[MUD-Dev] MUD Economy

[Adam Wiggins]

[Shawn Halpenny:]
> I have been pondering the startup and sustenance of a MUD economy,
> some thoughts follow about moving toward a complete trade economy
> where no money is present, nor required.

A very well-thought out post, Shawn, and very similar to the lines
Orion and I have thought along, so I'll give you some of the conclusions
we came up with.

> All vendors could start out quite stupid (i.e. not having any idea
> whatsoever about what an object is worth):  e.g. trading 1 kg of
> steel for 1 kg of flour.  Then, as the local demand for steel rises,
> the vendor would learn that he was initially trading steel for _way_
> too little and then raise his "price").  Now that price is what needs
> to be determined.  It's easy to say "You can have that sword if you
> give me three good milk cows", but where does the frame of reference
> for the comparison come from?  What makes the sword worth three cows?

I tend to think it's important for the shopkeepers to have a clear view
of what they are actually vending.  A few pawn shops/wandering merchants
can spice things up, but we tended to orient our shopkeepers around
actual crafts; they convert raw materials into sellable goods.  Thus,
a shopkeeper knows he needs x lbs of steel in order to make a breastplate
someone ordered.  If someone brings in steel in any form that he thinks
he can use, he'll buy/trade for it.  By a similar token, if someone
brings in a breastplate identical to one that they asked for and he feels
that it is up to snuff as far as quality, he'll buy it, polish it up, and
sell it to them, unless he has some sort of policy against selling
things he didn't craft himself.

> Perhaps vendors should keep track of what people have come in and
> asked for but the vendor didn't have.  He doesn't even need to have

Well, for that matter, he should keep track of everything they ask
for, regardless of whether he has it or not.

> any idea that it exists, just that someone asked for it.  This
> requires that characters be able to walk into a store and ask for an
> item the shopkeeper doesn't have.  Then the shopkeeper can wait until
> someone trades him that desired item, or find another method of
> obtaining some (trade caravans come to mind, amongst other avenues of
> obtaining goods).  

A method is needed, of course, to weed out things that they don't want
to bother selling.  The blacksmith may say, 'Bah!  Why would I sell
such a thing?' when someone asks for a beanie.

This raises the question: could they change trades?  This is what you
seem to be going for with your stuff, which is, I think, kind cool.
This depends a hell of a lot on how dynamic your world is.  If you create
all the characters by hand (traditional builder style) then I would think
probably not.  If you are going for a completely dynamic world (planting
the seeds and pressing the GO button, as JC suggests) then I'd think that
they would have to, in order for them to find their niche in the first
place.  Maybe different merchants would have different levels of flexibilty
with new lines of trade?  Ie you've got some that are ready to jump on any
bandwagon they think will make them cash, others that love what they do
and will never change, and everything inbetween, just like real life.

> Given that, the above sword _could_ be worth three cows because ten
> minutes before, someone came in and wanted some cows that the vendor
> didn't have.  The question of what determines that the vendor _would_
> trade like that still remains.  

Right.  Players could easily become merchants by making caravans between
cities in order to buy something that is cheap in one location and sell
it for a high price someplace it is sought after.  Entire games have
been based on this - Tradewars was probably the first I played like
this.

> This entire economy would be trade-based.  User-created objects would
> probably have to be untradeable to NPC vendors since the vendor would
> have no way of gauging the object's utility (it would be too easy to
> create a completely useless object that the vendor had never heard of
> and thus get something for nothing).  Of course, if there was no

This depends how user-created objects work, exactly.  Are we talking
about new classes of items (ie, different functionality) created by
builders?  Or a more MOO-like environment where anyone can make anything
they want?  Or are we talking about some sort of IC creation system
whereby players can forge a sword with two hilts and six blades?
It seems to me that all of these except for the completely open-ended
MOO style thing (which probably wouldn't work anyhow in a system like
this) would be fine.  If someone makes a new sword, the blacksmith takes
a look at it and determines its worth based on how well crafted it is,
what materials its made of, how well taken care of it is, etc.  Assuming
you have a system this detailed (builders define quality, sharpness,
method of grip, length, weighting, materials and so forth on new weapons
they create) this should be no problem at all.  It works exactly the
same way in a non-builder system such as Orion and I have been gravitating
towards with our server; a weapon's value is defined by how it is used,
how well it is made, how sharp it is, etc - regardless of whether these
numbers were typed in by a builder or generated by the system when someone
forged it.

