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If you could think of a powerful word, what would that be? I've solo created a Table Top Roleplaying Game where magic is defined to words that work as the boundaries of magic. With a simplified and complicated version, this game is accesible to anyone interested in a creative fantasy world.
Winning concept in Champlain College's Elevator Pitch, creating an entry level TTRPG to allow imagination and creativity to thrive while making the rules simple to follow.
Before being a standalone game, I wanted to go off of a base that I knew was good, and find ways I wanted to improve it. Starting as a mod for Dungeons and Dragons, I removed the Wisdom Modifier and replaced it with Arcana since this is all magic focused. One of my big issues with the original is a lack of creative wiggleroom in the base rules when it comes to leveling. I removed the concept of levels entirely and make skill points, and a full skill tree to spend them.
This skill tree, while looking complicated at first, can get boiled down pretty fast when you focus at the center. At the beginning there are 5 trees you can branch from that each give you a good idea of what they will help you do. There's a potency upgrade to make your spells have a greater effect, a tank spell to use mana as a shield for cover, general evasion to allow you to dodge attacks, Arcanic sight which helps you become more aware of the magic around you to find key weak points, and flexibility casting which helps the speed and range of the spells you cast. Keeping these 5 categories as vague as they are allows the player and GM to communicate together and fully build their characters the way they want to.
Instead of spell slots, I wanted players to feel the impact of each of their spells levels and really care about how they spend their mana. If they want to focus on casting a lot of small spells or focus on a few really powerful ones, I want that to be the direction they take. My overall creative direction for this project was to make a game that lets you really feel like you can create anything, and that's what I was able to create. Let's look at a few player examples!
One player wanted "Fortune" magic and to focus on tarot cards as their main spells. Their core focus was to manipulate the space around them to control enemies while still dealing damage. I want it to be clear this was a high power, fun campaign where making the players have crazy abilities was a lot of the fun. Her fortune abilities made them really useful at fighting both on her own and with her team, combining to some fun combos.
Hat magic was designed by the vibe of "man of many hats" in order to make their magic all around useful with various situations. Each hat was decided to have specific buffs that allowed him to change between being a high damage dealer to a supportive role each fight.
While the above looks really complicated, what if it didn't have to be? I spent a semester of an advanced seminar class creating this exact prototype, playtesting a way to make a game where the numbers didn't have to matter.
This simplified format simply works as a form of improv where you can say no. My goal was to create a way for those new to roleplay games to learn how to act in character or make a world to run without worrying about complications like balancing or encounters. The full GM side of the book is teaching how to improve and provide questiones that help define your world.
The character sheet is purely a questionaire for the player. Asking about strengths, weaknesses, their goals and admirations, these questions help the player create a character without getting overwhelmed, allowing creativity to be at it's strongest.
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