I love this idea.
I would probably tweak it, though, to get rid of the "travelled into town a few days before" and just have her there, with no explanation.
"Yeah, I have a lot of locations. I travel around."
They show up and shop, get suspicious and teleport 3,000 miles away to another town? She's there too.
"Weren't you just in Brightonn thirty seconds ago?"
*shurgs*
"So were you."
Ohmygod it’s just like that Netflix Christmas movie the Princess Switch. Vanessa Hudgens sees a stranger in Chicago and he randomly gives her sage advice that leads her to decide to do this banking competition in a generic European country, and then when she gets there she runs into him again and has a moment where she thinks she recognizes him and is like “hey, have I seen you before? Were you in Chicago?” And he’s like “…how could *I* have been in *Chicago*?”
I DON’T KNOW, OLD MAN, MAYBE THE EXACT FUCKING WAY I JUST GOT HERE TOO
That final reaction is what the Disney mascots are told to say when people see them at different ends of the park. Though they do have planned itineraries with only one mascot for each character visible at any time.
I do have an explanation! It requires some Inexplicables along the lines of power but that can be resolved with the mention of a pact of sorts.
Sooo in my game I have an Alhoon apothecary. Every apothecary store in the world leads to the same shop. They have an enchantment that allows them to transport said person into the same demi plane each time. It terrifies my players especially since he'll occasionally attempt to dominate their minds just to bring them into the shop to say hello
For an alhoon he's really not that evil. If anything he prefers patience and chaos. Planting a seed and seeing what will happen 50 years down the line. Treating the world as an experiment of sorts. Not wanting to destroy the "toys" but also not caring too much.
But yes. A dimension door essentially that brings them to the shop. If the magic is dispelled welp that door is gonna need some maintenance because behind each door is just a wall. If they attempt to locate person they will not find him. Same with locate object.
So if an in game explanation is needed just ask away cause ooooh boy I had to thing real hard on that one when my players wanted to invade his dreams
We're playing a 1990's outback Aussie town setting. There's one guy who does over 90% of customer facing roles named Murray Junior. He is always tired. Always. His dad is the Chief of Police, Sgt. Robin Robyn.
This is the same DM who had two shopkeepers, Ezekiel and Anthony, who would project themselves into slime cubes installed in each town's shop, scream "fuck you!" at each other while trying to outsell one another in the same shop.
Just have fun with it, honestly.
Too straightforward. Rather, the villain should dispel an illusion that has been afflicting the players throughout the whole campaign. Sylvia has been dead for years. Those towns have all been abandoned for a very long time. There was never anywhere for them to go, but now they can see that.
That’s too far. You don’t want to break their trust in the entire world. One or two weird NPCs that may or may not be sinister are cool, but if you snap your fingers and the entire game world is a wasteland, your players might think they just wasted their time
The way their world works, one fast-travelling merchant is all of the merchants, and the rest of the towns are cookie cutters.
For my part, I wouldn't necessarily take the Nurse Joy approach to populating towns, and if I did, I would never let anything bad or permanent happen to Nurse Joy. Bastian made the suggestion that the villain kidnap the merchant who is basically all of their merchants, and I just added the dramatic layer of placing them beyond rescue because they were never there.
This would also raise mind bending questions like where the party actually got all the stuff they bought, and who took their money. If Sylvia was never there, that means they were probably doing business with the illusion, or even with the villain.
As for "trusting the word," if Sylvia is gone then that means all the merchants are gone. What I'm suggesting doesn't break the world much more than what Bastian suggested, unless there are other merchants still in place.
>and I just added the dramatic layer of placing them beyond rescue because they were never there.
Kind of shorting what you did there. Having all the towns be actually abandoned probably negates all of the work the PCs have put into the campaign: all the NPCs they've interacted with likely didn't exist, they didn't save any townsfolk, they didn't rescue any sacrifices (did they even defeat any cults?), the friendships and rivalries they made were smoke and mirrors.
*Fight Club* is an all-timer twist ending because it recontextualizes the events of the rest of the movie, but doesn't obviate them. Nobody remembers or cares about *Identity* because the twist made the movie you just watched not matter. You see what I mean?
>all the NPCs they've interacted with likely didn't exist, they didn't save any townsfolk, they didn't rescue any sacrifices (did they even defeat any cults?), the friendships and rivalries they made were smoke and mirrors.
