One of the most common situations in a tabletop game is the shopping trip. You know it well: your players have saved up enough wealth to reward themselves, and it's time to stock up on gear. But how do you run the shopping trip so that your game continues smoothly? That takes some practice, but this guide will set you on the right path to be able to provide an enjoyable shopping experience for your players--and even for you.
The following is a guide for shopping trips and how to give your players what they're looking for. Remember that if you want information about what to offer in marketplaces or how to describe items for variety, I have you covered. Read on for the full guide to stewarding a shopping trip.
The first thing you're going to need to decide is that presentation method. You have two main options, which we can balance against each other to find the right middle ground. The two options are either providing a shop inventory or figuring out what the players want and modeling your responses after that. Both methods are relatively easy. But let's start with figuring out which method to use as a primary model for what the players would most benefit from.
The easiest way to answer this question is by asking the players a question of your own. It's a simple question, and you may well roll your eyes when you read it: "Are you looking for something in particular, or are you just browsing?" Yes indeed, this simple question is almost always enough to figure out what you need to do as GM. Until your players' actions tell you otherwise, believe what your players are saying. On the other hand, if your players say they're just browsing but seem only interested in one specific idea, it's a good idea to shift gears. We don't always know exactly what we want, and that's sometimes true of this question as well. But in general, this question should tell you what you need to know.
Let's dive into both of the styles of shopping trip. Remember that the following approaches can and should be combined to some extent for the best effect; these definitions and processes only help us to understand the big ideas involved here.
Looking for Something in Particular
Your players say that they want a specific thing. Perhaps it's an improved weapon, a magical item, or some quest item. What it is matters because it determines where the item would be and how hard it will be to find. But at the same time, shopping for groceries and shopping for a new outfit are much more similar activities than they are different in the scheme of things; what I mean is that in general, most of your shopping experiences are going to be pretty similar: you go to a shop, you identify a desired item, you haggle about the price, and the deal is done. This is an important idea to keep in mind because it makes any shopping trip pretty approachable.
If your players are looking for something specific, I recommend employing an idea that can be very helpful in tabletop games. Players don't know everything about your world--no matter how much they have experienced and read about your world, they will not have your understanding as GM. This means in practice that many players will be at a total loss for accomplishing something in the gameworld without help. But an experienced and battle-hardened fighter is almost certainly likely to know how to appraise and shop for weaponry and armor. Why does this matter? Players don't always know how to seek out the things that their characters would certainly know. So if a player character is looking for a specific item while shopping, I assume that if it's something that the character would likely know how to do, I can simply tell the player that they automatically succeed on finding it. In practice, that would look like this:
Player: I want to go shopping.
GM: Are you looking for something specific, or just looking?
Player: I want to find a better longsword.
GM: Because you know the look of an upscale smithy, you are able to locate a high-quality smith within a few minutes.
See how this can help speed through some of the less fun parts of the game? There's no scenes of wandering around town looking for a shop, nor do we suggest that there's only one smith in town for convenience's sake. And with only two sentences from each person involved, we've moved from a desire to shop all the way to arriving at a suitable shop.
Finding the shop is the first step. The next is how we handle presenting the inventory. This follows the same general principle of our first step: we're going to use the players' responses to guide our descriptions of items. So since our player(s) chose to look for something in particular, we can narrow the scope of our descriptions to only things that match what the player(s) decided on. Once the player is talking to the shopkeeper, we're going to basically repeat the first step: we're going to ask a more specific question this time, but the idea is the same. This time, though, the question comes from the shopkeeper. Have them ask something like, "What specifically are you looking for?"
Once you have the answer to that question, you can start describing inventory. Your descriptions might come from either of the above links to marketplace resources, or you might decide to improvise the shop inventory like I do. If improvising inventory sounds too daunting, consider this: when I was writing the descriptions of items for the varied description article, I would simply note three physical characteristics of it. For example, a longsword would be described by the shape of its blade, the feel of the hilt, and a visual detail such as design. The resulting description is a pretty unique sword. What this means in practice is, if you can name a few minor details about an item like I do and end up with a very satisfying experience for the player.
