Magonomia® will use Fate™ Condensed Rules

A couple of weeks ago, the awesome folks at Evil Hat Productions released a slightly revised and considerably streamlined version of their award-winning Fate™ Core System rules, called Fate Condensed. After reviewing the design changes, we’ve decided to adopt Fate Condensed for Magonomia®.

The changes are minor but they smooth out some fine points of the rules that we tripped over while we were learning Fate and playtesting our game. They’ll result in a slightly smoother play experience and will make the rules easier to learn.

You won’t need a copy of Fate to play Magonomia — we’re including all the rules you need, with permission from Evil Hat. We do wholeheartedly encourage you to check out Fate Condensed. It’s pay-way-you-want on DriveThruRPG.com. If you find it useful, please consider paying a few dollars for a copy. We did!

Big thanks to Evil Hate for sharing their outstanding rules system under the Open Game License and Creative Commons license!

Magonomia will be launching on Game on Tabletop on March 14. This minor rules update does not affect the release schedule.

Magonomia T-Shirts now Available!

We’ve created a Zazzle store for Shewstone Publishing and designed a T-shirt! The front features the Magonomia logo and the words “the RPG of Renaissance Wizardry.” The back has the tagline, “Magic is the secret that cannot be told.”

A men’s basic crew neck shirt is shown but you can select many mens’ and womens’ styles when you place your order.

Magonomia T Shirt
by Shewstone_Publishing

The Platinum Rule

For Magonomia ®, we developed something we call the Platinum Rule:

All players share responsibility for making the game fun for everyone.

A lot of RPG players and GMs understand and use this rule already, of course. Strangely, I have never seen it written down in an RPG rule book in quite this form — many games address making the game fun for the players, but usually that’s framed as solely the GM’s job.

Why the Platinum Rule?

I’ve tried to make our game accessible to new RPG players and to players who might want to re-enter the hobby after a long absence. Therefore, I thought a lot about how to present the rules to make the essential concepts clear. The Platinum Rule emerged as the most important concept I could think of that I wanted to communicate. This is the one principle that I most want to share with the whole RPG community. It’s the distillation of my 40 years in the tabletop RPG hobby.

Now that it’s occurred to me to write it down, I am rather puzzled that I haven’t come across something like the Platinum Rule more often in other games. I have certainly seen language to the effect that the GM is responsible for making sure all the players have a good time — but that places all the responsibility on the GM. If you think about it, players have a great deal of impact on the quality of one another’s experience. That is both a responsibility and huge opportunity.

Full Text of the Platinum Rule Section

The text between the separator lines is directly from the Magonomia ® core rules manuscript, ©2020 Shewstone Publishing LLC. See “Republishing the Platinum Rule,” below, for legal information.

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It goes without saying that the reason for playing the game is to have fun with your friends. We think it's useful, though, to make that idea explicit and examine it.

This is the only rule that's really important: all players share responsibility for making the game fun for everyone.

The implications are far-reaching. How do you, as a player, get to have your character shine without upstaging the other characters? How do you encourage a shy player to participate without being pushy? As a GM, how do you know when you're making things too easy or too hard?

What is “fun,” anyway? Different players will have different priorities. Some want to solve challenging problems, some want to immerse themselves in an imaginary world, and some want to create a rousing adventure tale. You’ll need to discuss this a bit so you can make sure everyone can get what they want out of the game.

Roleplaying games are a hobby. Everyone, new or old, develops their own style. That means everyone, including you, has something unique to offer. The best experience comes when you realize that you can contribute to making the game awesome for your friends.  

Bad Habits to Avoid

The Platinum Rule is primarily about making positive contributions, but there are some pitfalls in roleplaying that are worth bearing in mind.

Don’t hog the spotlight. Some people are naturally more assertive than others. Go ahead and have your character be awesome! Just make sure everyone else also gets their moments to be the star.

Don’t undermine other players. Don’t make choices that directly contradict what another player has started to do. For example, if one of your fellow PCs has started to negotiate with an enemy, don’t suddenly interrupt and challenge that enemy to a duel. If you really want to change direction, ask permission.

Don’t make a character who’s a jerk. You control what your character is like, so you’re responsible for whether they’re a positive or a negative influence. This is not to say your character can’t have personality flaws – a flawed character is often the most enjoyable and rewarding to play. Just make sure your character is likable in some way and can work well with others.

