Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

[Photon1966]

Why I ask this is in my campaign a player has decided to play a dwarf and the player is an economics kinda guy.

 

To give you a brief background the dwarves make Renown Steel, which is superior to common steel that humans make. Basiclly it is iether +1 to hit, more body, harder, nicer looking or combination. So yes expensive but valuable as well. Human weapons and the like work fine, basic rules from the book, dwarven ones just better in subtle ways. Now I also have dwarves in the shipping industry as the campaign takes place amongst numerous islands. They make great ships and hard workers.

 

But what do they gain, ie the dwarves. Money, bah..., dwarves do not need human money, they can do well on their own. One idea I had was spices. Humans sell them exotic sea and land spices that don't grow in the mountain homes of the dwarves. Sure the few coastal clans have them but its the mountain mines that produce all that lovely steel. But this didn't seem to satisfy the player.

 

Now the Elves have never traded with iether in any significant way, but in the campaign I had already established a tradtion of humans and dwarves trading, exchanging etc. For the most part it was aplot device to get the metals the human needed for their on going wars and allow for many dwarves in the campaign and their items popping up as treasure so often.

 

But now that I think about it what are the dwarves getting out of this deal?

 

Any thoughts or ideas, iether concerning dwarves or other racial trade policies would be welcomed.

 

Thanks in advance.

[waiwode]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Plain old-fashioned food.

 

Mountains have metal. And sheep. And ice. And mushrooms, in standard fantasy setting caves.

 

In some fantasy settings I'm sure Dwarves survive on Mushroom meals and Mushroom wine.

 

But my dwarves drink beer. And eat bread. And beer and bread require grains. And grains grow on plains. And humans love plains.

 

If your dwarves want beer (and other than gold, what do dwarves really want?) they'll trade with humans.

 

Doug,.

[Old Man]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

In some fantasy setting Dwarven [insert drink] is supposed to be good stuff, but they still have to get their grains (wheat, barley, hops, corn, etc.) from someplace - namely humans. I'm sure Dwarves like a good steak as well. Last I heard (heh), cows don't do so well in mountains and caves.

 

So basically anything having to do with produce and livestock would be human trade goods.

 

 

.

[paigeoliver]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

I also agree with the food idea. Sure SOME Dwarves might want to be involved in agriculture, but most Dwarves are going to be naturally drawn towards the more Dwarvenly pursuits of being a craftsman of some sort.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Food, and any amenity not easily available in their own homeland.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Besides food & beer there's leather, wool, wood, rope and cloths. The Dwarven women maybe able to produce stuff, but the raw goods have to come from somewhere else.

[Rhys]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Don't forget your ever present luxury goods. Dwarven smiths are going to love working with precious stones not available in their mountains. Emeralds, just to name one, don't usually show up in the places dwarves like to live. Then there are silks, cotton, and all kinds of other stuff that just isn't available to a mountain dwelling culture without trade. Plus, different mountains have different resources. There's no lapis lazuli anywhere in North America and the Greeks got tin from as far away as Cornwall. The Silk Road didn't exist because of necessities being hauled across three thousand miles of desert, those were luxury goods. And the good merchants of Venice didn't persuade the Crusaders to sack Constantinople because they wanted better access to the grains of Egypt and Asia Minor. They could produce plenty of food at home. If your player is truly economically minded, he should have been able to come up with this stuff on his own. No society is truly self-sufficient if it has any level of sophistication.

[KA.]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

A few more:

Music and instruments - Maybe the dwarves love music after a hard day of crafting and mining, but they have no talent for making the instuments or composing the music. They may pay well for instruments and bards to teach them new songs.

 

Healing and Lighting Magic - I don't know what the level of magic use is in your campaign, but perhaps dwarves have little talent for it. They would pay well for things like healing potions and magic lanterns. Hardy as they are, mining is still dangerous work and they probably need a fair amount of healing. And even if you can mine by some type of UV or IR vision, you can't use it to create crafts by (at least not well). Based on the scarcity of wood on some mountains, and the total darkness within, I would say lighting would be a major priority. Something that didn't fill up the tunnels with smoke would be really valuable.

 

Oil - If you don't want to go the magic route, how about just plain lamp oil?

