What purpose money?

[smileyy]

I hope this isn't too off-topic for Vanilla, but it seems like a reasonable place for gameplay discussions.

I'm thinking about concepts for a more canon-like variant, so I'm trying to understand the role of money in the game. I take for granted the fact that I find stuff in the dungeon, and sell it and buy stuff in town. But, outside of the Black Market, things purchased in town dwindle to nearly nothing past, say level 20 or so. Mostly its CCW pots, scrolls of recall and identify, staves of identify and teleport self, and wands of teleport other.

I'm of the opinion I've seen elsewhere on here that the Black Market is a little out of place with some of its items. I think this is especially true the closer one wants to get to Tolkien canon.

I guess my question is, outside of the Black Market, how can one make money or other dungeon-found resources an interesting feature later in the game? I have a few rudimentary ideas, but I'd love to hear others thoughts:

1. Eliminate money completely. This would seem to fit canon rather well, as, while there was an economy in LOTR, very little was ever mentioned about anyone having it or spending it, short of treasure hoards. I don't like this answer, because it takes a long-standing component out of the game. I remember tunneling through mineral veins to find gold, and it seems weird to take that out.

2. Make a very money-poor world, so you can buy very little in the early game, then pick up critical items mid-game. I feel like this doesn't really solve the endgame problem at all, though.

3. Use it as part of a crafting system, to pay for services in the world that one's own crafting skills to accomplish. E.g., a character with blacksmithing skills would pay to have potions created that an alchemist-skilled player would be able to make, or buy rare crafting resources.

4. Have ongoing repair/re-enchant/cost-of-playing services required for gold on the surface. This doesn't seem very fun. You're playing the game to pay a tax to play the game.

5. Make items like !Healing or !Speed available in stores other than the Black Market, but at very high prices relative to player gold. This might make the game too easy, and grindier, as players just make gold trips to the dungeon to buy useful supplies.

6. Be able to get quests from something like a Mathom House, where you trade powerful items into a museum in exchange for other useful items, like in (5).

I'd love to hear what other people think. Apologies if this isn't the right place for an open-ended brainstorming kind of post.

[Scraper]

I find money to be a little challenging at the start and middle game.

I usually have to buy my first _teleport and _iD. So they usually keep me tight at the start of the game.

!stat go for 24k in the BM, so that usually depletes all my cash until past stat gain. Also as a caster, books usually cost an arm and a leg as well.

In my current game dwarf paladin (terrible Cha) there was a ?*acquirement* being sold at one point for 600k. Needless to say I wasn't able to buy it. But I could afford it now .

Money is really trivial past stat gain imo, but until past stat gain I find it a minor challenge.

I think being able to re-enchant your gear back to starting values is probably a bad idea. It would really trivialize my greatest fear... getting your gear disenchanted to hell and back. If I could just pop back to town and get all my gear back to the way I found it, I wouldn't worry about disenchanters at all and would melee them without a second thought.

[Nick]

Excellent topic.

First, if you're interested in developing a true-to-Tolkien variant, I'd suggest you have a look at some of the things I've done in FAangband. Thematic consistency has been one of my aims; that said, you should of course do what you want.

As far as money goes, I have been struggling with that too. I am seriously considering removing shops altogether; probably I will keep money, but I have played with the idea of ditching it.

I think on the whole that I don't see having lots of money and nothing to spend it on in the late game as a problem. There are plenty of aspects of the game that essentially become a non-issue after a while, and gold can be just another of those.

[Gockel]

one possibility that comes to my mind is making the shopkeepers a bit more greedy. leave prices the way they are now, but as soon as a shopkeeper realizes you "like" one item he'll reconsider his pricing policy...
meaning that every time you buy an item it will get more expensive (let's say +1/4 of the current price...though maybe linear scaling would be better).
could be a bit difficult to scale if you want to keep consumables affordable, but i guess it would make money more interesting.

an interesting side effect would be that you start wondering if you can survive without potions of !CCW for one more dive in order to buy a bigger stack for the still low price later. could even make !CLW and !CSW more interesting as an early game alternative in order to keep the price for !CCW low...
anyway, just an idea...

