Living Grimoires - Freeform (but closed ended) Whitehack Magic for Into the Odd

Spell Lists or Freeform Magic?

Although I find spell list style magic fun, running Macchiato Monsters has showed me how much I enjoy the flexibility and open ended-ness that comes with more freeform magic systems. And because I appear to make a habit of taking whatever my most recent RPG obsession and hacking it for Into the Odd (I previously adapted GLOG magic into a cassette tape system for Electric Bastionland), here's my attempt at find a way to take a freeform system like Whitehack's miracles (or Macchiato Monsters spells) and fit it into the largely item based world of Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland. 

Something I specifically wanted to avoid in crafting this sytem was making it so flexible as to nullify other methods of approach. A lot of the fun of rules light games is finding new and interesting ways to apply the resources you have, so I didn't want to create a system that replaced that gameplay with more rules.

Another factor in finding a way to limit the freeform casting is that although I enjoy working with players to create unique spells and effects, doing so every single time a spell is cast can be somewhat laborious (which is why I wrote this flowchart for Macchiato Monsters). Additionally, some of the fun of magic comes from finding new ways to apply niche existing spells in clever ways, so I wanted a system where players would have a set spells they could keep going back to.

The Whitehack does this to some degree by requiring spell effects thematically match the overall name of the "miracle", and narrow miracle wordings are encouraged with a discount on casting cost. I took it a step further, by setting a limit for how many different spells can fit within a single Grimoire. In some sense, this is a "write your own spell list" system, and if a player wants more spells they'd better find a way to get more Grimoires (probably by way of murdering some wizards).

With ITO rules, depending on HP levels and spell cost, many spells will be essentially “free” to cast outside of combat or other perilous situations. That’s as intended, and if an effect seems like it would cause problems if it were able to be cast over and over just apply some unique restriction or requirement to it.

One benefit of this "system" is that it doesn't have to be added to a game wholesale. It's entirely contained within an item, so letting players find a single Grimoire means you can add a dash of magic to the game without fully committing to a whole system.

All that being said, it’s entirely unplaytested so who knows.

Living Grimoires

Grimoires tomes of stored knowledge and magic. They're alive and want to be used, but only in a way pleasing to their nature.

MTG has a lot of good magic book artwork.

Each Grimoire has a title indicating its contents and personality, and can hold 6 spells; those containing 4 or more spells are Bulky (due to the weight of unearthly knowledge). Some Grimoires may come with prewritten spells, but most will just have blank space ready for new spells to be inked. Each Grimoire has a specific way in which spells may be added related to its title.

When stolen or recovered from a former owner, roll a Luck die to see which (if any) spells remain intact.

If you are playing a more traditional game, instead of having players write their own spells a Grimoire might come pre-written.  Access to each spell would only be granted when the current owner has performed certain tasks or paid appropriate respect to the tome.

Casting Spells

To cast a spell, hold the Grimoire in both hands and speak the incantation aloud.

Casting the spell deals damage to you (ignoring armor) equal to its cost (from a d4 to a d12).

Excess damage is dealt to WIS/CHA, and a failed WIS/CHA save results in unconsciousness (or rolling on your favorite spell misfire table).

Spellcrafting

To write a spell, declare what you wish for the spell to do. The effects must be within the scope of the Grimoire's title.

To set the cost, start at a d4 to get one of:

• A fleeting moderate effect
• d6 damage
• A lasting minor effect
  

Step up die for:

• Improved effect (more powerful, more useful, more specific, etc)
• More damage
• Additional Targets
• Longer duration
  

Step it up again for lots of one of those things. For example step up once for second target, and twice for Blast/Area.

Step down die for:

• Narrow effects
• Significant drawbacks
• Negative side effects
• Complicated or lengthy casting
• Specific requirements

If you need a higher die size than d12 it's either not within the scope of the spellbook, or will require additional drawbacks, requirements, or steps.

