Building A Town

[JustAsking]

So I'm creating a town that the player's in my campaign have just discovered. I'm wanting to make it kind of a market place, run nearly completely off the people that travel through as it's centered around the main and easiest road from one side of the continent to the other. The trouble is, I cannot think of what type of market stalls would be there.
The town is South of a major fishing beach, about a three hour walk from the shore, so it's a mainly fishing town so there'll be fish stalls. There will be the normal stalls like for books and scrolls and armour and baked goods and trinkets and fruit and such. But I need to find some other market stall ideas so any ideas as to this would be much appreciated, as well as any possible side adventure hooks.


Please and thank you

[Knaight]

There's a few questions that either need to be answered to make advice work or that are worth thinking about. Notably:

What sort of technology is around? Does it approximately map to a real world period or location?
Why is it where it is? The road makes sense, but why isn't it three hours further south, right on the coast instead of just off the coast?
How is the town changing? Is it in a period of growth? Of decline? Is it getting wealthier? Poorer?
What problems does the town face? What different methods of solving those problems do people have, and how does that drive conflict?


With that said, there are a few standby options for a market. Notably:

Raw Materials. You've got lumber, stone, and metals for a bunch of tech levels, and there are multiple types of all of these.
Staple crops - barley, wheat, rice, millet, potatoes, whatever, sold in huge quantities and with the individual bags being a good fifty pounds.
Textiles. Presumably the setting has clothing of some sort, and there are often regional specializations. Linen, silk, brocade, polyester, woven carbon nanotubes, whatever. Textiles are in use.
Ceramics. Maybe this is fired clay pots and urns, maybe glazes have been developed, maybe there's china, maybe there's all sorts of exotic ceramic materials. There's probably something though.
Tools. For every club, sword, or plasma gun that shows up in a setting there's probably at least a hundred needles, hoes, or arc welders.
Animals. Dogs have been around for ages, and chickens, pigs, goats, horses, cows, oxen, and sheep aren't exactly new developments.
Repair. Even if the town is extremely mercantile and generally short on actual artisans (which seems pretty unlikely), stuff breaks. At the very least there's a big influx of travelers with vehicles and clothing likely to need repairs.

[sktarq]

So it is not on the coast? Why not? Because being on the coast is normally a huge advantage in terms to travel access, food access, etc. Are they on a river? Lake? Ocean? Are there pirates that keep them from settling here?

Okay. There are two towns from your immediate point of view.
First there is town that feeds off of the traffic that travels through the trade route
Second there is town that feeds, clothes, and otherwise supports the town above.

So what are the first town's BIG needs that have to be met locally (basically non-imports)
It needs to feed these people, they need water, they need the offer of warm beds, entertainment, security, and repairs.

So what are the things the second town needs. (local or import)
The people of the town need to eat, be secure, sheltered, a modicum of entertainment, basic governance, spiritual needs, plus basics stuff like ceramics, metalwork, clothes, woodcraft etc.

And what do people need in order to fulfill the first towns needs.
Farms, Taverns, Stables, Guard Posts, etc.

Those are the basics. If you want to add something more you have to start fleshing out things a lot more.
You have a major transcontinental route-so what is being traded? You said that the town lives off the traders which means that for them to add anything to the goods the traders take with them it would be either a small but visible part of their economy or you have to re-think the economic drivers of the town. The next question is what do you want the town to feel like? What kind of adventures are your players going for?

A cheap and easy option with lots of bright visuals and few worries about needing lots of support? Dyed basket/grass weaving. It is a common past time in the area that when people have a few minutes free they start weaving another bowl, or tray or whatnot. Coppice forest to provide willow or hazel shoots, or perhaps smoked grass, or vine. But people add dyed strands in geometric patterns-people get quite competitive. The passing merchants picked a up a few and brought them to far away cities and they are now rather collectable there. People have become more elaborate in both color and pattern over the years and the stalls that sell these things in town are points of local pride and profit.

A cheap and easy option with tons of plot hooks? The area that the town is in the heart of an ancient empire that is now considered collectable. Hunting for ruins with pottery, elaborate stone carvings, metal work, etc. Sometimes things need people with weapons to clear out those places where more goodies are hiding.

[Jay R]

There will be providers of food, and people who can do repairs of armor, weapons, clothes, and traveling equipment. Ammunition for bows and slings. Wagons, horses, carts.

Look at the character's inventory sheets. Since those things are valuable on the road, people in the town will make them, sell them, repair them.

And don't forget hustlers and flimflammers. Customers who never come back are perfect for con artists.

[Pugwampy]

But I need to find some other market stall ideas so any ideas as to this would be much appreciated, as well as any possible side adventure hooks.

There is no reason to be so specific . You can wing this easily dude.
Make up stalls and NPC,s as players or you need them .

[Vitruviansquid]

The ultimate lazy scumbag way of making this town would be to tell the players they are in a bustling market town, and ask them what they want to find. Whatever they ask to find, you see if you can picture it existing in this town in your mind, and either say it's there or not.

[LibraryOgre]

Your arrangement of a city on every road, just a few hours from a city on the sea, reminds me of Rome and Ostia.

A caravansary, for supplying caravans with the things they need.
That will necessarily include someone dealing in bulk food, but also farriers, wain wrights, and the trades that support them (leatherworkers, lumber mills, maybe coopers and certainly cobblers).

