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Old 01-26-2013, 02:57 PM   #31
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by Ketsuban View Post
I doubt most peoples' ability to stuff money under a mattress and then never spend it on anything, otherwise what's the point of having money? But anyway, if they hold onto it but don't use it to earn interest, then spend discretionary points to gain money (not Wealth) as you would during chargen. (Of course, a good GM would just hand the points over because you probably did something to acquire said fat loot...)
You're really not supposed to charge points-for-cash for windfalls. Why would you do that? Points-for-cash don't stay on your character sheet in any way.
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Old 01-26-2013, 02:59 PM   #32
cosmicfish
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by TheCrispyBit View Post
I was just wandering how it it handled in Gurps, can players sell loot they find (ie spare weapons/armour they find and don't want) into shops. Is there a 20% of original value to sell junk back to shops, or is it more of a haggling dice rolling affair, or should I just make something up.
I think it depends both on your campaign setting and characters. I have certainly looted and had players loot in my own games, and in some cases I handwave the resale, in other cases (where it is interesting to the players) I have them roleplay selling the different articles, legal and illegal.

In some cultures looting the dead would be considered a horrific violation, in others NOT looting would be a mark of waste and stupidity. In either case, the beliefs and needs of the different characters could mandate crossing custom - if the players need to make a killing look like a robbery gone bad they may loot the body just to maintain the illusion, and someone of timid disposition or under religious prohibition may not want to disturb the dead even with the enticement of riches.
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Old 01-26-2013, 04:33 PM   #33
Johan Larson
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Toronto, Canada
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

In a high-tech environment there may also be really _interesting_ legal/technological hurdles.

Suppose the dominant blaster manufacturer holds all the IP rights to blaster technology, and insists on leasing rather than selling or licensing blasters. So the blaster you took off your fallen foe actually belongs to Blasteriffic Inc. And being a prudent interplanetary corporation, they have secured a deposit from the original client (who is now dead), and installed potent high-tech security hardware and software to make sure that only they make use of it (since Blasterrific cannot be sure that whoever else uses the weapon actually has paid-up third party liability insurance that covers discharge of firearms, and several other issues that only make sense to lawyers...)

Congratulations, big guy. You have taken a weapon that will not fire on your command, and which will turn itself into scrap metal six months from now. Hope you're friends with a hardware engineer or security specialist. If not, your best bet may be to get some plausible fake id and return the weapon to the local Blasterrific outlet to reclaim the security deposit.
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Old 01-26-2013, 06:40 PM   #34
Godogma
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

Personally, I go by the dungeon fantasy base since it makes some sort of sense 40% seems a good starting point and merchant checks can raise or lower that amount depending on rolls. Or the players can sell at the base 40% without haggling.

The idea that you CAN'T loot stuff unless it makes the game world more interesting is a quick way to ensure that I'm not willing to play with you as the GM. It very handily defeats the point to beat the badguy and then not profit from it in my opinion.

In most settings rolling the corpse is quite likely the best way for the PC's to gather better equipment, or barring that increase their funding. In WW1 the US Army did a lot of it... Slapping a stamp on it and sending it home was the favorite pastime of a lot of soldiers.

Especially hard currency/jewelry/etc... It's light and is worth a substantial amount of money in most cases. In the past jewelry was the manner in which mercenaries and many other transients carried their fortune - it wasn't sentiment or bragging it was a method of carrying whatever they'd scrounged or saved in a lot of cases.

Banks flat out didn't exist for quite a long part of history and when they did there wasn't an interconnected banking setup so you only had access to your money in one town... Most also didn't trust others to keep up with their money either.

The Medici and another couple of families changed that in Italy if I recall correctly but I don't recall WHEN in history that happened and in any case that was in their zone of influence...

In a fantasy game, barring the influence of a vow or other considerations I don't see why anyone WOULDN'T loot.

In a frontier game where supplies are scarce it's ridiculous to leave the items that might allow you to survive lying on the ground to rot...

