50 Magical Paradigms

I like magic that's weird and complex and entwined with the setting in which it exists. Usually, I make something bespoke for every game I run - you can see an example here.

This is at odds with the standard D&D approach, where there's a list of somewhat arbitrary spells that get taken out of the box and used as-is, without much room for additional depth.

The local blogosphere is a bit better. There are lots of posts out there that think about what magic actually entails, or which go for an interesting aesthetic, or which have a solid thematic throughline.

There are two models I see a lot. The first conceives of spells as invisible critters that a wizard keeps locked up in their brain or spellbook. My favorite writeup is this post by Coins and Scrolls, which is incidentally also very in tune with my philosophy as regards magic-related worldbuilding.

The other old standby is Magic Words, which I think I first encountered via Papers and Pencils here. (There are more fleshed-out versions elsewhere, but unfortunately not any that have stuck in my long-term memory). This one posits that wizards learn spell-fragments, in the form of words like "fire," "missile," or "door," which they can then piece together to write their own spells.

I like these frameworks well enough, but I've seen them both re-iterated several times, and I wish there was more variety, or maybe more willingness to create something weird and out-there. 

I also enjoy coming up with this stuff for its own sake. So here are brief descriptions of 50 paradigms, most of which are at least loosely compatible with standard magic rules that assume wizards exist and are people who cast spells.

If any of these paradigms catch your eye, then maybe think for a moment about how you'd expand on them, or what the implications might be for a setting that uses them.

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Spells are...

1. Supplementary lobes grown in the brain using meditation and mnemonic techniques.

2. Fragments of the stolen mind of God.

3. Formulae describing a manner in which the delicate and volatile balance of cosmic forces can be safely manipulated.

4. Impossible sleights of hand invented by the King of Thieves.

5. Sorcerous bloodlines unlocked by convincingly fabricating the presence of a deity or lesser spirit in one's family tree.

6. Astrological rituals that invite the influences of the seven elemental planets.

7. Three goblins in an invisibility cloak.

8. Proofs that natural law is false or self-contradictory, promulgated by demonic philosophers.

9. The cobbled-together scraps of lost extrauniversal sciences.

10. Echoes of the word that brought the universe forth from primordial darkness, bounced back and forth across the cosmos from the day of creation until they were finally caught and decanted into jars.

11. Commands issued to a system of menhirs and henges empowered by ancient infrastructural rituals.

12. The sacred mysteries of dead, dying, or forgotten gods.

13. Ab-logical insights arrived at by taking psychedelic drugs or staring for too long into the depths of the chaotic planes.

14. Writs that empower eligible persons to make wishes with specific predetermined wordings.

15. Good advice given by someone at least a hundred years old.

16. Keys to various seals and limiters that were placed on mortals to prevent apocalypse.

17. Cheat codes for the universe simulation.

18. Koans, the contemplation of which allows one to perceive and transcend the illusionary nature of reality.

19. Astral weapons designed to be implanted in a soul.

20. Hyperdimensional structures that snap back into conventional spacetime when cast.

21. The caster's own externalized thoughts.

22. Chemical poultices and powders with a bit of something extra mixed in.

23. The secret arts of smiths, clockmakers, masons, etc.

24. Services provided by residents of the goblin market in exchange for items that suit their peculiar and highly specialized tastes.

25. Talismans prepared according to a series of exacting instructions and charged with the caster's will.

26. Phrases a bit like "abracadabra!" or "open sesame!" which for some reason only stick in the minds of the initiated.

27. Bullets etched with sigils and words of power, which ascend to a higher plane of existence upon being fired.

28. The misfortunes that escaped from Pandora's box.

29. Techniques learnt by beating a monster at its own game. (Defeating a basilisk in a staring contest, a giant in an arm-wrestling match, etc).

30. Favors that Entropy bestows upon those who hasten the world's decay.

31. The forms of a proscribed martial art that unbalances the vital energies of its adherents.

32. Sluglike things made of animate ink which pour forth from a spellbook to do the caster's bidding.

33. Objects or entities sealed within an extradimensional space in the wizard's hat.

34. Bizarre, temperamental devices that require constant maintenance and recalibration.

35. Pharmaceutical cocktails that briefly grant the imbiber psychic powers.

36. Patterns of mana that behave like cellular automata. Magic missile is a glider.

37. Parapsychological mutations induced by exposure to mythos entities.

38. Miracles worked by the various saintly relics that the caster keeps about their person.

39. Applications of the force exerted upon reality by purely mental phenomena such as perception or intent.

40. Demiplanes smaller than the head of a pin which follow altered laws of physics.

41. Stakes won from a set of anthropomorphic personifications that the wizard gambles with in their dreams.

42. Thaumic technology smuggled from the sunless lands beneath the sea.

43. Things the wizard sees with the eye they sacrificed for forbidden knowledge.

44. Divine retribution that the wizard directs to their own ends by tricking the gods with meticulously chosen blasphemies.

