Mage World

MageWorld is a small roleplaying game about wizards who explore dangerous locations to learn new spells. They peruse forbidden tomes, translate ancient scrolls, and interrogate locals dead and alive. They search for secrets to grow in power.

By Piotr Monwid-Olechnowicz
Edited by Zack Thomson, Radek MG
Illustrated by Roksolana Sainchuk

Version 0.2 — Playtest — September 2024

Attributions

The game aims to give the player what's best in Vancian magic while facilitating a fast and smooth gameplay. Depending on your style and favored culture of play, MageWorld can be a game for old-school power fantasies from mortal to a god, but also for a narrative tales of ambition, collaborative worldbuilding, and fast-paced emergent storytelling.

It's inspired by The Librarian and Indiana Jones movies, the story of Dragonlance's Raistlin Majere, the magic systems and combat scenes in Brandon Sanderson's and Steven Erikson's novels.

The magic moves are taken almost verbatim from the Magic-User playbook in Freebooters on the Frontier 2e by Jason Lutes, per his approval.

Harm and conditions system is based on Fantasy World by Alessandro Piroddi, Luca Maiorani, MS Edizioni. Here, it's combined with the "ability damage" concept from Freebooters on the Frontier.

Face Fury move is based on Jeremy Strandberg's "Defy Danger, Restated" blog post. His games Homebrew World and Stonetop are some of my favorites, so I expect there's some inspiration from them in here as well.

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What do I need to play?🔗

• One to five friends
• A Custodian Reference Sheet for one of you
• Mage playbooks for the rest
• some 6-sided dice

The Conversation🔗

Roleplaying is a conversation.

Participants go back and forth, narrating their characters’ actions, words, feelings, and the fictional world around them. Sometimes you talk over each other and interrupt one another, other times you pause to make space for others to express their ideas. Throughout it all, everyone listens and adds to the unfolding story.

Rules make it a game. They guide the flow, add structure and consequences to the narrative.

Themes🔗

• Exploration of the the mystic, the forgotten, and the undiscovered
• Power, its price and consequences

Principles🔗

See these as guidelines created to maximize engagement for everyone at the table. Follow them to play in the true spirit of the game.

• Embrace the arcane
• Address the characters, not the players
• Draw maps, leave blanks
• Ask questions and build on the answers
• Name everyone and everything
• Think offscreen too
• Be a fan of the characters
• Think dangerous
• Build up a coherent world as you play
• Begin and end with the fiction

Agenda🔗

• Play to find out Embrace collaborative world-building, ask questions, wonder what happens next. The players own parts of the setting, lore, and NPCs. The Custodian is in charge of the world and running the game, but it's a team effort. Together you'll create something far more interesting than any pre-written scenario you can find.

• Embrace the hard magic Fill the world with eldritch and arcane, but keep it real and reasonable. Soft miracle-y magic would push you into plot holes and steal player agenda. The physics of the world portrayed differ from ours, but they're still consistent.

  • If the fiction does not require consistency in how the magic works, a game in which everyone can cast spells will very quickly devolve into something nonsensical.

• Highlight the cost of power With great power come great consequences. Face dilemmas between power and its toll. The world will react to your ascent.

Covent🔗

You all know each other for a long time, and form a group. Establish its nature before you create characters.

• Arcane Adventurers: roaming around the world, and saving it in the process, like D&D or Indiana Jones
• Big Bads: literally on a quest to become immortal and gather an undead army because your high school crush rejected you
• Studious Scholars: attending or employed at a university of magic
• Incipient Immortals: seeking immortality or ascendance to godhood

Feel free to create your own Covent type.

Creating a Mage🔗

Name🔗

• choose a pseudonym like:

  Haze, Vane, Rook, Clove, Pale, Rake, Goldfinch, Lark, Killdeer, Atrament, Bramble, Sail, Wren, Willow

• or a name that fits the setting like Hakon, Morwen and Siobhan for middle ages; Sabrina, Isabelle and Constantine for urban fantasy
• or roll 2d100 on Wizard Name in Spell Name table

Attributes🔗

Distribute values from -1 to +2 so that their total equals +1.

ignoring order: (+2, 0, -1); (+1, +1, -1); (+1, 0, 0); (+2, +1, -2)

Body: Physical strength and stamina.
Wits: Mental acuity and perception.
Soul: Arcane potency and spiritual force.

