Social Engineering: Haggling - Broken?

[Snoman314]

First of all let me say that I'm not sure I've got the rules understood correctly.

I've got a player who's playing a merchant, so I sat down to wrap my head around the haggling rules in Social Engineering. As far as I can tell, a player can always haggle the merchant to their best possible price, provided the player's initial offer is sufficiently extreme, regardless of their character's skill. This is very metagamey, but it's going to be impossible to avoid to some degree, as far as I can tell.

Social Engineering, pg27

The merchant will lower his price or raise his offer in response. If the Quick Contest was a tie, the amount of his adjustment will be identical to the PCs’. If the PCs won, increase the adjustment by 10% times the margin of victory. If the merchant won, reduce it by 10% times the margin. The merchant will never go above his initially determined best offer, or below his initially determined best price; at that point his position is, “Take it or leave it.”

It seems to me that the idea is this: If the PCs lose the quick contests of skill by a lot/a lot of times, then the merchant will compromise less, and the point where the PCs counter-offers and the merchant's counter-offers meet will be closer to the merchant's desired price. That sounds great as far as it goes, but what's to stop the PCs from starting out at an extreme initial offer, so that the merchant always ends up at his best possible price? (Obviously the GM can stop stupid offers, of say $0 as a start point when buying, but where do you draw the line?)

Here's an example, following the rules as best I understand them:
-After influence/reaction rolls, the GM determines that the NPC merchant will make an initial offer of $1100 and be prepared to go as low as $1000 (the NPC is selling).
-The PCs respond to the initial offer of $1100 with a counter of $500.
-The NPC lowers his asking price by %10 of the difference - new price $1040.
-The PCs counter by increasing to $600.
-A Quick Contest is rolled, and the PCs lose by 5. The NPC would lower his price by $100 (the amount the PCs adjusted by), minus 10% times the NPCs margin of victory (so 50%). This takes the NPCs adjustment to $50, except that that would take him below his minimum price, so he says "$1000, that's my final offer".

In that example, the PC still got the optimum price out of the haggle, despite losing the Quick Contest by 5.

So, am I doing it wrong? Anyone have any thoughts?

[nik1979]

Depends on the merchants target margin, if the merchant believes he needs a margin of 80-99% relative to the cost of production then he'll remove the "nice to have" margin out of his price calculation.

Margins you Believe you NEED to make ends meet is different from margins one belieces he needs to afford that nice hous in the better part of town. It all depends on what the other person needs. Anyone who knows their finances will always give an unexpected cost to the buyer, unless the buyer is intrically aware of tthe merchants entire operarional costs and risks.

That sword goes $600 in basic set, but in the economy of the setting rife with uncertainty prices are x2-x10 of that. And shrewed merchants who inted to be in business in the long run may believe This is the REAL price of the good.

Note there are factors of anchoring effect and market going rate that affect supply and demand.

BTW in times of trouble and violence, prices realistically should x2-x10. And people are not inclined to buy, giving up liquidity, except if they are getting a x10-x100 deal factor and the good is easy to sell or pass on.

Basically, despite how awesome the player may be in making a deal if the margin will end up risking him and loved ones then he wont go bellow a certain amount. And merchants are a better judge of what amounts they will need in the future and factor that in their pricing. A reguoar person will look at their direct costs and sometimes overlook risks, a mercha twill look at all indirect costs and risks, also know the current supply of the market.

Being able to convince someone to mispriorities their priorities needs deception and not bargaining.

Prices in basic set has about 20-50% margin which is low for medieval and low tech settings and normal in modern times

[Snoman314]

Originally Posted by nik1979

snip

I'm aware that the base prices, and the rules for determining the initial offer and limit price for a merchant involve a lot of abstractions, but this is not what I'm getting at.
Once you have these prices determined, whether they be from the book, or GM fiat, I still want the players to be able to haggle. My point was that as far as I can tell, the haggling rules in Social Engineering are broken for the reasons I gave above. Can anyone confirm my interpretation of these haggling rules?

