Items and bartering, do we need to carry all this junk?

[Jed]

I'd like to note that I would like to see some limiting changes in inventory management not for realism purposes, but roleplaying purposes: another way of forcing the player to have to make tough choices.

 

[Human Shield]

Would coinage of different values ever be usable within a RPG? Or would putting decimal places on your gold counter work?

How valuable should moderate condition swords be? If making several trips profits the player enough gold they would end up trying to stuff as many as they can into their bag.

Should merchants be blank people that turn items into gold? Should even a junk dealer turn down your 15th sword if he has enough already. Could a dynamic economy ever work? Should the player end up walking around with more gold then 3 kingdoms combined? The player ends up turning down a king's random because he is carrying twice as much.

 

[Limorkil]

Would coinage of different values ever be usable within a RPG? Or would putting decimal places on your gold counter work?

How valuable should moderate condition swords be? If making several trips profits the player enough gold they would end up trying to stuff as many as they can into their bag.

Should merchants be blank people that turn items into gold? Should even a junk dealer turn down your 15th sword if he has enough already. Could a dynamic economy ever work? Should the player end up walking around with more gold then 3 kingdoms combined? The player ends up turning down a king's random because he is carrying twice as much.

When coins were actually made of precious material, like silver, people used to sometimes cut them into halves or quarters to create smaller denominations. So I suppose fractional gold pieces is possible. Of course, you could just say that the fractions are lower value coins, such as bronze.

A moderate condition sword would be worth quite a bit to a peasant levy or town militia. However, to a weaponsmith who makes swords it wouldn't be worth that much because she has better swords in stock. This is probably easier to explain with numbers: Say a brand new sword cost 10 gold. Well, 10 gold is a crap load of money to most people, which is why only knights and other nobles have good swords. A peasant levy could never afford it. By comparison, a moderate condition sword might be worth 2 gold. That is still a lot of money to a peasant, but to a mercenary or a merchant it might be within their budget. No knight or noble would buy a moderate condition sword rather than a new sword, so there is no point asking for, say, 5 gold. Now, if the weaponsmith expects to sell the moderate condition sword for 2 gold, she is probably not going to pay more than a gold to buy it off some adventurer.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people tend to charge what they can get away with. If an adventurer appeared to be loaded with cash then the new sword might be 15 gold for them.

Used weapons would still be worth a lot of money to most people, but not to an adventurer who expects to find or buy magical items. So a brave peasant might follow the adventurer round picking up the swords, but it is doubtful they would be worth enough for the adventurer to bother with. Besides, the adventurer's ability to perform physical actions would be heavily restricted if he were carrying half a dozen old swords.

It is worth remembering that the value of an item to a merchant would be directly related to it's resale value. A merchant might buy one used sword because he thinks he can sell it to some mercenary who wanders by. However, he is unlikely to pay much for a whole cart full of swords, unless he thought he could make a deal selling them to the local lord for equipping guards and levvies. At the other end of the scale, a merchant would be reluctant to buy a fantastic magical item unless he thought he could find someone who would buy it for more. Yes, that Crystal Orb might be worth 150,000 gold, but good luck finding someone who would pay even a fraction of that for it.

IMO one of the signs of good game design, whether it is a PnP RPG or a CRPG or an action adventure or whatever, is that the player never has more money than he/she knows what to do with. I dislike Morrowind because there is nothing much to spend money on, whereas I really liked Daggerfall because you could always blow your money on a new ship or a house. One problem with economies in many games is that the designers do not build in much by way of "adventuring expenses". Usually, equipment never needs repairing and items that are used up, such as potions, arrows, food, scrolls are frequently found and, therefore, rarely need to be bought. I would much rather see a game where you have to pay to have your weapon and armor repaired, and the cost is based on the value of the items. This sounds like an annoyance, but in many games where there isn't really any strong roleplaying or story elements (and there are many such games), the desire to acquire wealth and buy bigger and bigger items is one thing that keeps people playing. Once you have more gold than the king and nothing to spend it on, there is not really any incentive to keep going.

 

[Sammael]

I would like to see a weight/bulk system. There would be no "inventory tetris;" hell, there would be no need for "slots," either, just an empty scrollable space - tabbed for easier manipulation (with tabs for weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, quest items, junk, and whatnot). Each item would have two ratings: weight and bulk. Your character would likewise have a carrying capacity expressed in both max weight and max bulk (or degrees of each that result in various forms of encumbrance). There should be ways to increase the bulk capacity, such as different containers, bags, sacks, etc., with the tradeoff of increased weight.

Gold should have a meaningful weight, but virtually no bulk. In a party-based game, the weight from gold would automatically be added to the strongest/least encumbered party member.

All keys should be automatically added to a virtual keychain and automatically used when needed (with an appropriate message).

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I liked Arcanum's keyring.

 

[Crimson]

I also liked the key ring IT was a blesing not like in BG wher a guy took op the samme as a great sword or a minuture giant hamster from outerspace

I liked the Arcanum system becus it maked a littel sens a sprocket didnt take a lot of room a full plate took almost half...it all made sens to me...

Hwen i play PNP Looting is somthing a lot of pepol do "WE HAVE TO HAVE EVRY THING AND A LITTEL MORE" but how the hell can a guy fun around whit thouse 4 fullplates, 5 longswords and more..

Side note...

Rember the first Diablo wher gold op to 20000 or somthing took op 1 slot so you endet up whit your inventory filled up....

no wonder evry thing attacked him he most have soundet like a hole army of rats whit bells on ther tails...

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I enjoyed Arcanum's system as well. I also liked how the more stuff you packed on, you lost Fatigue (from having to lug shit around).

And about swords not being useful to Blacksmiths, i'd figure the smith would take your generic junk and just melt it down/break it apart for his own weapons. Like taking a so-so sword and making a bunch of fire daggers.

That's one thing I kinda wanted in Arcanum, since you had so much Tech skills that need Item+item, was breaking down items and turning them into parts. It'd be fun to take apart some stuff and make a whole new and powerful item.

 

[Crimson]

Well on thing i liked about the Tech system in Arcanum was the hole macgyver fell

Junk+Junk=Gun
Junk+Gun=Better gun
Better gun+Junk=BFG

 

[Human Shield]

Well I played Wiz8 and I was happy with the inventory system it used. It had a party inventory area whose weight is divided according to the str of your characters, I hadn't played a game that used this system before it made storing things a lot easier. Also each character had 8 spaces to put item that they could quickly use.

I would have just added body slots for personal items (limiting the amount of weapons one can carry). And a dividing option for party inventory between unneeded and useable, and have party members take what they needed at will while out of combat.

 

[Human Shield]

For ressurection questions.

How should merchant gold be handled? Infinite supply, restore every day/week.

Should buying and selling just be a drag and drop game or should there be more options, such as selecting a item and having the merchant pick items out of your bag for a trade.

Or what about asking recommandations for items, should merchants actually try to sell you items instead of being robots that give you a menu.

 

[Seven]

For ressurection questions.

How should merchant gold be handled? Infinite supply, restore every day/week.

Should buying and selling just be a drag and drop game or should there be more options, such as selecting a item and having the merchant pick items out of your bag for a trade.

Or what about asking recommandations for items, should merchants actually try to sell you items instead of being robots that give you a menu.

I would like to agree that it should not be infinite and should restore daily. However, this just leads to repetative resting. Why not have promise notes with a mall amount of interest instead of gold. In a setting like Arcanum credit notes should work great.