This gets into an idea about items that I think is overlooked often. The descriptions of items that I'm suggesting is not just meant to make shopping more interesting. A variety of items also means that the player has more choices available to them in the gameworld, both strengthening their tie to the gameworld and making them feel more emotionally attached to their new item. Consider this: would a player be more likely to feel attached to a dagger which is described as dull gray and shaped like a dagger normally is, or a black obsidian dagger with a curved blade and a grim reaper engraved in the handle? You can see that these descriptions are going to do more than make shopping colorful.
Now we're getting into the actual offering of inventory. I generally say that there's a nice guideline for how to go about this step: if you have one player who's looking for one particular item, I recommend offering three different examples of any given item; meanwhile, if you have more than one player looking for the same specific type of item (two or three players searching for daggers, for instance), I recommend offering five different examples of the same item. You could conceivably go beyond this if it fit your needs, but five distinct options for a single item can be a tall order. Let's discuss presenting the players with their options. Let's return to our example dialogue from before and continue it:
Player: I want to find a better longsword.
GM: Because you know the look of an upscale smithy, you are able to locate a high-quality smith within a few minutes. It is called Grognak's Smithy, and an aged orc is hammering on an anvil. He sees you and asks, "What are you looking for today?"
Player: I want a powerful longsword.
[Note: This answer does not help you as GM to provide a good experience, so ask for clarification.]
GM: The orc stops hammering. "What do you have in mind? Something heavy? Manueverable? Decorative?"
[Note: Providing suggestions like this can help players figure out what they really want.]
Player: I want a big, heavy longsword that looks cool.
GM: "I've got a few things like that. Here's a nice arcing sword with a lightning bolt etched into the wooden hilt. This one is pretty heavy, new alloy steel with a tree on the blade. And this one's thick blade, forged to have dark blue steel--and there's a small crystal in the pommel."
[Note: It's likely that the player now has more questions about the individual longswords we've described. Answer them to the best of your ability and allow the player to guide the scene to the extent you can.]
From here, things are relatively simple. The player has a list of items that match their description pretty closely to choose from. They may select one of these items, in which case you've moved past that part of the shopping trip. Then, they may decide that none of the provided options are what they're looking for. In that case, you'll either repeat the shopping trip with another vendor (trying to provide an inventory that the player actually wants this time around), or you'll explain that there are no other vendors of this sort in this settlement. Be careful, though. There are really only three good reasons that a settlement has no appropriate vendors: 1 - the settlement is too small for a specialist to succeed there, 2 - the industry the player is shopping in is exceedingly rare, or 3 - the item the player is trying to shop for would break your game, and you're delaying or preventing that. Beyond this, I really do recommend offering as many shops as it takes to get your players what they're looking for (at least, within reason--shopping for two hours can be a bit of a drag).
The last step is haggling, and that's very much up to you. I recommend thinking about your worldbuilding. What's the world economy like? Are people offering fair prices? How honest or dishonest is this particular vendor? How specialized is the item? I think people should remember in this step that the NPC who's selling things doesn't have to survive in the campaign with as much money as possible; allow your players to really negotiate when it makes sense to.
This handles the shopping process for when players know what they're looking for. But just as often for some groups, there will be aimless shopping. Read on for the opposite approach.
Browsing
Your players simply want to see what's available in the marketplace without a particular aim. In order to give them the experience that they're looking for, we need to offer a broad range of options. That can most easily be accomplished by asking a few questions to narrow the scope by a bit--just enough to make the GM's job easier. The operant question here is, "What kind of things are you looking for?" or in worst case scenarios, "What kind of things are you not looking for?" These questions can help us know what to offer and what to skip to get through shopping painlessly.
Let's return to the sample dialogue idea we worked with above. Here's a sample exchange between the GM and the players with a good player answer:
Player: I want to go shopping.
GM: Are you looking for something specific, or just looking?
Player: Just looking.
GM: Anything in particular you'd like to look at?
Player: Armor, weapons, something magic--something that would make me better in combat.
