Free money from the Redcaps: would your magi accept it?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I just wanted to say that:

a) I have edited the question multiple times, in fact, but very early on (when there were few or no votes) and only to clarify a few points that I thought had been missed: e.g. to highlight the fact that it's about covenants that are actively seeking a new source of income, so answers like "oh our covenant already has all the income it needs, so it won't take on the offer" are not really valid -- because the offer is made only to covenants who are actively looking for extra money.

b) I have entered the discussion revealing the "plot" only when there were already 20+ votes cast, and 75%+ of them where cast in favour of accept. From my point of view, that's when I got my answer: a large majority would accept the offer, a small but not insignificant minority would reject it. Before that, I tried to be as non-committal as possible.

Now, with that I perfectly agree. The question I am trying to answer is whether it's plausible that the plan might succeed if it is attempted. I think there's reasonable evidence that that's the case -- at least as much evidence as might be gained from a forum of modern day rpgers!

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I think that comes down to how you define plausible.
Is it something that a handful of redcaps, or even a large number after early success, could reasonably expect to work? Sure. Is it something an outside observer would expect to work out as planned? No. Is it possible that the plan might merge into other ideas to support a takeover by crippling the functional ability of a large number of covenants to oppose the takeover? Definitely.
I tend to view redcaps as being like the bourgeoise of the original medieval Europe, who gained power not through politics but by economics. What mages will realize that the fact that a mage pays a loan of 4 pawns back at 1 pawn per year interest while the redcaps are paying back loans to them by magi of 6 pawns at 1 pan per year interest has any real significance? Why would the Verditius consider that house rules which limit sales of magic items to mundanes but not to redcaps might allow redcaps to resell magic items to their economic advantage? Who would stop to consider whether a redcap carrying a tractatus or book from magus A to magus B is a party to the calf and cow oath?
To me the biggest flaw in your plan is that it is overt, and likely to trigger suspicions versus quietly amassing power behind the backs of the magi.

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There's definitely merit in the argument "I'd rather not rely on an ephemeral source of income that might disappear at any moment". But (and this is an honest question) what makes you think that House Mercere's support would be more ephemeral than that of ... uh, the fishing fleet you describe? Would your answer change if you were made the offer after witnessing other covenants have taken advantage of it for 30+ years?

Just a quick note: you do not get "money", you get the goods directly.
That was spelled our very clearly early on. You could still resell those, invest, and buy back the stuff you need. But it takes effort to do the selling, and it takes effort to do the buying, and that "trading" effort is a lot of the effort involved in maintaining a source of income without causing trouble to the local economy.

There are a few crucial points here.
The first, is that not all wealth-creation schemes require vis; and for those that do the amount of stuff produced scales very very rapidly with the magnitude of the effects (and thus the pawns) used. I ran through some numbers and basically, the vis involved is a non-issue for an entity of the size (and longevity: make, store, and resell over decades) of House Mercere.

On the other hand distribution is. If you produce and distribute one good (including silver) locally, you are likely to create a market glut. But House Mercere has the means to easily spread stuff throughout Mythic Europe. Then the question becomes: how much wealth of type X can you put into yearly circulation without seriously affecting the market? This depends a lot on the goods involved, but, roughly speaking, there are several efficient solutions. Ultimately, keep in mind that, if you assume the average covenant has 6 magi and 100 covenfolk to support, the entire Order might be the equivalent of ... 30 thousand common folk to support? That's a large city, but a drop in the ocean compared to Mythic Europe. Just the spice trade in the middle ages creates enough wealth to support over a million (several millions by the late middle ages) common folk. 3% of that? Nothing much.

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An Aq magi could keep an eye on the sea for the boats. Au and Aq magi would have the most efficient wind/water mills. A He mage could run a bakery at very low cost.

Long enough ago that I forgot... That is kind of infantilising if anything, "we don't think that you are grown up enough to handle money so we will give you food".

While being able to request rare materials for free is nice, I rather think that it would be abused: dear redcaps I don't want bags of flour, I want a big sack of diamond/ruby/emerald/electrum. If they fullfil the order they are clearly being taken advantage of and if not, then they are unreliable. Jewels would be easy to resell in any major town. Even if the grog gets a bad price for them, they were free so it's still profit for the Covenant.

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Or alternatively you can take the goods, and pocket the money that you would have otherwise used to buy those same goods, and invest that money.

The real value of the offer you propose is not in stuff like grain and fuelwood, which most covenants are already self-sufficient in. The stuff that fits your description: created in a few places and transported magically, would be as you yourself hint at, things like spices, glassware, fur, herb (magical and spicy), etc. Those are also the things that a covenant is most likely to require money to buy.