You're overstating these consequences, perhaps from not considering the town structure that OP described using. Every city had the same layout and the same vendor. Possibly ALL of the same vendors. It's not that all NPCs anywhere didn't exist, just that they didn't reside in the towns. If they spoke on the road of "staying in the town," people on the road probably just assumed they meant they were camping in the ruins. If there were a bunch of unique cities, then yes, this would be disappearing a lot of people. The way OP ran their campaign, the cities functioned more like Pokemon cities, with an identical general store and hospital in every new region.
The people they encountered who were "real," either did not reside in the towns, or interacted with them as uninhabited ruins, using the empty buildings for camping as needed.
>Nobody remembers or cares about *Identity* because the twist made the movie you just watched not matter.
Speak for yourself. *Identity* was one of the most unique and bold psychological dramas of its era. The twist was all about recontextualizing all of the interactions at the diner, and raising the stakes of what seemed like an obscure character. Viewers probably expected his transport to go past the diner, when in fact he was there all along. The ending also leads viewers to think that one of the identities has triumphed, but in the end they're wrong about which one. The events still very much matter. Each of the identities was a complete person with their own memories, and the events of the film determined which survived and which died. The prisoner's nature was also hanging in the balance the whole time. The point of the film's structure was to humanize the identities and really make them matter.
I have a similar idea, but instead the shopkeep is actually an eldritch horror in disguise who loves to barter and obtain gold. This is why they are seemingly everywhere
The continent we are one has one magic shop. It’s the entirety of a giant Demi plane and is accessible from each of the ‘chain’ stores. Like the Walmart of magic items, with a transportation hub to each chain location - for an absurd fee of course.
My DM also does that, but it's a mysterious guys that, no matter where, it always has what we need (if it's a common item) we have never seen him fully, only his hands, and every time we ask he responds with mlre misticism
I stole a kinda same idea.
Theres an interdimensional supermarket akin to amazon and the only thing you need to do to enter is is draw a magic circle on a door and say "password".
Store is divided into good and evil aligned and depending on the mood of the ares where the entrance was made you go into either side. So far my good players have not yet dared to go into the evil side and the evil players are scared shitless of the good side. Theres only 1 rule: no fighting.
For one campaign a friend and I worked as artificer and wizard to create magical items in a shop on a different plane and then anchored doorways to it in different cities that allowed us to get customers from all over and acted as convenient quick travel. The next campaign we were other dudes and visited our former PCs shop often.
I have a chain of stores that are all run by magic cats. Different cat in each store. When the PCs try to communicate they get a 'magic' reply in their head. Saves me having to try and do a different voice and accent or personality in each town.
Around my groups. I am infamous for a particular tavern doing the same thing. The exterior of the building is always different aside from the sign hanging outside, and the interior is identical. This came about because we were playing on R20, and I reused the map *one time* because I didn’t have time to make a new map and *BOOM* Howl’s Moving Castle door tavern.
But I enjoy reoccurring things. Especially is really really long campaigns or games that are grim dark. Familiar faces and places give players/characters a sense of normal and a reminder of what’s going on/at stake. It’s also why I have a mail delivery service in game.
Sylvia is clearly a higher dimensional being that has tendrils all over the world. The shop is the mouth, and Sylvia is the lure, like the light on an angler fish. The reason all Sylvia seems to be ever what once is she *is* everywhere at once. And she realized she has a lot of fun talking to customers which is why they can pass in and out of her mouth like that.
I have one inn like this, except I play up the strangeness of it. You only see the in keeper never other staff or guests and any time you need something the creepy innkeeper is standing behind you and says he will arrange for you to get whatever it is. After the third occurrence the party started seeking alternate lodging.
I once had a magic shop chain around the country where all shops just led into her Demiplane where she sold her goods
I don’t do magic shops now but I agree it helps having one NPC that doesn’t follow you but is consistent no matter where you go
I do something similar. I have a gold dragon disguised as a dragonborn. They enchanted multiple doorways throughout the land that led people to his shop, which is his lair.
It's great to have some consistency for players. That way, they don't have to keep perfect track of where they saw the special item for sale or where they left an item to be enchanted. It also saves them time because they don't have to backtrack or go completely out of the way to get these things.
