On Shopping

[Mordred]

Straw poll:

How attached are people to the Nethack model of shopping? (You have a physical shop, it has a shopkeeper, et cetera., you can interact with the items before use, you can steal them, et cetera.) I ask because I put this into Dredmor and nobody seems to be able to understand how to make it work, and I'm trying to decide if we should just do a Crawl-style shopping system instead (probably with more vending machines) or just try to make the shopping more intuitive.

[getter77]

I have to vote for a more intuitive, enhanced Nethack, etc approach given what appears to be the very eclectic assortment of items in the game---with just vending machines there would surely be some lost potential for some really crazy shop moments in terms of Shopkeeps and the like considering.   Frankly, there hasn't been too much experimentation along this front to my limited knowledge as it stands anyways...unless SLASH'EM or some such dealt with that aspect while kitchen-sinking the rest of it all.  Thus, this could well be another avenue for Gaslamp Games to make a mark for itself---maybe Chunsoft would then steal the idea for future Fushigi Dungeon games...

[Etinarg]

There was a discussion about Angband vs. Nethack shops many years ago on r.g.r.d   As I remember there were good arguments for both types of shops.

Personally I like the Angband type of shop. Spelunky has the Nethack type of shops and seems to be quite popular and scuccessful.

[Bear]

I've already decided on no town level, persistent dungeons, so if I allow anybody to buy stuff it's going to be in the dungeon. 

That doesn't necessarily mean shops though.  Right now I favor having some wandering merchants among the rest of the monsters.  If peaceful, you can buy stuff from them.  They probably have some kind of simple but usually-effective countermeasures against being robbed or slaughtered (automatically teleport before taking damage if attacked, for example).  Each merchant would be a monster of an intelligent race, carrying maybe 1-4 interesting things and possibly in the market for a few others.

It allows a strategic element; If you don't leave any races peaceful, you never get the opportunity to buy merchandise from merchants of those races.

[corremn]

Spelunky would not be anywhere near as good as it is with out "nethack" style shops, hilarious!.  But in a roguelike I am more inclined to lean towards Angband style (which of course should be called Moria-style). 
Really it should come to the author whether or not shop stealing is part of the game.
Stealing = nethack style.
!Stealing = Angband style (because it is easier to implement)

Of course stealing can be in both the nethack style promotes "clever" stealing.  Having a traveling merchant with angband style would work well, especially if you allow tricks to kill him and thus "steal" some of his stuff.