Drug-cartels anyone?

[Ingenious]

Okay, here's the low-down on what I want my character's future to be.
He's currently, and forever will be most likely... and opium addict.
So, he's already gotten people to try it.. because a high is supposedly pleasureable(okay, I know it is, at least in the case with nicotine).. though withdrawal sucks and so-on. But he's gotten the feeling that he likes sharing his opium, except that it dwindles his stash quickly.
SOOOOOOOO....
He wants to start up a farm/cartel, which begs the questions: how much does land cost, where's the best place to set-up an opium farm(climate-wise)((most likely to be like columbia or brazil or afganistan)), how much would it cost to get peasants to farm this stuff, how many peasants per acre of farm? How many animals to plow the fields? What social classes are allowed to buy land?(Need to know so I can be disguised as a noble if need-be, complete with forged documents from a priest lol)
What would be the cost for initially getting someone to smuggle this, though I am told by my seneschal that I have enough for a big enough ship for 2-4 tons of opium... If peasants might revolt, how many thugs will I need to hire to beat them into submission? How much will all of the 'hush-money' amount to? Etc etc etc.

The goal of this cartel is to make enough money, buy enough land, and farm enough opium to make an even bigger profit.. so I can either build my own nation... or raise up a massive army and head for Stahl to avenge my father's ill-fated 'medieval custer's last stand'. Or both, depending on how Bill Gates-like I become. Hmmmmmm Opiumsoft....

I've come up with my own figures for some of this, from modern day.. and then converted them into TROS economics.(simple mathematics really)

I'm open to suggestions about most of this.
I'll post my figures should anyone feel like looking at the raw data.
-Ingenious

[Camillus]

Okay, here's the low-down on what I want my character's future to be.
He's currently, and forever will be most likely... and opium addict.
So, he's already gotten people to try it.. because a high is supposedly pleasureable(okay, I know it is, at least in the case with nicotine).. though withdrawal sucks and so-on. But he's gotten the feeling that he likes sharing his opium, except that it dwindles his stash quickly.
SOOOOOOOO....

You do know that opium is a depressant? It tends to make users sleepy and its pleasurable feelings come from its close relationship to naturally occurring substances in the human brain that assist with pain control and pleasure feelings. Addicts (as opposed to casual users) are not the sort of people who tend to do anything dynamic - like setting up a farm to make money from their interest.

He wants to start up a farm/cartel, which begs the questions: how much does land cost, where's the best place to set-up an opium farm(climate-wise)((most likely to be like columbia or brazil or afganistan)), how much would it cost to get peasants to farm this stuff, how many peasants per acre of farm? How many animals to plow the fields? What social classes are allowed to buy land?(Need to know so I can be disguised as a noble if need-be, complete with forged documents from a priest lol)
What would be the cost for initially getting someone to smuggle this, though I am told by my seneschal that I have enough for a big enough ship for 2-4 tons of opium... If peasants might revolt, how many thugs will I need to hire to beat them into submission? How much will all of the 'hush-money' amount to? Etc etc etc.

Opium grows best in temperate climates - so almost anywhere really as long as it's not too wet or dry :)

As to acquiring land that depends almost entirely on where you are and what social time period you're basing your game on. In some societies trade in land will be easy, in others there may be a need to obtain permission all the way up to the nations ruler...It depends entirely on the Seneschal's Weyrth.

As to cost; well in medieval societies the usual price for a piece of land was between 20 and 50 times its gross annual income. Furthermore the new owner would probably have to swear fealty to a lord (unless the land was a true freehold - unlikely for all but the smallest areas) and obtaining his consent usually has to be paid for at a cost of a year's gross income from the estate.

I have limited information about the income of medieval estates but from what I can find you could probably expect one village to produce wealth equivalent to about 48 gold coins a year. That means that the cost of buying that land would be somewhere between 960 and 2400 gold coins plus whatever other bribes and payments would have to be made (including payments to freemen on the estate for their consent as well - normally through the remission of service - at least a year but perhaps more).

Of course your main problem isn't going to be the land it's going to be the labour. Wheat, a staple crop, takes about 17 man days of labour to produce an acre of crop (41 per hectare). Not too bad, particularly as most of the workers have enough time to grow their own food and see to other needs and necessities. Opium, on the other hand takes 141 man days to produce an acre (350 per hectare), of which about 80 days (200 if you're working in hectares) are just to harvest the stuff. That means you're going to have to either buy in food and services for your workers, cut back on land used for opium or own two estates so that one can feed the other. Those kind of labour requirements mean slaves or paid freemen; no serf is going to owe his lord that much labour in a year and trying to get them to work it is likely to produce more trouble than it's worth.

