Feature Specification: Shops & Merchants

[ç i p h é r]

Shops & Merchants
The requirements for player run shops and non-player merchants are detailed below.

For a short explanation of the feature specification format, visit:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=27229

Functional Requirements

PC Shops
Players will be able to setup and operate their own persistent shops. Each shop will include specific persistent containers to store items for sale and will include a clerk to handle the transactions. Each shop will have a deed that can be traded, bought, or sold from other players. Deeds cannot be stolen or pick pocketed. A player in possession of a deed will be considered the owner of the shop the deed pertains to and permitted to stock items as needed.

Shops and clerks will have up keep costs configurable per deed (includes possession/property tax) to be collected from the owner on a monthly basis. Players that cannot maintain the up keep costs will forfeit the deed to their shop. Deeds to unowned shops may be purchased by players from the store clerk for a one time fee configurable per deed.

NPC Merchants
NPC merchant inventories will be persistent with no more than triple redundancy on custom items. Common items will be restocked hourly or available in infinite supply. Stock items will be rotated daily with d10 cheap, d2 masterwork and 10% magical (or equivalent) according to the merchant type. The number of dice rolled will vary based on town size (on the area or the NPC) such that cities like Waterdeep will have greater quantities and remote trading posts will have less.

Merchants will buy all non-crafted items, but at 10% of the value if they don't normally stock it. Merchants will also deal in gems exchanging 95% of the appraised value of a gem for currency.

Temple Priest:
Priests will sell items relating to the healing and curing of ailments. They will also offer healing and ressurection services.

Fishmonger:
Fishmongers will sell fish and the tools for the catching and cleaning of them.

Bard:
Bards will sell musical instruments and compositions.

Mage:
Mages will sell spells and components for the casting and scribing of them. They will also offer identification services and insight into all things arcane.

Paladin:
TBD

Herbalist:
Herbalists will sell herbs and other non-magical items with medicinal properties. They may also offer minor healing services.

Blacksmith:
A blacksmith will sell ingredients needed for the creating of weapons and armor. They may also offer repair services for worn or broken weapons and armor.

Weaponsmith:
A weaponsmith will sell weapons and items relating to their maintenance.

Armorsmith:
An armorsmith will sell armor and items relating to their maintenance.

Tailor:
A tailor will sell clothing and tailoring items. They will also offer clothing/armor modification services.

Innkeeper:
An innkeeper will sell keys to rooms that can be used for safe resting.

Bartender:
A bartender will sell food and beverages to the tavern patrons. A bartender may also sell information.

General Store (Bazaar/Emporium):
A general store will sell basic items like ropes, torches, tents, bedrolls, oil flasks, tinderboxes, rations and tonics.

Jeweler:
A jeweler will sell gems.

Merchant System
Clerks and NPC merchants will allow players to haggle in the process of buying or selling items (bargaining). Bargaining is a skill strongly affected by Charisma. Players with high Charisma will generally achieve better results when attempting to haggle on prices. Excessive or unreasonable haggling will result in a reputation adjustment in proportion to the 'offense'. The number of attempts per item perceived as excessive will be inversely proportional to the merchants Intelligence score. Offering less than 50% of the base value of an item will be the threshold for unreasonable (considered an insult).

If a player fails to successfully bargain with the merchant, they will not be permitted to try again with the same merchant for at least 1 in-game day. Bargaining will be configurable per store.

Standard items will be stored in open containers throughout the shop. Special items will be stored in locked containers and/or rooms and can only be accessed through conversation options.

All standard store items for sale can be acquired and examined, wielded, or worn before a buying decision is reached. A merchant counter will be used to indicate what items a player has the intent to purchase. A player can attempt to shoplift an item by entering into stealth mode. A successful hide check against all NPCs in perception range will yield the item unnoticed. A player may choose to steal an item outright by leaving the store without paying but will suffer a significant reputation adjustment with the merchant and local guard faction. Players who are caught stealing may be wanted by local law enforcement, arrested and stripped of all items, fined for the offense and/or may no longer be eligible for trade with honest merchants in the community.

Stealing is configurable per store and when disabled, all non-purchased items will be removed from the player's inventory when leaving the shop or upon login after a reset.

