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Remarkable Shops & Their Wares
Turn ordinary shop visits into memorable roleplaying experiences. Remarkable Shops & Their Wares is the ultimate inspirational sourcebook to create and roleplay fantastical shops. From numerous shop types and wares to unique shopkeepers, currencies, items, exotic mounts, and crafting custom wares. You can even let your players build and operate a store. With dozens of random generation tables, roleplaying game masters can now construct the most detailed shops ever to grace a fantasy world…
This book is largely system-neutral and easily adaptable to any tabletop roleplaying game. Some items include minor mechanics/suggested rules, which are super easy to convert to your rule system of choice. Within the 112 richly illustrated pages you will find endless inspiration to bring fantasy shops to life in your D&D, Pathfinder or other campaign world. Many hundreds of random table entries help add immersive details, color, atmosphere, features, story and gameplay to your shop visits. The eight pre-written shops come complete with staff and other npcs, items and story hooks, ready to become mainstays in your fantasy world. Your players will enjoy discovering the weird and wonderful items that are on sale, and the memorable mannerisms of the shopkeepers.
This book is largely system-neutral and easily adaptable to any tabletop roleplaying game. Some items include minor mechanics/suggested rules, which are super easy to convert to your rule system of choice. Within the 112 richly illustrated pages you will find endless inspiration to bring fantasy shops to life in your D&D, Pathfinder or other campaign world. Many hundreds of random table entries help add immersive details, color, atmosphere, features, story and gameplay to your shop visits. The eight pre-written shops come complete with staff and other npcs, items and story hooks, ready to become mainstays in your fantasy world. Your players will enjoy discovering the weird and wonderful items that are on sale, and the memorable mannerisms of the shopkeepers.
112 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2020
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7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 28, 2020
So this was not anything like I thought it would be, but it I'm still happy to have it my collection. I really thought it was going to be in the same vein as the old "City books" where it would have a bunch of pre-made shops that you could pull up if your players wandered into a town or city that you didn't have a lot of detail prepared for. I took the word "remarkable" to mean "we're throwing in a couple of touches to make them memorable". The reality is that this could correctly be called "Fantastic Locations that are also shops", though it doesn't have the same ring to it.
At least 6 of the 8 shops included are either high magic/tech, extremely hard to get to (underwater, snowbound peaks touching the sky etc...), or very specialized. There's really no way these are gonna just "pop up", these shops are going to be a full on session or two (or more) of adventure.
Not complaining, just saying that there's not as much "generic utility" here as I thought. BUT that is made up for by the wonderful tables in the end session. Lots of great ideas, whether you're rolling randomly or just using them as a list of ideas to pick from.
There were two things I was disappointed in. One was that the maps, while beautiful, didn't seem to match the written descriptions sometimes. There was a shop that was also an inn but there were no guest rooms on the map for example.
The other thing was that there seemed to be some confusion on the book being for 5e or being "system agnostic". There were occasional details that were definitely 5e specific and then other items were completely generic, and sometimes the level of detail fluctuated, so for (totally made up) example you might have a magic item that was described as shoots fire and another described as shoots flames 30' that do 2d6 fire damage. There were also no stats for any of the characters, but since the book is listed as "For ANY ttrpg" I guess that makes sense, except that probably 90% of the people using this book will be using it with 5e, so it would have been a great "extra'.
At least 6 of the 8 shops included are either high magic/tech, extremely hard to get to (underwater, snowbound peaks touching the sky etc...), or very specialized. There's really no way these are gonna just "pop up", these shops are going to be a full on session or two (or more) of adventure.
Not complaining, just saying that there's not as much "generic utility" here as I thought. BUT that is made up for by the wonderful tables in the end session. Lots of great ideas, whether you're rolling randomly or just using them as a list of ideas to pick from.
There were two things I was disappointed in. One was that the maps, while beautiful, didn't seem to match the written descriptions sometimes. There was a shop that was also an inn but there were no guest rooms on the map for example.
The other thing was that there seemed to be some confusion on the book being for 5e or being "system agnostic". There were occasional details that were definitely 5e specific and then other items were completely generic, and sometimes the level of detail fluctuated, so for (totally made up) example you might have a magic item that was described as shoots fire and another described as shoots flames 30' that do 2d6 fire damage. There were also no stats for any of the characters, but since the book is listed as "For ANY ttrpg" I guess that makes sense, except that probably 90% of the people using this book will be using it with 5e, so it would have been a great "extra'.
June 28, 2025
Intéressant mais pas aussi bien que ce à quoi je m'attendais. J'avoue que j'aurais aimé trouver plus de conseils qui permettent de faire par exemple plusieurs petites boutiques dans une même ville, mais globalement, les idées sont beaucoup trop "renversantes" pour permettre ça. J'aurais vraiment aimé qu'il y ait plus de places pour des tables aléatoires qui donnent des particularités plus communes et qui permettent de diversifier le quotidien, mais là clairement, on peut juste intégrer une ou deux de ces boutiques dans une campagne complète au risque de complètement casser l'effet, l'utilité est donc sacrément réduite. Comme pour les auberges j'ai trouvé que les "prétirés" étaient franchement de trop. Un ou deux ok, mais ils sont extrêmement spécifiques et donc quasiment impossibles à intégrer (à moins de baser une campagne ou un scénario directement autour) et ils prennent la place de sujets plus intéressants. La partie création d'objet magique est aussi très dépendante du système D&D je pense, il faudra pas mal d'adaptations pour des systèmes même proche comme Pathfinder.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews