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

The number of items in RPGs are massive. Is stuffing them all in a grid still the best way? What descriptions are needed? Are weight systems nice? What should merchants really care about?

Maybe it is just from playing Arcanum again but I feel weird carrying around large and small springs, rags, old bottles. Feels like I am missing the old shopping cart to put it all in. Even when I tried the demo for Geneforge 2 I hated seeing all this trash in containers. I also have a hard time getting into Wasteland while I am carrying around these items that I'm not so sure I need.

Shouldn't my character have an idea of what is useful? I like item descriptions. I don't really need the history of some mundane item but I want to know more then just "large gears". If my character has a good merchant or barter skill, I would like to know the value of it, which people in my travels want items like these. If my character has a high intellience I would like to see possiblities for its uses. And I like to see all possible stats for a weapon.

Is a grid and weight system the best for gameplay? Is a volume system possible? How should one carry all this stuff?

What should merchants be in the gameworld? Locations in which all of your unneeded items turn to gold? Should they have a set amount of gold that gets magically restored? What about using a form of credit, should they be better at bartering or lower their prices after a compliment, should they have some items have a flat price, where should their items be stored, what about aunctions?

Well that is a lot of questions but I would like some discussion on the topic.

I think a weight system is one of the better ways of going about it. It limits the total weight possible of carrying, and furthermore makes so the player doesn't develop a constant "pick up everything" syndrome. It actually makes some choices between which items to take more interesting.

Though, grid-based systems aren't bad at all. They usually allow you to plan according to the room in your backpack, which is an efficient way to carry stuff as well (the "pack-rat" way). It's interesting you mention Arcanum, because i quite liked its system, because it combines those two types i like best.

There's also the slot method, coupled with weight, like in the IE games. But they tend to be too forgiving in the sense that often different-sized items have no problem of being carried (you manage to place a corpse, a familiar, and staffs into your backpack? :shock I guess it just depends on how you prefer your inventory.

One of things i do think brings down the pack-rat approach of grid-based systems is that items usually have a fixed position. For instance, in my opinion, it would be helpful if we could rotate items. Lets say you have a sword which occupies 5 squares vertically. You have 5 free slots, but they're horizontally placed, but you can't rotate it, so you juut have to move it all around until you hit the nail on the positions.

And then there's the messy inventory, like Morrowind, where despite being only limited to weight, makes you oftentimes lose track of the things you have in it.

Item descriptions should be mandatory, and they should sum up any possible value of mundane items. In Geneforge theres a lot of items that seem mostly useless, but from what I remember Spiderweb has always added something like "This could be worth some money to someone looking for these". It always makes it obvious that theres a character who will purchase all of that item at a high price, even though most shop either give you very little or nothing at all for it. Items such as "trash" doesn't need to be an item that can be picked up, just make it a static graphic on the ground.

I like the grid + weight combined system so it limits on how strong your character is and how much of large items you can buy though that still tends to be a tad sillyu due to being able to carry multiple armours and stuff. Oh well..

I love item descriptions. They always add flavour.

Someone should license the Tetris engine to turn inventory management in T3H FUN MINIGAEM!!!11

PS- I really appreciate good descriptions. Also, I think gold should have a weight penalty, to add some difficult choices.

That be interesting; if not anything else..

Personally, I prefer inventory that is based on one weight only, without a grid. Divine Divinity is a good example, since it also kept the inventory rather easy manageable by sorting items under different tabs. Playing inventory Tetris might appeal to Jed, but not me. Item descriptions should be a must as well, if there is a way to include price estimates and ideas for what it's used for (if it's something that isn't self explanatory) based on the character's skills and/or attributes that would be a nice bonus.

In GeneForge, you dont really need to carry junk items, heh... Nobody buys them, I think.

I'd like to see CRPGs give a nod to Bungie's Halo and impose some limits on the number of weapons a character can carry. It always bothered me in Fallout that I could find enough space on my body to store a Flamethrower, a Super Sledgehammer, a Laser Gattling Gun, 40-some odd Stimpacks, more drugs than the Reno police force's back room, 30+ Rockets, and a collection of ammo, explosives, and tools. Sure, I mean, it was well inside the rules -- my character was beefy (or mule-ish) enough to carry all that crap -- but jeez, there's more to lugging gear around than its metric weight.