In essence the value of the offer is something like this: We release you from the need to have money and a supply chain to get all of those luxury goods that magic (and comfort) requires. This means that a covenant with no money gets the benefit of having money without actually having to get money. However a covenant that already has a source of money is also left with all the money that they would ordinarily use to buy the stuff that the redcaps now gives them.

In other words in many cases giving covenants goods directly is in fact equivalent to giving the money directly because the goods being given free up the money that would otherwise have been spent. Even without having to resell the gifted items.

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I agree with you that it is plausible that such a plan as you describe will have some degree of success.

For one I think it makes for a really great plot, both for a covenant in a "trial" area where the redcaps a trying it out and from the perspective of a group of Merceres trying to pull it off.

Imagine playing in a tribunal that has been singled out as a test area for the plan. Either you accept and ta-da your economic problems are gone but now you are reliant on house Mercere for support and you will have problems opposing them at tribunal and you will be in their debt, even if it is purely a debt of gratitude.

If you dont accept you have to try to make do while all of your neighbors get a huge leg up from the economic headroom available to them because of the extra money and goods they have.

Once the players figure out what is going on they can either accept their fate and try to negotiate the best deal for themselves that they can or they can try to face off against the conspiracy on the political arena. Lots of great opportunities for drama and conflict.

The good thing about running it as a saga is that it doesnt matter whether or not this is a thing that is plausible to succeed in the core setting proposed by Atlas games nor whether it happening is a social and economic inevitability. What matters is whether or not it would make for a great story, and IMO this certainly would.

In criticizing your method of asking I am not trying to say that it is a stupid method and that you are bad for doing what you did. Professionally I am an academic and I have some exposure to the problems that come with questionnaires and that is what I am trying to get at. Obviously you are not trying to adhere to academic standards for asking questions and shouldnt be, but you still face the same problems.

For one the question you pose is sufficiently generally worded that it is, IMO possible for two people to read the answers given to the questionnaire and reach different conclusions. Which is bad because it makes it hard to have a reasonable discussion about what the answers mean. A generally worded question also leaves a lot of room for interpretation up to the answerer.
There is evidence for divergent answers in the top of the thread, where one person (Bitter) answers that they want to take the money to see what the consequences will be. (which is an out-of-character answer) and lots of examples of people answering from the perspective of their characters. This is even where you stepped in to clarify.

Another problem is that we all have wildly different underlying assumptions that we answer out of. We mostly dont bother stating those assumptions. For example I assume that even if the gift is given in kind it will still result in an increased cash-flow for a covenant. I assume this because I also assume that most covenants are reasonably well diversified in their economies and that even if they lose one source of income they will still have other sources that can given them cash. Anyone might reasonably disagree with my assumption. I also assume that it will be clear to most magi that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that they will naturally be suspicious of the offer and proud (or prudent) enough to try to use the gift to build up their economies instead of relying overmuch on it. Again it is reasonable to disagree here.

The point I am trying to make is that our underlying assumptions change how we answer and how we interpret the results of the poll. The OP did not to a sufficient degree specify which underlying assumptions we should use that we are not having this discussion now. (Again I should specify that I dont think that it is a failure on your part that the underlying assumptions were not specified, since it is highly unusual to state such assumptions, and it is generally also difficult to figure out ones own assumptions.)

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I very much agree with this. Whether it's a good or bad idea in the end is much less relevant than "is it an engaging idea?". Which I think it is.

Starting a campaign in 1228, at the Grand Tribunal, as a spring Covenant in the newly founded Lotharingian Tribunal where this Mercere trial will be run (like the UBI trials in Finalnd) sounds like a good campaign premise. That House Mercere supplies all the basic goods allows the player to not focus on how to earn their bacon but to dive right in knowing that the 200 odd pounds needed to get them started as well as the materials for their talisman will be catered for.

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But here's the catch. The premise is that House Mercere is not just giving the extra money to covenants that are doing fine as it is. It's giving it to covenants that are looking for additional income because they need it: a Spring Covenant without a source of income, a covenant whose source has just dried up, a covenant that's trying to expand. This means that the Mercere money is much more likely to be used outright than invested.

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Right, but what makes you think the favour of the local noble (and the demand for fish, the economic stability of the region etc.) is more "stable" than the support of House Mercere?

No, it's not like that, and I even spelled it out in the beginning: we'll give you food, and weapons, and high quality glassware, and fine silks, because if we gave you silver it would be non-trivial for your covenant, that's stuck on a mountaintop or in the middle of a forest, to buy weapons (what would the local nobles think anyway?), high quality glassware, and fine silks.

