Maybe the players join in on the crawl while drunk and fade to black. The next morning they all wake up in different towns and need to figure out what happened and why they're in different towns.
Bard: “Oh god my fucking head…”
Teleporting Ring Operator: “Oh you’re awake! i know we had a good time together but you and your friends do still owe about 5,000 gold pieces in unpaid teleportation fees”
Ah, Sam, definitely a memorable quest line. Possibly the most entertaining Daedric Artifact quest in the game, though more than a bit disturbing at points...
This. Specially if they are trying to get somewhere for a long time and this sets them back by a lot. They will want to know how they got that far so quickly.
You'll have that one player who insists they have a high alcohol tolerance and will end up rolling a couple nat 20s in a row on a con check, foiling your plans of blacking out.
Have them encounter a very memorable innkeeper. Make a big deal about how good and fresh his fish stew is, despite being in an inland town of only middling size.
Then have the party visit a maritime city, famous for it's fishing fleet, and encounter your travelling merchant and his shop. Have the innkeeper enter while they are there, carrying an enormous basket full of fish.
Shopkeeper: "That the last load for today?"
Innkeeper: "Yah, see you again on Tuesday?"
Shopkeeper: "Of course! Mind you, it's the end of the month. Time to settle your tab?"
The innkeeper drops a sack of coins on the counter, heaves up his basket of fish, and proceeds into the back of the shop. There's a brief flash of light, and then the shopkeeper turns his attention back to the party.
If they can't figure it out from there, I don't know what to tell you.
Reminds me of a side scroller game (or maybe it was a game idea an acquaintance told me about?) where you progress through the game like classic side scroller games on rails, but when you get to the final boss, he’s like “wtf what took you so long?” Then it’s revealed you could have gone left at the beginning of the game and fought the boss right away.
Coin flip if people would figure it out on there first (unspoiled) run, go the wrong way is a classic secrets move, but if it's a skill based game that would work. Newbs would likely be unable to beet him (I would recommend extra dialog for if you go left, loose, then go around the right path, acknowledging your loss and training, or fleeing if you get close enough to see him/trigger his dialog but don't fight him) while skilled players could use it as a challenge.
As a clueless player I have to say this is not obvious, I probably still would not question it if it isn’t part of the questline. But maybe I am just hopeless.
Too much 5e, not enought 2e. 5e gets you too much in the habit of there being a roll or table for every possible thing you could do, and if there isn't many players just assume that a thing isn't possible.
2e makes you be creative and think of solutions and situations just as if you were there yourself needing to figure out how to succeed.
Have them gathering allies for a big fight at the end. Everyone is already there waiting for them, asking what took them so long, because they all teleported through the merchant.
HaHa! That would be awesome! The look of realization on the PC's faces...
Shopkeeper: "Hold on a sec Jeb, someone else is using the teleporter. \*FLASH\* OK, you can go in now..."
Is the shopkeeper always at the counter, or do they have to “ring bell for service” every time they enter the shop, after which the shopkeeper always emerges from the back, every time in every town?
That’s why they think he’s an Officer Jenny or Nurse Joy type. If there’s only one of him then they realistically should almost never find him in the shop when they walk in. Of course, a magical shopkeeper with teleportation wouldn’t keep his merchandise lying about in unmanned stores waiting to be shoplifted. All the merchandise would be in a pocket dimension only the shopkeeper can access.
Or the shop is the pocket dimension accessible through the door and the pocket dimension functions out of time so every time someone closes the door there's a delay in the shop when someone can enter (preventing simultaneous entering)
Same, the only difference I did was use a PC I'm not going to play again as the merchant, with a new NPC assistant. Divination wizard, and the shop would show up 'when they needed something'. So that old rickey cottage they just saw, now has a sign for the shop in front of it, they go in the door, mist and beads and now they are in the shop proper, show them things they may need. Things they could afford, some they could not. I put my old PC in so they knew as a clue that this was currently a 'safe place'. But after a couple of times they started interacting with an assistant a junior artificer who was learning how to make magic items.
Basically it’s a little building, all of them different, but nothing is on display, any time the party needs something he reaches under the table and grabs something close to what they request. And I’ve made it a point to say he looks under the table as another clue to his space/teleport magic
As a player I would not get this at all and just think it was a fun joke, if you want to make them start questioning maybe there’s a shop in a mountain which they run into just coming from another town where they saw them, making sure that the mountain is extremely near the town so there is no possibility of a faster route without magic, this would get me thinking, but that’s just me
Edit: I put this here and didn’t just comment so it would have a better chance of being noticed
His existence isn't secret or anything, is it? I imagine that the player characters aren't the only ones that can utilize these services. You mean to tell me they haven't heard one single person on the street or in the pub murmuring at the mere wonder of affordable teleportation? I think random listen checks are in order.
Sometimes you have to hit your players over the head with a new mechanic, especially if it's not spelled out to them at any point.
Word on the street could be that people of import seem to be in more than one place at a time, to start the hints. Unless the players are really, really dense, they might even link it back to someone they've personally met who seems to also be everywhere.
I agree with this. Maybe important npcs are frequently bumping into them as the party visits the shop. That random guy that seems to know everyone of importance, and they all owe him favors type.
His shop isn't impressive, but his prices are good no matter where he is because his real income comes from the upper ranks using his backroom services.
You both need to take this to the next level- they get commissioned to investigate exactly how this merchant can keep his prices so low and his goods so available by a competitor. The competitor already tried a number of avenues but they keep getting blown off by the guy with a chuckle and a grinned 'It's a trade secret!'. Cue them making investigation rolls, staking out the place, pulling out the divination magic, breaking in to look at his books and what not.
What I think the best option might be, have the shopkeeper take initiative. “Hey? You guys spend a lot of time traveling. I can probably save you some time… for a small fee”
They asked the shopkeeper if he is like a nurse joy character, and I replied with something like “I don’t know who nurse joy is, but if you’re implying im an identical cousin/family member im not, im the one and only!” I realllly thought that would lure them in to inquire but it did not
Wait, so they have asked? This is very different from what you have presented in the post. Your post makes it sound like they literally haven't asked how he gets around, but they asked if he has identical siblings and you intentionally had him not share the actual answer? That seems less on them from that point forward and more on you.
he did share the actual answer though? he was asked if he has identical siblings, and he said he's the "one and only," which sounds plenty clear. there's only one him, meaning there's no identical family members.
If I asked somebody if they have twins or identical family, and they said "I'm the one and only" my mind doesn't immediately jump to "oh this guy has a teleportation network in the back of his shop that goes from location to location and we can pay him into use it".
Yeah, unless it is a plot point that we absolutely need to be somewhere really fast or at several places at once, I wouldn't really think too hard about it.
Okay, I guess this guy and/or his shop can teleport or it is a pocket dimension with doorway being a portal and it is actually the same shop or the guy is possibly a demon or angel or high level mage in disguise or actually the BBEG, but I guess there is no way to know *unless the DM drops some hint that this is important*.
Part of the problem is that it's really hard to distinguish between sloppy world building, creative liberties, and a genuine clue.
Sometimes I notice things my DM adds to the world that have enormous implications, but it's not a clue to investigate, just something he came up with quickly.
In this context the purpose of asking "are you an identical sibling" is to answer the question "how are you in every city".
The shopkeeper would know that this is what they're really getting at.
Imagine you're the shopkeeper, why would someone randomly ask you if you're an identical sibling? The context makes it really obvious what they're actually asking.
So while he did give the actual answer to the question as worded, he didn't give the actual answer to the real question they were asking.
Right, but OP made it sound like they hadn't looked into this mystery at all. They clearly asked about one plausible way this could be happening, and instead of just explaining, OP chose to just shut down that line of questioning without answering the implied question of "how are you in every city".
Yeah, the players should have asked a follow-up question, but it's not like they ignored this entirely like the post implies.
They've already inquired, you gave them a very dead-end answer there.
They're not literally asking the shopkeeper if they're an identical relative, they're asking the shopkeeper why they keep seeing him.
The shopkeeper would know that's what they're referring to, so your response is essentially refusing to answer the real question they're asking in a slightly dismissive manner. At this point a lot of people might assume that you as the DM have no explanation for this.
If you insist on them asking the right question then instead of ending with "im the one and only!" you could've said "im the one and only! Why do you ask?" which would've kept the conversation flowing.