I don't think you would want a refinery underground, even if you had the coal.

 

Pipeweed/Tobacco - What's a dwarf without a pipe? They sure can't grow that underground.

 

Just some ideas,

 

KA.

[paigeoliver]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

If you want a good description of why a "superior race" such as the Dwarves would trade with the humans, then read the novel "Rising Sun" (which they made into that movie with Sean Connery). You don't have to read the whole thing, just the bit about how the trade works.

 

Basically, the Dwarves as a whole are skilled laborers and leave the unskilled work to the "lesser" races such as humans. The dwarves will buy food, and raw materials, but wouldn't be caught dead buying most finished products from humans. You have to look at it from the dwarven perspective, why would a DWARF who lives long enough to truly master a craft, waste his time farming, fishing, lumberjacking, or doing any other basically "unskilled" work, when others can do it for him, and he can turn a profit to boot.

[Agemegos]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Well for a start there are the basic agricultural staples: food, fuel, fibre, and oil. (Note: that is correct, oil is an agricultural product. Mineral oil was used very little, even for lighting, until the later part of Nineteenth Century. Lighting oil may be whale oil. Cooking oil will be, and most lighting oil may be, vegetable oil.))

 

Dwarves may grow a few oats around their mountain homes, and perhaps graze sheep, goats, and a few milch cows. They probably have to grow fresh vegetables, too, and they may be able to grow apples and pears. But they probably import pigs and beef cattle, or perhaps salt beef, salt pork, ham, and smoked sausages, wheat and rye for their bread, barley and hops for their beer, beets and swedes. They may also import wine and fish. And other luxury foods such as spices, sugar, preserved fruits, nuts….

 

As your dwarves are making steel they are going to need lots and lots of fuel, and unless they know how to make coke coal will not be good enough--they will need charcoal. Besides, they won't necessarily find coal in association with metal ores.

 

Dwarves may make their kilts and plaids, and tweeds for their jackets out of wool from their own sheep. But they are going to want to import linen for their shirts, silk for luxury items, and probably leather (for sporrans, shoes, smithing aprons, etc.). And they may simply prefer to import nearly all their cloth, to avoid the tedium of spinning and weaving. A propos of clothes, they may be able to get some dyes from plants and lichens of the mountains, but they probably want to import dyes such as cochineal (red, from an insect of arid areas), saffron (yellow, from a crocus of warm temperate climes), and purple (purple, from a sea-snail). They will want twine, string, and rope, or else hemp or sisal, flax or cotton to make it out of (though they might use leather ropes).

 

Working underground, dwarves are going to want a lot of oil (or wax, or tallow) for their lamps or candles. For a start not all minerals are found in areas with petroleum. And in the second place refining kerosene from petroleum is a late 19th century industry that you might consider an anachronism.

 

Lots of livestock doesn't breed very well in cold mountain climes. Dwarves might import beasts of burden such as pit-ponies and bullocks for the capstans (they don't have steam enginges, do they?). They might also import household servants, workers for their few poor fields….

 

Dwarves will have to import certain raw materials for their work: pearls, mother-of-pearl, and coral from the sea. Ivory from narwhals or elephants. Opal, lapis lazuli, and turqoise from deserts. Jade, probably bone, any timber they might need, most wood they need eg. for making furniture, luxury woods such as lignum vitae, ebony, sandalwood…. They might have to trade for some ores or metals, too: they probably want gold, silver, copper, and tin, and these might be found thousands of kilometres away from the significant iron deposits. The same is true of gemstones such as diamonds, rubies, sapphires, garnets, amethyst, topaz, emeralds, spinels, tourmalines, beryls, jet, amber, agate etc. Tortoiseshell (for haircombs &c.). Shellac (for making lacquer). Gum arabic.

 

Do your dwarves make glass and enamel? If so, they need to import sand and potash. If not, they probably import glass or glassware.

 

Paper or parchment. Ink (from oak forests). Feathers. Medicines and medicinal herbs. Perhaps tea or coffee or chocolate. Tobacco. Meerschaum and briar-roots. Rosin and horsehair for their fiddles and viols. Reeds for their oboes, bassoons, and clarinets. Scents (such as musk, rosewater, civet, ambergris). Essential oils. Incense. Resin.