45. Otherworldly communications encoded in the movements of birds, the patterns of fallen leaves, the letters of magazines.

46. Hypnotic patterns inserted into the collective unconscious.

47. Things left over from previous iterations of the universe.

48. Secrets that you can only understand by emulating the mental architecture of an octopus.

49. Bursts of chaotic magic that in their natural state could do absolutely anything, but which the caster circumscribes with probability manipulation.

50. Ritualized dialogues that will persuade some vast and inhuman being to grant the caster a boon if executed correctly.

How to Play By Post

 It recently occurred to me that I have about a decade of experience with Play-by-Post (PbP) games. This seems kind of absurd to me: I'm young enough that I don't usually think of myself as having decades of experience in anything, aside from all the life-support stuff like eating and sleeping and reading.

Anyway, this realization was prompted by @cole1312 on a certain OSR discord server, who requested resources on running PbP games. Such resources exist, but I hadn't yet written one. This is what I'll point to if I see a similar request in the future.

If you're new to PbP games, the essentials are all in the first four sections - Setup, The Gameplay Loop, Momentum, and Things You Should Know.

The Advanced Topics are just a couple of weird things that I've done in the past, or that my groups occasionally do. You can think of them as a sort of human interest piece. Though if you try them, or if you've ever done something similar, I definitely want to hear about it.

Setup:

The simplest possible setup is a discord channel, forum thread, or email chain where players post actions or dialogue and the GM posts turns. Unless you're running your game on a forum and expect only a token amount of discussion, you'll also want an Out-Of-Character (OOC) backchannel. 

Each platform has different advantages and disadvantages. A forum thread is easy to keep track of and makes a great archive, but discussion will be slow. In Discord communication is very fast and you can create as many channels as you want, but old material rapidly gets buried.

The Gameplay Loop:

Gameplay in PbP games works a lot like gameplay in person, but for practical reasons it needs to be a little more structured. Additionally, the GM customarily rolls all dice. This speeds the game up a bit and eliminates awkward situations where you need to worry about honesty.

The basic loop is:
1. The players all post actions.
2. The GM rolls dice, writes up the results of each action, and posts them. This is a turn.
3. Return to step 1.

Sometimes the GM may respond to individual actions outside of the turn structure, if the action in question is something very minor that shouldn't take a full round. This is most frequently applicable to conversations, since waiting an entire turn between each line of dialogue would be far too slow.

Momentum:

It's very easy for a PbP game to slow down, and when that happens, it becomes increasingly likely that the game will grind to a halt and die. So, the most important part of running a PbP game is to keep the momentum going.

The root of the problem is that, by default, PbP games have very little time pressure. There's no expectation that anyone will do anything at any particular time, so it's easy for players to put off writing an action or for the GM to put off writing a turn.

My solution to this is to create a schedule. Choose when to post turns: every day after 9:00 EST, or on certain days of the week, every other Saturday, et cetera. Whatever works for your group. Then skip players who haven't posted by that time.

Skipping players doesn't feel great, but if you aren't willing to do it, your game WILL be held up by one person who never gets around to posting an action.

Lost momentum is difficult to recover. If your daily schedule slips and you begin posting turns every three days, players adjust to having the extra time. You'll have a hard time getting them to submit daily actions again, and in practice you may have trouble getting yourself to write turns more frequently. If there are long enough gaps between turns, people will also forget what's going on and may have trouble reengaging.

Things You Should Know:

PbP games are very slow. In person, it takes a few seconds to go through one iteration of the gameplay loop. In a PbP game it will generally take at least a day, and often much longer. An adventure that could be run in one or two sessions might take months to finish asynchronously.

Because an entire turn's worth of actions are processed simultaneously, PbP doesn't play well with systems where a single action or round of combat requires multiple branching decisions. The wizard can't decide to cast a counterspell mid-round if an enemy is about to throw a fireball, because "mid-round decisions" don't exist. The best you can do, in this case, is to let players make parts of their actions conditional. "I climb the ladder - and if I see the enemy wizard casting an offensive spell, I pause to counter it."

As the GM, you're probably doing a lot of rolling and bookkeeping that the players would normally keep track of themselves. Choose a system which won't make that unnecessarily difficult. One modifier per roll is manageable. Juggling two or three per character per turn gets old fast.

PbP games are, in my opinion, an underexplored medium, and you can use them to do a lot of really neat stuff. To list just a few possibilities, specifically ones exemplified by games that I've more recently played or run:
- PvP games that make heavy use of private channels and hidden information.
- Games where the "party" is somewhat nebulous and each player is free to pursue their own agenda
- Games with elaborate setting mechanics that reward a lot of thought and planning.

Advanced Techniques:

Inventory Management:

If your game has extensive bookkeeping needs, you may want to use Google Sheets. This allows you to create spreadsheets that anyone with access to the link can view and edit, which means you can fob a lot of that bookkeeping off on your players.

This sounds a lot scarier than it actually is. Your spreadsheet basically needs three fields: Name, Description, and Additional Notes. If you're tracking items you may want another field or two for quantity or monetary value or what-have-you.