Clerks and merchants can be configured to destroy all items sold to them, destroy items below a specific value, or destroy all items but the most valuable ones. Clerk and merchant controls will be accesssible via the DM wand.

NWN Object Dependencies
Persistent Chest, Weapon Rack, Armor Stand, Clothing Rack, Merchant Counter, Shop Deed

Local Variables and External Configs
iTownSize, iStoreSize, sMerchantType, iUpKeepCost, bAllowStealing, bAllowBargaining, bIdentifyItems, bBuyItems, bSellItems, bBuyStolenItems, iMaxOffer, fBuyMultiple fSellMultiple

Logging and Debugging (global LOG & DEBUG (on/off) constants)
Shoplifted Items and Attempts

Persistence Requirements
Store Inventories, Player Reputation

Event Dependencies
OnConversation, OnDisturbed, OnOpen, OnClose, OnClientEnter

[ç i p h é r]

I've got a fairly rough outline and a few ideas posted above as a starting point for discussion. Comment away.

[hypervx]

Each shop will have a deed that can be traded, bought, or sold from other players. Deeds can be stolen or pick pocketed. A player in possession of a deed will be considered the owner of the shop the deed pertains to.

If I understand the deeds is like a certificate of ownership, and so I don't think it should be stealable or pickpocketable. I mean, even if someone steal from you a certificate or a key, how he gains ownership of the shop?
In general I'm against this kind of system, I prefer that the ownership is stored server side (a script or object variable).

Shops and clerks will have specific up keep costs to be collected from the owner on a monthly basis. Players that cannot maintain the up keep costs will forfeit the deed to their shop. Deeds to unowned shops may be purchased by players from the store clerk for a one time fee (gp?).

This will require a specific script or DM interaction. Alternatively, we could use (as in my shop, Lantarh's Emporium) a system where a certain amount of the income are used to pay the shop's expenses, If I sell an item for 100gp, what actually I get is 30 gp, because 50gp goes for the item cost, 5 for the shop's expenses, and 15gp for, ehm, protection from accidents...
Selling/acquiring a shop should require DM interaction.

NPC Merchants

Add to the list a bazaar or emporium.

(Tradebars and/or Gems?)

Gems.
The merchant will acquire a gem for 95% of his price, with those money you can then buy items.

Excessive, unsuccessful, or unreasonable haggling will result in a reputation adjustment in proportion to the 'offense'.

A bit too harsh?

Standard items will be stored in open containers throughout the shop. Special items will be stored in locked containers and/or rooms and can only be accessed through conversation options.
All standard store items for sale can be acquired and examined, wielded, or worn before a buying decision is reached. A merchant counter will be used to indicate what items a player has the intent to purchase. A player can attempt to shoplift an item by entering into stealth mode. A successful hide check against all NPCs in perception range will yield the item unnoticed. A player may choose to steal an item outright by leaving the store without paying but will suffer a significant reputation adjustment with the merchant and local guard faction.

While this seems a good idea in the direction of realism, we should consider that we doesn't have always a DM around, so I'm not in favor of having stealable items in the shops. This kind of actions should IMO always require DM interaction.

[Fionn]

I'm muddling over how to rework my kloodgy system for rotating stock. Whatever we do for deeds/income (30% profit margin sounds HUGE), I'd suggest we set the normal NPC merchants to rotate mundane stock and have a % chance for MW and a /slight/ % chance for +1 gear. This gives PCs a reason to shop :)

If we can't tie %sell/buy to a global trade system (raw goods vs finished goods), we should randomize it based upon a constant in the merchant tag. mc_sword_low would be 15-20% buy back & 90-100% sell, while mc_sword_high might be 25-30% & 100-120%. These would be further adjusted by Appraise checks - obviously the _high needs a decent Appraise rank.

[hypervx]

I'm muddling over how to rework my kloodgy system for rotating stock. Whatever we do for deeds/income (30% profit margin sounds HUGE)

Well, for RL it is very very low

I used to work for a dress shop chain, and they usually had profit of about 100% (they sold at about 300% of the item base cost).

