There are two ways to
handle shopping in D&D. You either make it fun
or you make it fast. If you and your players would prefer to just speed past shopping, then I am not trying to change your mind. Just keep on doing whatever
works for your table. But if your players enjoy
downtime roleplay and you wanna be able to
make shopping sessions fun and engaging for them and for you, then man,
I've got a lot to say! And so does Bramble, the pixie
proprietor of the Hedgerow. - Welcome in. What do you want?
Plants for decoration, plants for healing, plants for
protection or travel or poison? Make it snappy. I haven't got
all day. My Griffon's Tail Lily is flowering soon and no offense, but it's much better conversation. - I recently created the
Hedgerow for the Seekers Guide to Enchanting Emporiums, a book that recently launched on Kickstarter. They sponsored this video so
that I can tell you all about what I created for the book
and what I learned doing it. It's gonna be 250 plus
pages of magic item shops and merchants for fifth edition D&D. And they're more than just shops! They're full-blown adventure locations, including detailed characters, events, and quest hooks on top of
setting descriptions, art, and of course, unique new magic
items to stock the shelves and give your players something to spend their hard-earned gold on. Here's the thing: I've put
together plenty of shops for my D&D tables over the years, but working on this project
really leveled up my shop game and taught me a lot
about how to make a shop not just a list of items and prices, but an engaging source of roleplay, and even part of your world building. So let's talk about how to make shopping fun, using
the Hedgerow as an example so you can see these tips in practice. And of course, if you
wanna add the Hedgerow and more than 20 other
fantastic, fully developed shops and traveling traders
to your game, pledge on Kickstarter at the link
in the description. - When I first came to the Mortal Realm, your cities made me sick to my spiracles. How do you sleep at night without hearing the whispers of the trees? How do you live in stone
boxes? Where's all the life? So I had to build my
little greenhouse, you see. And some say it's gotten out of hand, but frankly, it's none of their business. That area is for
authorized personnel only. So if they wander in and
get kidnapped by a dryad or consumed by corpse moss,
I'm not liable for that. - If you want shopping to
be fun, the first thing to remember is that the shop is secondary to the characters in and around it. We don't care about businesses,
we care about people. So if you want your
players to feel engaged during a shopping session, then you need more than a fun
name and an inventory list. You need characters. The natural place to
start is the shopkeep. Who runs this shop and why? Now, you don't need to come up
with a full, complex backstory, but anything you can do to make your shopkeep feel
like a real person instead of a cardboard cutout will help your players connect with them. I suggest that if nothing else,
you give them two features: a quirk and a goal. For example, let's say
your players visit an armory to upgrade their gear. The shopkeeper's quirk is
that they're always singing, and their goal is to save up
enough money from the profits of this shop to launch
their musical career. Once a week, they host an
open mic night after closing. Or maybe your players check
out a magic item shop. This shopkeep's quirk is that
she's always being shadowed by a reluctant, disinterested teenage son. Her goal is to train him to take over the family
business when she retires. The purpose of a quirk is to
make the character stand out, particularly in a circumstance
like a shopping trip where the party will only interact with them for a short time. There are a lot of reasons
you want characters to fall in love with a shopkeeper.
