As a Duke buying up every bushel I could find in D'Hara, I've noticed that the majority of trading is done by lord caravans. There are still, and will always be those regions that cannot be reached this way. Those regions however, are not allied territory. Allies tend to open up their food stores far more easily than far off realms that do not care whether your cities starve or thrive.
I have had decent amounts of fun playing a Trader, but I agree that there should be more things they can do besides searching half a continent to fill up a caravan or two. There is always add more stuff to trade! But that is a band-aid fix. We could.... add stuff only Traders can trade! That could work, if done correctly. Otherwise it would over power the trading game, and suddenly everyone is a Trader. I know! We could add something like the Banker's Manipulate the Books. An additional feature available only to Traders that adds some flavour. Oh nuts, we have that, its called the Blackmarket.
But I have an idea now. How come the Blackmarket is limited to food? Shady deals are made all the time, and in the setting of Battlemaster, I can think of nothing better to add than Unique Items to the Blackmarket. Its brilliant, think about it. Some fence offers to sell you Merlin's Staff of Rubber Chickens. Real? or Fake? Buy it on a gamble! It could work similarly to Hero's picking up volunteers, in terms of irregularly occurring. Perhaps even buy magic scrolls that I personally have only ever seen on BT as a result of the Dream?
