By: Jared B.
Picking up where we left off! In this article, I am going to show you how I put together inventory for a shop. I am going to continue my example of the magic shop from before, then also touch on other types of shop inventory and possible menus for taverns and restaurants.
So for this magic shop, The Silk Chupacabra, I want to kind of limit the rarity that is available. The setting of this shop is in a large city, near the local adventurers’ guild. The level of party I normally run in this setting is usually 1 to about 7 or so. I am looking at common, uncommon, and maybe some rare items.
Now the obvious easy way to do this would be to grab every magic item from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) of the rarity and throw it in there. Which, yeah, that is quick and easy. I wanted to give some variety and some chance that some items may or may not be there, even changing the items between visits if the players waited long enough between visits. So, I took that list from the DMG and made myself a roll table.
I ended up with 4 common items and 111 uncommon items. But included in the uncommon we have 18 potions, 5 rings, 4 wands, 4 elemental gems, 4 bags, and 6 different generic takes on a +1 item. What would Del Bog want to stock in his shop that would make sense? Well, I could see him stocking, say, 1d4(rolled 1-4) or 1d6(rolled 1-6) of all 4 common items. 6 would not be too many for those. 1d6 of a couple of potions, cantrip spell scrolls, and 1st-level spell scrolls. Those are nice, and once the party comes into some money, they can stock up. For the Health potions at this level, rolling 2d6 would not be a bad thing. I could see those selling quickly in this environment, so it would make sense for a magic shop to be well stocked in those.
Now the uncommons. You can either make a layered roll table based on type of item, or do what I did for this shop. Think about how many different types of uncommon you want to see in the shop. Let’s say 10-20. That’s types, not quantity. So with 107 items, we can roll a 1d100+1d12-1. You can roll this with real dice and record your numbers, or use a dice-rolling app, or use a virtual tabletop (VTT). Honestly, for this volume, I would recommend a VTT. I used Roll20 and got the following: 69, 96, 29, 85, 22, 62, 80, 98, 71, 49, 16, 76, 24, 40, 11, 91, 51, 58, 56, 72. That’s kinda mixed up, so let’s organize it.
In numerical order: 11, 16, 22, 24, 29, 40, 49, 51, 56, 58, 62, 69, 71, 72, 76, 80, 85, 91, 96, 98
Now, because I have this list pulled up on 5e tools, this makes it a little easier for me to tally how many and then to go looking for what numbers I rolled. You can also translate all these magic items into a Word document or into an Excel sheet. I would recommend an Excel sheet if you plan on doing this a lot. That way, you can number all the items and find them even faster. But the items we rolled above give us the following.
Bag of Tricks, (Gray), Boots of the Winterlands, Cloak of Elvenkind, Cloak of the Manta Ray, Dust of Dryness, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Helm of Telepathy, Instrument of the Bards, (Doss Lute), Lantern of Revealing, Medallion of Thoughts, Pearl of Power, Potion of Animal Friendship, Potion of Fire Breath, Potion of Fire Resistance, Potion of Hill Giant Strength, Potion of Poison Resistance, Potion of Water Breathing, Ring of Water Walking, Sentinel Shield, Spell Scroll (2nd Level). Almost all of the items I would only have one of in the shop. They are rare enough that there is not a good reason to keep more than one. For consumables, like the potions, I would say roll a 1d4 or just choose a number between 1 and 4 for how many are in stock.
For pricing all this. I also have a method that uses a VTT rolling ability. The DMG states that uncommon items are priced at “101-500 gp” each. So what I do is I set up a rolling formula in Roll20 of “/roll 1d400+100”. This will give you a range the same as the listing in the DMG. So we roll that 20 times. Getting 289, 437, 388, 186, 120, 365, 340, 234, 261, 162, 317, 415, 352, 310, 378, 483, 216, 246, 485, 449. So there are your prices for your items. You can do that for any of the rarity listings from the DMG.
To detail out what the spell scrolls are that would be in the shop, I do the same thing of creating a roll table out of the spells from the Player’s Handbook (PHB). Then roll it. Do not be afraid of seeing a roll and saying, “No.” That could apply to the spells for spell scrolls or magic items. If you do not want it in your game or it does not fit in your setting, you do not have to include it. A note on this, though, would be to be sure to tell your players if there are any such restrictions in your setting. That way, expectations can be managed, and there is not disappointment or frustration from your players about something that was not communicated.
I mentioned having a few rare items. I would roll a 1d4 or 1d6 for the total number of rare items and then do the same method as above to determine what items are there. Or, with a list that small, you could flip through the list on 5eTools or in your DMG and just decide which ones you want to have in your magic shop.
This is a great opportunity to set some plot hooks through items in the store or small quests for the shopkeeper.
Now for the more mundane shop. Decide what kind of shop it is. General store, clothing, wood items, weapons, armor, etc. Then look through the items listed under equipment in the PHB. Again, same method as above for figuring what items and how many. With mundane items, it’s usually not odd to literally have several of every suit of metal armor in an armor shop, or having a dozen battle axes in a weapon shop. With these, I would encourage you to look for ways to have a few unique pieces. Not mechanically, mind you, just ones that look different. Have some silver plating here and some decorative work there that makes them unique. Again, these are great plot hooks, if you want them to be. If you do not, that is ok too. The idea is to give your players more to look at than “I buy a battle axe.” Rather, “I want the axe with the black oak handle and that neat spiral detail on the head.”
If you do not have time to make the tables and look up the items, there are some great resources out there from places like https://www.thievesguild.cc/. All in all, I hope the above has helped you get your head wrapped around setting up shops in your village, settlement, or city that you have your adventurers explore. Thank you for reading, and Game on!
About the Author
Jared “Martel” B has been GMing and playing in several TTRPG’s since late 2013. Enjoys the challenge of bringing his players worlds and stories straight from his mind in the moment that it happens. He is one of the Founders of RPGCounterpoint, happy husband to an active historian wife, and father to two puppers and a toddler!
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