The party has just finished questing and they are ready to spend their hard-earned coin. Luckily, they have reached a big city and are ready for a shopping trip. How do you go about roleplaying this? Do you find it worthwhile to roleplay every transaction, including mundane objects like sacks of flower and ball bearings, or do you just tell the players to look through the player's handbook and buy things according to the price listed? Is there a middle ground? If so, how do you achieve this balance? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I hit up Ye Olde Magick Shoppe generator at https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic/shop.html for names and descriptions unless I feel like making my own shops and shopkeepers.
If the adventurers find themselves in a city of reasonable size, there will be a temple to buy a few healing potions (typically 50gp unless there's an RP reason for markup)and probably an academy or a sage who can cast identify on magic items for a small donation. Generally speaking, no shopkeepers in my campaign are going to have magic items for sale (except for the aforementioned potions). Mundane items, weapons, and armor are typically in easy supply and I generally charge what the PHB suggests and players can sell the stuff they find for half of that.
I wouldn't say I run a low magic campaign, but I treat magic items as rare and special things that would fetch an extremely high price in the rare event that one were to go on sale to the public. A rich local citizen of that town would snatch it up long before any adventurer would ever lay eyes on it. The flip side of this is that if players come across even mundane magic items they don't want, they will have no trouble finding buyers to pay top dollar for them.
As for categorizing shops in your second post, I have General stores, Blacksmiths (weapons and armor), and places that provide some mundane and magical services like blessings, healing, and selling of healing potions. If I were ever to have a magic shop, it would be an exception for a very specific reason. Also, since organized crime plays a fairly heavy role in my campaign, most medium-sized towns and all cities would have a few shops that have a reputation for dealing in stolen goods, although they would not pay the players as well unless they had a "secret handshake" or something like that. Those shops would have the really unusual (fun) stuff. Maybe a magic item there if the situation was right.
I've never gotten that detailed in shopping trips.
I've described the open markets in the city, much like renaissance era town markets - or your local farmer's market - but that's more scene setting and atmosphere.
The level of RP detail is usually determined by the player, "I want to buy X" is usually met with "OK, you find a small shop just off the main market, which specializes in ....", followed by a short description. If they player responds along the lines of "OK, I'll buy one, how much will that set me back?", that's pretty much the end of it. If the player decides to RP the scene "OK, I'll open the door and go in ....", then I'll play it out in further detail, whip up a shopkeeper NPC on the fly, or pull one out of "central casting", and have an interaction with the player.
Whether or not a shop that sells "X" is available, is answered on the fly - "would a town of this size likely have a shop that sold X?": clothing, farm tools, food - no problem; Parchment and bookbinding materials - towns possibly, cities yes, villages unlikely; weapons - city yes, off the shelf, towns and villages can be commissioned from the local blacksmith, will take time. If I determine that such a place does exist in the town, I'll make notes and make sure it's part of the town moving forward, including its NPC proprietor, if the PCs interacted with them.
I definitely am playing a low magic setting. Magic items simply are not for sale on the open market. All are unique, prized, and if sold by the party, treated like you'd see a great master painting sold in modern times. Mundane items useful to Wizards ( parchment and ink ) are available from the suppliers to their mundane consumers. Mystical knowledge is only available from other practitioners, usually in exchange for other knowledge, or favors - sometime, but seldom, for cash. Healing is available in shrines or temples - but healing potions per se' don't exist and can't be bought off the shelf ( however I've created a custom version of cure wounds which has a ritual version which consumes expensive material components, while the non-ritual version does not. It's like having healing potions that can only be administered by the Cleric ).
I'm not sure the low magic peculiarities of my campaign world are of use to you, however.
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I think the main question to ask if you want to just get an itemized list or not is a simple question. "How does this improve the story?"
Game session are finite and if you roleplay buying rations, and rope, and some arrows, etc.... that could take an entire session. The question is if you role-play that out, will it improve your game? If the answer is "yes" then do it, if the answer is "no" don't.
