Wordcery
A downloadable game
Wordcery is a rules light tabletop roleplaying game. It is played by a Game Master (GM) and at least one other player.
Players act as adventurers, exploring dark and mysterious ruins in search of words of power, magically inscribed symbols of a forgotten language once spoken by an ancient civilization. When combined into a sentence and pronounced, they work as spells and their meaning is manifested into reality.
This is a publically available playtest and not the final game. Feedback is appreciated!
Based on Cairn by Yochai Gal
Designed by Gianmaria Vasino, Aldo Rambaudo
Writing, editing, and layout by Gianmaria Vasino
Text licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0
Download
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Development log
- 1.2 Playtest update16 days ago
- 1.1 Playtest update36 days ago
Comments
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Very cool idea for using this word magic system!
You write that you need at least two words, but just saying "cure" could be a spell on its own, right? Or do you always have to specify what or how you want to use it?
Maybe you could add a short example of play section or similar, so people could see a spell or relic in use +1
We should definitely include more examples in the manual. They will be some of the first things we will include in the next version.
When a player casts a spell they make a sentence of at least two words of power (connected by prepositions as they wish). Their intentions are described inside that sentence, with only the words of power they have and as best as they can. It’s up to the GM to interpret the sentence and see if the intentions are described with enough details or if there are other consequences or effects they did not consider. The more words you say the more specific the spell may get, but higher is also the WIL you pay if you fail the save.
Having spells with only one word can make it very hard to judge situations for the GM. One word spells are also a bit too powerful in my opinion. The objective of the game is to encourage the players to use their creativity in combining words, having the limitation of at least two words helps with that in my opinion. One word is not enough and by including the second word they try to not make the spell do something unexpected, so maybe they include a third word and so on… Otherwise they would just use powerful one word spells all the time.
Hopefully this was helpful! Stay tuned for more updates to the game and thanks a lot for the feedback.
I love this magic idea, it would be perfect for an Earthsea Game!
Thanks! We're still in development for this game, so stay tuned for more updates!