In Fantasy RPGs, I could see throwing spare gear on the back of a wagon or something, if you or your party was rich enough to own one, but carrying five suits of armor, six two-handed swords and a couple longbows? Yeah right.

I mention Halo because, if you haven't played it (try and keep it that way), your character is limited to carrying two weapons at once. One's on his back, one's being held. Makes perfect sense to me. Or take Planetside as an example. If you're a beefy fighter type, you can carry two rifles and two pistols, but are slowed down by all that. If you're the sneaky, quick Assassin-type, you can carry one pistol, and your knife. That's it.

The "backpack" idea is valid, but needs limits. Some things just shouldn't be allowed to "fit in there." Think how much more interesting combats would be if your strongest fighter is made a sitting duck since he's carrying the mayor's unconscious, fatass daughter in both of his hands, instead of clicking her icon and throwing her in his dimension-less backpack.

Human Shield said:

Shouldn't my character have an idea of what is useful? I like item descriptions. I don't really need the history of some mundane item but I want to know more then just "large gears". If my character has a good merchant or barter skill, I would like to know the value of it, which people in my travels want items like these. If my character has a high intellience I would like to see possiblities for its uses. And I like to see all possible stats for a weapon.

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That's a bloody good idea. That sort of feedback is the kind of "hand-holding" I can abide in RPG's. Rather than just having a bunch of "recipes" in the manual, give some more incentive to pour points into intelligence or engineering. Have intelligence working on a pervasive, everyday level, providing more information about the world around you.

To try to answer the question - I don't think inventories are the problem. The Kotor inventory was awful just because you didn't have a lot of controll, the Fallout one was similar. Any system with the grids or slots works well and allows you to organize things for quick reference. I think RPG's have too many extraneous items, and no inventory system is going to remedy that. If I'm allowed to pick flowers, let them do something, let me gather them in a bouquet and give them to someone for a reputation increase. Or make self-same bouquet wrapped around a grenade and leave it on someone's doorstep for a reputation decrease.

The purely weight-based inventories are, for me, preferable to the grid approach--if I can see the entire inventory easily. Unfortunately, most of these require a not insignificant amount of scrolling just to see what's available. Daggerfall I'll forgive, due to the tiny screen size, but Fallout and Geneforge both needed bigger inventory windows. Especially Geneforge, where all the swords look alike. In Fallout I could just hold the scroll button down and get a good idea of what I'm carrying, but the same cannot be said for the Spiderweb games.

The Fallout Tactics/Divine Divinity approach (tabbed browsing) isn't bad. Nor is Morrowind's implementation, though they really needed tabs for "Ingredients You'll Either Sell Immediately Or Never Actually Brew Potions With" and "Potions You'll Never Drink Because You Keep Saving Them For The Absolute Last Moment." I didn't like scrolling past all the ingredients every time I wanted to apply a lockpick or repair my arsenal.

As a compromise between Inventory Tetris and a purely weight-based solution, I actually rather like the system from Castle of the Winds. All items had both weight and bulk. You couldn't exceed either limit. As a result, schlepping around seventy suits of leather armor was just as difficult as lugging chainmail, but the former wouldn't cause you to lose speed due to encumbrance.

Finally, I have to agree with the weighted currency. Letters of credit were so much fun in Daggerfall, yet you needed cash for traveling. Furthermore, why not add enemies like NetHack's leprechauns? Give some additional incentive for putting your assets in less convenient forms.

There is also the striping enemies problem. I think it should be possible (and realistic) to take a dead enemy's weapon, armour (leaving actual clothes, no more "armour or undies"), and any items they have. But after fighting a gang of humans, how many longswords or SMGs can one man hold? This is what I had thought up:

Have personal inventory space that is stored on your person. Pockets on pants and jacket for coins (included under mass limit), gems, keys. Locations on belt, leg, and chest for: pistols or knifes holsters; ammo pockets; small medkits; or grenades. Belt or back for swords. Back for assault weapons. And main assault weapon hanging on strap (miniguns and the like have have to stay on strap and be limited to holding one). This would be a player's 'gear', its weight is put on the player and he has limited space for just the equipment that he is going to use in his travels. Less bulk would free up some mobility in addition to less weight. The player would also have a small backback for long-term values like a journal (every hero needs a journal), and other items like extra grenades or medical supplies.

