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.

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(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.

Tales of Renaissance Wizardy: A Glass Half Full

by Chris Hopper

Tales of Renaissance Wizardry is a series of short adventure outlines for use in tabletop roleplaying games. ©2020 Shewstone Publishing LLC. You are permitted to use, modify, and redistribute this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike (CC BY-SA) license.

Background

Thirty years ago, Cassio Perno and his associates were invited by Henry VIII to bring Venetian glassmaking to London. For far too long the English aristocracy had relied on continental imports, and with the new church of England, many Catholic glassmakers were now beyond their reach. It was the king’s intent that cristallo soda glass and decorative engraving be brought not only to his new church, but to the secular world. And as England grew, so did the demand for glassware.

Queen Elizabeth has a more practical concern. Her wizards regularly require pure, stout glassware for alchemical concoctions. The stained glass, window, and table trade is great for England’s burgeoning economy, but the steady demand of wood-fired kilns is an expensive undertaking. Jean Carre, a Norman glassmaker relocated to the industrial forests of Sussex known as the Waeld, claims to have revolutionized the industry. His glass is stout and sturdy and, more importantly, made with coal and ash instead of fresh wood. The wealth of coal available in England would free up precious hardwoods for boats and buildings.  But before the queen signs an exclusive contract with him she wants you, her wizards, to put his product to the test.

One of the other experts, Cassio Perno, is set on sabotaging Carre to maintain his hold over the industry. When the wizards presence makes his plan more difficult, he resorts to increasingly extreme measures to ensure the Norman falls out of favor of the queen.

Scene 1: Meet the Glassmakers

The characters are called to Oxford, where Jean Carre is to present his new glassware to the Queen herself.  She is fond of her visits to Oxford, and excited for the opportunity to witness these claims firsthand. After the characters are briefed on this summons, read or paraphrase the following:

A light rain falls over the Jesus College in Oxford, splashing against the thick bubbled glass of the plated windows. A galley of court attendants crowds around flustered academics in the lecture theatre as a young huguenot sets up a series of demonstrations before the Queen and her advisors.

Jean Carre, the presenting huguenot, is a conservatively dressed calvinist with a thick french accent. He wears murrey woolens and the flat topped hat of a woodland worker, and seems out of place in both the bright silks of the court and the black robes of academia. After a series of basic demonstrations, he explains that his process is made using the by-product of industries the queen has already engaged. No longer will she have to burn precious oak, when his glass can simply be made with the leftover ash and lye.

Queen Elizabeth is not so easily won over. After a brief consultation with her trusted advisor and court magician Dr. John Dee, she declares that her wizards will be joining the academics in putting his alchemical equipment to the test.

As the attendants file out, Dee will take the opportunity to ask the characters what methods they’d like to use, and recommend a few of his own. He warns that there are many established suppliers of royal glass that don’t wish a newcomer competing on their field, and encourages the characters to keep an eye on the proceedings.

The attending experts from Oxford are: 

• Cassio Perno, an elaborately dressed man in his fifties. He speaks with only the faintest italian accent. He’s friendly and polite as decorum requires, but cruel-eyed and clearly intimidated by the younger craftsman. Perno is an accomplished Alchemist, with stats to challenge the wizards if it comes to open combat.

• Giuseppe Regio, a young Venetian specializing in avertine (opaque, copper-treated decorative glass). He prefers academic dress and is especially interested in the magical applications of alchemy.

• Siegfried Messer, a German chemist whose expertise is in explosives and other reactants. He’s here as a reagents expert, but also out of academic curiosity. He’s in his mid-forties and dresses unremarkably. Of the three, he’ll be the friendliest to the wizards.

Scene 2: The Tests

If they have the appropriate backgrounds, the characters may take a few moments to devise tests of their own, otherwise the academics do so. Choose one or two examples below as opportunities for the characters to interact with the experts, or to catch an act of malicious intent. It’s important that Perno not blow his cover at this phase: the sabotage is in the setup of the test, not the action itself.

Heat tolerance. The glass is placed inside a crucible that is fed bit by bit until the heat causes it to shatter. Perno will sneak a hotter burning wood like oak, birch, or cherry into Jean Carre’s side of the crucible.

