By the Pricking of My Thumbs ... Spell Teaser for Magonomia

We’re working on finishing up the manuscript for Magonomia Core Rules. If roleplaying a wizard who uses Renaissance themed magic appeals to you, our crowdfunding campaign is accepting late pledges through March 31, 2021. Here’s an example of one of our 200 spells in the core book, inspired by Renaissance sources:

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Degree 3 Sorcery; governed by Mercury

A Fetish temporarily grants (Good +3) Alert for Approaching Creatures.

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

--William Shakespeare, MacBeth, Act IV, scene 1

Onstage Preparation: Fast

Augmentation: None

Components: A bag of animal parts, blood, incantations

Activation: Create an Advantage vs. 3

Duration: Until the next sunrise or sunset

A spirit you have evoked into an object—a Fetish—can be awakened with two drops of your blood (one from each thumb). It lends you its Aspect, (Good +3) Alert for Approaching Creatures, which you can use as a skill instead of Notice to detect people approaching.

The spirit gives a silent warning in the caster’s mind when a significant mortal creature approaches. What counts as significant depends on the spirit’s perceptions, not on human reason, though it only goes far off if the Activation failed. If you succeed with style at detecting creatures, the spirit tells you something true and relevant about the creature, as it did for MacBeth’s witch: “something wicked this way comes,” in her case.

(c) 2020-2021 Shewstone Publishing LLC. The text of this article may be copied, reused, and modified under the terms of the Open Gaming License, version 1.0a.

Have More Fun by Embracing Failure in Fate Games

by Andrew Gronosky

This is a section of text from chapter 6 of the Magonomia® manuscript.

When I first read the Fate Core System book, I had a negative impression. It looked to me like Fate was designed so characters rarely fail. I'd spent most of my gaming years playing RPGs like Call of Cthulhu®, where having your character devoured by a monster is considered one of the better possible outcomes. "Young gamers these days are a bunch of crybabies!" I harrumphed. "Back when I started playing First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons® (or AD&D® for short), one failed dice roll could get your character disintegrated beyond hope of resurrection!"

It did cross my mind that having a character you've been playing for two years blasted into ash on Round 1 of a battle might be considered a bit anticlimactic. In fact, I remembered, when I was a GM for AD&D®, I fudged dice rolls quite a lot just to prop up some semblance of a plot. The current (Fifth) edition of D&D® is a lot more forgiving, or perhaps I should say, less gratuitously harsh. And more fun.

If you’re coming from an old-school mentality of "make this dice roll or your character dies!" then you’ll probably have an impulse to apply all the narrative tools Fate gives you to avoid failure. You can sustain that for several game sessions, if you’re parsimonious with your Fate Points. I did. You'll be missing out on more than half the fun of Magonomia, because failure, setbacks, and complications add a lot to the experience.

The key insight that made me embrace the Fate system was when I decided, for the first time, not to Invoke an Aspect to prevent failure. I took the "success at a major cost" option instead. That's the anecdote [about the wizard hiding in a tree and dropping the potion they were planning to use, then having to think fast to get out of that tight spot ] . Tell me that's not better than succeeding on the Stealth roll, if you can!

Failure has a different meaning in Magonomia than it does in a game like D&D®. Magonomia becomes fun when you let go of your fear of individual failure. Step outside your character and realize the story won't get derailed if something bad happens to them. In fact, unless they face dangers and trials, there is no story. Internalize that mistakes and bad luck don't punish you, the player. Trust the GM to make failure a springboard to move the plot forward.

Frankly, I think Magonomia is more like real life, where mistakes are recoverable and your friends have your back.

In the end, I concede that the Fate system gives you many tools to avoid failure. I would add that it also gives you every reason not to be afraid of failure. In Magonomia, we mean it when we say "create a positive experience for everyone." One of the ways you can do that is to let your character fail.

Shewstone Year-End Update, 2020

The Wheel of Fortune tarot card

The Wheel of Fortune tarot card

2020 was a tough year for many. I’m pleased to say, Shewstone Publishing weathered the year pretty well. We’re continuing to mature as a company and to grow our audience. Tell your friends about us!

Crowdfunding Success!

Thanks to 132 awesome backers, we successfully funded Magonomia® Core Rules in April! If you missed your chance to back it then, we are still accepting late pledges and they can still help us reach level-up goals. Thanks again to our backers who believed in us! Also our friends at Game on Tabletop deserve a shout out for all they did to mentor me and set me up for success.

This was our first-ever successful crowdfunding campaign, so that’s a very big deal. I admit the amount we raised is not enough to fully cover production costs, but it pays for a big chunk of the artwork. The support of our backers means so much. It tells me there’s an audience for our game: people are going to meet up with their friends and play wizards in Enchanted England. This is going to happen — because of our backers.

At the end of 2019, Shewstone was a third-level publishing company. (We’re using milestone based advancement from 5E, even though we don’t make 5E games at this time.) Reaching our funding goal during a pandemic leveled us up again. Welcome to level 4! (I put my stat increase into Wisdom.)

Magonomia® Release Date: Summer 2021

We have a release date for Magonomia Core Rules: May 31, 2021. We were aiming for end-of-November 2020 but I had to slip that date backward by six months. The Covid-19 pandemic had some impact on development — freelancers’ availability was affected — but my inexperience was a bigger factor. I thought because we had written a lot of words, the manuscript was closer to complete than it was. We’ve now recovered from that mistake and we’re working steadily toward a realistic release date. You can track our progress on the project’s Trello board.

