Table of Contents
The Mercantile DM is responsible for the cities craftsmen and professionals. You will be responsible for selling special items, controlling the availability of special materials and running scenes for PCs related to their crafts and businesses.
Adventure Frequency: once every 14 days
Skills: You should be closely familiar with the rules for Jobs and Income, and careful about the games economy.
Bookkeeping
You are responsible for all bookkeeping and paperwork related to the following:
- Various Guilds & Guild NPCs
Guilds
You should track a list of the various professional guilds, as well as the PCs who have membership of those guilds. Guild membership requires at least one rank in an associated Craft or Profession skill, but PCs can join multiple guilds if they qualify.
Membership of a guild is required to advance in Skilled Labour, and increase your weekly earnings. Additionally, the Guild provides a place to work for PCs who do not own a workshop - the latter is mostly for RP purposes.
Members of the guild can earn Mastery points to advance in their craft. Mastery Points are earned using missions, but face a special restriction: you can never have more Mastery Points than you have ranks in the guilds craft or profession skill.
Link: Mercantile Guild Members
Guild Scenes
Once a month, you should run a Guild mission. This special mission is given out by one of the mercantile guilds, and could include such things as protecting a trade caravan, retrieving an especially rare ingredient,
Both guild members and non-guild members are welcome on the adventure, though the mission itself should include at least one guild member as the point of contact.
If any of the PCs who complete the mission is a Guild Member, they gain up to 2 Mastery Points, provided they have sufficient ranks in their craft of profession skill.
Masters
Once a PC has gathered 10 or more Mastery Points (Remember, this means they have to have 10 ranks in the associated Craft or Profession skill) they become Masters.
Masters get all the benefits of guild members, and additionally can advance further in their income. (( The details for this have yet to be decided, as this level is currently not available to PCs yet. As Mercantile DM, you should help design this ))
Economic Forces
You are responsible for managing the economic forces in the city. As part of storylines, other DMs may ask you to influence the cities economy, and you can also do so at your own initiative.
You may declare certain materials or goods are "limited" or "plentiful". This could include items made of certain materials (Iron, Mithral, Darkwood, etc) or items of a specific category (Armours, Food, Horses, etc).
Items that are "limited" are less available than normal. Any PC who buys these items needs to pay 120% of the normal value, including newly created PCs. Additionally, any PCs selling such items sell them at 60% of their value instead of 50%.
Items that are "plentiful" are more available than normal. Any PC who buys these items needs to pay only 80% of their normal value, including newly created PCs. Additinally, any PCs selling such items only receive 40% of their value instead of 50%.
The status on an item lasts for 2 months, after which the price returns to normal. Please use this power responsibly.
Fire Sales
At most once a month, you may sell a limited number of special items at a discount through the Forum.
Choose one of the following:
You can sell 1 item worth no more than 2500 gp by open auction. The item starts at half its value and any PC can make an offer. If no new offers are made for 3 days, the item is sold for the final offered price to the final bidder.
For example, you can put a +1 fullplate for sale, with bidding starting at 1.325 gp.
Alternatively, you can sell at least 3 identical items each worth no more than 1000 gp and totaling no more than 3000 gp. The items are offered at 20% below the current market price. Price is not negotiable and is sold at a first-come-first-served basis. Offers are limited to 1 per player.
For example, you could sell 3 Wands of Cure Light Wounds for 600 gp each.