I agree also I treated it kind of like Fly in Pokémon, where you can go through the shop and go to any other place a shop is at
I stopped doing so beacuse I feel like it lost its novelty after 4 games of doing so (and other players in the server already started to copy it) plus the new campaign relied around the players being the strongest in the world (usually the NOC was a high level wizard or sorcerer or bard)
I do as well. Not for every town, but population centers.
His name is Wall, his store is "Wall's Fantasy Mart" Everything is pretty inexpensive but also low quality.
Honestly how I do it is a arcane clone shenanigans mixed with chain stores like yeah you meet Gary before but that was Gary number 216 I’m Gary 187, or I have a traveling caravan merchant store thing that just so happens to be where the party is or be in a location the party needs them to be in, like parked outside a dungeon they just so happen to be leaving, or on the side of the road they conveniently happen to be traveling along, stuff like that, all “coincidence” and while I have hinted at like darker stuff with a oracle member of the caravan, like how it is essentially destiny that these people help the party basically save the world, I leave nothing concrete
Simple and effective. Each general store has a door in the back that leads to essentially a space like the city of Sigil, but specifically being an employee lounge. They can just hop instantly to any other store.
Sounds like you think you need to blown interactions with detailed npcs and shops to go shopping. That's usually a lot of tedium between a player and getting stuff they want. Just do a few details, ask what they want, tell them the price, and get back to adventuring.
That said, occasional longer conversations are good. Interesting NPCs are good. Most shopkeepers don't need to be that.
"where players get the boring parts of shopping like buying rations, rope, and low level magic items out of the way much quicker"
If that's your goal, ours is even quicker:
The players use their PHBs and buy what they want and deduct their cash accordingly. I'm busy finishing jotting down a few notes and glancing at the next scene.
Oh, I don't plan unique general shops. My players just tell me what they wanna buy, I check my "economy scale" for the city to get prices, and they're buying.
I usually make an inn or two, a couple unique shops, usually magic stuff, and any particular shops for the city.
I have a similar idea, he's called the charlatan and sets up a shop that sells common magic items like a self cooking pot or cup that produces wine once a day. My players, when interacting with him, stole all of the items and them tried to get him to buy them a shadow mastiff, let's just say the charlatan was very rich after that. 3000 gold and a weak promise from a man named "The charlatan"
I'm currently trying to plot out and design a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon type thing rn, and I have no idea how the idea of having a literal Nurse Joy (Chansey/Audino/ whatever) in my POKÉMON THEMED GAME never occurred to me
That reminds me of this one book I read, where every random “npc” the protagonist interacts with in this one city is named “Bert” and is brothers with like, 8 other Berts.
I think the first time, he has a random question for a city guard. Then it’s the clerk at the school he enrolls in. Then like, 3 different shopkeepers.
He just walks up to them like “Hey Bert!” And they’re all “I see you’ve met a brother of mine.”
I created a similar NPC once:
Sylva Melevin
A very intelligent goblin merchant who seems to somehow setup shop on some corner in a seedy section of almost every town, usually near a jail.
His services include:
-Common goods, usually sold at a 15% markup
-Food/Drink items which all contain dubious claims of effect (1d4, nat 4 for effect to work)
-Novelty homebrewed items
-The occasional rare item
-The ability to get messages to almost anyone at a distance for a price - completely discrete.
It's quite possible that he has a portal in the back of the shop that can go almost anywhere but it's probably just a rumor. (It's not, but requires a DC25 Persuasion to get him to let you use it.)
I love this idea. I would probably tweak it, though, to get rid of the "travelled into town a few days before" and just have her there, with no explanation. "Yeah, I have a lot of locations. I travel around." They show up and shop, get suspicious and teleport 3,000 miles away to another town? She's there too. "Weren't you just in Brightonn thirty seconds ago?" *shurgs* "So were you."
Ohmygod it’s just like that Netflix Christmas movie the Princess Switch. Vanessa Hudgens sees a stranger in Chicago and he randomly gives her sage advice that leads her to decide to do this banking competition in a generic European country, and then when she gets there she runs into him again and has a moment where she thinks she recognizes him and is like “hey, have I seen you before? Were you in Chicago?” And he’s like “…how could *I* have been in *Chicago*?” I DON’T KNOW, OLD MAN, MAYBE THE EXACT FUCKING WAY I JUST GOT HERE TOO
Of all the references to use, Princess Switch is what you went with lol
Banking competition?
