Hello folks. So the last campaign I ran, the most horrible experiences we had were times when the players decided to shop, with one or two people who cared enough with their noses in books, and nothing happening for most of the session. As I was gearing up to run my current campaign, I started listening to The Adventure Zone (which is *amazing*, by the way. Listen to it). In it, their GM presents shopping to them in a constricted fashion. They go to the store and they simply have a stock of items available that the PCs find interesting.

I loved this idea, and just finished implementing it to great success. Here's the way I've approached it so far:

• I gave them options that would potentially cost them ~2x the amount of credits they had, so they couldn't just buy everything
• I took notes during session 0 on the types of things they wanted to be able to do, and gave them items that furthered those goals
• I peppered a couple of odd-ball items in that could potentially be useful in their next adventure arc, for a bit of foreshadowing if they choose to overthink it
• If they ever decide they want something specific, I'll fall back on the normal shopping rules with additions: Negotiation checks get boost, but they get two setback to finding 'exactly what they want', meaning on failure I...get creative . I want to incentivize them to shop in what is essentially the GM Store, to keep us from devolving into book-land for two hours.

So far, it is working very well for me. Has anyone else tried something similar? Any ways in which I could use this more effectively, or any drawbacks I might not be thinking of?

I do something similar in my own game as well. Additionally, given the party is part of a faction, I give them OOC votes on usually three options where their faction goes in the next venture (or they toss me an idea and I just do that if it makes ingame sense), which can free up additional rewards, options or, if things go wrong, gain them...complications. The reason I'm mentioning this is because I then do almost exactly what OP does, with their antics affecting who's willing to supply them (and with what...).

I never let them shop in-game. The easiest way to do this is to never have downtime in the story while you're having a session. If the clock is always ticking, they won't have time to think about it. Save the shopping for between session emails.

That said, sometimes getting an item is an adventure in itself...

I don't do Amazon-Star Wars. There is no just roll skill check and spend money option. I give them opportunities to develop contacts in game that can potentially sell them stuff, but they have to make the effort to make the contact. There is no 'Doug's used blaster store'. The contacts are generally part of various episodic story threads I dangle for them to become involved in, but they have to grab hold of the thread and put forth the RP effort.

I like the Players to let me know what they are aspiring to, particular items that they really want. If they want gear then they can look through the books between sessions then let me know what they are after. During the session ill find places to reward their efforts with either the person to negotiate with for a piece of gear, or as a find on a suitably nasty NPC they have had to deal with.

We had these, these became affectionally known as "Shopping sessions" our gm would just sigh, go with it and pretty much write off the session and do what was planned the following week. We didn't get any xp for the game session as we hadn't progressed the story.

Everyone was ok with this.