image: by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Running a freighter is, right after combat and exploration, one of the most common sorts of science fiction tropes. “Free Traders” are one of the most popular character types in Warhammer 40,000, and if you get a ship in Stars Without Number and you are not part of a military, chances are high it is going to be a trading vessel.

That makes complete sense: A trader has a ship, and a reason to be around, plus trading comes with the freedom to choose one’s own path – the freedom that is at the core of roleplaying games as such. So trading should come natural to sci-fi-RPGs.

The dreaded Shopping Session

On the other hand, and ironically, trading is burdened by one of the lamest and most dreaded aspects of roleplaying games: shopping, logistics, and number crunching. Encumbrance and equipment buying are regularly handwaved by overburdened GMs, and either messed up or deliberately obscured by players. Few moments are more shocking in an RPG session than those when one player decides to enter a shoppe and starts haggling about the price of fishing lines.

So, how do we unite these two core issues: The free trader as a natural archetype of RPG playing, and most tables’ natural inclination to shirk the work that that traders must do?

• Option 1: Keep the actual trading background, like it is done in movies, together with eating and trips to the loo: negotiations usually only have a place in fiction when they get interrupted by violence.
• Option 2: Have an easy, robust set of rules to handle the heavy lifting of business administration.

Stars Without Number, to no-one’s surprise, attempts to go that second way.

Easy Core Rules

The trading rules in the main rule book try to go quick and dirty:

• Base price of cheap bulk goods is 2d6 x 10 credits for a metric ton,
• Finished goods are 2d6 x 100 credits for a metric ton,
• Expensive luxury items are 2d6 x 1000 credits for a metric ton.

We see, wares go for 20 credits a ton up to 12000 credits a ton. Plus/minus: if we win a contested skill roll for the trader versus the buyer, we may get +10% out of it.
But… does that make sense?
20 credits a ton, does it even pay to load that junk onto a self-respecting starship?
What else costs 20 credits?

2 magazines of ammo.
Or a single laser rifle.

Does that make sense? A metric ton of grain for the price of 2 magazines of ammo or one rifle?

I am not sure, but I know it is a good, quick way to let the PCs do something between more standard adventures and hand them a stack of cash in exchange.
It works if you don’t think too hard about it.

Example

Let’s try it: We fly from planet A to B with a cargo hold of 200 metric tons, and fill it to the brim with finished goods.

2d6x100 credits for the ton, makes 800 credits per metric ton, aka 160,000 credits.

We know trade-1 and have good CHA (+1), so we get 2d6+2 versus our partner’s WIS/trade roll with the same stats, haggling. 7, versus their 8. The price is fixed.

There might be a calamity with a chance of 1 in 6, but no, we roll a 6.

Now we mosey over to planet B for the low price of a spike drill of 500 credits, irrelevant at this price range.

We sell for 2d6+1 x 100 per ton to dump the whole cargo on the unsuspecting market.
5, + 1, that’s 600×200 = 120,000 credits, and that means we are in deep shit with our little ferry business, because now we are 40,000 credits in the hole, and that hurts, and suddenly we are glad that a metric ton of “stuff” comes so cheap.

Suns of Gold

Now, this was all from the New, Revised Version: Stars Without Number v2.
v1, which is largely compatible with v2, had an extra sourcebook for traders among the stars: Suns of Gold. This went much deeper into the nit and gritty and gives us a wealth of tables to administer:

Any given planet would have a number of possible trading opportunities, say, 10, at various price ranges per unit, where a unit can be a metric ton, but if it is particularly compact goods, it is a tenth of that, and if the goods are particularly bulky, it is times 10.

Haggling also is more convoluted, with 3d6 modified by our crew skills for trading and cultural knowledge, and also modified by “Friction”, which is random costs like taxes, docking fees, and security, if necessary, all boxed into one abstraction, and normally ranges from 2 to 5, with an occasional 1 if you are especially lucky.

In addition, our calamity isn’t 1 in 6 but planet-dependent, with 1 in 10 for a very stable EU type of trade-lovers, and 5 in 10 for some raging hellhole full of anarchic warlords rebelling against each other every day.

Let us go right into an

Example

On agricultural world A we find two opportunities:

Native Artwork, for 10,000 per ton, or basic hand tools, for 5,000 per ton.
Right off the bat, our stakes are way higher than in the quick-and-dirty brush-up rules above, where we dealt only in 800 per ton.

We take the hand tools, which we want to sell on the more primitive world B.

200 tons makes 1 million credits.

Damn.

Unlikely that we have that much lying around, so we only fill up half our storage, 100 tons, for 500,000 credits.

We use our skillset: We have CHA +1 as above, and know trading for another +1. In addition, one of us is very skilled connecting to people, so we get another +2.
We have a planetary friction rating of 3 so we rest at +1.

3d6 makes 8, plus 1 is 9. Bad luck, we get our tools with a surcharge of 10%, which makes them 550,000 credits worth of investment.

Calamity roll: 2! Our agricultural world A has a 2 in 10 chance for calamity, so we have run into one: A union strike! Our friction goes up by 1d4… 1. We arrive at 20% surcharge, so our cargo now costs 600,000.

Miffed and angry, we fly away and vow never to set foot on this ugly planetoid again!
We fly to B for 500 credits, hardly worth a mention in our big numbers scheme.

At B, we land and want to sell our cool new tools, with a +1 for our price range.

We have our skillset as before, Friction is also 3. so this time we roll 3d6+2

8, +2 is 10.

Not the greatest result, but hey, at least higher than before.
Base Price, says the table. (Obviously, with a 10 on a 3d6 range)

That base price is 5,000 per metric ton…. this is shaping up bad.

Trouble hits us at 3 in 10. At least here we roll a 5 and have no union strike on the primitive world … alas, they don’t have tons of money, and our 100 tons of cargo sell for 500,000 credits.

And given our surcharges from planet A, we are 100,000 credits in the hole.

Honest Work and its pitfalls

We see that honest trading doesn’t pay well, so any free trader worth his or her salt will inevitably have to do shady side deals, smuggle drugs and weapons, or do dirty deeds for the local powers in order to get some sort of premium.

Hello, adventuring territory.

Boring Work and its perks

Also, hello better administration! A good trading network would surely secure a better deal ahead of time, compare buyers and sellers before the cargo is even acquired, securing a good premium right away, and leaving only the Trouble-Rolls as a risk.

Hire a local facilitator, stay in contact with that bureau and provide goods that come with extra demand.

There is a little-used “Administration” Skill in Stars Without Number, and that part is where it could come in.

Also, this still allows for adventuring territory, when rival traders do the same, and the trading run turns into a race to see who satisfies demand faster, and who comes in too late when the market is already covered.

Economy — the Final Frontier.