This is a really great product. One of the first questions the players ask when their characters get into a new town is "What's available in the magic shop?". This product makes it easy for me to answer that question. I just keep a note as to which list I present at each town/city/etc so the inventory doesn't change too quickly, and it works great. Players find something that they want to save up for, and usually it's still available. I highly recommend this product.

Originally published at http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/01/20/tabletop-review-so-whats-for-sale-anyway/

Hey, GMs – how many times has THIS happened to you? You have an adventure in progress, and the party reaches the next town – instead of resting, or going to the nearest pub, castle or spooky forest; one of the players turns to you and asks, “…so, what’s for sale here?” – leading to you scrambling to populate the stores with the first things that come to mind.

Well, worry about that no more (especially if you are playing a Pathfinder based game), as Raging Swan Press have put out a sourcebook that will take care of all your shop stocking woes. The aptly named “So What’s For Sale, Anyway?” provides the GM with a decent sized number of settlements, from Thorps to Metropolises; with 157 lists all up – all easily accessible from a simple dice roll.

Within the lists are several hundred new/improved/variant items for the hardy GM to play with and equip their adventurers with. Unfortunately, that’s all the information that is provided – what said item is; thus leading to some flipping between lists and books to get some more in-depth stats for your new weapon/armour/etc. I understand that this is a bit of a passion project for the author, and a lack of stats isn’t anything that kills the usefulness of this book, but having some extra numbers to cut down a few extra steps could be quite a help in the heat of a game.

Don’t get me wrong, though – stats aside, there is a good array of items in the lists. It’s all laid out in a logical, easy to find manner, so there won’t be too much faffing around when your players want to spend their hard won coin. There is really not much else that one can say about this other than that. If you find yourself scrambling to fill your shops when needed, this is quite the valuable little addition to your world- and for only a couple of bucks, it’s really a pretty good purchase.

Whats for Sale Anyways? by Raging Swan Publishing

This product is 26 pages long. It starts with a cover, credits, forward, and ToC. (5 pages)

Whats for Sale Charts (2 pages) This section has a random table for Thorp, Hamlet, Village, small Town, Large Town, Small City, Large City and Metropolis. Each chart has a random set of items that can be for sale. There is Thorp – 41 Hamlet - 35 Village - 21 Small Town - 16 Large Town - 13 Small City - 10 Large City - 10 Metropolis - 11

Sets (19 pages) This section has 157 different sets of magic item lists for sale. They are a nice mix of things and each fit the GP limit for the location the set is made for.

It ends with a OGL, ad, and back cover. (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. The art work is black and white and fair. Editing and layout was good I didn't notice any errors. I checked a few sets to see if things added up but I just didn't have the time to do it 157 times. But it looks like they accomplished it or got close enough to the GP limit to be reasonable if not. I found this PDF really hard to rate, I mean for one all the number crunching. Also that there is not really any fluff text or mechanics it is just random sets and charts of magic items for sale. It accomplishes what it set out to accomplish really well. If you want or ever wish you had a handy book to roll up random items for sale when the PC's come to town and surprise you then this is well worth the asking price. On the other hand I think it could have been more, I think the treasure sets could have had a nice personal touch, describing some of the items, maybe giving a couple of them a history etc. So what's my rating? I am going to go with a 4, it is a good product and gives you what it promises but I can't help but notice that with a bit more effort it could have been a outstanding product.

Trust me, I'm a Succubus.

This pdf is 26 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 blank page inside the front cover, 2 pages editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisements, 1 page back cover, leaving 19 pages of content, so let's check this pdf out!

How many times have you as a DM despaired at a sudden return of the PCs to civilization to restock? How annoying is it to have to ad-hoc cobble together lists of magic items for the PCs to buy? For DMs like yours truly, who seek to evoke a concise and coherent world, creating tables upon damn effin' tables of items to buy in each individual fleck has been a painful, annoying bane.

This is where this pdf comes in - we get tables for settlements of all sizes, appropriate for the respective sizes. A lot of tables. They respective entries are ordered by item categories and in the beginning of the pdf, you get 2 pages of d%-tables to randomly determine which of them to use for your settlement.

We get 41 lists for thorps, 35 for hamlets, 21 for villages, 16 for small towns, 13 for large towns, 10 for small cities, 10 for large cities and 11 to illustrate what can be found in a metropolis. 2 pages of lists are provided for each settlement size and none of the items felt really out of place in their settlements.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the printer-friendly b/w-two-column-standard by RSP, artworks are b/w-stock and ok. The pdf is extensively bookmarked and comes with an additional screen-version, optimized for use e-readers.

sigh This is one of these pdfs that are hard to review: Essentially, you take up your books and scan through lists, comparing list-prices in the pdf with the book, looking for any inappropriate item. Thankfully, this pdf does not have any, but nevertheless, you don't want to know how long it took me to double-check.

Back to the conclusion: This pdf is one of these immensely useful little tools that make any DM's life significantly easier, providing needed crunch and content that you just don't want to put together yourself. Even better, the stories how the items got to the respective places are great occasions to drop in your own story, making your campaign feel more organic and coherent.

If I had to nitpick anything, then I'd complain about the fact that I would have loved to see descriptions for at least some of the items - how they look different from the standard, lore-sections, the like. As this is clearly not the intended design goal of this pdf, it would be unfair to hold the lack of unique item descriptions against it, though. Me being at a loss to say anything detrimental to the pdfs quality, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars - well done!

Raging Swan Press has taken a fairly chore heavy task common to lots of Pathfinder campaigns and boiled it down to a few dice rolls. It's really that simple.

So What's For Sale, Anyway? takes all of the hard work out of coming up with an list of items available to your party when they wander into that random city loaded to the gills with loot. You didn't really plan for them to spend a lot of time there, really. It's just a stop over on the way to the next quest. But players being players, they want to convert that loot they've gotten into something they can use on their campaign. Something magical.

Grab your d10's and start rolling. In several timed tests (yes, I really did this) it took me an average of 9 seconds to find out what's for sale at any settlement of any size and offer it up to my fictional party. It's all in the charts. Raging Swan cuts right to the chase with this PDF and starts us off with tables for settlements ranging from thorps (very small) to the Metropolis (awesomely large).

Find the correct size for your party, and make one roll. Follow the chart to the correct set and there you have it, a list of magical items for sale. The larger the settlement, the more variety there is the greater the chance of finding more expensive items.

There are enough different sets (from 41 thorp sets to 11 metropolis sets) that things shouldn't get repetitive even with a very active party.

The PDF is very helpfully bookmarked, making getting to the right place a simple click on the correct bookmark. The four dollars you'll spend on this is worth saving either an hour of preparation or the frustration of leafing through books looking for a small but helpful range of stuff to sell your party.