I'll try to say it again. Creating valuable stuff with magic is relatively easy: silk, spices, whatever.
The problem is exchanging that valuable stuff for the stuff you need, which is generally achieved in two stages: by trading the valuable stuff for silver, and trading silver for the stuff you need. Most covenants (ones like Oculus Septentrionalis being the exception) just don't have the "networking" resources to do that effortlessly and without disturbing the local market -- hence, the corrosive effects of inflation.

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Them, Florum in Normandy, The Rheingasse chapter house in Cologne... The whole premise of the Lotharingian split is that the mages feel like they could handle it.

Power balance. A local noble is much weaker than House Mercere. If the noble makes an outrageous demand, the Covenant can just say nope and hit them with some sneaky Me effect, effect dynastic prunning and generally intrigue them out of the picture. This doesn't work on house Mercere which is much more powerful than an individual Covenant.

The demand for fish remains constant thanks to the Church's view on eating meat on Fridays. You seem very focussed on the specific fishing part. The need for mills or oil presses is also pretty constant at a local level, especially with a mage who can make sure that the weather is desirable for the crops.

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Sure, but note that these covenants are ones that are not in need of sources of income to start with... so House Mercere would not extend their offer to them in the first place!

I guess my argument fails only for those covenants that have all they want in terms of goods, but want more income ... just for the sake of it. Which is not intrinsecally inconceivable: some covenants have weirder goals than "let's experiment and see how rich we can get in 30 years", others might be corrupted by a demon of greed etc. But I think it's a sufficiently rare case that it would have little bearing on the Order-wide outcome.

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Which loops back to: only small starting spring Covenants would need it, but in the long term it's a bad idea to stay under the thumb of House Mercere, especially if you are a small 3 freshly gauntleted -magi Covenant where House Mercere will have very strong leverage on.

If you are 100% dependant on this helicoptered-in ressource, you simply can't say no to their requests, which is not a position magi wants to find themselves in long term. For example, if I run a campaign where the PCs start as vassal/chapter house to a larger overlord, breaking free from this yoke will be one of the key points of the game.

I think that's its an interesting idea to explore in-game. But if deal is aimed at those who don't have a choice, it says something about the deal.

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Not really. Any covenant whose source of income was suddenly lost (to war, competition, plague etc.) would be in the same situation. Also, a covenant who wanted to expand -- so as to accomodate new members, reinforce its grog contingent etc. would also seek a new source of income.

That's true only if you see it as a yoke; if you see House Mercere as a looming menace that will seek to manipulate you to their ends. It's MERC-ere, not TREM-ere, you know. They are the nice folks who deliver your mail and bring vis presents for Christmas (HoH:TL)!
If you think that
a) they are being intrinsecally nice, the way you would be nice to a relative in need and
b) not having to deal with the money-grubbing will allow you to instead spend your time on improving your Arts, finding vis, politicking etc.
c) push come to shove, you'll be able to establish a new source of income by spending time and effort when and if you need it,
well, then House Mercere's sounds much more like a helping hand than a yoke. Sure, some may refuse it out of pride, or out of paranoia, or ... whatever, but how many real-world scholars refuse funding that comes with no strings attached just because it might run out eventually?

Oh, but they do have a choice. Let's say they can spend 8 seasons in the next five years, and a bunch of vis, to establish your source of income. Or they can take House Mercere's help now, for as long as it lasts (and it seems it will last!), and push come to shove ... spend those 8 seasons if and when it does end.

Anyway, I don't really want to sound confrontational on this, and I am thankful for all the comments. I just find it surprising that people would have their characters see the situation under such a poor light. If I think of any real world analogy -- charity money, scholarships, support from a rich relative etc. -- very rarely is sinister intent ascribed to the benefactor.
"Coca Cola is paying for the cleaning and reforestation of that polluted site? Hmm, there' something fishy behind it, let's tell them no!"
"What? NSF is offering to pay my college tuition just because my grades are good and my parents poor? No way, that must be some Deep State conspiracy!"
"Rich uncle Joe says he'll pay for the treatment of our sister? He certainly wants something in return!"
"Santa is giving away presents? For free? Every year? Wall up the chimney, he wants to manipulate the kids into consumerism!"

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MERC is short for mercenary. Any house could try to pull a power move. Using financial clout to take over the order is more the Mercere or Jerbiton way, where Tremere tried to use certamen and violence.
I also have a very low opinion of the postal service IRL, having almost missed a concert by one of my favorite bands because of the laziness of postal workers...

a. there's no such thing as a free meal. They are not relatives, they are at best colleagues.
b. this is nice, this would be in the PRO category
c. this could happen by surprise, when busy with something, so I would rather not run that risk. Change of Mercere leadership or policy, and bam legs cut out from under you.

