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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 8578105" data-attributes="member: 8863">Ah yes, the Encyclopedia Magica.  I remember when I first saw this thing.  I was still pretty new to D&D at the time mostly using a mashup of the Black Box and the 2e PHB when I visited the bookstore at a local mall and saw a brand new copy of the first volume on the shelf.  The brown leatherette cover with the TSR logo embossed on the front, just an "Encyclopedia Magica" in gold ink on the spine, and the ribbon bookmark sewn into the spine caught my attention.  It made the book seem special in a way that no other game book ever has.  As I flipped through it and looked at all the stuff that was in there, it was kind of an eye opener to see just how many items there were for the game, and just what sort of things were potentially possible.A few months later once I started building my game library, the third volume was one of my first purchases not long after the DMG and MM, and I got the first two volumes (yes, I have the dawizard printing) as soon as I could too. That issue of Dragon was the first I ever bough and it was for the EM's tables. I eagerly awaited the release of the final volume at the end of 1995. They're still one of the most valued parts of my library.Sure, it only goes up to the end of 1993, and thus is missing more than half of what 2e would eventually offer, but that is a very minor quibble.  More importantly, it's a look into the first 20 years of the game with all its rich history and just about all the stuff that existed in the original game, 1e, and the classic D&D game.  They even slipped in stuff designed for a cancelled Spelljammer product, Infinity Spheres. There's a few notable sources in the volume beyond of course really fundamental stuff like Greyhawk, Eldritch Wizardry, the DMG, and the various D&D sets.  One is the Book of Marvelous Magic, a D&D supplement from 1985 by Frank Mentzer that had a big collection of items from A-Z.  Those items are everywhere through the encyclopedia, and there's all sorts of interesting stuff to find.  Another interesting source is War Captain's Companion, a Spelljammer supplement which I think was all about designing spelljamming ships and combat between them, but a lot of those items would work well for normal seafaring vessels.  And there's numerous tables and entries for customizing more unique items.  Every weapon has a random table at the beginning of its section which lets the DM randomly pick a weapon type, so swords go anything from short swords to longswords, two-handed swords, scimitars, sabers, rapiers, katanas, and even more exotic stuff.  There's a table of special abilities at the beginning of the first volume, and many standard categories has a table of quirks that can be added to an item.  Overall, the final volume claims that with all the variable material, there's potentially over four billion items to be had in the work.  Not bad, I'd say.</blockquote>

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