Good Habits to Cultivate

Giving a list of advice on how to be a good roleplayer may seem overwhelming to some (and superfluous to others). It’s certainly sufficient to start with the Platinum Rule and just apply it as you think best. If you want some more specific suggestions, here’s a list you can refer back to from time to time to help you develop your collaborative roleplaying skills.

Keep the story moving. As long as everyone is enjoying themselves, the game is going well! There will come times when the game session feels stalled or goes completely off track. When you notice that happening, say something or have your character do something to refocus people’s attention on the story. This is everyone’s job, not just the GM’s. If your group is having trouble making a decision, the General Divination spell is a powerful tool for getting past that impasse.

Yes, and… The first rule of improv theatre is to accept your partner’s idea and add something to it. You will find many opportunities to do this as you play. Aspects and Fate Points, explained later in this chapter, are a game mechanic for creating “yes, and” moments in the game.

Give positive feedback. When another player or the GM does something great, say so! This will help build a shared understanding of what your group enjoys.

Embrace setbacks. There is more to a good story than having your character go from success to success. A good story needs moments of tension! Some of the best experiences in a roleplaying game come when the heroes have to claw their way back from the very brink of destruction. Don’t be afraid of bad things happening to your character. Be afraid of letting their story become bland and forgettable.

Show your character’s reaction. Showing or describing how your character reacts to what’s happening around them is an easy and powerful method for engaging everyone in the story.

Learn the rules. Nobody expects you to memorize everything in this book – even the authors have to refer to it frequently during play. That said, the better your grasp of the rules, the more you’ll be able to apply them creatively. Spend 10 minutes re-reading sections of the rule book before each game session and you’ll probably be surprised how much that helps.

Being a Great Player

A good player doesn't interfere with other players' fun.

A great player actively promotes other players' fun.

If you try to be great, you will probably succeed.

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Applying the Platinum Rule

The Platinum Rule only works if you talk about it. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation. Just introduce the concept and make sure everyone knows it is part of your group’s social contract. During that conversation, it’s a good idea to invite the players to volunteer what makes the game fun for them. Focus on the positive, to encourage players to start collaborating.

I find it especially helpful in breaking the ice at convention games, where players may be meeting for the first time.

Something particular to Magonomia ® is that it’s a historical fantasy game, and a lot of gamers will understandably hesitate to step into a setting based on a time that’s so strongly sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and generally nasty compared to our own. The Platinum rule is a very tidy shorthand for how to make even a historical fantasy setting safe and welcoming. If something wouldn’t be fun for everyone, then don’t bring it up at the gaming table. Simple enough?

Related Subject: The X Card

I would never have thought of the Platinum Rule if I had not been taught about a similar and very useful concept, the X card, at Gen Con 2015. I definitely recommend you use the X card in addition to the Platinum Rule. They compliment one another.

Why It’s Called the Platinum Rule

The reason we called it the Platinum Rule is simple: Magonomia ® is based on the Fate™ Core System and Fate™ already has a concept called the Golden Rule of Fate. In other words, the term “Golden Rule” was taken.

Republishing the Platinum Rule

We want people to use the Platinum Rule in their games, including commercial products! You are welcome to use the Platinum Rule in any written work. The exact text of the Platinum Rule (appearing between the separator lines in this article) is Open Game Content under the terms of the Open Game License version 1.0A. If you prefer, you may also use, modify, and republish the entire text of this article or any portion thereof under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). Magonomia ® is a registered trademark of Shewstone Publishing LLC and must be acknowledged as such. You can also just paraphrase the Platinum Rule: it’s short and simple and we’re not going to sue you over it. If you feel, as we do, that the Platinum Rule is a worthwhile contribution to the gaming community, please use it!

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Update: Revised Jan. 20, 2020 to add full text of the Platinum Rule from the Magonomia ® Core Rules manuscript, change X-card link to the original source, and revised to emphasize positive reasons for using the Platinum Rule.

Grand Enchantments in Magonomia

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In Magonomia® there is a special kind of spell called a Grand Enchantment. This is how wizards in the game bond familiar spirits and create permanent enchanted items, among other things. Sometimes you don’t need a lot of mechanics to evoke a lot of atmosphere. Here is the rules section on Grand Enchantments to illustrate that point. Enjoy!

