One thing that bothered me in Oblivion was that stolen items were always known to be stolen by all shopkeepers, thus not letting you sell your stolen loot to anyone before joining the Thieves Guild.
In Fallout 3 you could take an item and sell it to anyone, but that really worked well according to the game world of a post apocalyptic world, where you take what you want, so to say.

In Skyrim, I want to be able to sell at least some of my stolen loot to some of the merchants that are not in the Thieves Guild, without me having to join the Thieves Guild. Maybe the game could get me a quest of joining the Thieves Guild if I sell stolen loot to someone from the Thieves Guild?

Some items should, of course, be so unique and famous that trying to sell it to an honest merchant would lead to him turning you in to the guards, but items that are common, such as a carrot, should be able to be sold to any merchant without problem. I mean, who knows whose carrot it is? Nobody, not even the person himself.

So, what do you think about Stolen Items in general and the Thieves Guild when it comes to stolen items? Share your thoughts and perspectives on the matter, I am really interested in your opinions.

I think the stolen item attribute should be local and fade with time. Anyway, how the game handle stolen goods was dramatically improved from Morrowind to Oblivion. I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda has improve this even more for Skyrim.

The stolen tagging system in OB was an immersion-breaker for me. How could a merchant in Chorrol know that the stone bowl I'm selling him was taken from some shack in the Waterfront, and not from a dungeon?

It was a good effort though, and as amgepo says, an improvement on the Morrowind system. But I suppose they will improve on it - right now, I'm just trying to think of ways in which to do it.

Perhaps general knowledge of the stolen state of a particular item is limited by distance from the theft and it fades over time at a rate inversely proportional to item value. As such, when stealing an item such as a carrot, collective memory of the theft amonst shopkeeps would fade before you even had time to run to the nearest pawn shop and unload yourself of the newly aquired foodstuff. On the other hand, if a very rare and valuable weapon is stolen from a display case in the castle of a local count (or even better: off the countess herself), then word will travel fast to all the merchants in a wide area and people will recognize the purloined item for months or even years to come. In the middle of that continuum you have, say, the theft of an uncommon book from the local bookstore that will be talked about an speculated about over drinks at the local pub for a few weeks, but after a while nobody will really be surprised if the same books turns up amongst the inventory of a nearby pawnbroker; and of course, in the next town over, a few miles down the road, nobody really knows or cares that the item went missing in the first place.

I think this idea would work really well. If you stole a sword from Windhelm only Windhelm shopkeepers would be skeptical about buying the item. And eventually fades. That would work.

And as I've said several times before, I'd like items not be so blatantly clear on what it stolen and not stolen. I make a museum in my home of rare uniques and I hate when there's a certain unique up for display that has an annoying red marker, or red text say "Steal" or "Stolen" If I steal it, the item is now mine. I don't need it to tell me it's stolen. I just have to be more careful about what I sell. Instead of a marker telling you that something is illegal to take, it should be up to common sense. If it's not yours, then don't take it unless you can handle the consequences. And if the marker is time/local based then it's not much of a problem.

Also it would be nice to steal items worth something, in oblivion everything was worth so little, stealing and pickpocketing wasnt even worth it.I would hope this issue has been looked at and tooking care of in skyrim witch im sure it has,one can only hope. :hehe:

It should depend on how improtant the item is, i.e. a glass battleaxe is likely to be engraved or something

I agree with this.
Be able to sell stolen items to non-Thieves Guild merchants. But as you said, if they're recognizable as clearly not being the player character's belongings (such as an engraved sword, or stolen from the merchant him/herself), then the merchant would either not accept the offer, or tell the guards.

On this one I have to say I agree to some points.

Items that are stolen should have the "Stolen" marker as long as it is in an area where the owner/others, might recognize it. So if I start the merchant menu with another merchant than the one I just stole an item from, the item would appear in the inventory with a red hand for example, so that I know that this item can be recognized in this area. Depending on who the merchant is and what the item is, but maybe also what merchantile skill I have, I could sell the item to him even though it has the red hand, without him calling the guards.

