DriveThruRPG.com
Browse Categories
$ to $















Back
pixel_trans.gif
Urban Dressing: Traders & Craftsmen $3.75
Average Rating:3.8 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
2 1
1 1
2 0
0 0
0 1
Urban Dressing: Traders & Craftsmen
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Urban Dressing: Traders & Craftsmen
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Aaron T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/17/2013 20:38:57

What you get: Two black and white pdf’s each 13 pages long. One is formatted to provide a quality printed version of the document, the other formatted for viewing on a tablet device. Two pages of covers, two pages of OGL and ads, one title page, one page credits, and one page Table of Contents and Foreword, leaving 6 pages of content.

Artwork: The two pieces of black and white artwork were both of good quality and fit the theme of the product.

Layout and Editing: Layout was two column standard. Editing was excellent, with only one “her” that should be a “his.”

Overall Impression: There’s a very good reason that this product is sold as a “GM resource.” There is almost nothing here for players. For GM’s this is a gold mine of tables of ideas for making your shops more unique and interesting.

The first table is 100 interesting characteristics to make shops memorable. Some are as simple as, “a small wooden shop that smells of fresh baked bread.” Some are complicated enough to give a rough idea of the shop’s Ikea-like layout. If you don’t want to roll percentile dice to decide what a shop looks like, you can still cherry pick shop descriptions for your game.

The second table is 100 different traders and craftsmen that could be working in a randomly picked shop that the PC’s walk into. Other than having a nice list of craftsmen that might be in a medieval-fantasy town or city, I struggle to see what use I could get from this table in my game. However, I can see where other GM’s might find it useful.

The third table consists of 20 hooks or complications that PC’s might encounter in a shop. These could be used as plot hooks to entice the PC’s into investigating a possible quest, or they could just be something that keeps a PC from shopping in that shop. Generally, these are some sort of trouble going on just as they arrive (shelf fell over, shop owner in back complaining of having been bitten by a patron, etc.). This was the most fun table to read, as each entry inspired my inner GM to invent quests for each of these.

The final set of tables consists of 8 table that, used in sequence, allow a GM to quickly roll up an interesting NPC. You get gender, name, race, appearance, mannerisms, purpose for being in the shop, and rumors. This set of tables, could be used by a player as idea seeds for a character, though I’m sure there are better resources available for that sort of inspiration. The prepared GM would use these tables to provide NPC descriptions ahead of time. In a pinch they COULD roll up an NPC at the table with these tables.

Final Rating: This product is darned useful, even if it’s not the most riveting set of tables I’ve ever read. Even a GM running a published adventure is left to their own devices for 90% or more of the material when faced with PC’s in town looking to spend money. This product combined with a copy of one of the “So What’s for Sale, Anyway?” documents would make the prep for a town worlds easier. Despite the dryness of the material itself, this product accomplishes what it set out to do, and accomplishes it well and thoroughly. 5 stars, and I want to check out more of this line of products.

-Aaron



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Urban Dressing: Traders & Craftsmen
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/05/2013 02:54:14

This installment of RSP's Dressing-line is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC/foreword, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 6 pages of content, so let's take a look!

After getting an installment detailing market stalls, we now take a look at the beings (and to a lesser degree, areas) where the goods are sold: A massive table with 100 entries spanning two tables mentions a multitude of different details, from eerie, blue glowing moss at an adjacent building, free drinks in the bar for purchases to different doors for different sizes of customers, the pdf offers a nice table of peculiarities.

After that, we get a list of 100 proficiencies/goods to sell, ranging from medicine and spices to mercenary services and linen-drapers. Of course, this is not about goods exclusively, and we also get tables for traders - a simple system with a table to determine gender, two tables à 20 entries for male and female names, a 5-entry table for determining common races and a 20-entry-table featuring uncommon races. We also get a 20-entry table featuring uncommon characteristics like large bellies, overbites etc. and 20 mannerisms to complement them. 20 simple rumors about the trader can spawn adventures or serve as red herrings and 15 different purposes for being in the shop (based on a d%-throw) round out this installment of the Dressing-line.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to RSP's 2-column b/w-standard and the b/w-artwork interspersed is nice. The pdf comes in two versions, one optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out. The pdf is fully bookmarked.

This installment of the Dressing-line is problematic at best due to a simple decision: This is the wrong format to depict traders. While we wouldn't necessarily need statblocks, the 2 pages devoted to shops take too much of the page-count to make this viable. As soon as you use different nomenclatures for different races (who doesn't???), the two tables of sample names turn all but useless and I have to turn to the name-generator-pdfs by Raging Swan or come up with my own names. The result being more mostly useless content.

Don't get me wrong, the characteristics of the shops are nice, but they SHOULD be their own product - as provided, they remain a bit sketchy and might yield weird results when combined with market stalls - and more importantly have nothing to do with traders and craftsmen.

Which leaves us with not much - 100 jobs, 20 mannerisms and 20 characteristics, about 1.5 pages, are simply not enough and don't do what this pdf sets out to do - provide you with a fluff-generator for traders and craftsmen. We don't get nearly enough peculiarities, no haggling-behavior at all, no distinguishing entries on personality (like "Takes 2x as long to craft item x, doesn't provide z" etc.) and no security measures - whether one takes this as a generator for shops or as one for tradesmen, the pdf fails either way, trying to be both and ultimately failing to be useful as either. Since usefulness make up about 90% of what I can judge regarding these Dressing-pdfs and since I can see NO USE at all for this one, my final verdict will be 1 star. Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Urban Dressing: Traders & Craftsmen
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Eric H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/08/2013 19:02:06

Urban Dressing: Traders & Craftsmen is another PDF from Raging Swan covering a variety of people your PCs can meet in town, willing to buy and sell whatever they might need. It's 13 pages long, with 1 page for the cover, 1 for the back cover, 1 for contents, 1 for credits, 1 for other products available from Raging Swan, and 1 briefly detailing this PDF and the Urban Dressing line. That leaves seven for the contents, so here goes.

First of all, it should be said that I was given this PDF for free by Raging Swan in exchange for a review. That said, it's got some very good stuff in it. The first two pages go into detail about 100 different shops your PCs can enter, ranging from rather nice places to the sort of shops people probably hire murderers in. Many of them are described in such a way as to make it obvious that they've had prior owners, and who knows what they could have left behind?

The next page covers a variety of different goods and services that can be offered. It's rather plain, but still very convenient. The next page lists twenty different odd events that can be occurring in a shop when PCs visit. They can be anything from local color to a combat or social encounter to the lead-in for an adventure. The last two pages cover any potential NPC you might meet in the shop. None of the information covers potential character levels or classes, but it does give some quick ideas for their appearance, rumors about them, and their purpose in visiting the shop among other things.

The PDF gives you exactly what it promises, and it does so effectively. I would have liked a trifle more information about the owners of the shops and any more unusual trades, but it still does a great job. I'll go with 4 stars. Definitely worth the price.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 3 (of 3 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items
 Gift Certificates