The Goblin Bazaar

The Goblin Bazaar is located in the first room on the second sublevel of my Five Years Left megadungeon. All manner of useful things can be found for sale there, but the prices are exorbitant, and any treasure traded to the goblins does not earn experience points for the players. None the less if they see something they want, it’s best to pounce on it, because each session I generate an entirely new inventory by rolling 3d6 and consulting the tables below:

Among all of the…

1. Cracked ceramic [subject]s, soiled mattresses, and jars of [animal bits]
2. Rotted [produce], sticky children’s toys, and sacks of [filler material]
3. [Fad instructional][Media], crumpled dorm room posters, and water damaged [genre] novels
4. Jewelry made from [Trash], board games with missing pieces, and boxes of [papercraft]
5. Horrid smelling [clothing], pencil nubs, and empty [food containers]
6. Branded [junk swag], lidless tupperware, and [holiday][junk you’re meant to throw out]

…you find…

1. gun (d6): combat shotgun, AK-47, Uzi, Silenced Pistol, Sniper Rifle, Spandau
2. spell of level 2d6 (drop lower), randomly determined from whatever spell list is at hand.
3. technology (d6): smart phone, wireless speaker, radar, moped, cordless drill, prosthetic limb
4. gear: random weapon or armor with 1 cool power (either technological or magical)
5. weird (d6): ritual magic, magic item with big drawback, A.I. companions, mutation juice
6. other tables: old curio shop table, the IOUN stones book, wondrous items from the DMG

…and also…

1. gun (d6): derringer, revolver, .22 rifle, hommeade pistol, hommeade rifle
2. spell of level 2d6 (drop higher), randomly determined from whatever spell list is at hand.
3. tech (d6): kitchen appliance, flashlight, camera, megaphone, laser tripwire, walkie talkies
4. explosives (d6): Frag grenade, flash grenade, smoke grenade, door buster, fire bomb, demolition explosive
5. single-use magic: something like a potion, powder, thrown glass ball, etc.
6. quest hook (d4): treasure map, item desired by an NPC, information broker, item to exploit a monster’s weakness

The prices are…

Items from the first table cost d6 x 5r.
Items from the second table cost 2d6 x 100r
Items from the third table cost 2d6 x 20r

(The “r” here stands for “Ration,” which is the base unit of currency in Five Years Left.)

Of primary concern when I was writing this is that the whole system had to fit on the bottom 20% of a sheet of graph paper. Any more than that and my rules reference would take up more than a single page. As such, I’ve used shorthand which is probably less clear to others than it is to me. Below are six examples which ought to clarify what results from these tables look like in practice. To cover as much of the table as possible I assumed that triples were rolled for each example (111, 222, etc.) In practice the results would usually be more diverse.

111: Among all of the cracked ceramic angels, soiled mattresses, and jars of pig’s tails, you find a clean and functional AK-47. The malnourished goblin clinging to it explains that she spent all her food money to buy it, which didn’t seem like such a bad idea at the time. Hungry as she is, the weapon is precious to her, and she will only part with it for the exact price she bought it for: 900r. You also discover a derringer beneath some greasy napkins. You only have a moment to examine it before the goblin seller snatches it away, and insists you can’t have it unless you pay 140r.

222: At first it seems that there’s nothing here but rotted cabbages, sticky children’s toys, and burlap sacks filled with sawdust. You’re about to give up when you discover the 4th level OD&D spell “Growth of Plants.” It’s written in a gilded journal, and was obviously the prized possession of some long dead wizard. The goblin who owns it has no idea what it is, but is confident that it must be worth at least 700r. Shortly thereafter you also find the 3rd level OD&D spell “Water Breathing,” carefully written out on a roll of toilet paper. You shudder to imagine what circumstance led to that particular spell being written on that particular medium. The goblin who owns it knows exactly what she has, but every time she looks at it she gags. She wants it out of her sight, and will sell it for the low low price of 180r.

333: Sifting through old jazzercise CD-ROMs, crumpled dorm room posters, and water damaged western novels, you come upon a sophisticated prosthetic leg. Someone has painted a racing stripe up its side. The goblin selling the thing rests on crutches, and laments that the leg was not as good for racing as they thought it would be. They’ll part with the thing for 600r. Meanwhile, another member of the party uncovers a cordless egg beater beneath some of those dorm room posters. The goblin selling it assures you that it is a fearsome weapon, and a total bargain at only 80r.

444: Beneath a heap of necklaces made from tin can tabs, stacks of board games with missing pieces, and several boxes of beige business cards for something called a “Sales Associate,” the party discovers a chain mail coif which has been ensorcelled such that the wearer gains the ability to speak with fish. The goblin says all the fish he met were terribly rude, and so is willing to part with it for a mere 600r. Nearby, a maternal looking goblin wrestles a napalm explosive away from a smaller goblin, holds it up high, and desperately asks if anyone will buy it before her kid kills someone. The melodrama is probably a sales scam, because she refuses to part with it for less than 280r.

555: Shoving aside racks of mildew-smelling jorts, heaps of pencil nubs, and stacked displays of empty soup cans, you discover an carafe of glowing liquid which, if consumed, will cause the imbibing character to gain a random mutation. The goblin selling it–who has a baby’s arm growing out of his forehead–insists that all the mutations are all cool and beneficial. He wants 400r for it. Another goblin shoves the first aside, holding up a wooden box with a ceramic key inside it. It’ll open any door you want, but it’ll break when you use it. A much better bargain, and more reliable, than that gross mutation juice. Only 100r!

