RealAlHazred
Frumious Flumph (Your Grace/Your Eminence)
Just updated a bunch of merchandise from Merty's Magical Shoppe, from “Merty’s Manual of Magical Merchandise,” Dragon #168 (April 1991), by Robin C. Ashmore & Michele Batter. I'm torn by this article. On the one hand, it would be great to get a bunch of low-level, useful items for a magic shop in campaigns that have them; I'm talking about non-combat flavor items. The kind of thing you, in Real Life, would actually use if you had it. Sets of dishes that clean themselves on command. Shows that tie themselves. That sort of thing.
There were a few such articles in Dragon in its run, but not many. And the items in this one are joke items: a mattress that makes you magically sleep when you lie on it. A mug with four different, random joke effects. And the prices in the article are part of the joke: 2,000 gp for earmuffs. 3,500 gp for the aforesaid mattress. When the items were all reprinted in the Encyclopedia Magica Volume 2, the prices and jokey nature remained; the only thing they changed was one of the item names: “Merty’s Mmm-mmm Muskmelons” became “Merty’s Mythic Muskmelons,” for some weird reason.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'll convert any of the others. I'm converting stuff that has even a modicum of utility -- the candle of convocation could conceivably be useful if the DM wants to include a subplot in one of those magical universities that popped up after Harry Potter. The rest of the items in this article seem like total duds.
There were a few such articles in Dragon in its run, but not many. And the items in this one are joke items: a mattress that makes you magically sleep when you lie on it. A mug with four different, random joke effects. And the prices in the article are part of the joke: 2,000 gp for earmuffs. 3,500 gp for the aforesaid mattress. When the items were all reprinted in the Encyclopedia Magica Volume 2, the prices and jokey nature remained; the only thing they changed was one of the item names: “Merty’s Mmm-mmm Muskmelons” became “Merty’s Mythic Muskmelons,” for some weird reason.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'll convert any of the others. I'm converting stuff that has even a modicum of utility -- the candle of convocation could conceivably be useful if the DM wants to include a subplot in one of those magical universities that popped up after Harry Potter. The rest of the items in this article seem like total duds.
