Bespoke Magic Shoppe

I recently finished GMing a home-brew fantasy role-playing adventure (which goes a long way to explaining where his time to write has disappeared to). I just finished running the party through the Temple of the Forgotten God adventure we published through Tangent Games for the 3.5 edition of D&D. (You can get your own copy of it at DriveThruRPG!)

By the end of the adventure, the party had all leveled up to 8th level. (This home-brew setting has a different power dynamic, so 8th level there is like 12th to 14th level in D&D.) I knew that I wanted the next campaign to be EPIC! (All caps and exclamation mark included.) So, while the characters had some downtime to train and learn new skills and spells, I wanted them to have an opportunity to acquire useful magic items. I could have just inserted any old generic magic shop in order to allow the players to get something “off the rack”, but this was a great

opportunity to do something unique and fun for the players (and especially for me). The Bespoke Magic Shoppe! (You know it’s cooler because of the extra “-pe” on “shop”.)

I started with a non-player character named Timon Procure. Yes, he specifically looks like Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka character. Timon is an enigmatic person who can acquire unique and special magic items, practically at the drop of a hat. He is also rather flamboyant in his presentation, but we’ll get to that.

Timon’s shoppe is a simple affair. It has a display window which always displays 3 items in it, and it is always a different 3 items to whoever is entering the shoppe. Plus, the shoppe can only able to be located after Timon invites the character to visit him. Without the invitation, they wouldn’t be able to find the place. This makes it very exclusive, and makes the characters feel special. The only indication that this is the correct shoppe is a gold letter “P”, which is painted on the frosted glass of the door.

Inside, the characters encounter unique scents as they enter. Everything from the smell of wet earth and grass, to spices, or baked goods, or the strange aromas of things that you might not associate any smell to, such as the life-giving breath of trees or crisp autumn leaves falling to the ground. Everything is designed to provide comfort for the character. (One of the PCs has a vow to not use any metal, so when he entered Timon’s shoppe, there was no metal anywhere in the shoppe.)

Timon greets every character personally, and he ushers them into a small waiting area with a three-panel mirror and an expensive, cushioned chair. Food and drink are offered by a servant as Timon goes to retrieve the magic item to show to the character. The food and drink is also tailored to the character’s interests or desires, and is always different for each character. (Characters always entered the shoppe alone. That was done by design in order to heighten the sense of inclusivity to a special and unique place, and it simplified the role-playing aspect.)

After a short wait, Timon would return with the magic item. If it was large, like armor, it was displayed on a mannequin that was covered by a silk cloth. Other items were placed inside a separate container. Timon would give a brief description of the item’s provenance or the effort that it took to acquire, without revealing any specific details. Timon highlighted the characters’ skill and prowess, and praised their efforts to deal with recent events and heroics. He would then reveal the item. For armor, it was as simple as removing the cloth from the mannequin, but for items in boxes, it was more unique. The boxes always had no outward way to open the box, and Timon would invariably need to play a musical tune, or manipulate hidden catches, latches, and slides, or tap out a combination in order to open the box. Again, the idea was to create a sense of wonder and uniqueness to the scene for the player and character.

Timon would then show the item with a flourish. In each case, this was something that I had created specifically for the character. No off the rack +2 longsword or wand of fireballs was going to cut it. These would be something special to the character. They were also intended to be irresistible to the character (and the player). Timon would name a price for the item, which would be very high, but explain that he would discount the cost because of the character’s reputation. Timon then explained that the character had excellent credit with him, and could put a down payment of any amount for the item. If they did that, they were given a small pouch that would teleport any coin placed inside it directly to Timon until the amount owed was paid off. A magical pay-as-you-go plan.

And that’s it. A few of the players were suspicious, and I could have put more nefarious plans in motion with Timon Procure and his Bespoke Magic Shoppe, but that was never my intention. I wanted to create a unique role-playing experience for the players that would reward them (and their characters) at the beginning of the EPIC! adventure to come. The beauty of the Bespoke Magic Shoppe is that the limitation is only in your creativity, which is sort of the point of playing a role-playing game.