Merchant: Specializing

[hal]

Hello Folks,
Not that anyone will read this and say "HEY - I gotta use this in my current campaign", I thought I'd mention the idea that this might be worth using:

MERCHANT (Haggling): this is a specialization of Merchant skill permitting a character to haggle relatively effectively, but not really know the worth of the goods they are haggling over.

Thus, someone could be good at haggling, but not do as well knowing what the value of any given thing is (Merchant skill-2).

Just a thought.

:)

[Christopher R. Rice]

That's pretty cool actually.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by hal

Hello Folks,
Not that anyone will read this and say "HEY - I gotta use this in my current campaign", I thought I'd mention the idea that this might be worth using:

MERCHANT (Haggling): this is a specialization of Merchant skill permitting a character to haggle relatively effectively, but not really know the worth of the goods they are haggling over.

Thus, someone could be good at haggling, but not do as well knowing what the value of any given thing is (Merchant skill-2).

Just a thought.

:)

That is a relevant skill. Suppose it is in a first contact situation, or a product necessary to a new technology. Suppose for instance the character is an Emir bargaining over permission to drill for oil in his territory? The Emir does not know anything about oil but he knows that Westerners want it.

An even more difficult problem is in a luxury product. Ibn-whatever has come across a new spice, or a new way of weaving silk. He has no way of knowing whether or not it will be fashionable. All he has is his intuition

There is in fact a Turtledove novel where this happens. The product is a clutch of peacocks and peahens sold by a Phoniecian trader and no one knew anything about them but that they were an uncommon bother to haul around.

[jason taylor]

Maybe you could combine that with Empathy. That will represent being able to see the other guys tells. That would be more important if the product was never seen before. To use the oil example again, Emir Ibn-whatever might not know a thing about oil depending on the date. But he has been reading people's tells all his life.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by hal

Hello Folks,
Not that anyone will read this and say "HEY - I gotta use this in my current campaign", I thought I'd mention the idea that this might be worth using:

MERCHANT (Haggling): this is a specialization of Merchant skill permitting a character to haggle relatively effectively, but not really know the worth of the goods they are haggling over.

Thus, someone could be good at haggling, but not do as well knowing what the value of any given thing is (Merchant skill-2).

Just a thought.

:)

That is an excellent idea, although my approach would usually be the One-Task-Wonder Perk for things like that. Or, possibly bought as a Technique for Merchant.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Yeah, I'd be more inclined to call this a Hard technique for Merchant that starts at Merchant and caps out around Merchant +4, though calling it an Optional Specialization would also be valid.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Yeah, I'd be more inclined to call this a Hard technique for Merchant that starts at Merchant and caps out around Merchant +4, though calling it an Optional Specialization would also be valid.

Question: can a person be better at haggling than at being a merchant?

Secondary question: can one master the techniques of haggling without knowing those things that qualify him for the skill "merchant"?

If the answer to both of those is yes, then can one justify Haggling as a technique of another skill - or as a skill in its own right, or as a subset of a skill in general, but because GURPS won't permit techniques from default skill levels... <shrug>

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by hal

Question: can a person be better at haggling than at being a merchant?

Secondary question: can one master the techniques of haggling without knowing those things that qualify him for the skill "merchant"?

If the answer to both of those is yes, then can one justify Haggling as a technique of another skill - or as a skill in its own right, or as a subset of a skill in general, but because GURPS won't permit techniques from default skill levels... <shrug>

Haggling just means you know how much is the most someone else will pay for something. You won't necessarily know how that equates to accepted cultural value or locate proper venues of selling/buying.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Haggling just means you know how much is the most someone else will pay for something. You won't necessarily know how that equates to accepted cultural value or locate proper venues of selling/buying.

Exactly. Which is why I tried the approach I did... If using the rules as written, Haggling (which doesn't exist) is subsumed in Merchant as a function of the skill (Rules as written), and the only game mechanism to make Haggling viable, and at the same time make merchant a lesser value overall than Haggling, is to use the optional specialization rules.

If you had merchant at 10. Haggling as a specialization raises the skill to 11. The other aspects of Merchant skill however, are now treated as being skill 9. One could think of this as a logical *cough* outcome where the more you haggle, the more you have experience with the intrinsic worth of those items you have been haggling over.

If I had my way - I'd suggest using modifiers when trying to assess the value of various items. +2 for items that are commonly used or purchased. Most everyone who goes to the grocery store to purchase milk will know how much per gallon it is selling for currently. If they don't generally purchase laundry detergent, they would have to guess. If they have never purchased diamond rings - they would likely not only not know the worth of a diamond, but also not be able to determine what one looked like sufficiently well enough to not mistake it for Zircon (or vice versa). Purchases like those, should suffer not only a familiarity penalty (-2) but also a difficulty penalty in addition - hiking the penalty to a larger value.

Truth be told however, I seriously doubt that GM's will want to go that far. Quick and dirty, Haggling as an optional specialty seems easy enough.

[Otaku]

Should Haggling also be an option for Fast-Talk? It might not be honest, but people do seem to try (and succeed) with such an approach.