Wolf

Limitation is a big part of this world, as you may be able to tell from the post about the worldbuilding. It’s a world in decay, devastated by centuries of war with the gods. A history of dead gods, of gods who abandoned humanity, and so on.

This is the world that the magic entered. In the shattering of reality, magic spilled forth. And while it allows for amazing, impossible feats, the cost for these things is very high. It draws upon the caster’s life itself and so every casting of a spell requires your blood. In so doing, you give up HP for the possibility of performing magic.

But magic is a fickle, wild thing. While you may know how to perform magic, it may fail or twist upon you.

A high cost, high reward mechanical element. You give up some of your HP and you may be able to blast things!

There are no old mages. Only the young, burning their life up, spilling their blood to perform marvels, Miracles.

In addition, you may form alliances with demons and spirits, though these also come with a cost and are often quite temporary. The cost of breaking the alliance is also high and dangerous.

What I find interesting about this and why I had to do the worldbuilding before I defined this sort of thing is that these mechanical elements tie directly into the structure and history of the world itself. The same is also true of any magical implements, like amulets or magical weapons and armor.

But this is something I’m always trying to keep in mind with this game. Nothing is just mechanical and nothing is just flavor text or worldbuilding tomfoolery. The goal is for these two things to be meshed together and inform one another. The mechanics are worldbuilding and the worldbuilding is mechanical.

All is one. And all of this spills into practical questions players or GMs might have.

If magic is possible, what does this do to the politics of a city state? If there are no old mages, what does this mean for players? Is it worth it to lean heavily into magic?

Perhaps, of course, you’ll be the one to break such chains, to find a way to longevity through the twisted horror of magic.