There’s a contest on DndBeyond promoting the new Stranger Things box set, “What’s in the Bag of Holding? A Welcome to the Hellfire Club Homebrew Item Contest.” The gist is, make a thematic magic item with a description of 50 words or less, and publish it to DnDBeyond with the tag ‘BagOfHolding2025.”

I took a little time yesterday morning to make one after I walked our dog, and I present to you… the Wizard Carriage!

Wizard Carriage (as submitted)

Wondrous Item, rare

This miniature carriage has a truly awesome painting of a wizard on one side and enlarges to full size. A creature who spends 10 minutes inside emerges in a smoky cloud and gains the benefits of a Short Rest, although they have Disadvantage on Intelligence checks for the next hour.

50 words is a pretty punishing limit. My original text was around 80. Part of that was the 2024 “As a Magic action…” syntax, which does eat up some word count when making magic items or writing an adventure. The original text was something like this:

“This miniature carriage has a truly awesome painting of a wizard on one side. As a Magic action, you can speak the command word to make the carriage enlarge to full size. Up to 6 Medium creatures can fit inside, but it’s a bit crowded. A creature who spends 10 minutes inside emerges in a cloud of smoke and gains the benefits of a Short Rest, although they have Disadvantage on Intelligence checks for the next hour.”

The language isn’t super tight, but it isn’t supposed to be. Read it in Argyle’s stoner drawl for the full effect. It could have also read, “although they are hungry and have Disadvantage on Intelligence checks for the next hour.”

Goodman Games has run DCC games out of a van on the floor of the Lucas Oil Stadium at GenCon the last few years. I haven’t played in one, but the van is always fun to see.