Social Engineering: Haggling - Broken?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by hal

Last but not least? Why was the rule "the seller may never go higher than his initial offer" included - unless it was possible to adjust the cost via haggling, to the benefit of the seller (assuming the NPC was the seller in this case)?

"The seller" is not what the RAW say. I quote:

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.”

If the merchant is making an offer, he's not acting as a seller, but as a buyer. That is,

The merchant will never go above his initially determined best offer [when buying a good], or below his initially determined best price [when selling one]; at that point his position is, “Take it or leave it.”

Does that make it clearer?

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by hal

If that were the case, then a PC can never lose the haggling contest, as each contest will result in the cost being haggled always going towards the point where the lowest acceptable cost to the seller will eventually be reached.

Well, in the first place, the merchant's least favorable terms may be less favorable than the "fair price." It does take a Very Bad reaction roll, but that results in selling for not less than 150% or buying for not more than 2/3.

But in the second place, and more important, 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’. That is, to get the merchant to come down, the PCs have to go up, and vice versa. If there's a series of rolls, all ties, the price will move to the midpoint between the merchant's and the PCs' initial proposals. That may be higher than the merchant's minimum selling price, or lower than his maximum offer.

The PCs can start out by proposing a price extremely favorable to them, but that gives the merchant a more negative reaction modifier, which makes his price extremely unfavorable. So there's some complicated game theory about what to propose at the outset. That's the strategy of haggling as opposed to the tactics.

Bill Stoddard

[hal]

Part of the problem (in response to William) is this:

Those modifiers for reactions to low prices offered by a buyer, are in fact, non-germane to the rules for haggling. Those modifiers only pertain (or so it seems to me) to the rules where you have ONE contest of skill rolls, and are doing it the "easy way". The Haggling rules seem to have been geared towards the prospect that the players and/or GM want to do more role playing (as perhaps opposed to roll-playing?) to where there is more interaction.

In all? The rules themselves are supposed to be for when the player character is up against a non-player character, and that the Haggling rules are all intended for when the player character is either the selller, or is the buyer. However, the rules don't seem to reflect the fact that the player character is trying to haggle the price UPWARDS when he's the seller, and downwards when he's the buyer. <shrug>

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by hal

The rules themselves are supposed to be for when the player character is up against a non-player character, and that the Haggling rules are all intended for when the player character is either the selller, or is the buyer. However, the rules don't seem to reflect the fact that the player character is trying to haggle the price UPWARDS when he's the seller, and downwards when he's the buyer.

I am just at a loss as to how you can get that from what I wrote. Here are some quotations:

Use the following rules for a sale by the merchant. (The rules are similar when the PCs are selling to the merchant, but the merchant is buying, not selling.)

. . . the merchant will make the first move, by lowering his asking price or raising his offer by 10% of the difference between the two initial prices, or by 20% of his initial price, whichever is less drastic.

The PCs may respond by increasing what they’ll pay, or lowering what they’ll sell for. . . .

The merchant will lower his price or raise his offer in response.

The merchant will never go above his initially determined best offer, or below his initially determined best price. . . .

Bill Stoddard

[hal]

Bill - I'm going to be blunt, as it has been a rough day at work and I'm too tired to be diplomatic.

The simple way to roleplay a commercial transaction uses a
single roll for each sale or purchase.

This is in the section where the rules are discussed about reaction roll modifiers dependent upon the fair value of the item in question, and what is being offered by the PC versus the NPC merchant.

Later in the Haggling section, the ONLY modifiers listed for that transaction, is listed here:

Modifiers: -1 to -4 for Compulsive Spending (p. B129). Complementary skill use (p. 21) for perceiving the other party’s emotional state (Motives, p. 28). In addition to the above, which modify every haggling roll, either side may use other complementary skills; e.g., Diplomacy to couch an offer attractively, or a Connoisseur or Hobby skill to point out the desirability of the merchandise. Alternatively, the riskier rules under Manipulation (p. 37) may be used.

Now for the fun part. As the original poster noted, there is nothing to keep the Player character from constantly rolling against his skill versus the Merchant's skill, to bring about moving the price change in the player character's favor.

Your statement that the merchant winning the contest does not bring the price back to favor HIM, is troubling in that he must always move the price in favor of the player character, not the merchant.

So here's the deal.

Write the same kind of example that I did, only use the rules as you, the author intended for them to be, versus you the author SEES in print, and prove your point that the rules as written do not result in the PC always being able to bring the price to where he desires.

For instance? If the initial reaction of the merchant is such that he will offer at 110% of the fair market value of the good, but accept 80%, describe how a merchant with a skill 14 haggles with a player character who happens to have merchant at, say, 10.

Basically? I'm seeing a disturbing trend in GURPS PDF products where the ruels are NOT clear cut, and they do not spell things out, but instead, rely upon written examples to prove a rule by inference, rather than explicitely stating them. Case in point are the sniper rules that were discussed around New Year's this year. Rules should not be MADE in examples. Examples should clarify existing rules.

So, prove with an actual written example, where a merchant actively avoids having to lower his price to the 80% of fair market price even though he started at intially, a 110% offering rate.

[whswhs]

Okay, sure, let's do a worked example.

I'll assume that the fair price of the item is $1000.

You say "offer," which sounds like he's buying, but "accept," which sounds like he's selling. The terms on p. 75 are ask/accept for a seller, and offer/agree to pay for a buyer. You have the merchant preferring 110% but tolerating 80%, which sounds like he'd rather have a higher price, which sounds like he's selling and not buying, so I'll assume that.

You don't specify whether the initial price was suggested by the merchant, or by the customer. I'll assume that the merchant spoke first. Per your specification, he asks for $1100 and will take $800. (This isn't actually one of the outcomes of a commercial transactions reaction roll—it would be $1100/$900 or $1000/$800—but your numbers will illustrate the process.)

Per your specification, the merchant has Merchant-14, and the customer has Merchant-10. I'll ignore other modifiers, as all they would do is adjust the relative skill levels.

Bargaining starts with the initial prices proposed by the buyer and seller. That's in the haggling rules, but it's a reference back to the simple rules, which determine the starting proposal. So the merchant's roll had him asking for $1100. Now, the PCs make a counterproposal: $500.

Step 1: The difference between the two prices is $600. The merchant will cut his price by 10% of $600, which is $60, or by 20% of $1100, which is $220, whichever is less drastic; $60 is less drastic than $220. So the merchant lowers his price from $1100 to $1040.

Step 2: Now the PCs have a free choice. They can raise their offer by any amount they want. They go from $600 up to $700.

Step 3: Quick Contest of Merchant skill. The merchant rolls 12, succeeding by 2; the PCs roll 16, failing by 6. The margin in the merchant's favor is 8 points. This is not sufficient for the merchant to refuse to change his price.

Step 4: The merchant's base adjustment is equal to the PCs' base adjustment.* This is reduced by 10% x the margin of victory, or 80% in this case; the merchant lowers his price by 20% of $100, or $20, which takes it from $1040 to $1020. (The merchant is making a big show of how he appreciates the PCs need for the item and as a special favor he will cut his margin to the bone.)

Step 5: Repeat.

The PCs decide not to raise their price as much, because the merchant didn't offer much of a deal; they go to $750. The quick contest is 15 (fail by 1) and 8 (succeed by 2), a 3-point difference; the merchant cuts his price by 30% more than the PCs raised theirs, or 130% of $50, or $65, to $955.

Now we're getting somewhere, say the PCs, and go to $800, another $50 raise. The rolls are 10 (succeed by 4) and 9 (succeed by 1), a 3-point margin in the merchant's favor. This time he cuts his price by 70% of $50, or $35, which takes him down to $920.

To get any further cuts from the merchant, the PCs have to go higher than $800. They go to $850. The rolls are 11 (succeed by 3) and 10 (just succeed), margin of victory 3, so the merchant cuts to $885.