Your attributes double as hit points. When depleted, you don't simply fall; you’re overwhelmed. Your body collapses, muscles numb from pain. Your wits scatter, leaving your mind reeling and disoriented. Your power burns out, leaving you drained and hollow.

Harm🔗

When characters get hurt they suffer in-fiction consequences of increasing severity.

• Minor harm (1 Harm) involves discomfort, pain, or situational setbacks.
• Serious harm (2 Harm) includes broken bones, severe confusion, emotional trauma and arcane burnout.
• Critical harm (3 Harm) denotes a condition so extensive or critical that it's life-threatening.

On top of narrative consequences, Harm lowers the current value of one of the attributes.

A character is taken out when one of their attributes gets to -3.

Damage sources like poison, illness or magic can target any attribute.

For example: food poisoning condition would deal 1 Body Harm, drunk would be 1 Wits Harm, but characters struck with the Cangoth's Ray of Apathy would receive 1 Wits, 1 Soul Harm.

Armor🔗

Armor negates Harm, and gets damaged in the process. It's described with 3 attributes, and possibly tags or moves.

example

Lionheart's Plate Armor (2 Body, 2 Wits, cumbersome)

• When you make a stand against superior foe, take +1 Forward.

The stats in parentheses "(2 Body, 2 Wits)" mean it can soak up 2 Body Harm and 2 Wits Harm before it needs to be repaired. The "cumbersome" tag affects fictional positioning — it's inconvenient to sneak or travel in a plate armor

example

Crown of Cherished Necromancy (1 Wits, 1 Soul)

• When you take a life with a necromantic spell, you absorb Life Essence. You can spend 2 Life Essence for 1 Power when you cast a necromantic spell.

Conduit🔗

You were not born to this. You took your power by grit and guile, years of work and blatant theft. You might have some talent, but the magic does not course through your veins. To make your mark on the world you need spells and your Conduit.

The Conduit focuses your power to affect the fabric of reality. If it's taken from you, you will be limited to the simplest of cantrips until you find another one. It can be an ancient spellbook, a magic wand or staff, a skull, or something else the group finds suitable. It is not part of your body, nor is it alive.

Your conduit stores spells even if it doesn't look like a book.

Nexus🔗

You have a common base of operations. It may be a tower, a ship (seaborne or airborne), a magical curios shop in the busiest street of a metropolis.

Name it and choose 3 tags from the list below. Get more tags through fiction.

• Sealed Safe: Your nexus is safe from enemies — they cannot enter. Rival wizards may try to evade the wards but it won't be easy.
• Forge: An arcane forge that can create or enchant weapons and armor.
• Atelier: You have a space for building and repair of machines, gadgets. Trivial devices take no time, for larger ones Undertake a Project.
• Minions: Devoted and expendable followers who inhabit the Nexus, fulfilling essential tasks and missions with unwavering loyalty.

Answer three of the questions, leave the rest for later.

• How did you first discover the Nexus?
• What did you have to do to get it?
• Who owned it before you?
• What room inside still holds secrets?
• Who wants to take it from you?
• What secrets about your group's past does the Nexus hold?
• What allies or contacts can you rely on to help defend or improve the Nexus?

Rolling the Dice🔗

The rules are written down in the form of Moves, each has a trigger and an effect.

When the Mage is doing something that looks like the trigger of move, the effect takes place.

roll+X means roll 2 six-sided dice and add a modifier X.

When a move tells you to take +1 Forward, it means you add +1 to your next (appropriate) roll. +1 Ongoing means you add +1 until it makes sense to stop.

Base Moves🔗

Cast a Spell🔗

When you cast a prepared spell, describe its effect within the scope of its name, distribute Power among the four aspects of the spell, and roll +Unspent Power. On a 10+, the spell works flawlessly. On a 7-9, the spell works, and the Custodian will offer you a choice: e.g. collateral damage, partial success. On a 6-, you forget the spell and suffer an arcane accident.

