The Ideal Bazaar

[Dracos]

Mmm, you know, when I stopped writing for RPGamer I was intending to pick up the slack here in writing.  I haven't really and that's disappointed me.  I reflected on it today and I think it largely came from an unconscious belief that the various game related stuff I pondered wasn't appropriate for here.  Which obviously is false and silly.  A bit was also just getting back into the habit.

   Thus today, I start blathering on topics such as this, to get back warmed up into the whole affair.  The inspiration today was Dragon Quest 8, which had, in fact, a really nice Bazaar.  You encounter it about midway through the game and well, it really adds a bit of flavor to that city.  More specifically, it got me thinking on how nicely it delivered the whole bazaar concept.  It's one used semi-often in games and every blue moon in tabletop ones and, for the most part, Dragon Quest 8 really put together a nice one.

   Specifically, the bazaar in Dragon Quest 8 demonstrated a lot of the traits that I think go along with a good bazaar.  First off, it was out in the open.  You could easily move from shop to shop in the game world without loading times between them.  This is more important to the experience than one might think as when you have to enter store after store, it feels more like a mall than a bazaar and doesn't really get the same effect.  Here you could dash store to store in seconds, and many of them were right across from each other.

   Secondly, it had stuff that you had no need for really.  Both in the 'you wouldn't even pretend to buy it' category and the 'worthless but we're offering it for sale' category.  This I think is important to the effect in a game environment.  If everything you see, you want to buy then it doesn't feel real.  It's just a collection of future shops.  A bazaar shouldn't all be geared towards the heroes.  There should always be random junk, glittery stuff, and folks hawking and being hawked in order to make it really come alive.

   Thirdly, it had more stuff that you would want than you could reasonably buy.  That's good as what is a bazaar that you can walk in and clear out?  That would be silly.  Sure, eventually you might buy everything there, but it was unreasonable to do so for the most part.  It took time to collect enough.  The result is you had to pick and choose, more than any other part of the game, which neat stuff you wanted to grab.  There was also reason to come back to the bazaar in this, making the city feel more like a merchant hub.

   There is one thing I feel it was missing and, scarily enough, the only game I can think of that really hit it was Secret of Evermore.  Specifically, its Arabic bazaar had this last trait that there was a kind of bartering system played out.  Some places would trade for different amounts of things for the same object.  You need to have different vendors offering some of the same goods at different prices.  A bit annoying from a coding perspective, but somewhat intrinsic I think to the concept of making a good working bazaar.

   Stepping a little away from the video game area, this also can be considered for tabletop bazaar.  On one hand, you're limited more than a video game environment here.  As is happening in a group, it can be awkward to have that kind of bidding going on.  Moreso, you don't have the navigation of the bazaar as part of the gameplay.  Here to this effect, I'd suggest working along a single street for the bazaar to remove the whole navigation from the equation.  Instead of a sprawling mass and maze of shops, using a single street allows there to be a clearer description of the shops for interacting, a sort of play by play deal as they walk down the street, and a more organized sense of the game while still maintaining the whole bazaar type feel.