I think it actually depends on the frequency of combat/loot in the game.

For diablo the most commonly looted thing is gold from an enemy. If common items were still worth picking up the player would be overwhelmed and annoyed by the amount of loot they had to manage. To make matters worse, the randomly generated items would actually be annoying as every item would require analyzing.

For your game, combat is much less frequent. Awarding gold only isn't ideal in this case since it makes it appear the player isn't winning much from each combat. Basically, it's much more rewarding to see multiple lines in the loot window than 1 slot for the gold. You also don't have randomly generated items so it's easy for the player to keep track of trash/treasure. On the down side, your inventory system is not set up for managing large amounts of items (no hover tooltips, uses a list instead of a grid, etc)
 

One interesting approach I've heard discussed was in the Bard's Tale remake from three or so years ago. Players would still pick up loot, but had the opportunity to turn it directly into cash once in their inventory. It's a mechanic that Margaret Robertson mentioned in her talk at GDC this year as an exemplar of a game respecting a player's time.
 

First off, first time poster - enjoyed the trial/demo version, looking forward to the real version. Love the idea of the blog keeping everyone up-to-date, as well. Anyway, enough fawning, back to the question at hand :D

I'd say that it would depend on the length of the game and how much you had to do, like other posters. For instance, if each mob dropped what it was wearing/weilding, you'd have a balancing nightmare - a party of 4 gangs up on a single mob, each one splits the lewtz, rinse, repeat, uber-gankers incoming. However, you do see similar things to this in (For instance) Oblivion or Two Worlds. That, to me, is the most realistic system and possibly the most enjoyable.

The other end of the scale is the 'mobs drop coins', which I always find is rather... meh. I'd rather have something tangible, or better yet - have the best lewtz be craftable. The idea in Two Worlds of adding objects together to make +2, +4, +8 and so on objects really, really worked - and it encouraged you to save that trash, because it wasn't trash - it was a new super-weapon :D

Personally, the 'get-gold-buy-stuff-rinse-repeat' is the least pleasurable experience in RPG's. The 'get what a mob actually has on them' is the most, and add that to crafting, and you've got nirvana ;)
 

As Brett pointed out, the conversion-to-cash is a nice, balanced way to handle it. This is one of my favorite features of Dungeon Siege - it has a low-level spell that turns any item into gold, albeit at a slightly lower conversion rate than if you wait to carry it to the next vendor. This allowed the game to drop all sorts of loot, and the player not to feel like he or she was leaving untold riches for the next adventurer to just pick up.
 

I will admit that when the chips are down I am ALWAYS pro realism. That being said though not every system is designed any where close to a place where that will work in this case.

But I think that as far as FK is concerned you have a little more room because of your storyline.

I remember playing with a few DMs (myself included) who took encumbrance very seriously. Which meant that players were always making those decision on which was the best thing to hold onto. That is a great opportunity to me to break the grind. Yes you do rinse/repeat the kill-loot process...but you are always calculating (based on the player's knowledge) what the best use of space:loot value was.

As we continued to play, and could afford it, we often (unentionally at first) found ourselves really becoming professional adventurers. Not that we weren't seeking epic fame and glory and all that touchy-feely fantasy stuff, but we found ourselves in the unique position to be able to afford a baggage train, even if it was small.

A group of "adventurers" with horses and pack mules become quite enterprising and professionally minded quickly.

Sure, we didn't always have the option of cleaning out a dungeon or area and then going back and picking up all items, transporting them and packing them up, then heading out with a healthy bit of loot. But when we did management it, it always opened up more opportunities for game play.

With FK being set in the back drop of a "professional" adventurer spirit...the idea that I can have the ability to plan "operations" for the maximum efficiency of fame and fortune just seems natural.

I could prattle on about how "I" like the idea of:

a)not getting gold off of animals
b)not getting gold off of creatures smart enough not to carry their life savings on them during guard duty
c)having the opportunity to strip a fallen enemy clean of any things useful
d)not being able to sell the 150 long swords I got off of all those dead goblins in the next town because either the weapons dude doesn't have the money or the market can't support them. Not too mention the immediate jump in status from "professional adventurer" to arms merchant that will get me alot more attention than I may otherwise enjoy.

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The problem isn't only the dropping of inappropriate loot (gold from a bat or the 100th longsword). It's also the 'trapped, locked' chest (found in the desert) containing only a torch, and ultimately the casual equipping of items found as loot.

I've always wondered about the halfling who dons the frost giant chief's plate armor + 5. Or the dwarf who puts on an elven chainmail of speed.

As players, we should all want realism or at least immersion. As humans, we usually opt for one-upmanship and keeping up with the Joneses. I've finished games with hundreds of thousands pieces of gold, dozens of magic bags with exotic weapons, and more things than I can think of.

A possible solution would be to limit 'drops' to 'bosses' and reward the adventurers when they return to the quest giver.
 

Clearly what Frayed Knights will eventually need is a Scroll of Insta-Sell: some brilliant (but mercenary) wizard sets up a shop somewhere and gives away scrolls of limited Teleport and Telepathy to allow adventurers to sell items from the field. (Store credit only, of course)

Absolute bottom dollar with a surcharge if you don't clean off the blood first, but who can put a price tag on a healing potion when you REALLY need one?
 

