MAGE Engine Monday #1: Cleanup and Magnitude

Hello, hello!

This is the first update of MAGE Engine's public playtest so far, so let's make it a good one! The plan is to put out a MAGE Engine Monday post every other week, and along with it any major updates or modifications to the main document. That way there's a nice, steady pace of additions and revisions to chew on.

This time around was a little light--mainly, we polished a couple things up, snipped and tied off some loose ends in the main document and embellished a few things that needed embellishing. We also added a new reference table for Magnitude, a trait of certain Arts that allow them to scale a bit in effect with level. A lot of Arts on the Generic tables were polished up as a result!

Similarly, to keep gamemaster bookkeeping and required page-hopping to a minimum, NPC skills no longer reference Arts. In line with baked-in skills for the boss monsters like manticores, NPC skills are now a list of simple, evocative once-per-encounter abilities. Hopefully this helps make NPCs feel more dynamic when you run them.

This is also a good space to tease future plans!

What we're looking to add by the next MAGE Engine Monday:

• An oracle system for solo play and GM emulation!
• Hireling traits!
• More detail for nations and mortal kin!
• Illustrations, by yours truly (maybe)!