[Bruno]

If I'm trying to sell you a new mercedes and your initial offer is one penny, I'm going to be insulted. That's not haggling, that's mockery.

[d_ns]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If I'm trying to sell you a new mercedes and your initial offer is one penny, I'm going to be insulted. That's not haggling, that's mockery.

I agree with this. Maybe the rule ought to be something like "if the PCs offer is less than the minimum he will take, minus the difference between the minimum and the initial price, he will take this as an insult, or call the PCs 'unserious'"

So, in your example. Initial price $1100, bottom price $1000, unserious price <$900.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If I'm trying to sell you a new mercedes and your initial offer is one penny, I'm going to be insulted. That's not haggling, that's mockery.

Are you still angry about that? Look, I told you I was short on cash.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If I'm trying to sell you a new mercedes and your initial offer is one penny, I'm going to be insulted. That's not haggling, that's mockery.

That's true. But depending on context, an initial counteroffer of 50% would not be out of the question.

The question, of course, is context. Run the same negotiation where the merchant's initial offer in $1500, and you get something more reasonable. So where do you draw the line of where the merchant simply refuses to negotiate?

Define the difference between the initial asking price and the final price as the spread. You'd have to play around with the numbers to figure out what a good place would be, but I'd probably say if the difference between their initial counteroffer and the merchant's final price is more than twice the spread, it's an inappropriate offer.

If the merchant receives an inappropriate offer, they won't change their asking price at all. The PCs can make a second counter-offer. This requires a Merchant roll at -1 per inappropriate offer and -1 for each multiple of the spread their new offer is below the final asking price. If they make the Merchant roll and the new offer is within the right range, haggling begins with the new offer counting as the PC's first offer. If the new counter-offer is still inappropriate, repeat the process (with accumulating penalties to the merchant roll) until the PC makes an appropriate offer or fails a roll. If the PC fails a Merchant roll, the NPC is done negotiating: the PC can take the asking price or leave.

You should give the PCs some ability to determine approximately what the spread is in an initial encounter, so they can avoid insulting merchants this way if they're careful. This might be external to the negotiation, like looking up the invoice price to help in a car negotiation. It might be culturally determined, so that most spreads, say, 10-25% percent of the asking price in a given campaign (and anyone with Merchant knows this). You might allow a successful Merchant roll to sound out an unfamiliar negotiation, and get the spread (approximately; say add 1d-3 x 25%).

[Snoman314]

From your replies it seems, that I'm reading the rules correctly.

Originally Posted by Bruno

If I'm trying to sell you a new mercedes and your initial offer is one penny, I'm going to be insulted. That's not haggling, that's mockery.

Indeed. This is what I meant earlier when I said the GM can stop obviously stupid/insulting offers. The issue then becomes where to draw the line.

Originally Posted by d_ns

I agree with this. Maybe the rule ought to be something like "if the PCs offer is less than the minimum he will take, minus the difference between the minimum and the initial price, he will take this as an insult, or call the PCs 'unserious'"

So, in your example. Initial price $1100, bottom price $1000, unserious price <$900.

My first thought about that is that the PCs won't know exactly what these prices are. I can of course roleplay it out so they learn from the NPCs responses, roughly where things are at. It starts to get into RL negotiating skill then though.

Another thought I've had since I first posted is to adjust the rules slightly, to make the NPCs offers sort of proportional to the ratio between the difference between the NPCs initial offer and the minimum price, and the PCs initial offer and the minimum price. I didn't explain that very well. I'll just use an example

To revisit my earlier example, the NPC's initial offer is $1100 the minimum is $1000 (which the PC's will only be able to guess at), and the PC's initial counter-offer is $500. Lets say that the NPC isn't offended, and is prepared to haggle from this point.

