How To Create a DnD Shop?
A lot of times, I see that DM's treat their shops and merchants as vending machines. Players put in the Golden coins inside the machine, an item or potion drops from it. That's D&D shops for you unless players get frustrated with bartering and start beating the living crap out of the merchant like a vending machine instead. DMs might think that Shops and Merchants are not as important as the story. However, I see them as an excellent opportunity that might enhance your storytelling. And today, we shall see how I run my D&D shops and Merchants.
What's the reason for shops & merchants being in D&D?
Loot. That's the logical answer. However, think about your players that slay the dragons, deal with deadly cults and get their hands on precious gold or gems - Do you really think it's the best way to exchange a reward for your players just with a simple, cold exchange for the efforts they put in risking their characters? Well, I don't think so. We can achieve more players' satisfaction if the gold spent in your game on Magic Items and other necessities would have excellent customer service & journey.
But yes, the objective of shopping in D&D is to get a bigger & better item. However, the journey is almost as important as getting the item itself. Suppose you ever participated or ran in a campaign where magical things are given casually and as often as they would be manufactured in China and delivered by Amazon Prime. You will soon start to feel that players don't value the items given to them that much. In other words, give less loot and "sell" the item's idea to your players if you want them to enjoy their "loot" more. It's really about how we sell it, not what we sell in D&D.
Running a Business in D&D
There are three merchant/shop types if we want to think about it simplistically. Or at least three categories that average players will be interested in investigating when they reach a town all the time.
Blacksmith/Weaponsmith/Armourer - Better items to maximize their damage, get less damage from enemies.
Magical Item Shop/Health Potions - Special cookie items to boost their character.
General Goods/Inns and Taverns - Basic consumables and rest/entertainment.
When creating a shop, keep these fundamental reasons in mind when we introduce shops and merchants. However, here at Dungeon Goblin Incorporated, we believe in smooth customer journey transitions using imaginative customer experiences for your D&D audience. (Yes, I'm fluent in empty fluff corporate talk). So how do we achieve these crucial KPI(Key Performance Indicators) parameters, such as players' enjoyment and satisfaction, not in the next Quarter, but right now, you ask? There is our plan for that:
Have fewer characters and shops and make them unique
Quality always wins against quantity in D&D. If you limit yourself by only having a couple of merchants or shops, you will find a way to make them more interesting for your players. When we focus on quantity, it's the same as pouring water into a soup, hoping for a thick one. A simple magic item shopkeeper could also have a curiosity museum on the second floor of her shop. Maybe it could be a charlatan that reads the palms and tell stories. Don't be afraid of mixing and mashing some locations with the merchants or even other NPC's ideas you want to throw to your players. A blacksmith could also be a fighting pits leader, a wizard in his tower can host dragonchess tournaments on the side. Just let your imagination run wild. There is not much need to create 100 locations with 100 characters to make the place feel alive.
With any shop, think hard about providing an extra layer of entertainment on the side that your players might participate in. Small activity, lore bit, little roleplaying opportunity, everything goes, because this will shake up the story a bit from the dungeon grind and make the reward so much worth it.
Merchants are Characters Too. Invest time and effort into them
Dragons, thieves guilds, and cults make not the safest environment to run a business in D&D. Many things could happen and will certainly happen in a fantasy setting. Don't be afraid to show the effects of your nefarious plans in your merchant's stories since they can give you their perspective on the issue. Perhaps the merchant's shop got burned down by the dragon. His naive son decided to kill the dragon, but instead, he became a snack for the said dragon. The merchant wants that dragon's teeth and would make some dragon teeth necklace to see someone in this town who did some justice to the evil dragon. Since it's not easy to take down a dragon, this poor fella might have information on the Dragonslayer sword and how to find it, but now he is old and frail to be successful in retrieving it. Any NPC could be connected with your story and your adventures. Never be afraid to invest in these characters and tell stories from their perspective that your characters encounter. Which leads to...
Merchants can be much more than simple peddlers of goods
For example, when you think about it, magical item shops require rare and dangerous materials that are hard to come by. This might lead an artisan to become a traveler who goes worldwide to find the best materials, a quest giver, or just being a guild master or apprentice. Not only that, they can be treasure hunters, pirates, a fence for the thieves guild, or whatever you think about because this NPC type could be anything.
For example, a simple, respectable general goods merchant might sell goods stolen from other towns and give a decent proposition for a magical ring. He might be asking things like where are you planning to go next and so forth. When players reach the next town, the guards take the person that bought the ring into questions about the ring. It seems that this ring was stolen from the mages guild, exposing the quest lead about the thieves guild and mage guild. The guards might don't care about the ring since it's a small catch that invites you to infiltrate the thieves guild or, in a subtle way, say that they don't support the mages guild. When you give alter-egos to your NPCs, it might lead to subtle, worldbuilding that your players enjoy more than a know-it-all wizards lore drop.
Using Guilds to your advantage
Guilds are great since they can be a template of flavourful history for your world and characters the party encounters. Maybe the Potion Makers are a part of the same guild and refer to other sellers into other towns. If your players treat your shopkeeper nice and not as a vending machine, it might offer a discount voucher in other cities or something like that to enhance the feeling of progression. This might also lead to funny moments like the potion is on the house if the players buy many goods. But what happens if the seller's notes leave clues to other sellers on how to bargain with the party and your party can decrypt it?
Using Magic to your advantage
Using Magic for the merchants and shops provides an excellent opportunity for the merchants that your party is invested in to maintain their relationship if they leave merchants' town. Maybe the Magic Item Artificier has a magical courier that delivers items that take a long time to craft, uses teleportation tokens to be summoned, or something similar. One of my favorite magical items, peddler Kusmerald, a short and fat tabaxi with a flying carpet tent, could appear anytime if I see that players like him as a character. He also has a trapped beholder in a fish-bowl-glass that he naively calls bubbles and taps into the glass from time to time and treats him as a pet(I Just wanted to talk about him, okay?).
Traveling Merchants
Magic might be expensive. It might be too much High-Fantasy for your liking. However, traveling merchants might be used to the same effect. Having a simple traveling merchant might also be useful since they can appear whenever you need, skipping some worldbuilding in the process, just building on top of the established character. This might also be the case if the merchant had an apprentice that seeks to establish himself in the next town and brings that lore that you created with him.
Move your shopkeepers across the world
D&D settings are dangerous. Anything can happen when you think about it. So instead of losing your favorite party merchant or store or NPC, make something happen to them. Maybe the store is burned down. The merchant might be forced to move out because it's associated with the party for whatever reason, wants to expand to the next city or town, or just be protected till he reaches the place offering a small side quest on the side to the players. Don't be afraid to move them around and finding reasons for beloved characters to tag along for a bit more if your players enjoy it.
So there you have it on how you should try and create shops and shopkeepers in D&D 5e if you want to make something more interesting than a magical item vending machine attitude from your merchants. If you liked this blog post, I recommend How To Incorporate Economy In Your Game, which delves a bit into the economy and how you could run your shops effectively and save some DM brain energy while you're at it.
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