Relationships with NPCs make players care about your world and feel invested in what happens in it. And memorable characters
bring that world to life and make it feel real. This also helps players learn about and keep track of the
locations they visit. Meanwhile, the purpose of a goal is to make that character dynamic. Once your party cares about
the shopkeep, you can use that goal to make sure that things change, giving your players a chance to interact and influence the course of
events for these characters. Like maybe next time they visit
the family owned magic shop, the shopkeep tells them that
she's retiring next month. Her teenage son pulls the party aside and begs them to bring him along and train him to be an adventurer. Do they help him even if it means that there might not be a source of magic items in this
town for them anymore? Or do they convince him to stay and take over the family business? And if they do, how does the
new ownership affect the wares and prices and quality of the shop? Also, knowing a character's
goal is super useful in roleplay scenarios. Anytime you have to ask yourself
how your NPC would react to a situation, you can
reference their goal. Tons of DMs get annoyed by players trying to roll persuasion checks for discounts and spending a ton of time
haggling with shopkeepers. But that experience gets
a lot more interesting and your players have to
be more creative when your shopkeeper has goals. The aspiring singer who runs
the armory is probably unlikely to offer a discount unless
the characters can provide something beneficial to
their musical career. Offering to recommend them as entertainment for an upcoming event at the
royal court might convince them to shave some gold pieces off the price. - That'll be 53 gold pieces. No, let's not make it an
even 50. What do you mean 'just plants'? If you don't
think my wares are worth it, then don't waste my time. And don't bother trying
to haggle with the shrublets. They're not authorized to give discounts. Come back when you've learned
to respect nature. Now, scram! - I know I've been very
focused on the shopkeep here, but you might also consider
developing characters around shop employees
or even other customers. In my writeup for the Hedgerow, there are several recurring NPCs that players can encounter when
they visit, from the awakened shrubs that work for Bramble
in the shop, to the bored Dryad who lives in the greenhouse. I find that if you want
players to develop a bond with an NPC, it's a good idea to give them a menu of options. They're not gonna get attached to every NPC you throw at
them, so feel free to come up with basic concepts for several and then wait to see which ones they like before you develop them any further. - Listen, I hate to ask for a favor, but I'm at my wit's end. We've been trying to expand the caverns under the greenhouse so we can cultivate aquatic cave plants, but my excavation crews
keep getting attacked. If I lose another shrublet
to whatever's burrowing around down there, I'm
gonna tear my antennae out. I'll let you pick some items
from the shop for free if you can get to the bottom
of it. What do you say? - This might be obvious to some people, but I have to say it just in case it's an eye-opener for you. If you want shopping to feel
like part of the story instead of just a chore, then you need to place narrative moments into shops. In between listing inventory and haggling for discounts, something has to actually happen, and there are tons of different ways to accomplish that. For example, you could tie a
shop into another plot line. Maybe you need something from
the shopkeep for a quest, but it's not for sale or they've already sold it to
someone else or it was stolen. Maybe the shopkeep can
give you what you need, but only if you complete
a task for them first. The shop doesn't even
need to be explicitly tied to the event in order to
serve as its location. Like maybe an attacker
follows the party to the shop and attacks them while they're inside. You can also do the classic
thing of using a shopkeep as a source for a quest hook. A merchant is exactly the type
of person who needs errands run, materials fetched,
and goods delivered. This is a perfect solution if
your players need extra money or just a way to fill some time. And of course, you can always
throw some events into your shopping sessions just for flavor. An argument between a customer and the shop owner can
establish character traits or even atmosphere for the city. A store opening event or a going out of business
sale can make your world feel dynamic and alive. Remember, a merchant or employee or shop regular can be just
like any other NPC in your game. A shopping session doesn't need to be any different from any other session and locating plot relevant
NPCs in a marketplace or store helps blend those edges and make your world feel realistic. There's no reason that a marketplace or storefront needs to be any different
from the other locations where characters can learn
information, interact with complex characters, or run into conflict or complications. Of course, if something
surprising happens every time your player's go into a shop,
it's gonna stop being surprising pretty quickly. Just because you can have stuff happen during shopping sessions
doesn't mean that you should do that every single time. Part of making a world
feel alive is making it feel unpredictable. If your party comes to expect that every single time they
