I'm studying the hexmap of TSSOS, trying to mark the borders of realms presented in the region as well as trade routes.
Considering Siadanos is probably a market class IV, and Turos Tem being a market class V, how can there be a trade route between them, if Siadanos is clearly beyond Turos Tem range of trade?
I'm strongly considering just ignoring this 'range of trade' rule, but I want to know what was the idea behind it, as right now it makes no sense to me.
so i think the difference here is "trade route" vs. "trade range". If two cities are within each other's "trade range" that means that trade is so rapid that their market demand modifiers drift towards each other. By contrast, even cities far apart can still have a trade route, and possible even because they are far away, since the demand differences facilitate big profits in arbitrage trading.
So there is a trade route within trade range, and there is a trade route out of trade range. It has a lot more sense now, thank you. Although demand modifier table from TSSoS still looks like Siadanos influences demand modifiers of the forts along Krysivor river, and there is even a note about Siadanos being the main supplier of beer and grain to these forts, yet they are clearly not in each other's trade range.
I have concocted another justification: both were probably larger cities during the height of the empire. They were likely in range of each other at one time, but technically aren't now that they've lost so much population. Thus they originally influenced the demand modifiers but then didn't revert back to old demand modifiers after they shrank.
In that case the demand modifiers should have changed, although I doubt all these border forts were previously larger settlements.
I'm thinking only the larger settlement's trade range should matter, for example Market class IV settlement can influence the demand modifiers of a Market Class VI settlement located 12 6-mile hexes away from it. I'm also considering an optional rule of civilized/borderlands/wilderness influencing trade range (with boderlands probably being 1x to the default values from the core rulebook).
By common sense the effective trade range should be counted along the actual road connecting two settlements, in that case the majority of border forts are clearly not influenced by Siadanos. But maybe those forts can be influenced by a largest market in the region (being a part of the same political subdivision - Siadanos palatinate) if they are connected to a settlement located in trade range of Siadanos, thus forming a long trade route passing through all the border forts, which are in trade range of each other (4 6-mile hexes).
There's a trade route between Siadanos and Turos Tem for the same reason that Türos Tem has a Class V market instead of a Class VI market - Turos Tem sits in a hub-like position on a navigable riverway at the terminus of a road. Turos Tem is within Siadano's trade range, it has no other city or town which it could trade with, so I concluded it must have a trade route to Siadanos. *waves hand*
The other trade routes would technically be between Turos Tem and Turos Drav, Turos Tem and Turos Spen, Turos Drave and Turos Telle, and Turos Telle and Siadanos.
Always keep in mind that the world-building rules in the ACKS "Secrets" chapter are intended to be guidelines rather than strict laws. Real human societies are too richly varied and complex to be completely represented in those scant pages. One of the reasons I deliberately did things like make Turos Tem Class V when it "should" be Class VI was to show that the Judge ought to break the guidelines when it makes sense to do so. As Bobloblah (I think) put it once, I don't want the players to be more Catholic than the Pope.
Thank you for that clarification. I never did any serious worldbuilding or played hexcrawls or old school d&d, my knowledge of history is also very limited (although I have to admit ACK made me read more about ancient history), so in order to understand something as complex as ACK I needed a clear example which I can use to understand the system, before I start changing any of those rules to suit some other setting. That's why at the current stage any exceptions are more like chaos, than a constructive demonstration of "law unto itself" principle.
Understood! I hope your ventures bear fruit. World-building is a lot of fun. Always happy to explain, or try to explain, the methodology behind what we do.
I really enjoy the arbitrage rules, but found something missing. It seems the range of trade doesn't take into account historical trade situations such as the Silk Road and Sino-Roman trade relations. What if the adventurers traveled a thousand miles or more? Or are importing unique goods like silk? I wrote up some rules to handle this. I'd be curious to hear opinions on whether this sounds balanced.
Extreme Distance Arbitrage (Experimental)
When an adventurer brings foreign goods to a market from far beyond its range of trade, the demand modifiers will reflect the extreme effort the adventurer has made in traveling great distances. Determine the market class of the destination market (where the adventurer’s are trading) and the market of origin (where the adventurer’s acquired the foreign goods). Take the larger of the two markets, and use its class to find the range of trade via roads and its range of trade via water.
Next, find the most direct distance via roads (in hexes) between the two markets, and divide this by the range of trade via roads (also in hexes). This is the overland distance modifier. Then find the most direct distance via water (again in hexes) between the two markets, dividing this number by the range of trade via water. This is the maritime distance modifier. If the foreign merchandise is of a type that is unique and completely unavailable at the destination market, double the distance modifiers. Add the distance modifiers to the destination market’s demand modifiers.
Those modifiers are potentially very, very large. Which is presumebly what you want - but given that in the vanilla system trade modifiers only rarely go beyond +/- 4, they might be a bit too large. Maybe some sort of cap is in order?
Also, under your proposed system, players hauling stuff between tiny podunk hamlets get massive trade modifiers. Players hauling goods directly between two massive trade cities each within earshot of those hamlets have much smaller trade modifiers, despite being close enough to their respective hamlets that they practically share price modifiers.
Those are some good points. While I do want large modifiers, I definitely don’t want this to become an exploit of the system. I’m thinking I’ll put another restriction - the market of origin has to be in a different realm than the destination market(s). So instead of a hard cap, I want an incentive for traders to target larger markets and yield diminishing returns. After each entry into a market, lessen the total distance modifier by 1. Or maybe instead of basing this on market entry, lessen the modifier by 1 for each transaction with a merchant for the foreign merchandise?
I’m not sure why you would add both the maritime modifier and the overland modifier; does it matter how difficult it is to get somewhere by land when everyone is just taking ships anyway?
I would be inclined to add only the smaller of the two.