Fantasy

Fantasy Magic: Artistry or Academia

Lester

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. :-)

Cool Name RPG – big, free, Creative Commons

Lester
A free, community owned RPG

In January of 2023, when WotC/Hasbro floated the idea of revising their original open game license for D&D to something more restrictive, backlash from the tabletop role-playing community was immediate and severe. WotC/Hasbro quickly backtracked, but by then several other prominent companies had released their own OGLs. The D&D RPG is still dominant, of course, to say the least, but those other OGLs have seen a lot of traffic, too.

That same month, as part of the D&D OGL reaction, Mechanical Muse launched a Kickstarter to fund a truly community owned RPG system. Temporarily called the Cool Name RPG, it officially became titled the Open Adventure system, and you can get an entirely free Open Adventure PDF on DriveThruRPG, to use for play or publishing as you wish. There are also about four dozen professional pieces of art on that site, released into the public domain. Just do a search for “Open Adventure” on the DriveThruRPG website.

Role-Playing The King of Elfland’s Daughter

Lester

Way back in April, I started reading Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, due to its reputation as a fantasy classic before there were fantasy classics. (The Hobbit wasn’t published until 13 years later; Lord of the Rings fully 30 years later.) Having read less than half of it, I was already in love and knew I’d want to role-play in this world myself.

As a backer of Peter Rudin-Burgess’ Patreon, I asked if he’d do a Cut Up Solo treatment, and he asked if I’d publish it. The novel isn’t yet public domain in the UK and EU, and he’s a Brit, so he couldn’t publish it himself under his Parts Per Million imprint.

So since April, I’ve working toward publishing that with a treatment in three of my four RPGs (the other, D13 RPG, is horror), intent upon releasing all 4 The King of Elfland’s Daughter products at once. What with me being a one-man band (other than for my old friend and Dragon® Magazine editor Dale Donovan‘s editing), my meticulosity, and time spent play-testing each, it has taken awhile.

But last night they all went live on DriveThruRPG (available separately or bundled):

Bundle link here, or click the image to the left.

Part of what has made this such an effort is that there’s almost no combat in the novel. Fantasy role-playing habitually depends upon a climactic battle scene. Heck, the “role-play” classification in computer games is pretty much straight-up “murder hobo” adventure. But if players were to come to The King of Elfland’s Daughter with that approach, they’d be sorely disappointed. The Cut Up Solo oracle, in particular, drawing “snippets” directly from the novel, couldn’t provide much in the way of armed conflict.

Happily, in the Tuesday and Thursday night group’s I game with, play-testing these various rules sets GM-less with the Cut Up Solo oracle has been magical!

The novel itself is free on gutenberg.org (click the link or image at the start of this post). Definitely worth reading.

Frankie & Pudge Meet Apep

Lester

Back in February of this year (2025), I mentioned here, in “Fey and Fedoras, Nixies and Noir,” that my old college buddy Tim Ryan and I were using the Fairyland Confidential solo mystery game by Teapot Dome as a GM-less framework for play-testing the d4ce rpg. 

Before I go any further, let me repeat that the biggest crime here is that Fairyland Confidential has gotten so little love on DriveThruRPG. I’m asking you to go fix that right now. It’s PWYW (pay what you want), so please, go now to get a copy, play it, and give it 5-stars. If you can’t yet play it, trust me and give it 5 stars anyway. (drivethrurpg.com/en/product/286295/fairyland-confidential)

Though I bought the game, I’m prevented from rating and reviewing other publishers’ products on that site, so I’m relying on you. (And maybe message Teapot Dome Games that I recommended their product.)

Over the course of the past six months of Mondays, Tim and I had worked through a half-dozen permutations of Fairyland Confidential’s fantasy/noir crossover mysteries, and were preparing to return to our old Bookmark Cyberpunk campaign. But the urge to continue role-playing with Tim’s Frankie Blair (bar owner) and my Pudge Mallone (bouncer) was too strong. So we decided to continue their adventures, replacing Fairyland Confidential with the GM-less oracle Cut Up Solo: Carnacki the Ghost-Finder (a randomizer of text snippets from the public domain Carnacki tales.)

With both of those frameworks, the GameMaster’s Apprentice core deck has been handy for added details such as character motivations, etc.

An aside: Though the oracle products tend to use the terms “Game Master” and “GM,” I prefer the gender-neutral term “game host” as a better descriptor of the job.

Our first CUS Carnacki adventure in the Fairyland Confidential setting begins with this three-snippet prompt: 

disagreeable sort of slithering sound
I slammed the door
run in the complete darkness

We’re starting at Frankie’s bar. Is the joint open? CUS has a Yes/No dice roll option, and my roll says Yes, but I rolled boxcars, suggesting more than a simple affirmative. We decided it meant still open but Last Call. So while Frankie is putting away bottles, Pudge is telling patrons at the tables to drink up and go home. 

Who are those patrons? I roll a couple of dice for how many. It says “5.” Tim’s GMA draws give a few details, and we decide there’s:

  • Millie, a former mine manager whom we cleared of murdering her boss, in an earlier adventure, now drunk as usual; 
  • three nameless gangsters; and 
  • a fairy named Snare, who’s taking payment for a delivery of Oberian Brandy from Minnie Hargrave (a smuggler we helped out in another previous adventure). 

Pudge sends one of the gangsters to the bar to settle up their tab.  

Tim’s imagination turns that CUS prompt into … A woman comes slithering out of the bathroom on her belly like a snake, leading a wave of darkness. 

