Silver and Jade

Permutations

• Resources Rating vs Resources Purchases

Investing

• Every investment is rated as a Resource purchase.
• Every investment has what is called a turnaround time, which is the amount of time it takes an investment to determine success or failure,and the degree thereof.

Shielded Resources

Resources that come to a character through Backing of some kind are far more reliable and solid than normal Resources. Where unshielded Resources are based on the character's own wheeling and dealing, making money where he can and generally tending to his own finances, Shielded Resources come to a character through the organization to which he belongs. This may be in the form of a salary, or it may simply reflect investments and income that come about as a result of association with that organization.

A Backing Background can protect up to its rating in Resources. Multiple Backing Backgrounds do not stack; the Resources of that character is simply protected by the best of them.

Benefits: Shielded Resources benefit in the following ways:

• Regeneration: Instead of Resources rating dropping permanently by a single dot when a Resources purchase of equal value is made, the drop occurs only until the next month. This, of course, is only the case if the Backing shielding the Resources rating is of equal or greater rating.
• Immunity to Attack: Shielded Resources ratings are immune to attack by the Silver and Jade system, to a degree. Shielded Resources cannot be eroded below the rating of the Backing serving to shield them.

Resources Ratings & Resources Purchases

The Resources rating, for the purpose of these rules, is the number of dots a character has in the Resources Background. It represents an overall, often times regenerating buying power of the character in question.

A Resources purchase is a single expenditure of funds. These are rated on a scale comparative to the Resources rating. These ratings reflect how expensive the item is; if someone with a Resources rating equal to the Resources purchase scale makes that purchase, it reduces his Resources by one dot.

Example: Gilded Coin has a Resources •••• rating. The purchase of an estate is a Resources •••• purchase. If he makes the purchase, his Resources are reduced to a rating of •••.

The Mercantile Action

The mercantile action is a dramatic action intended to find, buy or sell an item. Generally speaking, this action uses two Skills at different points in the process: Bureaucracy to find the items in question (or buyers if one possesses the items) and Presence to handle the haggling thereof.

The system assumes that the basic price of any given item is a Resources purchase. Of course, with a culture that lacks the concept of standardized pricing, there is no such thing as a fixed price. As a buyer, there are three steps in this process: Finding Goods, Evaluating Goods and Haggling. As a seller, there are two: Finding Buyers and Haggling

Finding Goods or Buyers

The first step in any mercantile action is finding someone with whom to trade, whether that means finding a buyer for one's goods, or finding someone with the thing you want. This requires a Perception + Bureaucracy roll, with a difficulty of the Resources price of the item(s) to be sold.

This can be affected by a number of modifiers, all of them manifesting as external modifiers (i.e. adding or subtracting successes from the roll). Many very basic purchases receive so many positive modifiers that a roll is utterly unnecessary - finding food (Res. 1) in a good harvest season (Scarcity: Ample Supply +2) in an agricultural trading center (Market: X +X) is an automatic success, with successes to spare. Others are a bit more difficult, however: finding an orichalcum daiklave (Res. 5)

Scarcity

The Scarcity of a given product indicates how easy it is to find in the current location. This can fluctuate fairly radically, ranging from impossible to find (-5) to being in a major production center for that good (+3-+5, depending on the level of production). Some example modifiers apply below:

• -5: Impossible to get anywhere in Creation.
• -4: Impossible to get anywhere in that Direction.
• -3: Nearly impossible to get in that Direction, and are the province of rulers.
• -2: Very difficult to get, possessed on by the very wealthy.
• -1: Difficult to find, with a specialized market for them.
• +0: Not too difficult to acquire, with the right money.
• +1: Easily acquired, within the same Direction as some place that produces that product.
• +2: Common, found within roughly the same area of a Direction as some place that produces that product.
• +3: Fairly common, located in a shared area with some production center for the product.
• +4: Very common, in a production center of large town size for that product.
• +5: Extremely common, such as in a major production center for that product (blades and metalworks in Nexus, glassworks in Chiaroscuro, etc.)

Market

The Market of a given product determines how large of a demand there is for that product in the area - it is easier to find a product in places where it will sell, after all. Some example modifiers apply below:

• -3: No one in this location would purchase such a product.
• -2: Only very specialized purchasers seek this product.
• -1: Professional or wealthy buyers are the only ones who seek this product, but it is in fair demand among such customers.
• +0: The sale of the product is fairly common, though hardly considered vital or greatly desired.
• +1: A popular item with half the populace or so.
• +2: An item considered a staple or favorite purchase by nearly everyone.
• +3: In demand by nearly everyone.

Other Modifiers

• Trade Barriers: X
• Legality: X
• Magical Nature: X
• Guild Proliferation: X

Evaluating Goods

Before haggling begins, the prospective buyer generally makes an Intelligence + Bureaucracy roll, with a difficulty of the item's Resources rating. The prospective buyer may also use other Abilities appropriate to the purchase being made instead of Bureaucracy: a combat Ability for a weapon that uses that Ability, Survival for an animal, Socialize for clothing and jewelry, Medicine for slaves, appropriate Crafts used to make the item in question and the like.

A dishonest seller may take steps to make the item seem worth more than it is, through sweet-talking the buyer and/or underhanded little tricks such as adding a discreet layer of wax to make something that isn't in the best condition shine, or otherwise concealing flaws in the item.

• Physical Tricks: Each success on the seller's Dexterity + Larceny adds one to the difficulty to determine the true value of the item. This generally requires some time, based on the item's size and complexity.
• Sweet Talking: Each success the seller scores over the buyer's MDV in a Manipulation-based social attack increases the difficulty by one as well, unless the target spends a point of Willpower.

Success: If the buyer succeeds at this roll, he gains an automatic success on the following Haggling roll, or three successes if the seller resorted to physical tricks or sweet talking.