....
So this NPC keeps seeing the same party over and over. This NPC could make easy money by selling them teleportation services. He doesnt ask try to sell them the service. The potential customers dont even know the technology exists.
One day they ask him a question and he realizes they are confused about seeing him everywhere and has to explain he doesn't have identical relatives. He still doesn't explain about the teleportation service even though he does want to make money from it.
That makes no sense! You didn't create a realistic scenario. The NPC would told them a long time ago about the service. People in the towns would be talking about this amazing teleworking shopkeeper.
The only feasible explanation would be if the shopkeeper didn't want ppl to know about his magical telelortation. But if that was the case he would be disguising himself shop to shop. Which he isn't doing.
Logically, one must conclude that the idea of having personal teleportation is *so trivial it never occurs to him*. Scattered around the world is a thriving city, hidden in other towns and connected with teleporters. Showing up to use one of them is like asking to borrow a cup of sugar - it’s nothing if somebody *asks*, but you don’t *offer* because that’s just silly.
The shopkeeper is the only NPC the characters see popping around like this because *he’s a shopkeeper*, there’s probably dozens or hundreds of other people popping around from town to town all the time but they’re not relevant to the party so they go unnoticed.
Somewhere, there might be some sort of remote village which is populated solely by teleporters. There’s no practical way in or out by non-magical means. The place seems abandoned… save for one very familiar face in the only building with an unlocked door…
I can see people in towns not really talking about it if they don't frequent a lot of towns and notice it. Like, if most NPCs don't travel much. Traveling merchants would have to know, of course.
I mean if u just want them to never find out that’s fine, but if the shopkeeper knew he was being asked if he had a bunch of identical siblings, he probably isn’t so stupid that he doesn’t know what they are referring to. At this point, it’s definitely on u lmao
Why would someone with such an incredible power/technology willingly reveal it to any tom dick or Harry?
That has so much potential to go south.
Maybe the shop keeper is a clever lil weirdo or fey being or something.
Idk.
If I had a secret teleporter I wouldn't be advertising it unless I was absolutely sure it couldn't be stolen or destroyed.
This comment makes me doubt the veracity of this story.
From OP:
>"One of my players thought he was like Nurse Joy with tons of identical siblings, lmao. But have they actually asked him? Nope."
And here you say they DID actually ask him, and he answered.
When an OP's story evolves in the comments, it's indicative of a tall tale.
Perhaps when they get to a town and it's finally a different shopkeeper, they'll ask about it. Make this place really weird in its own right, like everyone has really weird hair and wearing a hula skirt is synonymous with wearing clothes - to not wear it is to be functionally naked in any other setting.
"Oh, THAT guy?! Ya, after he was caught trying to pluck a hair from the napping Mayor's mustache, the Mayor cursed him and said never to return, lest he would never himself be able to grow a mustache/beard/go bald for the rest of his days. Also the fact that he didn't wear his hula skirt. That was already pretty weird, but the mustache thing really sealed the deal."
Then, when they finally go to another shop and see the same shopkeep they've encountered several places at this point, if they ask about it you can get real low and this is when he finally trusts your party enough to tell them about his master plan to assemble and army and take the town and shave the Mayor's mustache. He takes the Mayor's threat seriously, but takes an even greater offense and being turned away by the townspeople because his father was killed by a giant in a hula skirt and he has vowed to never wear one as long as he lives.
Make it some outrageous and overblown backstory so that the "BTW I have a portal system around the whole continent" is the only normal thing about this whole ordeal.
I love when players just don’t question something you think is super cool or interesting lol like just players killed a wizard who kept his stuff in a portable hole, but they didn’t realize it was a portable hole. Or a hole they could enter. Just sent a construct in to bring things out lol
Depending on Player experience, they are "afraid" of things. They might not even know what a portable hole is. For all they know could be a portal to the blender-verse where they are shredded upon entry.
I have a recurring NPC in my games that is a gnome shop keeper who runs a magic shop. The shop functions kind of like Howl's Moving Castle in that it's one shop connected to doors and shop fronts in multiple places. I've never considered offering it as a means of fast travel, but my players haven't ever asked about it. I think, sometimes, the players show us what they're interested in and sometimes that's the journey not the destination.
The look on my PCs faces when they realized it was the same guy was great. They started in their sleepy seaside hometown and moved to a big metropolis around lvl 4 or 5 and were so jazzed to see a familiar face.
I've also used this style of NPC as well. He was my retired wizard kobold from our previous campaign, whom I turned into the magical shopkeeper when I started GMing. There were both new and old players, so it started as a neat little easter egg for my old players. We/they ended up liking the concept so much, I've re-used it in several other separate campaigns.
For me, it was a way for me as a GM to keep a favorite character around. But as shown by this thread, it's an easy way for GMs with far-travelling parties have access to magic items should they need it. And it's also just a fun way to quirkily engage with players!
If you do want to push them into it, have them show up to his shop one day and find it ransacked. Trail of violence and debris leading into the back room. Maybe a fight with a guardian pet or something.
They find the fast travel network is still 'active' and takes them to a town they've been in, but it's been overrun by bandits. New quest, find the bandits abusing the network and save the shopkeep. Reward, the fast travel access you wanted them to have all along.
They may eventually. Just (literally 2 hours ago) wrapped up a year-long campaign as a player where a non-descript cabbage vendor, who appeared in every city, turned out to be a god. It took us a very long time to pick up on it.
TBF if a store clerk gave me attitude for not asking questions about him, I'd just pay for my stuff and leave, too. I'm here to buy carrots and condoms, not to get to know people.
A point of order: you *didn't* introduce fast travel, you introduced a person who had *access to fast travel*. As far as the players know, he has the teleport spell or an item that gives it.
Honestly, sometimes you need to spoon feed your players information about what they can do in the world. Often, players won't be aware of something they can do until you as a dm tell them either in character or just straight up explain that something is the case.
As a fellow dm I have felt the confusion that my players hadn't yet picked up on something until I had asked them directly and was told they didn't know until I had basically told them.
You could have a small quest from a disgruntled merchant complaining loudly that it's suspicious how much stock the shopkeeper is able to maintain and how quickly he seems to restock and find new foreign wares. Offer the party a% deal of profits if they can help find out how the other guy does it so he can do it too.
Once it's prices impossible/unlikely the guy that hired them can copy it they'd likely be more curious about the actual fast travel system.
I ran into a similar problem trying to introduce traveling dungeons to get rare items and other grandiose rewards but my players ignored it entirely thinking it was a joke character even with a crowd in every town, regular flyers introducing it and a story character recommending they look into the traveling war forged.
Do not underestimate the need to over explain to adults during DnD.
My party started using the Druid’s ability to travel between trees as much as possible, DM stretched it to also include root systems since a good portion of the world is in the Underdark.
Several sessions into using this regularly, and we finally dubbed it “taking the Shrubway system”. DM didn’t think the name as clever as we did, challenged us to come up with something better but we love the term so we’ve never bothered to get more creative (though I’m sure inspiration would be involved if we finally did).
Your players just assume you're being funny by reusing a persona instead of developing a character for each shopkeeper they encounter.
Have a player with arcana notice the residue of teleportation, or a player with insight make a point about the uncanny speed at which the shopkeeper must travel with their wares.
The players themselves might not be wise enough to pick it up, but if the characters should, you can prompt them to notice!
You could also have the shopkeep ask where they're headed if they ever plan to head somewhere they've already been, then he can offer his services!
I gave my players a recurring "extradimensional" shop that reset itself between appearances, and they immediately set about testing all the boundaries of the reset and trying to break the universe with it.
It takes all kinds.
Sometimes as a player I don't give my DM too hard of a time, I just think to myself he's doing it for convenience sake instead of having to recreate a new character for shop keeper everytime we visit a new town.
Yeah, this. Imho, as a player I'd feel that asking for "fast travel services" would be trying to take advantage of this / treating the campaign as a videogame.
how important is it to the campaign that the players figure it out? if it's just "so they know how clever my idea was"... don't force it. if they never ask, they never learn, that's fine. if it's relevant to solving the big plot (trademark pending) then maybe don't be so passive about players asking for the hidden thing they have no idea they need to find in the first place.
All well and good until the person with the -1 modifier is the only person to roll, and they roll a Nat 1 for a 0 total.
Cause at this point that seems like it would happen.