I think we have a huge thread on this in the forum...
 

Here's a poll that Corwin put up

and

Here's another one, on realistic drops

and

Magic Item Sales

and

The Use of Money sinks
 

Having been playing computer games since 74, specializing for rpg for the last 15 years, I'd like to share some thoughts.

Games are fiction. They do not have to be real in terms of selling the hides, growing something etc. Unorthodoxical choices can be made.

Sooner or later the character will be burdensome with gear. And then it becomes a problem in inventory. And since you cannot be sure if an item is THE IMPORTANT ITEM that is needed to complete the game, you carry all sorts of wierd stuff that is not mostly needed.

I liked bards tale because it automatically applies a better item on you and converts old one to money. Unfortunatelly you cannot spend it.

I liked mass effect because it converts items to gel that can be used for opening new containers. BUTif you carry too much, then before you can choose what to convert to gel, you have to convert newly found items to gel and not choose from the old ones. And at the higher level you just have so much gel. But in here you can use the gel without going to shop with it.

Nevertheless, in my opinion the best system is that automaticaly applies better similar gear on the character. That of course impacts a game design: Choices like should I take sword of fire or sword of ice if taking one converts the other to gold should never appear, but new items should be built on top of the old and you should be able to do without shopping something to that converted item...

In real situations it does not matter how much you carry, but what you can do with it.
 

I enjoyed the drops in FFXII, where enemies would drop signature items that were of value to merchants. Some enemies would drop money, but only humanoids, people you would expect to be carrying money. If a bit of a market was added to the game (to prevent grinding of the more valuable drops), it would be a simple, satisfactory system.
 

I think most of these systems have their time and place, but one thing I'd avoid is heavy inventory management - it's never fun. Neverwinter Nights is a good example of a bad system. Flipping through those disorganized "pages" filled with vendor trash and quest items (which should never be stored in the same place as regular items) - ugh. It's like you need a spreadsheet just to whack off some kobolds.

This is slightly askew of the main topic, but as far as looting goes, I've always felt that cash should be automatically deposited in the player's 'coffer' once an enemy goes down. There's simply no need for a loot window for cash, because every player's going to take raw coin, however small the amount. Auto-looting coin is just a nice way to streamline the looting process*, and becomes especially useful when the player's dropping hordes of smaller, weaker enemies.

* All in all I favor rarer but more valuable drops from monsters, and less constant vendor trash. The same goes for treasure chests - they should be rare and valuable, so that seeing one makes a player go "Cool! A treasure chest!", not "Oh, a chest, I hope it's not 8 bronze coins and a rusty dagger like last time."
 

There are two issues here. Other posters have already covered the first, which is the economics/desired frequency of loot.

The second, which I'm more interested in, is how to minimise player annoyance with the loot interface. There are three stages to this: (i) picking up loot; (ii) storing loot and (iii) divesting loot. There is also a fourth item, maintaining loot, of which more later.

These three things make up one of the un-fun parts of a typical RPG, because the tasks need to be carried out lots of times.

Let's look at (i). I particularly dislike mousing around over the screen after a battle to find where all the enemy corpses ended up. Compare this with an old Bard's Tale or Gold Box game where the whole looting process was covered by text ("after the battle you find...") and the older game is actually more streamlined and fun. Most games right now require you to find each body, click on it and on particularly bad design days, manually to move each item from the corpse including any money they had on them. Mount & Blade goes a long way towards addressing this by having a single loot screen for each encounter.

My ideal solution would be to code in a point at which each encounter ends, and have that lead to an attractive loot screen - it doesn't require much, just for example a moody picture in the corner of [insert hero here] searching some bodies - which would display all the items that you found sorted into groups (weapons, potions, money) - with a readable mouse-over description.

As for (ii) storing loot, I come down strongly against realism on this point only. In any game where there's a tangible benefit to carting around lots of stuff, give the player some plausible explanation of why his character can do so. Maybe he can buy a cart, hire native bearers, rent a packhorse etc. But unless you're going to take a very radical route and make it a waste of time to loot after a battle, find some way of letting players take quite a bit with them, and ever more over time if they want to pay for it. Otherwise, the satisfaction of clever inventory management is overwhelmed by the fact that after a certain point you spend more time rummaging in your pack looking for an extra few cubic centimetres than you do fighting.

(iii) Selling loot / towns. I'm strongly in favour of abstracting this in most cases. For repetetive tasks like selling loot (or depending on the level of realism in the game maintaining weapons / sleeping / whatever else you'd expect to do in town), find some graphically appealing and quick way of giving the player the feeling that the character(s) are off doing this without making the player control the entire thing. Because it doesn't take very long for ...find merchant....click and drag items...find next merchant...click and drag other items...etc, etc. to get very dull indeed.
 

Progress Quest FTW!

Ahem. That is, at design time, decide which aspects (logistics) of the RPG experience your game is going to include. Focus on it, and abstract out everything else.