Free DnD shop template and a fair price list
New game masters get stuck on shops for two reasons: what to put on the shelf, and what anything should cost. This page gives you a one-page shop layout that fits on an index card, and a way to price ordinary goods that never needs a rules book: measure everything in days of wages. It works for any tabletop RPG, and it deliberately leaves out magic items, because their prices depend on the game you play.
The shop on one card
Write this at the top of a card or a binder sheet. Everything below it is optional, and a shop with five items feels like a real shop.
SHOP NAME / PLACE / OWNER (name + one quirk): WHAT THEY SELL (5 to 8 items, price each): WHAT THEY NEED (one thing they will pay extra for): WEALTH OF CUSTOMERS (labourers / traders / nobles): RUMOUR (one thing the owner knows, and what it costs to hear): RESTOCK (what changes next visit):
Two fields do most of the work. What they need gives the party something to do besides buying. Wealth of customers sets the whole price level: a shop for labourers sells cheap goods and few of them, a shop for nobles sells fewer, finer goods at several times the price.
Price everything in days of wages
Pick what an unskilled labourer earns in one day in your world, in whatever coin your game uses. Call that 1 day's wage. Every price below is in hundredths of a day's wage (cw), so 100 cw is one full day of work. Then multiply. The table shows the same ten goods at three example wages: 2, 5 and 10 coins a day.
| Item | cw (1/100 day's wage) | Wage 2 a day | Wage 5 a day | Wage 10 a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain meal | 20 | 0.40 | 1.00 | 2.00 |
| Bottle of wine | 80 | 1.60 | 4.00 | 8.00 |
| Bed in a common room | 30 | 0.60 | 1.50 | 3.00 |
| Private room | 100 | 2.00 | 5.00 | 10.00 |
| Ferry crossing | 20 | 0.40 | 1.00 | 2.00 |
| Buy a riding horse | 6000 | 120.00 | 300.00 | 600.00 |
| Lantern | 300 | 6.00 | 15.00 | 30.00 |
| Tent for two | 1000 | 20.00 | 50.00 | 100.00 |
| Local guide, one day | 300 | 6.00 | 15.00 | 30.00 |
| Scribe writes a letter | 30 | 0.60 | 1.50 | 3.00 |
Read it this way: a private room costs 100 cw, one full day of a labourer's pay, so at a wage of 5 it costs 5. A riding horse is 6000 cw, sixty days of work. That ratio is what players feel, whatever the coins are called. Prices are original rules of thumb for storytelling, not historical data or any game's official price list.
A filled example
An invented shop, written in about three minutes with a wage of 5 coins a day:
| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Owner | Edda Marr, who counts every coin twice and hums while she does. |
| Sells | Plain meal 1, bed in the common room 1.50, private room 5, ferry crossing 1, stable floor 0.50. |
| Needs | Dry firewood. She will take a bundle in place of a night's rent. |
| Customers | Labourers and traders, so nothing finer than a good meal (2.50). |
| Rumour | The ferryman has not crossed since Tuesday. Free if the party buys a meal. |
| Restock | If the river floods, the ferry stops and every price on this card rises by half. |
Three ways to use it
- Sudden shop. The party walks into somewhere you did not plan. Fill in the card in the time it takes them to ask what is for sale: the name, one quirk, five items, one need.
- Price check. A player asks what a lantern costs. Look up cw, multiply by the wage, and say the number. Using the same method every time is what makes your economy feel consistent.
- Story levers. Raise every price by half when the road is closed, halve them when a caravan arrives. The party notices without a sentence of explanation.
What this page leaves out on purpose
Magic items, weapons and armour. Their value depends on your game's rules and balance, so a flat table would mislead you. Decide those yourself and write them on the card as a plain number of coins.
Printable version
The shop sheet and the full price ladder (five groups, including lodging, travel, gear and services) are printed pages in the Append Binder ($9): 44 sheets in 8 tabs, with travel and weather tables, on US Letter and A4. A free sample of five sheets is in the DM binder guide, and the session planner is free as well. Not affiliated with any game publisher.