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View Full Version : Merchants, Shopkeeps, and Salesmen oh my!



Bedivere
2014-07-31, 02:15 PM
Particularly strange or interesting ones. Nobody wants to hear about Tony's Taco Shop, unless Tony is psychic too or something.

I was brainstorming ideas for a strange merchant in one of my campaigns. Thus far he's appeared once, and he's offered the party "a cheat" in exchange for a body part. In that particular instance he was going to ferry them through territory run by a bunch of gangs in exchange for one of the player's ear. They happily declined as they were more than willing to ground pound some unethical gangers. The merchant as I figured was going to use the ear to make clones of the players, or something. But I don't want to gouge my players of many body parts, though we do have a PC who currently isn't using their eyes :smallcool:.

So that got me thinking about merchants that other DMs or players have made/encountered in their games. What unique merchants have you discovered in your travels? What goods/services did they offer? What made them special? Did they use any special currencies or OOC mechanics?

I'm curious to know because every game has merchants, almost every player needs to buy things right? So surely there have been some AWESOME shopkeeps and barkeeps and cobblers and tanners and armorsmiths and jewelers and haberdashers and and and

Fumble Jack
2014-07-31, 02:57 PM
Hmm in a recent game I had a rather obsessive Gnome named Ghint with an eccentrics and magic item shop. Most of what he sold was junk or trash he randomly made up history to and even had the Pc's hunt down one of these pieces of not quite treasure. Though he did reward them nicely with some of the actual magical items he did have.

There was a recurring one in my white wolf, nwod games, Crazy Hakiko's guns, tech and fertilizer. The name and latter part of the options was borrowed and paraphrased from a merchant that sold similar in Disney's Aladdin. I think a guard fell into his supply. Anyway my version was a mage a bit out of his gourd. He would name outrageous prices or bizarre ones but could be negotiated down easily.

Bedivere
2014-07-31, 03:28 PM
Hmm in a recent game I had a rather obsessive Gnome named Ghint with an eccentrics and magic item shop. Most of what he sold was junk or trash he randomly made up history to and even had the Pc's hunt down one of these pieces of not quite treasure. Though he did reward them nicely with some of the actual magical items he did have.

There was a recurring one in my white wolf, nwod games, Crazy Hakiko's guns, tech and fertilizer. The name and latter part of the options was borrowed and paraphrased from a merchant that sold similar in Disney's Aladdin. I think a guard fell into his supply. Anyway my version was a mage a bit out of his gourd. He would name outrageous prices or bizarre ones but could be negotiated down easily.

Both excellent examples! The Gnome shopkeep who sells a mixture of garbage and magic treasure is brilliant, and I especially like the idea of a quest coming from him. It's cool when set pieces the party takes for granted end up becoming an important piece of an adventure.

One merchant I forgot to mention is the group's spy contacts. Before each adventure the group has the opportunity to purchase information from their spymaster. As a result they'll get a piece of knowledge that will help them complete the dungeon. Some examples could be the solution/hint to a difficult puzzle, location of a secret chamber, or a secret passage that bypasses a hazard. I also keep track of the party's influence with the spies and their associates, so if they fall out of favor the spies can feed them misinformation. I'm fairly certain after the first incident of that, the PC's would quickly hop on the "slaughter all the spies" train.

Fumble Jack
2014-08-03, 02:23 PM
Both excellent examples! The Gnome shopkeep who sells a mixture of garbage and magic treasure is brilliant, and I especially like the idea of a quest coming from him. It's cool when set pieces the party takes for granted end up becoming an important piece of an adventure.

One merchant I forgot to mention is the group's spy contacts. Before each adventure the group has the opportunity to purchase information from their spymaster. As a result they'll get a piece of knowledge that will help them complete the dungeon. Some examples could be the solution/hint to a difficult puzzle, location of a secret chamber, or a secret passage that bypasses a hazard. I also keep track of the party's influence with the spies and their associates, so if they fall out of favor the spies can feed them misinformation. I'm fairly certain after the first incident of that, the PC's would quickly hop on the "slaughter all the spies" train.

Thank you. Actually an idea kind of spring boarded off this. A doppleganger/changeling (haven't decided which per se yet) that is an information broker of sort except the only things he sells is lies. Now it seems odd but the basis I'm going with is that any halfway decent lie has some merits of truth to it. Should be interesting to see it in play.

Slipperychicken
2014-08-03, 03:00 PM
One of my DMs had an alchemist shop where the counter was manned by a middle-aged gnome apprentice, who the DM described as an intern who was obviously stressed, overworked, underpaid, and in constant fear of getting fired, being made to do humiliating tasks like stabbing himself to help demonstrate the authenticity of healing potions. The alchemist herself usually hung out in a back room and had a nasty personality, making quips and insulting anyone who did more than pay for the goods and leave. The shop, however, had the lowest prices in town (either that, or it was the only alchemist shop in town), meaning it made money despite the obvious wrongdoing there.

Terraoblivion
2014-08-03, 03:11 PM
A fairly crazy kung-fu game set in the modern world has its share of odd shopkeepers. Probably the weirdest are the kung-fu tailors who have the habit of literally sewing shoplifters and people trying to vandalize their store to the wall at lightning speed. They're simple and easy to describe, but pretty weird too. There's also the convenience store clerk with an obsession with instant noodles who have gotten into a blood feud/very confusing romance with one of the party members over the latter's preference for home cooked meals. And then there is the antiquities dealer who seems destined to go out of business because she wants to collect rare artifacts, books and so on and not share them because then they'd be less rare and special meaning that she doesn't really have an income. Especially since even when she does share she only wants more artifacts of books in return.

jedipotter
2014-08-03, 06:16 PM
Sal Or Sul or Sol or such. A yuan-ti shopkeeper in a big, black heavy cloak. Always found on a street named some thing like Rip Off Way or Lost Money Drive. With a dark basement place to trade that is not exactly a 'shop'. Sal will, quite amazingly, have what ever powerful item the player is looking for at the time. And his prices are cheap, just everything the character owns. Still, 3000 gold is a great deal for a sword+5 vorpal. And most amazingly Sal's stuff turns out to be fakes.

I've used Sal for years. Every time a player tries to ''buy their way to power''. Tons of players have fallen for his trade, some more then once.

Auroras Aurora has a shop in most major cities. The shop itself is just an empty room with a table, chair, wooden box, small bell, and book. The book is a catalog. You just open the book to the page you want and place the payment in the box. Then your payment is teleported away, and your item is teleported in. Should the character need help, an illusionary helper can be called.

Made for high level games, of course. So no magic items are in the shop to steal.

Angelalex242
2014-08-03, 06:35 PM
Make a salesman named Willy Loman.

Yes, THAT Willy Loman.

Come up with more inventive ways to do 'Death of a Salesman' in a world of magic and demons and such. ;)

Slipperychicken
2014-08-03, 06:36 PM
Auroras Aurora has a shop in most major cities. The shop itself is just an empty room with a table, chair, wooden box, small bell, and book. The book is a catalog. You just open the book to the page you want and place the payment in the box. Then your payment is teleported away, and your item is teleported in. Should the character need help, an illusionary helper can be called.

Made for high level games, of course. So no magic items are in the shop to steal.

I always kind of figured some arrangement like this would be used for such items. Except I figured the items would, by default, arrive some time after you order (depending on the current volume, available transporter magic, business hours, etc), but you could pay a few grand extra for varying types of"express delivery", the most costly of which being an outsider (delivery devil?) teleporting with the item to your exact location the round after you place the order.

Jakodee
2014-08-03, 09:17 PM
I had an AD&D game with firearms. I used an arms dealer named Kristof. The party found him in the sewers sitting at a table. With nothing around him. Humming. They talked to him and asked to be shown his wares. The sewer wall opened revealing hundreds of swords, daggers, crossbows, pistols, bluderbusses(blussi?), ect. And all of them were different from normal weapons. He sold swords designed to drip poison, and crossbows that could fold into cubes, and four barreled pistols(with matching four round ammo), and Generaly bizarre or awesome weapons. He also had a workshop in the back and was basically the Essence of chaotic neutral mixed with Marcus from boarder lands. I also maned him a level 10 assasin in case the thief got grabby.

chainer1216
2014-08-04, 12:08 AM
Lance and Vance, twins who have opened competing adventuerer specific shops across the street from each other. Lance deals mainly in stuff that melee/mundanes want and Vance in stuff casters want, while they are brothers they are very competitive and aren't above slandering each other.

BWR
2014-08-04, 01:12 AM
My favorite, from the Thunder Rift supplement: Bediah Bulon, owner of the Sarcastic Goat Inn. Bediah is a solid, polite dwarf who runs the Inn. He's unfailingly polite to visitors and guests. He's unfailingly acidic and sarcastic to friends and employees. His inn is named after himself, as one of his friends once likened Bediah's beard to that of a goat.

My players loved him, seeing him start off nice and quiet, then get more and more lippy with them the longer they stayed at his inn.

Sidmen
2014-08-04, 02:17 AM
I have Captain Hargar's Adventurer's Shop and Emporium - the result of players actually expecting me to think at the very end of a session during which I advised them I hadn't slept the night before.

Captain Hargar speaks with a completely normal voice, but I say arrrr at the beginning and end of each sentence. He's dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow; and lives in a small town or village as far from the sea as possible (the original incarnation had him living 1,000 miles from the nearest big body of water). He doesn't have a parrot, but his partner - Snakeskins (appearing as a Giant Boa with a cobra hood) does. Snakeskins never says anything but peoples' names; hissing appropriately whenever an S appears - and after saying the name for good measure. He has a parrot sitting on his cobra hood who repeats random sentences (he's never been named) with my worst parrot impersonation. The parrot wears an eye patch - under which is a red swirling eye.

The shop is, itself, mostly mundane. He always trys to foist off random goods on the players. Like the twelve crates of caltrops that were mistakenly delivered. The silver-plated katana he was supposed to deliver to that werewolf hunter, but never got around to. Or the wand of ShutUp! which just telekineticly slaps someone once per social scene.

He, along with Larry the trans-dimensional Jellybean are probably my group's most remembered characters.

Graypairofsocks
2014-08-04, 05:17 AM
This isn't from a game I was in, but I feel it is worth mentioning:

Crazy Gustav's Sword Emporium.
"I will Club a Seal to get YOU a Better Deal!"
Still trying to work out how clubbing a seal equals a cheaper sword. Especially since I actually couldn't find Seals anywhere in the campaign world.
And Crazy Gustav has had a few different itterations in my play groups. In a steampunk campaign he was an Airship Dealer. In a modern he was an army surplus store owner. In an epic campaign he was a major planer being. And yet every itteration somehow has this facination with clubbing seals. I have yet to figure out how this started, or why.

fishjam
2014-08-05, 08:31 AM
I once had a fun idea to have a magic item,

A small wooden door that when placed down grew and created a portal to a shop. Run by the most intresting character i ever made, A djinn who wanted to trade anything for anything, always random, always useless, but always fair..

Araba the Djinn once traded a small wooden bowl from my players for a key to open an unknown door. after 3 months of gameplay the players tried to work out where this key opened, ( They had tried it on every single locked door, chest, opening to find what it opened) It turned out to open Araba's cupboard which held his ledger of sales, which he complained on not being able to find everytime he met the players after the trade.

Kol Korran
2014-08-05, 09:39 AM
There were a few strange... "business interactions" of a sort ins some games I ran or played in.

Grad the Organ Dealer: In one game, the party met a strange "merchant" in the Mournland- he looked like a green tinted ogre, with perfect manners, a monocle, cane and such, escorted by a circus of strange miniature zooming creatures. Anyway, this creature was there to offer the SPECIFIC PCs a strange deal- he would graft the body parts of strange creatures to them, in return of some of their... "heroic potential". (Action points in this case). One PC got grafted wit ha dying angel's wings, another with a stone giant's skin, another with the fur of a displacer beast, another got the tongue of a succubus.

Grad didn't set out shop. He would find particular individuals, that were significant to the world's history and development (Hence the PCs), and would offer some kind of deal that could not be offered in any other shop. He seemed bound by some sort of... cosmic rules, and seemed to not exactly be connected to this time and place. At this first meeting he mentioned to meet, and have met, the PCs in other life times and such. He would appear momentarily in other campaigns, always with a special deal..., often in different forms, but always polite, and seemingly... ancient.