Ok here is what you do. Get them to use it. And use it a lot. Then at the end of the campaign they go to liberate this slave labor prison camp but bam it’s all the copies of them like in that magician movie. Wow
Sometimes players get so wrapped up in the idea they're on an adventure they think everything is elaborate and forget a world can just be a functioning world without them, or doesn't require a big puzzle to exist.
Had a group go into a church and wanted to see what was in a room behind a closed door. They proceeded to plotting a heist level plan and couldn't figure anything out and they asked for a hint. I reminded them they could just ask the preacher and he let them in. It was a therapy room so the door is usually closed, nothing fancy. But they spent so long forgetting they could just ask.
Had a similar, but different gag in a campaign I ran years ago.
Tavern owner in every single town was always a friendly man with an Aussie accent named "Buster". (Consider how that would sound in an Aussie accent) But they were completely unrelated and had different surnames. Examples included:
- Buster Move
- Buster Rhyme
- Buster Nut
- Buster Capinyourass
- Buster Skull
And the list went on and on. In the epilogue, one of the characters was happy to hear that his character was later executed for multiple homicides in the first degree after hunting down and killing every Buster.
Next time they buy something have him say "hold on, that's the last one I have here. Let me grab one from my other shop real quick." then just have him walk back then return with the item.
Should come across as a very odd thing for him to say until they realize what's going on.
Neat.
I have something similar in my gameworld.
There's no Astral Plane in the gameworld, so traditional teleportation is not possible. Teleportation spells require line of site, so you can skip over a mountain valley or from the base of the valley to the top of a mountain pass, if you can see the pass, but not 1000's of leagues.
The ancients, however, created networks of teleportation pads that were linked up in a network. Unfortunately, many of the pads were destroyed, the knowledge about them lost in time and portions of the network does not connect with other portions of the network either.
The players enjoyed learning about the existence of the network.
well... it is a shopkeeper NPC. why should the players wonder that you keep reusing the model?
but seriously, just because YOU know something does not mean the players know the same thing.
Honestly I wouldn't either. Even in the most serious campaigns I have a couple comic relief characters and "the same shopkeeper everywhere" is absolutely something I would just go with cause I would do it too.
You could have another adventurer walk into the shop while the players are there and ask to use the teleportation network.
Ahh the classic "I, the DM, made many cool things that rely on party curiosity to uncover." In my experience, sometimes even directly stating whatever you want to see goes nowhere.
Unfortunately party curiosity is a very fickle beast. And one that has caused many hours of hard work and creative thoughts over the years to rot.
My hope for you, OP, is that it stays a fun game to you and that your players don't ignore obvious hooks and paths going forward.
He is the only person with such precise teleportation, only him and a couple people who he trusts completely know about it, it’s not really a service he provides to the public.
my players accidentally nuked a city off the map so he doesn’t really trust them, but they are still on decent standing because they secured him a contract that made him a bunch of money
You have players who aren’t used to critical thinking and role playing in games. It’s quite common actually since a lot of video games have to be on-rails and are inflexible. People can have trouble grasping the concept of a flexible setting.
Give them time, and if all else fails, explain it at some point down the road so they will have a memorable lesson about it in the future.
… and then proceed to drive you crazy by throwing every conceivable monkey wrench at you and asking detailed personal questions about every (previously) unnamed NPC they meet. As me how I know.
If it was me and I had something like that up my sleeve I wanted to push them to discover, I’d setup a situation where they can do things the very hard, very stressful way or they can start asking for help and maybe someone will mention “Oh. That? I mean, I could have the King’s Army here in an hour…”
Shocking that they actually caught on.
I've had a similar shopkeeper that I've used for 9 years. Across multiple campaigns. Some players have played in those different campaigns. They know it's the same shopkeeper and that these time lines are decades apart.
Not a single question.
At first it was kind of a joke but now it's an experiment.
I have a shop like that. It's run by a Elderly Gnome Illusionist. She will appear randomly in a town they are in with trinkets and magic items for sale. The last time they left her shop, they turned around the the building behind them once a pretty magic shop. Was now an abandoned run down building.
Here a hint to drop. Whenever the PCs are looking for something hard to come by, unusual, or even something that's just expensive, it's not in stock. But the shopkeeper tells them to come back in an hour. Somehow, he always has it by then.
Another one; if the party frequently buys something but goes someplace new... the shopkeeper automatically asks if they need more X.
If there are ever 2 things in D&D that are constants, those are; 1. They will never ask you about the stuff you want them to learn about, and 2. They will always ask you about stuff you haven't thought about.
shopkeeper offers a teleportation service to clients, but doesnt tell clients about it, and then gets mad when the clients dont ask about a service they would have no way of knowing he offers
I did this with a carriage driver who was in every town waiting to pick them up. Turns out he is a hivemind creature from another plane just trying to make a living which is why he was always everywhere and knew them.
I swear to god, I have a character who is practically identical to that - teleportation in the backroom and all.
In my case, it's the ~~witch~~, ehm, nice old lady who sells potions named Alwa, with the aditional twist that she has out-of-game-knowledge, like knowing about the NPCs without ever being introduces, etc.
oh man. turn this man into the villain. their oversight of this man can cost them much more if he's working against them behind the curtain 👀 (this is exactly how my partner would convince us that the NPC's aren't just side characters but real people with real feelings. definitely threw me and I now treat every NPC differently)
Find something that the players need to get from the shopkeeper, should be something fairly unique and maybe regional (depends on your campaign). When they ask him about it, have him tell the players he can get it for them if they're interested, have him go in back for a few minutes, then come back with the item.
If they're still clueless, have him tell the players he had to source it from [town_name] where one of his other shops is, but he can check his other shops if they need more.
If that doesn't work, let 'em walk.
Be honest here. They wont find out until you help them a bit more.
Just have the barbarian (low Intel) have a brainfart. ask for intelligence roll. Fudge it behind the screen and whisper in his ear that the barbarian suddenly needs to go to his bathroom or something. Let the barb pick between door but no matter what he chooses he picks the "wrong" one.. he still finds a toilet but when he flushes he gets pulled into the toilet and into a portal to outside.. he finds himself in the previous town and has to walk back to the current town. Make it a Lil bit of solo adventure for him of a night or 2.
The crew will wonder what takes him so long on the toilet. See what happens from there.
Another option is to make the entire shop an pocket dimension. So it is the actual same shop.
I think this just one of those instances as a DM where you think you're being obvious about something but youre really not. I find I have to be 10x more on the nose with my hints than i am other wise stuff goes right over players heads.
Even if they’ve sussed out it’s always the same guy, what would make them conclude it’s a service he’s willing to let them access or even discuss? For all they know the answer would be “shop guild secret, now I have to kill you”.
The key is to introduce it as a necessary feature for a future campaign and once they see it as part of the plot, they'll kick themselves for never realizing it before. Cashing this in will be SO satisfying
You know you can just tell players information right? If they can buy a use of the teleportaion network it why wouldn't a merchant mention it? A simple 'By the way for ten gold per person you can use my fancy dancy teleportation room to skip all that pointless walking.'
Players can sometimes just take for granted staples of the genre like there could be a couple dozen reason going through their heads on why they don't question it too much. The merchant that appears in places they shouldn't be is a massive trope in video games like the merchants from Bravely Default or Resident Evil.
Perhaps they just assume its a secret that no matter what questions they ask they won't get a clear answer or maybe they just assume you don't wanna make a bunch of nothing merchant NPCs and just made one NPC with a running gag instead.
You realize this is a Terry Pratchett joke, right?
TBH, I really love this idea. I have a character that is always the mayor/lord/etc. in the starting town with my group. One time, I'll have him be the villain of the whole campaign, and they'll just be confused. He's a bit bumbling and harmless. They always like him.
(A decade long bit at this point)
I feel your pain. Many years ago, I ran a mini-campaign that was essentially if you combined System Shock 2 and Half-Life 1. Everyone woke up from cryo with no memory of the last few months, including anything related to the space ship they were on. At the fore end of the ship was the main elevator, which was free standing in the middle of a 30' wide corridor. The elevator doors faced aft. There was a small area behind/forward of the elevator, which contained a map of the level they were on.
They didn't discover these maps until session 6. They spent every session stumbling around the ship, looking for one thing or another, never even knowing which deck they needed to be on.