Stain. Egg wash and silver powder paints are used to fill etchings on vibrant window glass. While this is decorative, it serves an important purpose for a number of magical applications as well. The wizards may use the piece to attempt a scrying challenge. Perno will dilute the silver with cadmium, burning it to a flat black if successful.

Acid. Increasingly dense concentrations of vitriol (sulphuric acid) are roasted into oil of vitriol. Perno will swap it with the dangerous Aqua Regia to destroy the glassware outright.

Thermal Density. Glassware is heated in the same crucible as before, then doused in water to see if it will crack. This would also be difficult to sabotage, but Perno may have some clever means of weakening the glass prior to it being heated.

The glassmakers brought their best pieces to Oxford, but after the Trials the academics will want to see the glassmaking process itself. Carre’s Wealder glasshouse is two days away by carriage, outside Tunbridge, south of London. The academics will gladly offer to share a carriage with the wizards the next morning.

Scene 3: That Night

The wizards are given rooms at Oxford for the night. These are well-appointed, though the town of Oxford is clearly straining economically. Elizabeth’s reign has made university towns rife with conflict between religious reformers, Catholics, and various class issues. If the wizards decide to sneak out for whatever reason, they may find themselves rolled into a ditch for their finery.

Cassio Perno hopes to use this as cover to murder Carre. He talks the Norman (and anyone who wants to tag along) to a pint at the Bear, where he slips a bit of Monkshood onto his glass. This maneuver is well-rehearsed, and should be hard (but not impossible) for the wizards to spot, if they’re present. If using Magonomia, the Subtle Poison Alchemy spell should be used for this.

Wizards who spot the action must work quickly to save Carre, and detain Perno at the Tavern. If he realizes he’s been caught, he’ll call on the aid of a couple of hired toughs and slip out into the night, relying on alchemy and stealth to avoid being personally involved in the fight.

 If the wizards were not in attendance at the tavern, it’ll be up to their investigative skills to uncover Jean Carre’s murderer.

Scene 4: Investigating the Murder

If the wizards didn’t visit the tavern, or failed to detect the poisoning, they’ll wake the next morning to find the campus buzzing about the death of their guest. As the queen’s wizards, they’ll be in a prime position to aid the local constabulary in the investigation. Interviewing the other experts and staff will reveal the following: 

• Cassio Perno will be open and honest about befriending Jean Carre by treating him to an evening at Oxford’s finest alehouse. He will allow the characters to search his quarters, having disposed of the poison outside the Bear last night.

• Giuseppe Regio joined Cassio and Carre, but turned in after a single drink. He didn’t hear or see anything else that night

• Siegfried Messer is too old for that, and hadn’t left the campus. He heard Carre stumbling around the room.

• A witness at the bar, a commoner or servant, may have seen Perno slip the poison.

Characters with divination or medical knowledge may detect the poison around Jean Carre’s room, which looks to have been tossed a bit before he collapsed into bed. If they pursue the murder to the Bear, a servant named Emma Burgess will have witnessed the poison slip, but have no evidence beyond her word. Searching the grounds will find the vial, but magic will again be required to link it to Cassio Perno.

Wrapping Up

If the characters prevented Carre’s murder, he’ll compose himself and demonstrate his remarkable process with pride, impressing the remaining wizards and academic experts with his simpler method of production and clear results.

If Carre is murdered and Perno captured or killed, the Crown will commend the wizards for dispensing justice but express their regrets at a failure to prevent catastrophe. 

If Cassio escapes, he’ll slip away from Oxford to lay low until the whole business is forgotten. He’s well established in London, and continues to provide his Murano methods for years. The remaining academics will attempt to reassemble Carre’s methods, but never fully reproduce his methods.

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The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men …

We played this scenario as part of the Magonomia Actual Play video series: you can watch the entire game session using the YouTube link below. I thought the scenario played very well — though in our case it didn’t quite go as written. That’s a strength, not a weakness, of the scenario: we went a little off script but the concept of this adventure was clear and complete enough that I (the GM) never felt lost or stuck.

When we launch the Shewstone Podcasts, one of our episodes will be an interview with me, the GM, and Chris, the writer, talking about what went well and what was most helpful in the material he wrote. Until then, you can check out our actual play video and compare for yourself!

— Andrew Gronosky

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

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