I'd suggest we set the normal NPC merchants to rotate mundane stock and have a % chance for MW and a /slight/ % chance for +1 gear. This gives PCs a reason to shop

Would be awesome to have rotating stocks tied to a global economy/market, but I'm doubtful about the perfomance hits...
About the MW/+1 gear, I'm against (possibilist if we are talking of percentage around 0,001%)

[Fionn]

Take a stroll through Waterdeep now...

[hypervx]

Take a stroll through Waterdeep now...

To check rotating stocks performance or other?

[Fionn]

to find all the +1 gear ;)

[TennysonBull]

cipher:

if there is a thread for trade, i am missing it completely. besides, there is a connection here anyway. two questions:

first, any thought of tying trade into the NPC shops?

Using an example from pgs 88-89 of the FRCS, Amn exports ale to the Western Heartlands. It would be pretty cool to have this trade come up in game - for example, the inns in WH boast of their fine ales from Amn and, if troubles on the road cause interruptions in this trade, the barkeeps take it off the "menu" and talks about it, creating an adventure hook for the players that does not require a DM to get it rolling.

second, could we use trade goods to drive an NPC merchant economy?

1.) PCs can participate in trade via static quests or get into the game by buying trade goods. Either way NPC merchant sellers give the PC a trade token that identifies the source of the trade good and names a potential buyer (in the case of a static, the token would also name a specific buyer).

2.) NPC merchant buyers "consume" trade goods at a set rate (by reselling to other merchants and/or making items for sale in his shop), perhaps 1 per day for example.

3.) Buyer's price is based on the source of the trade good and the quantity of the trade good that he has when the PC shows up. The PC may make money or not - if lots of supplies are getting through, the price stays at the purchase price (no chance of exploit). If very few are getting through, the price may go up (and perhaps so too does the price of the related good in the shops about town...)

Again this offers players adventure hooks for IC travel throughout the realms that do not require DMs to get them rolling.

[ç i p h é r]

The main question regarding up keep costs IMO is how do we prevent players from "squatting" (buying and holding shops without having a real interest in them or not transferring the rights to them when leaving the server)? Squatting is one of the major downfalls to any player owned system and where the monthly up keep cost derived from. The sales tax approach is transactional, so it doesn't prevent this from happening. We can implement a sales tax if there would be some other use for taxation you can think of.

I'd also like players to be able to buy or sell shops w/o needing a DM or builder to have to broker those deals - it's micromanagement best left to the system to facilitate if possible IMO (like bartering items for instance). A DM can certainly intervene if they wish or need to, but it wouldn't be required. I think DMs would appreciate having that freedom but what do you all think?

Add to the list a bazaar or emporium.

Sure. Can you define what items or services they offer?

Excessive, unsuccessful, or unreasonable haggling will result in a reputation adjustment in proportion to the 'offense'.

A bit too harsh?

I'm open to suggestions if you have them. The intent there is to prevent players from haggling repeatedly (spam haggling?) in trying to find the NPCs acceptance threshold. It just isn't very IC to allow that.

Regarding stealing, we could make this a configurable option on shops. If stealing is disabled, they can't leave the shop with the item.

Since reputations will hopefully play a greater role in our NWN2 world, I think allowing opportunities for theft may add some interesting flavor. Could players exploit this if, say, catching a thief in the act of stealing would turn the local guard and merchant faction against them? With a jailport, guards could attempt to arrest the player, strip them of all their gear, toss them in a cell, and fine them for the offense. Repeated offenders might simply be outlawed in a city. Merchants might not trade with such players at all. So, if the consequences are there for stealing and as severe as they should be, is there enough deterrant to try exploiting?

[ç i p h é r]

Fionn, what would rotation of stock be based on? Is it totally random? If we can make store inventories persistent, that would also offer enough variation to keep players checking in.

TB, there is infact a trade forum where this has come up and briefly discussed. We never got far but yes, I agree, having trade goods available and tied to a crafting system would spark interserver travel and role play. It could also give players an opportunity to provide transport services for buying/selling large quantities of goods if we have caravans and pack animals in-game.

Here's the forum:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... .php?f=108

The only tie into NPC merchants I can see is defining who sells what and the rate at which they replenish (if we don't want to open up harvesting of raw materials).