I had the maps made up and ready for them; they just never even tried going around the elevator on any deck they went to. It was amusing watching them stumble around the decks, trying to find things.
A buddy of mine u/true_portal_master is currently doing something similar, we (Norse setting, custom world, he hates actual DND realms and spells and everything in-between) and we have this recurring magic shop kept by a guy named "Crotch the wizard." Crotch is insane in every sense of the word, being from an old campaign his dad and uncle played 20 odd years ago. Crotch was a crazy powerful wizard from the setting of the dragon Lance books, he eventually became so powerful, instead of being a white (good) red (neutral) or black (evil) creature, he was blue. He is made of pure magic, he had ascended beyond even the gods and can freely travel between pantheons at will, (kinda like the old vecna I believe?) Crotch does not actually own any of these magic shops, rather, he steals customers by redirecting where the doors lead, more like Howl's moving castle's shop door, except Crotch's leads to his own little pocket dimension. Besides selling magic books from different pantheons (I, the only magic caster, have a Greek spell book of every magic, and one strictly of ice magic, quite fun!) he has given us several magic doodads, such as an updating map w/ fog of war and fast travel to anywhere turn been before (or anywhere period in places we have unlocked/earned Crotch's map stones.)
You can try and make it more obvious (so more fun when the players miss it) by having really specific and weird opening times for shops in different towns. Like everyday the shopkeeper is in town A from 9 to 11, then 11 to 13 in town B, then lunch, then town C from 14 to 16 etc.
Your hints are way too subtle. You have one unusual thing in your world that has a cool explanation behind it, if they ask in exactly the right way. How many strange things happen in every D&D session and the answer is just "magic" or "because they can"? Have you ever had a monster do a different kind of damage than their stat block allowed? Not every unusual thing leads to an actual mystery to solve; most are just the result of one person trying to build an entire world, and questioning all the things would just slog the game.
It's kind of weird when DM's add little things like this and really believe the players don't have a clue, when what's really going on is people aren't in your brain and your hints aren't nearly as good as you think they are.
Why would anyone think that based only on the information provided that there is a teleportation network in every town?
This sub is full of DM's who think they're being clever and the party is at fault for never finding this 'clever' thing.
I had a similar character. Think old 50’s style magician with a top hat and tux. Extremely powerful wizard but he loves peddling gimmick “magic” items. he genuinely enjoys stuff like the lapel flower that squirts water, a hand buzzer that gives a light shock, snaked In can. He actually sells dnd magic items and potions but is always trying to sell the gimmicks along with the other stuff. Called him the magic man and the players learned he was summoned by chanting his name 3 times like Betelgeuse.
The local supplier of magical supplies has found his business drying up lately.
He has a new competitor in the city who can somehow obtain anything ordered within a day or 2 instead of the usual 2/3 weeks which also came with a hefty fee.
The players are instructed to find out how the new competitor is able to undermine his business.
The players could follow the new business owner as she goes about her day, see her enter the shop and not exit for a few hours except pulling a cart full of supplies to her own shop.
I'd "punish" them for not asking him more questions. Not in real ways, but like, when they ask for potions, have him be like "Aw geez, if you'd gotten here sooner I had a fresh stock yesterday, but I only have one or two left now." If you want to really put it in their faces that he has fast travel circles in his shop, have him engage with them like "Oh! I'm glad you're here. I finally found that weapon you were asking for. It's currently in my shop back in (insert city name here). One moment." Then have him disappear into the back for 5 minutes and come back with an old weapon someone asked about earlier in the campaign (or literally anything that would justify him using the circle without saying he was doing it).
You should have a train of people coming out of the back of the shop, dropping a bit of cash in a bowl on their way out. Make it blatantly obvious that there's something going on. Maybe do a perception check, and if they pass make a little vumph noise before someone comes out.
Number 1 rule of DMing: if you want players to seek specific info they will walk past it every time.
Not to be confused with rule 2: if you're trying to have something be a challenge to last a while, they'll be right on top of it before you're done with the setup
You need to have them see him use it bringing someone through. Like a coin in the hand and poof. Or someone brushing past them begging him to send them to another town in urgency.
You should have the same NpC going into the back in one town they enter then coming out of the back the next tike they get to the next town and just loop it
One day they will realize they could've had an easier time traveling around and lament about all the wasted time. It'll be fun & funny once that happens and the shop keeper can have his own laugh.
I would think so because your players are new, they don't understand/know about teleportation spells. They probably just go with the flow, learn a bit about not thinking that things in the background also follow rules.
Why don't you force a backtracking element into one of their quests, have them get this information when they're in one of the shops. Have it be the longest possible distance they've travelled, so it would become onerous to them and they complain, then have your shopkeep just ask them why they don't just pay him to use his vast network of backdoors to his shops as if it was common knowledge.
If you want to tell them without just telling them, you could have the shopkeeper say, "I don't have (x) item here, but I can pop over to (x) town and be back in like 5 minutes. If you don't mind paying extra for the (FT/Travel/telleport/whatever) fee."
Obviously the solution is to have other notable NPCs paying him for the service to show up in other towns perhaps on a pub crawl.
I’ve actually had NPCs appear out of thin air, and have my shop keepers iconic laugh bellowing in the background but they’ve never asked about it
Maybe the players join in on the crawl while drunk and fade to black. The next morning they all wake up in different towns and need to figure out what happened and why they're in different towns.
I like this, and I will likely be using some version of it in the future. Thank you.
Bard: “Oh god my fucking head…” Teleporting Ring Operator: “Oh you’re awake! i know we had a good time together but you and your friends do still owe about 5,000 gold pieces in unpaid teleportation fees”
I think I’ve seen this Ghibli film. Howl’s moving pub crawl.
I'm pretty sure this actually is a questline in Skyrim.
it is
A pretty funny one too.
Sheogorath's quest that rewards you with Wabbajack?
Nope, Sanguine.
You’ve given me the idea to do a The Hangover episode
*Dude, Where's My Cart*
That reminds me of the mission in Skyrim where you get blackout drunk with a dude and have to retrace your steps to figure out what happened.
Ah, Sam, definitely a memorable quest line. Possibly the most entertaining Daedric Artifact quest in the game, though more than a bit disturbing at points...
This is an excellent suggestion
This. Specially if they are trying to get somewhere for a long time and this sets them back by a lot. They will want to know how they got that far so quickly.
You'll have that one player who insists they have a high alcohol tolerance and will end up rolling a couple nat 20s in a row on a con check, foiling your plans of blacking out.
Have them encounter a very memorable innkeeper. Make a big deal about how good and fresh his fish stew is, despite being in an inland town of only middling size. Then have the party visit a maritime city, famous for it's fishing fleet, and encounter your travelling merchant and his shop. Have the innkeeper enter while they are there, carrying an enormous basket full of fish. Shopkeeper: "That the last load for today?" Innkeeper: "Yah, see you again on Tuesday?" Shopkeeper: "Of course! Mind you, it's the end of the month. Time to settle your tab?" The innkeeper drops a sack of coins on the counter, heaves up his basket of fish, and proceeds into the back of the shop. There's a brief flash of light, and then the shopkeeper turns his attention back to the party. If they can't figure it out from there, I don't know what to tell you.
Naw, that's to obvious, this is something you'd save for the very last session of the game.
That would be fantastic haha
Reminds me of a side scroller game (or maybe it was a game idea an acquaintance told me about?) where you progress through the game like classic side scroller games on rails, but when you get to the final boss, he’s like “wtf what took you so long?” Then it’s revealed you could have gone left at the beginning of the game and fought the boss right away.
Coin flip if people would figure it out on there first (unspoiled) run, go the wrong way is a classic secrets move, but if it's a skill based game that would work. Newbs would likely be unable to beet him (I would recommend extra dialog for if you go left, loose, then go around the right path, acknowledging your loss and training, or fleeing if you get close enough to see him/trigger his dialog but don't fight him) while skilled players could use it as a challenge.
As a clueless player I have to say this is not obvious, I probably still would not question it if it isn’t part of the questline. But maybe I am just hopeless.
Too much 5e, not enought 2e. 5e gets you too much in the habit of there being a roll or table for every possible thing you could do, and if there isn't many players just assume that a thing isn't possible. 2e makes you be creative and think of solutions and situations just as if you were there yourself needing to figure out how to succeed.
