Re: SJ Reviews: The 'SJR' References

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:36:54 -0700, Blackmaer <cslundy@?????????.net>  
wrote:

> IMO it's a LOT more dangerous in wildspace than on the ground.  Which is
> in itself another reason that SJ hasn't caught on in the campaign worlds
> as much as overland/oversea trade.  Plain and simple, it's an extemely
> dangerous venture with a lot of risk, but a also a lot of potential
> reward.

But what about just using helms for overland travel?  No real travel in  
wildspace required.  Are you saying that there are lots and lots of  
dangers for character in the upper atmosphere?  The way I handle this is  
distinctly different.
Spelljamming people don't want everyone to know about them when they do  
business there.  This minimizes the groundling competition turning to  
spelljamming and keeps down the amount of disgruntled groundlings that  
might cause trouble.
Much of the trade on a given world IS by spelljammer but people just don't  
know.  Traders are required to bring goods to common ports where they are  
offloaded on to a separate ship for final delivery.  Tradeships that  
aren't licensed to operate in major ports won't be allowed to offload  
cargo there.  Off course there are people that then use the minor ports,  
but black market trade is by definition secretive anyway so no one will  
tell the populace about that.  This system prevent a single spelljammer  
 from rapidly ferrying massive quantities of cargo.  It is still way  
fasterhan normal ground shipping, but the overhead is much higher.  Given  
that there is already some competition very little room would remain for  
spelljamming cargo from place to place on the main worlds.  This leaves  
only shipping real exotics from spelljamming ports to other spelljamming  
ports as well as basic necessities for extremely distant outposts.   
Remember as the people on spelljamming ports already have their pick of  
the nearby world they will be used to basic luxuries, but out of sphere  
products will fetch good gold, and the people living on the ports should  
be very much wealthy enough to afford exotic luxuries.
The only thing I'm really lacking is a good list of exotic items to  
traffic in.

(btw much of my ideas are inspired by the references to waterdeep only  
allowing ships that have landed out of sight and have sailed in to port.