OK it’s been a heck of a long time since I’ve actually published anything new.  Magister is a concept I first started working on in 2011, I think.  It began as a pen-and-paper RPG inspired by the old fantasy strat-game Master of Magic and kind of grew in snowball fashion as I started putting things down.

I went through a significant dry spell on this one and almost didn’t pick it up again.  The prospect of stat-blocking a bunch of monsters and new spells lost all of its appeal.  To compromise, I came up with a “Skull Method” for quickly statting monsters without getting into excessive spreadsheet detail.  Basically the way it works is, a monster is assigned a rating based on a number of skulls between 1 and 5.  Each rating correlates to a particular die type: a Rating of 1 is equivalent to a d4 and a Rating of 5 is a d12.  If a monster has a “one Skull” rating, then in general they will roll d4s for whatever it is they do, and so on.  I also leave the powers of creatures specifically vague so that people can just give them whatever abilities they think are appropriate and fun.  Simply roll based on the Skull Rating to determine success and failure.

Spells were much harder to work through and I have to admit I may have cut a few corners there just to get this thing published!

There are some decent flavor bits here.  I like the brief sketches I did for the different “wizarding groups” and Magisters that populate High Talona.  It feels like you could tell some more stories here using these simple building blocks.  Not sure I’ll ever get around to playing this one, but I could see myself returning to the world in some capacity.

Now off to see if I can blow the dust off of anything else before the year is over!

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