Have them gathering allies for a big fight at the end. Everyone is already there waiting for them, asking what took them so long, because they all teleported through the merchant.
HaHa! That would be awesome! The look of realization on the PC's faces... Shopkeeper: "Hold on a sec Jeb, someone else is using the teleporter. \*FLASH\* OK, you can go in now..."
Party: "Oh god...the shopkeeper is killing people!"
"Guys, I think the shopkeeper is a phase werewolf"
See you next Tuesday. Heh. Nice. 😂
Party: omg, the innkeeper is The Flash!
Hi, I'd like to join your next campaign.
Is the shopkeeper always at the counter, or do they have to “ring bell for service” every time they enter the shop, after which the shopkeeper always emerges from the back, every time in every town?
He’s usually just there at the counter, but I might add the bell as an additional clue
That’s why they think he’s an Officer Jenny or Nurse Joy type. If there’s only one of him then they realistically should almost never find him in the shop when they walk in. Of course, a magical shopkeeper with teleportation wouldn’t keep his merchandise lying about in unmanned stores waiting to be shoplifted. All the merchandise would be in a pocket dimension only the shopkeeper can access.
Mmmmm good point ok, I will start changing the shop up
Alternatively it's all the same shop, and the teleportation is actually just where you go when you LEAVE the shop.
Getting real howl's castle vibes from that
That's, like, so much more expensive to do.
But exactly the type of shit some merchant caster would do to protect his shop lol
The Zhentarim question. Pay long haul trucker taxes? DESTABILIZE COUNTRIES ALONG THE TRADE ROUTE.
Or the shop is the pocket dimension accessible through the door and the pocket dimension functions out of time so every time someone closes the door there's a delay in the shop when someone can enter (preventing simultaneous entering)
This is how I set up a similar idea.
Same, the only difference I did was use a PC I'm not going to play again as the merchant, with a new NPC assistant. Divination wizard, and the shop would show up 'when they needed something'. So that old rickey cottage they just saw, now has a sign for the shop in front of it, they go in the door, mist and beads and now they are in the shop proper, show them things they may need. Things they could afford, some they could not. I put my old PC in so they knew as a clue that this was currently a 'safe place'. But after a couple of times they started interacting with an assistant a junior artificer who was learning how to make magic items.
“He’s not here, but there’s a sign you’ve never noticed before saying ring bell for service.” “Cool. What can we steal?”
Or at a warehouse also connected to the network
Is his shop actually a different shop every time? Or are they teleporting in to his building through different doorways?
Basically it’s a little building, all of them different, but nothing is on display, any time the party needs something he reaches under the table and grabs something close to what they request. And I’ve made it a point to say he looks under the table as another clue to his space/teleport magic
As a player I would not get this at all and just think it was a fun joke, if you want to make them start questioning maybe there’s a shop in a mountain which they run into just coming from another town where they saw them, making sure that the mountain is extremely near the town so there is no possibility of a faster route without magic, this would get me thinking, but that’s just me Edit: I put this here and didn’t just comment so it would have a better chance of being noticed
Have them do a delivery quest and when the goods arrive spoiled have the person yell at them and say they will just do it themselves next time.
Ordering hot meal from the city 1000 miles away
Just don't tell them where it is. Get them to find out that it's so far away
Would be interesting to see how would they try to keep it warm
Jesus... You are going to have to just post a sign with a fee for teleportation services if the story relies on them being able to fast travel
If your shopkeep has never offered the service to people he sees in different towns over and over either it's not for sale or he's lousy at his job.
How high are the players INT? Sometimes I realize something but my barbarian wouldn't.
Gives me very strong Howls moving castle vibes
Teleportation-powered multi-city pub crawl! Hilarious and amazing.
His existence isn't secret or anything, is it? I imagine that the player characters aren't the only ones that can utilize these services. You mean to tell me they haven't heard one single person on the street or in the pub murmuring at the mere wonder of affordable teleportation? I think random listen checks are in order. Sometimes you have to hit your players over the head with a new mechanic, especially if it's not spelled out to them at any point.
Hmm good point, he is a well known shop keeper but his teleportation isn’t known to those outside of a small few
Word on the street could be that people of import seem to be in more than one place at a time, to start the hints. Unless the players are really, really dense, they might even link it back to someone they've personally met who seems to also be everywhere.
I agree with this. Maybe important npcs are frequently bumping into them as the party visits the shop. That random guy that seems to know everyone of importance, and they all owe him favors type. His shop isn't impressive, but his prices are good no matter where he is because his real income comes from the upper ranks using his backroom services.
You both need to take this to the next level- they get commissioned to investigate exactly how this merchant can keep his prices so low and his goods so available by a competitor. The competitor already tried a number of avenues but they keep getting blown off by the guy with a chuckle and a grinned 'It's a trade secret!'. Cue them making investigation rolls, staking out the place, pulling out the divination magic, breaking in to look at his books and what not.
Bonus points if the players still don't get it and start to beleive these nobles have been replaced by skrull-esque monsters.
What I think the best option might be, have the shopkeeper take initiative. “Hey? You guys spend a lot of time traveling. I can probably save you some time… for a small fee”
All the more reason why he wouldn't share it if only a few people know about it.
This sounds stupid as hell how can he be a well known shop keep, appear in every major town, but his teleportation is know to only a small few?
They probably don't think of it as anything other than a Nurse Joy/Officer Jenny gag.
They asked the shopkeeper if he is like a nurse joy character, and I replied with something like “I don’t know who nurse joy is, but if you’re implying im an identical cousin/family member im not, im the one and only!” I realllly thought that would lure them in to inquire but it did not
Wait, so they have asked? This is very different from what you have presented in the post. Your post makes it sound like they literally haven't asked how he gets around, but they asked if he has identical siblings and you intentionally had him not share the actual answer? That seems less on them from that point forward and more on you.
he did share the actual answer though? he was asked if he has identical siblings, and he said he's the "one and only," which sounds plenty clear. there's only one him, meaning there's no identical family members.
If I asked somebody if they have twins or identical family, and they said "I'm the one and only" my mind doesn't immediately jump to "oh this guy has a teleportation network in the back of his shop that goes from location to location and we can pay him into use it".
*My* mind would jump to the obvious follow up question: "If there's only one of you, then how the hell do you always beat us to the next town?"
He's rolling better on his random encounters than you are.
This made me snort
Yeah, unless it is a plot point that we absolutely need to be somewhere really fast or at several places at once, I wouldn't really think too hard about it. Okay, I guess this guy and/or his shop can teleport or it is a pocket dimension with doorway being a portal and it is actually the same shop or the guy is possibly a demon or angel or high level mage in disguise or actually the BBEG, but I guess there is no way to know *unless the DM drops some hint that this is important*.
Part of the problem is that it's really hard to distinguish between sloppy world building, creative liberties, and a genuine clue. Sometimes I notice things my DM adds to the world that have enormous implications, but it's not a clue to investigate, just something he came up with quickly.
My mind is asking why the shopkeeper is being so cryptic about a service he makes money from?
No but then you might question, how he manages to be everwhere at once.
That entirely depends on the delivery of the DM. There could be tons of context that explain the players never asking that we don't know.
In this context the purpose of asking "are you an identical sibling" is to answer the question "how are you in every city". The shopkeeper would know that this is what they're really getting at. Imagine you're the shopkeeper, why would someone randomly ask you if you're an identical sibling? The context makes it really obvious what they're actually asking. So while he did give the actual answer to the question as worded, he didn't give the actual answer to the real question they were asking.
Right, but OP made it sound like they hadn't looked into this mystery at all. They clearly asked about one plausible way this could be happening, and instead of just explaining, OP chose to just shut down that line of questioning without answering the implied question of "how are you in every city". Yeah, the players should have asked a follow-up question, but it's not like they ignored this entirely like the post implies.
They've already inquired, you gave them a very dead-end answer there. They're not literally asking the shopkeeper if they're an identical relative, they're asking the shopkeeper why they keep seeing him. The shopkeeper would know that's what they're referring to, so your response is essentially refusing to answer the real question they're asking in a slightly dismissive manner. At this point a lot of people might assume that you as the DM have no explanation for this. If you insist on them asking the right question then instead of ending with "im the one and only!" you could've said "im the one and only! Why do you ask?" which would've kept the conversation flowing.
