There’s a stark difference between video games and tabletop games when it comes to being able to create magic as a player. It’s odd that TTRPGs, with their endlessness of possibilities, have a hard time tapping into this particular form of creativity. Well I tried to change that, found out why this is, but made my own system anyway. Enjoy!

Effects

Items are deemed magical if their behaviour is unexpected or impossible. Wondrous possibilities are vital for any magical crafting systems worth implementing.

In my opinion, magic is most fun when it’s a double-edged sword. Positive effects you’d want to apply to an ally have a potential downside, negative effects you’d want to apply to enemies come with inconvenient benefits. Aside from dampening their power, balanced effects also improve the amount of situations they’re useful in.

For example: Turning one’s skin to chainmail. They become more difficult to harm, yet take a hit in movement speed as well. Useful in defensive situations to become more resilient yourself, or in chases where you’d want to halt a particular guard’s dexterity. Not the other way around.

Targets

Magic can alter its environment in several ways:

• affect specific creatures
• affect certain items
• affect entire locations

It’s very possible to fold all these effects into a crafting system, but difficult as well. Freeform crafting systems often fail by trying to be too broad. Each unique implementation makes the rules of engagement exponentially hard to set in stone. So I limited the scope: runes only affect specific creatures.

Creating a variety of ways to target individuals is more difficult than coming up with cool magical effects. Creatures have a limited variety of properties, so which are most gameable? Their touch? Their name? Their… blood? Whichever property is chosen has a lot of consequences down the road. Suddenly it’s a goal to collect every villager’s blood.

Runecrafting Mechanics

So, tools with runes carved onto them can wield powerful effects. A rune consists of 2 parts: a target, and an effect.

• Target: The bottom diamond-shaped part of a rune determines who’ll be affected by the rune.
• Effect: The top circular part of a rune determines what that effect will be.

Carving a rune onto a tool isn’t enough. A rune-carved tool needs to be struck by lightning before it turns into a magical tool (with charged rune). The wielder of a rune-carved tool may apply its effect any time its target is triggered. This exhausts the rune, which automatically recharges in 8 hours. The rune’s Target + Effect are always known to its wielder.

Playtesting this showed me that these mechanics have to be as simple / intuitive as possible. The lightning requirement sounds harsh, but it’s meant to limit the ease of crafting. It gives control to the GM, since they can feed players possibilities to create lightning at their own rate.

The Pamphlets

With the mechanical rulings out of the way, adventures can be molded from their foundation. The system is easy to iterate and expand upon, but also usable as a one-time thing. As an example, I’ve made a few (setting-agnostic) pamphlet dungeons that serve as an inroad to drop runecrafting into your home game.

If that doesn’t quench your appetite yet, there’s also a crowdfunding campaign running. It’s goal is to publish a full zine utilizing runecrafting through gameplay and story. If that sounds interesting, I’d love your support!

Cheers, Willem-Jan

If you would like more hand-made one-shot content, you could subscribe to our adventure feed to stay up to date with all dungeon goodness and receive a free one-page adventure.

Files

Get Runes in Ruin