If you don't think it will improve the game, but you want a middle ground. Describe the town. Describe how the people interact on the street as they do their shopping, off the list. Is the town lively? Do people look happy? are there street entertainers? do people look upon the party with suspicion and avoid strangers? is it hot or cold? Does the smell of spices or manure scent the air? This is a good middle ground because it invests the town with flavor without taking up a lot of time. You can describe how an interaction goes without necessarily role playing it, but if a player suddenly wants to jump in and ask question, great.
This is very different if your players are travelling through a location or if the location itself is a centerpiece. I was a player in a game and we were travelers who just hit a big city after some adventures in a hamlet or two. The GM was having us role player every last interaction. At first, I found it a bit tedious but I personally thought the game would be about our greater adventures as we made our own mercenary band, and it was. It was also about the city itself. The time we took interacting with the different NPCs became the story. Eventually one of the party members asked the local fletcher out on a date, she accepted. Turns out she was replaced with an assassin, we had a bounty on our heads, and so the rest of us had to rescue him from his "murder-date". Thankfully bad guys like to monologue so we got there in time!
The Blacksmith of the town is still as stingy #%*@! that over charges and under pays, but he's the only good smith in the not rich area. We knew the names of the gem dealers and enchanter.
I as the player learned to appreciate the style, but it took time to see "How does this improve the story?".
The amount of time that I invest for shopping descriptions tends to be determined by how much time the characters will, probably, be spending in the settlement. For settlements where the players will be around for an extended period of time I tend to put additional detail into the shops and shopkeepers, providing names for both with some additional descriptive details in advance. Although when it comes to super mundane purchases in these settings I will usually have them begin an initial discussion with the shopkeeper before out-of-character discussing with the players what they want to determine the price, then allowing a bit of post-purchase banter before they depart. Of course, I also often have my shopkeepers be involved with (or red herrings) for the various quests that the players might find in the setting, so it helps flesh them out for those 'quest based' potential interactions.
If they are planning on doing shopping in a bunch of different shops you can tailor the amounts of interaction for different shops based on those that the characters (and your plot) would benefit the most from.
With regards to different shop classifications the larger the settlement the more specialized shops it can manage to support. In a major city you can have shops for item times (tailor, glassblower, art sellers, etc.). I tend to use blacksmiths for all your combat equipment (weapons and armour) as well as the other metal gear. For healing potions I usually lump those either with the local temples, or an apothecary that also generates numerous other tinctures and tonics. For magic items you could have a dedicated Arcanist shop, although based on the expensive nature and unwanted attention that magic items often have it would also want to have excellent security measures (using magic for these defenses as well). Most magic items they make would probably be to order, due to the investment required for making them, although they might have some of the most widely useful items already prepared for sale (Bag of Holding, protective cloaks or jewelry, maybe a +1 weapon, shield, or suit of armour).
It's definitely a "read the room" sort of situation, imho!
I was in a game where the Wizard needed to do research and buy stuff but the Player obviously didn't WANT to have to actually DO that part, and felt a little uncomfortable when the DM focused attention on it. But, in that same quest, when I asked if I could do some shopping stuff, the DM just had me send them an email for the next session and just told me to "calculate the cost out of your gold and we'll just say your shopping was a success." I would have LIKED to meet some shopkeeps and done some dealing, but someone else already set the precedent for it not being something to "play".
I'd say there's already REALLY good advice in here for how to handle setting/merch availability, that I'll definitely be using on top of my own learning-as-I-go stuff. In closing, as I sit here typing up last-minute descriptions for areas my party MIGHT manage to get through to today that I hadn't thought of, it's always better to think up the information and not need it, than not give it any thought and then have your players bring it up.
On second thought, I’d like to slightly revise my earlier statement. I wouldn’t have a magic shop that sold magic items, but I could see perhaps a magic shop that sold vials, parchments, and many mundane spell components. Maybe even fancy ones.
I love the idea of characters building relationships with shop/innkeeepers. It is an easy adventure book to get the characters from where they are to where you want them to be.
I think depending on the players, they’ll also love having in-game ‘friends’ because it helps write their stories.