Now there would also be a scavenge bag (or loot bag if you prefer). It would start as a small sack and would grow in size the more mass that is put into it. It would grow into a large over the shoulder sack and then (if character is strong enough) into two bags suspended on a bar across one's shoulders (maybe that isn't clear enough, think two water buckets on a bar).

The scavenge bag would put sizable movement penalties dependant on the mass of the bag and strength of the character. And it would have a mass cap in which no more could fit in addition to a strength based weight limit. But the good implementation is:

The bag is automatically laid down at the start of a fight, freeing up movement (two adventurers would laid down their backpacks for a fight in a bar).

Items can be assigned to automatically be placed in the scavenge bag (Old weapons, armors, and ammo types you don't need).

Can be transfered between party members and any mounts on a mass basics instead of per item (can assign percentages of carry weight and one button could evenly divide items among the party according to strength).

Party members could ask for items out of the scavenge bag if they want them (simulating a group inventory pool), and any items party members don't want are moved there for others.

In bartering, can automatically pull items (divided to best meet what the merchant is interested in buying, armour for blacksmiths) to closely match any desired value.

Any items that the player wants to keep could be assigned a flag in the scavenge bag to disallow selling but they would be very hard to get to in combat and would be included in the bag's mass limit.

Does this make bartering too automated? Well now with merchants you just click on an item in your massive reserves and have it transformed into gold coins. With a better economy system and more life-like merchants I think it would work nicely. And I like the idea of putting a bag full of assorted weapons on the table and telling the merchant to go get me that thing.

Would it be better to make separate thread on merchants and economy or could this thread cover it?

Human Shield said:

There is also the striping enemies problem. I think it should be possible (and realistic) to take a dead enemy's weapon, armour (leaving actual clothes, no more "armour or undies"), and any items they have.

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Actually, realism would work against finding intact suits of armor on bullet-riddled or eviscerated corpses. Unless you've got a portable forge or manufacturing plant, severely damaged plate mail is completely useless as armor. It's not fitted for the wearer, it may be dented sufficiently to inhibit breathing, and so on.

That said, discrete pieces a la Daggerfall would be reasonable. Scavenge a pauldron or gauntlet, but don't expect the breastplate or helmet to be usable. The longer combat lasts, though, the smaller a chance there should be of finding anything good.

Human Shield said:

But after fighting a gang of humans, how many longswords or SMGs can one man hold?

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It's interesting that you bring this up. Text adventures had a similar phase years ago; people realized that the average human probably couldn't carry the talking skull, huge lump of tofu, chisel, half-melted nacho cheese, and solid gold statue of the governor of Plunder Island. The result was inventory systems with eight-item or even four-item limits. Until you found the backpack or "thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is" your ability to solve inventory puzzles was severely impaired.

Personally, though, I found all those systems to be unremitting pains in the ass. "Realistic" they may be, but you're still performing more than twenty-four hours' worth of virtual efforts without food, sleep, or toilet breaks.

Regarding the bartering system, I think it's a bit too automated for my tastes. Besides, the way barter's usually implemented (if it's bartering at all and not a straight currency as in Arcanum, Geneforge, or NWN), it's not really that hard to make a decent deal.

I'm with Azael on this matter. Weight limit is definitely the way to go. I personally love the inventory systems implemented in Daggerfall and Divine Divinity.

And, yes Volourn, I was just looking for an excuse to mention Daggerfall again.

Psilon said:

. Daggerfall I'll forgive, due to the tiny screen size, but Fallout and Geneforge both needed bigger inventory windows. Especially Geneforge, where all the swords look alike.

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Isn't it a bit different in Geneforge 2?

In Fallout I could just hold the scroll button down and get a good idea of what I'm carrying, .

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It was only after a few years that I realized I could use the keyboard in my inventory menu in Fallout. Saves much time because scrolling is so slow.

I don't mind weight-limited in party-based games (since I have a mixture of strong and weak characters usually) but in solo games with a character that's not hyper-strong it can be a bit of a pain.

I quite like the grid-system in the IE games (although you needed more grids/bags of holding etc by half-way through most of them). Inventory tetris is my least favourite sport.

Yes it is unrealistic if you can carry seventeen different heavy weapons but I prefer to be able to do exactly that than have to abandon a cool weapon because of inventory tetris (eg in the original Deus Ex where I always found myself leaving the flame thrower because it took up too much space).