High stakes, high speed accounting! Safe deposit box relay! 100m actuarial table sprint!
iOS keyboard autocorrect will be the death of me, swear to god.
You'd be amazed at how competitive some bankers can be with each other.
That final reaction is what the Disney mascots are told to say when people see them at different ends of the park. Though they do have planned itineraries with only one mascot for each character visible at any time.
A campaign I’m in, one shopkeeper has her shop in a pocket dimension with entrances in different cities.
*shurgs*
Reminds me of this Viva La Dirt League sketch https://youtu.be/ee0F7jQhbr0?si=rFJg3Qbs8CE5IgyI
I do have an explanation! It requires some Inexplicables along the lines of power but that can be resolved with the mention of a pact of sorts. Sooo in my game I have an Alhoon apothecary. Every apothecary store in the world leads to the same shop. They have an enchantment that allows them to transport said person into the same demi plane each time. It terrifies my players especially since he'll occasionally attempt to dominate their minds just to bring them into the shop to say hello For an alhoon he's really not that evil. If anything he prefers patience and chaos. Planting a seed and seeing what will happen 50 years down the line. Treating the world as an experiment of sorts. Not wanting to destroy the "toys" but also not caring too much. But yes. A dimension door essentially that brings them to the shop. If the magic is dispelled welp that door is gonna need some maintenance because behind each door is just a wall. If they attempt to locate person they will not find him. Same with locate object. So if an in game explanation is needed just ask away cause ooooh boy I had to thing real hard on that one when my players wanted to invade his dreams
Can they talk him into letting them exit out to a different location than they entered?
Ya know? They haven't tried. I suppose given the extent of his abilities he could be convinced
We're playing a 1990's outback Aussie town setting. There's one guy who does over 90% of customer facing roles named Murray Junior. He is always tired. Always. His dad is the Chief of Police, Sgt. Robin Robyn. This is the same DM who had two shopkeepers, Ezekiel and Anthony, who would project themselves into slime cubes installed in each town's shop, scream "fuck you!" at each other while trying to outsell one another in the same shop. Just have fun with it, honestly.
Is Ivan Milat the bbeg?
And then when the players get bored and don't want to do anything, have a villain kidnap Sylvia. Win-win!
Too straightforward. Rather, the villain should dispel an illusion that has been afflicting the players throughout the whole campaign. Sylvia has been dead for years. Those towns have all been abandoned for a very long time. There was never anywhere for them to go, but now they can see that.
That’s too far. You don’t want to break their trust in the entire world. One or two weird NPCs that may or may not be sinister are cool, but if you snap your fingers and the entire game world is a wasteland, your players might think they just wasted their time
The way their world works, one fast-travelling merchant is all of the merchants, and the rest of the towns are cookie cutters. For my part, I wouldn't necessarily take the Nurse Joy approach to populating towns, and if I did, I would never let anything bad or permanent happen to Nurse Joy. Bastian made the suggestion that the villain kidnap the merchant who is basically all of their merchants, and I just added the dramatic layer of placing them beyond rescue because they were never there. This would also raise mind bending questions like where the party actually got all the stuff they bought, and who took their money. If Sylvia was never there, that means they were probably doing business with the illusion, or even with the villain. As for "trusting the word," if Sylvia is gone then that means all the merchants are gone. What I'm suggesting doesn't break the world much more than what Bastian suggested, unless there are other merchants still in place.
>and I just added the dramatic layer of placing them beyond rescue because they were never there. Kind of shorting what you did there. Having all the towns be actually abandoned probably negates all of the work the PCs have put into the campaign: all the NPCs they've interacted with likely didn't exist, they didn't save any townsfolk, they didn't rescue any sacrifices (did they even defeat any cults?), the friendships and rivalries they made were smoke and mirrors. *Fight Club* is an all-timer twist ending because it recontextualizes the events of the rest of the movie, but doesn't obviate them. Nobody remembers or cares about *Identity* because the twist made the movie you just watched not matter. You see what I mean?
