Alternative approaches to shopping in TTRPGs 
(or, how to quietly radicalise your players)

What follows are a few quick thoughts on making shopping and trade in TTRPGs more interesting and less capitalist. This does not need to be a replacement for the published economy of your game – it might simply provide flavour to a certain location and expose your players to an alternative way of doing things. There are plenty of alternatives out there – e.g. the gift economy – these are just some that the author has had direct experience with.

Free stores

The party arrives at a settlement. Asking for the price of an item at the shop, the shopkeeper looks puzzled for a moment, before comprehension dawns. They explain that the community is built around mutual aid and that this is a free store: people are encouraged to take what they want or need, and to leave behind what they no longer do, providing it is of good enough quality to still be of use. Or perhaps when the party arrives there is no one around, and all the goods are there for the taking. Maybe there’s a sign explaining how things work, or maybe there isn’t. Does the group take everything that isn’t nailed down and leave, or do they leave items in place of what they take? Does they approach the next town with spare supplies to give?

Barter

The specific method of value exchange is be tailored to the individual character, resulting in an opportunity for more roleplay, combat, exploration, or a combination of these. This approach has the advantage of potentially bringing lesser-used game mechanics, or small narrative beats, into play.

For example: In a heroic fantasy game, the party finds themselves in need of healing items. A local herbalist offers to freely make what they need if they can bring them a specific plant that grows deep in the woods. The herbalist only requires part of the plant to make the potions the party needs, and the rest can be used to support the community or make supplies for other adventurers. This might be quickly resolved by rewarding a player with a relevant background (or something like the Herbalism Kit proficiency in D&D), or perhaps the reason the herbalist hasn’t gone to get the plants themselves is that the wood contains a threat to the local population.

Another example: In a SF game, a player is looking to improve their equipment. An armourer offers their assistance, saying that the work will take a couple of hours. They then mention that their teenage kid has been wanting to learn the basics of hand-to-hand combat. The player character looks like they’ve been through a few scrapes – could they teach the kid a thing or two while they wait? This could be resolved through roleplay or mechanics or a combination of the two. How would you test the degree of success of teaching combat in your system?

LETS

This is a more involved option for a location in which the party will be based for a while. A community has decided they want to keep created value within the local community, and has set up a local exchange trading system (LETS). This participatory, not-for-profit system, which decouples value from the mainstream financial system, is essentially a trade of IOUs which incentivises immediate needs. Of key importance is that there is no interest on LETS currency, which encourages PCs and NPCs to invest in productive assets rather than hoarding currency. Everyone’s account begins at zero and the balances of participants are visible to all. Often the value of the local currency is equivalent to the external currency. Communities using LETS typically have stronger ties and are more resilient to outside power. How would your party (or a campaign antagonist) react to a location like this?

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Version 1.0 written for the Fuck Capitalism Jam 2025   
Released under a CC0 licence
Project cover photo by SL on Unsplash

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