You could have a volumetric inventory, but I would definitely do it without a grid and instead attribute a "bulk" stat to items in addition to weight. So, a strong guy might be able to carry a lot of lead bars, but he simply can't carry more than one balsa wood dresser on his back. If you somehow could come up with a single stat that encompassed both weight and bulk, that would be like totally sweet.

King, havinga very weak character *should* be a pain.

Volourn said:

King, havinga very weak character *should* be a pain.

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Yeah but I don't like being punished because I thought it was more realistic for my mage to have 6 strength than 16.

The again, at least in D&D style games the mage doesn't have to wear heavy armour/wield big weapons but it is still a pain if I want to convert that stuff into gold by carting it back to town.

Not if theyw ere to include certain spells that makes it easier toc arry stuff. Still, a 6str mage probably has other stuff to make up for his weakness.

DemonKing said:

The again, at least in D&D style games the mage doesn't have to wear heavy armour/wield big weapons but it is still a pain if I want to convert that stuff into gold by carting it back to town.

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Be lucky no CRPG to date has put weight on gold. Imagine what 20,000 gold pieces must weigh.

I'm disappointed in you. Daggerfall did it. There was a reason to carry all those letters of credit.

A lot. Depedning ont he version of D&D for exmaples, it can eb either 100 coin s= 1lb. or 10 coins = 1lb. Do the math. :shock:

Psilon said:

I'm disappointed in you. Daggerfall did it. There was a reason to carry all those letters of credit.

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D'oh!

I disappoint me too.

I'll be curled up in the corner whimpering if someone needs me....

I feel so low....

I think an inventory system has to use weight, volume or a combination of the two.

I do not like the grid system because you end up rearranging stuff, even if the game has an auto-arrange feature. If you want to do volume, just do it like weight by having a number that represents the volume. You could have weight AND volume, but that is a bit over the top. IMO it is better to use a single measurement that represents both weight and volume, or just simply how hard something is to carry. A 16 foot pike (the weapon, not the fish, although the fish would be even harder to carry) weighs a fair bit but the main obstacle to carrying it is that it is 16ft long. Can you really imagine someone carrying one of those if it is NOT his or her weapon?

Most items of psuedo-junk that people typically pick up and sell in a CRPG would not really fetch much money. Most weapons you pick up off fallen foes would be too worn to be worth more than scrap, unless they just happened to be brand new or special in some way, such as high quality or magical. If you did find a magical sword then it should be worth a lot, assuming they are not common finds, but there would be a limited number of people that would buy it off you. Certainly, most weaponsmiths could not afford many such items.

When I used to play a PnP RPG the DM would roll 2d6 for every item of note (weapons, armor, magical items etc.) to represent the quality of the item. An item that was quality 12 could be sold like it was brand new, whereas the sale value of lesser quality items dropped dramatically.

One disadvantage of CRPGs that use gold as the only unit of currency is that the minimum value of an item is 1 gold, which may actually be quite a lot of money, particularly if you horde many such items and sell them. For example: you might get 6 gold for selling a sword, and 1 gold for a loaf of bread. Could you really buy a sword for 6 loaves of bread - I doubt it, unless it was damn good bread.

I always believed that there should be some advantage to travelling lightly. People who wear heavy armor should get penalities when running, swimming, climbing etc. and they should tire out much quicker. Carrying as much junk as you possibly can should also have the same effect. The inventory system in Morrowind had its flaws, but one thing I did like was that the speed that your character moved at and the rate that your character tired was directly related to how much stuff you were carrying. If you were a theif-type character then there was a lot to be said for not picking up every item you find, because this made a lot of difference to your speed.

By way of a summary, here's my view of a good inventory system:
- You can see all the items a person is carrying all at once.
- No grid system. Instead, have a fixed number of slots that is reasonably large.
- Each item has a numeric value that represents the size of the item, which is a combination of volume and weight.
- A character cannot really carry much stuff that is large, such as spare weapons and armor.
- Most items are near worthless. Only precious stones, jewellery, magical items and items of high craftmanship are worth keeping to sell.
- Even before a character reaches his or her carry limit, he/she gets penalties to dodging, stamina, speed, swimming, climbing etc. according to weight carried (as a percentage of total capcity).
- Items like weapons and armor deteriorate in quality very quickly when used. That expensive sword you bought is very valuable when you first acquire it, but once you have used it the value drops a lot. (Repairing an item does not totally reverse the depreciation in value.)
- I think you should be able to examine any item and read a good description of it. The description should change as you learn more about the item.