Spells that seem like a poor fit for the Grimoire's title are either impossible, or require a significant drawback or limitation that makes them more suitable.

Make a note of the spell’s name, effects, and cost. Remember each Grimoire can only store a certain number of spells.

Make the spells interesting! Spells with very direct, useful effects will be expensive, and boring spells will piss off the Grimoire. If you have to jump through a few hoops to make it work, that’ll lower the cost to manageable levels. 

Honestly you could do worse than just stealing Grimoire names from MTG.

Scrolls

Individual spells might be found (or created) as scrolls. Depending on the limitations of your world, scrolls might be single use. Or they might be reusable, but have the option to be destroyed during casting in order to negate the cost.

Examples

The Path of Flame -  New spells must be burned into the Grimoire using a heated piece of metal.

1. Flame Friend - d4 - Summon a orb of flame that will follow the caster for a day and provide illumination.
2. Salamander's Lockpick - d6 - Superheat a small piece of metal to weaken or melt it.
3. Purifying Flame - d6 - With a touch purge a poison, disease, or enchantment from a target. Deals 1d4 damage directly to STR and leaves a hand print burn.
4. Oathkeeper's Light - d8 -  Ignite a small white flame as an oath is sworn. The flame will internally ignite any who breaks the oath, dealing them d6 damage directly to STR every sunrise.
   
5. Circle of Protecting Flame - d10 - Trace a closed loop with a flammable material. As long as you stay within the enclosed space, anything attempting to cross will cause the loop to erupt into flame dealing 1d12 damage.
6. The Classic - d12 - Shoot a spark of flame that explodes to deal 1d10 Blast damage.

The Catalog of Lesser Spirits - New spells may be added by requesting them from the spirit of the Grimoire itself, along with a suitable gift (it likes fresh flowers to press within its pages).

1. Loyal Lock - d4 - Animate a lock and command it to open or close. It will do so and remain in that state until someone with a higher CHA countermands the order.
2. The Devil’s in the Dust-Trails - d6 - Blow dust at a mark on a surface (scratch, scuff, footprint, etc). The dust will briefly animate to show you what caused the mark.
3. If These Walls Could Talk - d6 - Draw a mouth on a wall with saliva. Using that mouth the wall will answer one question to the best of its ability (walls know about things that occurred near them, as well as things that support them or that they support).
4.  Bleeding Edge - d4 - Awaken bloodthirst in a bladed weapon. Its next strike deals max damage, but if that hit does not cause Critical Damage it will deal 1d4 STR damage to its wielder.
5. Threshold Sentinel - d8 - Take 10 minutes to awaken the spirit of a doorway (or similar space) and choose a pass code. The spirit will prevent anyone from passing through the doorway unless they know the pass code (dealing 1d12 damage to anyone that forces their way through). Lasts a day, but if cast every day for a week becomes permanent.
6. Spectral Courier - d4 - Press a minor spirit into service to deliver a message to a named person. Most spirits travel only as fast as a walk, although they do so in a straight line.
   

Atlas of Flesh & Bone - New spells must be inked in blood, using a pen carved from bone.

1. Indefinite Loan - d6 - Restore 1d4 STR or DEX by transference between two creatures you touch.
2. Maximize Minimize - d4 - Touch a creature to set one of STR or DEX to 18 for 10 minutes. That stat is then set to 3 for another 10 minutes.
3. Bonus Limbs - d6 - Grant a creature d4 extra limbs (of your choice). After 10 minutes they dry out and fall off.
4. Bone Sense - d4 - You know the exact location of every bone within a 50 foot radius for 10 minutes.
5. No Mask? No Mask! - d8 - Reshape a person's face as though it were putty (a reference will likely be needed to aid the artist if the goal is disguise). Lasts until sunrise.
   
6. Monstrous Melding - d12 - Transplant a monster's organ or limb into a willing subject, they gain some aspect of the power or abilities of the donor. Will last for a week, but if this spell is cast again within that duration the effect becomes permanent (some side effects may occur).
   