go shopping, they'll have to catch a thief or tackle a fetch quest,
that'll end up being just as repetitive as consistently uneventful shopping sessions are. - Hey kid, thanks for your help with that sprite infestation last week. It's a shame about the fire damage though. Looks like we're gonna have
limited stock for a while until we can get those repairs done. You should really talk to
your wizard about that. - This isn't gonna come up all the time, but one thing that I
really loved about writing for Enchanting Emporiums
is that I was encouraged to consider how the events
that occurred inside or near the shop could
affect the inventory. This is a great way to remind your players that they have a real
impact on this world. Maybe they complete a fetch quest and that enables the
shop to stock a new item or provide a new service,
or maybe the things they do or witness within the shop make it harder to get what they need. - Here's something you might
like. It's a watering can't. Instead of pouring water
out, it sucks water in. Whatever it collects, it
stores up. But be careful. The mote it creates is
dangerous. Explosive, even. You wouldn't wanna-- ah, I
see from your expression that you see that as a
feature rather than a bug. Well, just don't test it out in the store. - Another great way to make
your shopping sessions more interesting is to make the
actual items your players are shopping for more interesting. I mean, that is the point
of shopping, right? Now, obviously, the rulebooks are
full of items both magical and mundane for your players
to find and purchase. And I'm not saying that
you should ignore those. You can pick out specific items to make available at specific
shops, whether that's by theme or by random roll. And I don't think it's bad to have the basics, like
crossbow bolts or incense or parchment, easily
accessible everywhere. But if every shop has all the same items, or if your players are
experienced enough with D&D to recognize, say, an alchemy jug or a wand of smiles,
there are a lot of ways to spice up a shop's inventory and make sure shopping
still holds some surprises. The most obvious answer is
to homebrew some stuff. Personally, I am a homebrew fiend and I really enjoy coming
up with my own items. But if you don't feel
comfortable creating your own, you can use one of the
practically infinite third party resources for magic items. But if you're nervous about
offering too many magic items or homebrew stuff being overpowered or unpredictable, there
are tons of other ways to make shop stock more interesting. You can do "homebrew
lite" and just reflavor or tweak existing items, like
reskinning an immovable rod as a 'stuffed rabbit of permanence', or turning a wand of fireballs into a 'scepter of psychic bursts' and just changing the damage type. You can increase or decrease
in item's power, like a secondhand robe of useful items that only has three patches left, or a bag of holding that comes pre-stocked with a selection of potions. An item doesn't even need to be magical or work differently in order to make the shopping
experience more interesting. Like, maybe a shop sells leather armor that has the exact same stats
as any other leather armor. But this one is beautifully hand tooled with intricate feather designs and has been painstakingly painted with red and gold accents. Or just because a blacksmith
might have a +1 longsword to sell doesn't mean
that they would call it that. Maybe it's Harpy's Bane, the
legendary blade of a folk hero who saved the people of the
town from a nest of harpies and bound some of their feathers
to the hilt as a trophy. - With the briar darts we're
looking at a total of-- Hey! what part of 'do not touch' don't you understand?
If you poison yourself with those things, I'm
not paying for the healer. - So, to recap: don't just
make a shop, make characters; make sure story is happening
while you're shopping; and introduce some interesting items to keep your players on their toes. I know I said this at the
beginning, but it bears repeating. You do not need to turn every
shopping session into an engaging role play experience. You can always handle
shopping in between sessions or in the form of a montage
or whatever suits your table. And just because you wanna
roleplay shopping sometimes doesn't mean you need to do it every time. It's totally okay to change
your approach depending on what the individual session calls for. But if you and your players do
enjoy the occasional in-depth shopping roleplay, these
three tactics can be used over and over again to create
basically an infinite number of shops and merchants
that feel individual and dynamic and alive. And of course, if that sounds like fun, but you don't feel like
writing up your own shops or you just want some inspiration, check out the link in the
description to pledge for your copy of the Seeker's
Guide to Enchanting Emporiums, where you can find my pixie Bramble and her shop the Hedgerow,
along with a bunch of other fully developed,
unique shops for your games. - You've met the shrublets, of course: Sprig, Bud, Root, and their cousin Petal.
Herb is out sick this week. They've got a nasty pest problem, and I don't want them
spreading it everywhere. Twig is covering Herb's shifts. In the meantime, highly recommend
hiring awakened shrubs if you get the chance, and not just because they wanna be paid in fertilizer.