Here is one of mine, from a game I've spoken about before.

Turn Anarchy:

Don't wait to do a full turn. Respond to actions as quickly as players post them.

This is a very intense experience. If you have enough players, and if your game is moving fast enough, chances are that at least one of them will be around at any given time. You can, in theory, have unlimited TTRPG. As much TTRPG as you want. Be very careful.

If you ever decide to do this:
- You will probably want to use a text-based chat program in which you can create many different channels. Practically speaking I mean Discord, but if you have a suitable alternative then go for it.

- Each player gets their own IC channel. This is important, because the game will move at different rates for everyone, and it will move very fast. Trying to use a single channel is mentally taxing, makes you lose track of actions, and is overwhelming for your players.

- There won't really be a "party," as such. Sometimes players might work together.

- Use a very simple system. Mine is "roll 1dX to resolve uncertainty, higher is better."

Lastly, most seriously: Set boundaries with your players and with yourself. Continue to do stuff other than your game. Make sure you're getting enough sleep. This was incredibly fun for me, on the few occasions I've been in a position to do it, but you really, really do not want it to get away from you.

Settingpost - Scrap: Industrial Magic

The following is a description of an asynchronous play-by-post game I ran for a while, with a few elaborations and extras.

It's from the perspective of advising someone else who might want to run a game in the same setting, mostly for my own convenience while writing. That said, it might be a decent example of how to manage a magic system that uses very little abstraction.

The Premise:

The players are a group of Machinists, tinkerers who build wonderous devices from metal, runes, and soulstuff. They scrape out a living at the border of the Waste - a perilous, continuously shifting magical wasteland that was created decades ago by the impact of a falling star, and which has since been used as the dumping ground for an empire's worth of faulty devices and alchemical pollution.

Thaumaturgical surveys have detected an anomaly at the center of the exclusion zone, something with a magical signature far stronger than any machine yet created by mortal hands. It could merely be a danger - but it could also be the key to controlling the forces that shape the wasteland, or to reproducing the cataclysm which created it.

The players, for reasons known only to themselves, have decided that the prospect of getting their hands on those secrets outweigh the considerable risk of mounting an expedition past the Waste's outermost edge.

The Magic System:

Every thinking being has a soul, a sort of aetheric nucleus which houses their memories and personality. The souls of beings with a physical body are typically entangled with their brain (1), but there also exist disembodied souls, more colloquially known as spirits, which are capable of persisting without a body to anchor them (2).

Souls naturally generate thaum, magical energy that can be used to power runes or sorcery.

Each rune has a name and a function. To power a rune with your own soul, you need only touch the rune and will it to be so - but this is an exhausting process, and human souls have only so much energy to spare. More powerful devices often make use of bound spirits, entities confined by runic enclosures that drain thaum and induce a sort of dreamless sleep. The practice is ethically dubious, but effective - as fueling more advanced creations otherwise requires inefficient thaumic batteries or simultaneous contributions from many operators at once.

Conversely, sorcery is performed by channeling thaum through knots that have formed in one's soul. Each knot is an clot of aetheric structure that embodies a particular concept, and prospective sorcerers must form them by taking part in initiatory rituals, undergoing ordeals, or engaging in obsessive study. There is also the unwise route of experimental soul-surgery.

Gameplay:

When I last ran this game, the party started play with an airship. It may be preferable for them to remain earthbound, in which case I would instead provide a crawler or an automobile. Access to a single large vehicle is an important part of the setup - it forces players to work together, always a consideration in play-by-post games that are freeform enough that characters could easily wander off in different directions. It also acts as a mobile storage space and workshop, in a setting where crafting is an essential part of gameplay.

I might give players a choice between a few transports with different strengths and weaknesses. Most of the options available in-setting will be bulky constructions that operate by harnessing the power of a bound spirit, but if the table is particularly averse to that idea, it's possible to acquire a lightweight vehicle that can (effortfully) be run with thaum from the characters' own souls, or a somewhat awkward mundane conveyance like a zeppelin or steam-powered cart.

It is also essential that players have tools that allow them to shape wood, stone, metal, etc so that they can create runic equipment. These tools are themselves likely to be runic devices. My go-to option is a runic array shaped like a set of interlocking rings which allows the players to deform matter held within it.

The Waste is ideally represented by a hexcrawl, but one where the hexes change periodically. Locations are occasionally shuffled around by dimensional instability. Spatial anomalies aside, hexes can also suddenly be contaminated with extradimensional flora and fauna, blasted by storms, terraformed by buried machines, or altered by spirits. The longer players spend in one place, the less the landscape behind them will look like the one they originally passed through. Environmental hazards are common and varied.

Ideally there should probably also be other factions attempting to reach the Center. I haven't run that variation, though so unfortunately there aren't any further details to go into.

Running Runes, Sorcery, & Spirits:

I have provided a list of some runes I used at the bottom of this post. I don't necessarily endorse including all of them - Reservoir in particular is one that I would strip out if I were to run the game again, as it makes storing thaum for later use too straightforward. There are also many redundancies, because I allowed players to formulate variations of runes they already knew. I have stripped out the worst offenders.

There is a core set of runes that the players should be provided with at the start of the game. These are runes which serve essential functions, like the "transfer" symbols that, when chained together, act like wires that can run thaum from one part of an object to another, making it possible to control a large device via a contact point in the handle or console. 

These core runes are:

Transfer (for transferring power to other runes)
Dissonance (for binding spirits)
Cage (for holding a bound spirit in a hollow container)
Projection (as a basic way to manipulate thaum)

There should also be something that lets players make simple weapons - I used "burst," which acts as a basic force gun, but something like a sharpness rune would also work fine.

Players should be able to acquire a new rune or two by taking apart any runic device they find. The GM should also ideally be able to say a few words about how the device works. For example, a bomb might be triggered when plates bearing two halves of an explosive rune are allowed to touch.

Runes can be written in any medium - painted, embossed, engraved, et cetera - so long as it's possible to reproduce the rather intricate symbols in fine enough detail.

Thaum dissipates quickly in empty air, unless there is an ongoing effect that preserves it.

Sorcery is more freeform. As described before, knots are gained from initiations, study, ordeals, and soul-surgery. The key is that an experience must reshape your soul - either directly, via exposure to spirits, high concentrations of thaum, or surgical modification, or indirectly by changing the sorcerer's identity. Each knot corresponds to a particular concept - "life," "rage," "annihilation," "force," "plants," and so on - and can be invoked to cause effects related to that concept. Finesse is difficult and must be trained, as must more exotic interpretations of the concept in question. Generally, a sorcerous spell must promote or manipulate the concept it's associated with, and cannot directly reduce or eliminate it. A sorcerer with a rage Knot could induce rage or redirect it, but would be incapable of soothing it.

Spirits can look like more or less anything. They also have varying levels of intelligence, ranging from that of a plant to that of a superhuman mastermind. Their bodies are incorporeal, essentially aetheric shells filled with thaum. They can be harmed by physical objects, very inefficiently, but to truly hurt them it is generally necessary to use attacks that make direct use of thaum, a more conceptual effect like those associated with sorcery, or runes like Dissonance that influence the soul directly (3). This requirement is more flexible than it may seem - with sufficient force behind it, even a charged line of Transfer runes will do. Spirits almost always have supernatural abilities equivalent to those of sorcerers.

Spirits originate from the space between dimensions, and sometimes cross into reality in places where dimensional boundaries are thin (this happens frequently in the Waste). The crossing and subsequent adaptation to conditions within reality is difficult: some spirits fizzle out within moments of arrival, and those that survive rarely have comprehensible memories of the Outside.

There are really no further rules. Players can make any runic device they can comprehensibly (and COMPACTLY) describe - the GM pictures it and uses their understanding of the setting to determine whether it works, and if not, to determine what goes wrong. Expect some very creative problem-solving: one of my players designed a gun that shaped Thaum into Dissonance runes and fired them at the spirits they were going to fight. There will also be some getting lost in the weeds.

The Ending:

The object at the center of the wastes is a massive titanium sphere, cracked and partially disintegrated, illuminated by flares of escaping Thaum and covered entirely with celestial runes. All astronomical bodies in this setting are actually mechanisms of vast and abstract power. Stars, in particular, are meant to reinforce and manipulate dimensional boundaries. This one broke when it fell from the sky, and its death throes are causing the dimensional instability characteristic of the Waste.

The things that would be possible for someone who controlled or studied this device scarcely bear contemplation, and are certainly outside the scope of this game. Successfully laying claim to it is a win condition - provided that the players can do so before some other group beats them to it.

Footnotes:

(1): The brain acts as a sort of metaphysical scaffold, keeping the soul firmly anchored to the physical body and supporting it as it grows. Damage to that scaffold - of the sort that might be caused by asphyxiation or blunt force trauma - will also affect the soul, in much the same way that knocking out a load-bearing wall would affect the structural integrity of a building. 

(2): Great thaumaturges from ages past are said to have been able to disentangle brain from soul in order to become spirits themselves, but modern experiments with this aim have been less than successful.

(3): Human souls can also theoretically be harmed by these sorts of attacks, but are resistant to them as a result of being anchored to the body. Soul-surgery is usually performed either sorcerously or with implements that produce highly concentrated and intense thaumic effects

Sample Runes:

Transfer: Transfers thaum to the rune ahead of it. Can be chained together to transport thaum over the surface of an object.

Dissonance: When directly touching a spirit, loosens its control over thaum. Self-sustaining once the spirit can no longer prevent the thaum it generates from activating nearby runes.

Cage: When repeatedly scribed on the outside of a container, creates a stable shell of thaum that can hold a spirit in place.

Projection: Launches thaum outwards, perpendicular to the surface the rune is printed on.

Burst: Consumes thaum to launch a blast of force.

Pressure: Exerts even force on whatever is in front of the rune, with intensity that scales directly with the amount of energy that is used.

Fork: A modified transference rune that divides energy into two equally-sized steams. Used to regulate the overall level of energy that is fed to each component.

Reservoir: Energy seems to build up in this rune, forming a pool that nearby transfer runes can draw from. Used to reserve energy for maneuvering and stabilize the engine's output.

Forcefield: Consumes thaum to generate a flat plane of solid force.

Foam: Creates small bubbles of thaum.

Halo: Concentrates thaum several inches above the rune.

Clot: Causes energy to stick together and accumulate.

Linkage: Directs magic towards matching sigils on other devices. Slight variations in the dots at the center of this rune can be used to connect it to different networks.

Clairaudience: A scrying rune that allows the being powering it to hear all sounds it's exposed to.

Waste: Consumes thaum.

Ray: Consumes thaum to fire a beam of destructive magic.

Unburden: Consumes thaum to reduce the weight of whatever it is printed on.

Ooze: Consumes thaum to produce toxic sludge.

Arc: A targeting rune that makes magical effects curve towards whichever direction the glyph is pointing.

Partition: A rune that repels energy. Powering it is difficult. The designers of the Thaumic Forge resorted to a long chain of Projections.

Valve: A Transfer variant rune that restricts the flow of Thaum. Its output can be adjusted by varying the angle of two specific lines.

Oculus: Powering this rune with your own energy allows you use it as an additional eye.

Kinesthesia: Powering this rune with your own energy allows you to sense its approximate location.

Spark: Consumes energy to create a concentrated ball of electricity.

Bolt: Consumes energy to create a lightning bolt.

Fog: Consumes energy to create an expanding cloud of mist.

Kamikaze: Consumes energy to violently shatter the object it's printed on.

Smelt: Consumes energy to heat up the surrounding area.

Enervate: Weakens and disrupts any spirit that is directly exposed.

Scorch: A rune that consumes energy to produce flame.

Blindsight: A divination rune that provides the person fueling it with a blurry image of everything within a five-meter radius. It is not affected by light, or the lack thereof.

Shockwave: Consumes energy to create a surge of destructive magic.

Attract: Consumes energy to pull at any object that's in front of it.

Confine: A ring of runes that prevents objects from leaving their area of effect.

Reinforce: Consumes energy to increase the durability of the object it is printed on.

Cruor: Transforms energy into blood.

Volatilize: A ring of six runes that consumes energy to make objects more explosive.

Sustain: Consumes energy to prevent a spirit from deteriorating.

Squall: Consumes energy to generate gusts of wind.

Tar: Transforms Thaum into flammable pitch.

Frost: Transforms Thaum into ice.

Blacken: A ring of six runes that consumes Thaum to make objects a darker color.

Filigree: A ring of six runes that consumes Thaum to cover objects in intricate black lines.

Shroud: A rune that consumes energy to surround itself in magical darkness.

Empathy: A divination rune that forms a weak telepathic link between all entities who are currently powering it, allowing them to sense each others' emotions.

Lifesense: A divination rune that allows the entity powering it to perceive nearby Thaum.

Unnerve: Consumes energy to evoke feeling of paranoia and unease in nearby minds. The effects become more pronounced during extended exposure.

Membrane: A weak binding that does not prevent spirits from manipulating thaum.

Imbue: Concentrates Thaum within the object it is scribed on.

Sever: A rune that consumes energy to apply cutting force to whatever is in front of it.

Sensor: A divination rune that provides tactile information to whoever powers it.

Encrust: Consumes Thaum to cover the object it's scribed on with a layer of stone.

Fuse: A Transfer variant that holds energy for one second before moving it onwards.

Hamper: Consumes Thaum to slow down the object it's printed on.

On Pokemon

 

Prompted by this post from Alone in the Labyrinth.

Pokemon is a setting that I feel I should have a take on. I was really into it as a kid, and in fact thinking up my own creatures/regions/etc was a first step towards most of my current hobbies.

In practice, I haven't been able to reinterpret it in a way that feels satisfying.

For one, I think any more narrative medium demands that you focus more on the interaction between pokemon and trainers, which is... sort of barren, as it currently exists. You catch a being in a ball and now it joyfully does whatever you say, modulo some minor problems that are always eventually overcome.

At this point I think it would be productive to engage in one of my favorite activities: Taking something apart in an attempt to understand it. So, digging into that feeling a bit... maybe the crux of the issue is that Pokemon justifies itself via doublethink. Pokemon are intelligent creatures, so they understand you and have cute, relatable personalities, but they're animals, so you make all the decisions. They're objects, so you're allowed to treat them like collectibles, but they're also sentient beings that you're meant to develop a bond with. They're wild, in the sense that they exist in "nature," but they're civilized, so they're never shown to eat anything but berries and meal cubes.