How much would all that work produce? Well an Afghan farmer using modern fertilisers and pesticides can produce a whopping 36lbs per acre (40 kg per ha). I'd guess that the kinds of farming techniques available on Weyrth are going to be less efficient, so say 24lbs per acre. If you get a holding of around 1500 acres you could expect perhaps to farm 200 acres a year with opium and produce 4800lbs.  

The goal of this cartel is to make enough money, buy enough land, and farm enough opium to make an even bigger profit.. so I can either build my own nation... or raise up a massive army and head for Stahl to avenge my father's ill-fated 'medieval custer's last stand'. Or both, depending on how Bill Gates-like I become. Hmmmmmm Opiumsoft....

I've come up with my own figures for some of this, from modern day.. and then converted them into TROS economics.(simple mathematics really)

I'm open to suggestions about most of this.
I'll post my figures should anyone feel like looking at the raw data.
-Ingenious

One problem I see is that you're thinking very much like someone from the 21st Century. In places like Weyrth the concept of a substance being illegal is probably very alien - smuggling is going to be to avoid tax not because owning the stuff's against the law.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the market for this will always be very small - only the idle rich will be able to use it and there are unlikely to be too many of them around.  

Hope that helps

[Brian Leybourne]

So thats why you emailed me to ask which Weyrth nations were most like Afghanistan, Brazil or Columbia... :-)

Brian.

[Ingenious]

I use the term opium loosely, only because I knew historically of the existance of opium back then.. and it being semi-legal depending on what time period we're talking of. But I could very easily see my character branching out into other drugs... something maybe that has the effects of PCP/angel-dust... etc. Ride the white lightning hahahahaha....

And since someone posted about statistics.. I figured I could post mine here as a rebuttal.. so here it goes, and forgive the length of space this is going to occupy.
Modern prices of opium from Afganistan.(Before Afgan war, after Taliban ban on producing opium)
$200-300 per kilogram.
2.2 pounds per kilogram.
$90.9 - $136.36 per pound.(0.0909 to 0.13636 gold) to (0.00909 to   gold)
$30 to ship a 70lb package 1400 miles
$0.0003 per pound per mile to ship
Therefore, shipping 1 ton of opium 1000 miles would cost $600.
(TROS equivalent of .6 gold)

Farm/stronghold set-up:
Stanislav has 19 gold. Half of this will be spent on the aquisition of land, the other half, on labor, hush money, a SMALL castle... etc.
So using the figures of $19000/2=$9500...divided by $23 an acre(low modern estimate for land in Brazil) amounts to 413 acres. Or 167 hectares I beleive, being that there are 2.47 acres in a hectare.
Using my figures of 11 pounds per acre a year for the yield...
average yield actually from what I found...
4543 pounds of opium would then be produced.
And at the low price for opium; $412,958.7 or 412 gold of GROSS profit is to be had. At the high price for opium, this amounts to $619,483 or   619 gold of gross profit.
And with the rest of the profit, I can do as I see fit with it, but most likey it will be to aquire more lands to farm more... to make more money.. etc etc. And I might be able to pass off as a noble so that *I* would be the Lord of the manor. Who knows.

Okay now that I put that to rest, let me say this... the book gave figures for converting gold into modern money, so I used the inverse of this to figure this all out. And I might have to smuggle the drugs due to the fact that not every place in Wyerth deems opium legal. Also mentioned were rich people and aristocratic types, 'only the rich can afford this stuff'... so I'd be selling it to Lords, ladies, counts, dukes, kings and queens, heads of state, etc etc... Which also works to my advantage because this can bring part of if not the entire PC party into my character's story line, all of us disguised as nobles...infiltrating a social class of big-wigs and maybe having a few of them becoming powerful allies, or enemies *shrug*.

-Ingenious

[Mike Holmes]

I doubt that opium would be illegal anywhere. It wasn't made illegal in the RW anywhere until well after the time that parallels Wyerth. This is mostly because it was relatively expensive - not due to it being illegal, but instead because most everyone is dreadfully poor in a medieval society. You can't afford Opium if you barely have enough to eat. Meaning that the only people with enough money to get addicted would be the rich and powerful. Meaning that they'd have no reason to outlaw it.

Drugs only become illegal in places where ruling elites become concerned about the addicted members of the poor elevating crime levels. That sounds kinda Marxist, but it's pretty factual. The earliest I know of that opium was made illegal was in China just before 1800 when use had become epidemic. Well after the time period that Wyerth represents.

Mike

[Camillus]

I think what we have here is a clash of world views :)

I thought you were playing in a medieval world but it would appear from your reply that socially it is closer to ours. Could you clarify the sort of world your character inhabits so that I can comment further.