Learning to Jam with ELECTRIC WIZARDS! - Eclectic Bastion Jam Post Mortem

 

I recently participated in the Eclectic Bastion Jam, an RPG game jam centered around Electric Bastionland. Hacks, modules, items, adventures, and more were accepted so long as they were at least tangentially related to Electric Bastionland or Into the Odd.

ELECTRIC WIZARDS! was my entry into the jam, and I'm honestly pretty pleased with how it came out.

I wanted to get down "on paper" my process for the design, writing, and layout of the module,  collect the specific resources I used to put everything together, and talk through some things I learned along the way.

This ended up being much more meandering and unfocused than I'd originally envisioned, but hopefully someone else finds this info useful! If you'd rather skip me blathering on about my "process" and just want the resources I used, scroll to the bottom.

Game Jams?

Something I've learned about myself and writing is that without deadlines, I'll never get anything done. I mostly learned this in academia (research papers, proposals, conference submissions, even my friggin dissertation) but it has stayed very true in RPG writing. The first piece of RPG writing I actually finished (outside of stuff for personal use) was for Dissident Whispers, where I wrote and laid out one module, and wrote another (and then people much more talented than me created art and layout for it). During that project, the time from starting to when the writing was due was 72 hours. My first module (The Mechanical Menagerie of Michael Moreau, MD) was something I'd been working on prior to joining Dissident Whispers, but once I was in a position where things had to get done I was somehow able to actually do it. And then do it a second time, because I finished earlier than expected and wrote another module, The Crumbling Carmine Ruins, for Mausritter.

After Dissident Whispers was done, I went back to fiddling with a bunch of different projects and not really making any progress on things.

Which is all a long way to say, I need deadlines and specific goals to actually finish things. If you have similar problems I highly recommend joining game jams As far as I can tell they are designed specifically to give you a deadline to get you to finish things.

(Dissident Whispers is a community collection of one page RPG modules published and sold to raise money for the National Bail Fund. Get it here (it's incredible) or read play reports for my playthroughs of several of the modules here).

Module Goals

So deadline ahead of me, I decided to pull up an old blog post of mine about using the Goblin Laws of Gaming wizard magic (as filtered through Masuritter) in Electric Bastionland. Electric Bastionland is all about items and objects, rather than innate power, so cassette tapes containing magic spells was my plan to fit both the mechanics and the aesthetic of the game. 

What I wanted to do was go a bit deeper with the mechanics than I did in the original blog post, and flesh it out into an actual module.

I went through a spectrum of different options for what I wanted in the module: starting with simply the rules adapting GLOG magic plus a handful of spells, all the way to a huge module with an entire borough including 8 wizard towers each of which would be a fleshed out adventure location ready for running heists to steal ætheric technology. There was going to be a faction war between the litigious Royal Thaumaturgical Society trying to keep magic locked down, and the FLOSS (Free Legerdemain and Open Sorcery Society) trying to spread it to the masses.

In the end I managed to fight back the feature creep and created the following goals:

• Rules for Cassette Tape GLOG magic integrated into existing Electric Bastionland rules.
• 6 "GAUNTLETS", the devices used to cast Cassette Tape spells.
• 18 total spells, suitably "Bastionland-y".
  
• 6 GAUNTLET mods to customize the above GAUNTLETS.
• 2 Failed Careers, as a way to communicate the tiny slice of setting, and as a quick way for people to start with a GAUNTLET and SPELL.
  

Once I got into the writing and layout, it ended up shifting a bit. One failed career got cut and I added 6 oddities to go alongside the 6 GAUNTLET mods. But this is what I had in mind once I sat down to start working on the module in earnest.

Making Magic

I'm not going to restate the full set of rules here, but to briefly explain: it's GLOG magic. contained in physical items, combined with Electric Bastionland's HP system. If you want the full explanation, just go download my module, it's free!