[Scraper]

one possibility that comes to my mind is making the shopkeepers a bit more greedy. leave prices the way they are now, but as soon as a shopkeeper realizes you "like" one item he'll reconsider his pricing policy...
...

If the BM did this for !stat etc. it would be pure evil... Great idea.

[smileyy]

Thanks for the feedback. I think the issue is sale of equipment. That is, there should be no one around to offer you $BIGNUM gold for selling them Power Dragon Scale Mail for the 11th time.

I think I like a gold-poor world (IIRC, that was in OAngband), with a Mathom House offering bounties of some kind on artifacts and other powerful or interesting items.

Perhaps occasional windfalls (Smaug's hoard, etc.) as well, and the ability for players to leverage those.

[Roch]

To me, buying and selling works thematically, especially in, e.g., Nick's First Age variant. To take it even further, where different towns are present, each town could specialize in selling folk-appropriate gear. For example, in Belegost the dwarrows would reasonably be expected to market the weapons and armor that they forge, and in Menegroth the Sindar would reasonably be expected to market their cloaks, bows, and arrows. Staples should be found everywhere (everyone eats), but maybe expensive items only in the larger towns.

In Vanilla, the town is generic and so there can be no such division of goods among merchants. I suppose concessions need to be made for the expedient of locating a town at the mouth of Angband. But the concept of buying and selling things as implemented in what to me is a fairly minimalist form I think fits well enough. Contrast with the metropolises of Z+.

[smileyy]

This sounds like good motivation to play a bit of FAAngband. I think we have similar goals, but I'm planning to include all 3 (or maybe 4) ages.

I like the idea of "we buy and sell this specific stuff", with an added twist of "we want this stuff as raw materials for the stuff we make".

[artes]

In my opinion, shopkeepers pay too much for items they buy from the player. Reduce the amount they are willing to pay to 10% of the shop price of the item. This allows the shop-keepers to make a better profit. It also makes sense economically since the price of junk would be low close to the source of supply, with all the junk that players take out of the dungeon. Also it has some of the advantage of the "no sell" option in that it discourages the player from carrying around a lot of junk to sell, but it still leaves the possibility to sell things for a small profit if the player wants to.

[Timo Pietilä]

In my opinion, shopkeepers pay too much for items they buy from the player.

That is a good point. I would not go quite as far as you, but currently if you have 18/220 CHR items bought and sold go for same amount of money or near same amount of money, and that is bit too generous for shopkeepers.

[PowerDiver]

The obvious use for money is to give an unlucky player access to items.

Suppose you design things so that you expect a player to find a ring of free action by DL20. There is plenty of variance, so maybe the player makes it to DL30 without finding one. You could decide to "give" that item to the player at DL30. The way to accomplish this is to make it available in town, for a price sufficiently expensive that [assuming the playstyle you design for] he cannot afford it at DL25. Perhaps half the expected amount of money you expect to be collected by DL30 would work. Perhaps a defender should be priced at half the money through DL45, depending upon when you think an unlucky player should be given one.

The other place is for items that are too deep. A staff of teleportation can be a near necessity before you are expected to find it. You set the price high enough to require a certain amount of kills/exploration before giving it to the player.

Neither of these ideas is really workable in a system with selling. That's one of the things that led me to the idea of no_selling in the first place. The initial suggestion I made for the gold multiplier with no_selling was based upon when I thought the player ought to be able to buy _telSelf.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I don't like hosing the shops completely, but I can see toning them down. Insofar as pricing...I agree that only getting 10% is going too far. I'd shoot for 20% (terrible Char) to 50% (18/220 Char). Could even have a very simple formula...33% + (Char - 16)%, where Char here uses the underlying value. 18/220 is, IIRC, 40, so that would be 47%; a 3 Char would mean 20%.