Also known as "DMBYLF, LIBYIS!"
"I am an All Powerful Wizard possessing Untold Eldritch Capabilities and Knowledge That Which Man Was Not Meant to Comprehend! Naturally I am exceptionally busy dealing with Conundrums and Catastrophes beyond any Mortal Ken, but sadly, these mundane realms are full of irritations, intimations, and irrigations. For these, I have amassed a coterie of highly trained and capable agents, enacting my will in all manner of courts and caverns far, far from my lofty, yet exceedingly comfortable, Wizard Tower."
"Unfortunately, my lofty perceptiveness has failed to account for a minor assortment of quibbles, foibles and dribbles, simply due to how boring and simplistic they all are. Luckily, I have my misKellaneous array of bound demons, familiars, sentient spells, sundry intelligent magical items, and utterly useless apprentices to sort out things in the Kingdom of Whatever. So... what are you all waiting for? Get out of here, you filthy mongrels! Do My Bidding You Loathsome Fiends, Lest I Blast You Into Smithereens!"
The Rules
- The Wizard is busy. Interrupting his work, especially at critical junctions, will likely result in a Fate Worse Than Death
That's it. That's the Rule.
The Guidelines
- You should really try and get as many things on the list done as possible, as soon as possible
- Coming up with a tricksy interpretation or technicality of a vague instruction has a reduced chance of working, but not zero
- If you ask the Wizard for help, there is a 50% chance that they cast a single spell, and a separate 50% chance that they obliterate whoever asked. These chances can modified with circumstances
- If you can't get something to the Tower, but can arrange it for the specific time the Wizard demands, that'll do
- If you need cash, you can sell something lying around the place for a bunch. 10% chance that the Wizard needed it for his work, whoever is responsible for selling it needs to get it back or suffer, you guessed it, a Fate Worse Than Death
- If you need a sword, someone is going to have to play as The Sword. Make sense?
The List
- A hair from the head of a princess
- The steeple of a church
- The weirdest bottle in the most popular bar
- Part of the front door of a bank (not the vault)
- A twig from the oldest tree in the forest
- Kill this one guy, make sure everyone knows I did it, and won't forget it in a hurry
- True Love, preferably between two young adults
- Lots and lots of shoelaces
- A living goat with three horns
- A broken oath
- An assortment of curses
- A rare cheese. If it's the last of that particular type of cheese, so much the better
- A famous unsolved riddle
- Fourteen engagement rings
- The deed to land in the capital city
- Dreams, the more vivid the better
- The biggest and loudest bell in the area
- Prize winning livestock, a hog or something?
- A beloved pet
- Dust from the lowest floor of a dungeon
- Uncut gemstones, variety over size
- Hat, wand, robe or slippers of a rival wizard
- One coin from a dragon’s hoard
- Fluid from a witches cauldron
- Retrieve this orb without looking into it
- Get someone important to steal this box
- Find my lost "horse"
- Retrieve the lost child of that peasant couple, or whatever will stop them from whining. Can’t just kill them, sadly
- One of those weird fish from the bottom of the ocean, not exactly sure which type though so get a few
- Unicorn poop
- Torque, and lots of it, as much as you can get
- A lost cause
- Three letters, as scandalous as possible. Doesn't matter if they are true or not
- Arrange a romantic evening. It's not for me (it might be though)
- Get this law passed through the parliament
- Build a temple
- Make the tallest building in the city shorter than the current second-tallest
- A single flower of this particular orchid. It's extinct, I checked
- Take this barrel of love potion and get as many people as possible dosed with it at the same time (lasts about 10 minutes with a normal dose)
- Get three or more heroes showing up at the tower to rescue the same person at the same time
- As much unrotten dead meat as you can get. Bug-meat counts
- 600 kilogrammes of metal
- An artisan, of pretty much any kind
- Lava
- One drop of blood from one hundred different people
- A parade
- "Start a rumour"
- A real royal crown, but only for about a minute, then you can put it back
- Something from space
Things you might find in the Wizard's Tower
- Launch catapult for rapid deployment
- Well-stocked kitchen and bar
- Servitor spirits
- Animated armour and gargoyles
- "Defences" and "Pest Control"
- Partly dissected god
- Ritual altars for a wide variety of cults
- Multi-dimensional library
- Vast basements digging into the bedrock
- Rooftop telescope
- Bound superintelligent entity
- Regular visiting heroes seeking wisdom
- Moat full of crocodiles
- Artefact-level weapon
- Enchanted paintings of famous people
Fates Worse Than Death
- Ha! It was death anyway. Head Explodes
- Slowly dissolved in weak acid over months
- Transformed into a chamber pot
- Teleported into space
- Turned into a frog
- Bone confiscation
- Turned inside-out
- Dunce Cap of Idiocy glued to your head
- Dire Wasp nest grown in your ribcage
- Eyes set on fire every ten minutes. Also, your arms fall off
- Buried alive (yikes)
- Turned into a tree, birds poop on you all the time
- Strapped onto the target in the wand test-firing range
- Banished to a dimension full of vomit demons
- Lungs, kidneys and liver all escape
- BEES
- Skeleton takes control, runs you into sharp things to get rid of gross meat
- Sliced in half, both halves still alive
- Shot out of a cannon into a volcano
- You'll never know exactly what they did to you...