[Fionn]

We can make it persistant with an hourly check to remove anything with more than 3 repeats, and restock common items. Then a daily check to dope the merchant with d10 cheap, d2 MW and 10% magical (or whatever). These could be based upon a TOWNSIZE int on the area (or the NPC) to have more in Waterdeep and less in a remote trading post. Furthermore, we can add MERCHANTYPE so we know what types of items to dope with.

It will be great if we have buyback control per item - allow all merchants to buy all items, but at 10% if they don't normally stock it.

If we don't make it persistant, we can simply recreate the store based upon similar numbers every night.

[ç i p h é r]

Sounds good.

Along with town size, we could factor in a store size on a scale of 0 - 10. This would influence the calculation of an item's value, for sale or purchase. 10 is a huge store with lots of traffic, 0 a small shop with minimal traffic. The traffic level is used as a percentage multiplier that increases the sale price of store items and decreases the offer price for items by up to 100%. This value could even be dynamic from whatever defaults we set it to, increasing or decreasing over time depending on player activity. (the economies of scale)

Pricing based on reputation (5 different NPC attitudes per canon):
For every level below INDIFFERENT, a merchant will apply a 25% price increase to the goods they sell and a 25% price decrease for goods they buy. For every level above INDIFFERENT, a merchant will do the exact opposite. It pays to cultivate a good reputation with merchants.

Do we want to store "merchant funds" as hard currency somewhere (like in a locked away chest)? Should funds and stock be lootable if PCs want to break in after hours, or shoplift, or hold up a store, etc? Do we want to always limit buying/selling according to available funds? A looted merchant may very well go out of business.

For posterity's sake, we should also note the available store controls:

Sell Markup
Buy Markup
Buy or Sell
Identify Items
Buy Stolen Goods
Max Buy Price

This would either be setup as local variables on a merchant or on a store depending on what we use (conversations vs stores).

Of course, it remains to be seen how we'll be able to implement these with the interface changes coming in NWN2.

[hypervx]

The main question regarding up keep costs IMO is how do we prevent players from "squatting" (buying and holding shops without having a real interest in them or not transferring the rights to them when leaving the server)? Squatting is one of the major downfalls to any player owned system and where the monthly up keep cost derived from. The sales tax approach is transactional, so it doesn't prevent this from happening. We can implement a sales tax if there would be some other use for taxation you can think of.

What about a possession tax? Something like 100gp/RL month?

I'd also like players to be able to buy or sell shops w/o needing a DM or builder to have to broker those deals - it's micromanagement best left to the system to facilitate if possible IMO (like bartering items for instance). A DM can certainly intervene if they wish or need to, but it wouldn't be required. I think DMs would appreciate having that freedom but what do you all think?

Sounds ok, just don't make the token stealable.

Add to the list a bazaar or emporium.

Sure. Can you define what items or services they offer?

Basic items like ropes, torches, common weapons, potions and armors.

Excessive, unsuccessful, or unreasonable haggling will result in a reputation adjustment in proportion to the 'offense'.

A bit too harsh?

I'm open to suggestions if you have them. The intent there is to prevent players from haggling repeatedly (spam haggling?) in trying to find the NPCs acceptance threshold. It just isn't very IC to allow that.

An idea could be to store the result of haggling for a certain period of time.
I don't think one should take a reputation hit for anonimously entering a shop and trying to get a good price...

Regarding stealing, we could make this a configurable option on shops. If stealing is disabled, they can't leave the shop with the item.

Since reputations will hopefully play a greater role in our NWN2 world, I think allowing opportunities for theft may add some interesting flavor. Could players exploit this if, say, catching a thief in the act of stealing would turn the local guard and merchant faction against them? With a jailport, guards could attempt to arrest the player, strip them of all their gear, toss them in a cell, and fine them for the offense. Repeated offenders might simply be outlawed in a city. Merchants might not trade with such players at all. So, if the consequences are there for stealing and as severe as they should be, is there enough deterrant to try exploiting?

Sounds good this way.

[Fionn]

I'd let individual DMs worry about breakins - too many variables to control. Add magical scrying in case of large merchants (I'd certainly have a 'this property protected by Mages R Us' in my window), and it's unlikely to be a common occurance.