Fence and Blackmarket: The two least-popular Guild commands

[galaxgal]

As we likely know, the Brotherhood of Common Goods (BCG) is an all-Freemen guild with limited influence and a lot of wonk with contemporary Support mechanics. These two things plus their unpopular Guildskills (besides Lockpicking, probably,) kneecap the Guild from the word 'go'. Under normal circumstances this would be fine; other Guilds have codedly unexciting or nonexistent Guildskills (Order, Troubadours, Reeves,) but make do with special access tools or unique commands.

BCG has two unique Guild functions that could theoretically offset this and make the guild feel 'special': Blackmarket and Fence.
However, both of these commands rely on the player economy (which has changed dramatically ever since the addition of Assets,) and player willingness to engage in activities which they know are dubiously legal with people who are effectively strangers (generally low.)

Allow me to break these down for the uninitiated:

Fence allows BCG to move goods to a certain NPC shop which then pays a dividend back to BCG.
This shop like most shops is weirdly hard to find (it is buried in the already pbase-underutilized Roster command) and players who know about the shop still avoid it like the plague because they don't want to be seen carrying stolen goods. The outcome is that this shop is mostly used to ransom stolen goods back to their owners but is not really the steady stream of revenue that 'fencing' goods implies.

Since the majority of high-value legal goods are purely cosmetic it makes sense that players are going to avoid this shop which will make them a victim in conflict if seen using or wearing these stolen goods.

Proposed solution:
Normalize Fence prices to be based off of Appraise value and let BCG take a % of each Fenced item's price as an advance, up to a weekly limit.
If the item is bought, BCG doesn't double dip on profits, they already got the advance from that shop.
This allows petty theft to actually be profitable while still allowing players to buy back stolen goods.


Blackmarket is kind of like a sketchier version of Rumor. It is available in many public facing locations like taverns and lets players post items of interest.
You can buy and sell anything fully-anonymously here.
Also analagous to rumor is the BCG's 'soft' control over Blackmarket posts, which they can strike down in exchange for IP. BCG also gets a cut of blackmarket job payments. Not literally the same as Troubadour interactions w/rumor, but analagous in that it's a persistent, asynchronous system that the Guild influences.

Unfortunately, basically no one uses the Blackmarket. In the past players have said they don't want to support an illegal organization by using it.
Most players also just don't have a motive to use it for selling, as again, income is passive and there are severe diminishing returns on having more silver over a certain threshold. 'Jobs' is the legal counterpart and people don't use that much any more either.

Proposed Solution: Give Blackmarket the same incentive as the extremely popular rumor system: IP. Posting jobs takes the same amount of effort. Fulfilling them takes even more. If Blackmarket is as rewarding as rumors (which give instant gratification just for typing up a post) I really think it will see more use.

TL;DR: Thief Guild is weak & its commands are underused, creating the sense that it is the game's 'black sheep'. Proposed changes to help modernize it with the rest of the MUD are given above.

Inactive Thieves means bored Reeves. Let me know what you think.

[galaxgal]

Also, technically, I know that Arrest and Celebrate are also unpopular, but one of those is used for PK and one of those requires an active and needy Noble population that cares about Prestige rather than being routine commands.

[Sparkles]

I was under the impression that "Blackmarket" had been depreciated into "Jobs" but the two systems were one and the same rather than meant to be two concurrent systems. Did potentially not all of the code/helpfiles get updated with the name change?

[galaxgal]

The Blackmarket still exists. Jobs set to 'Anonymous' become blackmarket jobs, give a cut to BCG, allow aliases and TMK can be struck, although there's been no reason for anyone to test that functionality right now.

Regular-grade Jobs don't have those characteristics, besides the fact that BCG can view them anywhere as a consequence of both being under the same list.

[Kuzco]

All good points. I particularly like the fencing one because yeah, crime doesn't nearly pay as much as just sitting on your bum and accruing asset money.
Sindome has a neat criminal mechanic: you can fence stolen items in shops (for a chance for good money) or you can leave them in a special room, staff calculates the total value of the loot, wipes out the room and gives you like 10% of said value. It's less returns but a guaranteed sale.

[galaxgal]

There was a concern in OOC chat that fenced items might just end up being items BCG crafts and sells themselves under the proposed solution.

I wanted to address that here:

In the proposal, all fenced items are sold at some universal, fixed % of their code value. Say that % is 80%
That is, an item worth 100 silver should go for 80 at the Fence shop (it's a discount store, after all.)

Assuming all material costs and coded item values are sane. That is:

-No item costs dramatically more than the sum of its parts ('Dramatically more = ~120% or so)
-Except for Guildskill adept+ crafts that are character defining and BCG can't have without extreme effort

Then:
Buying junk from a vendor and reselling it will always be at a loss of silver, and,
Buying junk from a vendor, crafting it, and reselling it will always be at a loss of silver, MV, time, energy, and EXP.

It would be impossible to exploit this for any real profit unless no silver was spent acquiring the item, and the item isn't already low-value forage/butcher junk.
Guess how that happens.

No special flags for stolen items needed. Just the unnatural will of the economy.

Of course, this makes assumptions that may not necessarily be true of how the code prices of objects are set, but I do know they exist - since Appraise approximates item value.

But yeah, like Kuzco says - almost nothing in the game is more lucrative from an effort and risk perspective than simply waiting for money to deposit to your account.
This really hits thieves the most, because that Guild categorically has the worst passive income and no assured way to see returns on an act that can lead to the thief's PK.

[Geras]

How do we define coded value though? Because I sell a lot of materials below their npc shop value.

Also 1,000th post woot!

[galaxgal]

Dunno. I'm taking it on faith that those values are reasonable and realistic.