[MUD-Dev] Nation of shopkeepers

[Adam Wiggins]

[MK:]
> Note that I said "coding"; actually implementing player-run shops would
> appear to me to be extremely difficult - because giving players incentives
> to sit around behind a counter all day rather than go out and adventure
> would appear to be impossible. This same problem, of no-one being
> interested in the more menial jobs in a mud economy, would seem to stymie
> any decent attempt at a player-run economy, which is a pity.

The solution is your definition of player-run shops.  I don't consider
standing behind a counter to be 'running' a shop, although that may be
a part of it.  Running a shop involves getting a space for the shop; buying
shelves and counters and furniture; buying inventory; hiring staff; setting
policy; bookkeeping (==counting the money); and so forth.  The actual
grunt-work of standing behind the counter is the *easy* part, and you
might as well hire some young hobbit for five coppers an hour to do
that part of it.  Depending on the business things could get more
interesting - finding the best places and people to buy your goods
from, trying to keep your best selling items in stock, trying to deter
shoplifters, hiring guards to keep an eye on things, dealing with taxes
or other local economy regulation...  and of course, if it's an actual
craftsman's shop like a smith or a talior, you can actual charge people
more for you to craft their armor personally, since you'll do a better
job than the NPC you have working for you.  Traders are pretty easy to
do - just make supplies localized.  Thus mithril is cheap at its source,
but expensive everywhere else.  Of course, if every starts hauling
mithril to all corners of the land, suddenly it's pretty cheap everywhere.
Then if the mines start to run dry, the price goes up again...

I think this addresses the fundamental part of game design which is, for
some reason that's beyond me, completely overlooked by a lot of game designers.
Basically, the only reason a player would every want to do anything is
because it's fun, interesting, engaging, and challanging.  There's
no point in giving them 'busywork', yet this seems to be a primary 'feature'
of many games, including muds.  If you ever find yourself thinking, "I can't
wait until this part is over, so I can get to the _fun_ part..." then
something is wrong.
Of course, people's defininition of fun varies, but usually busywork is
pretty easy to spot.  I would consider tending a shop to be busywork unless
there was something interesting going on.  Dealing with all the factors I
mentioned above, however, sounds pretty darn interesting to me.