Ultimately, pokemon are convenient. They're compatible with video game mechanics, they work well as animated characters, they're kid-friendly and promote kid-friendly themes like adventurousness and friendship. They indulge particular fantasies, like having a magical animal companion, or engaging in pitched, superpowered battles, or acquiring new powers and becoming stronger by making use of them.

I think that convenience is ultimately the reason I find pokemon/trainer relationships uninteresting in their current form. As written, Pokemon rarely have motivations of their own, if those motivations would conflict with the priorities of their trainer. They rarely take much initiative, even to cooperate with trainers, because in that case their trainer would need to learn how to work with them rather than ordering them around. They can have personality traits, in contexts where that's easy to implement, but those traits are usually superficial. Interaction can occur, if the needs of the story call for it, but it can also be elided.

Taking a step back...

If I were to make my own setting in the monster collection genre, I think I would start by playing with some of the convenient ambiguities. The object/being binary is a particularly substantial one. Lots of interesting themes to explore there. To begin with, maybe there's a sense in which the monsters are literal objects - for example, the spirits of sacred weapons. So on one hand, they're embodied as items that someone can physically hold or keep locked up - and they lack the ability to do much of anything on their own.

On the other hand, there are questions you can raise about these beings' experience of the world and their motives. Do those weapons choose their wielders, or are they chosen? What do they think of the humans who fight with or over them? To what extent can they act independently? Do they have agendas of their own? And practically speaking, you can only wield one or two weapons at a time, so the characters of the ones you're using have much more direct significance.

Another route might be to swerve hard in the opposite direction and give monsters much more agency, so that it isn't really possible to "collect" them at all. Then maybe you end up with a game that's about negotiating with powerful forces, where it's possible to gain their cooperation, but any cachet you have with them is ultimately finite or temporary.

200 Word RPG: They Said It Couldn't be Done

It's really more of a 50-word RPG with some complementary tables.

They Said It Couldn't be Done

You are MAD ACADEMICS. Roll d66 on the following tables for your EXPERTISE. Interpret it expansively.

The GM instead generates an ADVERSARY. Players must SAVE THE WOLRD by FOILING their DASTARDLY PLAN.

Resolve actions by rolling d6:

1: Catastrophe
2: Failure
3: Mixed Success
4-5: Success
6: Catastrophic Success

11. Stellar
12. Pyrotechnic
13. Mycological
14. Psychedelic
15. Eschatological
16. Blasphemous
21. Ectoplasmic
22. High-Energy
23. Pneumatic
24. Non-Euclidian
25. Antediluvian
26. Extraterrestrial
31. Neural
32. Controversial
33. Cybernetic
34. Meta-
35. Galvanic
36. Occult
41. Gladiatorial
42. Inexpensive
43. Counterfactual
44. Immoral
45. Olfactory
46. Oracular
51. Particle
52. Machiavellian
53. Subliminal
54. Clandestine
55. Necromantic
56. Autonomous
61. Quantum
62. Surgical
63. Gustatory
64. Unobservable
65. Accidental
66. Speculative

11. Engineering
12. History
13. Architecture
14. Criminology
15. Music
16. Psychology
21. Linguistics
22. Sculpture
23. Theology
24. Biology
25. Philosophy
26. Economics
31. Litigation
32. Diplomacy
33. Pedagogy
34. Cartography
35. Literature
36. Zoology
41. Dance
42. Botany
43. Finance
44. Pharmacology
45. Marketing
46. Photography
51. Archaeology
52. Mathematics
53. Theater
54. Mythology
55. Horology
56. Meteorology
61. Geology
62. Statistics
63. Journalism
64. Programming
65. Logistics
66. Sociology

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Notes:

Inspired by this event, posted here because I don't feel like interacting with tumblr.

You may wish to consult Wikipedia's Index of Branches of Science in place of the second table.

The action resolution rules are an old standby, originally lifted from the standard "roll to dodge" rules on this subforum. It's as lightweight as I could make it, but realistically, my typical rulesets aren't much larger.

Slushpile Mark 1

Slushposts have been fashionable lately, and it doesn't take much effort to grab some notes and make them suitable for public consumption. So I have at long last overcome inertia. It's a low bar and I may never clear it again.

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Saints are monstrous, and they may confer that monstrosity upon those who pray to them. 

The past branches in the same way as the future. Time travelers must navigate a shifting, indefinite mass of alternate histories, each of which will produce an identical present.

Incantations and hand-gestures are a bunch of claptrap; the magic is in actuality performed by very complicated, very finicky thaumaturgical devices. Wizards walk around with a collection of mechanical baubles that require constant maintenance.

Dark forest multiverse.

A tyrannical empire of rodents. Their ruler is the reincarnation of a historical villain.

Martial artists who maintain delicate elemental systems within their bodies. Losing control of their internal balances typically results in detonation.
> Humorism but shuffled around a bit so there aren't two things called "bile." Breath, bone, blood, bile. Air, earth, fire, water?
> May be dependent on ingesting herbs, charcoal, snow, fulgurite, etc. 

Neo-Promethean electromancers who raise the dead and grow auxiliary limbs from synthesized muscle. It's unrelated to necromancy, but try explaining that to the torch-wielding mobs.