 

Remember that every day a dwarf spends drudging at agriculture or other work that does not make use of their special knowledge and skills is a dawarf-day's production of renown steel sacrificed. If a dwarf-day's output of renown steel will import more of any thing--say bone buttons-- than a dwarf can make in a day, then it pays the dwarves to import bone buttons rather than make them. The dwarves can make something that everyone else wants and no-one else can make. They shouldn't have to do or make anything else unless it can't be shipped.

 

If dwarves have a major comparative advantage in making steel weapons, tools, and armour, they will concentrate on making that and import everything that can be shipped. Tell your economically-minded player to look up "Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage".

[Titan59]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Another good reason to have trade in your campaign is smuggling, always an excellent source of adventure, particularly in an island based campaign. In Britain for many centuries customs duties were the largest form of tax collection until the introduction of the dreaded universal income tax and people will always try and minimise their tax bills.

 

Give the players a small boat, a cargo of pipeweed (or whatever), and send them out to sea. Add pirates, rival smugglers and the tax collectors of whatever kingdom you want and you have an adventure. Also smuggling is a good reason to develop all those shady contacts PCs always have. You can also always have Jabba the Hutt or his local equivalent hunting them for dumping their cargo.

 

To return to the original point about why trade, a lot of governments have historically encouraged trade because its an excellent source of revenue. It lets them extract relatively large amounts of money from a relatively small and sometimes not particularly popular or influential part of the population (merchants). It even lets them tax foreigners bringing goods into the country. Its easy to establish choke points where taxes can be assessed-customs houses, bonded warehouses etc. (Raiding these might be another adventure idea.)

 

And as people have pointed there are always things people will want and be prepared to pay high sums of money for. Again, historically, most pre-modern trade was in small, light, high value high portability objects. Dwarves might produce their own ale but can they produce rare narcotic wine? What about alchemical supplies, magical items etc. There's the whole theory of comparative advantage to consider as well but at that point we enter an area of stupendous dullness. Not for nothing is economics called the dismal science.

[Darth Sarcastic]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

I agree with the other responses (food, cloth, etc...), but I also think that "news" would also be a commodity. If the Dwarves are trading for stuff they might like to know the climate of the world around them. Its good to know whose "in charge", or who is blaming who for what. I don't think the Dwarves would care for serious details though. Think of it like this...if you lived in almost total solitude you'd still like to know if Bush or Kerry (or dare I say Nader) won the election. Whose in charge does affect prices whether you're for or against them.

[Vondy]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

A number of reasons. Foodstuffs, Textiles, Commodities (like spices), Leather Goods (you can only kill so many mountain sheep, but the humans have plains filled with lowland sheep), money - maybe they can do well on their own - but the more the merrier - and lastly: realpolitick. Dwarves are (if we go with normative fantasy assumptions) fewer in number with a lower birthrate in a terrain type that does not allow for rapid expansion. Trade and money are influence. The best way to stay alive is to remain informed and exert that influence in subtle ways by playing the various human factions off against one another, or by assisting the human factions that are well disposed to the dwarves. Just my 2AP.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

One not-so-obvious answer might be implements made of steel or other metals. Sure, the stuff the dwarves make is better, but you don't always need high quality materials for everything. Are dwarven nails so much better than human nails that anyone would be willing to pay 10 times the cost just to build a woodshed? Or maybe some dwarves aren't quite so well off. If the choice is between a one room apartment of "all the best", or a good sized house with a lot of shortcuts, there would be plenty who would take the second option.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

I always figured it was for apples. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get an apple grove underground??

 

apples are the answer.

 

Dwarven Ale is a specially made kind of applejack....

[psm]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Depending on your campaign, maybe the Dwarves trade with humans for "escorts". Admittedly, a small niche market but have you seen dwarven women:)

[Old Man]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Well if their beards are any indication, then I'm sure they suffer from "Chewbacca cooch".

 

- Hey, I didn't coin the phrase, I'm just using it.