If your PCs sit down and chatter about wanting to go visit <insert brilliant shopkeeper name here> to see if her husband is feeling better, then I think you’re doing it right.
Dungeons are dark and stressful, and having people to go home to/remember is good for PCs.
If the characters want to interact with the NPCs, I agree with the idea of having 3 different shops (General, Weapons, & Magic). I don't think you should have separate shops for each trade, however. That can get confusing, and even hard-core roleplayers don't want to keep track of 10 different NPCs.
If they couldn't care less, just let them pick out the items from the Player's Handbook.
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"Well met, adventurer. You seem like a curious sort who enjoys the finer things. Permit me to thrust upon you my latest masterwork, years in the making." Volothamp Geddarm
I realize that not everyone is trying to make a realistic pseudo-medieval setting world - but the "there are 3 stores in town ... any town", doesn't come anywhere close to any level of realism.
Players don't need to keep track of all shopkeepers, everywhere.
Personally, I know some business owners by name and to talk to; some I don't.
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If your PC are travelling, establishing the existence of a Merchant Guild might be a good thing. Check out the anime "Spice and Wolf" for what I mean.
There will be different trade houses, and individual merchants are "licensed" under the guild family. I get the feeling the Background "Guild Artisan" or "Guild Merchant" as well as "Clan Crafter" is all about kind of thing.
The point is if the PCs are travelling through a 1 horse farming town, they wouldn't have that many different shops. There would be a smith, but s/he be more proficient in horse shoes and at best arrowheads and spear tips for the town militia and hunters. Swords are expensive: it's a lot of iron and requires a fair amount of skill a spear no so much. Travelling Merchants from a Trade House would probably supply the town with goods and the town would trade whatever they produce, mostly likely merchants would come on a regular schedule (just after harvest or if they produce a worked good on a regular basis).
Large towns would have more specialization and cities would have quite a few shops, but the PCs really only care about meeting and establishing a relationship with a few key people. It might take a while before they could meet the smith of actually has to skill to make full plate and commission a set. The fletcher that provides arrows is probably in middle class neighborhood, but the jeweler you sell gemstones too would be in the rich part.
That said if you establish the existence of Merchant Guilds, then you can even have mini-plots about the corporate espionage of the houses, and the PCs might get some kind of "token" of they shop with a merchant often enough. Sorta like a "buyers' card" that could be recognized as they travel around.
Also if you want to move away from the PCs having to carry cubic tons of gold, Merchants Guilds are a great replacement for banks. The PCs could have letters of mark from a guild as they guild "holds" the liquid cash. If you're playing a long term game then the PCs might even accrue interest!
These letters of mark could allow PCs with little liquid capital to spend the credit they have with a Guild House in other towns.
General items from the PHB can be found in just the simple general goods shop/blacksmith or whatever the party is looking for of that category in town. If the town does not have that shop thematically they are a little SoL there. I do keep traveling merchants in my game that hold onto magical items or have specialty items in the shop that are on display as a center piece big ticket item. When my campaign first started I had a few caravans at the starting town to watch some national event and sense then have brought them back either with their own personal shop, or with a chain of stores in each town that sells items they are used to on the more magical side of things. I find the traveling shopkeeper to be more fun especially if they have a home base of operations the player knows about. Keeps that vendor in the game so you can build a character for them.
I hope that this reply bumps this thread and I get some responses...
For a new-ish DM (me), markets/marketplaces are a real struggle.
There is really great advice above and the donjon and dndspeak links are great. However, the struggle that I am having is that I don't have 20 years experience of DMing DnD games and I don't have an excellent index of market value for items in my brain for immediate recall.
It's not great to have a PC say, "I'd like to go shopping" and not having a shop prepared for what they are looking for. Yes, the mundane items are in the PHB and I could have those printed out or links open but flipping through those lists while improving an NPC shopkeep while they shop in real time at the table is difficult/tedious/probably not fun. The Matt Mercer Effect is real and the fact that he can improv any merchant interaction with an interesting NPC AND have a command of the market value of everything is...not possible without a lot of XP behind the screen. Maybe I'll get there someday but it's tough right now.