Cheers

[Judd]

I've got to admit when I first saw this thread it made me uncomfortable and I wasn't going to take part.  But I think I hae a suggestion that is some sort of creative input and so here it goes.

Rather than a modern style drug lord what if your charcter was the leader of a posse or cult or band of assassins?  He could be a kind of evil, corrupting opium pusher, perhaps even worshipping some sort of religion that uses it as a dark sacrament.

I believe the word assassin comes from a cult of killers who would take hash before making their kills.  Someone please correct me if I'm way off on that.  You could read up on them and model your character's self-styled cult after that.

By doing this your character could stay more in the medieval mindset while still retaining some of that drug lord vibe.

Hope this helps, have fun gaming.

[Ingenious]

Okay, first things first Paka... the assassin idea also plays into my character beleive it or not, however... the worshipping of gods and such is not. This being that my character is an atheist. However, he could start a rag-tag group of cut-throats and so forth... but the reason for the drug cartel(modern terminology I know, sometimes even throws me off)... is so he can raise money.. in order to either start his own nation, or to pay for an army an go invade Stahl and avenge his father... or both.

Now, onto what Camillus asked me.. Yes it is a medieval setting, however the current town I am in has made opium illegal, possibly as to what was previously mentioned... would have been a spike in crime levels.

I should really stop using the word opium and replace it with the garden variety catch-all of 'drugs'. It does not really matter what he is pushing, farming, exporting, etc... so long as it makes a sizable profit for the use in my character's goals.

He wants a war, revenge, and redemption.
-Ingenious

[Draigh]

I would recommend stealing Stahlnish horses and selling them to Gelure, Cyrinthmere, or Oustenriech.  Shit, sell 'em to anybody, and if you stole 'em, every penny's profit.

Forget about "legitimate business intrests", just rob them blind.

[Ingenious]

Yes, well... stealin Stahlnish horses is one thing... but stealing them and training them would make for even more profit. Zero cost, little cost in training... and much much more profitability :-D However, my character being from Stahl and such, having his own horse, and I don't know how he would take to this idea. However, should I buy another Stahlnish horse and breed the two of them, set up a horse-farm.. and train the off-spring.. the same profitability could be had, and it would be a legit-business with no risk for my character. Oooh. Ideas. Or buy more than one horse... etc etc.
I can't help but think about legit-businesses, because my character isn't exactly wanting to be caught at any point in his life. It would tarnish his 'good' name worse than his father had with his military snafu's.

Oh, and in this adventure.. Gelure has invaded Farrenshire. So after they get disposed of, they might expand northwards towards Stahl... so I don't know if my character would want to sell horses to a potential enemy..

Regardless I have 19 gold and am going to liquidate it into some type of profit-making asset.

-Ingenious
Thanks for the idea.

[Camillus]

Now, onto what Camillus asked me.. Yes it is a medieval setting, however the current town I am in has made opium illegal, possibly as to what was previously mentioned... would have been a spike in crime levels.

OK - this isn't the right place to give an in depth overview of medieval societies and how they worked. There are though plenty of game related supplements out there that will give you the kind of information you need to build a realistic medieval society. You might try the Ars Magica main rules which has a small section on medieval life and has the advantage of being available as a free download from RPGnet. The best resource is probably Harnworld which is an excellent, stand alone, world for adventuring in but can be difficult to get hold of.

All that probably clues you in to what I'm going to be saying next: your scheme is not likely to work terribly well in a medieval society. There are a couple of reasons for this:
[list=1]
[*]Acquisition of land: you need a substantial amount of land to farm but getting your hands on it will not be easy. Land is power, almost all of the wealth generated in the medieval world came from the land and only someone in really dire straights would sell land that they own. Most people, however, don't own the land that they live on - a lot of land is granted to others for a service that they owe the land owner. This is the basis of the feudal system, and what that means for you is that you have to persuade a lord to either sell you land that he owns (extremely unlikely) or to grant you the land in a feudal deal (by the way you don't need to be a noble to be subinfuedated with land but you would still be under an obligation to provide knights and soldiers for service).

As I pointed out in my earlier post this is likely to be expensive, certainly much more than the 19 gold* your character has. You can't, by the way, buy land in discreet pockets, you're going to have to buy an estate and that is a substantial investment.

[*]Sale of the goods: the medieval period was not a cash rich one. Most people operated by a system of barter for goods, although of course money existed. This means that selling your goods for cash is going to be difficult, except to the very wealthy. There is also the problem that most people don't live in cities, even the rich tend to live on the land that provides their income. Furthermore each family lives separately in its own manor and tend to be fairly self contained. That makes transporting your goods to the place of sale difficult, costly and very high risk; once word gets out that you have (a) a very profitable cargo and (b) a lot of cash every bandit for miles around is going to be making a beeline straight for you as you travel through the countryside from manor to manor.