Grand Enchantments

There is a special kind of spell called a Grand Enchantment that requires even more elaborate and exceptional preparation than a typical spell. Unlike other spells, Grand Enchantments can last forever.

From the wizard’s perspective, Grand Enchantments are in a class by themselves when it comes to preparation and complexity. A typical spell might require the wizard to wear a special robe and carefully prepare a conjuring circle. A Grand Enchantment might require the wizard to cast the spell at Stonehenge on the summer solstice using a staff made from a rowan tree that was struck by lightning. Every Grand Enchantment is a magical quest that culminates in a permanent increase in the wizard’s power. The benefits of the Grand Enchantment are usually gaining an Extra in the form of an enchanted item, a companion such as a familiar spirit or a guardian angel, or some permanent, new power for your wizard, such as Second Sight.

Several Grand Enchantments are available to PCs in Chapter 11: Spells.

A Grand Enchantment lasts indefinitely and cannot be cast concurrently, so a wizard will usually only cast it once in their career.

Grand Enchantments for PCs

If you choose a Grand Enchantment as one of your wizard’s spells, you can assume they have gone through the lengthy process of preparing and casting it offstage. You don’t have to take special steps to “unlock” a Grand Enchantment you’ve purchased or earned according to the rules. You can simply record the benefits of the Grand Enchantment, whether that’s an Extra for your character, an additional Aspect, or whatever.

Of course, you are encouraged to make up a backstory about the awesome things your wizard did to complete their Grand Enchantment. Continue reading into the next section for some inspiration.

Roleplaying Grand Enchantments

If you wish, you can ask the GM to prepare a story or a subplot about your character’s quest to cast the Grand Enchantment. This can be a great way to deepen your character’s persona and to make their magical career feel like the personal and even spiritual growth that Renaissance magicians perceived it to be. Here are some tips for designing that story.

• The Grand Enchantment Aspect can be used as a campaign Aspect for the duration of the story. Players can Compel it to add new challenges and complications to the quest to complete the Grand Enchantment, or Invoke it to have their sense of destiny help carry them through those challenges. Any character who is helping with the quest can Invoke Grand Enchantment, not just the wizard who has the spell.

• Your wizard doesn’t have to know the Grand Enchantment yet at the start of the story. You can instead work with the GM to have your character start the quest for the Grand Enchantment and then actually learn the spell at the end of the quest, as the milestone award for completing the story.

• The events and challenges in the story can be directly related to casting the Grand Enchantment, or they can be side quests the wizard discovers along the journey. For example, the GM might decide that the Grand Enchantment requires the wizard to obtain the scale of a huge dragon. The nearest big dragons are in Norway. The story could be about traveling to Norway and following rumors and climbing mountains to reach the dragon’s lair, or it could be about a sinister Norwegian sorcerer terrorizing a town the wizards pass through along the way.

The actual tasks a wizard needs to complete for a Grand Enchantment can be anything you can imagine that makes a good story. Here are some general suggestions to help inspire you:

Time and Place: It’s common for Grand Enchantments to be timed to rare astrological events like planetary conjunctions or comets. They may need to be cast in a special place: ancient pagan holy sites, tombs and catacombs, or the sites of momentous past events. In extreme cases, a Grand Enchantment may require the wizard find their way to a mythical place like the island of Avalon or the summit of Mount Olympus.

Spirit Encounters: The Grand Enchantment may require the magician to conjure a specific spirit and convince it to participate. Your wizard doesn’t need to know any particular spell to do this: when destiny calls, General Divination is enough to tell them how to make contact with the spirit they need. Perhaps contacting the spirit is a quest in itself, such as finding the tomb of an ancient wizard to call up their ghost. Perhaps the spirit requires the wizard to prove they are worthy of its help, or perhaps it demands a favor in return.

Legendary Items: The Grand Enchantment may require the wizard to obtain some legendary item, such as Merlin’s staff or the eye of a basilisk. Quests for legendary items can easily lead a wizard to distant lands: Greece, Persia, even as far as India or China.

Special Person: The Grand Enchantment might require finding a special person to participate in a ritual: a direct descendant of some ancient royal line, or an adult who is pure of heart. For player characters, the special person should be a willing participant in the enchantment, not a sacrificial victim. Human sacrifice is for villains. The person doesn’t have to be a wizard – but it might be interesting if they are!