Are there links out there to prefabricated shops with costs? The closest thing that I've been able to find is The One Loot Table to Rule Them All which is great but is really more about loot in game environments and not a shop/market:
Unless you have a story reason for it, don’t bother with it. Do you really need to RP someone buying 50’ of rope from a general store? A bartender, sure. But I think people IRL are more likely to try and get to know a bartender than, say, someone who works at Target, and that would likely carry over. (No offense, some lovely people at Target, but the shopping experience isn’t really conducive to befriending the workers, where bartenders can give you free drinks.) Now there might be some shops where you want to let the PC have a relationship. A fighter might make friends with the blacksmith who fixes his armor. A wizard might get to know the guy who sells him components, etc. But by no means do you need to. I find it best to just say, “you’re in town, buy what you want” and then get back to the actual adventuring.
Every village, town.. etc I make has it's own tavern/inn, blacksmith, alchemy, armor, general stores with NPCs which all have their own backstories and voices.
Do they all get used? Nope. But I like to have them there just in case. Especially when some of those NPCs might just have some interesting info regarding rumors.
Plus actually getting the players walking the town can give the DM opportunities to mess with them for fun.
There's nothing wrong with just saying players bought their items and it cost them x gold and took x days.
If they want to role play the shopping, I role play the shopping. If they don’t then I don’t.
I also don’t have “Magic Shoppes” in my campaign world. High magic like that is no longer manufactured on my world. I have “Brokers” like magic item pawn shops where adventurers can buy/sell magical equipment.
I should have put more emphasis on the Matt Mercer Effect as my reasoning. All of my players love CR and I aspire to that level of game (and fail but I know I'll never get there). In CR, the players can walk up to any random guard and strike up a conversation and MM has a name, voice and story on the fly. When my players roll up to an NPC, I'm on the spot because they have seen hours and hours of a DM improv-ing this stuff with amazing skill.
I'm also an architect and I'm building this game from scratch from a regional map that I found online and just let my imagination run wild. In my scenario, this small city (city by DnD definition) is "near" the coast and is a trade city for other regions of the world. Conveniently, on the enlarged city map there is an open town square/piazza and I wanted to establish that this city is a trading center due to its proximity to the coast so I created a bustling market in the square for story and visual impact but I didn't have time to prep a lot of market content.
Before you rip the heck out of me, this party started the game at Level 3, and I haven't been loading them up with money/loot so I (stupidly) figured that they wouldn't want to drop a lot of money on items at the marketplace and that it could just be eyewash/background for the game. Nope, I made it too attractive apparently and they were strolling around buying textiles to have tailoring done! The uh, "textile vendor" was...flailing to establish costs for their wares. I was panicking and looking at the DM screen because it has the little section in the upper right for Food, Drink & Lodgings so I could sort of gauge how much a yard of fine fabric would cost relative to a bottle of wine! It turned out being fun RP but man was that stressful.
Mainly this is a cautionary tale for newer DM's. Don't create an attractive/interesting place for the sake of story and have no content prepared for it. Also, spend some time deciding on how much "magic" you are going to have in your game. Are alchemists (potions), enchanters (magic items) and arcanists (identify spell, etc) commonplace or rare? Have a vendor/list of items and cost ready to go as suggested above even if you don't use them. As for how to handle the more common items, the suggestions above are solid. I would only add that you should have an idea as to whether or not it's worth the time to RP all of these interactions or gloss over them and just have the PC look up the cost for stuff in the PHB and subtract it from their money (with maybe some thought as to whether there is a premium above and beyond the costs in PHB or maybe prices are lower for some reason).