To bring magic into Electric Bastionland I had a few goals to help it mesh together nicely:

Goal 1: It had to be very rules light.

Electric Bastionland has very few rules so adding any new ones has to be done carefully. GLOG magic is pretty straightforward and lightweight, so no trouble there, but the main trick was stopping myself from layering even more rules on top.

Starting with Mausritter's version of GLOG magic, I had originally been tracking charges per spell (or per cassette in my case) with unique recharge conditions. This is very fun, and I like it a lot (it works great in Mausritter) but for the scale and pace of how I run Electric Bastionland I found it unwieldy. Making the GAUNTLET holding the charges meant only one number was tracked, and it played more nicely with creating different GAUNTLET variants.

The next thing to handle was saving throws or hitting moving targets. Originally I just had nothing, spells simply did what they said. That restricted possible spell designs too much, as lots of potentially fun effects would also become instant kill spells if used on enemies.

The simple solution was to just let enemies make a DEX or CHA save to avoid a spell's effects, but I dislike that sort of binary resolution when handling things like spells. If you've sunk resources into something, it's frustrating when the outcome is just "nothing happens".

The solution I ended up sticking with was to tie the magic directly into the usual Hit Protection system for Electric Bastionland. HP in Electric Bastionland is already explicitly the ability to avoid harm, so if casting a spell is treated mechanically like an attack it works perfectly.

When you case a spell it is treated as an attack(using the highest die rolled as "damage" and only if it gets past their Hit Protection will it effect the enemy. Now even on a miss, you're still exhausting their ability to avoid further spells or attacks. It encourages teamwork in combat, since you might need your party to keep an enemy pinned down with normal attacks in order to get your spell through. Plus I get to take advantage of Bonus Damage (Enhanced in ITO) and Impaired attacks without any further complication on my part. Any time rules can do double duty it's a win.

At one point rewinding a cassette safely took time, a full 10 minutes, but you could rush the process by manually (maybe with a pencil) at risk of things going wrong. I eventually realized the main reason I had included this was just to make the pencil rewinding joke, and that wasn't worth the extra rules baggage. After a couple more iterations, I ended up dropping rewinding tapes altogether.

In the end I like where the systems landed, although I am probably just about doubling the total rules word count. Electric Bastionland is so pared down it's very hard to add extra systems without everything seeming unwieldy or heavy.

Goal 2: It had to be item based. 

It should be something anyone could pick up and use. It had to be a physical item that could be traded, bought, or stolen. Magic being a tangible thing you could hold was important, and Mausritter provided a great starting place. 

Cassette tapes are a fun, eminently tangible thing to use. The nice "cachunk" they make as you slot them into a player is permanently burned into my brain.

Using power glove type things as the requirement for casting is also great, because who doesn't want to run around shooting fireballs out of a power glove?

Goal 3: It had to have a high "shenanigan coefficient". 

 By which I mean straightforward spells with an obvious, useful purpose are boring. Weird, obscure spells that lend themselves to several convoluted purposes are better. I want players to be initially confused or amused by a spell's description and then start scheming. Spells shouldt lend themselves to odd uses, or encourage players to come at a problem sideways. 

Just imagine the goofs players would get into using this.

There are already literally hundreds of GLOG spells out there, and I don't think anyone benefits by a few more reskins of standard DnD spells being thrown onto the pile. I don't think I was entirely successful in this, but I'm generally pretty happy with my final spell lists.

This same process is also what went into the design of the Oddities and GAUNTLET Mods. The Troika! spell list was also a great source of inspiration, showing that you can make traditional effects interesting again with strange enough trappings (see the Invisibility spell for my favorite example).

Layout

I'm very much a novice at layout, but wanted to try to do something that would be visually exciting to look at. This ended up turning into doing a different visually exciting thing on every single spread, which in retrospect was probably a bit over the top and also makes the entire module a bit incoherent to read through. I do like where it ended though, so I'm not too down on myself for this.

