Diagram of Sciences and their Relationships

Here’s a page from the Magonomia® design journal: a diagram showing the relationships among the magical Sciences and certain types of spells we’ve encountered in the historical sources. A professionally drawn version of this, with an appropriate parchment-and-ink look, will appear in the core book.

Polls on Spells & Archetypes

All fans of Renaissance magic are invited to join us on the Shewstone Publishing forum to help us decide what spells will make it into the core book. This week, we’ll be selecting Astrology spells by choosing what character concepts will be supported in the core book.

The Astrologer by Ferdinand Bol (1616-1684), courtesy of the Rosenwald Collection, US National Gallery of Art

The author team has developed slightly over 200 spells for Magonomia®. This presents a bit of a challenge because, as you can see from the Starter Rules, each spell takes up the better part of a page. From a production standpoint, we can’t fit that many pages in a book. A 400-page book would only be cost effective at a large scale and it’s not realistic to expect our crowdfunding campaign to bring in over 1,000 backers who want hard copies. It might happen, but we certainly can’t count on it.

The way forward for the Magonomia® Core Rules project is a more typically sized, 250-300 page rule book. This means not all of our spells will fit — some have to be saved for future supplements.

To help us decide which spells to prioritize in the near term, we’re using the concept of archetypes. Archetypes are an optional tool for character creation that describe a broad concept for a type of Renaissance wizard, such as “Alchemist mystic” or “Astrologer detective.” The archetype comes with a list of suggested spells that will best equip the wizard to do their job. Come help us figure out which archetypes are your favorites, and we’ll make sure they have a collection of interesting, useful, and historically-themed spells to match their concept.

Poll of the week: Sorcery Archetypes

I’ve decided to ask the fan base — small as it is, but growing! — about what content should get priority for the limited space in the core book. We’ve started weekly polls over at the Shewstone Publishing official forum. This week’s poll: what three Sorcery archetypes would you most like to see in the core rules?

Sorcery is the Science of conjuring spirits. Some say all sorcery is black magic, but others claim it’s possible to practice sorcery without resorting to summoning demons. There are even those who say summoning demons should not be a problem, as long as the sorcerer remains in control. Sorcery is the “edgiest” of the Sciences, strong in attacks, cursing, and dramatic effects. It’s also the least subtle Science and the easiest to defend against.

Join us on the forum to cast your vote for your favorite Sorcery archetypes! There is also one day left to vote in last week’s poll about Alchemist archetypes.

Magonomia Launch Plans

Magonomia is alive and well! Our first attempt at a Kickstarter campaign (August 2019) was not on track, so I decided to cancel that campaign, re-plan the project, and re-launch in early 2020 with better publicity and a clearer definition of what will (and won’t) be in the core rule book.

The new project will be called Magonomia Core Rules and it will launch in early 2020. The core book will be a complete, stand-alone RPG. It will introduce the Enchanted England setting but it won’t be able to go into great depth. That depth of setting will have to wait for a future supplement.

The work between now and the end of the year is fit the big manuscript we have into the page count of a single book. Everything that doesn’t make the cut can be saved for a future supplement.

Edit: Due to Kickstarter’s announcement on Sept. 28, 2019 that they are an anti-union company, I have decided not to use Kickstarter as a funding platform for Shewstone Publishing products. Magonomia will still be finished and published, but it won’t be on Kickstarter unless Kickstarter reverses its anti-union position.