Chapter 28 — Trade & the Economy

This chapter covers two things a Wanderer can never quite escape: how to make a living hauling goods between worlds, and what a credit is actually worth when they spend it. The trade loop comes first; the price reference follows. For the cost of a specific piece of equipment, see the catalog in Gear (Chapter 24) — that chapter lists gear prices, while this one is about what those credits are worth: cost of living, wages, passage, and the value of a haul.

The currency of the Shore is the credit (Cr) — a single unit that trades across worlds because the data networks that clear it outlived every government that ever tried to.

Index§

• Trade & Cargo
  • SCU — the unit of cargo
  • The trade loop
  • Goods & worlds
  • Roll the spread
  • Freight & passengers
  • The cost of doing business
  • Contraband
  • Starting out
• Money & Prices
  • What a credit is worth
  • Cost of living
  • Earning a living
  • Hiring help
  • Getting around
  • Services, bribes & trouble
  • Big-ticket & property
  • For the GM

Trade & Cargo

Hauling is how a great many Wanderers keep a ship fed — carrying goods between worlds that each have too much of one thing and too little of another, and pocketing the difference. It is also a gamble, because of one hard fact of the Shore: there is no faster-than-light communication (Chapter 27). A trader buys a hold of cargo without knowing what it will fetch where they're going — only what it fetched there the last time a ship came back to say so. Information is worth as much as the goods.

This is a light loop, not an accounting course. It leans on the Merchant career and on Negotiate (haggling), Network (finding cargo, buyers, and rumors of demand), and Bureaucracy (papers and customs).

SCU — the unit of cargo§

Cargo is measured in Standardized Container Units (SCU) — sealed, stackable containers of a common size, the shipping standard across the Shore. A ship carries a number of SCU and nothing about their weight is tracked; an SCU of feathers and an SCU of ore both take one slot. The Cargo Hold quality (Chapter 26) is what rates a hull in SCU:

The trade loop§

A run is five steps, most of them a single roll:

1. Source a cargo at the world you're on — what's cheap here (see below).
2. Buy it with a Negotiate roll (the spread, below). This takes capital.
3. Jump toward a market where you think it's wanted — blind, since no word travels ahead of you. Network and dockside rumor are your only forecast.
4. Sell it with a Negotiate roll at the far end.
5. Pocket the spread — (sell price − buy price) × SCU — minus the cost of the run.

Goods & worlds§

What a world sells cheap and what it pays dear for follow from what it is. Match the cargo to the run: carry what's abundant where you are to where it's scarce.

Buying a good where it is abundant (the world produces it) is done with Advantage; buying where it's scarce, with Disadvantage. Selling where it is wanted is done with Advantage; selling into a glut, with Disadvantage.

Roll the spread§

Each transaction — a buy or a sell — is one Negotiate (Intellect) test: roll 2D6 + Negotiate, apply the supply/demand Advantage or Disadvantage above (and any from your Contacts or reputation, Chapter 35), and read the price as a percentage of the good's base:

High rolls help you both ways — a cheap buy or a dear sale. A good leg (buy at 85%, sell at 120%) clears 35% of base per SCU; a great one (70% → 140%) clears 70%; a botched run can have you selling at a loss. That uncertainty — you commit the capital before you know the far price — is the whole game.

Worked run. A free trader fills 30 SCU with manufactured goods (base Cr5,000) on an industrial world. Buying where they're abundant is at Advantage; the broker rolls 2D6 + Negotiate = 11 → 85% → Cr4,250/SCU → Cr127,500 spent. She jumps to a frontier world that wants manufactured goods (sell at Advantage), rolls 10 → 120% → Cr6,000/SCU → Cr180,000 taken. Gross spread Cr52,500, less the run's overhead — a strong week. Had the frontier market been glutted (Disadvantage) and the roll come up 6, she'd have sold at 85% and lost money.

Freight & passengers§

Speculation needs capital and nerve. The steady side of the trade needs neither, and it is how most crews start and how they cover the bills between scores:

• Freight — carrying someone else's cargo under contract for a flat fee, no price risk. Reckon roughly Cr1,000 per SCU per jump. Find a load with a Network roll; the shipper bears the speculation, you just deliver.
• Passengers — berths sold by class at the fares below (steerage ~Cr500, a standard cabin ~Cr1,500, high passage ~Cr5,000 per jump). A ship with the Stateroom quality (Chapter 26) carries them in comfort and charges for it.

Freight and passengers won't make you rich, but they don't lose money — fill the hold with contracted freight and a few paying berths and a quiet month still meets the mortgage.

