Trade Secrets: The Business of Adventure in Fantasy RPGs

Trade is the lifeblood of every settlement, from humble villages to sprawling empires. Behind every bustling marketplace, powerful merchant guild, and thriving trade route is an economy that helps bring a fantasy world to life. Trade Secrets explores the business of adventure, giving GMs and players the tools to make commerce, shopping, and the pursuit of wealth an exciting part of their tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

Designed for Tales of the Valiant and fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, this supplement is easy to incorporate into almost any fantasy campaign. Whether you’re running a published adventure, building a homebrew world, or adding new layers to an established setting, you can pick and choose the tools, tables, and ideas that work for your game. You don’t need to overhaul or learn an entirely new system. Just open the book and put its resources to work!

Make Every Gold Piece Count

PCs spend a lot of time earning treasure. But what happens after the dragon is slain and the party returns home with a wagon full of gold?

Trade Secrets offers more ways to make that wealth meaningful. Turn routine shopping trips into memorable roleplaying opportunities. Give characters the chance to invest in businesses, establish trade relationships, and build something that lasts beyond their latest adventure. Add merchant rivalries, economic intrigue, and unexpected opportunities to settlements your players thought they already knew.

It’s an easy way to add substance to shopping episodes, give players exciting ways to spend their hard-earned gold, and make your fantasy world feel more lived-in and interconnected.

What’s Inside Trade Secrets?

Within Trade Secrets, you’ll find a wealth of mercantile opportunities and practical tools for bringing fantasy commerce to life:

• Build a Fantasy Economy: Master the basics of supply and demand, establish monopolies, and create merchant guilds that shape your world’s economy.
• Make Shopping an Adventure: Keep the pace moving with tips and ideas to make marketplace visits engaging, entertaining, and full of roleplaying opportunities.
• Create Economic Adventures: Introduce greedy merchants, ruthless business rivals, highway robbers, trade disputes, and other villains whose schemes revolve around money and commerce.
• Build a Business Empire: Give adventurers somewhere to invest their hard-won gold. Establish taverns, smithies, inns, shops, and other businesses that can become an ongoing part of your campaign.
• Discover Marketplace Encounters: Populate your world with useful random tables, including marketplace encounters, surprise auctions, and mysterious interplanar bazaars.
• Expand Your Gear and Treasure: Discover new weapons, magical items, tools, and other equipment to bring to your adventures.

An Easy Addition to Any Fantasy Campaign

You don’t need to run an entire campaign about merchants and money to get the most out of Trade Secrets. The book complements the games you’re already running.

Need to make a city market more interesting? Roll on a table. Looking for a new side quest? Introduce a merchant with a problem. Have players sitting on a mountain of gold? Give them an opportunity to open a business or invest in the local economy. Want to make a settlement feel more distinctive? Develop its trade guilds, local industries, and economic rivalries.

Use a single table to spark an encounter or draw from multiple sections to create an entirely new adventure. Whether you’re running a published campaign, expanding a homebrew setting, or simply looking for new ways to keep your players engaged between quests, Trade Secrets gives you flexible resources that are easy to bring to the table.

See Trade Secrets in Action!

How much adventure can you create using the tables and tools in Trade Secrets? We decided to find out!

The Valiant 6 sat down for The Business of Adventure, a live actual-play session featuring an adventure generated entirely using tables from Trade Secrets. Stella Luna, Candace, Drak, and Walle got caught up in a commerce-inspired adventure full of deals, unexpected twists, and chances to strike it rich.

It’s a great example of how the book’s tables and creative tools can take a few rolls of the dice and turn them into a complete adventure.

Put Your Gold to Work with Trade Secrets!

Ready to bring new mercantile opportunities, exciting shopping encounters, and a deeper world of fantasy commerce to your tabletop?

Trade Secrets is a versatile resource for Game Masters and players looking to make their fantasy worlds richer, their shopping trips more memorable, and their adventurers’ hard-earned gold more valuable than ever.

GET TRADE SECRETS ON THE KOBOLD PRESS STORE

Build your fortune, expand your influence, and finance your next great quest with Trade Secrets!

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