Acquired from Pixiv Id gallery on Zerochan.
A random encounter in my Lest Dispelled GURPS Campaign had resulted in the introduction of a wandering gnome merchant who possessed a bag with what seemed like an endless supply of low-cost knick-knacks and trinkets. Here’s how I model this.
Inventories
Are Tenuously Defined
When merchants are established in tabletop roleplaying games, they are typically done so with a very tentative inventory that is not completely stocked with the specific items it may hold. This is because, in reality, this sort of information is not important for the sake of furthering a roleplaying game.
Instead, these inventories are usually considered in the scope of a larger category of items. For example, there are magic item shops and armouries. They would respectively contain various items of their respective sorts with a chance of having more expensive items depending on the size of the city they are held in.
We will use this sort of tenuous definition as a starting point for modelling this in GURPS eloquently.
Are Like Libraries
A friend of mine wrote a very excellent article on defining libraries in a very similar fashion. This is because they face a similar problem of large potential complexity in terms of inventory or collection of books.
In a similar grain, we will establish that the inventory of a merchant is finite and can be finitely described. Using an analogous method found in that same post, we can move further. A template statistic block for a merchant is formulated below.
Formulation
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Browsing Time | Time | How long it takes to find an item of average rarity. Should not be particularly long. |
| Base Stock Size/Rarity | Target Value | The target value on a 3d6 roll for determining if any given item is actually present if all conditions are normally met (analogous to CR). |
| Specific Items | Item Category [Rarity Modifier] | A number of specific sorts of items present. |
Going from the above, we can now completely define the possible presence of an item on the basis of rarity and respective item categories, as is usually done in very abstract definitions of a merchant’s collection.
When a check is carried out to determine if an item is present, we follow an analogous procedure to that of Self-Control or CR in the GURPS rules. If an item being looked for is not part of the specific item categories present in that shop, there is an immediate -10 penalty placed onto the check in order to model that there is a slight possibility of fringe inventory space being put aside for that item. How long it takes to find an item can also be modelled on the basis of margin from the target check and halving or doubling for each margin of “success” or “failure” respectively from the CR.
Note that, therefore, with the above formulation, having a relatively high Base Stock Size/Rarity but large negative modifiers for specific item categories models an incredibly esoteric collection of items. The larger the Base Stock Size/Rarity, the more likely any given item will be present. The smaller that value, the less likely.
Here is an example defining Fizzle Fizzlesprout‘s collection of random knick-knacks and trinkets.
| Property | Type |
|---|---|
| Browsing Time | 2 min |
| Base Stock Size/Rarity | 9 |
| Specific Items | Crockery [+3], Jewelry [+3], Trinkets [+3], Keys [+0], Maps [-2], Tankards [+1], Scrolls [-3], Gems [+0], Combat Equipment [-1] |
In the above table, for example, I could have a PC ask me if Fizzle has a mail gauntlet. I would judge this to be fairly common combat equipment, and therefore incur no additional modifier for rarity. Fizzle might have this item because, on average, he has a rarity check target of 8 for Combat Equipment in his inventory. I roll 3d6 and see if I get 8 or less: if this is true, he has this item.
On the other hand, if a PC asks me if the merchant has a gold necklace of pearls, I would judge this to be slightly uncommon as far as common jewelry goes, and incur an additional penalty of -1. This means I would roll 3d6 and try for a target of 9+3-1 = 11. So, just about a 50% chance of him possessing that sort of item. Not bad; but that is the sort of inventory he possesses: random knick-knacks and trinkets.