 

 

.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Dwarves would trade for lots ofthings from humans. the Dwarves prefer crafts to magic, so healing potions would fetch a high price and be a major luxury item. The dwarves love to eat and drink in massive quanities, and as has been suggested probably buy food rather than grow or raise it. The Dwarven mines produce more metal and gems than the dwarves themselves can use -- why not trade them for stuff they haven't got on their own?

 

Perhaps the reason dwarves and elves don;t get along is that the elves don;t do very much in the way of trade or barter with outsiders, and the Dwarves think they have sticks up their *bleep*. I ahve always seen Dwarves as down-to-earth in every sense, and elves as so ethereal they are barely attached to the world at all.

 

Then again, maybe the elves also trade with the dwarves. They have to get the raw material for their superbly crafted swords from somewhere, and no self-respecting elf is going to mine for iron ore.

[Kirby]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

One not-so-obvious answer might be....

Now this is ironic, Captain Obvious pointing out the inobvious.

 

Okay, well I love to play dwarves (and rarely get the chance to) but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone before wonder why dwarves (or any good to neutral race) would trade with humans (or any good to neutral race). I like pretty much all these answers, but thinking about it, there isn't much you can get from mountains to sustain life inside a mountain. Even clothing. Goats don't procreate like rabbits, so eventually you'd run out of leather. This is not a good thing for a race of creatures that live to be 400. Sure they may not shop 'til they drop, but the clothing is going to get worn out.

 

PS: Rhys, I've found the thread.

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

Keep in mind that trade isn't always for something you can't make yourself. Many times, it's because your trading partner can make it cheaper or better. For example, the US can make cars, but other countries tend to be able to do it for less.

 

Think of a couple of things dwarves could make, but might not want to do themselves. Maybe they use most of their metals for mining machinery, weapons, and armor. It may not be worth their time to make nails, chain, or table utensils if the humans next door crank them out for next to nothing. Maybe it's easier to buy and slaughter livestock than it is to try to raise your own in a confined area (like a mountain citadel).

 

Another option is to make the humans middle-men for some other culture's product. It's just more convenient for the dwarves to get something they want from their human neighbors than to send their own merchants to the far side of the human territory to trade on their own.

[paigeoliver]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

 

Think of a couple of things dwarves could make, but might not want to do themselves. Maybe they use most of their metals for mining machinery, weapons, and armor. It may not be worth their time to make nails, chain, or table utensils if the humans next door crank them out for next to nothing. Maybe it's easier to buy and slaughter livestock than it is to try to raise your own in a confined area (like a mountain citadel).

 

 

 

Exactly. The fantasy world easily has a real economy just like our world does. In the fantasy economy it is too expensive to pay a dwarven smith (who will on average have 100 years of experience and leave the BEST human ones in his dust) to make nails, chain, and other bulk items. The dwarven smith could use that same time to crank out more complicated tools, weapons, armor, and the more ornate "bulk" items, such as complex door knobs and handles.

 

I would really imagine that in a good fantasy world the human smiths would make very few weapons and almost no armor, and those that they did make would be considered inferior.

[Kirby]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

In the fantasy economy it is too expensive to pay a dwarven smith (who will on average have 100 years of experience and leave the BEST human ones in his dust) to make nails' date=' chain, and other bulk items. [/quote']

"Nails? Nails are the work of apprentices in their first month! First year if they're not mindful."

-New Dwarven Maxim

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

 

I would really imagine that in a good fantasy world the human smiths would make very few weapons and almost no armor' date=' and those that they did make would be considered inferior.[/quote']

 

They might be inferior, but there's plenty of good reasons for them to keep making them.

 

First, in many "traditional" fantasy games, there just aren't as many dwarves as humans. That would probably lead to fewer dwarven smiths and ultimately less production capacity. That would give you very low supply and very high prices -- probably more than the typical weapon purchaser (soldier or beginning adventurer) could afford.

 

Second, everyone would want to maintain some weapon production, just in case they lost their supplier. If they were destroyed, blackmailed into not trading with you, or even worse -- went to war with you, you'd be in serious trouble if you couldn't pick up the slack in a hurry. You never want to be totally dependant on an outside source for a defense item.

 

Finally, if dwarves have a monopoly (or near monopoly) on weapon production, that almost automatically leads to artificial price manipulation. A longsword now costs a year's wages. Why? Cause we said so.