The cost of doing business§

A ship is a mouth that must be fed whether or not it earns:

• Overhead — crew shares, life support, docking fees, and routine maintenance run a small ship roughly Cr5,000–10,000 a month. (Living expenses on top are the crew's own, per lifestyle below.)
• The mortgage — almost no crew buys a hull outright; they fly one on debt. A starship is a fortune that lasts centuries, so its note is written to match: a term of a hundred years or more, refinanced and handed down from owner to owner like the ship itself. What lands on the crew each month is therefore modest beside the sticker price — reckon a flat note by size, not a slice of the purchase: roughly Cr500–1,000 for an S1 vehicle, Cr3,000–6,000 for an S2 craft, and Cr10,000–15,000 for an S3 starship. Miss enough payments and the lien-holder repossesses the hull out from under you — a debt that outlives its signers is collected just as patiently.
• Time — every leg is a jump, and every jump is a week (plus any in-system flight). A trade route is measured in weeks, and the calendar is itself a cost.

This is the engine of a trader's life: the note comes due monthly, so the ship can never sit still for long.

Optional rule — building equity. By default the note is a perpetual, inherited lien: you service it, you don't retire it, and owning the hull outright takes a windfall. A group that wants paying off the ship to be a reachable long-game can instead split the monthly note in two — half services the debt as ever, while the other half buys down a residual. The residual is not the hull's full sticker (a fresh hull's price would take centuries); it's the slice of a generations-old note left to its current owners, on the order of Cr500,000–1,000,000 for a small starship. Equity only builds in months the note is paid on time — a lean stretch stalls the clock just when it hurts most. At roughly half of a Cr10,000–15,000 note, the residual clears in about ten to fifteen years of steady flying, and a crew can dump any windfall straight onto it to finish early. Nothing compounds; the residual only falls. The day it reaches zero, the ship that owned them is theirs — sticker value and all.

Contraband§

Some cargoes pay far above their base — weapons into an embargo, restricted tech, things that don't take kindly to manifests — and carry a matching risk. Every jump ends at the system fringe, where customs and pickets wait (Chapter 27): slipping a hot cargo past them is a Deceive or Bureaucracy test, a forged manifest, or a quiet bribe (below). Get caught and the cargo is seized, fines bite, and your ship earns the Marked drawback. The margins are real; so is the cell.

Starting out§

A crew fresh off character creation (Part III) rarely has the capital to fill a hold on spec — a single run can tie up more credits than they own. The trader's arc is the point of the system: start with freight and passengers to cover the mortgage and build a stake, speculate a few SCU at a time as the cushion grows, and graduate to filling the whole hold on a hunch once you can afford to be wrong. The ship that owns you slowly becomes the ship you own.

Money & Prices

A reference for what a credit is worth: what it costs to live, to travel, to hire help, and to make a problem quietly disappear. The gear chapter (Chapter 24) prices equipment; this section prices everything else.

A credit is a reference, not a ledger. Track money only when it's interesting — a lean stretch between scores, a payout worth arguing over, a bribe that bites. Most small spending isn't worth a die roll or a subtraction. Prices below are ranges and ballparks; round them, and let world, Technology Level, and scarcity move the number. Salvage and resale run at roughly half list.

What a credit is worth§

As a rule of thumb, Cr1 is about a day's small comforts — a hot meal off a cart, a tram across a hab, a strong drink. (If you need a real-world handle, picture Cr1 ≈ $5.) Cr1 is the practical floor; nobody tracks anything cheaper.

Cost of living§

Between adventures a Wanderer still has to eat and sleep somewhere. The GM may charge a month's upkeep during downtime at the lifestyle the character is keeping; living rough is free but costs you other ways. Lifestyle is also a social signal — dressing and lodging the part can grant Advantage on social rolls where appearance matters, while visible destitution can impose Disadvantage.

A starting character's Cr2,000–5,000 is therefore a real cushion — most of a year lived Modestly, or a few months Comfortable — but a Wanderer's life burns through it, which is why they keep taking the next job.

Earning a living§

What honest (and dishonest) work pays, for pricing patrons, payrolls, and the party's own gigs.

A Wanderer's payday is the gig, not the wage, and it swings hard:

The career credit rewards on the career tables (Chapter 21; Cr500–1,500) are about a good term's worth of set-aside — meaningful, but not a fortune.

Hiring help§

Need a guide, a slicer, a surgeon, or muscle you don't have? Day rates for competent NPCs:

Hiring is also where Contacts (Chapter 35) pay off: an Ally does this kind of thing for a favor or for cost, a friendly Contact for a fair rate, and a stranger for full freight and no loyalty when it goes wrong.

Getting around§

Local movement is pocket change; leaving a world is not. Ship combat is in Chapter 25, crossing between worlds in Chapter 27, and cargo hauling and speculative trade above — these are passenger fares.

Services, bribes & trouble§

Big-ticket & property§

The far end of the scale, mostly campaign turning-points rather than shopping:

For the GM§

Money is a pressure, not a spreadsheet. Use it to make the next job necessary — the upkeep that runs the savings down, the medical bill after a bad fight, the bribe that empties the purse right before the score. When something isn't on these tables, price it by feel against the touchstones above (Cr1 ≈ a day's small comforts) and keep moving. A poorer world charges less and pays less; a Seeder-core world charges more for everything but the labor; a place that wants what the Wanderers are selling will pay over the odds. Let the number serve the scene.