Riddles and Puzzles: The quest for the Grand Enchantment may be framed as a riddle. The quest may start by encountering the riddle in some ancient tome or in a vision the wizard receives. Solving the riddle leads to a clue to the next stage of the quest. There are many movies and novels about occult conspiracies that use this formula to great effect. A classic example of a riddle, perfectly usable in your stories with a little imagination, is the alchemists’ motto V.I.T.R.I.O.L.: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. It translates to “Visit the interior of the earth and, rectifying, you will find the hidden stone.”

Prophecy: Completing the Grand Enchantment very well might require fulfilling a prophecy. For purposes of creating a Magonomia story, a prophecy is just a way of presenting one or more of the other elements of a Grand Enchantment story. The prophecy itself may be oblique enough to count as a riddle. It may designate a time and place to perform a magical ceremony, or identify (perhaps clearly, perhaps cryptically) a special person or a legendary item, and so on. The prophecy might be one the wizard encounters in their research, it might be pronounced by some spirit they encounter, or it may come to them directly by mystical revelation.

Personal Growth: One of the most fun and rewarding experiences in roleplaying is portraying a character’s personal growth. Growth in this sense is not just gaining new powers and abilities: it’s growing into a better person. For example, maybe a wizard’s powers have gone to their head and they use magic when it’s not really necessary, for personal benefit or even just to feel powerful. Character growth for that wizard could be to come to a new understanding that their powers are a gift to be used for the benefit of mankind. Renaissance occult writings are very much concerned with elevating the magician’s moral and spiritual status. Pulling this off in a roleplaying game will require some negotiation between the player and the GM. Don’t be afraid to suggest what direction you think the character should go. After your character experiences a major change like this, you’ll probably rename one of their Aspects to reflect the change. This can occur as part of the milestone at the end of the story, in addition to gaining the Grand Enchantment spell.

Grand Enchantments for NPCs

The GM can also use Grand Enchantments as a plot device. A rival wizard, or cabal of wizards, could be preparing a Grand Enchantment that requires a multi-stage quest over several weeks or even several years. The player characters need to find out what the NPC wizards are really up to, and most likely, foil their evil plan – though it can also be interesting if the NPC wizards are attempting something important and beneficial and the PCs have to step in to make sure they succeed.

In the hands of NPCs, Grand Enchantments aren’t limited to the spells in the rule book. They can attempt any Grand Enchantment that would make a good plot device.  Here are some ideas:

• Cast a massive Curse that affects a whole country or a whole royal family

• Turn a human into a werewolf

• Conjure a very powerful spirit into material form

• Bring someone back from the dead (either for real or as a twisted undead monstrosity)

• Become King or Queen of a mortal kingdom, usurping the rightful ruler

• Create some kind of unstoppable weapon, such as a fire-breathing mechanical dragon

• Lift an ancient curse

Looking Back on 2019 and Ahead to 2020!

2019 was a landmark year for Shewstone Publishing. We definitely had our ups and downs. We had one significant setback and passed one major milestone. We earned our first revenue and published our first product. We’ll be ready to launch or first full-length RPG, Magonomia®, the game of Renaissance wizardry, in 2020.

Magonomia® Schedule - Crowdfunding in March

First things first. We will be crowdfunding Magonomia® on the specialty platform Game on Tabletop. The launch date of our campaign is March 14, 2020. Until recently, we had been aiming for February, but I decided to delay one month so we don’t have to rush the artwork.

Becoming a Real Publisher

In May of 2019, we released Magonomia® Starter Rules for pay-what-you-want on DriveThruRPG.com. This is literally our first product. As of yesterday December 31, we had exactly 400 downloads. Not bad! Since this is pay-what-you-want product, most people downloaded it for free, which is totally fine and encouraged. Enough folks did put some money in the digital tip jar that I can report business revenue on my 2019 taxes, which is a huge milestone. It takes a long time to get a business off the ground and earning revenue is the first milestone on the road to actual profitability.

I also had the pleasure of working with my friend and former gaming buddy John Tibbetts, who wrote our first published adventure for Magonomia®: “Curse of the One-Eyed Witch”. We have two products!

You’ve probably noticed the word Magonomia appears many times in this post with the little ® symbol next to it. In 2019, Magonomia® and the Magonomia logo became U.S. registered trademarks. What this means for customers is that Magonomia will be easy to find in a web search. For us, it was another step on the path to becoming a real publisher.

