What would a system built around being merchants look like?

>>50267079
Probably a simple system for characters, some complex subsystems for trade guilds and organizations and a SHITTON of tables - random encounters, town and county creation, weather, harvesting and so on. So that you can generate a bunch of kingdoms and population centres in them with different goods and prices that will change during game depending on some global dice rolls.

>>50267079
ryuutama?

>>50267079
It depends on what you want out of it.

World travel?
non-dungeon exploration?
Social-heavy campaign?
Spice and Wolf?

>>50267343
World travel, maybe a bit of dungeon exploration to get rare and valuable stuff on the cheap, and some economical systems.

>>50267240
This guy's idea is actually sounding good. When I've got more time I might start making some tables

File: Traveller Solo_Star Trader.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>50267079
here is one

GURPS

Ryuutama
GURPS (can go rules light)
Traveller

GURPS has several supplements to support this kind of thing. Social Engineering, City Stats, Boardroom and Curia, and there's a Pyramid issue specifically written on the premise that the PC'S will be traveling merchants/traders. It's the kind of thing where it's as "into detail" as you wanna go, and can involve anything from cultural barriers to currency exchange to mechanically enforced haggling, investing, advertising, and whatever million other things you and your players wanna do.

>>50268538
Forgot Low Tech and LT: Life and Economics.

I want a venture capitalist game.

>>50267079
I once ran a game where the PCs were agents of a shady merchant consortium sent to investigate a contact loss.

It was supposed to be a Scarlet Pimpernel meets Mission Impossible game.

It turned out to be a spreadsheet simulator, ending with the whole country nearing default thanks to the PCs, and forcing the local ruler to sell the region to them. The PCs never left the regional capital.

>>50267079
working on a game now where the classes are Scholar, Merchant, Artisan, & Noble.
goal is just to be comfy. also trade empires, guild politics,market manipulation, book keeping, etc.

>>50273741
sounds neat, would play.

also, is the ryuutama pdf worth buying? anyone have any experience or tales from the game? seems really fun, would like more insight

>>50267079

I once ran a game of Ragnarok:Fate of the Norns where all my players rolled on the randomized tables. One of them ended up as a fairly wealthy merchant and trader who managed to roll himself a long ship when they were rolling for wealth. One was a weaver, and one was a Blacksmith. And so a rather interesting campaign of Viking merchants was born. It was decided that both the weaver and the Blacksmith did business with the Merchant, who had gone into debt with the local Jarl to finance his business operation before the fimblewinter started. Now his business was all that was keeping the two of them above water, so they were inclined to help. Of course the player for the merchant also did a really good job role playing it and convincing them to go along with stuff. Lot of back and forth bargains between the players. You help me i help you sort of thing. The main plot was that the Merchant had a year to earn 100,000 gold pieces to pay off the Jarl. Minor plots included things like trading sheep, investigating why green land was able to export food (green houses. yes i know it was silly, but i thought it was fun), war profiteering trading near the front of the war with the Crusaders of the White God, Investigating mine shipments that were behind schedule (the had tunneled into Niflehiem.), looking for new trading partners and dealing with politics, going after bandits who interfered with shipments, and finally when the debt failed to be paid because the merchants thief friend (he had rolled an npc thief as a friend during character generation) stole his money, they fled to Iceland, and later on to the Skrealand (Americas) where they finally died. I think i was doing something wrong, cause it's a system that encourages character death, but either way we had a blast.

>>50273741
>>50274674

thinking of adding Explorer as a more 'active' class but im afraid it would end up shifting the tone too much. I was thinking more gentlemans club/cartographer/expeditions for foreign resources type

>>50267079
five rings courtiers are more or less merchants