Imagine you operate a market stall in an open world RPG. What do you sell? How does it help the player?

[TheUnknowable]

I sell potted plants and other decorations for player homes. Secretly, though, they all spawn low level trash monsters near your home.

Overachieving people who actually bother to decorate player homes with useless crap will then have to fend off swarms of blobs or wild boars every time they go home or log in.

[Duthguy]

I sell new appearances for the player character, not makeup and hairdye or anything but literal skins

[Mae]

I sell overexpensive unnecessary emotes, but there is an emote for pretty much everything you could possibly want, the more obscure and underused emotes being the more rediculously expensive ones.

Also, the only payment I accept is kills, both player deaths, player kills and monster kills. My merchant cannot be killed, however.

I also sell a wooden cube for rediculous amounts of money. It does nothing.

[NotAMouse]

LSD.

[Doltboy]

Items that appear to have much importance/high stats near the start of the game (just outside of the tutorial zone) for a ridiculously high price (basically, you waste all your post-tutorial cash) and no sell-back value that become entirely redundant about thirty seconds into the first actual action segment and have somehow made your character worse than they should be. Or stuff with permanent-curse problems...

[Doltboy]

Alternatively, everything I sell turns out to be a monstrously-OP mimic.

[tsukune]

I sell this.



...Obviously. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Antarctic Termite]

A merchant selling hundreds of cardboard boxes for cheap, varying subtly in scale and dimensions but otherwise identical. They're not very useful for regular storage and are all named something long and borderline indistinguishable, like cardboardbox48.5cm*51.5cm*49cm. Mostly they're just good for putting down in great numbers for kicks, building fake walls around an NPC or pushing a tower of boxes off a cliff.

Elsewhere, in an entirely unrelated dungeon, lives an aggressive monster, large and deadly in a number of ways. Normally it's a regular (if challenging) side boss, but, if exposed to the correct box (randomised for each save file), it will placidly tuck itself into the comically undersized container and can be carried as an item.

This is where the fun begins.

Go to a well-populated settlement, whether a defenseless early-game home city or a sprawling late-game metropolis with its own military. Take out your Hell Box. Open it up and run to the nearest safe vantage point.

Watch wildly outmatched NPCs fight back as your absurdly out-of-place abomination starts a Godzilla rampage.

After finding and using the correct box, the merchant is mysteriously absent. If you go back to the dungeon where you found the monster, however, you can see her in the boss chamber. Attempts to interact will result in the merchant chuckling and walking into the darkness, where she despawns forever.

[Cpt Toellner]

I'm that guy in the market who owns a stall.

People talk about me in the town, they talk about my shop, but you are never able to actually buy anything from me. I just spout some canned "go fuck yourself" quote whenever you try to talk and mean-mug you.

Later in the game I'm involved in a plot and leave town/ or am killed, revealing that the store was just a cover. You will then be bombarded by random phrases by the townspeople by how suprised they were that I "was more than a simple merchant."

Oh yeah, and nothing ever changes with my stall, it just stays there after I'm gone, taunting you.

[Polymorpheus]

.

[A Man Is No One]

I would be quite the purveyor. My wares would not necessarily appear to be anything of particular merit; however, they would be the most likely to progress the storyline by allowing the characters to access new or strange parts of their world. A ring that belongs in a dragon's horde, a diadem stolen from a goddess' personal wardrobe or a mace that is capable of shattering the very fabric of reality. It would not appear to be a fancy shop nor even a well maintained shop. But it would hold a number of fabulous ware and quite a dangerous place for any curious kender.

[Shoryu Magami]

For most of the game, my rundown old store actually never appears to do much of anything. You find a few books lying around that you can browse through, sometimes adding entries into your adventure journal and offering hints about a variety of side-quests. Each time you speak to me directly, I usually just tell you to leave me alone, or make a snarky insult, though with persistence I start offering cryptic dialogue or make different sarcastic comments (possibly breaking the fourth wall, depending on the type of game) about the current events of the plot and the lore of the world. You might even encounter unusual monsters if you remain on the premises for an extended period of time.

Once you start reaching the end of the game's storyline, however, if you have completed the side-quests throughout your travels, giving me specific key items related to them will result in me rewarding you with one of the following for each:

• A pathway into the "secret dungeon" of the game, which you cannot get the "true ending" without completing.
• The option to face off against one of the game's most difficult optional bosses; myself.
• Entry into the game's Debug Room.

(A couple of other people had other ideas I had in mind used, so out of all my ideas I went with this one to avoid stealing other people's since they posted first.)

[Chrono]

Me? I'm the worst. I'm that vendor in an MMORPG that wanders all over the world, seemingly seeking only the basic items you would need per leveled zone. BUT. Once a week, in my inventory, appears ONE copy of an extremely rare mount, sold at a ridiculously reasonable price. You know, that item that the gold farmers always manage to grab first, and resell on the auction house for 100x the price.

[ScreenAcne]

I sell, motherfucking. OP, cool shit that you'd find in a CYOA from 4chan or something. But. like. I don't accept gold. You got to give me really, weird, sometimes abstract stuff.

Like the love for your mother othe ability to ever sit on a chair without your butt getting itchy.

[genghismike]

I'll sell the dildo bat and the Rectifier because someone has to have odd shit for the weirdos playing the game.

[Guru]

I sell bad advice.

[Keyguyperson]

I sell really shitty memes made in paint and also unwanted and irrelevant edgy political opinions.

[BrokenPromise]

I would be a merchant that claims to be an alchemist, and sells you items that "change how people perceive you." Those types of items are...

Gifts/Romance items: I sell you stuff to romance other characters in the game, be they NPC, or other players. Oddly, I am the only character in the game that you can't romance. This is upsetting to most players as I'm the hottest. Except when i'm laughing at your attempts to romance me and always manage to say something that makes you feel small and vulnerable. I may be in cahoots with the end game boss, but nobody knows for sure.

Transformation potions: When you want to look like someone or something else. Typically the effects wear off in combat, so it's just for fun.

Generic buff potions: While in the lore, your enemies only perceive you to be stronger/faster/tougher, they do work as far as the game is concerned.

Event items: In a free to play MMORPG, during Valentines day, Halloween, or any holiday that involves dressing up or impressing others, I will likely be the event NPC.

When attempting to chat with me, I often say things that start sounding like flirting but end sounding like insults.

"Well you're pretty...ugly."

"You remind me of a childhood friend. I won't make that mistake again!"

"Please tell me you're single, people like you should definitely stay single."

Also, because I'm constantly downing potions as experiments, my appearance changes every time you enter the aria. Sometimes I'm a Man, Sometimes a Woman, but the one constant is that i'm always holding a large vial and throwing masked insults at you.

[ClocktowerEchos]

I would be Crazy Hassan.

I sell slightly used camels.