this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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A shopping trip can kill half a session if it's been a while. Then maybe one of the shopkeepers has a problem that would be worth one of the nicer items in their shop if it were taken care of for them.
Do you really have fun running a session like that? Me and my players would die of boredom.
I think a lot of it is the dopamine of getting to upgrade your character.
Also, I have observed that people LOVE getting everything together to get kitted out for a mission. If there’s some special equipment they’re going to need to go into the temple, and they’re trying to think what they would need once they get there and running around town putting it all together, they just get super excited and it gets them amped up for the adventure. It is fun in my experience, although yes YMMV.
I don't really like running them, but my players enjoy it from time to time and it always seems to take half a session.
They get itchy when they have too much gold. And a couple of them have taken to collecting t-shirts from the places they visit.
For some reason, my players tend to like it, but as a DM, I've always found it boring as hell.
Depends how well you can roleplay it. Don't let them just buy the longsword they want... Or if you do, have there also be a super duper double ended longsword of doom™ that's not actually for sale, but could be if you could just do the shopkeeper a favour....
I stufferd a store in for my players to shop (Foundry) because it had been a while, and just grabbed a pre-built one and tossed it in...
they spent the night planning and implementing a massive heist because one item cost too much for them to afford and they wanted it..... I had NOTHING for this (half the players beliefs on the shopkeeper, how they worked and how they could be robbed was based on some crappy random generated name and they had made "assumptions"...)
Found out later they thought I planned it all
While my players will easily kill 30 minutes collaborating on what to buy, a session like this is definitely more fun if there are NPC's involved.
We had a memorable session when the PC's found the Emporium of Evil, where they tried to find the magic items that weren't TOO cursed, speaking to all manner of morally questionable merchant. (They bought a lot, actually.)
You can also brainstorm the next quest this way. Whether or not the party wants to take a quest from a one of these merchants, they can certainly hear rumors. You can see what they take interest in, and build your next plot arc off of that base.
Some trouble can always pop up when the shopping is winding down, requiring decisive action by the party.
In their defence, Blades in the Dark, set a trend of having a formal downtime phase which is about upgrading team, healing physical and mental wound, and advancing your side project, and I heard player telling me that they've spend 2 (short) sessions on it.
Even on more classic games, having the player looking what to buy in the books, then finding a shop having it, negotiation with the shopkeeper and so on, can take a lot of time.
I was both a player and a GM in a lot of FitD games, and its downtime is not just a D&D shopping session, it's another phase of the game covered by the rules.
D&D-like shopping sessions, in contrast, are just table talk.