The Blood ship: One the same campaign, the party needed to transverse a huge distance in the matter of less than a day, and it was even beyond the reach of a teleport spell. They managed however to uncover a ritual that would summon The Blood Ship. The idea is taken directly from Eberron's adventurer guide (Or a similarly named book, I forgot, deals with travel all around the world). Basically the ship can arrive at anywhere that a lot of blood have been spilled, which has some form of liquid (Be it a pool, a cloud, a lake of lava), and there is a great end for speed. The ship is humongous, but only has a single occupant- The Captain, who seems as bound to the ship as it is to him, as if by some kind of an ancient curse. The captain will get you where you need, be it on this plane or the another, and fast.... for a price. In the book the price is winning some sort of a random CR+2 encounter on the way, a price of blood. In my game however the price of blood was a more personal one- the party had to choose taking the life of one of three close NPCs... There is a price for everything.

Charley's angels: Inspired both by the show and the depiction of the concept in Erfworld, There came to be an interesting info broker in a shaodwrun game. Charley was a paranoid metrix hacker/ entity/ who knows what. No one ever saw him. You either contacted him through archaic terminals of technology, and then he would set you up to meet one of his angels- always some sort of a stunning woman, and always not to be messed with. Though they appeared fully human, other than a few obvious cyber connections, there was something definitely... odd about them. And they adored Charley! Adored him so much they got some sort of a highly illegal and dangerous interface that enabled Charley to take control of their minds and actions, and speak directly through them. It was.., disturbing. Charley dealt with the top info, and it would usually either cost lots of nuyen, or a favor. And you paid Charley's favors, you didn't mess with him at all, or you got all of your info spileld to the peopel you want the least, or somehow manipulated into a tight spot.

The purifiers: In a post apocalyptic setting, this was a small tight knit family of water merchants, which in this setting lend them quite a lot of power. They had the only water purifying facility in the known setting, and only they were able to produce radiation free water. This sold more expensive than gold. But they were not just water purifiers, but also a highly "practically spiritual" religious group, who believed that the "tainted" of the post apocalyptic world (We used something similar to Fallout, so that meant mutants, ghouls, and so on) needed to be... cleansed of the earth. Dealing with them was an experience, for they held quite a bit of a political power, and an agenda.

Couronne
2014-08-05, 05:11 PM
The Discworld has some good ones that you could poach for games:

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - who is essentially an entrepeneur consistently latching on to the 'next big thing' and then screwing it all up (think dragon-detectors that are just a twig on a pole - when the twig burns through you've found your dragon) and falling back on disgusting sausages-inna-bun.

The Wandering Shop - which is only sometimes there and moves through dimensions (possibly) by means of an (alleged) machine. Tends to sell things that are very powerful but ill advised and not well explained.

I once had to deal with an alchemist 'snake-oil salesman' who literally had a rack of live snakes and would squeeze out the venom into bottles to mix his potions, all whilst extolling the rather suspect virtues of his various unguents in a rather theatrical fashion. They worked though...to an extent.

There was also a vampire broker who we had to pay in blood for information - which meant a temporary Con penalty and resulted in some hairy battles. In the campaign we had inflitrated an assassin's guild, trying to learn its secrets and we needed to advance in the ranks to get access to them. We had a choice between the slow route, building our reputation in the guild over time, or going for instant recognition by taking out marks who massively outmatched us. Effectively the deal was that we could buy information about the harder marks which would make the fights winnable, but with a higher risk of death due to having less hit points going in.

Fortune Tellers, Oracles, Scryers and things are always good - you can have them do pretty much anything as part of their ritual.

LokiRagnarok
2014-08-06, 01:47 AM
I once had a fun idea to have a magic item,

A small wooden door that when placed down grew and created a portal to a shop. Run by the most intresting character i ever made, A djinn who wanted to trade anything for anything, always random, always useless, but always fair..

For something similar to the "always fair exchange" thing, consider SCP-914 (http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-914).