Some low value items - carrots, bowls, plates etc. - should never be recognisable as stolen, unless you try and sell it back to the person you stole it from. Higher value items, such as weapons or armour, should be recognised by all merchants in the area you stole it from. If someone robbed an armourers shop, for example, most of the other merchants in the area would hear about it. Extremely valuable/unique items should never be sell-able to an honest merchant. For these items you'd had to find a shady private collector, or a fence.

As for the Thieves Guild, I'd like to see them asserting their supposed monopoly on theft. Freelance thieves should be hunted down, and either beaten and robbed or offered a place in the guild, depending on how notorious they are.

Good point. Surely there'd be some way to rate the rarity of a type of item, or a hidden attribute (or shown) that corresponds to a feature of the item (engraving, et cetera) with the rarer types of item.

Hmmm... With regards to the fading stolen state, items could be grouped according to how the fading worked, e.g. clutter and miscellaneous items would fade faster (or just not have it in the first place), and so on.

An easier way to implement this, avoiding tagging items as stolen from where and from whom, is to have all generic items sellable to everyone anywhere, but have specific items, of appreciable value and not found in random loot, such as paintings and heirlooms, which are all marked as stolen. No point risking jail for some mutton and an iron mace, but snaeking into a wealthy household for a painting is what thieves should be doing

If they make all stolen generic items sellable then really what is the point? Who is going to sell 300 carrots to a shop for like 30 gold? I guess someone could spend massive amounts of time picking up items that are worth .2 and .3 cents just to make some money but to me it is easier to either drop the item or eat it etc.

I see the point people are making and yes I agree that the shop owners should not know that generic items are stolen but is there anyone who would actually load up on a bunch of generic stuff just to sell it for a small amount of gold? I know I was never really that cash strapped that I needed to do that.

Bethesda needs to increase the costs of things and should make better armor more uncommon and lucerative. For example every bandit had some deadric on them, which is sad - because deadric was/is the best metal in the game. And by the way, a flawless diamond only costs 100 gold! Is a flawless diamond really that common? Please change the price of things and make better weapons and armor more rare - as the leveling system obviously will change!

Love you, Bethesda :laugh: ! :hehe:

I really like your idea Glorious, that non-Thieves Guild members that steal items and get known for doing so by the Thieves Guilds own sources of information should get in trouble for it like beaten down.
Non-lethal combat 6 vs 1 would be awesome, where your character wouldn't die even if you lost the fight, but you'd have the chance of knocking down at least some of them.

Johntown, we are not only talking about carrots, but also books that could be worth 100 gold without being marked as unique and generally stuff that many different persons can own, such as jewellery, worth up to 250 gold each. But those items should not be able to be sold to honest merchants in that area, as they have heard about valuable jewellery gone missing, but in another town, it should matter at all.

This

If there is item crafting in Skyrim I would also like the opportunity to use it to modify valuable, easily recognized items so that shopkeepers wouldn't be suspicious, sort of "filing of the serial number" type of thing when it comes to inscriptions and such. This would come with a chance of decreasing the items value, temporarily or permanently, take your pick. A normal shopkeeper might buy a modified glass sword that you stole from the local duke or something but a thieves guild merchant might give a higher price for it unmodified because it is recognizable as the duke's sword.
Also it would be nice for items to have sort of a "history" of previous owners, if it's stolen or not and more but that would cause absolutely horrible inventory management issues.
Oh and as a side note, dynamic store displays. Merchants display what they currently have in store. And if a NPC sees an item you've successfully pawned off the shopkeeper they might recognize it and start an argument which depending on how long ago you stole the item or sold it to the shopkeeper might get the guards after you. Of course in that situation you should be able to talk yourself out of it. and if a guild member (any guild) sees a bunch of stuff from the guild hall in the local stores he might start an investigation in the local guild hall about who is stealing guild property and then you could frame a guild mate by say planting a bunch of stolen items in his locker or chest or something. And i got a little exited and off topic but that would be awesome if you could do that.

A simple mechanic could be, using the value of the item combined with the distance from the theft.
e.g. a cheap piece of jewellery (25 gold) you would obviously not be able to sell to the shop owner, but could sell to the guy next door, an expensive Longsword you would have you go to a different settlement to sell, and a truly unique item you would have to sell through a Thieves Guild Fence.