I used Affinity Publisher (technically the free trial of it) for doing the layout (with a bit of Affinity Photo for editing).

I approached the layout by trying to make each page resemble a specific thing. Layout was much easier when I had an end result in mind, so aiming for something real I could look at to reference helped a ton. I could usually figure out how to mimic the layout of something, but struggled much more with making the layout both easy to read and visually interesting on its own without there being any "gimmick" to the look. Evocative is easier than original, at least for me.

In order, after the intro and rules page, the visuals I was attempting to replicate are:

• Patent Document
• Cassette Tape Insert
• Dot Matrix Printout
• Government Form
• Comic Book Advertisement Pages

For specific aspects of layout details I highly recommend finding things made by people who are actually good at layout, and shamelessly stealing their ideas. The first thing I tried to lay out myself was my Troika! module in Dissident Whispers, where I used a flowchart style "map" which I borrowed from Sean McCoy's layout in the Ypsilon-14 Mothership Module.

The rest of Dissident Whispers (i.e. the parts that I didn't do layout for) is an amazing exhibition of tons of different layout styles and techniques. It's a fantastic smorgasbord of excellent ideas to borrow from.

One layout "trick" I used that's is worth highlighting, if only because it's on nearly every page, is how to apply a texture to an entire spread to give it a "used" feel. I'd find an appropriate texture stock image, set it as the bottom layer of the spread, and then set the layers above it to "multiply" which translates that texture through all the elements on top of it. For black or very dark elements, like text, I used "pin light" or "hard light" blending, although I think simply lowering the opacity would accomplish something similar.

Paper texture blending. I didn't blend the "4. EPOXY" text particularly well, but you get the idea.

 Beyond that, desaturated colors made things more visually easy to look at, and a more "authentic" feel in a lot of cases (specifically the Oddities spread).

Tipping text a slight angles can be visually striking (look at MÖRK BORG, or a bunch of the Dissident Whispers modules for examples) but I mostly used it in ELECTRIC WIZARDS! when I was trying to make something look hand written. 

It's perhaps too subtle here, but looking at the whole page the slight misalignment between each desctipion sells the feel I was going for.

An Affinity specific goof I made was while using mixam's booklet templates, I did all of my layout using a single "page" within the software for each two page spread. What this meant was when I finished, I had no way to split each spread into individual pages for export (or at least, I couldn't figure out how to do so). What I should have done from the beginning is to use the single page templates then under Document Setup checking "Facing Pages". This lets you edit in two page spreads, but export as either spreads or singles.

The last piece of advice I'd give is that there are tons of really cool and interesting fonts out there, absolutely use them but don't forget that people should actually be able to read the thing at the end of the day.

Final Product

You can find the final ELECTRIC WIZARDS! at itch.io. It's totally free, and I'd love for anyone to give it a look and tell me what they think. While you're over there check out the rest of the incredible entries into the Eclectic Bastion Jam.

A friend of mine got the module printed and shipped to me for my birthday, for which I'm incredibly grateful. I recorded a video of a flip through so you can see what it would look like in print:

I'm very thankful for the Eclectic Bastion Jam giving me the framework and impetus to produce something I'm actually quite proud of. I highly recommend joining a jam just to get the experience of working on, and finishing a project.

For the curious, at time of writing the module has been downloaded 119 times, although some of those are people downloading both the singles and spreads pdfs. I don't have a following of any kind to try and market this to, plus it's a very niche crossover module connecting two relatively niche RPGs so the potential audience is pretty limited to begin with.

Resources Used

Fonts

Google Fonts

League of Movable Type

Misprinted Type

Moonbase Press - Specifically for the Dot Matrix style font.

Images

British Library Flickr - All the old timey images came from here. Searching for specific things can be a bit wonky, but digging around will provide a bounty of excellent stuff. A lot of my ideas came from things I accidentally found while looking for something else.