Now we have a range of items to consider: things that would improve combat. Alternatively, if the player had less of an idea:
Player: I want to go shopping.
GM: Are you looking for something specific, or just looking?
Player: Just looking.
GM: Anything in particular you'd like to look at?
Player: Not really. I just want to see what's out there.
GM: Is there anything you're not interested in? Restaurants, street food vendors, bookstores?
Player: I don't want, like, everyday items. I want something interesting.
Now we have some guidelines. That's really the process of this first step. We ask our players what they're looking for, and they say, "just browsing," but we still need to narrow the scope. That's the point here: to figure out what types of items we could offer and still interest the players. This saves us from spending several minutes establishing an oddities shop only to find out that the players are really more interested in buying mounts. Now that we have a general sense of what to offer or not offer, let's move to the next step.
Now we're going to guess at things that the players might like, and then based on their reactions, we're going to offer more things that might be what they're looking for. Think of it like sculpting something you can't see; instead, you have to refine by intuition based on your player's reactions. If your players are friends, this step will be easier--you likely know what your friends think is cool and uncool. As a for instance, when I was running my National Treasure-inspired campaign, I had my players on a shopping trip, and a rogue wanted to find a cool new rogue-like thing to have. Knowing that the character was as grimdark as possible and that the player found gothic things cool, I offered (among other things) a black dagger with a wicked curved blade and a huge skull on the hilt. He snapped it up and used it to great effect in the rest of the campaign. I want to point out here that I spent a few minutes describing daggers and other rogue gear to the player, but he spent the entire rest of the campaign geeking out over his cool dagger. A little investment in shopping can pay off greatly.
So how do you develop an entire shop inventory on the spot when players are shopping? With a modification of the trick we've used so far: more clarifying questions. Let's use the broadest possible example to illustrate this point: the general store. Of all shops in the classic tabletop universe, the general store is the most diverse in terms of offerings and a standby for adventurers of all stripes. But how would you begin to describe everything in the shop? By asking about categories of things. Rather than saying, "Would you like to buy hemp rope? Elven rope? Silk rope? A lock? A simple lock? A fine lock?", you can ask about categories: "Do you want weapons? Adventuring gear? Tools?" Then, after they've answered, refine again. Let's use an example dialogue to illustrate this:
GM: You enter the general store. A stooped halfling woman is behind the counter. She greets you and returns to reading a small book. Around you are dozens of useful items. Do you want weapons? Adventuring gear? Tools?
Player: I'm interested in the gear. What do they have?
GM: They have a selection of ropes, locks, manacles, lanterns, camping gear, and whetstones. What would you like to look at?
Player: Hmm. I want to see the lanterns.
GM: They have a few hooded lanterns, some bullseye lanterns, and a couple of fog-cutters. Are any of those of interest to you?
Player: What do the bullseye lanterns look like?
GM: One of the is shaped like a sphere on a pedestal and is polished steel. Another is shaped like a pyramid and has a wider scope than normal. The last one is rectangular with an engraved symbol of Pelor on the back.
Player: I want the pyramid one.
Obviously, this takes more time and effort than the first approach, where players know what they're looking for at the beginning. If you think about it, this step I've just described is helping the player to decide what it is that they really want--we're just asking questions to help narrow things down for them. But you can see how asking just a few guiding questions moved the player from not knowing what they wanted to buying an item that they think is cool.
Now, I want to address a possible critique at this point. I'm sure that there are some GMs who would listen to this advice and laugh. "Why bother giving multiple descriptions of a lantern? All bullseye lanterns function the same way." But I would use the same fact to make my own case: if all lanterns are going to function the same, why not have the player using the version of that lantern that makes them happy? Adding some fun description to items really ramps the game up for players in a way that's hard to keep in mind as GM at all times.
So now we've helped our players go from not knowing what they want to buying a thing they like. Following this, we would haggle as described above. Now what? Well, the thing about browsing shopping trips is that because they lack a specific goal (like finding a buying a specific item), there is no clear end. Browsing players might shop more or less indefinitely--trust me, I've seen it happen multiple times. That's why I recommend really committing yourself to a certain mindset.