The party has just finished questing and they are ready to spend their hard-earned coin. Luckily, they have reached a big city and are ready for a shopping trip. How do you go about roleplaying this? Do you find it worthwhile to roleplay every transaction, including mundane objects like sacks of flower and ball bearings, or do you just tell the players to look through the player's handbook and buy things according to the price listed? Is there a middle ground? If so, how do you achieve this balance? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I would also like to know how you categorize shops when creating your own. The classifications which spring to my mind are
1. General Shops- for mundane items which the average civilian might buy
2. Magic Shops- which sell magic items, scrolls, and other wizarding necessities
3. Weapon Shops- to which sell stabby things
Is there anything I'm missing? Would you separate my classifications even further? (e.g. have the potion shop be its own separate location)
I hit up Ye Olde Magick Shoppe generator at https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic/shop.html for names and descriptions unless I feel like making my own shops and shopkeepers.
If the adventurers find themselves in a city of reasonable size, there will be a temple to buy a few healing potions (typically 50gp unless there's an RP reason for markup)and probably an academy or a sage who can cast identify on magic items for a small donation. Generally speaking, no shopkeepers in my campaign are going to have magic items for sale (except for the aforementioned potions). Mundane items, weapons, and armor are typically in easy supply and I generally charge what the PHB suggests and players can sell the stuff they find for half of that.
I wouldn't say I run a low magic campaign, but I treat magic items as rare and special things that would fetch an extremely high price in the rare event that one were to go on sale to the public. A rich local citizen of that town would snatch it up long before any adventurer would ever lay eyes on it. The flip side of this is that if players come across even mundane magic items they don't want, they will have no trouble finding buyers to pay top dollar for them.
As for categorizing shops in your second post, I have General stores, Blacksmiths (weapons and armor), and places that provide some mundane and magical services like blessings, healing, and selling of healing potions. If I were ever to have a magic shop, it would be an exception for a very specific reason. Also, since organized crime plays a fairly heavy role in my campaign, most medium-sized towns and all cities would have a few shops that have a reputation for dealing in stolen goods, although they would not pay the players as well unless they had a "secret handshake" or something like that. Those shops would have the really unusual (fun) stuff. Maybe a magic item there if the situation was right.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I've never gotten that detailed in shopping trips.
I've described the open markets in the city, much like renaissance era town markets - or your local farmer's market - but that's more scene setting and atmosphere.
The level of RP detail is usually determined by the player, "I want to buy X" is usually met with "OK, you find a small shop just off the main market, which specializes in ....", followed by a short description. If they player responds along the lines of "OK, I'll buy one, how much will that set me back?", that's pretty much the end of it. If the player decides to RP the scene "OK, I'll open the door and go in ....", then I'll play it out in further detail, whip up a shopkeeper NPC on the fly, or pull one out of "central casting", and have an interaction with the player.
Whether or not a shop that sells "X" is available, is answered on the fly - "would a town of this size likely have a shop that sold X?": clothing, farm tools, food - no problem; Parchment and bookbinding materials - towns possibly, cities yes, villages unlikely; weapons - city yes, off the shelf, towns and villages can be commissioned from the local blacksmith, will take time. If I determine that such a place does exist in the town, I'll make notes and make sure it's part of the town moving forward, including its NPC proprietor, if the PCs interacted with them.
I definitely am playing a low magic setting. Magic items simply are not for sale on the open market. All are unique, prized, and if sold by the party, treated like you'd see a great master painting sold in modern times. Mundane items useful to Wizards ( parchment and ink ) are available from the suppliers to their mundane consumers. Mystical knowledge is only available from other practitioners, usually in exchange for other knowledge, or favors - sometime, but seldom, for cash. Healing is available in shrines or temples - but healing potions per se' don't exist and can't be bought off the shelf ( however I've created a custom version of cure wounds which has a ritual version which consumes expensive material components, while the non-ritual version does not. It's like having healing potions that can only be administered by the Cleric ).
I'm not sure the low magic peculiarities of my campaign world are of use to you, however.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I think the main question to ask if you want to just get an itemized list or not is a simple question.
"How does this improve the story?"
Game session are finite and if you roleplay buying rations, and rope, and some arrows, etc.... that could take an entire session.
The question is if you role-play that out, will it improve your game? If the answer is "yes" then do it, if the answer is "no" don't.
If you don't think it will improve the game, but you want a middle ground. Describe the town. Describe how the people interact on the street as they do their shopping, off the list. Is the town lively? Do people look happy? are there street entertainers? do people look upon the party with suspicion and avoid strangers? is it hot or cold? Does the smell of spices or manure scent the air?
