Greetings!
Do you have extensive mercantile-based alliances and organizations in your campaign? I'm always reminded of the Greek Delian League, in the Ancient World, where it formed a sophisticated alliance throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Composed of numerous small city-states, as well as the larger and more powerful city-states, such as Athens, the Delian League generated immense wealth and prosperity, and funded the creation of large, powerful fleets. The Delian League also possessed immense political and diplomatic power and influence. Likewise, the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages, in Northern Europe and the Baltics. They were ruled by independent councils of Merchant-Princes, that funded large professional armies which crushed many traditional noble-led states and principalities.
Very interesting dynamics to have in an ongoing campaign!
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Yes, but I take my inspiration more from literature than history. My usual model Poul Anderson's Poleseotechnic League. I would love to insert a Nicholas van Rijn NPC for the players to meet, but sadly, I don't think I can do him justice with my roleplaying abilities.
I hadn't really thought of it but my setting is definitely leans more to having city states and small kingdoms than large states.
So alliances like this could definitely exist.
My current setting has an emerging trade league, but not fully formed yet. That is, part of the idea of the campaign was to pick a point in time when trade agreements are being formed to serve as fodder for different kinds of quests. It's mostly city states that don't entirely trust each other, but need each other against external threats to make going to full-blown war too unattractive. In fact, trying to gain an advantage in trade is how they are working out some of their needs to compete. Several guilds and "trade group" subsets of guilds have near monopolies that they guard jealously.
Complicating matters are the various merchant guilds, guild alliances, guild and city state agreements, etc. Guild X might be closely aligned with City State A. From the outside, it would appear that they are joined at the hip. Yet there are fault lines even there.
One group of players is carefully cultivating a relationship with three different guilds. The local city states range from neutral to mildly positive since some of the things the characters did for the guilds helped the city states too. The characters have their eyes set on a long-term plan of being allowed to purchase trained griffins as mounts some day. That is going to take a lot of guild favors.
From my Majestic Wilderlands supplement
The Winedark Sea
The dark waters of this sea are noted for its storms and its troubled past. Currently the great city state of Sotur aids the merchant adventurers of the League of Pokrantil in defending their trade convoys from Viking pirates. The city state of Valon, one of the first colonies of the Skandians, has begun aid Sotur as its magnates are finding more profit in peaceful trade than raiding. Warwick on the northern coast of the Padizan Peninsula still welcomes pirates and Vikings alike. This region is designed to allow for adventures involving sea-faring; both trading and raiding.
For my last MW Campaign I adapted some of the trade Adventurer Conqueror King rules into a Merchant Adventure supplement (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Merchant%20Adventures%20Rev%2004.pdf).
The Hansa is pretty cool, but my readings on the Delian League always suggested that it was primarily a political dominance ploy by Athens, with merely the trappings of a merchant league.
Skimming Wikipedia: founded in 478; by 465 Athens is fighting wars to compel city-states to join the "league" - it's a hegemony; from around 454 you could consider it the Athenian Empire, Peloponnesian War breaks out in 431, war ends and Delian League broken up in 404.
In my Primeval Thule game the city states often form alliances built on trade, notably the PCs themselves forged a trading and military alliance between Quodeth (the 'Athens' of the setting) and the dwarven fortress/mining city of Kal-Zinan. Opposing them is the slaver/pirate city Marg, loosely allied with imperialist Lomar - Lomar is a kind of 'black Rome-meets-Sparta' (the BBC would love it) :D, and has the land dominance to match Quodeth's naval power. Depending on how things go, either alliance could emerge as dominant; Quodeth in particular could form the heart of a powerful mercantile league, whereas Lomari dominance would look more like Rome under the Principate.
Quote from: S'mon;1142159In my Primeval Thule game the city states often form alliances built on trade, notably the PCs themselves forged a trading and military alliance between Quodeth (the 'Athens' of the setting) and the dwarven fortress/mining city of Kal-Zinan. Opposing them is the slaver/pirate city Marg, loosely allied with imperialist Lomar - Lomar is a kind of 'black Rome-meets-Sparta' (the BBC would love it) :D, and has the land dominance to match Quodeth's naval power. Depending on how things go, either alliance could emerge as dominant; Quodeth in particular could form the heart of a powerful mercantile league, whereas Lomari dominance would look more like Rome under the Principate.
That's the best kind - where the PCs are a key driving force behind the alliance. That's when such alliances become more than just window dressing, and truly come to life.
Merchant republics like Venice in the sixteenth century are another good variation on this idea, they were fairly small territory wise but their wealth gave them a lot of military/international political power. Genoa was similar, although they were a bit weaker than Venice. For RPG options you could have players work for one republic and then switch sides (pretty common in renaissance mercenary armies) or have them as spies. Another possible quest is that you have to negotiate for trade access for a republic/company with a larger nation or empire.
I have the Argos League in my Mazes & Minotaurs game. They're privateer merchants. They won't pirate each other and merchantile is kept in friendly competition. Some NPC have entire fleets with significant rivalries. My PCs usually have a couple ships and one PC group had six ships, three for war and three for cargo.
Outside of the Argos League are many independents and many pirates, and some sanctioned by city states and a couple of temples. For instance, as the default PC group has both a son of Zeus and a priest of Zeus in the party, Hera funds an enemy fleet who try to disrupt or destroy the PC's efforts.
My OD&D game is more savage / post-apoc / S&S where long distance trade is very rare as it's highly dangerous. Man is under siege so on the road, its merchants vs. bandits vs. monsters - so all merchants have reasons to show some allegiance to each other.
The same mentality as in my Gamma World games (which I mostly run on Gamma Mars).
I've never thought about using this organized mercantile aspect in Warhammer, but it would totally make sense there. Especially when considering the Tilians.