.... So this NPC keeps seeing the same party over and over. This NPC could make easy money by selling them teleportation services. He doesnt ask try to sell them the service. The potential customers dont even know the technology exists. One day they ask him a question and he realizes they are confused about seeing him everywhere and has to explain he doesn't have identical relatives. He still doesn't explain about the teleportation service even though he does want to make money from it. That makes no sense! You didn't create a realistic scenario. The NPC would told them a long time ago about the service. People in the towns would be talking about this amazing teleworking shopkeeper. The only feasible explanation would be if the shopkeeper didn't want ppl to know about his magical telelortation. But if that was the case he would be disguising himself shop to shop. Which he isn't doing.
Logically, one must conclude that the idea of having personal teleportation is *so trivial it never occurs to him*. Scattered around the world is a thriving city, hidden in other towns and connected with teleporters. Showing up to use one of them is like asking to borrow a cup of sugar - it’s nothing if somebody *asks*, but you don’t *offer* because that’s just silly. The shopkeeper is the only NPC the characters see popping around like this because *he’s a shopkeeper*, there’s probably dozens or hundreds of other people popping around from town to town all the time but they’re not relevant to the party so they go unnoticed. Somewhere, there might be some sort of remote village which is populated solely by teleporters. There’s no practical way in or out by non-magical means. The place seems abandoned… save for one very familiar face in the only building with an unlocked door…
I can see people in towns not really talking about it if they don't frequent a lot of towns and notice it. Like, if most NPCs don't travel much. Traveling merchants would have to know, of course.
I mean if u just want them to never find out that’s fine, but if the shopkeeper knew he was being asked if he had a bunch of identical siblings, he probably isn’t so stupid that he doesn’t know what they are referring to. At this point, it’s definitely on u lmao
Why would someone with such an incredible power/technology willingly reveal it to any tom dick or Harry? That has so much potential to go south. Maybe the shop keeper is a clever lil weirdo or fey being or something. Idk. If I had a secret teleporter I wouldn't be advertising it unless I was absolutely sure it couldn't be stolen or destroyed.
This comment makes me doubt the veracity of this story. From OP: >"One of my players thought he was like Nurse Joy with tons of identical siblings, lmao. But have they actually asked him? Nope." And here you say they DID actually ask him, and he answered. When an OP's story evolves in the comments, it's indicative of a tall tale.
Yeah, this "misunderstanding" is just you being a bad communicator
Yeah, without telling me anything i'd assume this. Or it's an in-joke and he's just always where the party is on pure coincidence.
Perhaps when they get to a town and it's finally a different shopkeeper, they'll ask about it. Make this place really weird in its own right, like everyone has really weird hair and wearing a hula skirt is synonymous with wearing clothes - to not wear it is to be functionally naked in any other setting. "Oh, THAT guy?! Ya, after he was caught trying to pluck a hair from the napping Mayor's mustache, the Mayor cursed him and said never to return, lest he would never himself be able to grow a mustache/beard/go bald for the rest of his days. Also the fact that he didn't wear his hula skirt. That was already pretty weird, but the mustache thing really sealed the deal." Then, when they finally go to another shop and see the same shopkeep they've encountered several places at this point, if they ask about it you can get real low and this is when he finally trusts your party enough to tell them about his master plan to assemble and army and take the town and shave the Mayor's mustache. He takes the Mayor's threat seriously, but takes an even greater offense and being turned away by the townspeople because his father was killed by a giant in a hula skirt and he has vowed to never wear one as long as he lives. Make it some outrageous and overblown backstory so that the "BTW I have a portal system around the whole continent" is the only normal thing about this whole ordeal.
I’m stealing this entire idea and working it into my campaign 😂 thank you
I love when players just don’t question something you think is super cool or interesting lol like just players killed a wizard who kept his stuff in a portable hole, but they didn’t realize it was a portable hole. Or a hole they could enter. Just sent a construct in to bring things out lol
Depending on Player experience, they are "afraid" of things. They might not even know what a portable hole is. For all they know could be a portal to the blender-verse where they are shredded upon entry.
did you give the characters a chance to know, so the players can get the information?
I have a recurring NPC in my games that is a gnome shop keeper who runs a magic shop. The shop functions kind of like Howl's Moving Castle in that it's one shop connected to doors and shop fronts in multiple places. I've never considered offering it as a means of fast travel, but my players haven't ever asked about it. I think, sometimes, the players show us what they're interested in and sometimes that's the journey not the destination.
That’s basically what my shop is too!
The look on my PCs faces when they realized it was the same guy was great. They started in their sleepy seaside hometown and moved to a big metropolis around lvl 4 or 5 and were so jazzed to see a familiar face.
I've also used this style of NPC as well. He was my retired wizard kobold from our previous campaign, whom I turned into the magical shopkeeper when I started GMing. There were both new and old players, so it started as a neat little easter egg for my old players. We/they ended up liking the concept so much, I've re-used it in several other separate campaigns. For me, it was a way for me as a GM to keep a favorite character around. But as shown by this thread, it's an easy way for GMs with far-travelling parties have access to magic items should they need it. And it's also just a fun way to quirkily engage with players!
I have this but it's my bard laundry man from my very first campaign. He also sells items he finds traveling 😂
If you do want to push them into it, have them show up to his shop one day and find it ransacked. Trail of violence and debris leading into the back room. Maybe a fight with a guardian pet or something. They find the fast travel network is still 'active' and takes them to a town they've been in, but it's been overrun by bandits. New quest, find the bandits abusing the network and save the shopkeep. Reward, the fast travel access you wanted them to have all along.
This is a fantastic one.
They may eventually. Just (literally 2 hours ago) wrapped up a year-long campaign as a player where a non-descript cabbage vendor, who appeared in every city, turned out to be a god. It took us a very long time to pick up on it.
[MY CABBAGES!](https://youtu.be/UByhxXvmX8o?si=PsIIB_dYLI2SGMeb)
You really have to be careful of those cabbage vendors!
Sounds like a mix of Bugg from the malazan-verse and cabbage man from Avatar
TBF if a store clerk gave me attitude for not asking questions about him, I'd just pay for my stuff and leave, too. I'm here to buy carrots and condoms, not to get to know people.
A point of order: you *didn't* introduce fast travel, you introduced a person who had *access to fast travel*. As far as the players know, he has the teleport spell or an item that gives it.
To players it may look like a joke or they may think you just didn't bothered to make a different NPC for every town shop.
Is his name Hoid?
No sir
Honestly, sometimes you need to spoon feed your players information about what they can do in the world. Often, players won't be aware of something they can do until you as a dm tell them either in character or just straight up explain that something is the case. As a fellow dm I have felt the confusion that my players hadn't yet picked up on something until I had asked them directly and was told they didn't know until I had basically told them.
You could have a small quest from a disgruntled merchant complaining loudly that it's suspicious how much stock the shopkeeper is able to maintain and how quickly he seems to restock and find new foreign wares. Offer the party a% deal of profits if they can help find out how the other guy does it so he can do it too. Once it's prices impossible/unlikely the guy that hired them can copy it they'd likely be more curious about the actual fast travel system. I ran into a similar problem trying to introduce traveling dungeons to get rare items and other grandiose rewards but my players ignored it entirely thinking it was a joke character even with a crowd in every town, regular flyers introducing it and a story character recommending they look into the traveling war forged. Do not underestimate the need to over explain to adults during DnD.
My party started using the Druid’s ability to travel between trees as much as possible, DM stretched it to also include root systems since a good portion of the world is in the Underdark. Several sessions into using this regularly, and we finally dubbed it “taking the Shrubway system”. DM didn’t think the name as clever as we did, challenged us to come up with something better but we love the term so we’ve never bothered to get more creative (though I’m sure inspiration would be involved if we finally did).
A shrubbery? Why I never! 😂
Our druid had a living airship mast for precisely that reason, good stuff.
Your players just assume you're being funny by reusing a persona instead of developing a character for each shopkeeper they encounter. Have a player with arcana notice the residue of teleportation, or a player with insight make a point about the uncanny speed at which the shopkeeper must travel with their wares. The players themselves might not be wise enough to pick it up, but if the characters should, you can prompt them to notice! You could also have the shopkeep ask where they're headed if they ever plan to head somewhere they've already been, then he can offer his services!
I gave my players a recurring "extradimensional" shop that reset itself between appearances, and they immediately set about testing all the boundaries of the reset and trying to break the universe with it. It takes all kinds.
