BALLIN': DISCUSSING MONEY AND HOW IT WORKS IN GAMEPLAY

I actually liked the method in Final Fantasy XII where you get item drops from enemies that can be sold for cash. Depending on the item and its rarity, it can be sold for varying amounts of money. Now let's take this idea further and have variations of selling price for each item based on the town and location you sell it at. For example, selling a cold parka fleece dropped from some wintry enemy would sell more in that town that is snowy. But try to sell that cold parka fleece in a summer town by the beach and you'll be getting some weird looks and a lower sell point. Its a simple example, but I feel for those micro-managers out there, they would be all over that, trying to find the best buck for their item drops for sell.

I think those last two points (utility and supply & demand) are very good ones. There are two other things that nearly always get ignored about money in RPGs. First, it's (normally) heavy, at least outside of present-day and SF settings. No paper money, no credit cards. If you find a chest full of coins in a dungeon, it'll be heavy and bulky. There are some small, light items with high value (gemstones) but they're non-divisible. This should place a realistic limit on the wealth a player can carry around. If he leaves the rest in a "safe place" - well, locks were really crappy back then. Banks get robbed. Problem solved.

Secondly, shopkeepers have finite cash reserves - sure, Trader Joe wants to buy your Axe of Slaying, but he doesn't keep 5,000 gold coins on the premises. To make a realistic offer he'll probably have to throw in other goods, maybe training, etc.

Of course, the issue here is "realistic" versus "fun". If players want to spend longer selling stuff from adventures than actually adventuring then they should be able to, but it's probably best to introduce at least one trader character early on so that players who don't care about squeezing every last copper out of their loot can just dump all their crud on him, he sells it on and takes a cut. Maybe he offers credit in his shop rather than a giant sack of heavy coins. Of course, it's very easy then to remove "excess" wealth - the trader gets greedy, or gets robbed, or whatever.

Alternatively, let them get rich. Adventurers take risks most people would pale at, and I don't really see a problem with them getting wealthy as a result once they've been doing it for a while. Limit what they can actually buy with it instead. If nobody in town sells plate mail it doesn't matter how much money you have, you still can't get it without a long journey (or trusting someone else to go get it for you, and hope they don't get robbed themselves or do a runner with your deposit). You could also impose legal restrictions on what certain people can own (not just the fantasy equivalent of firearms restrictions but potentially also sumptuary laws, that kind of thing). Maybe only one nation can forge steel and won't sell it to your country because you're at war, or maybe the technique for forging it was lost centuries ago. In this situation you could end up with adventurers who throw money around on big parties every time they get back from an adventure, but get looked down on by the local nobility, which sounds like a dynamic that has possibilities.

First post, by the way. Hello everyone!

author=Tardigrade
maybe the bear kidney for that Potion of Strength has to be cut with a copper sickle in daylight and immediately stored in alcohol, for example. This could be one way to limit the value of a kill to early-career adventurers.

This is generally the opposite of what you want to do, though. As your character progresses and becomes stronger, killing weak enemies is easier and should therefore provide less of a reward. Not more of one.

This conversation is sparking memories of the Might and Magic series where characters could acquire a Merchant skill. In iterations of the series after the 5th game, one's Merchant skill had an effect on how closely to the actual value of an item you would have to pay for, or how much money you would get it you sell an item off. Then, there is the fact that characters do not level up automatically. You had to go to a training facility and pay money to level up.

I seriously doubt the "pay for levels" idea would work in today's market, but I've seen the Merchant skill elsewhere (i.e. Fallout's Barter).

Just randomly remembered Starfox Adventures' silly "haggling" system. I haven't played the game in years, so I might be remembering some of this wrong:
Whenever you go to buy something, the shopkeeper puts up a number ticker that you can move up and down. Every item seems to have a minimum price that the shopkeeper is willing to sell it for, but go any lower and he'll just yell "NO. THAT'S TOO LOW!". Keep going to low and he'll tell you to "GET OUT!", but these are just voiceclips with no real consequences. You can just keep trying to purchase the item, moving it up one tick every time, until you finally buy it for the minimum price.
The game also has the only instance I can think of where you have to chase your money - which are Scarabs. You also often have to lift rocks and such to find them. There were probably other ways to uncover them, but I really don't remember.

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For a non-RPG example, there are some STGs with currency. I know Fantasy Zone, Ordyne, and Diadra Empty have them, but the games that I've played are Lords of Thunder and Trouble Witches Neo.

LoT is pretty simple - any destroyed thing drops gems that you collect, and then you spend it at the shop before each level. You can buy health, power (both these things reduce every time you're hit), bombs, shields, and I think extra credits as well. Being an STG, there's an inherent danger of going out of you way to collect the money, but on most difficulties this isn't a very bullet-heavy game -- most of my gameovers come from colliding with the enemies themselves.

TWN is more complex: You have a deployable barrier that almost completely freezes bullets, and when the enemy that shot them is killed, the bullets turn into money. Vice versa works as well - you can kill and enemy then deploy the barrier over the bullets. You can spend the money at shops (two per level) on either the very expensive 1-ups and MP (barrier time) upgrades, or the less expensive, but arguable more important Spell Cards. Every time you buy a card, it'll be more expensive next time.
There's a lot more than that, but I don't want to make a wall of text that spreads an entire page by itself.

author=Tardigrade
First post, by the way. Hello everyone!

Welcome to the mad house!

I once made an event system where you could sell monster parts and the more you sold of any individual piece, the less you got for it. The excuse was supply and demand, but the real reason is balance. That way I can easier estimate how much money the player will have. It also makes grinding for money harder while still allowing for it in an emergency.

Personally, I prefer to go with what works best gameplay wise and then try to fit it into realism as well as reasonable. I'd rather not make a realistic system that causes balance issues.

Anyway, what I'd like to try sometimes is allowing the player to buy any equipment that is buy-able right from the start. The only thing stopping the player from get overpowered equipment early is the price, late tier equipment is simple too expensive early on. Of course, there are some things to keep in mind then.

1) Money usually inflates slower than exp in RPGs. This makes grinding for higher tier equipment way faster than grinding for higher levels.
2) While the player can't say skip level 21, 22, 23 and 24 and just jump from level 20 to level 25, the player can skip buying tier 3 and 4 equipment and jump right from tier 2 to tier 5.