Trade and Commerce in the New World

Elegan/t g/entleman,
help me expand my humble setting.
I wrote a financial education system compatible with most ttrpg's and am
going to test run it with a group of normie friends that have never before played anything ttrpg related.
The setting so far is basically the Caribbean under Spanish rule during the 17th century.
A new ore has been discovered there
and the kings and dukes of the old world pay extraordinary prices for it, which led to a gold rush.
There is also a big landmass just a few days of travel by ship to the west of "Las Antillas" as I called my archipelago.
Most people think, that this landmass is probably really rich in the new iron ore but no expedition that set foot on it
was ever heard of again.
There are three bigger settlements on "Las Antillas", Port Azur, Fort Royal and Puerto Santa Azara, the first is controlled by a
conglomerate of corporations and rather pluralistic, while the Santa Azara and Fort Royal are controlled by the crown of Spain.
The players will be able to purchase assets ranging from ships, commodities, real estate and factories, to slaves, mining operations
and many more. 1/3

Storywise what I have so far is that the party grew up in Port Azur and starts working for one of the big trade companies
and get to know Las Antillas by travelling by ship from one plac to the other and have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals
of markets and trade.
After a few months they get a special job, which is safely getting the Governor of Puerto Santa Azara to Port Azul for a trade conference.
At night, while the sea is calm their ship gets boarded and attacked by tribal warriors from the new world, who kidnap the governor and kill everyone else.
They as the only survivors are stranded on a small island. There they have to play a bit survival and stumble upon a grotto, in which they find a ship and some treasure,
with a skelleton holding a map, the map to one of the riches and secret locations of the legendary pirate, who has terrorized the colonies of
the crown for decades. The skelleton also wears an amulett made of a big chunk of the new ore and is not as "dead" as they might have thought.
Coming back into civilization they will find Port Azur and Puerto Santa Azara at the brink of war as the gouvernors widow wants retribution
for the death of her husband and thinks the entire thing was no accident.
The players will have to come up with a plan to find the governor to avoid an all out war between the factions.
Luckily the map they just found seems to show a path up, against the seeming current of a big river into the heart of he new landmass.
As soon as they get there they will find a huge inland sea, with two civilizations at war, one being human and the other being
Yuan-Ti (who kidnapped the governor and actually replaced his wife with a pureblood).
They will also find out, why the old world pays such high prices for the mineral ore, because being in contact with it
makes you a lot more powerful (leading to the difficult decision making of using it to level up or sell it to buy more assets
and/or hire mercenaries). 2/3

Give me your input, plot hooks, interesting and inspiring locations, clever twists, and whatever you can think of.
Will dump some related art in the meantime. 3/3

tl;dr
Caribbean, pirates, Spanish, Aztec warriors, good stories, plot hooks etc.

Iron would not have called a "gold rush", because gold and silver were still being discovered, iron was not expensive at the time, and iron is not that easy for the average Joe to mine.

What do you mean iron?

>because gold and silver were still being discovered, iron was not expensive at the time, and iron is not that easy for the average Joe to mine.
>>>
> OP 11/22/16(Tue)12:02:13 No.50346249 ▶
ah, I actually wrote iron once, thanks a lot, I am but a fool.
The new mineral is a greenish shimmering ore, that can be smelted into something harder than steel.

>I wrote a financial education system
What, exactly, do you mean?
Like, the players will need to read up on the first 3 hours of an econ 101 course to do well in your campaign?

the opposite, the players will be able to buy assets and have events in the world, like a drought have an influence on the prices of what they own.
The basic idea was to teach people with no idea of how the business world works in a fun way that there is nothing hard about figuring out whether you should buy a house to live in or maybe keep living in a rented apartment and buy a share in a factory, that provides you way better returns.

I wrote the system with the thought in mind, that many people are scared of the financial markets and are being told crap like (I'm living in germanic Europe, where real estate prices are absurd atm) "An apartment to rent out is the best way of securing your rent". And people in general are way more scared of any risk than they are in the States.
So I wanted to use the Caribbean setting to portray markets in their most basic function, supply and demand and those two being different in at different places for reasons. And if you are the one who sits in between you can make a lot of money.