Contracts Idea

boogis

hey, guys, i have a cool idea about contracts. every city has gate guards like a custom and they do not allow people to bring anything they want into the city, people must have sort of contracts or allowance for certain items like smith has an allowance for weapons and armor. miner has an allowance for ore ect. city can issue those allowances to citizens for a small fee and for a bigger fee for anyone else. or maybe won't give it certain guilds and alliances which this city in war with or neutral relationships. so you have to be a diplomat to regulate prices for those allowances for your people. as a major, you can regulate items entering your city, you can issue a law that this month you can only sell 100 allowance for copper ore for 10 gold each and only for your fella citizens miners, cos you have too much copper in a city and you dont want price to drop on market and you wanna support local business, but cunning traders raised a price and next month you allowed to sell 1000 allowances for 1 gold each for everyone and city overflowed with cheap copper from all over the world. or maybe you prohibit copper ore supply from certain guild or alliance, or maybe allow only one guild or alliance to bring ore. or maybe a few. maybe this will be done only by major but maybe by his helper under majors supervision. i think its a very cool idea.

Azathoth

I don't know if allowing players this level of control over who can sell what, when, where, for how much, or what quantity would be a good idea. I can see this being a thing in economic nodes maybe, but otherwise causing an artificial flux in the market could potentially screw with the whole system.

I think you put a lot of thought into this, and as a DM I do this to my players in D&D depending on the city they are in or who they associate with. However, for a game with a populace of players well beyond seven, I see this being more of an issue and hindrance than anything beneficial.

To some degree this sounds like an attempt to prevent certain guilds or members of the community from being able to participate on a fair footing.