This is a good middle ground because it invests the town with flavor without taking up a lot of time. You can describe how an interaction goes without necessarily role playing it, but if a player suddenly wants to jump in and ask question, great.
This is very different if your players are travelling through a location or if the location itself is a centerpiece.
I was a player in a game and we were travelers who just hit a big city after some adventures in a hamlet or two.
The GM was having us role player every last interaction. At first, I found it a bit tedious but I personally thought the game would be about our greater adventures as we made our own mercenary band, and it was. It was also about the city itself. The time we took interacting with the different NPCs became the story.
Eventually one of the party members asked the local fletcher out on a date, she accepted. Turns out she was replaced with an assassin, we had a bounty on our heads, and so the rest of us had to rescue him from his "murder-date". Thankfully bad guys like to monologue so we got there in time!
The Blacksmith of the town is still as stingy #%*@! that over charges and under pays, but he's the only good smith in the not rich area. We knew the names of the gem dealers and enchanter.
I as the player learned to appreciate the style, but it took time to see "How does this improve the story?".
The amount of time that I invest for shopping descriptions tends to be determined by how much time the characters will, probably, be spending in the settlement. For settlements where the players will be around for an extended period of time I tend to put additional detail into the shops and shopkeepers, providing names for both with some additional descriptive details in advance. Although when it comes to super mundane purchases in these settings I will usually have them begin an initial discussion with the shopkeeper before out-of-character discussing with the players what they want to determine the price, then allowing a bit of post-purchase banter before they depart. Of course, I also often have my shopkeepers be involved with (or red herrings) for the various quests that the players might find in the setting, so it helps flesh them out for those 'quest based' potential interactions.
If they are planning on doing shopping in a bunch of different shops you can tailor the amounts of interaction for different shops based on those that the characters (and your plot) would benefit the most from.
With regards to different shop classifications the larger the settlement the more specialized shops it can manage to support. In a major city you can have shops for item times (tailor, glassblower, art sellers, etc.). I tend to use blacksmiths for all your combat equipment (weapons and armour) as well as the other metal gear. For healing potions I usually lump those either with the local temples, or an apothecary that also generates numerous other tinctures and tonics. For magic items you could have a dedicated Arcanist shop, although based on the expensive nature and unwanted attention that magic items often have it would also want to have excellent security measures (using magic for these defenses as well). Most magic items they make would probably be to order, due to the investment required for making them, although they might have some of the most widely useful items already prepared for sale (Bag of Holding, protective cloaks or jewelry, maybe a +1 weapon, shield, or suit of armour).
It's definitely a "read the room" sort of situation, imho!
I was in a game where the Wizard needed to do research and buy stuff but the Player obviously didn't WANT to have to actually DO that part, and felt a little uncomfortable when the DM focused attention on it. But, in that same quest, when I asked if I could do some shopping stuff, the DM just had me send them an email for the next session and just told me to "calculate the cost out of your gold and we'll just say your shopping was a success." I would have LIKED to meet some shopkeeps and done some dealing, but someone else already set the precedent for it not being something to "play".
I'd say there's already REALLY good advice in here for how to handle setting/merch availability, that I'll definitely be using on top of my own learning-as-I-go stuff. In closing, as I sit here typing up last-minute descriptions for areas my party MIGHT manage to get through to today that I hadn't thought of, it's always better to think up the information and not need it, than not give it any thought and then have your players bring it up.
On second thought, I’d like to slightly revise my earlier statement. I wouldn’t have a magic shop that sold magic items, but I could see perhaps a magic shop that sold vials, parchments, and many mundane spell components. Maybe even fancy ones.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I love the idea of characters building relationships with shop/innkeeepers. It is an easy adventure book to get the characters from where they are to where you want them to be.
I think depending on the players, they’ll also love having in-game ‘friends’ because it helps write their stories.
If your PCs sit down and chatter about wanting to go visit <insert brilliant shopkeeper name here> to see if her husband is feeling better, then I think you’re doing it right.
