[MUD-Dev2] [TECH] Implementing currency without implementingcurrency

[McDonald, Stephen]

> Thus spake William Leader...
> >    Now this is all well and good, but I can't expect any kind of
real
> > economy to develop without currency. Mainly because I can't figure
out a
> > way for NPC merchants to determine what is a fair trade. I figure
that
> > for NPC Merchants to function they are going to have to know a price
for
> > any given item, and be able to sell the item for a price, and buy
the
> > item for a price. The question becomes how?

I don't think it would be so bad to have stackable items.  It should be
possible to implement stackables without getting dup bugs.  And
stackables will also help with lots of other things, especially if you
have crafting.  I don't think you want 100 items representing the wood
that a lumberjack has cut up, any more than you want 100 items
representing coins.

But stackable items does not solve the underlying question of
determining value.  One idea I had a while back, and tossed into
Mud-Dev, was the concept of time debt, a means of representing the time
needed to do long-duration activities, without requiring players to
spend their login time watching the screen while their character do
boring chores.  I won't get into the details just now, but one result of
the concept is that it provided a very real basis for determining the
raw value of an item.  Ultimately, the basic value of a product can be
based on how much time/energy is required to gather/make the product
(including that of the materials used up to make it), possibly modified
by the skill required, and possibly modified by the local demand for
that product.  Demand should only increase the value--an item should
(theoretically) never be valued at less than the cost to make it.

If you have crafting in the game, then I believe that every product in
the world should be capable of being gathered or produced somehow.  You
can limit exactly which things can be done by players, but making every
product theoretically producible will help you plot out the economy much
better.  That way you can see which products need what, and how much of
a given raw material is necessary to support the economy.

If you don't want to include crafting, then this is probably more work
than necessary.  I also don't see how you could do even this without
having some kind of parameter on eacy type of product.  But at least the
parameter is "time", which is rather more universal than "skill" or
"damage".

You indicated that your game base does not have parameters for skills,
health, and so on, but didn't explain how it was implemented.  Perhaps
more information would give us some more ideas.

					-----steve m