Bloody Barter & Bitter Bargains is out!
Shopping is one of those strange little places where fantasy adventure briefly pretends to become civilized.
The party walks into town covered in blood, carrying three swords they definitely found legally, and asks a perfectly reasonable question:
“Can I buy one of those?”
And then the GM has to decide whether the local shopkeeper has a healing potion, a pistol, a grappling hook, a trained giant moth, a siege engine, or a forbidden occult object that probably should not be available to anyone with coin and a winning smile.
So I made Bloody Barter & Bitter Bargains.
This is a new Shadow of the Demon Lord supplement about merchants, markets, stock, and the terrible things that happen when adventurers mistake commerce for safety.
What does it do?
At its core, Bloody Barter & Bitter Bargains gives GMs a procedure for answering the question “does this merchant have it?” without reducing the whole scene to a flat yes or no.
The book adds stock challenge rolls, modified by the merchant’s focus, the item’s availability, the settlement’s size, trade access, local production, exports, and other circumstances. A merchant in a sprawling trade hub has a very different inventory from someone operating out of a cursed frontier village where the shutters whisper at night and the taxman is technically undead.
There are also tools for determining merchant availability, stock volume, merchant coin, and special outcomes when the roll lands somewhere more interesting than “available” or “not available.”
Sometimes the item is out of stock. Or maybe it is reserved. Or the merchant needs a favor first. It could even be a masterwork piece sold at a fair price. And sometimes, just sometimes it is cursed, because this is still Shadow of the Demon Lord and nobody gets to be happy for free.
Merchants with actual personality
The book also includes tools for making merchants memorable at the table. Not every shopkeeper needs a tragic backstory, but they should at least be allowed to have a wet cough, a copper voice-box, a forbidden cult membership, or a suspiciously enthusiastic opinion about the contents of their own shelves.
You get tables for:
- merchant personalities
- distinguishing features
- secret motives and rumors
- pride, prejudice, and how the merchant views their wares
That last one is important. There is a big difference between a merchant who thinks their goods are honest trade and one who believes every sale is part of a plan they refuse to explain. Players notice these things. Then they ignore the warning signs and buy the cursed item anyway.
Mercantile manifests, item tables, and ledgers
The main meat of Bloody Barter & Bitter Bargains is the mercantile manifests for different kinds of merchants: alchemists, armorers, black market fences, black reliquaries, blacksmiths, engineers, gunsmiths, occultists, provisioners, shipwrights, stable-masters, wainwrights, wanderers, weaponsmiths, and more.
Each merchant type has likely, neutral, and unlikely item categories, making it easy to generate inventories that feel appropriate without becoming predictable.
The book also includes item category tables covering alchemical goods, ammunition, animals and animal gear, armor, clockwork upgrades, clothing, explosives, food and accommodations, forbidden items, incantations, marvels of engineering, personal gear, poisons, potions, tools, vehicles, melee weapons, ranged weapons, firearms, artillery, and siege gear.
And because all of that is more useful when you can actually track it at the table, the release includes a separate merchant ledger booklet in two versions: one with backgrounds, and one without backgrounds for easier printing.
A cursed economy is bad enough. It should not also murder your printer.
Bitter bargains
When the dice turn cruel, the book gives you Bitter Bargain. The merchant might have the last item in stock, but it is reserved. Or they might sell it only if the party performs a favor first. Or it might be cursed, which honestly, often is the kind of customer service adventurers deserve.
On the other end, Exceptional Deals can produce half-price offers, masterwork items, extra stock, related freebies, enchanted trinkets, and other suspiciously good outcomes.
And yes, there are curses. Because sometimes the true horror is not the monster in the ruin. It is the receipt.
Pick up Bloody Barter & Bitter Bargains on DriveThruRPG now!
Want early access to future projects? Want to throw even worse ideas at me? Check out my Patreon. Patrons get early peeks at all my madness, plus playtest copies and the chance to tell me which bargains were not bitter enough.
Share your cursed purchases, terrible merchants, and shopping-related regrets over on Discord, Bluesky, dice.camp, or X. I want to hear which “special deal” ruined your table first.