[A+H Financial] The Southern Institute

OOC: if you've read this, and know somebody who doesn't visit the forums but may be interessted, can you tell him/her about the idea?

The Southern Institute
S.I.C.A - The South-Seas Institute for the Commercialization of the Arcane

“It is ridiculous that magic should be in the hands of the academia who write it down and let it gather dust on the shelves. They lack vision and ambition. The Southern Institute will demonstrate that free magical enterprise will accelerate our progress a thousandfold. All major cities connected by permanent teleportation-gates which are open to general public in five years? You bet it!
-Undermine Examiner

Miss Sophyra is a goblin in heart. In fact, unless I see proof of the contrary I am convinced she is a goblin cleverly disguising to look human! Force mages out of the cellars and let them turn the wheels of our economy, that’s brilliant! Watch out, because I will personally drive you out of business!
-Gadgetzan Times

Magic is a great untapped resource of Azeroth, a resource that can build and destroy, serve in wars and at home; then why haven’t we begun earning money on magic? Kings and Lords pay mages far less than they are worth, while mages themselves use their rare talent for the academic pursuit in some dark, dusty tower. It is about time the mages took their place in the broad daylight of today’s dynamic world, and sought to apply their skills to solving practical problems and making money.

The South-Seas Institute for the Commercialization of the Arcane (The Southern Institute) is a Steamwheedle-associate venture created to assist the mages to apply their talents to everyday world and come in contact with possible investors, to assist investors to find promising magical ventures to finance and to lay aside a certain fund to further the research into the practical and financially-healthy applications of magic.

Located in the free and sunny Gadgetzan, the Southern Institute grants mages and artificers a rare chance to pursue their venues under the support of a powerful overarching organization without imposing any form of external control on their pursuits. We will help you make your business-plan, and as long as you keep providing the agreed results, nobody will interfere with your work! Did your professor ever tell you that you are worthless? Prove him wrong, be worth a thousand gold! We don’t care for your race, we don’t care for your looks, we don’t care for your gender – we care for your talent!

Businessmen looking for investment opportunities are invited to weekly exchange in Gadgetzan to purchase and trade shares, get informed on latest number changers, listen to presentations of new projects and be consulted on Institute’s policies. Aspiring entrepreneurs should attend these meetings to present their magical enterprises in person to the audience of potential investors.

Come to the first weekly meeting to listen to the presentation of the institute’s first project, and purchase their shares!

The Southern Institute’s first weekly meeting: 22nd at 20:30 in Gadgetzan Auction House

Avreen Magical Workshop
Avreen is a rocky island in the south-seas, a port of call for ships that need repair supplies or shore-time. Fazlina Shortrudder is a shipbuilder and a talented sorceress, seeking to magically augment her workshop to provide faster and better services to the ships in need of repair. And besides, “if you can put enchantments on plate and swords, why not planks, cannons and sails?” Miss Shortrudder promises steady profits fixed over a long period of time, as well as indirect income from new patents that may come as the venture gains experience. Full augmentation will take 3500 standard silver coins, and is expected to produce a weekly net income of 275 standard silver coins. The Institute has split the investment into 100 shares with a nominal value of 35 per share, they will be sold on our very first exchange for 35 silver coins per share.

Wondrous Elixirs
Wondrous Elixirs is a successful alchemist’s shop in lower Ironforge, owned by Nazzin Sputtertube. Mister Sputtertube has recently inherited the business from his father, Tindrid Sputtertube. The new owner comes with a new vision, “why are all elixirs always so serious? Why can’t we make them fun?” Mister Sputtertube is looking for investors to finance his reorganization of the shop into an alchemical land of wonders, specializing in recreational elixirs ranging from weak love potions to transformation elixirs to weak prankster’s solutions giving long noses or fat fingers. Mister Sputtertube is first in the field of selling those items commercially on large scale, and expects good and reliable profits of 50 silver coins a week. The Institute has divided the total investment of 1200 standard silver coins into 100 parts, nominal value per share is 12 silver, the shares will be sold by the Institute for 12 silver per share.

OOC:
I begin with giving credit for the whole Stock Exchange idea to a certain goblin guild-leader who proposed it at start of cataclysm! I also thank Anaei for listening to my half-comical rant on this topic. Yes, it is a combination of a magical company and an investor’s concern. I thought it fun to have a group of greedy mages trying to make a living from their skill, but the idea of a whole ‘trade’ around it is even sweeter. And I already know that this will be swarmed with goblins, but cross-faction role-play is good!

Magical part, how does it work? Although this is mostly about financial RP rather than magic strictly-speaking, I do hope to make actual events and expeditions next to purely fictional venues. That means that I am looking forwards to interacting with any mages trying to open business, or any outsiders trying to hire the Institute to aid them with magical issues.

Financial part, how does it work? There are several projects that require a fixed amount of money as investment. That money is raised through issuing shares which are then up for grabbing. Once the money is raised, the project begins turning out its one-time profit (with expeditions) or its weekly income (other venues). Profits are given out as dividend to the shareholders, or invested in the Institute (with blessing of the shareholders of course). Profits depend on role-play and luck (rolls), depending on what events happen and what decisions we make, profits can rise or fall, and value of business can increase or decrease likewise. For instance, if pirates threaten a venue and we agreed to invest more in security…profits may as well die for that period. Or if we don’t invest in security, the venue itself may die to piracy, making all the shares worth nothing at all. Value of shares changes based on value of the venue and its ability to make reliable profit. So, let us begin trading shares and committing suicide when we lose all the money! Timescales are unrealistic, but I doubt any of us want to wait years for our capital to grow.