Dungeons are dark and stressful, and having people to go home to/remember is good for PCs.
*avatar by @ZomgDae on Twitter*
If the characters want to interact with the NPCs, I agree with the idea of having 3 different shops (General, Weapons, & Magic). I don't think you should have separate shops for each trade, however. That can get confusing, and even hard-core roleplayers don't want to keep track of 10 different NPCs.
If they couldn't care less, just let them pick out the items from the Player's Handbook.
"Well met, adventurer. You seem like a curious sort who enjoys the finer things. Permit me to thrust upon you my latest masterwork, years in the making." Volothamp Geddarm
I realize that not everyone is trying to make a realistic pseudo-medieval setting world - but the "there are 3 stores in town ... any town", doesn't come anywhere close to any level of realism.
Players don't need to keep track of all shopkeepers, everywhere.
Personally, I know some business owners by name and to talk to; some I don't.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
If your PC are travelling, establishing the existence of a Merchant Guild might be a good thing.
Check out the anime "Spice and Wolf" for what I mean.
There will be different trade houses, and individual merchants are "licensed" under the guild family. I get the feeling the Background "Guild Artisan" or "Guild Merchant" as well as "Clan Crafter" is all about kind of thing.
The point is if the PCs are travelling through a 1 horse farming town, they wouldn't have that many different shops. There would be a smith, but s/he be more proficient in horse shoes and at best arrowheads and spear tips for the town militia and hunters. Swords are expensive: it's a lot of iron and requires a fair amount of skill a spear no so much.
Travelling Merchants from a Trade House would probably supply the town with goods and the town would trade whatever they produce, mostly likely merchants would come on a regular schedule (just after harvest or if they produce a worked good on a regular basis).
Large towns would have more specialization and cities would have quite a few shops, but the PCs really only care about meeting and establishing a relationship with a few key people. It might take a while before they could meet the smith of actually has to skill to make full plate and commission a set.
The fletcher that provides arrows is probably in middle class neighborhood, but the jeweler you sell gemstones too would be in the rich part.
That said if you establish the existence of Merchant Guilds, then you can even have mini-plots about the corporate espionage of the houses, and the PCs might get some kind of "token" of they shop with a merchant often enough. Sorta like a "buyers' card" that could be recognized as they travel around.
Also if you want to move away from the PCs having to carry cubic tons of gold, Merchants Guilds are a great replacement for banks. The PCs could have letters of mark from a guild as they guild "holds" the liquid cash. If you're playing a long term game then the PCs might even accrue interest!
These letters of mark could allow PCs with little liquid capital to spend the credit they have with a Guild House in other towns.
General items from the PHB can be found in just the simple general goods shop/blacksmith or whatever the party is looking for of that category in town. If the town does not have that shop thematically they are a little SoL there. I do keep traveling merchants in my game that hold onto magical items or have specialty items in the shop that are on display as a center piece big ticket item. When my campaign first started I had a few caravans at the starting town to watch some national event and sense then have brought them back either with their own personal shop, or with a chain of stores in each town that sells items they are used to on the more magical side of things. I find the traveling shopkeeper to be more fun especially if they have a home base of operations the player knows about. Keeps that vendor in the game so you can build a character for them.
I hope that this reply bumps this thread and I get some responses...
For a new-ish DM (me), markets/marketplaces are a real struggle.
There is really great advice above and the donjon and dndspeak links are great. However, the struggle that I am having is that I don't have 20 years experience of DMing DnD games and I don't have an excellent index of market value for items in my brain for immediate recall.
It's not great to have a PC say, "I'd like to go shopping" and not having a shop prepared for what they are looking for. Yes, the mundane items are in the PHB and I could have those printed out or links open but flipping through those lists while improving an NPC shopkeep while they shop in real time at the table is difficult/tedious/probably not fun. The Matt Mercer Effect is real and the fact that he can improv any merchant interaction with an interesting NPC AND have a command of the market value of everything is...not possible without a lot of XP behind the screen. Maybe I'll get there someday but it's tough right now.
