Everybody else has their list

[Nomadic1]

I had to follow the crowd. So a few ideas. No idea if these are repeats, or if they are feasible, or if there is a much better easier way to do it, or even if they are worth doing in the first place.

Allow categorisation of the item types (eg: Misc, Ingredient). Modders would be able to place each of object of a category into a sub-category, and then be able to define behaviours for each sub-category. For example, in ingredients, it would be able to split them into edible (eg: hackle-lo, saltrice), inedible (eg: diamond, raw glass), and bread (well... bread). All of them would still be used in potion-making, but the modder would be able to set it so that the PC could also eat edible hackle-lo leaves, but not inedible glass. The other effect would be that NPC merchants could be set so that they only buy and sell in specific sub-categories: for example a jeweller would only buy and sell inedible ingredients (rather than bread and kwama eggs too), and a baker would only buy and sell in bread ingredients.

Allow buy only and sell only merchants. I know you can make it so that NPC merchants have no stock, or no gold, to achieve an effect similar to this but then the NPCs gain stock to sell back or obtain gold to buy stuff so it doesn't really work. You could also simulate it in dialogue but you lose the mercantile interface.

Allow specific NPCs / (non-playable) Races to not have disposition or disposition options. For strange mod ideas I have. Using creatures just wouldn't be the same.

I have other ideas but I'll be damned if I can remember any of them.

[evercharmer]

What if I want to eat glass?

You're right, though, it would be cool if there was some option to group items like that. Instead of just choosing one, though, it would be cool if there was something of a tagging system, where multiple tags could be added to items. One that integrated the vanilla options, but also made it so that a mod could come in and make new categories on the fly, like maybe just a 'baked goods' tag, and add that to bread, the one muffin in the game, and whatever other baked goods the mod adds. They could then have an NPC that's only allowed to trade in the 'baked goods' category, and who to top it off isn't willing to buy any from you, reasonably enough only wanting to peddle his fresh baked bread and cookies and having no reason to buy any from you.

My brief foray into modding Skyrim showed it to have a very similar system.

As for your other idea, it seems pretty good, too. Might I also add that it would be cool if I could give certain creatures dispositions, if you hadn't already meant that?