Unsplash - The large background images of cassettes all came from here.

photos-public-domain.com - Used for paper images to provide texture to backgrounds.

The US Patent Office - So it turns out most patent art is public domain. All of the images on the gauntlet page came from here.

Scripted Para-Entropic Lexigraphical Linking System (SPELLS) - Magic For Electrc Bastionland in the Anomalous Subsurface Enviroment

My group has been using Electric Bastionland to explore the Anomalous Subsurface Environment, and it's been a blast. So far I've been running things pretty by the book, but seeing how good of a job Mausritter did with stapling GLOG magic onto the base system (Into the Odd in that case, but it's functionally the same) made me want to do something similar.

Mausritter's implementation is fantastic, and I have no desire to reinvent the wheel so I'm stealing it pretty much whole cloth, but what I am doing is reskinning it to fit the theming better.

ASE has (or had, I guess) a lot of engineers and scientists finding, researching, and taking advantage of magic and supernatural things. I thought it'd be fun to look at magic through that lens, how would an engineer try to fit bona fide wizardry into the scientific framework they were familiar with? I was also hesitant to add normal spell casting to EB, since spellbooks and memorization seems incongruous next to the oddites and electric technology of Bastion. On the other hand fiddling with weird little electric gadgets, with many more moving parts that strictly necessary, fits right in.

That leads us to SPELLS, AMULETs and TALISMANs.

---

SPELLS

This mix tape is fire.

The first step to understanding something is being able to describe it, and the researchers working in ASE developed a sort of programming language for magical effects.

This language is the Scripted Para-Entropic Lexigraphical Linking System or SPELLS for short. A combination of descriptive language, computer commands and atomic runes which when pieced together and read out in the right way can describe any magical effect (or at least, the designers claimed it was a "Merlin complete" language). Researchers found that writing out SPELLS by hand was unwieldy, especially because breaking a single SPELLS module into multiple physical pages seemed to disrupt its use. To get around having to write out SPELLS onto lengthy and cumbersome scrolls of paper, special magnetic tape cassettes were developed that could store SPELLS without issue.

---

AMULETS

SPELLS on their own are just code, a script that has to be compiled before it does anything. The simplest way to do this is to have a human being read the entire SPELLS module in one sitting, and let their brain do the compiling. Researchers who compiled SPELLS this way complained that the experience was "unsettling" and "stressful" with one researcher saying he now "understood what a battery felt like," and so the AMULET system was developed.

Amplification of Metacognition for Ultra-Liminal Electric Thaumaturgy, or AMULET, is a device which assists the user in compiling SPELLS without requiring reading or memorization (or having to jam the SPELLS into the limited memory available in a human brain).

Imagine this, but with space for a cassette to be slotted in.

An AMULET device usually takes the form of a glove, or gauntlet, where a SPELLS cassette could be slotted into place. The AMULET 'plays' the SPELLS and through thaumaturgical calculation converts it into electrical impulses and specific hand motions using micro servos embedded in the glove.

A given SPELL is only able to be compiled a finite number of times, although this number is difficult to predict. Once depleted, the cassette must be recharged through a process thematically linked to the effect of the SPELL, such as a Fireball SPELL cassette needing to sit inside a furnace for several days.

---

TALISMANS

Unable to bypass the necessity of human involvement in the compiling process, researchers at ASE at least figured out how to anchor a compiled SPELL into a stable configuration. They called this Teathered Aether Loop for Integrated SPELLS Meta-AmplificatioN (or TALISMAN).

This is just magic items but with nonsense science words attached.

See some TALISMANs I've created for my campaign over here.

---

Rules

So here's how this all works in game terms. Again, this is just me borrowing the Mausritter implementation, and I highly recommend just going and picking that up. Get it because it's great (and free), and because it does a better job of explaining the rules.