That mindset is this: remember that players love shopping. I remember my years as a player being marked by the cool things I was able to obtain; I also remember being frustrated by GMs who simply said, "You bought a dagger? It's a dagger," and added nothing more. How am I supposed to get excited about a blank piece of metal when I could be terrorizing the landscape with a spiked dagger covered in spiderweb designs? So when your players are deadset on a long shopping trip, and you're tired to describing inanimate objects to them, remember that the players are almost certainly enjoying themselves (especially if you've followed these steps). Give them room to enjoy it.
The flip side of this is that players don't necessarily realize it's difficult for you as GM to handle shopping trips. For the many, many players who have never GMed a game, shopping might seem like a simple matter of reading out of the Player's Handbook. They don't know that you're using all your brainpower to stay afloat during these scenes. I've allowed myself to feel resentful before. I remember that years ago, I was running a game and had a very exciting plot twist planned for the next session. When the session came, my players spent the whole session shopping and breaking minor laws, and I had to delay the twist until the following week. I remember being frustrated--why would my players choose looking at items over my story?
But that was never the case. At the time I was running that game, my party was 80% new players and 20% veterans of goofy antics campaigns, which is to say that no one at the table but me knew what my experience was as GM. As much as I wanted at the time to feel like my players were knowingly picking a course of action that was not enjoyable for me, I came to recognize that they simply didn't realize shopping for a long time didn't appeal to me. That's why I really recommend letting go of any frustrations you have about running shopping trips. It's not the most engaging thing as a GM, but it really does matter to the players, and I think that regular GMs can forget that.
Some final things about shopping trips to keep in mind:
- A good deal of many tabletop games revolves around the amassing of wealth. The point of this exercise is to allow the players to trade their hard-earned treasure for something that will allow them to progress. This is the fundamental principle of a role-playing game on some level. Even if you don't enjoy shopping trips, be sure to allow your players occasional trips so that they can utilize the game as it was designed.
- Not all shopkeepers are identical. As easy as it is to make shopkeepers one-note and simplistic, a shopping trip can be greatly spiced up with interesting shopkeepers. Consider complicating your shop scenes with details like NPC customers trying to steal, a shopkeeper in the middle of a nervous breakdown, or a shopkeeper who is so proud of their wares that they are hesitant to sell them--anything you can dream up can make the experience more interesting.
- You're not required to satisfy your players' shopping desires. Sometimes players set out to find things that would break the game or story; other times, players want something that just couldn't exist in your gameworld. It's okay to tell them out of game that they won't find it or to play out a few fruitless attempts to find it, but don't feel bad for not allowing players to have what they want. After all, you can turn a highly desired item into a quest reward, which would be much more satisfying than simply buying it.
- Keep in mind that your descriptions of items that are available in shops need to not fundamentally change the nature of the item. For instance, I played with the shape of the lanterns in the sample dialogue above, but I made sure to not add anything that would make the lantern function differently. All three options are still bullseye lanterns. This is especially important with weapons. A dagger might have a spike and a serrated blade, but unless you've specified that it is more powerful than an average dagger, the cosmetic differences are just that: cosmetic only.
- Pricing items is one of my greatest challenges as a GM. Balancing an economy is very tricky, and deciding on the prices of even common items can be a challenge that even the Player's Handbook won't magically solve for us. I recommend checking an official source for a reference if you're feeling uncertain or your own reference information if you're homebrewing. As mentioned above, funds in the game are more important than simply being an in-game currency; it's also the tool that handles character power via items. It's worth taking the extra few seconds to check if you think it's a big purchase or a particularly important one.
- There are so many details that the GM and the players must keep in mind in a tabletop game that many details will be forgotten as a natural course of the game. But we don't need to despair; we can fight back with simple tools. When it comes to shopping, I tell my players to keep a list of things that they want from shops on their character sheets so that they don't forget about anything when they get back to town. This is another expression of the above idea of characters having an easy time with something that's hard for players to do--remembering a vital item you need is something the character would be able to do even if a player struggles with it.
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