Thread: Starting amount of Sorcery spells?

Originally Posted by nclarke

I found the MRQI Guilds, Factions and Cults and MRQII Empires books very useful for determining organisations.

Very nice example! I actually picked up the MRQ1 Guilds, Factions and Cults during a sale long ago, but haven't really looked at it yet. Was this material moved into Legends?

Originally Posted by The Rampant Gamer

You can set up shamanistic cults, mainstream religious organizations, sorcerous guilds, mercenary troops or anything else that might provide benefits (and obligations) in exchange for following their rules and meeting their requirements.

Seems like it could be very useful.

Originally Posted by Chorpa

I am in the making of an adventure based on the 0one's Blueprint Vale of the Mages that will also serve as a small school for sorcerers in my campaign.

Was it you who turned me on to 0one? It was someone on this forum. Man, that stuff is good. Vale of the Mages looks enticing as well.

So far none of the material from either MRQII Empires or MRQI Guilds, Factions and Cults has made it into Legend format. Both will slot right in to Legend however.

Empires has details of the Renown skill which I find to be very useful in determining if the heroes have any local influence and in determining if they can get an audience with the nobility compared to the slightly less focussed Influence only skill.

Much facile nonsense has been typed about ‘Trad’ and ‘Indie’ games but I’m going to assume that we all recognise that human behaviours are on a continuum and that any kind of labelling is only going to identify tendencies and clumps of behaviour.

All that taken as read

A ‘Trad’ GM acting as creator and curator of knowledge (and there are many such who have a wonderful time GMing and are fine human beings) is presumably going to enjoy using either official cults/organisations/grimoires or their own meticulously crafted ones.

I tend to the ‘Indie’ end.

I recognise that I’m too lazy for that legwork most of the time and that most of players are at least as imaginative as me (usually more so). So I’d favour this

Originally Posted by TrippyHippy

1) Roll a D6.
2) Have the player write a description of the contents of his Grimoire in game world narrative. Then draw out the various key words and ascribe spells that fit the themes therein.

(but probably 1d8 spells due to my years playing SB and Elric! And the association 8 – chaos- sorcery)

And allow a sorcerer to choose their own spells in said grimoire and build in their own plothooks and gameworld details to be used later.


Do I worry that this is license to munchkin/mini-max/etc?

Not really, if that happens it either indicates (to me) that
a) the player is a bit of a d!ck and we are going to fall out over much more important things anyway
b) I’ve made my game to confrontional/compettive and that maximising behaviour is probably a sensible survival strategy

Do I worry that I’m missing a chance to weld the character to my game world?

Not really, if it is really important that the Sorcerer is sworn foe of Archmage Pohl Danjels then I can always add that anyway. Plus the vast majority of players I’ve sat at the table with will add interests and complications that I’d either
a) never have thought of
b) never have dared to impose

Originally Posted by Chaot

Was it you who turned me on to 0one? It was someone on this forum. Man, that stuff is good. Vale of the Mages looks enticing as well.

Yeah I think that was me.
Love their stuff myself. Well made maps you can easily adapt and slide into any fantasy campaign and in some cases other genres. It is easy to just pick a product and whip up an adventure around it. Funny thing with Vale of the Mages that I had incorporated that idea into my own campaign world long before I discovered the product in the 0one Games product list. I called it Valley of Wizards from the beginning but after the discovery of the product the name changed to Vale of the Mages.