666: After picking your way through the branded letter openers, lidless tupperware, and hollow plastic Halloween weapons, you find a tattered pair of Boots of Elvenkind, which a goblin hates because she can’t make noise in them no matter how hard she stomps around. She wants them out of her sight for a measly 400r. As you browse about further, a goblin in a trench coat pulls you aside. They say they know things. Many things. Is there something you want to know? They probably know all about it. They’ll tell you what you want to know, for a price… Specifically for 180r.

Obviously there’s a bit of finessing involved in producing these results, which is why I generate them outside of play. In general I prefer to avoid committing myself to systems that require out-of-session prep, but this is the sort of creative work I find both enjoyable and easy. It’s just improvising details around a set of random seeds. In a pinch I could do it mid-session, but in fact I enjoy it so much that I’ve already got the next 10 weeks of Goblin Bazaars pre-generated.

And that’s it, that’s the whole system. Now I’m gonna work backwards a bit and talk about why I made the decisions I did.

What benefit is there to this sort of randomly populated item shop?

There are three major benefits. First is that we’re playing a game where the goal is to get money. The referee can tax that money by requiring the players to pay for repairs, or healing, or training, but they also gotta have some fun stuff to splurge on. This is doubly important in a megadungeon like this one, where the play is focused in a way that precludes traditional domain building. A bazaar with a random and rotating inventory offers the players some fun tools and toys to get excited about, while avoiding the dreaded opening of the flood gates typically associated with magic item shops.

Second, placing a single-session time limit on items adds an interesting pressure to the game. Does the party want to spend money to buy the mid-tier item that’s on sale this week, or do they want to hold on to their money in case there’s something better next session? Or perhaps the bazaar has a truly great item for sale which the party can’t afford. Now the players have a ticking clock which forces them to push and push to collect enough treasure to buy this great item before the session ends, and it is lost forever.

Third, I am ever the advocate for randomizing anything which can be randomized. It forces everyone–players and referee alike–to adapt. For example, a group which usually relies on brute strength will look at problems differently if they just got a really good deal on some potions of invisibility. That sort of adaptation to circumstance is a huge part of what makes this game fun for me. I want to encourage it whenever I can.

As an aside, I was halfway through writing this post when I realized it wasn’t the first time. This is an idea I’ve been iterating on for years now. It started way back with Thracle’s Emporium in Brendan’s Pahvelorn, which I adapted for my paleolithic D&D&LB campaign as the Caravan system. Later I would adapt the idea further into the Curio shops that were scattered around ORWA. This latest take on the concept, the Goblin Bazaar, feels strikingly more mature to me. I’ve used it for several sessions already, and I love it. It’s sleek, it drives play, I am sincerely proud.

Why doesn’t money spent at the bazaar earn experience points for the players?

The in-universe fiction is that the player characters are from a destitute settlement, which only has five years of supplies left before everyone dies. Bringing fresh resources out of the dungeon and into the settlement is an act of real heroism. It gives hope to the hopeless, and extends the life of the town. That’s what I award experience points for. Spending those same resources on Goblin junk is pretty selfish in comparison.

The real life explanation is that I’ve spent several years running high level domain play in my On a Red World Alone campaign. I’m a little burned out on that sort of thing, and would like to indulge in an extended period of grotty dungeon delving. It suits my purposes well if the players’ levels advance at a snail’s pace.

Why is the first table full of useless junk!?

It may seem silly, but the junk table is one of the biggest advantages the goblin bazaar has over my earlier efforts. When using the caravans or the curio shops, I presented them to players as being filled with all manner of interesting things, then listed the few objects that were meant to be player facing. Inevitably, if the items on offer didn’t interest the group, they’d ask “So…what else is here?”

It’s a perfectly reasonable question when the referee has described a shop that is filled with a great variety of wonders. In my head all that other stuff was supposed to be useless junk. Gewgaws for eccentric rich people. But I’d said it was there, so I was stuck improvising whole inventories that felt appropriate. Again, inevitably, something I listed would spark interest among the players, and we’d all get dragged down this rabbit hole of them trying to figure out a good use for a set of 500 year old encyclopedias. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you there have been sessions where the party spent fully two hours sitting in a curio shop.

It was tedious. I may sound petty for saying so, but this has been a source of real frustration for me. In contrast, the goblin bazaar is framed as a heap of garbage where the players are lucky enough to find a couple cool things.

Why Goblins?

Because it gives me a regular excuse to perform as a malevolent toddler in front of my players.

Also, because goblins are just toddlers, I am fully justified in the bazaar being filled with junk, and everything being sold for wildly inconsistent prices.

Before I go, I ought perhaps answer “Where are those dungeon prompts that were supposed to follow the megadungeon post?” Well, if you’ve ever wondered how to ensure a project hits a stumbling block, all you’ve gotta do is tell people it will be done soon. The set of six d100 tables I mentioned in my last post are still in the works, but it’s an immense undertaking. They will be done some day.

I hope everyone is taking care of themselves and the people around them. Respect and solidarity to the brave protesters in Portland, and all across the U.S.

Edit: One of my players was incensed to discover that her favorite Goblin, “Muscles,” was not mentioned or depicted anywhere in this post. To maintain the harmony of my game table, I will accede to her demands that Muscles be included: