Voices in a dozen languages. The air is thick with spice, animal musk, and sumptuous foods. Colour everywhere: shimmering silks, glittering trinkets. Each alley hides another. Every smile masks an agenda, and a price. The bazaar gives and takes in equal measure. What are you here to find, and what will find you first?
How do! This is number seven in a series of encounter generators inspired by MGS tracks. The objective is to give GMs a [nearly instant] practical tool they can use at the table. Whether in a hurry, or brainstorming ideas, I hope this generator can help.
Ben Milton and Kevin Crawford are the primary inspirations behind this series through their book, respectively Knave 2e and the Without Number series. These resources are brilliant prompts for both worldbuilding and encounter ideas; they are an easy recommend from me; check them out if you have the chance!
How It Works
The procedure is simple: grab a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and a d4. Roll all of them together; then, compare the results with the tables below. Link any results where it makes sense. The tables go from atmosphere (d4 environment, d6 aspects) to scene (d10 features, d20 creatures); narrative developments (d8 complications, d12 secrets) come last.
If you wish, pick and choose from the results if you want; do whatever suits the creative flow. Complex encounters can come from multiple rolls (or picks) and combining together. Again, there’s no need to connect every result together. Results will sometimes work better separately rather than forced together.
Today’s track is Bazaar. It’s available on the MGS store here. Alternatively, it comes as part of the 50 track album RPG Ambiences Vol. 3 which you can find here.
Here is the generator:
Bazaar Roll Tables
d4 – The Environment
1. Festive surge – a local holiday has swelled the crowd to bursting. Strangers press close. The noise is joyful, and deafening. Perfect cover for anything.
2. Simmering dispute – two merchant guilds are in an open trade war. Barkers compete relentlessly, customers conscripted into loyalty. More than money makes a nervous atmosphere.
3. Exotic influx – an unusual foreign caravan has arrived, and the bazaar has absorbed it chaotically. Unfamiliar goods, customs, and dangers. Fascination and suspicion are rife.
4. Lean times – the crowds are thinner. Barkers call out with a desperation that wasn’t there just a month ago. Someone is bleeding this bazaar dry. Prices are wrong. Something is very wrong.
d6 – Bazaar Aspects
1. Spice fog – braziers burn aromatic blends at every third stall. The smoke is pleasant at first. After a few minutes, it dulls the senses. Some traditions are incredibly useful.
2. Caged wonders – live animals line the street. Creatures from places most visitors have never been. Some are beautiful. Some are illegal. One cage is empty, door hanging off its hinges.
3. The performers – acrobats, fire-eaters, a one-man percussion act, a woman who swallows swords. They draw crowds, pickpockets, and trouble.
4. The mud – recent rains have turned the streets into slick chaos. Carts are stuck. Stalls have collapsed. Tempers are short and feet are soaked.
5. Enforcers on patrol – guild soldiers move in pairs, unhurried. They see everything, but act according to their own laws. Reassurance and threat: it depends on who you are.
6. Rumour stalls – the town’s second trade. Information brokers, gossips, spies, and a blind woman who is always right. The price for truth varies. The cost is always higher.
d10 – Its Features
1. The auction platform – wooden stage where lots are called at speed. Today’s items range from salvage to the suspiciously fine. Bidders are out in force. The auctioneer misses nothing.
2. The central fountain – dried up for years, now running again. The meeting point of the bazaar, deals are struck here. Children play. A body was found in it last week.
3. Weighmaster’s booth – disputes over measure and value come here. The queue is long and hostile. Scrupulously fair in public, the weighmaster’s private rates are another matter.
4. The cookfire row – a hundred vendors selling a hundred things on sticks. Cheap, filling, occasionally unidentifiable. One stall’s recipe is so good rivals have twice tried to burn the place down.
5. Livestock pens – the smells hit first. Horses, goats, pigs, and less identifiable ones follow. The beasts are restless. One of the larger pens has been reinforced recently and urgently.
6. Money Changers– a row of tables under a shared awning. Rates chalked, argued, erased, and re-chalked over and over. More than money moves here.
7. Black market – no official name, though everyone knows the street. Goods with no questions, services with no receipts. Entry is easy. Leaving with a secret is harder.
8. The announcement board – warrants, proclamations, and lost property notices of varying legality. Some read it obsessively. This morning, a new notice has set gossips alight.
9. The sealed warehouse – the largest building on the market square. Belongs to a consortium no one can give details beyond the name. Hasn’t opened in six months. Deliveries still arrive after dark.
10. The apothecary quarter – healers, herb sellers, and quacks cluster here. Remedies, genuine and fake, share shelf space. The back rooms do a quieter, more careful trade entirely.
d20 – The Creature(s)
1. Inspector – checking stalls. Knows who needs what license. Technically neutral. Methodical.
2. Fence – appraising necklaces. Cheerful, curious, observant. Records everything. Networked.
3. Pilgrim – lost and overwhelmed. On sacred business. Carrying something precious. Obvious and trusting.
4. Refugee merchant – selling final stock. Displaced, no more road left. Haunted.
5. Off-duty soldier – haggling. Relaxed, sociable, attentive. Knows which stalls are fronts. Cheerful.
6. Antiquarian – dusting a relic. Previous owner “uncertain,” but price is. Has a wonderful story. Plausible.
7. Herbalist – bundling dried plants. Genuinely helpful; adjusts prices according to customer’s desperation. Poison aficionado. Calm.
