Shop Archetypes

An archetype is a ready-made shop script. It bundles a complete dialogue tree with a matching theme and accent color. A few archetypes also bring an ambient track, and some bring preset opening hours or a haggle preset. Applying one seeds the shop’s title with the archetype’s trading name.

Each tree is written as a scene rather than a menu. The keeper greets the player, reacts to what has happened before, and offers choices that lead into browsing, selling, or services.

The ten archetypes

Archetype	Shop sign	Personality
Blacksmith	The Iron Oath	A blunt, proud smith. Players haggle her sharpening fee in dialogue, then pick the weapon she puts an edge on.
Apothecary	The Bitter Root	An anxious apprentice who never stops talking. She asks what ails the player and can fortify a flask they hand over.
General store	The Odd Shelf	A shopkeeper of few words. The smallest tree in the pack.
Tavern / Inn	The Adventurers Alcove	A warm innkeeper. She draws a rumour at random, weighted to the campaign’s act, and a long tab earns a free bed.
Magic shop	The Secondhand Patron	A theatrical dealer. He rolls an appraisal table on whatever a player brings, and the locked case opens only for a player who trades away arcane training.
Bookseller / Scribe	The Tome of Tomes	A scribe who rambles. Players type what they are after and he keeps a ledger of their commissions.
Stable / Mounts	The Muddy Hoof	A folksy horse-trader. She sells the mount first, then the tack, then the boarding, and hires out passage to set destinations.
Black market / Fence	The Cloak and Barter	A wary receiver. Trust grows with every deal and persists between visits, unlocking the back room and then the full stock.
Festival vendor	The Painted Wagon	A crier who barks the same pitch every time. The stall opens only on market days.
Itinerant trader	Wandering Wares	A trader who counters the player’s offer at the counter. Travellers can buy a seat on the wagon. The pitch is packed up by midday.

A macro can read or set a shop’s trust counter through the module API. Trust is tracked per archetype rather than per shop actor: every Fence shop in the world shares one trust value. See API and Hooks.

Services and effects

Some trees include service choices that grant an effect to the buyer, such as the blacksmith’s sharpening or the apothecary’s tonic. These effects live in a world compendium that Peddler creates on first use. The effect definitions come from the active system adapter.

The stable and caravan trees also carry a fare node. It appears only when the Travel Pace module is active and the shop has destinations configured in Shop Settings. The node lists one priced choice per destination with its travel time. Buying passage whispers the request to you for approval. Approving advances world time by the journey length, and denying refunds the fare.

Applying an archetype

To apply an archetype, open the merchant’s actor sheet and use the shop button in the sheet header. A dialog lists the archetypes with a short blurb for each. Confirming creates a journal entry holding the dialogue tree and flags the actor as a shop. Choosing the blank option instead creates an empty tree and opens the Dialogue Tree Editor.

The magic shop also seeds a world roll table for its appraisal scene and a world item for the relic behind the locked case.

Switching archetypes

You can change a shop’s archetype later from Shop Settings. Saving a different archetype replaces the shop’s dialogue tree and sets its look to the archetype’s theme. A confirmation dialog warns you before the save goes through. Any custom nodes you added to the old tree are lost, so export or duplicate the journal page first if you want to keep them.

The theme applied by an archetype is a starting point. You can restyle the shop afterwards without touching the tree. See Themes and Chassis.