The Trades Ward is the beating commercial heart of the Great City. All adventurers sooner or later will visit this crowded district. In the middle of the trades ward is found the great market square, where a seemingly infinite number of small booths, peddlers and self-appointed vendors show up like magic at the first light of each day. The trades ward also features many brick-and-mortar shops, facing the square as well as scattered about in the many alleys and small streets surrounding the great square. All of the common services can be found here: alchemists, locksmiths, armorers, tailors, weavers, weaponsmiths, brewing houses, and woodworkers.
Buildings include:
Curiosity Shop: This shop appears very small and anonymous, but entering you will find yourself in a faerie world, surrounded by all sorts of strange objects. Also, the shop is not as small as it seems. A door leads upstairs to the second section of the shop, where only certain customers are allowed. A secret door in this second shop leads to a secret area where many strange and sometimes illegal objects are sold. Note: The Curiosity Shop is fully detailed in 0one's Blueprints Backdrops: The Curiosity Shop.
Alchemist: This small shop is busy at all times. On the ground floor is the shop where all sort of potions are sold. Upstairs there is the laboratory, a chamber with a well providing fresh water and a storage room. Hidden by a secret door, there is another storage room where the most precious (and dangerous) potions are kept.
Locksmith: The largest locksmith of the city. A large working area dominates the shop. A small office and a privy are the only other rooms here.
Armors & Fine Weapons Shop: A small porch gives access to a fully equipped weapon-and-armor store. The store has a secret room where magical weapons and armor are kept.
Emporium: You can find just about anything in the great emporium. The main shop area is connected to a secondary storage room by well-locked double doors. Important deliveries of goods are discussed in the emporium owner's house, on the first floor.
Woodworker: A double door leads directly to the woodworker laboratory. Special business is held in the small office accessible through a small door from the laboratory.
Fine Silks & Clothes Shop: An impressive array of silks and clothes are displayed in the main shop area. This area also features large working tables where expert weavers cut clothes and silks. A smaller shop area holds the best silks from distant southlands. The owner of the shop dwells on the first floor of this building with his family.
Merchant's Guildhall: The guildhall is divided in two main areas: the public area and the private area. A hook-shaped corridor gives access to the facilities of the public area: the library, the meeting room, and the assembly room. The private area belongs to the guildmaster who usually dwells here.
The Great City is a series of seven linked products that explore a whole fantasy city. The first PDF provides a map of the entire city; the other six products each detail one city district with the floorplans of its major buildings. Each of the products can easily be used as standalone product.
The Blueprints product line offers you old-fashioned blueprint-style maps for your adventures and campaigns. Each map includes a blueprint version and a standard black-and-white version. The maps are all vector-based for maximum print resolution. Despite their old-fashioned appearance, each map offers a degree of customization by taking full advantage of pdf technology. A small control bar (which will not be printed) on each map allows you to turn the grid on and off, eliminate the room numbers, fill the walls, or hide doors and furniture.
Each product features a classic fantasy adventure location: a dungeon, a keep, a temple complex, a thieves' guild and so on. You can use these maps as reference to build your own adventures or simply have them at hand in case your players go in an unexpected direction during the campaign.
While offering you the best quality, these products are really inexpensive.
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Latest in the detailed breakdown of buildings to be found in The Great City, this product looks at the merchant district, the commercial heart of the city. As with other 'Ward' books, the contents consist of detailed plans for several of the establishments to be found in this area. These are a curiousity shop, an alchemist, a locksmith, an armour & fine weapons shop, an emporium, a woodworker, a fine silks and clothes shop and the Merchants' Guildhall.
They are all presented in the now-familiar style of blue or black versions, with the facility to choose whether or not to display gridlines, furniture or room numbers. Reference sheets are provided for you to print out and add your own notes as required.
Each building has its own distinctive character, and just looking at them begins to spawn ideas of what might transpire when your players decide to drop in! The Guildhall is particularly fine, with a conference room and a large auditorium, as well as areas for private study, meetings and a residence for the Guildmaster - useful for anyone who enjoys a layer of politics in their game, or who wishes to use a guild as patron for the characters.
In true mediaeval fashion, some of the premises almost run into each other, which makes for slightly odd maps in places where the ground floor is smaller than the one above (mostly because the upper floor is built over some other store that has not been included). Cross-reference with the master plans in The Great City makes this quite easy to understand, however.
Overall, a good addition to the series with plenty of scope for making the inevitable 'shopping trip' a bit more interesting than a check of the price lists in your sourcebooks, and indeed a good adventure location in its own right for all those who do not need a hole in the ground to seek excitement!
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