Unspent Power equals Soul plus Boons, minus the combined Power Cost of your spell. Boons are positive modifiers from spent resources, and environmental circumstances.

The effect column includes both a descriptive tag and suggested numerical modifier or number of dice. For example, a major effect costs 3 power and might be used to create +3 to a roll, deal 4 Harm or create armor negating 4 Harm.

The spell effects are not limited to numbers! Use your imagination and work with the table to determine a spell's effect level. The Custodian has the final say, but the other players can introduce their perspective or bring up a precedent. ("The Wall of Fire last week was moderate. It would makes sense the Ice Wall was the same.")

Prepare Spells🔗

When you spend a few hours studying and organizing components, you forget all prepared spells and prepare a 3+Wits spells.

Inscribe🔗

You start with 2 spells, prepared and inscribed in your Conduit. Roll them up on the Spell Name table.

When you spend a day of downtime copying a new spell from another source, store it in your Conduit.

If the other source is not a scroll or book, but other mage's Conduit, you must first Undertake a Project to decipher it.

Face Fury🔗

When the stakes are dire, danger is imminent, and you act anyway, roll ...+Body to endure, act fast, or employ finesse ...+Wits to apply expertise, diplomacy, enact a clever plan, or rely on your senses ...+Soul to invoke the arcane, unleash mystical forces, resist esoteric energies

On a 10+, you pull it off as well as one could hope. On a 7-9, the Custodian will present a partial success, a tradeoff, or a complication.

Undertake a Project🔗

When you begin a significant endeavor, work out a list of 2-5 requirements. Leave blanks for later if you don't have a clear idea.

Mark requirements when you complete them in fiction. Use Take Time or Face Fury to make progress in downtime.

Take Time🔗

When you spend weeks or months working on a project, travelling or resting, discuss how the world changes. Clear all conditions.

If you're working on an ongoing project, describe your approach, what you hope to achieve, and mark progress.

Help or Hinder🔗

When you assist or interfere with an ongoing action of another Mage, Face Fury. On 7+ you add +1 or -1 (your choice). On 10+, you also avoid the consequences.

Discern Realities🔗

When you closely study a situation or person, roll +Wits.

On 10+, ask the Custodian 3 questions from the list below. On a 7-9, ask 1.

Either way, take +1 Forward when acting on the answers.

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who's really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

Learn from Mistakes🔗

When you miss a roll, and its consequences come to bear, mark 1 XP. Don't mark XP when the miss is mitigated through Help or Hinder or Overload.

Overload🔗

When you sacrifice a part of yourself to beat insurmountable odds, burn 5 XP to reroll any dice. Choose the new roll or keep the old one.

Level Up🔗

When you have 5 XP, you can spend it to gain an Advancement. You can hold XP unspent as long as you want.

Advancements🔗

• Cabal Caster
  When you Help or Hinder with another Mage's spell, you can distribute your Soul and Boons to augment the Spell Aspects.

• Familiar Focus
  Your Conduit is a living being that serves you.

• Thaumaturgic Tattoos
  Your Conduit can never be taken from you, as it is part of your body or otherwise inseparable from you.

• Backup Conduit
  You are attuned to a spare Conduit you keep in the Nexus.

• Phylactery
  When your physical body is destroyed, your soul returns to the phylactery, allowing you to regenerate and reconstitute your body.

  When your phylactery is used or broken, it Takes Time to get a new one or replenish it.

  Answer the following questions:

  • What power did you use to create your phylactery?
  • What price have you paid for it?
  • Where do you keep it?

Non Player Characters🔗

NPCs have:

• name
• attributes
• tags for fictional positioning
• perhaps moves

The NPCs don't roll, so the attributes serve only as slots for Harm.

An Orc Brute with attributes (+1, -2, -1) can bear 4 Body Harm, 1 Wits Harm and 2 Soul Harm.

He can take a beating, but confusing him or fooling him to turn on his allies will be trivial.

The Custodian🔗

We use the term Custodian, not Game Master, because they're neither a master of the players, nor the sole person who seeks mastery. All players hold responsibility for the game.

The game works much better when the Mages seek mastery, and the Custodian is just vibing, than in the inverse.