You could of course just sell in the cities, but that's not where the majority of the wealth is and you're going to have to overcome the opposition of the local guilds to your selling - after all they exist to protect themselves against outsiders cutting into their profits. You've still got the issue that very few city dwellers will be able to afford what you're selling and that you're going to have to pay a substantial amount of tax every time you try and bring a load in. You've also still got the problem of moving your goods and cash around the countryside from city to city across dangerous areas inhabited by bandits who'll gladly rob you the first chance that they get.[/list:o]

My advice would be to abandon the idea of a drugs empire in a medieval society and, if you want to make a profit and set yourself up for revenge take up banditry (or piracy - you own a ship don't you?). This has the advantage of being more in keeping with the spirit of the era as well as being more romantic (Robin Hood anyone?) and less morally ambiguous.

I should really stop using the word opium and replace it with the garden variety catch-all of 'drugs'. It does not really matter what he is pushing, farming, exporting, etc... so long as it makes a sizable profit for the use in my character's goals.

How about calling it poppy or lotus? Good enough for Robert E. Howard good enough for me :)

He wants a war, revenge, and redemption.
-Ingenious

Don't we all Brother, don't we all...

*I think you're overestimating the buying power of the gold coin - remember a destrier will cost you 40 gold. It looks to me that the gold coin on Weyrth is roughly the equivalent of a medieval English pound. If that's the case a castle (I think you mentioned acquiring a small one in a previous post) would cost somewhere in the region of 3500 - 4000 gold (Aberystwyth castle, for instance, cost about £3850 to build)

Anyway hope that's helpful.

[Mike Holmes]

I believe the word assassin comes from a cult of killers who would take hash before making their kills. Someone please correct me if I'm way off on that.

That's correct. The original term is thought to have been Hashishin, or users of Hashish (though there's some debate about this). There's a lot of Myth surrounding the cult, news of which was brought back to Europe first by the crusaders and later by Maro Polo. It may be true that they didn't use drugs at all. It's all really interesting, and I'd recommend to anyone reading up on this stuff.

As for the name of the drug, make it Ma Huang. A natural source of Ephedra. Take enough of that and you'll become a berzerker.

Mike

[Ingenious]

I'm liking the ephedra idea, but there's a few side effects I can see from it. Many athletes have died from ephedra related products, and some people in the military... so if you're doing any seriously hard physical activity.. you might die from it. However, this might be because the modern day ephedra is stronger, who knows. And the other side effect is that ephedra is an appetite suppressant is it not? Much like nicotine is, I beleive.

I'll have to research a bit more on that. But good idea anyways.
-Ingenious

[Draigh]

LMAO

Ok, this has officially become idiotic...
You're talking about a character who has a MAJOR flaw: Drug addiction.
I've known quite a few drug addicts in my day, and an extremely small percentage of them have any concern about how much of a risk their addiction is to their health.  Sure, ephedra can kill you, but if you're riding into battle swinging a halberd on the back of a destrier, who cares if the shit you're snorting (or whatever) can make your heart explode.

Jesus man, try some perspective.

[Draigh]

Sorry to double post like this, but lest it slip in under the radar...

Take into account that junkies (people with major addictions) are rarely motivated to do anything other than feed their habit.  Give a heroin junkie a weeks worth of smack and he'll camp on the shitter for a week solid.  Give a cokehead a weeks worth of coke, and he'll snort enough to get geeked out and sit there, licking his lips 'til it's time to snort another rail and get geeked out again.  Give a crackhead a weeks worth of crack and he'll smoke it all in one day and walk around in the parkinglot picking up pebbles till he comes down, then he'll probably try to rob you.

My main point here is that unless they're high, chronic and severe addicts are looking to get high, nothing else.

With that being said, unless your character is newly addicted (within the first week or so, it doesn't take much time for your body to fall all to shit), you're not very likely to be in good enough shape to fight effectively.  Junkies can be highly motivated and quite dangerous, if they are coming down and think you've got something they can take.  Punching them isn't a good idea because you're probably gonna break a bone or tooth, and they'll bleed on you... who knows what they've got?  My point here is, they're generally weak and frail, though they have the "benefit" of feeling no pain when they're high.

I think your motivations for playing an addicted character are probably immature and you don't have enough real-world knowledge of drugs and addiction to portray an addicted character accurately.

No offense intended here, but honestly, grow up.  This thread is immature.

Thank you in advance, G (who has done coke, pot, speed, lsd, E, 'shrooms, and other harmful things) *edit: I'm not bragging, this stuff can and will kill you, I've seen it.  I've only listed these to lend credit to my above stated descriptions of junkies. /edit *

ps. Drugs are bad, mmkayyy?