A nice idea. To keep ensuring that it is different, I'd keep playing up the economic angle.
I don't speak Polish - Nowa or Nowy?
Other than Malbork, there seems to be a dearth of information on members, or even locations. Even if you want to provide flexibility to GMs by avoiding specifying towns, I'd think you would want to better describe the parameters of membership:
- Towns without cantonments by major military units
- Towns with that avoided major destruction during the war (from nuclear or conventional attack) - noting that there is a large rail yard a few blocks from Malbork Castle, and a nearby Polish AF airfield :-)). A town needs to be in decent shape in order to have a surplus to trade.
- Towns on access to a major road or navigable river for transportation.
Malbork is not on the sea, but is at least on a river or canal; Tczew is connected by a major road (and a river); Elblag is in the other direction; add in Nowy Dwor Gdanski, and you have a definable perimeter of decent transport links. Hmmm. I should go back and see where there are rail links. Even where rail yards may be beat-up, long stretches of track may be fine.
They would avoid adding a community too far from the edge of their patrolled territory, or without a decent transportation link - too expensive to extend protection.
(For bulk movement of grain, ie, that which backs the currency, river traffic will be easier to accomplish, IMHO.)
The nearest major seaport is Gdansk, which may not be suitable due to damage.
Additional missions, of course, can be
- outreach missions (or protecting outreach missions).
- protecting food storehouses (since it is the basis of currency) or
- retrieving stolen supplies raided by someone else - someone with access to several trucks and strong firepower or their raid would not have succeeded in the first place...
- tracking down traders from non-member communities and collecting taxes
- tracking down people who illegally collected taxes from traders from non-member communities
You could also describe a market, or that due to trade, the markets in the member towns have a wider variety of goods available, as if they were a larger town.
I agree that a personality or two would be helpful. The movers and shakers in this organization will be nouveau entrepreneurs, or those who were criminals under the Communists - sharp operators. Hmmm, or ex-party officials who are used to getting what they want. This organization is set up mainly so the traders can safely carry out trade...
Uncle Ted