Worldbuilding: How do you design immersive, chaotic marketplaces and merchant guilds?

[W E Ray]

When I introduce players to a new place (such as a massive, bustling, chaotic bazaar) I give a flavorful description of sights and sounds and smells, a few examples that showcase either the bizarre or mundane or whatever, and often an image or just reference to a similar thing in a movie or show.

Just to set the mood -- give a taste.

Very brief.

It's the players themselves that lead me the next direction. The bigger and more memorable you want it to be, the more -- much MORE -- you'll have to do in preparation. You're going to need to design dozens or scores of examples for all kinds of things. Start making lists of products and services each more unique, avant-garde, eclectic, and frankly, never to be used in any game by any PC-or-NPC ever (to illustrate how the market has everything) and be prepared to start rattling off items from that list at full speed from your mouth.

And them get the players to tell you where they want to go / want they want to buy.

And tell them it takes 1d4 hours of getting directions and walking thousands of meters to find a few dozen stalls that sell what they're looking for.

[agoak]

A big question is whether you want to follow narrative or simulation logic in your design. Narrative will be designed according to the dictates of the story- what types of goods do you want to make difficult to get, what kind of hoops do you want them to have to jump through to get them. Simulation will be based on the question of why the guilds formed and what interests they are protecting. Traditionally trading cations follow family lines, and are based on having some financial advantage or access to certain goods or markets they want to protect. Alternately early banking was largely based on reputations and relationships so associations may form along those lines- a need to be able to trust who you are doing business with.

[Maya Coleman]

This keeps being marked as spam, but I thought it was someone who genuinely wanted to do world building similar to these Dutch markets... Can I ask for a community lifeline? Is this spam?

[QuidEst]

Maya Coleman wrote:

This keeps being marked as spam, but I thought it was someone who genuinely wanted to do world building similar to these Dutch markets... Can I ask for a community lifeline? Is this spam?

I held off on flagging myself, although I'm on the fence. First post with a link to a commercial site is fishy, and the questions are... well, I have at least seen AI do similar.

(If you're a new person, welcome! Sorry, we just have a lot of bots posting links to foreign businesses.)

[0xTJ]

I had my finger on the flag button, but I held off initially as I wasn't sure. It matches one of the formats of the spam posts, being some Pathfinder or TTRPG question or answer generated around a link to make it seem seamless.

Looking at it more now, I'm sure it's spam. I clicked on the suspicious link (I know I shouldn't), and at first the website looks legit, but then there's a dropdown to a bunch of sketchy online gambling, which seems to be the main point of the site.

Also, I did a quick search for this market, and only a few results come up, and one of them was a post from a day earlier with similar text: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/netherlands/off-the-beaten-pa th-visiting-the-giant-zwarte-markt-in-slagharen (this link is displaying for me on the forum as having a space in the middle of "path", but it's not there in the edit box) :

Quote:

I’m currently planning a road trip through the eastern provinces of the Netherlands for later this year. I really want to experience some unique local culture and hidden gems away from the usual Amsterdam tourist track. I’m a big fan of flea markets and vintage hunting, and I recently came across the website for a massive indoor market in the region: https://zwartemarktslagharen.nl/ It looks huge and seems like a fascinating glimpse into local life, but I haven't found much mention of it in standard travel guides. Has anyone here ever visited this specific market while traveling through the area? Is it worth a detour for someone who loves thrifting and antiquing? Also, if you have any recommendations for other small towns, historic stops, or scenic spots to check out nearby in the Overijssel region, I would love to hear them!

I also can't match the address to a building that would hold a "sprawling indoor market". The closest I get in Maps is a town over from the given town, on a little street with small buildings and a church.

[Maya Coleman]

Ok, so it IS Spam! Then, I will be removing the post and locking the thread. I'm glad I asked, and I appreciate you all for helping me out on this one! Most times, they're super easy to tell, but I do feel validated that I wasn't the only one on the fence. Thank you all for trying to help in good faith anyway! I really do adore this community ^_^