Antennae are of immense ritual significance. From what might they receive a signal?

Otherworldly critters that are bigger on the inside. You wouldn't know it while they're alive, 'cause they just look like big insects, but split one of them open and ten gallons of viscera will come pouring out. 

The akashic records are instantiated in vinyl.

A pair of marooned space-gods send each other letters written in the scale patterns of bioengineered snakes. The snakes have been made progressively more dangerous, so as to protect them from itinerant dragonslayers.

The vines in this garden are thirsty, and their roots run all through the underworld. Whet their appetite with a drop of your enemy's blood, and they'll pursue him for all his living days.

Rings are ideal mana-batteries. You can set energies flowing in a circular pattern and draw them off only as you need them.

Space starts behaving strangely when cut off from the rest of the universal substrate. This phenomenon occurred primarily in isolated caverns, up until the invention of the hermetic seal.

Souls are electric. Technomancers make devices that can interface directly with your innermost self. Astral projection is accompanied by the scent of ozone.

A many-armed scarecrow holding dozens of candles. Jostle it and it will immediately go up in flame.

Gods create belief. News of their exploits spreads faster than it has any right to. Storytellers will independently concoct retellings of true events.

The sun is an hourglass filled with glowing sand. One bulb is made of clear glass, the other is singed and stained. It turns over once every twelve hours, at the transitions between day and night.

Once, technologies that threatened to end the world were systematically uninvented. Then someone uninvented uninvention.

The demons that are still around don't get much mileage out of iron claws or hellfire breath. They just know things. And they can talk in your head from wherever it is they're buried, and make promises they don't intend to keep.

Deities do die of old age. They just have very long half-lives.

Perception has mass. Staring at an object on a very sensitive scale will cause a measurable increase in its weight.
> Beholders don't have their traditional gaze attacks, but they can pulverize you through sheer force of observation.

Wizards spend most of their time scrying. It's why they all build towers; the reception is better up there.

Hell overflows with light.

Bat-people communicate with each other in a language that's inaudible to everyone else.
> They can also cast spells ultrasonically. This technique is limited to incantations that have been adapted to work at higher frequencies, but it protects trade secrets and makes it practically impossible for anyone else to land a counterspell.

Dungeon-space is an empty void in which rooms shaped like tetrominoes hang immovably. Doors are linked to each other by persistent portals, but at midnight the rooms reset and all the connections get shuffled. Leave before then or you'll be stranded.

"The Ultramarine" as the name of a sea.

There's a crowd just around the corner. They laugh at irregular intervals; occasionally they applaud. You can't find them no matter how thoroughly you tear the building apart.

Someone who travels in a cottage tied to a roc's neck.

Matter is language. Producing gold from base metal is an act of translation. The Rosetta Stone and the Philosopher's Stone are one and the same.

A manuscript entitled "Detective Sherlock Holmes' Adventures in Fairyland."

Humanity's continued existence is reliant upon the advocacy of an outer god who treats us like a pet goldfish.

Setting where the sun has been stolen, upending the natural order and stopping the passage of time. Creatures of the mythological underworld thrive, whereas all but a few mortals stumble blindly through their daily routine and cannot be roused from sleep. The players must travel to the western horizon, reclaim the sun, and return it to its place in the sky.

Assembling spells by cutting words out of magazines.

The aftermath of an antimemetic catastrophe. Alleyways are filled with heaps of offal, exotic parisitoids have infested the sewers, and parts of the city were scrambled when the disaster stripped them of semantic content. Everyone is afflicted with amnesia; the contents of characters' inventories are the only things that hint at their past.

Spellcasting which involves gathering reagents, each of which holds a single magic word. Magicians can expend them to use those words in a spell, or depend on the persistent but more restrictive lexicon provided to them by foci and innate sorcerous abilities.

Multicultural animism. You can talk to rocks anywhere, but not all of them follow the same set of social conventions.

Wizard whose final doom is weaving themselves a chrysalis and emerging from it as a giant butterfly.

Setting in which each spaceship is unique, ancient, and irreplaceable.

Enough with clockwork hearts. Let's see a few hearts that are literally clocks.
> What if your heart were counting down to something?

Message bottles that appear out of thin air. Teleportation? Fourth-dimensional insertions? A messenger that's moving too fast to be seen? 

A threefold fire god - sparks, flame, ashes.

A memetic cordon - which is to say, a place from which little information is permitted to escape. Entering it results in an immediate timeskip and a few circumstantial clues about what happened before your memories were wiped.

Cyberpunk setting where the aesthetic trappings of magic have progressed a bit. Instead of swords and sorcery, there are enchanted revolvers and cassettes.
> TI-84 graphing calculators are the standard for programmatic spellcasting.

Memory-eating vampires that believe themselves to be their own first victim.

Rat-catchers living deep in the hypergeometry of an escheresque city.

Deposits of divine ichor that pool in the ground like oil.

A crown of moth wings.