Character Creation
Take a Form and two Powers (potentially modified by your Form). All Forms have implied capabilities and weaknesses.
Form
- Imp: Can't be killed by physical harm. Sacrifices improve your Powers
- Demon: Eat a Tasty Soul to gain 1 Power. Sacrifices improve your Powers
- Spell: Partial manifestation, you can cast yourself whenever you want
- Cantrip: Full manifestation, you can cast yourself all the time
- Familiar: Beastly, Birdly, Buggy (probably "Dire")
- Familiar: Blobby, Baleful, Bonkers
- Elemental: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Plant, Metal, or something weirder
- Apprentice: You're a human
- Child: -1 Power, but you can get up to 2 extra from unlocking your potential
- Ghost: No physical form, you can float through walls, but you can't touch anything
- Monster: -1 Power, but you are fast and brutal. Also, you have a combat ability (Skeleton, Stunted Dragon)
- Golem: -1 Power, but you are strong and hardy. Designed for a particular purpose (Iron Stove Golem, Frankenstein)
- Servant: -2 Power, but you're secretly incredibly competent at something (Butler, Gardener, Bard)
- Gremlins: -2 Power, but there's vast numbers of you. Shame how generally useless you are
- Item: +1 Power, but you haven't got a proper body (Grimoire, Staff, Orb, Hat)
- Weapon: You are enchanted or enhanced, but don't have a proper body (Sword, Gun)
- Test Subject: +1 Power. Generally weird, the Wizard has a closer eye on you
- Minor Godling: +1 Power, but your powers only apply to your godly domain (The "Oh God Why" of Things Stuck in Drawers, The Death of People Trampled By Their Own Horse)
- Cryptid: You're never directly seen, even by the other characters, operating in the shadows
Power
- Chaos Burst: Cast a random spell on a random target
- Ritual Spell: Can be cast once you complete a slightly irritating ritual
- Spell Charge: Cast it three times before you need to be recharged
- Elemental Affinity: Communicate and coerce chosen element
- Shapeshift: Can't use other abilities while transformed, must pick a limitation of your choice
- Hobby: Unnaturally capable in a mundane discipline, like gardening, fishing, lumberjackery
- Bookish: Know everything there is to know about a very specific topic, like diplomacy, military history, or explosives
- Arcane Craft: You can turn a spell and/or source of power into (d4): 1. Rune, 2. Scroll, 3. Potion, 4. Wand
- Murderous Instinct: Never surprised in combat, always surprise enemy
- Stalwart: In hand-to-hand combat, you count as two fighters
- Healing Touch: Ease pain and suffering, or share your life-force directly
- Third Eye: You can move your perspective to somewhere you can currently see
- Additional Sense: Echolocation, Electrical, Olfactory, or Otherwise
- Flight: Either wings or slow levitation
- Blast: Takes a round to charge up
- Illusion: Make something appear as something else, difficult to conjure from nothing
- Telekinesis: A single psychic hand
- Word of Power: Make a one-word demand of Reality, hopefully it'll go well
- Nudge Spell: When you see a spell being cast, you can change one or two letters of it
- Portal: Takes time and effort to make a portal to a known destination. Maximum one pair open at a time
- Alternate Human Form: Can't use other abilities while transformed (perhaps you look like The Wizard?)
- Friends: You have several assistants and buddies
If you want, you can sacrifice one Power to increase the potency of another ability.
Very good, and I think I can adapt to supernatural bureau quite easily.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteFantastic. It's a little hard to use right out of the box, but I'm absolutely in love with the concept.
ReplyDeleteThank you, and I would agree. I'd say that when I ran it, it benefited from just gradually feeling out how the other players were feeling in regards to rules and such. In the end, no dice were used at all!
Delete