The setback has a silver lining. Author Timothy Ferguson, my friend and colleague from my days freelancing for Ars Magica, was able to join the project and to write a couple of key chapters. His passion for history, folklore, and historical magic have made their mark on the game. Combined with the contributions from CJ Romer, excellent rookie designer Tom Nowell, and Vesna Gronosky, we have a big, ambitious manuscript full of solid play advice, historical flavor, and authentic lore. Our magic potion is nearly done!

I won’t claim credit for leveling up again until the Core Rules are out to door, but the goal is in sight!

Missed Gen Con 2020

When Gen Con 2020 was forced to move online, it was a blow. I admit I didn’t take it as well as I could hae done. I got depressed and I backed Shewstone Publishing out of the convention entirely. At the time, I was cramming to try to get Magononmia done for the original fall 2020 deadline. It was a mistake not to participate.

We’re very eager to return to Gen Con. If it’s online again, Shewstone Publishing will be back with a roar! We can’t commit to an in-person convention in 2021 until we see how the pandemic plays out.

2021 Events

We’re starting off in January with a monthly series of actual play videos of Magonomia. Sign up if you want to be a player in our videos!

We’ll be resuming the Tales of Renaissance Wizardry blog series of free adventure starters. This was always planned to be monthly but we seem to have slipped in November … and December. Keeping it going regularly is our 2021 New Year’s resolution!

We’ll be adding a monthly podcast on adventure design to accompany the videos and blog posts. Here’s how they fit together. First we play the adventure. Then we post the plot outline to the blog. Then on the podcast, the GM talks about what it was like running the adventure based on the outline provided.

Our convention schedule is not decided yet. Follow us for updates.

2021 Product Schedule

Spring or early summer: Curse of the One-Eyed Witch, Revised Edition. Still pay-what-you-want, but with updated content, professional layout, and beautiful black-and-white artwork by Teresa Guido and Colin Throm.

Summer 2021: Magonomia Core Rules delivered to backers, then offered on DriveThruRPG and other outlets for general sale.

Fall 2021: Tentative date for publishing our tried-and-true convention adventure, Queen Elizabeth’s Astrologer is Missing!

Follow Us

To keep informed of all the great stuff we are doing — videos and podcasts, free adventure starters, online games and events, plus news of upcoming products, you can subscribe to our email list or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Discord, MeWe

Open Call for Proposals: Magonomia Plot Outlines

This is a request for proposals to write plot outlines for Magonomia®. A plot outline is a very short and basic adventure scenario that needs some development by the gamemaster before it is ready to play. If your proposal is accepted, you will be paid a flat fee of $75 USD and your plot outline will be published in the Tales of Renaissance Wizardry column of our blog (accepted submissions become the property of Shewstone Publishing).

About Magonomia

(Edit 7 Feb 2021: added this section)

Magonomia is the tabletop roleplaying game of Renaissance wizardry. The important things about it are: A) Every player character plays a wizard; B) The magic and fantasy elements are based on real-world Renaissance folklore; C) the historical fantasy setting is Enchanted England during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). To learn more about Magonomia, check out the free starter rules on DriveThruRPG.

Assignment Specifics

A partially developed story concept with a beginning, middle, and end is a called a Plot Outline. A plot outline is not fully developed and ready to play, but it should require less than an hour’s work for an experienced GM to prepare it for their game session.

This assignment is for a plot outline of at least 750 words and not more than 1250 words.

Edit 7 Feb. 2021: For examples of what a plot outline should look like, please see the Tales of Wizardry category in this blog.

At minimum, a plot outline must include:

·         A well-defined plot point (see below) that defines the players’ objective.

·         At least one method for the GM to introduce the plot into their campaign. It can be simple: for example, being hired by one of the principal NPCs is sufficient.

·         At least one additional plot point describing a complication or plot twist: something unexpected.

·         At least one possible successful ending.

·         A reward or benefit for achieving the adventure’s objective.

·         Names for all the principal NPCs

Plot Points: A short one- or two-sentence concept of a story event is called a plot point. This is directly related to the literary definition of a plot point: a major event in the story that causes a change in the action. Example of a plot point: “The player characters are invited to a royal ball and told a foreign wizard will be there to entertain the court. If they wish to secure a patron, they’ll need to impress the court more than this foreign wizard does.”

Proposal Process

You must be of legal age to sign contracts in your state or country. If you are under age, contact us before submitting a proposal.

All proposals must be accompanied by Shewstone Publishing’s Author Release Agreement.

Your proposal should be 100 words or less, explaining what genre of adventure it is (mystery, action, thriller, horror, romance, etc.) and the plot point of the main objective. Be sure to mention what is unique or original about the overall plot outline. Email it to andrew at shewstonepublishing dot com and be sure to attach a signed copy of the Author Release Agreement!

Writing Process

You should expect one or two rounds of feedback from the publisher between your first draft and final submission.

Contract and Payment

If your proposal is accepted, you will be asked to sign an author’s contract with Shewstone Publishing. The copyright of your finished work will be assigned to Shewstone Publishing.

Payment will be a flat fee of $75 upon acceptance of the finished work.