The PCs go to $875. The rolls are 11 (succeed by 3) and 6 (succeed by 4); the PCs have a margin of victory of 1. The merchant is willing to cut by 110% of the PCs' $25, which is $27.50. But that would be $857.50, less than the $875 the PCs offered. So instead the merchant gets in one last speech about his starving children, and accepts the PCs' offer.

You protest that nothing allows the merchant to raise his price again. That's true. But you're missing the converse point, marked above by *: To get the merchant to lower his price, the PCs are required to raise their price. So you get a series of steps: The merchant comes down, the PCs go up, the merchant comes down, the PCs go up. They meet in the middle.

I don't know what sort of bargaining scenes you're used to, but the ones I've seen always have both sides moving closer together, step by step. The rules simulate that sort of movement. And as this example shows, the PCs cannot simply force the price down by repeated offering the same bid; if they don't come up, the merchant won't come down either—and presumably he'll eventually get tired and turn away. The price has to meet somewhere in the middle.

Statistically, I would predict that the PCs would end up raising their price by 1.4x the amount by which the merchant lowers his price. The total price difference is $600. $600/(1 + 1.4) = $600/2.4 = $250; I would expect the merchant to lower his price by $250, to $850, while the PCs raise theirs by $250 x1.4 = $250, to $850. That's actually fairly close to the outcome determined by my random rolls.

Bill Stoddard

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't know what sort of bargaining scenes you're used to, but the ones I've seen always have both sides moving closer together, step by step. The rules simulate that sort of movement. And as this example shows, the PCs cannot simply force the price down by repeated offering the same bid; if they don't come up, the merchant won't come down either—and presumably he'll eventually get tired and turn away. The price has to meet somewhere in the middle.

Perhaps they were hoping that the rules also covered where the seller has the buyer over a barrel where the sell keeps raising their price until the buyer final breaks/clues in the trying to bargain will make thing worse and accept the current price

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Perhaps they were hoping that the rules also covered where the seller has the buyer over a barrel where the sell keeps raising their price until the buyer final breaks/clues in the trying to bargain will make thing worse and accept the current price

I wouldn't use haggling rules for that. That sounds like using Intimidation as a complementary skill to Merchant, if anything.

Bill Stoddard

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I wouldn't use haggling rules for that. That sounds like using Intimidation as a complementary skill to Merchant, if anything.

I know , it makes an interesting scene occasionally in fiction precisely because it takes the other side some moments to click simply because it not how haggling is meant to work.

[Anaraxes]

Your statement that the merchant winning the contest does not bring the price back to favor HIM, is troubling in that he must always move the price in favor of the player character, not the merchant.

You seem to be missing the point that the PCs don't just get to force a roll repeatedly for free. The only way to induce a roll is for the PCs to move toward the merchant's price. Only then will the merchant move by some amount toward the PC's price.

And perhaps it's not stated, but it should be clear that the merchant isn't ever going to overshoot the PC's price. Once the PCs move up even once, they can never get back to their starting point. Like the merchant, they can only move above their current offer, and closer to the merchant's price. So, the system will always result in a price somewhere between the two starting points.

(Even if you treat the rules in a mindlessly mathematical fashion, a move away by the PCs changes the sign of the operation and the merchant would then move away as well; he would in fact move his price in his favor if the PCs did so. But that's being silly.)

You can't keep rolling until the price gets arbitrarily close to the PC's starting point, because the PCs can't remain at their starting point, but have to move up. And if they move by a tiny amount, then so does the merchant. If I ran into players that wanted to turn it into an exercise in calculus, I'd add a rule for a minimum increment by which the PCs must move, probably with a negative reaction for the merchant if they waste his time by offering to switch by ridiculously tiny amounts compared to the amount under discussion. This rule just speeds up convergence, however; it doesn't change the convergence point other than the lower resolution.

The OP's original objection was that the PCs could select a starting point so low that the converge point was always at the merchant's best price, even though the PCs were always moving up. That's where the negative reaction for insultingly bad offers comes into play.