Antagonism? Yep, if you want to make some event with the institute (attack one of the venues for instance), I personally am looking forwards to it. Not to mention organizations such as councils, senates and other magical organizations may take different stances towards the institute and interact with it in different ways.

Communication? RealID is the best way to go around the cross-faction communication. It is easy to create horde/alliance alts and exchange the addresses.

Who ‘owns’ the institute? Right now Sophyra. Those who come with sufficiently-large investments and own a good deal of shares may as well become partners, or force their way into becoming partners. Such people run the institute. Other shareholders are only consulted. But mind that money Is power, so if you have 77% in some project, you may very well force the partners to take the policy YOU want when it comes to that project! Political RP, yep!


What sort of money-system we use? You can check here for a rough estimate: http://www.defiasrp.com/t2605-prices-and-economy-of-stormwind, but remember that profits & investment sizes are adjusted slightly to allow for small amount of investors and for quick profits/quick losses.

Now it is too late to post full information, considering there is only one shareholder, but I am giving it a preview. After next week, I hope to see at least a dozen shareholders!

Spoiler:

Now a little explanation on the charts: they are simpler than they look, was no more than an hour of work.

Investment: amount of money needed to complete a project
Project Value: amount of money a project is currently worth (how much is invested, was there any damage, is it getting old?)
Project Completion: shows if the project is ready, or still gathering needed money
Fixed Time: a measure of time, in weeks, for how long no major changes in weekly income are expected
Profit (W and I): shows weekly and instant profit of a project.
Interest: weekly interest on investment, based on market value of the shares. Basically, how fast your investment grows
Share Value: how much is a share worth. N stands for the value share represents when contributing to the completion of the project, E sands for the value a share is sold for by the Institute, A stands for actual market-value of the share (MIND! This is how much a share is worth, if you buy it for that price you expect to ‘break even’ unless profits rise or fall, or you keep the shares for a longer time) and P stands for market value last week
Excess Fund: is how much money the project has contributed to the Institute as a whole, based on the difference between Share (N) and Share (E)
Number of Shares: how many shares are in circulation (issuing new shares de-evaluates all shares!)
Value of Shares: total market value of all the shares

PS: Summer vacation is coming, also for me, I have consciously decided to start it now. The summer break in july will give me time to fix any problems we may discover while role-playing this.

PSS: Joint enterprise is as old as history, and shares were invented by Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). Prices of gold were fixed daily by Venician merchants during the height of the city-state. So there is nothing too modern in ‘Institute’.

In a statement earlier today, Mailin Isastra Azuresong, Director of the Dalaran Directive, spoke out against the South-Seas Institute for the Commercialisation of the Arcane (S.I.C.A) and the commercialisation of arcane magic. The Director stated that due to the dangerous nature of arcane magic and the consequences its misuse may lead to, it needs to be strictly regulated by a neutral and impartial organisation without any commercial interests.
The Director called this venture “a threat to the global security of our world” and strongly encouraged all mages across Azeroth to boycott it.
S.I.C.A has of yet not made a response and whether the mage population of the world will heed Director Isastra’s warnings remains to be seen.

In other news…


OOC:
I find this idea provoking, fun and original and I hope many driven people will join up and make this seed for something –new- grow.

OOC:

Argh, I know my character objects to these sorts of things, industrialising magic... But I'm very much interested in this myself. I'll see if I can find a reason to be there.

She could've seen the light and converted to industrial magic!

((Loved Aleric's reaction. Gotta follow suit.))

To be distributed to the guard-houses and magi-holds of the Kingdom of Stormwind.

By command of the Minister of Magic Professor Astroloxia any member of the newly formed South-Seas Institute for the Commercialization of the Arcane must be detained upon entry into the Kingdom and transfered to the vault on charges of mis-use of magic and exploting the nature of magic. The Minister makes it very clear that this organization will not be tolerated in the Kingdom of Stormwind.

((Bar my IC views, you know my OOC ones. I love the idea of commercialization everything.. xD))

((oh god... its illegal, that makes it even more appealing >:l))

I may need to read it again a couple of times, but it seems indeed interesting; I'll contact you in game as soon as possible.

Since I was getting this question in-game whispers already:

How does it work in practice?

In practice a group of people (mages, enterpreneurs, investers) meet in Gadgetzan. There the projects are presented, questioned and discussed. Then it is time for share-releases, where shares are auctioned out in small packages. (so if demand is large, it might be possible to sell them for more than their value!). [Auction-like sub-event]

When there are no official share-sellings, we discuss the financial developments and other news (share-prices changing, projects getting damage, thugs demanding protection-money) and interessted parties, per project, decide what to do. [Council-like sub-event]

Then we let people 'go' and they can begin trading shares among each other, doing shady deals, intimidating each other, scheming on how to increase the value of projects they invested in and sink the rivals. [Lounge-rp]

After the evening is over, people might be meeting new mages/employees/enterpreneurs throughout the week and either being persuated to finance them, or persuating them to open up for financing. If there are no player-characters opening new projects, I just do them on behalf of the NPCs. Then I simply combine the descisions we made during the meeting, with some dice-rolls, and let my spreadsheet calculate the new values for the coming week!

And the circle is round.

Hmm, I should try to specifically contact some Gobling guild! and Flumi.

Exaythe wrote:[i]
I begin with giving credit for the whole Stock Exchange idea to a certain goblin guild-leader who proposed it at start of cataclysm!

I think this may have been me, yay! Good luck with it Exaythe, it looks good!