SO I want to have at least a base idea of the economy and see where the players take it or leave it.
So I said I had a question 3 points ago, How much do you prep your commerce in your worlds?
For my current game, a moderate amount. This is because the main place for most of the action is Al-Rakkah, the titular
Jewel of the Desert, strongly inspired by the
Thousand and One Nights, the
Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, medieval Cairo, the Islamic Golden Age, al-Andalus, Morocco, etc., but the regional political climate is more similar to Archaic Greece (many city-states with autocratic or monarchic power structures, with one--the aforementioned Al-Rakkah--being the most powerful in the Tarrakhuna region.)
So,
some amount of thought put into trade. I make up a fair amount as I go, but the general gist is as follows:
- Al-Rakkah is the largest, oldest, and strongest city-state by a country mile, but it doesn't actually control a majority of the region's population. If the other city-states banded together, they could take it down. There's just too much infighting and politics for that to be realistic.
- It sits at the mouth of the largest river running through the arid Tarrakhuna region, the Sadalbari, which is part of why it's got such a stranglehold on trade.
- The Temple-City of Kafer-Naum (loosely analogous to the Vatican + Mecca) lies near the headwaters of the Sadalbari, so there's a strong back-and-forth on the river, with pilgrims and alms going up-river and raw materials and priests coming down it.
- Al-Rakkah itself has rich floodplains, so it can feed a large population, and ready access to the Ten Thousand Isles of the Sapphire Sea, where many rare and valuable resources can be collected (this is the Sinbad influence.) There's also incense, coffee, linen, cotton, and sources of various building stones (sandstone, marble, granite, limestone.) The nearby isles are rich in precious metals, gems, dyes, and exotic flora and fauna.
- Far away, on the far western shore of the Sapphire Sea, you find Yuxia, the Jade Home, an exotic and mysterious land which has only recently opened formal diplomatic ties with Al-Rakkah. Silks, spices, porcelain, and tea are major imports from Yuxia.
- Trade in artifacts (both fakes and genuine articles) is a big deal.
- Other major cities include Al-Maralus, to the north, which deals in timber; in its near environs, olive, citrus, oak (especially cork oak), linden, and acacia forests are common; in the jungles to its north, cedar, camphor, sandalwood, ebony, and balsa are commonplace.
- Jinnistan, the parallel-world region that corresponds to the Tarrakhuna, is full of elementally-charged materials, foods, and alchemical goods, which fetch extremely high prices because the Jinnistani nobles collect immense tariffs on exports to the mortal world.
- Slavery is ABSOLUTELY forbidden, though some people still practice it in secret. The ancient Genie-Rajahs kept slaves, and one of the reasons they abandoned the Tarrakhuna for Jinnistan was a massive slave revolt.
- Nomad Tribes wander the arid/desert lands between the cities, surviving as best they can. Often, some few of them provide mercenary services to merchants among the city-folk, to bring back money and supplies to the tribe.
- Wealthy merchants often maintain small personal estates out in the desert, protected by geography, hired help, and magic. This often leads to conflict with the (usually solo) monster-hunters who range across the wastes, hunting down the Big Nasty Things that wander out of the deep desert every now and then.
- The (roughly) baker's dozen of ultra-ultra rich folks in the city form the Brass Ring, an unofficial council of merchant-princes who have no formal legal power, but can exert tremendous pressure on the Sultana if she were to try to defy them. (She's smart enough not to bother unless it's really important, which hasn't happened yet...but could!)
I'd say about 75% of the core ideas above were developed in advance of the game proper or during Session 0, with details and the remaining 25% developed through play as we explored things.
I don't doubt that an actual business major or economist would have some issues with how all of this fits together, but I don't have anyone like that in the group, so it hasn't been enough of an issue to matter.
Related questions: I understand fairly well how business works today both big and small in a capitalistic democracy with modern tech. I was able to back figure how that would work in a free kingdom with some hand waving form the DM. However I have no idea what a Totalitarian dictatorship and or feudalism will effect this… my world is complex but can be quick explained as: big warlord has multi smaller warlords under him and those smaller warlords hold feudal control over sections of the empire, but it is dysfunctional and the smaller warlords sometimes even war with themselves.
SO this isn't a freemarket at all.
Sounds like it is ripe for mercantilism. Make sure to remember, however, that there is a very important distinction that often gets erased with the colloquial term "feudalism." Properly speaking, "feudalism" refers to two distinct elements which
usually, but not
always, came hand-in-hand for medieval Europe. One is "manorialism," which is the whole "one person owns this land, and tenant farmers live/work on it as effectively indentured servants" thing. The other is "vassalage," which is the specific thing you just talked about--where one person
technically has legal authority over the entirety of a vast country, but delegates that authority to regional sub-rulers, who may themselves delegate sub-regional authority to their own subordinates, down until you get to the smallest units which are directly administered (usually via manorialism, but not always--churches and some cities bucked this trend, e.g. London is
so old it actually has a special arrangement "from time immemorial" rather than the traditional manorial arrangement.)
Also as someone who watched Game of thrones but didn't enjoy the books as much as the recaps I hear other talk on youtube about, I have heard more than one rant that fantasy writers don't understand how things would work. I don't need it to work perfect but I need some ideas on making it look like it works.
TLDR: How does Commerce work in your games and how do you prep it? Do evil empire have commerce at all?
Evil empires are a WHOLE other ball of wax and no, they usually
do not function economically, for many of the same reasons that IRL fascist dicatorships did not actually function, they were just REALLY GOOD at PR and making it
look like they functioned. (E.g., the whole "the trains run on time" thing? Yeah...it was only the trains
Il Duce himself rode on that were always on time...no prizes for guessing why it was
those trains that were never late.)
Bottom line, the vast majority of commerce works because of three things:
- Transportation (which, historically, has meant specifically water transportation because of speed and ease)
- Resource scarcity in one place but not another
- Actors (whether state or individual) investing in something
This is why most cities either sit on a river, on the coast, or at a MAJOR crossroads with supplementary fresh water sources (like good aquifers or really well-made aqueducts.)