Strange conservation laws.
> Conservation of royalty, morality, ambiguity.

Impersonation so thorough you don't retain your own memories.

Artificial ley lines that are put down to form a magical power grid.

Fantasy worlds must have some very strange fossils.

Necromancer trailed by a very awkward cyclops skeleton. It is actually a misidentified elephant.

The spells-as-creatures paradigm could use some further exploration. What are the capabilities of an unbound Sending or Magic Missile? Could you train them to do something else?

A sea that warps time and space.
> Variant where sailing is relativistic. The faster you go, the less time you experience. Supplies are theoretically a nonissue, but pray that the wind doesn't blow you off-course.

Non-reptilian dragons. A lot of bugs would work well for this purpose, but there are also bats and fish.

Angels as minor messenger spirits. The sort of creature a magician might use as a carrier pigeon or bind to a scrying mirror.

Sufficiently skilled characters can develop pseudo-magical knacks. Sticking objects together, an uncanny sense of direction, knowing what face a coin will next land on, etc.

Novice wizard maintaining a mind palace the size of a birdcage, bound in silver wire.

If angels are beings that maintain the inner workings of reality, demons are equivalent to cancerous cells.

Augurs who take their instruments into diving bells to record and interpret whalesong.

Mad scientists are having ideas planted in their minds by an extrauniversal intelligence.

Magic remote that shuffles its buttons around every time one is pressed.

Names and phrases: Witch-gates, Starcross, the Unfinished Country, the Apocryphal Archive.

Setting where writing doesn't function correctly. Everything has to be taught and transmitted orally; possibly some memory aids will work if they're sufficiently imprecise.
> This probably has to work at the point where a text is read rather than upon the writing itself, or there would have to be some way for the effect to scramble every possible means of recording information. Unless that was the point?
>> A place where things are mostly stable at a large scale, but the details change from moment to moment, like how perception works in a dream.

The key to every door, a crystal dodecahedron that functions as a supercomputer. Can break ciphers, translate languages, map buildings, and open locks using esoteric sensors and field manipulation tech. Locals believe it to be invested with the platonic essence of access.

A setting where telekinetics are by default weak but very precise, and so are more likely to be artisans or safecrackers than combatants.

Space monks who render their bodies impervious to extreme conditions. There are different possible mechanisms - mummification while still living, tempering the body into a sealed and self-contained system, encasement of oneself in a protective bubble.
> Also comes with the means to travel in space - reactionless thrust or the ability to reach escape velocity by jumping.

Physiology is impressionable, so becoming one sort of creature rather than another is mostly a matter of education. Thus why a chicken taught by snakes will develop into a cockatrice, and why any animal that's regularly exposed to language may eventually learn how to speak.

Certain heritable magics can temporarily be shared via a blood infusion.

A spear of indefinite length.

A secret society that exists to ensure that a divinely-ordained apocalypse comes to pass. Their agents are fed prophetic intelligence by angels dwelling in cell towers.

The lemurian empire is not traditionally composed of lemurs. But there's no reason it couldn't be.

Bull's-eye lantern that can project a magic circle onto any flat surface.

Dragons which regularly shed their skin.
> Certain beings (elementals, high spirits, kings) will become new dragons if they crawl into an old dragonskin.

Lightning only strikes things that have defied the gods. Raising oneself towards heaven is a form of blasphemy.

The previous universe ended in celestial fire. The stars are cinders.

More magic should be reliant on infrastructure.
> Wizard colleges responsible for maintaining central dictionaries which their graduates' spellbooks refer to.
>> Alternate history in which the dominant magical tradition stopped working when the library of alexandria burned down.

Magic or psionics that are usable only with cybernetic assistance. 

Coins that grant wishes when spent, subject to strict limitations that vary based on their markings and denomination. Snake's-head coins are for healings, 'yokes' perform labor, 'daggers' inflict injury or death, et cetera. Backed by imprisoned djinn.

Low Alchemist - to hold such a position one must be conniving, ingenious, cowardly. Practice instead of theory, catacombs and clandestine laboratories rather than gilded towers.

Wizard-of-Oz-esque figure with access to a panopticon. Can see everything, but has limited attention.

Extradimensional space that's a maze of sky-bridges and fire escapes. The "buildings" are concrete pillars that permit no entry or exit - but some are cracked open, and serve as the nesting-sites of creatures that are adapted to this aberrant ecosystem.

An assembly line for the production of dwarves. Optimistically, an experiment in creating large groups of identical twins. Pessimistically, equivalent to Tolkein's orcs.

Martial art whose practitioners become larger on the inside. They can exhale gusts of wind, swallow lakes, bleed profusely for hours without risking death. Forbidden techniques purport to expand the convolutions of the brain.

The trappings of a mecha setting, but "pilots" are put in sensory deprivation chambers so that they can project their minds into the noosphere. Humanity is threatened by engineered memeplexes and egregores that arise emergently from the collective unconscious, but the oneironaut program is treating the symptoms instead of the disease.