Nowadays I don’t often get the chance to be a player in someone’s tabletop role-playing adventure. I’m either running one for other people or playing GMless, generally solo. But recently my old friend Jim Brooks ran a D6xD6 Dungeons adventure, letting me play my young necromancer, The Vyggian Laurette, and it got me to thinking about different approaches to magic in role-playing games.
Given a choice, in fantasy settings I nearly always play a magic user. (My second choice is thief, third an unimaginative fighter. The only time I’ve chosen a priest is in Feast of Legends—because priest is its only vegetarian option—and once when play-testing the priest character type for the D6xD6 Dungeons RPG. Okay, I’ve never actually played the Feast of Legends RPG, but then again, who has?)
From my experience, I’d say there are basically three approaches to magic in role-playing games:
- The first approach is old-school memorization, as in the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or Dungeon Crawl Classics. It’s a magical concept originally borrowed from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels, in which spells are mentally toxic rituals impressed upon the mage’s brain. It was that sort of magic I was originally introduced to in 1980 with AD&D. And I loved coming up with ways to use those spells beyond their intent. Whereas other players generally chose Fireball or Magic Missile for their first level character’s one spell, I chose Enlarge/Reduce and used it even to open doors—expanding them until they broke their frames, or shrinking them off their hinges.
- The second approach is formulaic, as in the “L’Académie des Arcane” setting chapter for the D6xD6 RPG: imagine a desired effect; follow the equation for your chosen “school” of magic; calculate the difficulty; cast the spell (if you’re skillful enough, or reduce some features of it until it’s within your range).
- The third approach is more spontaneous, as in most of the RPG’s I design nowadays.
- In the Bookmark
HP RPG and d4ce rpg: imagine a desired effect; decide its difficulty on a scale of 1-10 (or d4 to d20 in d4dce); roll your dice to succeed or fail; describe the result.
- The D6xD6 “Chambers and Chimaeras*” setting and D6xD6 Dungeons RPG accomplish that spontaneity only slightly differently: Choose a purpose; roll your dice; note the scale of your success; describe the effect.
That “Chambers and Chimaeras*” setting has only two types of magic, Binding and Loosening, as befitting what used to be called Saturday morning cartoons. Want to cast a lightning bolt? That’s a Loosening spell, as in loosing energy from the environment. Want to shield yourself from an attack? That’s a Binding spell, as in binding the air around you into a protective shield, or maybe raising a wall of earth, or even binding the attack itself, if you can describe that.
The D6xD6 Dungeons RPG expands that concept into six dice-rolling “intents”: assist, attack, dispel, hinder, protect, and traverse; and nine descriptive “schools”: alchemy, battle magic, bindings, conjuring, elementalism, illusions, nature magic, necromancy, and sorcery.
If you’ll forgive my saying so, I love playing that magic system. Let me give an example of actual spellcasting in that Jim Brooks adventure. Our group had just finished a battle with skeletons in a burial chamber. There were bones scattered all over the floor. Our dwarven fighter opened the next door, and we found ourselves facing the pirate captain who originally hired us to find the tiny casket we were now carrying. Before the captain could say a word, the dwarf rushed him, axe raised. The captain and his crew responded in kind.
Laurette decided she had better protect the dwarf, so I told Jim as much. A roll of d6xd6 resulted in two Successes, so two points of protection. Now to describe it: “A whirlwind of bones arises around my friend, deflecting the captain’s attack!” I could have as easily said, “Bones rise from the ground to form a suit of armor on my friend.”
But let’s say Laurette were a conjurer. My description might have been her summoning a shield from thin air. A fire elementalist might have raised a shield of flame. A sorcerer would more likely have chosen “hinder” as an intent, mentally interfering with the captain’s attack. Other sorts of mages would come up with their own types of spells, to accomplish some similar defense.
As the fight went on, Laurette maintained that defensive spell, while managing to raise another skeleton to carry the chest toward the exit. (The distraction of spell maintenance imposes a penalty on other actions, by the way.) But unable to get past the melee, which was going against her companions, she canceled her spells, dropping the chest, and retreated. Earlier we had passed a door behind which a lich was trapped. Laurette negotiated a deal in which if she released him, he would leave her be and focus on the pirates. One dispel spell later, she was on her way elsewhere.
Sadly, now the casket she had hoped to take to the Black House of necromancers in Mautram, City of Splendor, is now guarded by a lich and undoubtedly a band of undead pirates.
Okay, call me biased, but the truth is that I always design games I want to play. I love Laurette, young necromancer and devotee of Viggya the Damned, god of the Underworld in the Bauner Coast campaign setting. I’m quite happy with D6xD6 Dungeons, and the narrative nature of its magic system.
In “Codyfing Lovecraft,” a December 1, 2025 project update for the Chilren of the Elder Sign Kickstarter, I describe what I aim for in role-playing game design as “something like a living human being: flesh and bone. Take away the flesh, and all that’s left is a lifeless skeleton. Take away the bone, and all that’s left is a hideous heap of flesh. Game mechanics are the bone structure beneath the meat of a game. That structure needs to be solid, dependable—and unobtrusive. The game can then be fleshed out to portray its genre and mystique.”
I believe the D6xD6 RPG system has good bones, solid but unobtrusive, upon which the role-play and storytelling of spontaneous magic is easily fleshed out. There’s nothing wrong with old-school spell lists; I’ve certainly enjoyed them in the past. (And I find the Dungeon Crawl Classics spellbook fascinating!) But they aren’t really in keeping with most fantasy fiction.
And honestly, at this point in my life, I’d rather be role-playing than memorizing tomes of rules.
*Yes, I know, it’s mispronounced. :-)
