Question Player-Owned Shops

Has anyone had success setting up a system for player-owned shops? If so, generally speaking, how did you go about it and in what way do they work? Did you try other things that fell through before the final version?

I haven't seen this done with tbaMUD, but I'll give you a thumbs up if you make a snippet

Some initial thinkings to generate some momentum follow imminently.

1.) Player accessible OLC menu to create the shop, edit the shop properties and edit the merchandise menu.
Most of this can be recycled from sedit code - neat!

2.) Shops should persist over reboots - how to save the shop information?
I might look at the house code, hedit.c on ideas for this

3.) In game practicalities:
Where can a shop be set up?
Can NPCs be shopkeepers or only the PC?
Gold from transactions go to the shopkeeper or directly to the players bank?
Multiple shops in the same room - potential problems.
Multi-room shops?
Can you attack another players shop? Turf wars..

4.) Merchandise practicalities
How do you define what is for sale / purchase
Does the shop auto-produce items?

How about instead of opening an actual shop it was like a street merchant?

The player could simply choose from whatever items he had in his inventory (or items he wishes to buy) at the moment of opening the shop, maybe setting prices maybe not, in case of prices not set players would have to engage in bartering over the price of said item for sale or item announced as wanting to buy?

Cons:
- you wouldn't be able to salvage much code from sedit? not sure,
- turf wars would not happen if players opened shops in peaceful rooms but maybe there would be fight over good selling spots? near important areas, players selling potions or w/e?

Pros:
- less setup required for players maybe? not needing an actual room or shopkeeper
- gold would be directly given to player (maybe area taxes by clans or per zone?)

Just another take on the idea to help with the brainstorm

And to add to the street merchant idea:
You could perhaps re-use parts of the old auction code snippets..

Hire a street merchant to hock your wares, pay them a small fee for the privilege. The merchant acts just like a shop in terms of list/buy/sell commands but listing only what the player gives the merchant.
(Eg: sells anything in his inventory on behalf of the player. Only accepts items from the hiring player)

Once the inventory is empty the merchant shuts up shop.

So many awesome ideas here. I like both the street merchant idea AND the idea of an OLC editor for players to set it up...

Some more idea I've been rolling around in the pre-planning stages:

* A mobile setting for "shoproom" that allows me to assign a room vnum, and from that room vnum they populate their inventory. Whatever is on the ground in that room is the shop's inventory. When items are purchased the coin is dropped into the shop room for owner retrieval. This would come down to two rooms per shop, I'd imagine - the public one where the shop mobile is, and the locked back room/shop room where the inventory and money is.

* Perhaps simpler all in all, the ability to buy a shopkeeper 'pet' and install it (either anywhere there isn't already a shop, or in designated locations -- limited by a room flag?). 'Give' the wares to the mobile and their inventory will be whatever they're carrying. 'Collect' or something along those lines to collect the accumulated coin from the shop. Would need to limit to shop owner, prevent them from accepting items from non-owners, yada yada...

I've been messing around with this idea for a few months, and my workaround is to have an invisible shopkeeper. The player crafts the item(s) for sale, puts them on a shelf in exchange for cash, the invisible shopkeeper 'takes' the item and then it's in inventory for sale.

Obviously, I think the long way around stuff...