There’s just a lot of value in the experience of getting products out the door. Both of these products are serving well to help promote Magonomia. What I didn’t expect is that even with these free promotional products, I learned the ropes in this business. In 2019, I leveled up!

The 2019 Kickstarter: Less than Success

The big RPG publishers launch their Kickstarters a week before Gen Con so they can hype them at the convention. We tried to follow that lead and launched the Kickstarter for Magonomia in late July. This turned out to be a mistake. The major RPG publishers had big, polished projects to unveil and professional publicity to promote them. Magonomia’s Kickstarter got overshadowed. Our first Kickstarter did not reach its funding goal. Timing was only part of the story. There was a whole lot I thought I knew about crowdfunding an RPG, that wasn’t correct or that didn’t apply to us.

I cancelled the Kickstarter for Magonomia shortly before it was due to end. At the time, I was expecting to re-launch on Kickstarter after replanning the project due to lessons learned. However, I found out that Kickstarter, the company, had fired some employees who were trying to organize a union.

The remaining union organizers have asked creators and backers to continue using Kickstarter, but I prefer to take my business elsewhere. I’m not willing to become dependent on a business partner that abuses its workers and is needlessly combative toward union supporters. I shopped around for a new funding platform and I’m happy to say, the folks at Game on Tabletop have been very supportive and helpful. I’m working with them continuously to prepare for a successful funding campaign for Magnomia.

I made several mistakes with the first Kickstarter due to inexperience. Here is what will be different the next time around:

• There will be original artwork on the crowdfunding page. I thought the awesome cover illustration by Claudio Pozas would be enough, but it wasn’t. The common reaction was “where’s the artwork?” The RPG market has set certain expectations. More artwork up-front, coming soon!

• The market expects a funding goal of $5,000 or less from a small RPG publisher. I originally picked a higher goal ($12,000) because that was the break-even point based on my cost projections. I learned that the $5,000 expectation is real and I have to plan the project to be viable at that level. I found a way to do that, so we’re prepared for success next time around!

• Now I have a whole new marketing strategy that will actually work. It will rely more on Facebook and Twitter and much less on word-of-mouth. I had a lot of people promise me face to face they would back my Kickstarter, but only a few of them did. In other words, I learned a lot about marketing, very much from the school of hard knocks.

• Most importantly, a lot of gamers are leery of backing an RPG project that doesn’t look finished. I’ve personally backed multiple RPG projects that missed their delivery date by two years or more. So here’s another market expectation: you need to convince backers there’s a good chance they will actually get the game. That stings a little because I take pride in being reliable, but of course there is no reason for a stranger to believe I can follow through on a promise. The best I can do is get the manuscript completely done before asking again for people’s money, so that’s what’s happening for the 2020 relaunch.

Looking back, I was not properly ready for the Kickstarter campaign. I thought I knew what readiness looked like, but I didn’t. I had to go through the experience. Now that I have my priorities right, I’m fully confident we can fund Magonomia successfully on Game on Tabletop.

The Kickstarter was not all bad, though. Some things went very, very right! Strangers got excited about Magonomia. So many of the backers sent me kind words and helped to bring friends on board. The global Magnomia community started to take shape during the Kickstarter. It’s full of wonderful people. I am more eager than ever to deliver a great game for them so I can feed that community and be part of it as it grows.

Becoming Part of the Creator Community

The one person who did the most to help Shewstone Publishing rebound from the Kickstarter in good spirits is Jacky Leung of Death by Mage. One of the smartest moves Shewstone made in 2019 was to host a seminar on Magonomia at Gen Con. Jacky attended and he has been a fan, booster, and mentor since that day. He helped me plan the timing of the funding relaunch and he wrote a very warm review of the game based on the Starter Rules. He gave me a few words of advice on how to get started using Twitter and introduced me to the Discord creator community hosted by Domille’s Wondrous Works.

Connecting with other creators online has been a blast. I have made several new friends, been inspired, given back, grown, and loved every minute of it. In fact I would say finding my tribe online has leveled me up again!

Shewstone Publishing is starting 2020 as a third level publishing company. We’re now seriously ready for the challenge ahead: to secure funding for Magonomia artwork and layout and get the project completed by the end of the year!