I can go on and on, but mainly it depends on the style of game you want to run and your players whether or not you're going to find looting acceptable and how much it's going to sell for and how much trouble it's going to cause... 40% from DF seems a fair baseline for what items will likely be worth to your buyer before bargaining begins to me however.
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Old 01-26-2013, 08:34 PM   #35
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by Brett View Post
Sure. Call the Shooting Squad, Professional Standards Unit, and a scene-of-crime unit, have the bodies photographed, bagged, taken the the morgue, stripped, and autopsied, and the effects inventoried, bagged separately, and entered into evidence.
Also known as looting-stealing-sons-of-female-canines-who-weren't-even-prent-during-the-shootin...

...some people may resent the implication that equipment temporarily located on the bodies of dead foes does not automatically represent extra weaponry. ;)
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Old 01-27-2013, 07:22 AM   #36
starslayer
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by Godogma View Post
Personally, I go by the dungeon fantasy base since it makes some sort of sense 40% seems a good starting point and merchant checks can raise or lower that amount depending on rolls. Or the players can sell at the base 40% without haggling.

The idea that you CAN'T loot stuff unless it makes the game world more interesting is a quick way to ensure that I'm not willing to play with you as the GM. It very handily defeats the point to beat the badguy and then not profit from it in my opinion.

In most settings rolling the corpse is quite likely the best way for the PC's to gather better equipment, or barring that increase their funding. In WW1 the US Army did a lot of it... Slapping a stamp on it and sending it home was the favorite pastime of a lot of soldiers.

Especially hard currency/jewelry/etc... It's light and is worth a substantial amount of money in most cases. In the past jewelry was the manner in which mercenaries and many other transients carried their fortune - it wasn't sentiment or bragging it was a method of carrying whatever they'd scrounged or saved in a lot of cases.

Banks flat out didn't exist for quite a long part of history and when they did there wasn't an interconnected banking setup so you only had access to your money in one town... Most also didn't trust others to keep up with their money either.

The Medici and another couple of families changed that in Italy if I recall correctly but I don't recall WHEN in history that happened and in any case that was in their zone of influence...

In a fantasy game, barring the influence of a vow or other considerations I don't see why anyone WOULDN'T loot.

In a frontier game where supplies are scarce it's ridiculous to leave the items that might allow you to survive lying on the ground to rot...

I can go on and on, but mainly it depends on the style of game you want to run and your players whether or not you're going to find looting acceptable and how much it's going to sell for and how much trouble it's going to cause... 40% from DF seems a fair baseline for what items will likely be worth to your buyer before bargaining begins to me however.
I agree with everything in your statement with the exception of the 40% baseline.

While applicable in a DF game where there are lots of murder hobos wandering around perfectly willing to buy a used sword as new at essentially full price even if the filigree and gemstones are last seasons, this represents a society where function has won out over style in a very real and permanent manner. It reflects a society where weapons and armour are in high demand, and where merchants make no profit on resale and serve to simply be portals via which you get your money.

More 'real' economies are going to have to look at more 'real' problems associated with resale. First off, if your buying used, your looking for a deal, depending on the item this can be between a 10-70% discount on the original asking price of the item (depending on how it depreciates). Then your going to take additional money off for the items overall ascetic and functionality (if the knife of shanking +2 is missing the beer bottle opener on its pommel then it might be worth an additional 5% less).

From the merchant perspective they then have to consider turn around time, the longer an item is going to sit on a shelf the longer they will have to pay to keep it on that shelf (in ethereal forms of 'if its on the shelf I can't put something else that will sell sooner' forms, temporal 'I must spend my time or one of my assistants time polishing and cleaning it', and real 'polish, rags, and oil cost money').

As such I think that the methodology often mentioned on many of the pawn shows seems most applicable- whatever the merchant figures they are going to get for the item in the future, they will offer half, less in bulk.