8. Urchins – three visible, a fourth not yet spotted. Light fingers, fast feet. Serving someone ancient. Expendable.
9. Foreign aide – buying for their dignitary. Embarrassing item, huge budget. Confusing local customs. Flustered.
10. Debt collector – carrying a list. Patient, polite, inexorable. Interest rates are cruel. Merely an instrument. Implacable.
11. Forger – selling maps. Work is flawless, morals flexible. Has other talents besides. Precise.
12. Healer – treating patients. Eight people waiting. Helps anyone, no fee if broke. Exhausted.
13. Caravan guard – smoking a pipe. Between contracts. Works for the right employer or cause. Has opinions on both. Idealistic.
14. Broker – browsing. Genius for connecting need with supply, no matter how illegal. Amused.
15. Disgraced noble – browsing cheap stalls. Recognisable to anyone in court circles. Hopes no one here is. Diminished.
16. Street preacher – doomsaying. Apocalyptic fervour. Wrong about specifics, right about the mood. Sincere.
17. Spice merchant – offering samples. Theatrical generosity. Unaware a spice has been switched. Effusive.
18. Local tough – minding a stall. Bored, easily provoked. Fiercely loyal, but won’t explain. Protective.
19. Prodigy – doing arithmetic for gamblers for coin. Has memorised every price in the bazaar. Curious.
20. Cultist – selling candles. Chats with every third customer. Symbol on wrist is small, their network is not. Patient.
d8 – The Complications
1. Stampede. Spooked livestock. Pens opened, running amok. Items go missing in the chaos. So do people.
2. Arrest. City watch are dragging someone out. The accused is shouting a name. Crowds are split, jeering or sad.
3. Price fix collapse. Guild agreements break down. Three factions: people take up sides, weapons are next.
4. Fire. A cooking stall is aflame. Fire spreads fast. The owner is screaming it’s deliberate.
5. Poisoning. A seller has collapsed. Panic spreads faster than the cause can be found. Stalls are shuttering and a mob is forming.
6. Blackout. Lanterns go out. Sudden darkness, then screams. Light returns, and two men are dead.
7. Tribute. A new group are collecting from vendors, not the guild. No one knows who they are. One vendor refused; now they’re on the ground.
8. Revelation. Someone is shouting a secret in the square. The crowd is growing. So is the danger.
d12 – The Secrets
1. In a bolt of fine cloth, a sewn-in letter. Coordinates and a date. Interception was likely intended.
2. Under a vendor’s false floor, a stash of forged gold coins. Well made. The duke will be furious.
3. In a spice jar, a rolled-up list. Names, amounts, and dates: a ledger of bribes. Very recent. Very complete.
4. Wrapped in cloth with junk, a broken insignia. Belongs to a dissolved order. To the right person, proof against denial.
5. In a locked box on a money changer’s table, a second set of books. The real rates. The real clients.
6. Pinned inside a coat at a mercer’s, a map. Very detailed. Shows a route into a location that’s supposedly impregnable. Fresh ink.
7. In a healer’s bag, an unlabelled vial. The contents are incredibly beneficial, incredibly potent.
8. Behind a loose brick, a bundle of warrants. Signed, sealed, and legitimate: arrests that were never made.
9. In a sealed room, crates marked with a foreign military seal. Factions are looking for them. Once located, even more will try to take it.
10. On a notice board, a small chalk symbol. Present for weeks, it changes every night. Someone is having a very slow, very coded conversation.
11. On market stall weights, a tiny carved name. The original owner died in unusual circumstances. They guarded the treasure’s location; it’s still a secret for now.
12. Folded into a religious text, a death list. Real names. Real dates. The first is tomorrow.
Example Encounter for Bazaar
Roll Results:
d4: 2 – Simmering dispute
d6: 5 – Enforcers on patrol
d10: 8 – Announcement board
d20: 11 – Forger
d8: 3 – Price fix collapse
d12: 3 – Bribe ledger
My Idea for the Encounter:
Voices in a dozen languages. The air is thick with spice, animal musk, and sumptuous foods. Colour everywhere: shimmeringsilks, glittering trinkets. Each alley hides another. Every smile masks an agenda, and a price. The bazaar gives and takes in equal measure. What are you here to find, and what will find you first?
The Corthars and the Red Hand consortium have been at each other’s throats for months, and the market has become a social battlefield. Prices shift by the hour. Enforcers in both colours move through the crowd, watching each other more than any customer.
At the announcement board, a new notice is drawing a murmuring crowd: a proclamation that the Red Hand’s market licenses are suspended, pending fraud investigation. Official, sealed, and also the forger Pell Osta’s finest work, commissioned by someone in the Corthar camp; Osta has already disappeared, by choice before the Corthars tie up loose ends.
Tucked into a spice jar at an unwitting vendor’s stall is the evidence that would prove the proclamation false and expose the forgery; it’s a ledger of Corthar bribes to the very officials supposedly investigating the Red Hands. Everyone knows it exists, and they’re all keen to find it first.
Tips for Using These Tables
I wrote some tips on using roll tables here. However, some important things to highlight:
– Try using awkward results before tossing them away. Often it’s the unexpected combinations that build the most memorable stories.
– Modify the tables as you like. Change them; add to them; mix them up. GMs will know what will work best for their own group.
Finally, for those interested in more or missed the previous encounter generators, here is a list with links:
Baroque Noble Party
Old Fort
Temple of the Stars
Ship in Blizzard
Snowing
Forest River
Have a lovely day!