A SPELLS cassette can be slotted into an AMULET, at which point 3 indicators will light up red or green indicating the current aetheric charge of the cassette.

To compile a SPELL the hand wearing the AMULET must be free so the proper hand motions can be made for the required somatic component. When activated, the cassette plays and the AMULET compiles the module (casts the spell) in a process that takes approximately 6 seconds (or one action in combat).

When compiling a SPELL, roll a number of d6 up to the number of charges remaining. Specific effects of the SPELL depend on the number of [DICE] rolled or the [SUM] of all dice rolled.

For each 4-6, one aetheric charge is consumed (one green light turns red). Any 6's rolled indicate aetheric feedback while compiling the spell, and each 6 deals d6 damage to CHA.

Before compiling a SPELLS module a second time, the cassette must be rewound. Rewinding takes an action in combat, and can only be done if at least one aetheric charge remains. If no charges remain, the cassette must be recharged through a process unique to that SPELL. If players think to do so, a cassette can be rewound manually (using a pencil, or something similar) but doing so damages it and permanently reduces the maximum charges by 1.

---

Some AMULETs

A standard issue AMULET works as above, but there's plenty of opportunity for variation. Different AMULETS means different 'wizards' stay distinct from each other, even if you can easily swap SPELLs.

AMULET-XL
Bulky, but can have two SPELLS Cassettes loaded at once. Makes you look a bit like RoboCop. Make a DEX save to cast both loaded SPELLS simultaneously (roll all the dice for both SPELLS at the same time, divvy up results as you please), failure means the effects mix in some catastrophic way.

AMULET-HandsFree
A helmet with sticky electrodes that attach to your face. Uses eyebrow and nose twitches for the necessary somatic components leaving both hands free. Any CHA damage from aetheric feedback is increased by 2. Also, casting a fireball with your face is a good way to not have eyebrows anymore.

AMULET-BoomBox
A large bulky AMULET worn as a backpack. Can compile SPELLS without using aetheric charge by doing so slowly and methodically over 10 minutes. All SPELLS are compiled with 1 [DICE] and a  [SUM] of 3.

AMULET-SmartWatch
A smaller AMULET, with the form factor of a fingerless glove just large enough to store a cassette. Aetheric charge is only consumed on rolls of 5, however the decreased size means a maximum of 2 [DICE] can be rolled while compiling a SPELL.

AMULET-Walkman
A small AMULET which clips to your belt instead of being worn. Uses headphones to whisper the SPELL into your ears keeping your hands free, but SPELLS only effect the wearer.

Some SPELLS

The spells from Mausritter (seriously, go get it) or GLOG work as is, but here are some other ideas.

Wind Shape
Effect: With a touch transmute up to [DICE] creatures (you can choose yourself) into wind for [SUM] rounds. As wind you can move through spaces of any size, have triple your normal movement speed, and cannot interact with anything physical beyond a bit of buffeting if you try hard enough.
Recharge: Tie the cassette onto a kite and fly it into a storm.

Door Transposition
Effect: The SPELL marks a door with a glowing rune (can be any size). The next door the user opens connects to the marked doorway instead of wherever it would normally open to. The connection lasts until either door is closed [DICE] times.
Recharge: Slam the cassette in 3 doors within 3 different buildings (don't worry, it's durable).

Sneaky Octopus
Effect: Summons a miniature octopus which latches onto a surface and blends in, becoming nearly invisible. When the octopus is retrieved and consumed, the memories of what it has observed during the past [SUM] hours are transferred to the eater. If 2 [DICE] were used it can also slowly crawl to a specific location. With 3 [DICE] it can be summoned back to hand with a thought.
Recharge: Submerge the cassette in a body of saltwater for 3 days.

Identify
Effect: A calm voice methodically explains the history, use and effects of [DICE] objects you can see.
Recharge: Spend at least 12 hours reading an encyclopedic, historic, or otherwise scholarly text to the cassette.

