Minor stuff

[Drul Morbok]

Just noticing minor inconsistencies here and there, but most of the time, I forget them...just thought I might as well start a thread and update if I see some more.

- Spice crystal:
"A full kilogram of spice crystals can fetch as much as 150 gold pieces. One dose will fetch about  5 silver pieces on the street. One kilogram of spice crystal is equivalent to about 300 doses."

Assuming Drakkelian currency (10 silver nobles = 1 gold lord), the guys buying kilos of it are selling it on the street at cost price. Assuming the currency of any other locations where it is sold, they even make loss.
Unless I'm getting something terribly wrong....

- Brotherhood of the Serpent Tongue
It says 64,200 members on the page of the organization, but only 4,200 on the organization overview site. I think you increased the number following one comment in the forum.

[David Roomes]

I wasn't actually thinking of it in terms of the distributors buying a kilo and then turning it around and selling 300 doses. The two sentences in that paragraph both refer to the street price. The end street price value of the drug is 5 silver for one dose which is the same as 150 gold per kilo.

I included the kilo price just as a note with regards to what the value is in terms of moving large shipments of it. If a ship arrived with one metric ton of crystal, then it's got a cargo worth 150,000 gold pieces.

[tanis]

Yeah, but with drugs, there's a HUGE price hike from distributor, to dealer, to tertiary and lower dealers, to end user, and a drop in quality attending each step. For example, I was reading about MDMA, in the form of Ecstasy, in the real world, and a distributor would typically receive enormous bulk. Then a trusted dealer would get some number of "k-packs" with 1,000 tabs, for $500.00 US. By the time the individual tabs hit the street, they're priced at between $5.00 and $20.00 US. That means that the price goes from $0.50 US a tab at the first dealer's level, to, typically, $10.00 US, or 2,000% inflation, mostly benefiting the distributor and first two dealers in the chain down most.

I understand that you're not thinking about it from that perspective, but with only a street price, it's a little confusing to try to make realistic estimates, and I think that's what he was trying to address.

[Drul Morbok]

Uh, well, sorry, I misread it as "if a group of adventurers happens to find a block of spice crystal, they might get around 150 gold pieces, given some underground contacts.

But than, on the other hand, they might not get rich by finding a kilo. I think tanis is right about that, depending on the respective laws, it's quite realistic to assume street prize to be 10 to 100 times the kilo prize. And the selling rate of a ton would be even worse.

I especially think that 1 kilo equaling 300 doses results in average doses of more than 3 gram. That's not very potent, and any bigger city where it was a "common street drug" would need tons of shipments per month to fulfill demand.
But let me quote: "At present, only a few organizations have managed to  successfully retrieve spice crystals in any sizeable quantity."

Maybe this is more about personal intuition that about an actual correction request, but I just would expect spice crystals to be a lot more powerful. Maybe even a dose about the size of a grain of sand, available for a copper, might have considerable effect on a first-time consumer, and someone hopelessly addicted might consume a tenth of a gram per day - if he can afford it. Bigger cities might see about one kilo of it consumed per day.
For me, that would be a more plausible relation of demand of supply - an expedition returning with some 100 kilos will have made the catch of their lives.
But if you were in for a kick, you'd get it at literally any corner of some districts of bigger cities - or at least hope that spice crystal really is what you get there...

But after all it's your world, and you sure know more about it  

[David Roomes]

Yeah, I know there would be a big markup at each level, I just didn't think anyone would be interested in the economics behind the drug trade. That's why I only gave the final street price. I suppose if players become dealers or spent a series of adventures trying to take down a drug ring, the DM might need to know the price at different stages.

In that case, I think the individual DM would have to work out a lot of details, including the distribution methods, how common it is everwhere, prices, availability, etc. I'll leave that up to the DM.