PRICE FLUCTUATIONS
Previous article…D&D – Merchant #6 – Base Price
Ok, it is time to talk about the most delicate matter.
Price fluctuation in a merchant campaign, or at least a campaign that tries to throw the players into such kind of genre.
We previously stated, just as a general rule, that price fluctuation is strictly related to the goods category.
Indeed, we investigated a bit and we found out that price fluctuation in raw materials, is not the same as price fluctuation in luxury goods.
We have published the awesome Merchant Guide, a pdf available on DrivethruRpg. Just have a look at the preview to have an idea of the content.
Also, if you already have an idea on how to run your own trading campaign you may want to have a look at our Trade Goods Generator.
Under normal circumstances, Luxury Goods are more volatile while Raw Materials are more stables. Thus, we may assume that Finished Products, stand somewhere in the middle.
We decided that the above mentioned statements are true because we investigated a bit about the price formation in renaissance and middle age eras.
At the same time, we also know that Raw Materials become extremely volatile only when extraordinary events occur, like famine, war or pestilences. This open a window to another topic that will be included in our analysis, which is Events, Disaster etc…
So, we must create a table of events that may affect cities, regions or countries…we will do this later however, not now.
So, we want prices fluctuate, and we want to determine this fluctuation with a roll of dices. Of course.
When rolling dices, we need to consider the following principle.
The more dices we roll, the more the result will be close to the dice average value, this is even more true if the dice range is small. A roll of D4s give a less volatile result than a roll of D6s.
Rolling 2D10 gives a more volatile result than rolling a D20, even if on paper the average is the same.
I have found a very interesting website where the statistical distribution of dice rolls are explained and detailed according to the Gaussian distribution.
Anydice
Have a look at it, if you ever want to know more about statistical distribution of dice rolling. Very useful and very easy to use. We must thank the guy who did this!
So, with this in mind, we now have the proper tools to pick a good combination of dices that will work fine for making our price fluctuation system work.
RAW MATERIALS PRICE FLUCTUATION
We said we want a weak price fluctuation, and we also said that the peak of this fluctuation must not be too high or too low.
My pick is the D4, but how many D4s are we going to roll?
4D4s I would say! I am going to explain why of course, because explaining why is the actual purpose of this article, this series of articles, and indeed is the true purpose of the blog as a whole!
The average value of a D4 is 2.5. The average value of 4D4 is 10.
Again,
refer to Anydice.com and you will discover that
9 has 15.63% of
occurring.
10 has 17.19% of occurring.
11 has (again of
course) 15.63 of occurring.
In other words, we have 48.45% of rolling a result between 9 and 11.
Why is this important? Again, I am going to explain you why.
Imagine that a roll of 10 means that I am buying/selling a good at 100% of its base price.
A roll of 9 means that I am buying/selling a good at 90% of its base price.
A roll of 11 means that I am buying/selling a good at 110% of its base price.
And imagine again that this is going to happen 48.45% of the times, very close to 50%.
Here we have a dice roll that grants me a good price stability for raw materials, and it was exactly what I was looking for.
Of course, I will have peaks, but these peaks won’t be extremes because they will be comprised between 40% and 160% of the base price.
I take it! I keep 4D4 to roll price fluctuation for raw materials.
Now let’s see what we can do for finished products, and I bet you already have in mind a good solution, don’t you?
FINISHED PRODUCTS PRICE FLUCTUATION
Don’t forget what we said in the paragraph before, and let’s have another look at anydice.com.
I will skip some considerations I made for raw materials price fluctuation, but I will show you the statistical distribution.
My pick is 3d6.
The average of 3d6 is 10.5, which, in terms of dice rolls, translates into 9 and 12.
This means we have 48.14% of scoring a price fluctuation comprised between 90% and 120% of the base price. It is a bit more inflationary because it leans slightly a roll higher than 100%, but it is fine.
LUXURY GOODS PRICE FLUCTUATION
Now, for what concern luxury products, we have plenty of solution. We said that luxury products are very volatile and prices are not stable at all.
Many picks exist and all may work well.
My personal pick, which is perfectly questionable of course, is rolling 2D10.
This combination gives a good volatility and good peaks.
WHAT IS MISSING?
Of course we haven’t said all about price fluctuations. We have just talked about the interactions between the base price of goods, and their fluctuations, nothing else. Something raw I would say.
We haven’t touched the topic of modifiers for example.
Because modifiers are those that will contribute to adjust properly the final price.
For example, imagine the you are in the ancient Roman Empire and you are a trader of wheat. As you can guess, you will buy wheat from Egypt and resell it to Rome. Why? Because Egypt produced a tremendous amount of wheat and Rome consumed a tremendous amount of wheat.
With this in mind, we can state that buying or selling wheat in Egypt imposes a penalty on the dice roll, that will reduce the base price accordingly.
At the same time, selling or buying wheat in Rome imposes a bonus on the dice roll, that will increase the price accordingly.
If I were a merchant in the ancient Roman Empire, I would try to buy loads of wheat in Egypt, and then sail to Rome to sell it with a good profit…which is exactly what the merchants did in the ancient Roman Empire; provided I do not get killed while trying to invade the market of a very powerful opponent…but that is a matter of roleplaying, more than dice rolling :).
CONCLUSIONS
We have in our hand a decent system to calculate price fluctuations, and we have material to think about for the next article. Base Price modifiers!
Hope you enjoyed this article! See you soon for the next one!
Next article…D&D – Merchant #8 – Price Fluctuations