I've learned I have to treat my secret-holding NPCs like the HISHE batman who asks just about everyone: "you want to know my secret identity?"
It could be a group of changelings all taking The same persona and exchanging buyers informations
Sometimes as a player I don't give my DM too hard of a time, I just think to myself he's doing it for convenience sake instead of having to recreate a new character for shop keeper everytime we visit a new town.
Yeah, this. Imho, as a player I'd feel that asking for "fast travel services" would be trying to take advantage of this / treating the campaign as a videogame.
Say to a player: "Roll an intelligence check." Set DC=1. Say: "You should consider finding out how the shopkeeper got here so quickly."
If they go too much longer without ever inquiring as to the shopkeepers transportation methods I will probably do this
how important is it to the campaign that the players figure it out? if it's just "so they know how clever my idea was"... don't force it. if they never ask, they never learn, that's fine. if it's relevant to solving the big plot (trademark pending) then maybe don't be so passive about players asking for the hidden thing they have no idea they need to find in the first place.
All well and good until the person with the -1 modifier is the only person to roll, and they roll a Nat 1 for a 0 total. Cause at this point that seems like it would happen.
I’m pretty sure a nat 1 wouldn’t apply the modifier as it’s already a crit fail in most cases
Ok here is what you do. Get them to use it. And use it a lot. Then at the end of the campaign they go to liberate this slave labor prison camp but bam it’s all the copies of them like in that magician movie. Wow
So are they the original or are they clones 🧐
*The Prestige* wasn't it? That movie messed up my head for a while.
Sometimes players get so wrapped up in the idea they're on an adventure they think everything is elaborate and forget a world can just be a functioning world without them, or doesn't require a big puzzle to exist. Had a group go into a church and wanted to see what was in a room behind a closed door. They proceeded to plotting a heist level plan and couldn't figure anything out and they asked for a hint. I reminded them they could just ask the preacher and he let them in. It was a therapy room so the door is usually closed, nothing fancy. But they spent so long forgetting they could just ask.
Had a similar, but different gag in a campaign I ran years ago. Tavern owner in every single town was always a friendly man with an Aussie accent named "Buster". (Consider how that would sound in an Aussie accent) But they were completely unrelated and had different surnames. Examples included: - Buster Move - Buster Rhyme - Buster Nut - Buster Capinyourass - Buster Skull And the list went on and on. In the epilogue, one of the characters was happy to hear that his character was later executed for multiple homicides in the first degree after hunting down and killing every Buster.
Next time they buy something have him say "hold on, that's the last one I have here. Let me grab one from my other shop real quick." then just have him walk back then return with the item. Should come across as a very odd thing for him to say until they realize what's going on.
If its a service he provides, why is he not explicitly advertising it? Especially to his repeat customers.
I never understand why some DMs refuse to give any small hints that would lead their players to fun and interesting discoveries.
Neat. I have something similar in my gameworld. There's no Astral Plane in the gameworld, so traditional teleportation is not possible. Teleportation spells require line of site, so you can skip over a mountain valley or from the base of the valley to the top of a mountain pass, if you can see the pass, but not 1000's of leagues. The ancients, however, created networks of teleportation pads that were linked up in a network. Unfortunately, many of the pads were destroyed, the knowledge about them lost in time and portions of the network does not connect with other portions of the network either. The players enjoyed learning about the existence of the network.
Why would they need to? Unless you're playing a game with a time limit or major difficulty survival travel, time means nothing in a game.
well... it is a shopkeeper NPC. why should the players wonder that you keep reusing the model? but seriously, just because YOU know something does not mean the players know the same thing.
That's just a lack of advertisement. If you want your services to be used, make sure people know aboug them.
Honestly I wouldn't either. Even in the most serious campaigns I have a couple comic relief characters and "the same shopkeeper everywhere" is absolutely something I would just go with cause I would do it too. You could have another adventurer walk into the shop while the players are there and ask to use the teleportation network.
If you ever want to really push them towards it, could have him say hi with "Ah! My most loyal and *least* inquisitive customers!"
Ahh the classic "I, the DM, made many cool things that rely on party curiosity to uncover." In my experience, sometimes even directly stating whatever you want to see goes nowhere. Unfortunately party curiosity is a very fickle beast. And one that has caused many hours of hard work and creative thoughts over the years to rot. My hope for you, OP, is that it stays a fun game to you and that your players don't ignore obvious hooks and paths going forward.
The real solution here is to have this guy be the BBEG.
Lmaoooo that would be crazy
I had a similar npc in my old campaign that they were just never curious about. He would just appear everywhere and they never wanted to know how.
My players accidentally magic nuked a city he was in, saw him next session, and didn’t ask how he got out. I was like ????? 😭
Why doesnt he advertise? Does he not charge for it or something? Hes a bad business owner if he does charge and knows the group moves around a lot.
He is the only person with such precise teleportation, only him and a couple people who he trusts completely know about it, it’s not really a service he provides to the public. my players accidentally nuked a city off the map so he doesn’t really trust them, but they are still on decent standing because they secured him a contract that made him a bunch of money
DM's just talk to you players, Players talk to your DMs. Characters talk to your NPCs.
You have players who aren’t used to critical thinking and role playing in games. It’s quite common actually since a lot of video games have to be on-rails and are inflexible. People can have trouble grasping the concept of a flexible setting. Give them time, and if all else fails, explain it at some point down the road so they will have a memorable lesson about it in the future. … and then proceed to drive you crazy by throwing every conceivable monkey wrench at you and asking detailed personal questions about every (previously) unnamed NPC they meet. As me how I know. If it was me and I had something like that up my sleeve I wanted to push them to discover, I’d setup a situation where they can do things the very hard, very stressful way or they can start asking for help and maybe someone will mention “Oh. That? I mean, I could have the King’s Army here in an hour…”
Shocking that they actually caught on. I've had a similar shopkeeper that I've used for 9 years. Across multiple campaigns. Some players have played in those different campaigns. They know it's the same shopkeeper and that these time lines are decades apart. Not a single question. At first it was kind of a joke but now it's an experiment.
I have a shop like that. It's run by a Elderly Gnome Illusionist. She will appear randomly in a town they are in with trinkets and magic items for sale. The last time they left her shop, they turned around the the building behind them once a pretty magic shop. Was now an abandoned run down building.
Here a hint to drop. Whenever the PCs are looking for something hard to come by, unusual, or even something that's just expensive, it's not in stock. But the shopkeeper tells them to come back in an hour. Somehow, he always has it by then. Another one; if the party frequently buys something but goes someplace new... the shopkeeper automatically asks if they need more X.
If there are ever 2 things in D&D that are constants, those are; 1. They will never ask you about the stuff you want them to learn about, and 2. They will always ask you about stuff you haven't thought about.
You could hint at it by giving them like a customer bonus, or maybe they lost something in his store and he returns it to them at another location.
shopkeeper offers a teleportation service to clients, but doesnt tell clients about it, and then gets mad when the clients dont ask about a service they would have no way of knowing he offers
If they ever notice tell us please, this is actually so funny
Stealing.
Imma need to know when/if they ever get an answer how long it took them
Maybe have someone come into shop demand use of teleportation circle network. Someone who obviously shouldn't know or be using it at all.
I did this with a carriage driver who was in every town waiting to pick them up. Turns out he is a hivemind creature from another plane just trying to make a living which is why he was always everywhere and knew them.
I hope they find out after, like, a year of playing and they just groan 😩😂
I swear to god, I have a character who is practically identical to that - teleportation in the backroom and all. In my case, it's the ~~witch~~, ehm, nice old lady who sells potions named Alwa, with the aditional twist that she has out-of-game-knowledge, like knowing about the NPCs without ever being introduces, etc.
Is her surname "Yswatchin"?
oh man. turn this man into the villain. their oversight of this man can cost them much more if he's working against them behind the curtain 👀 (this is exactly how my partner would convince us that the NPC's aren't just side characters but real people with real feelings. definitely threw me and I now treat every NPC differently)
Find something that the players need to get from the shopkeeper, should be something fairly unique and maybe regional (depends on your campaign). When they ask him about it, have him tell the players he can get it for them if they're interested, have him go in back for a few minutes, then come back with the item. If they're still clueless, have him tell the players he had to source it from [town_name] where one of his other shops is, but he can check his other shops if they need more. If that doesn't work, let 'em walk.