I don't think that's the case, the party coming to rely on an external source puts them at a disadvantage. And while nothing might be asked at first, 3 or 5 years down the road, House Mercere can start making demands. This looks a lot like the "first one is free" from a drug dealer wanting to get someone.

Some funders of academic pharma research will make sure that studies that fall against them never get published. You have to be careful where you take money from.

I also do not see it as family helping out. For a closer comparison, I see this is a Business Process Optimisation (BPO) where a central purchasing department is set up between several companies. It offers savings thanks to the scale, but it becomes hard to exit, as the company has come to rely on this third party which holds a lot of keys and is privy to a lot of contracts, who maintains a lot of the contacts.

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Here we are back at differences in our underlying assumptions. You say that your House mercere conspiracy is giving goods only to those who dont have the connections to use the gifted goods to free up money to invest. However you provide a list of 3 types of targets that you consider to fulfill that criterion:

  1. A spring covenant without a source of income.

  2. A covenant whose source of income has just dried up.

  3. A covenant that is trying to expand.

for 1. There is quite a bit of room for variation. A spring covenant might be anything from a freshly established spring covenant with nothing to its name except a roster of young magi, a charter and an ambition to be great all the way up to a second spring covenant like the canoncial Collem Leonis. obviously a group of magi who have literally just set up shop are quite likely to need the income and have little ways in which to raise cash, initially at least, since they also have the most room to grow. A covenant like Collem Leonis has income from multiple different sources, each of which provides a little. It would likely hurt the covenant significantly if it lost say, the right to use the nearby forest. But if it replaced the resources of the forest with gifted goods then the covenant could still use its other sources of income to raise cash to invest. Which ties into target group no. 2. obviously some covenants are reliant on a single source of income that can be lost, but IMO most covenants are reasonably diversified. In fact I would go so far as to say that being at least somewhat diversified economically is part of transitioning out of Spring in a covenants life-cycle.
That is not to say that I claim that all non-spring covenants are diversified to the point where they can survive the sudden and catastrophic loss of a single source of income unaffected but neither would they lose their ability to raise cash entirely from the loss of a single source of income either. It all depends a lot on what you put into the wording "dries up", does it mean a sudden and catastrophic loss of a source of income overnight or a slow decline of the source?

covenant type no. 3 should obviously be able to save a lot of cash to reinvest from being gifted goods. A covenant that is simply looking to expand is by definition already at a point where it is reasonably secure and can start looking towards growth. This means that they have a least some income that can be freed up from being spent on expenses and be used for investment, that is after all what expansion means in this context.

EDIT:
As a sidenote I would like to point out that there is a lot of evidence that real-world scholars who receive money "with no strings attached" will not publish results that criticize the person or organization that gives the money, are disproportionately likely to "find" that the givers products are harmless, these scholars also often report that they feel like their freedom to control the direction of their research and what they can publish is limited. It is in fact a serious crisis in modern research.

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76

We are on the same page for this.

Craig ex Tremere - Spend less on obsidian candle
Wint ex Criamon - No

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77

more like:

Craig ex Tremere - Spend less on obsidian candle
Wint ex Criamon - No
Recap: Here have some free obsidian candles
Craig ex Tremere: Great now we dont have to buy obsidian candle, lets invest in this great scheme I have.

(I dont know what obsidian candle is but now I want one in my lab)

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78

So I'm crossing the memes: Spend less on candles and obsidian candles are a thing in the Song of Ice and Fire series (and as i recall a test of would be mages if to light one using "magic" which fails and is really a lesson in humility).

You know what, I think that Hassan El-Megrayhi ex Misc will ask the PCs to bring him a dozen or so of them, in exchange for putting pressure on Stentorius to give them the Fengheld sponsorship.

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oh thats cool. I have not read the song of ice and fire series recently enough to remember obsidian candles.

I also have never seen the candle meme before, it is was good. thanks for sharing.

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story wise I'm thinking an interesting arc would be a covenant which is made this offer, along with others in the area (to me it seems like Novgorod is an ideal testing ground), then goes through the cycle of wanting free stuff to realizing there is a plot and how to deal with it to reaching some sort of balance in the area, then to have Mercere abandon the plan as unworkable and withdraw all the funding from everyone.

Really scary is if Mercere tries to bury the plot by simply cutting those covenants off from the rest of the order.