Pudge rushes to slam the door before the darkness floods the room. (Which action nicely fits line 2 of the prompt, right?) Typically I’d call for an Athletics skill roll, but Pudge is an ex-boxer, and Tim agrees that Martial Arts qualifies here. We decide the difficulty is Formidable (d8s). Success!

Did that contain the darkness? Yes/No dice say No. Tim decides this means inky blackness begins erupting out of the snake lady herself, and we’re all in the dark. 

Time to flee the bar with some Difficult (d4s) Perception skill rolls (in d4ce, the smaller the die, the better): 

  • It seems Millie is too drunk to even notice what’s happening;
  • The gangsters stumble around but can’t find the door, so they pull knives (only a fool uses a pistol in the dark); 
  • Snare, despite whatever magical attunement, also fails;
  • Pudge fails to find his way back to protect Frankie; 
  • Frankie also fails, but with a 1—d4ce treats that as an experience point—so we figure Frankie at least realizes where everybody else is, especially the snake lady.

We figure it’s time for a new CUS prompt: 

The great tread came
about seven feet high and
a half passed, quietly

O-o-ka-a-y then. That sounds ominous.

Let’s have some Perception rolls, d4s again, to track that huge thing treading quietly through the darkness.

  • Millie fails, but a roll of 1 suggests that she now knows something—so we hear her scream; 
  • The gangster at the bar knows its location, by sound; 
  • The other gangsters are clueless;
  • Snare has the same results as Millie, and cries out;
  • Pudge still can’t even find the bar where Frankie stands; 
  • Frankie rolls several successes, and knows exactly where the seven (“and a half”) feet tall thing is. 

We let Frankie make a roll for his Fairyland Lore to identify it. (There’s no Fairyland Lore skill in the d4ce core rules, but we’ve been to the fairy world on cases more than once over the past six months, so he invented the skill for his character awhile back. I call Pudge’s version “Streetwisery, Fae,” for similar knowledge, but with a twist.) 

Frankie’s success means he dimly perceives the figure of Apep, shedding the skin of the snake lady like an ecdysis in rags and earrings. He’s holding Snare by the neck in his right hand and Minnie by the arm in his left. Apep’s focus is on Snare. 

An aside: How did we decide on Apep, I hear you wondering. Well, given (a.) Tim’s snake lady idea; (b.) the darkness; and then (c.) the “great tread, quietly” of something seven (and a half) feet tall, to my mind an avatar of that Egyptian god seemed to suit.

Having heard Minnie’s scream, Pudge heads toward it, blindly through the darkness. He’s stepping in a boxer’s pose, left fist up for contact, right drawn back for a haymaker. Pudge bumps into Apep and swings (Herculean, d10s) and fails, swiping through empty air.

Frankie is desperately wracking his brain for what to do. Tim asks me, “Remember that case we solved a couple of months ago about the evil Faerie Queen Abraxis, where someone anonymously left her crown here for safekeeping? Did we ever give that back?” I didn’t think so, but we let the dice decide. Sure enough, it’s still here! 

Seems like a good time for another oracle prompt: 

he would gladly have
forward I flashed the light
(natural enough in his

Frankie opens the safe under the bar by touch (a roll of d6s), pulls out the crown, stands up, and puts it on his head. The room lights up, and Apep immediately focuses on Frankie (though he’s still holding Snare and Millie). Tim says, “Shit!” 

An Aside: Over the course of our years of GM-less play, we’ve developed a style in which, when one of our two heroes is in the limelight, the other steps into the role of whatever other characters they’re facing. So that was my decision for Apep.

A light like the sun (because Ra, Apep’s enemy, right?) flashes from the crown, and Frankie focuses it on Apep. Pudge takes a mere mortal’s swing at this avatar of a god (we decide on Legendary difficulty, d12s) and connects! Apep disappears.

Pudge grabs Snare and Millie as they fall. He turns to Snare, the elf’s shirtfront in his fist, and snarls, “You brought that thing in here! It came for you!” 

Tim says Millie cries out, “Pudge, you’re hurting me!” because I forgot to have Pudge let go. Also, I suspect, because Tim figured it was a dramatically appropriate detail, taking Pudge’s tension down a notch. (As I said, we sort of take turns with these sorts of game host decisions.) Pudge lets go, sheepishly apologizing, though he retains his grip on Snare.

Snare turns to glance at the crown but Pudge jerks him back, waving at Frankie to put the thing away. Then he drags Snare over to the bar and plunks him down on a barstool. 

Frankie says “Fess up or we take you to Minnie to sort it out.” Given that this is the first time Snare has appeared in one of our adventures, and that we’ve developed a close relationship with the smuggler Minnie Hargrave, he’s clearly newly in her employ. 

Time for another oracle. This time we took a whole five-line set, instead of just the three most suggestive ones: 

torn from my grasp with
lanterns; also some whisky
grapple. The wire was
his big chair—began
we had not heard those

Tim and I decide, after some discussion, that what best makes sense from Apep’s appearance and now “lanterns; also some whisky” is that Snare was in on some tomb robbing (lanterns to light the way, “whisky” to bribe the guards). At Minnie’s direction, no doubt, because it’s just the sort of job she’d take on for some rich gangster wanting a roomful of trophies. “His big chair” suggests an actual throne. 

Tim’s GMA deck says that Snare’s vice is “Dissembling,” so there ends up being some role-play and dice rolling for Pudge to shake the truth out of him. But it also says that the elf’s virtue is “Loyal,” so once we convince him that Apep is probably on his way to Minnie’s joint now, while she’s asleep, he says, “What are we waiting for? She’s in danger! Let’s go!”

We leave the fright-sobered Millie to keep an eye on things while we head out. 

And thus endeth the session. More to come.