-The NPC lowers his asking price by %10 of the way to his minimum - new price $1090.
-The PCs counter by increasing to $600.
-A Quick Contest is rolled, and the PCs lose by 5. The PC has moved 1/5 of the way to the minimum, so the base adjustment for the NPC is $18 (1090-1000 = 90, 90/5 = 18). The NPC then offers a price adjustment of $9 (-50%), making the new price $1081, but I'd round it to $1080 in this case.

Things then proceed from there, repeating steps 2-4 as per the book. This isn't perfect, because for one thing, the result of drawing every quick contest will be to arrive exactly at the minimum amount. It'll also take me as the GM longer to work out (but not much longer with a spreadsheet). But the general idea is there: Starting significantly lower has no effect on the outcome, only the outcome of the Quick Contests.

I do like the idea of having the NPC not take offers seriously unless they're in the ballpark, and d_ns's suggestion definately would be the simplest solution. I just like to be able to fall back on the crunch where possible. Note that I wouldn't expose any of this to the players, it's just how I'd make the PCs skill rolls affect the NPCs responses during haggling.

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

[Snoman314]

Originally Posted by gjc8

That's true. But depending on context, an initial counteroffer of 50% would not be out of the question.

The question, of course, is context. Run the same negotiation where the merchant's initial offer in $1500, and you get something more reasonable. So where do you draw the line of where the merchant simply refuses to negotiate?

Define the difference between the initial asking price and the final price as the spread. You'd have to play around with the numbers to figure out what a good place would be, but I'd probably say if the difference between their initial counteroffer and the merchant's final price is more than twice the spread, it's an inappropriate offer.

If the merchant receives an inappropriate offer, they won't change their asking price at all. The PCs can make a second counter-offer. This requires a Merchant roll at -1 per inappropriate offer and -1 for each multiple of the spread their new offer is below the final asking price. If they make the Merchant roll and the new offer is within the right range, haggling begins with the new offer counting as the PC's first offer. If the new counter-offer is still inappropriate, repeat the process (with accumulating penalties to the merchant roll) until the PC makes an appropriate offer or fails a roll. If the PC fails a Merchant roll, the NPC is done negotiating: the PC can take the asking price or leave.

You should give the PCs some ability to determine approximately what the spread is in an initial encounter, so they can avoid insulting merchants this way if they're careful. This might be external to the negotiation, like looking up the invoice price to help in a car negotiation. It might be culturally determined, so that most spreads, say, 10-25% percent of the asking price in a given campaign (and anyone with Merchant knows this). You might allow a successful Merchant roll to sound out an unfamiliar negotiation, and get the spread (approximately; say add 1d-3 x 25%).

Determining the spread and a lot of the other stuff you covered is either:
a) explicitly covered in Social Engineering, or,
b) I agree and already do it, e.g. merchant roll to determine approximate price.

The problem for any scheme where you draw a line and say: Here is where I start haggling, is that the ratio of minimum-PC_offer to NPC_offer-minimum has the effect of directly affecting how successful the PCs will be for a given set of skill rolls, and that doesn't seem right to me.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Snoman314

The problem for any scheme where you draw a line and say: Here is where I start haggling, is that the ratio of minimum-PC_offer to NPC_offer-minimum has the effect of directly affecting how successful the PCs will be for a given set of skill rolls, and that doesn't seem right to me.

Well, if you don't like that, it's your game. IMO, if the PC's initial offer doesn't matter to result of the skill rolls that's a disadvantage, by removing player choice. If you wanted that, you could simply resolve the result according to a single quick contest of Merchant, consulting a chart to see where a given margin of success/failure puts you relative to initial asking and final prices.

The intent of my system is to allow the PCs to choose the level of risk they're going to take in the negotiation. They do want their offer to be as close to the minimum acceptable offer as possible, since they'll get a better price that way, but if the offer is too low, they risk insulting the merchant and losing the ability to make any negotiation at all.

Edit:ninja'd, tried to edit to better respond to Snoman's post.