| d100 roll | Merchant's stock in trade |
|---|---|
| 01-02 | Armour |
| 03-06 | Costumery (clothes) |
| 07-12 | Cloth |
| 13-14 | Candles and lamps |
| 15-17 | Cutlery |
| 18 | Curios |
| 19-20 | Cordage |
| 21 | Charms and amulets |
| 22 | Furniture |
| 23-26 | Furs |
| 27-32 | Fish |
| 33-35 | Glassware and crockery |
| 36 | Grain |
| 37-39 | Hosiery |
| 40-43 | Horses |
| 44-49 | Horse furniture |
| 50-53 | Jewellery |
| 54-60 | Livestock (other than horses) |
| 61-64 | Leather and leather goods (other than shoes) |
| 65 | Medicines and patent remedies |
| 66-70 | Meat |
| 71-73 | Pastries, cakes and sweetmeats |
| 74-75 | Parchment and paper |
| 76 | Perfumes and cosmetics |
| 77-80 | Shoes and boots |
| 81-82 | Spices |
| 83 | Sculpture and other fancy and artistic hoo-ha |
| 84-86 | Silver and goldware |
| 87 | Trained animals |
| 88-98 | Vegetables and fruit |
| 99-00 | Weaponry |
If you have an NPC merchant, and one of the players demands to know what they're selling but your brain refuses to cooperate with an on-the-spot answer, you can use this simple chart to find out. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it covers a lot of the bases.
It's also useful for determining the cargo of a ship or caravan without requiring any of that difficult and distasteful thinking.
Naturally, as with any random determination system, it's possible (even likely) that you might end up with some very strange combinations. You can either ignore such results and try again, or you can run with them and let your players puzzle out why on earth the guy they just met would be selling furniture and fish from the same market stall.