Read Through: The Magpie Codex

June 7, 2009 4 comments

Paul Jessup’s The Magpie Codex is a simple yet highly entertaining fantasy roleplaying game. Whether it’s Old School or a retro-clone is a moot point to me, because I don’t think it’s either. Jessup has used the OGL, it’s true, and the tropes of the game are very familiar to those who have played early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, but Magpie isn’t trying to duplicate either a style of play as the Old School movement does, nor does it seek to replicate an out-of-print rules set the was retro-clones do. Magpie is its own animal, an attempt to streamline those familiar tropes. I would go so far as to describe it as what Basic D&D might look like today if 3^rd edition had never happened.

Read my interview with Paul Jessup at Examiner.com

Character generation goes like this: You roll 3d6 a total of six times, and assign the scores to Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. You pick a Class, and add modifiers. You pick a Race, and add modifiers. You buy equipment. Seem familiar? Here’s where Magpie diverges. You have five Saving Throws, which are really more like meta-skills. They’re called Feats, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking 3e or 4e Feats. These are Feats of Agility, Feats of Prowess (athletic stuff), Feats of Persuasion, Feats of Knowledge, and Feats of Perception. Just about anything you’d want to do, aside from fighting and spellcasting, can be done with these. The bonus for each feat is figured by taking the bonus of two relevant attributes – Feats of Persuasion, for example, is based on Wisdom and Charisma – and adding them together with your Luck score.

Luck is probably the most controversial element of the game. At character creation you roll a die. If you roll an even number, you get a +1 to everything. this is a correction in the errata; in the original rules, if you rolled odd you got a -1 to everything. Luck is something that can be affected by GM caveat, and there are examples of how the GM can use Luck to fudge things in the characters’ favor during play. While I understand the intention of the rule as written, it’s the one thing about the game I would immediately house rule and make more concrete. I would have all characters start with a Luck of 0. Upon rolling a natural 20 (or doing something awesome in-game), I’d give them a +1 for the rest of the game session. If they rolled a natural 1, I’d give them a -1 for the rest of the game session. These modifiers cancel each other out, so if you rolled a 20 and later rolled a 1 it would simple cancel the bonus back to 0. This could also be limited specifically to certain types of Feats; roll a 20 on a Feat of Persuasion, for example, you get a +1 to all other Persuasion rolls for the rest of the session.

Each character also has an Attack score, a Defense score, and a Magic score. Roll d20 + Attack, beat the target’s Defense +10, you hit. Other tasks are rated with difficulties from 0 to 5, with 0 being “don’t bother rolling, you succeed”, 1 being a target number of 10, 5 being a target number of 30. Easy enough. You roll to cast magic, with a target number of 15 for spells for your level. You can cast spells above your level, with difficulty adjusted higher.

Classes are Fighter, Mage, Rogue and Mystic, with sub-classes of Barbarian, Hermetic Knight, Ranger, Pirate, Thief, Scout, Alchemist, Elementalist, Illusionist, Druid, Healer and Monk. There are no attribute prerequisites for any of these, but each class offers bonuses and penalties for attributes and saving throws as well as a special ability or spell list. Class also determines die type for hit points.

Races include Dwarves, Elves, Faeries, Giant-Kin, Half-Elves, Halflings and Humans. As with Classes, there are no prerequisites but each race has attribute and save modifiers and special abilities.

There are rules for creating your own races, classes, magic items, and monsters via a sort of point-balance system. It’s about is easy as creating a character, probably moreso, and makes GM prep and customization of the rules to suit your own setting a breeze.

The spell list is very minimal, but I’m okay with that. The ability to cast higher or lower level spells makes up for quantity, and the quality and variety is there. One thing I’d like to have seen is a guideline or formula for creating new spells, as there is for classes, races, etc, but it can easily be fudged. The book hints at the future release of spell book supplements per class.

The creature and animal companion sections are likewise small, but the inclusion of rules for building monsters compensates. Again, the book hint at the release of a monster supplement in the future.

My overall impression? I like it very, very much. It’s crucial to use the errata, though. This caps Attributes at 20 and bonuses at +3 per Attribute for starting characters. Without that errate, it’s possible to min/max characters with It packs a lot into 99 pages, It makes me feel like I felt when I was 14 years old and picked up the Red Box for the first time. It gives me very simple rules and rules for expanding on this sucker myself. It makes me want to run it, which is really the ultimate test of a roleplaying game, and it makes me want to play it. Other than the Luck hack I mentioned about, I don’t want to tweak it, I want to expand upon it, and again the rules for adding my own stuff are right there for me. This is everything I was looking to accomplish when I started fiddling with doing a Risus fantasy game last year. Do not be surprised if any future fantasy game material I put out in the future is geared toward The Magpie Codex.