How to handle "shopping"?

[kutulu]

I'm in the early phases of my first D&D 4e campaign, and my first campaign as DM since college, and my current batch of players are much more "serious" about D&D than any previous party. To try and keep them engaged, I've been making an effort to play out, either RP or mechanically, things I used to just gloss over. The next major milestone in my DM evolution will be when my players get to the big city with pockets full of gold pieces.

In previous campaigns I would just let me players tell me "I bought x, y, and z while everyone was sleeping", but it seems unrealistic to me that every little town or village would have everything for sale in the PHB and AV. On the other hand, handing the players inventory lists for every store in Brindol seems to go too far the other way. And what about magic items -- can I just assume any magic item the players can come up with can be made at "the magic item store"?

How can I make a more reasonable shopping experience without boring the crap out of the whole table? Or is it even worth the effort?

 

[thundershot]

It's a tough one. In 3E, my sister would always want to "haggle" for better prices, and we'd spend so much time just shopping that at least one of the players would fall asleep and another would play Nintendo. Naturally, we had to stop that, but what's fun for one person isn't fun for another. Finding some kind of balance is the key... Maybe let the people who want to do more extensive shopping do so after the game so no one else has to get bored or waste precious game time. In 4E, we haven't had enough MONEY to go shopping for anything other than the mundane. And we use Goods & Gear, Aurora's, and Ultimate Equipment Guide to do that between sessions.

 

[Echohawk]

You know, this strikes me as a good idea for an add-on for the character builder, or an extra bonus tool for the DDI: A shopping application.

It would be great if a DM could create a shop, decide what to stock it with (perhaps with some randomly generated goods), and for players using the character builder to then be able to buy (and sell) whatever they want from that particular shop. There could be some customisation options, so that a particular store sells weapons at 90% of their usual price, but charges 120% of list price for potions, say. A DM could easily set appropriate level limits for magic items, or just block a store from selling magical gear at all. Of course, an application like that would work best if used between games, rather than during games, but most of my group's shopping happens between sessions anyway.

 

[Obryn]

It really, really depends.

If your group loves to roleplay every little interaction, then go ahead. If you're all having fun, you're doing it right. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.


Me, I just decide spur-of-the-moment. The first time the PCs interact with a new shop, I will probably RP the conversation if I can come up with something interesting, or if I'm running a module with the appropriate details. Later on, I will generally gloss over it. "OK, you buy 50' of rope. They don't have those healing poultices, though they might have some next week. You can check with the herbalist."

However, if I think it will be fun or if the shopkeeper has important information, I'll keep RPing the shopping scenes. Alternately, if we're moving along briskly and the players just want to pick up a few items before heading back into danger, I don't want to kill the momentum. "Tell me what you want, spend the gold, and we're done."

I think that it's easily possible to over-roleplay things that are really no more romantic than dropping by Meijer for bread and milk. Just watch your group and keep your own fun in mind. When you think like you've done too much, you probably have. Ideally, try to figure out where that point is, and cut the role-playing off right before that. Or, skip to the interesting parts... Just go through a list of stuff they're buying or selling, but break back into full-RP if they reach something interesting.

-O

 

[Thanee]

Normally, I would have said:

1) give money
2) get stuff



But since that's not what you are looking for...


Just let them take the initiative. Let them enter the city. Describe the city. Maybe offer some opportunities, like some special events taking place in the city (festivities or somesuch). Let them go look for merchants. Describe the merchants and the stores. Add in some little tidbits, maybe even some smallish sideplots. And so on...

Bye
Thanee

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I usually let my players play out shopping once or twice, after that i will have them do diplomacy checks to get an appropriate sell rate...

if i want to know if they can buy a desired item, i will assign an more or less arbitrary number and roll... (ok, this way my archer got a holy longbow + 3... at a 1% chance)

 

[kutulu]

You know, this strikes me as a good idea for an add-on for the character builder, or an extra bonus tool for the DDI: A shopping application.

I'm already considering using the character builder for mundane shopping, as a matter of fact. The shopping mode works pretty well for the mundane stuff and I don't have to waste play time looking up prices. Walking myself through that process was actually when this question hit me: "wait, this thing has every item known to man in it... would a real shop have that?"

I do like the idea of doing some of the shopping offline, or at least during alternate play times. Right now I'm running the campaign at lunch at work 2 days a week whenever everyone's here, so time is very limited, so this actually is very appealing.

--K

 

[Scribble]

Decide what the "level" of the shop is. Add this +5 to a d20 roll.

Determine the level of the item (use the magic item costs) Use the level of the item to determine the DC of it being available based on page 42.

For small towns use the hard column, for medium the average, for cities use easy. Modify as you feel appropriate. (ie if it's really remote, make it harder, if it's got a lot of mages, make magic item DCs easier...)

Compaire your shop roll against the DC. If it beats the DC the item is available. If not the item isn't (or the shopkeep doesn't want to sell it.)

You can also roll a d4 to determine how much markup the shopkeep adds to costs, and then let the players use diplomacy or intimidate or whatnot to lower that markup. (and you can even add or subtract bonuses to the availability roll based on what kind of impression the shopkeep has with the PCS.)

Just off the top of my head.

 

[gizmo33]

I think the general advice would apply here - play it out if it interests people, and gloss over it if it doesn't. Similar to overland travel - talk about the interesting points and assume the rest.

4E is designed, AFAICT, for PCs to basically find whatever magic items that they can afford. There isn't supposed to be a game-breaking 7th level item, for example, so you don't have to keep tight control on this for game-balance reasons.

As far as versimiltude reasons (if you can hear me over the shouts of "simulationist!" from the mobs), I think you can estimate a 10% mark-up on non-mundane items to account for messages being sent and items being located. Just because adventurers are sitting in a particular village doesn't mean merchants won't attempt to go to them. Especially if they've thrown around enough money to establish that they are wealthy, a smart merchant isn't going to wait for the PCs to come to him.

So imagine the possibility of a network of merchants with messengers, inventory lists, wealthy patrons and contacts, and so on that would all realize some benefit in hooking up a wealthy PC with his desired magic item (at a good profit, of course). Then mark off the time, a nice round figure of money, and then get back to adventuring. At least that's what I do, except in cases where PCs are just blowing through town in which case I just pick a few random items (with the help of a computer program) and let them know that if they want a better selection they'll have to stay in town for a while.

 

[Lanefan]

I usually pretty much wing it.

At very low level, the limiting factor will (or should) be the amount of gold they have; and mundane gear (rope, torches, rations) is available anywhere except the smallest of hamlets. Once they've got some gold, I just tell them to spend the money and write it down, with the proviso that no item worth over 100 g.p. gets bought without clearing it through me (so I can roll to see if it's available).

Magic of any kind, on the other hand, I just roll for. First, a general roll to see how much stuff if any happens to be available, then some more detailed rolling to see what it might be. And this, believe me, is some heavy lifting I'd really like a computer to be able to do; I wrote my own program for it once, but I wasn't happy with the results, and that computer is long since dead and gone. Problem is, any generic item-generation program won't account for all the bizarre stuff I have in my game.

Lanefan