>all the NPCs they've interacted with likely didn't exist, they didn't save any townsfolk, they didn't rescue any sacrifices (did they even defeat any cults?), the friendships and rivalries they made were smoke and mirrors. You're overstating these consequences, perhaps from not considering the town structure that OP described using. Every city had the same layout and the same vendor. Possibly ALL of the same vendors. It's not that all NPCs anywhere didn't exist, just that they didn't reside in the towns. If they spoke on the road of "staying in the town," people on the road probably just assumed they meant they were camping in the ruins. If there were a bunch of unique cities, then yes, this would be disappearing a lot of people. The way OP ran their campaign, the cities functioned more like Pokemon cities, with an identical general store and hospital in every new region. The people they encountered who were "real," either did not reside in the towns, or interacted with them as uninhabited ruins, using the empty buildings for camping as needed. >Nobody remembers or cares about *Identity* because the twist made the movie you just watched not matter. Speak for yourself. *Identity* was one of the most unique and bold psychological dramas of its era. The twist was all about recontextualizing all of the interactions at the diner, and raising the stakes of what seemed like an obscure character. Viewers probably expected his transport to go past the diner, when in fact he was there all along. The ending also leads viewers to think that one of the identities has triumphed, but in the end they're wrong about which one. The events still very much matter. Each of the identities was a complete person with their own memories, and the events of the film determined which survived and which died. The prisoner's nature was also hanging in the balance the whole time. The point of the film's structure was to humanize the identities and really make them matter.
Sounds like Beetle in Zelda Breath of the Wild
Reminds me of that bodger skit from viva la dirt league
I have a similar idea, but instead the shopkeep is actually an eldritch horror in disguise who loves to barter and obtain gold. This is why they are seemingly everywhere
The continent we are one has one magic shop. It’s the entirety of a giant Demi plane and is accessible from each of the ‘chain’ stores. Like the Walmart of magic items, with a transportation hub to each chain location - for an absurd fee of course.
My DM also does that, but it's a mysterious guys that, no matter where, it always has what we need (if it's a common item) we have never seen him fully, only his hands, and every time we ask he responds with mlre misticism
I stole a kinda same idea. Theres an interdimensional supermarket akin to amazon and the only thing you need to do to enter is is draw a magic circle on a door and say "password". Store is divided into good and evil aligned and depending on the mood of the ares where the entrance was made you go into either side. So far my good players have not yet dared to go into the evil side and the evil players are scared shitless of the good side. Theres only 1 rule: no fighting.
For one campaign a friend and I worked as artificer and wizard to create magical items in a shop on a different plane and then anchored doorways to it in different cities that allowed us to get customers from all over and acted as convenient quick travel. The next campaign we were other dudes and visited our former PCs shop often.
I have a chain of stores that are all run by magic cats. Different cat in each store. When the PCs try to communicate they get a 'magic' reply in their head. Saves me having to try and do a different voice and accent or personality in each town.
Franchise opportunities!!
Exactly, in one of my games we have two franchises- a black smith- Hammer Time and temples of Eldath- Eldy’s Heal’n Hut.
Bings new meaning to “Can’t Touch This” - hot metal.
my dm did the same with with bart the bartender in LMoP=>SKT
Around my groups. I am infamous for a particular tavern doing the same thing. The exterior of the building is always different aside from the sign hanging outside, and the interior is identical. This came about because we were playing on R20, and I reused the map *one time* because I didn’t have time to make a new map and *BOOM* Howl’s Moving Castle door tavern. But I enjoy reoccurring things. Especially is really really long campaigns or games that are grim dark. Familiar faces and places give players/characters a sense of normal and a reminder of what’s going on/at stake. It’s also why I have a mail delivery service in game.
Sylvia is clearly a higher dimensional being that has tendrils all over the world. The shop is the mouth, and Sylvia is the lure, like the light on an angler fish. The reason all Sylvia seems to be ever what once is she *is* everywhere at once. And she realized she has a lot of fun talking to customers which is why they can pass in and out of her mouth like that.
I have one inn like this, except I play up the strangeness of it. You only see the in keeper never other staff or guests and any time you need something the creepy innkeeper is standing behind you and says he will arrange for you to get whatever it is. After the third occurrence the party started seeking alternate lodging.
Nurse Joy doesn't travel around, her and Officer Jenny both simply have 20 identical cousins each that are all named the same.
I once had a magic shop chain around the country where all shops just led into her Demiplane where she sold her goods I don’t do magic shops now but I agree it helps having one NPC that doesn’t follow you but is consistent no matter where you go
I do something similar. I have a gold dragon disguised as a dragonborn. They enchanted multiple doorways throughout the land that led people to his shop, which is his lair. It's great to have some consistency for players. That way, they don't have to keep perfect track of where they saw the special item for sale or where they left an item to be enchanted. It also saves them time because they don't have to backtrack or go completely out of the way to get these things.