Are there links out there to prefabricated shops with costs? The closest thing that I've been able to find is The One Loot Table to Rule Them All which is great but is really more about loot in game environments and not a shop/market:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lIKwMVNbJLTE8b5iHbhEMFef8o7WuVsy1s0-I0k3ohA/edit#gid=0
Any thoughts/links/etc are appreciated.
Unless you have a story reason for it, don’t bother with it. Do you really need to RP someone buying 50’ of rope from a general store? A bartender, sure. But I think people IRL are more likely to try and get to know a bartender than, say, someone who works at Target, and that would likely carry over. (No offense, some lovely people at Target, but the shopping experience isn’t really conducive to befriending the workers, where bartenders can give you free drinks.)
Now there might be some shops where you want to let the PC have a relationship. A fighter might make friends with the blacksmith who fixes his armor. A wizard might get to know the guy who sells him components, etc. But by no means do you need to. I find it best to just say, “you’re in town, buy what you want” and then get back to the actual adventuring.
Every village, town.. etc I make has it's own tavern/inn, blacksmith, alchemy, armor, general stores with NPCs which all have their own backstories and voices.
Do they all get used? Nope. But I like to have them there just in case. Especially when some of those NPCs might just have some interesting info regarding rumors.
Plus actually getting the players walking the town can give the DM opportunities to mess with them for fun.
There's nothing wrong with just saying players bought their items and it cost them x gold and took x days.
If they want to role play the shopping, I role play the shopping. If they don’t then I don’t.
I also don’t have “Magic Shoppes” in my campaign world. High magic like that is no longer manufactured on my world. I have “Brokers” like magic item pawn shops where adventurers can buy/sell magical equipment.
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Thanks! Y'all are the best.
I should have put more emphasis on the Matt Mercer Effect as my reasoning. All of my players love CR and I aspire to that level of game (and fail but I know I'll never get there). In CR, the players can walk up to any random guard and strike up a conversation and MM has a name, voice and story on the fly. When my players roll up to an NPC, I'm on the spot because they have seen hours and hours of a DM improv-ing this stuff with amazing skill.
I'm also an architect and I'm building this game from scratch from a regional map that I found online and just let my imagination run wild. In my scenario, this small city (city by DnD definition) is "near" the coast and is a trade city for other regions of the world. Conveniently, on the enlarged city map there is an open town square/piazza and I wanted to establish that this city is a trading center due to its proximity to the coast so I created a bustling market in the square for story and visual impact but I didn't have time to prep a lot of market content.
Before you rip the heck out of me, this party started the game at Level 3, and I haven't been loading them up with money/loot so I (stupidly) figured that they wouldn't want to drop a lot of money on items at the marketplace and that it could just be eyewash/background for the game. Nope, I made it too attractive apparently and they were strolling around buying textiles to have tailoring done! The uh, "textile vendor" was...flailing to establish costs for their wares. I was panicking and looking at the DM screen because it has the little section in the upper right for Food, Drink & Lodgings so I could sort of gauge how much a yard of fine fabric would cost relative to a bottle of wine! It turned out being fun RP but man was that stressful.
Mainly this is a cautionary tale for newer DM's. Don't create an attractive/interesting place for the sake of story and have no content prepared for it. Also, spend some time deciding on how much "magic" you are going to have in your game. Are alchemists (potions), enchanters (magic items) and arcanists (identify spell, etc) commonplace or rare? Have a vendor/list of items and cost ready to go as suggested above even if you don't use them. As for how to handle the more common items, the suggestions above are solid. I would only add that you should have an idea as to whether or not it's worth the time to RP all of these interactions or gloss over them and just have the PC look up the cost for stuff in the PHB and subtract it from their money (with maybe some thought as to whether there is a premium above and beyond the costs in PHB or maybe prices are lower for some reason).
Matt Mercer cheats. He keeps a cheat sheet of NPCs handy just in case he needs them. You can do it too.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
"Cheats"...ha! I know he has a list there and I do to but a voice and reasonable pricing of items so the players can RP with vendors is...next level.