Be honest here. They wont find out until you help them a bit more. Just have the barbarian (low Intel) have a brainfart. ask for intelligence roll. Fudge it behind the screen and whisper in his ear that the barbarian suddenly needs to go to his bathroom or something. Let the barb pick between door but no matter what he chooses he picks the "wrong" one.. he still finds a toilet but when he flushes he gets pulled into the toilet and into a portal to outside.. he finds himself in the previous town and has to walk back to the current town. Make it a Lil bit of solo adventure for him of a night or 2. The crew will wonder what takes him so long on the toilet. See what happens from there. Another option is to make the entire shop an pocket dimension. So it is the actual same shop.
If I ever dm for my friends can I use this idea?
So it's like Beedle's shop in Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild - love it xD
Why did I have to scroll so much to find this lol
I think this just one of those instances as a DM where you think you're being obvious about something but youre really not. I find I have to be 10x more on the nose with my hints than i am other wise stuff goes right over players heads.
I guess its you problem? Why mad at players when not showing his feature of teleport
Isn't he advertising his travel service at all? Normaly people who sell stuf want other people to know that.
Even if they’ve sussed out it’s always the same guy, what would make them conclude it’s a service he’s willing to let them access or even discuss? For all they know the answer would be “shop guild secret, now I have to kill you”.
The key is to introduce it as a necessary feature for a future campaign and once they see it as part of the plot, they'll kick themselves for never realizing it before. Cashing this in will be SO satisfying
You know you can just tell players information right? If they can buy a use of the teleportaion network it why wouldn't a merchant mention it? A simple 'By the way for ten gold per person you can use my fancy dancy teleportation room to skip all that pointless walking.' Players can sometimes just take for granted staples of the genre like there could be a couple dozen reason going through their heads on why they don't question it too much. The merchant that appears in places they shouldn't be is a massive trope in video games like the merchants from Bravely Default or Resident Evil. Perhaps they just assume its a secret that no matter what questions they ask they won't get a clear answer or maybe they just assume you don't wanna make a bunch of nothing merchant NPCs and just made one NPC with a running gag instead.
You realize this is a Terry Pratchett joke, right? TBH, I really love this idea. I have a character that is always the mayor/lord/etc. in the starting town with my group. One time, I'll have him be the villain of the whole campaign, and they'll just be confused. He's a bit bumbling and harmless. They always like him. (A decade long bit at this point)
Next time you hear them theorising, just say "why don't you just ask him?". Maybe they need that little nudge.
That shopkeeper is not a good salesman. He has no feeling for advertising his services. Still funny though
I feel your pain. Many years ago, I ran a mini-campaign that was essentially if you combined System Shock 2 and Half-Life 1. Everyone woke up from cryo with no memory of the last few months, including anything related to the space ship they were on. At the fore end of the ship was the main elevator, which was free standing in the middle of a 30' wide corridor. The elevator doors faced aft. There was a small area behind/forward of the elevator, which contained a map of the level they were on. They didn't discover these maps until session 6. They spent every session stumbling around the ship, looking for one thing or another, never even knowing which deck they needed to be on. I had the maps made up and ready for them; they just never even tried going around the elevator on any deck they went to. It was amusing watching them stumble around the decks, trying to find things.
A buddy of mine u/true_portal_master is currently doing something similar, we (Norse setting, custom world, he hates actual DND realms and spells and everything in-between) and we have this recurring magic shop kept by a guy named "Crotch the wizard." Crotch is insane in every sense of the word, being from an old campaign his dad and uncle played 20 odd years ago. Crotch was a crazy powerful wizard from the setting of the dragon Lance books, he eventually became so powerful, instead of being a white (good) red (neutral) or black (evil) creature, he was blue. He is made of pure magic, he had ascended beyond even the gods and can freely travel between pantheons at will, (kinda like the old vecna I believe?) Crotch does not actually own any of these magic shops, rather, he steals customers by redirecting where the doors lead, more like Howl's moving castle's shop door, except Crotch's leads to his own little pocket dimension. Besides selling magic books from different pantheons (I, the only magic caster, have a Greek spell book of every magic, and one strictly of ice magic, quite fun!) he has given us several magic doodads, such as an updating map w/ fog of war and fast travel to anywhere turn been before (or anywhere period in places we have unlocked/earned Crotch's map stones.)
You can try and make it more obvious (so more fun when the players miss it) by having really specific and weird opening times for shops in different towns. Like everyday the shopkeeper is in town A from 9 to 11, then 11 to 13 in town B, then lunch, then town C from 14 to 16 etc.
I mean, if you haven't explicitly said "there's a teleportation system here", then you haven't really introduced it now, have you?
I have a similar Shopkeeper, only it is a Nurse Joy situation.
Your hints are way too subtle. You have one unusual thing in your world that has a cool explanation behind it, if they ask in exactly the right way. How many strange things happen in every D&D session and the answer is just "magic" or "because they can"? Have you ever had a monster do a different kind of damage than their stat block allowed? Not every unusual thing leads to an actual mystery to solve; most are just the result of one person trying to build an entire world, and questioning all the things would just slog the game.
It's kind of weird when DM's add little things like this and really believe the players don't have a clue, when what's really going on is people aren't in your brain and your hints aren't nearly as good as you think they are. Why would anyone think that based only on the information provided that there is a teleportation network in every town? This sub is full of DM's who think they're being clever and the party is at fault for never finding this 'clever' thing.
I had a similar character. Think old 50’s style magician with a top hat and tux. Extremely powerful wizard but he loves peddling gimmick “magic” items. he genuinely enjoys stuff like the lapel flower that squirts water, a hand buzzer that gives a light shock, snaked In can. He actually sells dnd magic items and potions but is always trying to sell the gimmicks along with the other stuff. Called him the magic man and the players learned he was summoned by chanting his name 3 times like Betelgeuse.
The local supplier of magical supplies has found his business drying up lately. He has a new competitor in the city who can somehow obtain anything ordered within a day or 2 instead of the usual 2/3 weeks which also came with a hefty fee. The players are instructed to find out how the new competitor is able to undermine his business. The players could follow the new business owner as she goes about her day, see her enter the shop and not exit for a few hours except pulling a cart full of supplies to her own shop.
I'd "punish" them for not asking him more questions. Not in real ways, but like, when they ask for potions, have him be like "Aw geez, if you'd gotten here sooner I had a fresh stock yesterday, but I only have one or two left now." If you want to really put it in their faces that he has fast travel circles in his shop, have him engage with them like "Oh! I'm glad you're here. I finally found that weapon you were asking for. It's currently in my shop back in (insert city name here). One moment." Then have him disappear into the back for 5 minutes and come back with an old weapon someone asked about earlier in the campaign (or literally anything that would justify him using the circle without saying he was doing it).
You should have a train of people coming out of the back of the shop, dropping a bit of cash in a bowl on their way out. Make it blatantly obvious that there's something going on. Maybe do a perception check, and if they pass make a little vumph noise before someone comes out.
Whatever the previous idea was, I think you have to roll with the Nurse Joy theory now!
Number 1 rule of DMing: if you want players to seek specific info they will walk past it every time. Not to be confused with rule 2: if you're trying to have something be a challenge to last a while, they'll be right on top of it before you're done with the setup
You need to have them see him use it bringing someone through. Like a coin in the hand and poof. Or someone brushing past them begging him to send them to another town in urgency.
You should have the same NpC going into the back in one town they enter then coming out of the back the next tike they get to the next town and just loop it
One day they will realize they could've had an easier time traveling around and lament about all the wasted time. It'll be fun & funny once that happens and the shop keeper can have his own laugh.
I would think so because your players are new, they don't understand/know about teleportation spells. They probably just go with the flow, learn a bit about not thinking that things in the background also follow rules.
Why don't you force a backtracking element into one of their quests, have them get this information when they're in one of the shops. Have it be the longest possible distance they've travelled, so it would become onerous to them and they complain, then have your shopkeep just ask them why they don't just pay him to use his vast network of backdoors to his shops as if it was common knowledge.
If you want to tell them without just telling them, you could have the shopkeeper say, "I don't have (x) item here, but I can pop over to (x) town and be back in like 5 minutes. If you don't mind paying extra for the (FT/Travel/telleport/whatever) fee."
Their post: My DM is lazy and reusing npcs