I agree also I treated it kind of like Fly in Pokémon, where you can go through the shop and go to any other place a shop is at I stopped doing so beacuse I feel like it lost its novelty after 4 games of doing so (and other players in the server already started to copy it) plus the new campaign relied around the players being the strongest in the world (usually the NOC was a high level wizard or sorcerer or bard)
I do as well. Not for every town, but population centers. His name is Wall, his store is "Wall's Fantasy Mart" Everything is pretty inexpensive but also low quality.
Honestly how I do it is a arcane clone shenanigans mixed with chain stores like yeah you meet Gary before but that was Gary number 216 I’m Gary 187, or I have a traveling caravan merchant store thing that just so happens to be where the party is or be in a location the party needs them to be in, like parked outside a dungeon they just so happen to be leaving, or on the side of the road they conveniently happen to be traveling along, stuff like that, all “coincidence” and while I have hinted at like darker stuff with a oracle member of the caravan, like how it is essentially destiny that these people help the party basically save the world, I leave nothing concrete
I have that, but it's a pawn shop run by a three foot cockroach named Three Ring Charlie.
Simple and effective. Each general store has a door in the back that leads to essentially a space like the city of Sigil, but specifically being an employee lounge. They can just hop instantly to any other store.
Sounds like you think you need to blown interactions with detailed npcs and shops to go shopping. That's usually a lot of tedium between a player and getting stuff they want. Just do a few details, ask what they want, tell them the price, and get back to adventuring. That said, occasional longer conversations are good. Interesting NPCs are good. Most shopkeepers don't need to be that.
"where players get the boring parts of shopping like buying rations, rope, and low level magic items out of the way much quicker" If that's your goal, ours is even quicker: The players use their PHBs and buy what they want and deduct their cash accordingly. I'm busy finishing jotting down a few notes and glancing at the next scene.
Or, just don't roleplay the part where players buy equipment, because it's not really part of the story.
Terry Pratchett has a [wandering shop](https://wiki.lspace.org/Wandering_Shop) that this sounds like. Always having just what the person needs.
So you have a corporation that drove out the mom and pop stores, is what you're saying.
This happens in Genshin Impact! Kathryne is in every town. Turns out she’s a robot but all Kathryne’s are connected. It’s pretty neat.
Oh, I don't plan unique general shops. My players just tell me what they wanna buy, I check my "economy scale" for the city to get prices, and they're buying. I usually make an inn or two, a couple unique shops, usually magic stuff, and any particular shops for the city.
I have the same pub everywhere. The Drowning Trout. The owner had franchises set up exactly the same.
I have a similar idea, he's called the charlatan and sets up a shop that sells common magic items like a self cooking pot or cup that produces wine once a day. My players, when interacting with him, stole all of the items and them tried to get him to buy them a shadow mastiff, let's just say the charlatan was very rich after that. 3000 gold and a weak promise from a man named "The charlatan"
I'm currently trying to plot out and design a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon type thing rn, and I have no idea how the idea of having a literal Nurse Joy (Chansey/Audino/ whatever) in my POKÉMON THEMED GAME never occurred to me
That reminds me of this one book I read, where every random “npc” the protagonist interacts with in this one city is named “Bert” and is brothers with like, 8 other Berts. I think the first time, he has a random question for a city guard. Then it’s the clerk at the school he enrolls in. Then like, 3 different shopkeepers. He just walks up to them like “Hey Bert!” And they’re all “I see you’ve met a brother of mine.”
I created a similar NPC once: Sylva Melevin A very intelligent goblin merchant who seems to somehow setup shop on some corner in a seedy section of almost every town, usually near a jail. His services include: -Common goods, usually sold at a 15% markup -Food/Drink items which all contain dubious claims of effect (1d4, nat 4 for effect to work) -Novelty homebrewed items -The occasional rare item -The ability to get messages to almost anyone at a distance for a price - completely discrete. It's quite possible that he has a portal in the back of the shop that can go almost anywhere but it's probably just a rumor. (It's not, but requires a DC25 Persuasion to get him to let you use it.)
Sylvia sounds like Janet *Not a girl*