> demand for that bogus object, the shopkeeper would have no reason to
> trade for it.  However, a user could then determine what objects the
> shopkeeper would trade for (i.e. someone had previously come in and
> tried to trade for something the vendor didn't have) and then go
> create an empty shell of that object and trade it in, again getting
> something for nothing.  Another argument can be made, though, that

I see this as no different from RL.  You *could* try to trade a hollow
sword, but as soon as the shopkeeper tested its weight he'd know it was
a fake.  Obviously this gets tougher in a higher-tech world, but I
still don't see any real problems.  Someone makes something which is supposed
to be a computer but is actually an empty metal box.  As soon as the
shopkeeper tries to boot it up, it does nothing, and he won't want to
buy it from you.  Long story short is that shopkeepers need to test
out objects given to them just as a player would.  Now, they can still
be dupped - a player could learn the methods by which they test, and come
up with something that would pass all the tests but still be a fake,
resulting in profit for the player.  I have no problem with this.

> eventually the shopkeeper will realize that no one wants to buy this
> (junk) widget that Bubba traded for that jewelled sword, so perhaps
> he will lie to the next trading customer about what it does? 

Hmmm..one would assume he's already lying, since he was lied to in the
first place.  Metal box being a computer, for example.

> Although possibilities abound within that, a huge set of junk objects
> could be created whose sole purpose is to get something essentially
> for free (not to mention turning every shopkeeper into a liar).  I'm
> not sure that this would enhance game play.  

Sure, as long as it didn't get out of hand.  Ideally creating the junk
object would be difficult enough to get close to the original (ie,
would still require many resources) that it wouldn't be *pure* profit.
Particularly if you're making an imitation of something that gets
a high price mostly on reputation; making fake artifacts that are
supposedly a thousand years old that you actually forged yesterday.
But it's still real gold.

> I suppose this view could be summed up like this:  shopkeepers do not
> really sell items to characters.  They act solely as distribution
> points and what they distribute depends on what they are asked for,
> what they have, and what they can get.  After all, what would money
> mean to a NPC shopkeeper?  Certainly, he could just accumulate it
> like everyone else and retire wealthy but is that interesting from
> any point of view other than simulation?  It seems that money
> wouldn't be required at all.  

If this is what you want.  We made it so that money was worth the same
as the material it was made of - a hunk of gold is worth something
regardless of the shape it takes.  Then we attached significance based
on who made it - a coin backed by a government is worth more than a
shapeless lump of gold with nothing emblazed upon it.  This also has
the nice effect of causing certain money to not be taken in certain
places.  A shopkeeper in one city-state might refuse the coinage of another
city-state with whom they are at war, but if you melted them down and
created generic coins they'd take them, but probably at a lower value
than 'real' coins would.

> So, to start the economy from nothing:
> 
> 1. Give shopkeepers no knowledge about any objects.
> 2. Give shopkeepers a method for determining what one object is
>    worth compared to another object and apply this equally to all
>    objects.  Also take into accout how much of an object is at hand,
>    and how much of it has been asked for.
> 3. Have shopkeepers track how often an object is requested and adjust
>    their trading practices accordingly

Sounds good.  You'd just need to let the economy run on its own
for a few weeks without players to get some initial values set up.
This is no big deal if you're going with the seed + 'go' button method,
but it does require that NPCs both buy and sell with each other.

> Given that, is there a requirement for a planned initial distribution
> of objects to vendors to seed the economy somewhat?  Each vendor
> would have to at least start with one item, or he'd have nothing to
> trade (and there's no incentive for a player to trade anything to the
> vendor if the vendor has nothing or just gives away his object for
> free).  Is more than one item necessary for each vendor?  The paths
> of future trade caravans can be started at this stage simply be
> putting all the flour in one vendor's shop and all the milk and eggs
> in another.  As long as the object given to the vendor is somewhat
> desirable by at least one player, would things take off from there? 
> Or could things just be dumped haphazardly on vendors and the result
> (a semi-functioning economy) be the same?  Perhaps each would yield
> something sustainable and interesting.

An economy cannot sustain based on people just trading things around
endlessly.  (Or, at least, it would be a fairly stale one.)  At
some point someone has to produce something, and someone else has to
consume something.  I think that everything you outline is great as long
as you already have a system for production and consumption set up;
your economy just becomes a method of distribution.