Thus I would put my baseline at:
Merchants charge ~50% for used items
They will pay your 25% for rapid turn over/high value items (single cool pieces)
They will pay you 10% for bulk/questionable items

Some modifier for wealth should still apply in order to represent the network of buyers/social contacts/social 'worth' that a wealthy person possesses, and further modifiers for a good or bad merchant roll, but selling 25 goblin broadswords is only going to net you 2.5x the value of buying 1 goblin broadsword new in an average situation.
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Old 01-27-2013, 07:46 AM   #37
TheCrispyBit
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

Quote:
The idea that you CAN'T loot stuff unless it makes the game world more interesting is a quick way to ensure that I'm not willing to play with you as the GM. It very handily defeats the point to beat the badguy and then not profit from it in my opinion.
I would never not allow my player's to do anything worry not, flexibility is like the whole reason I want to convert to GURPS. D&D is so rigid. I was just wondering how the resale thing worked, whether it was actually worth it for them. I fully expect my players to loot everything. But with GURPS' realism and longwinded item generation i was just asking how y'all went about the process.

Chars for all the input team, it is much appreciated.
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Old 01-27-2013, 08:02 AM   #38
Sunrunners_Fire
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by TheCrispyBit View Post
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Depends on the genre and setting details.

In games where doing so isn't outright idiocy, I use the rules in GURPS Social Engineering. In games where it is outright idiocy, I let events take their natural course after reminding the players that it is a bad idea and making sure they really want to do that.
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Old 01-27-2013, 11:03 AM   #39
Godogma
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by starslayer View Post
I agree with everything in your statement with the exception of the 40% baseline.

While applicable in a DF game where there are lots of murder hobos wandering around perfectly willing to buy a used sword as new at essentially full price even if the filigree and gemstones are last seasons, this represents a society where function has won out over style in a very real and permanent manner. It reflects a society where weapons and armour are in high demand, and where merchants make no profit on resale and serve to simply be portals via which you get your money.

More 'real' economies are going to have to look at more 'real' problems associated with resale. First off, if your buying used, your looking for a deal, depending on the item this can be between a 10-70% discount on the original asking price of the item (depending on how it depreciates). Then your going to take additional money off for the items overall ascetic and functionality (if the knife of shanking +2 is missing the beer bottle opener on its pommel then it might be worth an additional 5% less).

From the merchant perspective they then have to consider turn around time, the longer an item is going to sit on a shelf the longer they will have to pay to keep it on that shelf (in ethereal forms of 'if its on the shelf I can't put something else that will sell sooner' forms, temporal 'I must spend my time or one of my assistants time polishing and cleaning it', and real 'polish, rags, and oil cost money').

As such I think that the methodology often mentioned on many of the pawn shows seems most applicable- whatever the merchant figures they are going to get for the item in the future, they will offer half, less in bulk.

Thus I would put my baseline at:
Merchants charge ~50% for used items
They will pay your 25% for rapid turn over/high value items (single cool pieces)
They will pay you 10% for bulk/questionable items

Some modifier for wealth should still apply in order to represent the network of buyers/social contacts/social 'worth' that a wealthy person possesses, and further modifiers for a good or bad merchant roll, but selling 25 goblin broadswords is only going to net you 2.5x the value of buying 1 goblin broadsword new in an average situation.
Buying at 40% allows a merchant to sell for 80% of the original purchase price and double his money as well as offering a 20% discount over the original price of the item.

If you think a Pawn Shop only offers 25% for a cool item initially? Got news for you, they try and offer closer to 40-50% at the get go and then negotiate from there. Unless they're very shyster type pawn shops that tend to get in trouble with the police in TL8 - then they offer closer to 20%... or try to - most people won't take it so they come up to around 40%.

I've spent quite some time in pawn shops... I also watch a lot of Pawn Stars - generally they try and buy for around 40% of what an item is truly worth if they can and MOST of the time wind up spending more depending on how interesting the item is to Rick or the Old Man.

That's another factor - if your merchant isn't a faceless non-entity; what does he LIKE? That will influence what prices he's willing to pay for things as well.

Last edited by Godogma; 01-27-2013 at 11:32 AM.
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Old 01-27-2013, 11:51 AM   #40
johndallman
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: Do you let them search the bodies, and sell the loot?

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Originally Posted by Godogma View Post
I've spent quite some time in pawn shops... I also watch a lot of Pawn Stars - generally they try and buy for around 40% of what an item is truly worth if they can and MOST of the time wind up spending more depending on how interesting the item is to Rick or the Old Man.
If that behaviour is duplicated over here, it would account for why the second-hand cameras in my local pawn shop are way overpriced to anyone who knows the field, or can use eBay.
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