Shop Archetypes

An archetype is a ready-made shop script. It bundles a dialogue tree with its own theme, accent color, and ambient track, and it names the shop after the archetype’s sign. A few archetypes also preset opening hours, haggling, a tab limit, or daily restocking. Archetype fees and service prices scale to the active system’s currency.

The twelve archetypes

Archetype	Shop sign	Chassis	What it offers
Blacksmith	The Iron Oath	Bench	A blunt smith who hones and tempers blades, takes commissions, buys old steel, and arm-wrestles.
Apothecary	The Bitter Root	Bench	A chatty apprentice who asks what ails the buyer, fortifies flasks, brews remedies, and buys herbs.
General Store	The Odd Shelf	Counter	A quiet shopkeeper with a bargain bin, buyback, special orders, a tab, and town news.
Tavern / Inn	The Adventurers Alcove	Counter	A warm innkeeper with beds, rumours, games against the regulars, a tab, and the odd brawl.
Magic Shop	The Secondhand Patron	Bench	A theatrical dealer who appraises, recharges, and binds items, buys curios, and keeps a locked case.
Bookseller / Scribe	The Tome of Tomes	Counter	A rambling scribe who values and buys books, lends from a ledger, and takes commissions.
Stable / Mounts	The Muddy Hoof	Bench	A horse-trader selling mounts and tack, with boarding, a farrier, buy-back, and hired passage.
Black Market	The Blind Eye	Den	A wary buyer of stolen goods whose stock, back room, and forged papers open as goodwill grows.
Festival Vendor	The Painted Wagon	Stall	A crier open only on market days, with midway games, a fortune booth, and a last-hour clearance.
Itinerant Trader	Wandering Wares	Stall	A morning trader with haggling at the hatch, a road charm, tales, fetch orders, and a wagon seat.
Spymaster	The Quiet Room	Den	A broker of rumours, dossiers, and secrets who sells paid leads and takes watch orders.
Hacker	The Night Market	Terminal	A data fence run from a chat channel, where players type commands to browse, sell, and place orders.

Each archetype’s chassis comes from its theme. See Themes and Chassis.

Services and effects

Some service choices grant the buyer an effect. Effects are stored in a world compendium named Peddler Effects, created the first time you apply an archetype. The active system adapter defines them.

The stable and caravan trees 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 a request to the GM. Approving advances world time by the journey length, and denying refunds the fare.

Heat

Black Market, Spymaster, and Hacker shops track heat for each buyer. Heat is Cold, Warm, or Hot. Warm and Hot buyers pay higher prices. A Hot buyer can find the shop raided, which closes it to everyone for a while. A buyer can pay to lay low, which clears their heat and turns them away until the timer ends. The Spymaster calls heat Exposure, and the Hacker calls it trace. The archetype section of Shop Settings holds the multipliers, timers, and raid chance.

Calendaria notes

While Calendaria is active, orders, leads, lay-low timers, loans, and boarding create notes. You get one note and the buyer’s players get another. Spymaster and Hacker order notes and lead notes are hidden from other players.

Applying an archetype

Click Create Peddler Shop in the merchant’s actor sheet header to open the Shop Builder. Pick an archetype on the Basics step, then choose Import the tree to step through its dialogue, or Start fresh to keep the archetype’s look and mechanics while writing every line yourself. With no archetype picked, the import option uses a minimal starter tree. The Dialogue Tree Editor is available from the Review step.

Switching archetypes

Change a shop’s archetype from the Dialogue Archetype field in Shop Settings. Saving a different archetype asks for confirmation first. It then overwrites the dialogue tree, renames the shop, and applies the archetype’s theme, accent color, ambient track, and presets. Any custom nodes in the old tree are lost, so export or duplicate the journal page first if you want to keep them. Setting the field to None clears the archetype but leaves the tree in place.

Caution

Shops created with the Fence archetype pick up the Black Market look and voice. They keep their Fence dialogue until you reinstall the archetype as Black Market.