[TSoY 2nd] Free-ranging attributes of Near
dindenver:
Harald,
That is wild, but it doesn't really cover large purchases with cash on hand. What is that cash?
Eero Tuovinen:
My call would be to go with the sensible choices in this regard. And the sensible choice pretty clearly is metals - rare or not, they can't be so rare as to not be available for being used as money. Also, if the rest of the world (Maldor, mostly) runs on the gold standard, good luck using your money for the most important purpose of long-distance trade if it's not the same stuff. Different monetary economies only exist in disconnected environments.
So I'd be inclined to interpret the scarcity of metals in Ammeni as scarcity of mining and bulk materials suitable for making tools and weapons of. Gold and other noble materials will make the rounds even if they're originally dug out of the ground in Goren or wherever. Or heck, if metals are for some reason super-uncommon in the whole eastern Near (remember that Khaleans go for wooden weapons, too) due to metal-eating groundworms or whatever, then I guess the currency of choice could be iron.
Of course, even if there is money in the form of metals, and even some primitive seigniorage by the most ambitious lords, that doesn't mean that wealth is held in such an uncertain and fragile form. Rather, I imagine that wealth in Ammeni is in land and slave ownership propped up by men whose loyalty you have bought. Similarly, the mostly barter-based Khalean economy probably recognizes noble metals, which are used to make jewelry and for convenient bartering materials. But wealth will be tribe-based and communal, with most of it invested in the living conditions and tools of survival - the prosperous tribe will have good clothes, nice homes, good tools for farming and hunting and even some bronze or steel weapons.
Also, good stuff on debts, Harald. To be clear, I think that being definite and avoiding ambivalence is a virtue at the level of the individual campaign. That's what setting-ownership, one of the SG duties, is for. So while I might not write many definite details in the book, that's definitely not to say that such details are to be avoided in actual play. Rather, consider those unanswered questions as opportunity to make your own choices whichever way you find interesting.
oliof:
Yes, this is of course an idea that just might be the thing for one campaign. For Ammeni, I can also see letters of trust or simple contract work; maybe even scraps of paper painted with alchemic inks for paper money.
Brand_Robins:
So, almost completely by accident the Ammeni in my games have almost always had a huge element of the early medieval South-East Asian empires (mostly Srivijaya, or the Khmer).
Partially as a result of that, Ammenite trade was almost always based on spices as much as metals, with different types of spices having a more or less fixed value per weight. (In the early stages of the Spice Route the market fluctuations weren't really a huge factor, it wasn't until the mass scale trading of the early modern period that became a problem.) The truly wealthy had gold, mostly brought in by trading spices outwards, but most merchants and internal matters were done in "spice weights" -- even when the exchange of actual spices wasn't at issue.
Which brings me to something else, Eero. Development level is one of the areas I'd love a side bar on, and tied to it but separate is trade level. How much do the people of Near trade with each other? Internally? Externally? Who knows what about who, and how far do merchants trade goods?
Like, in the real world, nutmeg from the Banda islands was known as far as France by 100 BC, despite the fact that no one in the Bandas had ever heard of France and the Gauls had no clue the Bandas even existed. But someone from the Bandas (probably a small group of someones) knew about Java, and Java knew about Sumatra, and Sumatra had some kind of tie to India, and so on and on. OTOH, at the same period of history folks from Rome had direct literate contact with China, and knew pretty accurately about the land route from whence came their silk.
So, who trades? And in what? And how far? And how much cultural contact and exchange goes along with it?
Eero Tuovinen:
Quite so, Brand. I'm going to be adding some minor crunch for the Ammeni to develop and maintain trade routes, so there'll certainly be material related to that. In general the specifics again fall largely into the "depends on the campaign" box for me, as it depends on the campaign which cultures - and therefore, which trade routes - are pertinent. If I want a city that is the nexus of trade between the Goren and Ammeni, I'm very well going to have it.
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