I don't really know the best way to contextualize this but my next campaign is gonna get real weird here pretty soon.
There's gunna be a lot of tangential dimension/ timeline hopping in fiction with the occasional glimpse @ our real world.
This draws some small amount of inspiration from Stardust in which Captain Shakespeare occasionally visited our world & is kind of aware of our pop culture. There's probably also a parallel in the Adventure Zone balance arc where one of the NPCs has a mirror that can see into our world & has used that to invent seemingly modern things but it's been a long time since I have given that a listen.
Where I'm looking for aid from this humble hivemind is in stocking a convenience store outside of time & space with items that deal with the meta in some way.
There will be big ticket stuff that're way out of the players' price range like a lightsaber or a functional time-travelling delorean but I don't have a huge list of things that could be within the players reach.
A couple I've cooked up so far are Crit++ tokens (that two of the players will have @ the start although they don't know their origin that were awarded for exceptional backstory stuff that tied perfectly into the world I'm trying to build) that allow a player to replace a 1 or 11 on a single d20 roll instead with a 22 & will allow them huge agency on how that action plays out in the world. Or perhaps a potion that allows them to heal to full, or possibly just a gaggle of temporary hit points, that'd be contingent on chugging one of those little bottles of fireball whiskey (we're all 21+ & often have drinks @ the table). & I think I stole this again from TaZ but a quill & ink that would enable a player to change one letter of a spell's name before casting it, thereby changing it's effect (Wall of Fire could become Walk of Fire for example & I'd more or less let the player decide how that plays out).
I need more things in that vein but it's especially hard for me to work something like this out as it's such a different line of thinking than the usual GMimg stuff.
I love to read any & all suggestions you might have.
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The costs of these items will be abstracted as well because what use does a meta-being have for a number scrawled in pencil next to 'gold pieces' on your character sheet.
I'm not having quite as hard a time thinking of these but if you have suggestions that'd be lovely too. My favorites so far are 'the sound of your voice' in which the player will be forced to adopt the ridiculous/flamboyant character voice I have for this NPC for a period of time, & 'the color of your hair' where I'd make the player wear a silly wig for a session or two.
I told y'all it's gunna get silly/weird up in here but I'm really hoping it'll be a lot of fun & a break from the years & years of boilerplate adventures they're used to.
i'd had funky items in my game, maybe some of them might work for you.
A working LOAD-stone (the cursed loadstone is a bugged one that keep looping hance the movement 'LAG') that allow the user a one time use of Akashic form (basically making a 'save file of his character ;).
- this should be one of the higher priced items you want your players to drool over but not have too early in the game. (you might also allow the players to 'fix' a cursed loadstone and get a 1 use working one out of it)
you can couple it with a 'scroll of editing' which when used on a loadstone that has a save set would allow to edit some of the info in it. the information saved appear in the scroll which then can be changed somewhat. (change your size to large maybe? or other stuff?). again only for high end(game) costumers.
you mentioned timeline hopping so you might want to add a:
'Timekeeper' - a magical notebook that need to be attuned to a person before he hop the timelines. it will then keep track of any alteration made to himself in the timeline and notify him of them. (helps to avoid killing your own father when going back in time. or at least pointing it out so some1 else can go back and stop you from making yourself unborn).
an add-on item to this is a "Note to Self". a magical note one can write which is then magickly delivered anywhere and anytime but only to himself. (this is mostly for you to use as plot-hook or deus ex machina to save the players or help them. they can pay for and buy the item after they learn they needed it. "Note to Self: don't trust the talking mushroom!")
btw one of the Delux top priced items you can offer is a "Temporal Guidance System" which, as advertised, help guide some1 who timehop in achieving the time change he is after. (think all them foresight movie scenes where they get instructions like 'go here. buy balloons. drop coins etc' and somehow everything they do help achieve what they were trying to do).
for metagaming items you might also want to take a look at the items Paizo published here.
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Look at my "High tech items" topic. There is a lightsaber that needs occasional recharging. The time travel stopwatch is found in pieces that have to be assembled. The box full of gears might sell for a dollar and they would think they ripped YOU off.
Objects in your solar system has a planet, dirt, that is suffering from an old one infestation that would be fun to have as your "real" world.
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this remind me of a time i had my players find ancient "notes" with pictures and writing on.
it took them a while to figure out that they were money bills.
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Looking at this topic a second time, I got to thinking about what this market itself would be like, rather than its wares. I loved Mike Mignola's comic book adaptation of Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories, and a really cool one of those was "The Bazaar of the Bizarre." The gist of it was that nothing about the bazaar--the venue, the wares, or the merchant--were what they appeared to be... and everything being sold was a lure to draw the unwary customer further into danger.
In that short story's case, the premise was rather literal: get the customer in, have him enticed by the wares, and kill him--in one visit. It could just as easily have been a prolonged gambit, though, wherein adventurers are lured into a web of schemes by the promise of magic items and other rare goods at a cut-rate price (in exchange for their services, of course).
Look at my "High tech items" topic.
Oh how I wish you'd linked it. Instead I opened your profile & saw the treasure trove of threads you've made. Now I've got a dozen tabs open that I'm going to have to mine for gold. Thanks a lot jerk.
(Seriously, thanks a lot. I haven't frequented this forum in a very long time & it seems your contributions are vast & glorious.)