Help me create a Marvelous Magical Marketplace!

[Chaldfont]

I'm starting back up a mid-level campaign (12-13th level) and I want to start up with a bang. So I'm starting with the idea of a magic marketplace that teleports around to those who can afford its higher level wares. The marketplace will teleport to the PC's HQ at first but will soon leave.

The marketplace gives out (or sells?) a catalogue that lists all of the merchants and their current wares. The catalogue is also a magic item that will teleport all who touch it to the current location of the market and back (1/week). With this ability the PCs will be able to return to the market to sell loot on a regular basis (so we can get right back to the dungeoncrawling!). Maybe you need to pay an xp tariff in order to be able to buy items and the xp would be split evenly amongst the magic item creators in the market.

The market has vendors who can sell any potion, wand or minor wondrous item plus any special items or services a DM wishes to make available.

What other vendors would you suggest?
What type of encounters might happen in such a place?
What's a good name for the market?
How did the market start? Who created it? Who runs it?

To start off, here's a vendor I thought up:

The Biergarten

This is a popular outdoor eating & drinking establishment. While they provide excellent normal food and drink, they also serve the equivalent of a heroes' feast (660 gp, CL 11, reservation required) and many of their ales and wines provide the same benefits as potions (cost as potion).

 

[VirgilCaine]

Theres a Random Encounter on the WotC website just like this.

However...

The PCs meeting enemy NPCs shopping would be interesting.
Perhaps the market is a neutral ground, and thus the PCs will be kicked out (and their merchandise cofiscated) if they spy on, much less interfere with someone else's experience.

New and different spells and magic items are obvious additions. Smokepowder (requiring a rare substance) and magic flintlock pistols are the first that come to mind. Other types of magic or magical items (candles, food/fruit, etc.) are also appropriate.

Of course, the PCs would be observed and searched and such to prevent charms, threats, fool's gold, Mystul's Magic Aura spells, etc.

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What? No one else has posted on this thread? It's a pretty nifty idea, IMO.

You would obviously have potion sellers that have different presentations--wooden sticks or gems or skulls that can be crushed, fruit that is eaten, tapers that are lit, etc. to trigger the spell.

Tattoo potions or magic items are another possibility, as well as psychics as "wizards" or whatnot.

 

[Conaill]

Once your players have gotten used to instant availability of magical items, you can pull the following on them:

The PC's teleport to the market via the catalog, and land on a unknown planet. The market is completely in ruins, and the automatic teleport back doesn't work. The PCs need to figure out what happened, and how to get back to their home world. Probably using a few magical items that are so useless that whomever did this didn't bother to destroy them...

 

[Slife]

Have various booths teleport around during the market itself. Make different sections devoted to completely different races than the ones in your campaign. Have the opportunity for the PCs to pay money to set up their own booths.

"Another fine Myth" has one of these.

 

[arwink]

Sweet idea. I love the idea of magic item traders (as should be obvious by clockwork golems Magic Merchants line of products).

I think the important aspect of such a market would be enforcing it as neutral ground - good and evil creatures are equally welcome there and are free to trade side by side. That makes players think twice about disposing of the evil items by simply selling them "off world" to become someone elses problem.

Another store : Agnost's Artifacts. Run by an aging centaur philosopher who trades in divine magic items. The proprieter doesn't actually believe in the gods himself, and often has trouble using divine magic as a result, but has a profound interest in understanding why sentient creatures devote themselves to otherworldly beings. Trading in divine items means he gets the opportunity to examine hundreds of holy artifacts as they pass through his store, and he meticulously records as many details as he can about their origins and the beliefs that surround them.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

That's a great idea!

A trader:

Kang's Wildlife Emporium: Kang is an half elven gentleman at around 150 years of age. He trades and trains exotic animals. The rarer and stranger the better. He stocks a wide range of animal related magical goods - enchanted saddles, control devices and so forth. The beasts are kept in magically controlled environments to keep them as comfortable as possible.
Anything not in stock can be acquired for the right price. There is money to be made capturing animals for him. He has to pay considerably higher pitch fees than most of the other traders, partly due to the size of his shop but also due to a couple of rather unpleasant escapes from his collection.


As for the owners, perhaps a cabal of clergy who worship the god of money or trading. They'd enforce neutral ground to ensure maximum profits. A divine patron should offer a serious deterent to anyone wishing to cause trouble for them?

Or a powerful group of Efreeti - just seems right for some reason?


I guess information mongers might make a healthy living working from a place like this?

 

[Andor]

Lawrence the ageless runs a small empty booth at the market. He sells a most interesting commodity, time itself. However he rarely accepts cash as payment. Often he desires services performed or some small item in trade, these do not always seem significant.

"Very Well Magus, I shell sell you an extra week of crafting time for your Enchantment competition. In exchange however you must give a healing potion to the one-eyed beggar you will find by the bakers next tuesday."

 

[Chaldfont]

These are great ideas, and I'll be using every one of them. I think this is a great opportunity to introduce new spells, magic items, and even feats and other rules to the campaign. I'll probably even have a warrior school were fighting types can learn Iron Might maneuvers.

Here's another one:

Guillermo's Grenadoes

Guillermo is an alchemist who has discovered a way to make alternative potions. He places these into glass balls encased in hemp netting (for easy storage and throwing, range 10'). Each grenado is a just like a potion, but instead of allowing spells that just target one or more creatures, nearly any area effect spell will work. A grenado is a grenade-like weapon.

Some of his more popular grenadoes include:

dispel magic
fireball (and fireball modified by the energy substitution feat)
summon monster I,II or III
stinking cloud
obscuring mist
fog cloud
darkness
daylight
glitterdust
sleep

 

[Henry Hankovich]

Better yet, how about the Bazaar, from Robert Asprin's Myth books? Basically, an alternate plane (or perhaps some sort of pocket dimension, or what have you) that serves as nothing other than a meeting-place for plane-traveling merchants and powerful casters and crafters...one giant marketplace/world, crowded with tents and booths where beings from all over the place meet to trade. Kind of like Sigil, only overflowing with merchants...

Thus, you'd have the combination of a place where you can find all sorts of powerful magic items (as well as conviently finding not-so-powerful forgeries, shady con men, and the like), while being 'limited' to those characters powerful enough to travel the Planes, or aquire the necessary artifacts or magical devices to travel there. And, given that the chars would require portals, spells, or magical items to get there, they could conveniently (or not-so-conviently) travel there from wherever they happened to be at the time.

 

[mythusmage]

Game Dimension

This shop features games. Ordinary and fantastical. Games on all subjects and styles of play. There are board games, miniature games, even roleplaying.

And not just ordinary games.

There are rule books where whatever you write in the margins is incorporated into the text when next you peruse the volume. There are game boards that change with the seasons, and with the time of day. There are RPGs where the player does become the character.

Days of the God-Kings is one such game. In it the players become people living in an ancient bronze age world dealing with the trials and tribulations of history and legend. In a typical hour's session their characters are born, grow up, have families, and die. All the while dealing with matters dire and creatures abhorrent. And it can be a continuing story, with the players changing history and legend itself as the years progress. (Though it must be pointed out that DotG-K does not change the real world. At least nobody's shown that it does. )