Shamud’s Apothecary by Joseph Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing for use with OSRIC. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
The supplement is available as a 15 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three the front matter and three the Open Game License.
The opening paragraphs talk about apothecaries and their place in society as well as some general descriptions on this particular one.
For the Game Master gives a few more brief details and explain the shop would be found in larger towns and cities.
Shamud and His Family has stats and descriptions of the owner and his family.
The Apothecary Building and Street explains this would be found in the seedier part of town as those with real money would use clerics.
Encounters in the Apothecary has the chance of encountering a customer.
Key to the Apothecary covers the locations.
What’s for Sale? has descriptions and prices of tonics, herbs and spices that can be bought. There’s also a chance items useful as spell components will be sold.
The Various Remedies has the chances any will work and what effect they may have.
Patrons of the Apothecary has a d20 list of NPCs with stats and sometimes descriptions of why they are there.
The final page of content has a map of the shop.
Shamud’s Apothecary in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of errors. Bar the map and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This is a useful description of a small shop that can be used to flesh out a city. The main problem with it as written is it won’t be useful to players for long; they will rapidly have access to much better healing magic than the shop’s remedies, which does lead to questions about why they might visit otherwise. Some adventure hooks would have been useful for this; perhaps Shamud is being pressured to join an apothecaries’ guid for instance. Shamud’s Apothecary can be found by clicking here.
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