The Custodian facilitates the conversation, portrays the world, and keeps the notes.

Custodian Moves🔗

A Soft Move is one without immediate, irrevocable consequences,. Ignored, it becomes a Golden Opportunity for a Hard Move, which has an immediate effect. Don't speak the name of your move. Make one that fits the fiction, then ask "What do you do?".

• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost.
• Put someone in a spot.
• Show signs of an approaching threat.
• Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask.
• Hurt them.
• Use up their resources.
• Separate them.

How to play as the Custodian?🔗

All players play according to the Agenda and the Principles, but the Custodian has an additional task.

important

The Custodian's main responsibility is taking care of the game.

To take care of the game, you:

• Maintain an orderly, safe environment.
• Ensure the game flows smoothly, like a well-oiled machine.

You're free, but not required, to employ the help of the Mages with typical Game Master tasks — scheduling, describing environments, portraying NPCs, finding and prepping modules, and managing the overarching story of the campaign.

But these two duties are yours alone.

Safety Tools🔗

You maintain an orderly and safe environment by using safety tools and resolving social tensions.

• Stars and Wishes

  • https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/blog/stars-and-wishes
  • Stars and Wishes double as a planning mechanism in addition to being a feedback procedure.

• X Card by John Stavropulous

• Lines and Veils before the first session

Well-oiled Machine🔗

You make it run like a well-oiled machine by learning the preferences of the table, and controlling pacing.

Pacing🔗

You can play a good game in 2.5 hours.

There's nothing wrong with 6-hour sessions. On the contrary, I'd love to play one like that. However, a well-designed roleplaying game should not exclude adults with jobs and children.

• Let moves resolve whole conflicts. After you roll, the fiction changes based on effects of the move.
  • If it's not clear what the player wants to achieve by their actions, inquire about it. Be curious, and be a fan of the characters.
• Use dialogues to zoom in on interesting scenes.
• Use indirect speech to zoom out and speed up.
• It's polite to respond to dialogue with dialogue,
  • but don't be afraid to say "Cut!" and skip forward to a new interesting scene.
• Open in media res liberally.
• You can prep, but don't plan. Play to find out. If you have extra time to prepare, leverage Love Letters to start the sessions strong.
• The Mages are competent, driven, and resourceful. You won't be able to run an off-the-shelf linear adventure for in MageWorld.
  • Play to find out and enjoy the ride instead.
  • If you want to run a premade adventure, you'll have to convert it into an open module.

Preferences and Settings🔗

There's a lot of ways to play a roleplaying game.

What's more, despite the sleek design, the opinionatedness, clarity of writing, and great looks of the author, there's a lot of ways to play MageWorld.

With the construction of moves and the text of the game, I'm trying to suggest things I feel make good games easier to pull of. However, there's still a lot of breathing room for the table. Regardless of the mechanics, each table will play a slightly different game, adjusted to their preferences.

Does your table like to build elaborate narratives, immerse in a fictional world, or do they like a challenge? What do you like, personally? Play different games to learn your preferences. Learn to strike a balance, too. Focusing on one aspect to the detriment of the others can lead to a shallow play.

If you're playing with a new group, and you fancy a lengthy Session 0, take a look at Play the Same Game Tool.

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Hacking the Game🔗

Playing as a non-magical martial fighter🔗

Your Conduit is a legendary weapon. You call the spells Techniques. Instead of rewriting them from scrolls, you learn them studying from old masters, dueling rivals, observing and mimicking beasts.

Running one-shots🔗

1. Don't worry about the Covent and Nexus or predefine it. Provide three combinations to choose from, no more.
2. If you don't have much time, Level Up and Overload require 3 XP instead of 5 XP.
3. Play High: Let Mages choose one Advancement at character creation.
4. Or Play Low: As 0-level characters, start with no spells. Find them in game, but not later than second location or right after first combat.

Custom Moves🔗

TBD: What are the common structures of moves? One example move for each of three structures.

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Printable Materials🔗

Contact🔗

If you've found a mistake, or have a suggestion, please reach out to me on BlueSky, Twitter or by email at hasparus@gmail.com