UPDATE: I decided to make a new version of my house rules supplement detailing the availability of goods and services. It now shows the amount available weekly. This serves my purposes much better as I run my game every week. So rather than having to track what’s available for the month and note everything down, I can just roll once and that’s what’s available this session.
If you want them, here’s a link to my Old Rules. And here is the text of my old post explaining the ideas that motivate this supplement:
Continuing on in my series of posts examining my house rule supplements, today I’ll be going over my rules for the availability of goods and services. The lack of inclusion of any sort of guidelines for what goods and services should be available in a given settlement is probably the single most glaring omission in classic D&D and the retro-clones. (Obviously excluding Adventurer Conqueror King System, which pioneered the concept.)
Making expensive items scarce in small settlements not only mirrors reality, but it drives play. Assuming you start your campaign in the traditional manner of a small village on the frontier with a dungeon nearby, it prevents PC’s from just securing anything and everything they need and provides a motivation to travel to, and explore, any larger settlements in the setting.
Finally, having guidelines for the scarcity of goods and services implies a living breathing world that exists beyond the PCs with its own economic pressures. Including these rules does a significant amount to build verisimilitude in a game.
Availability-of-Goods-and-Services-Weekly