Consider that the marketplace may have several goods from "further up the road"... if I am a merchant in A, and want goods from C, I might travel all the way to C... or I might meet other merchants at B, between the two points, trade my A goods for their C goods, and come back and sell my C goods at a profit in A. Add in a seaport and you've got a whole LOTTA As and Cs up in your B's-ness. It may be more expensive to do it that way, but it will also be faster... instead of traveling AC and CA, I'm traveling AB and BA, and pity the fools who make the longer trip for not much more coin.

These also suggest other things. There may be a horse fair or other livestock market (including, depending on alignment, human stock). You might also have a thriving trade in mercenaries... people to protect your goods as they go from A to C, and hirelings (people with skills you want). Of course, you're also going to have prostitutes*, hucksters, and thieves.

Consider the value of skilled locals, as well. Touts, interpreters, local guides. You need someone who knows the city, has contacts, and knows both your language and the local language (or useful foreign languages).

*One thing I find a lot of worlds don't think about is the place of sex workers in their world. Depending on your local religions, sex work could fall into a lot of different religious categories. Often lumped in with the lower echelons of society, sex workers might also run towards Firefly/Serenity Companions, or geisha, or Servants of Naamah. (http://kushiel.wikia.com/wiki/Servants_of_Naamah)

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Things like bridges or fords are good for towns to grow up around, especially if they're a days travel from another settlement so travellers can over night somewhere safe/hospitable before carrying on in the morning. Plus, with a river, you have a fresh water source to support the town's growth, another means of getting people and goods in and out (river barges certainly, possibly coastal boats if the river's deep enough) and more goods to sell - freshwater fish/mussels etc., aquatic plants like rushes being used for crafts like basket making rather than straw, (plus seaweed from the coast), barrels of fresh water for seagoing vessels. The coast nearby also gives you a chance to set up an evaporation pond to get sea salt, and you can have seafaring arts and crafts like scrimshaw on walrus tusks or whale bones, plus people who'll build and repair boats, fishing nets, carve figure heads etc., while an inland location makes it a safe harbour against bad weather or pirates.

You'd probably have merchants setting up warehouses in the town if it's a trading hub, which could make it a cultural melting pot - different/fusion foods, exotic spices, wines and spirits, cloth/silk and jewellery from other countries and so on. And taverns with plenty of rooms for visitors at different price ranges (expensive, good quality apartments for merchants, single rooms with proper mattresses for ship captains, down to cheap beds in large dormitories for ordinary crew), along with a large watch to clamp down on sailors getting drunk and causing havoc. And sea deities would have churches and temples, allowing sailors to make observances for a fast, safe journey, either hoped for or just received.

You'd almost certainly have a stockyard outside the settlement - a ship's quartermaster might go and buy a couple of cows and some chickens/other fowl to be taken on board and slaughtered during the voyage so the crew have fresh meat, plus some barrels of salted pork etc., while land traders might want to buy new horses, mules or oxen to replace losses or take back additional goods.

And if you've got animals getting slaughtered, you've probably also got a tannery to turn their skins into leather, which then means you have people selling either the leather itself, or goods made from it.

If you get an ex-pat community, you'd have traders handling their requests for goods from home, especially around cultural/ religious observances.

You'd almost certainly have at least one moneychanger/lender or bank, who might also act as an independent assessor of goods (buyer thinks they're worth x, seller thinks they're worth x+y) and/or translator - or who knows people who can act in those roles and bring them in for a small finders fee, or you may have a board of trade who runs the market and settles trading disputes.

There might be someone who can link sailors with ships that need crew, or caravans with cart drivers. And you'd have porters to move goods for the merchants.





Consider that the marketplace may have several goods from "further up the road"... if I am a merchant in A, and want goods from C, I might travel all the way to C... or I might meet other merchants at B, between the two points, trade my A goods for their C goods, and come back and sell my C goods at a profit in A. Add in a seaport and you've got a whole LOTTA As and Cs up in your B's-ness. It may be more expensive to do it that way, but it will also be faster... instead of traveling AC and CA, I'm traveling AB and BA, and pity the fools who make the longer trip for not much more coin.

You could even have people making a circuit of towns and cities, buying locally produced goods in each and selling them in all the others they visit. Or if you do only travel from A to B and back, maybe your son falls in love with the daughter of the trader who you negotiated a deal to bring you goods from C in return for your goods from A, they marry, your two merchant companies merge, the newlyweds run an office you and the other trader set up for them in B looking after the A to B and B to C trade, allowing you and the other trader to start setting up A to F and C to D trading routes, and you now have the start of a trading empire.



*One thing I find a lot of worlds don't think about is the place of sex workers in their world. Depending on your local religions, sex work could fall into a lot of different religious categories. Often lumped in with the lower echelons of society, sex workers might also run towards Firefly/Serenity Companions, or geisha, or Servants of Naamah. (http://kushiel.wikia.com/wiki/Servants_of_Naamah)
Possibly the writers don't want to think about them - depending on either their personal views or what they think their target audience wants to see. But, I agree, there'd almost certainly be some, although their presence and legality might depend on local laws, which might mean they're highly visible across the settlement, pushed into a certain area to keep them out of sight of most people, or hidden away and you have to know someone who, if pressed, might admit to knowing someone who may possibly know someone... .

And whether they're controlled by the local crime syndicate, employed by a brothel owner (although the workers level of freedom may vary from one employer to the next), part of an official organisation with prestige and maybe political influence (geishas, Firefly's companions), a loose collective who protect each other (the girls of Old Town in Sin City), or operate as independents, (which may actually be the most chaotic and vicious if they're fighting over the best pitches) is another matter entirely - and may depend on the political structure and morals of the settlement, where you are, who you talk to and any particular service or physical type that you're looking for.