Chain Lightning
Effect: A bolt of lightning leaps out dealing [SUM] damage to a target within 20 feet, repeats for each of [DICE] extra targets each within 20 feet of the last.
Recharge: Wire the cassette up to a voltage source and let it charge for three days, or get lightning to strike the cassette.

Some TALISMANs

TALSIMANS can be anything a normal magic item can be, but flavoring magic as cassette tapes opens the door to some pretty goofy items.

Cassette Changer Bandolier
Quick swap cassette bandolier that can store up to 10 tapes. Attaches to any AMULET and can swap a SPELLS cassette in almost instantly, so as to let the user compile any cassette in their collection at a moments notice.

SPELLS Realtime Interpreter
Looks like a tape recorder but with a small "receiver dish" antenna attached. When pointed at a magical effect it will translate it into SPELLS and record the result onto a cassette. Make sure you know what you're taping over!

Be Kind Rewind Transmuter
Made of brightly colored plastic, is a tape cassette rewinder with space for two cassettes. Can transfer charge from one cassette to another at a rate of one charge per 4 hours.

Aetheric Preamp
Attaches to any AMULET and amplifies the effects of compiled SPELLS. [SUM] is always equal to [DICE] times 6, but aetheric feedback occurs on rolls of 5 as well as 6.

---

So get out there and compile some SPELLS! Get together with fellow wizards and swap cassettes, or maybe figure out a way to make mix tapes by recording different spells over each other. Start arguments about how SPELLS recorded on vinyl have a much warmer feel to them. The possibilities are endless, and also firmly outdated.

Electric Bastionland Oddities for the Anomalous Subsurface Enviroment

I'm currently running a small party through Anomalous Subsurface Environment using Electric Bastionland (having placed Mount Rendon and Chelmsfordshire into a patch of Deep Country).

Because character abilities in Electric Bastionland are mostly based around what they're carrying, and also that I've found it's easier to encourage players to look for clever solutions when they have things to be clever with, I wanted to put together a list of Oddities (Electric Bastionland's version of magical items) to be found within the ASE.

These are all intended to be found within the Gatehouse level, and so are things the military or scientists working there would have found useful to make. Or more commonly they are the sort of things a bunch of scientists would decide to create if they were given access to a massive budget, advanced fabrication technology, and apparent magic (along with little to not oversight).

Some of the items are immediately useful, some will be useful in the hands of clever players, some I have no idea how they could ever be put to a productive use.

Although designed for Electric Bastionland, the items are mostly system agnostic. Specific damage, HP, or stat references should be easy enough to adapt to your preferred system. Where items have effects that last 10 minutes the assumption is that it will last for the duration of a single exploration turn, so adjust as necessary. Protonium is a virtually indestructible and magic proof metal; Argonium is the slightly less indestructible plastic version of it.

 Ancient MRE

     "Let's get this out onto a tray. Nice!"

     A Meal Ready to Eat with a Best By date in a format you don't recognize, but it looks to be in surprisingly good condition aside from the faint glow.

     Upon consuming reroll your STR with 3d6 and consult the table below:

     2-4: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, metaphorically anyway. You are fully immune to all poisons and toxins, and can consume spoiled food with no negative consequences.
     5-11: Your saliva is now corrosive. Given enough time you could spit your way through most materials.
     10-15: You are Deprived for 24 hours from extreme nausea.
     16-18: Your eyes have been opened to the joys of preserved food. Eating fresh food causes you to become Deprived.

 Quantum Adventuring Gear

     Leather satchel with "Adventuring Gear" branded onto the surface alongside an atomic symbol.

     When you say out loud, "It'd sure be useful if we had a [thing]" where there [thing] is a mundane item that would fit inside the satchel, the item will be found within the satchel.

     The item exists for 10 minutes before decohering, and that item can never be found within the satchel again (write down items as they are pulled from the satchel).

 Universal Meter

     Small protonium box with two slots, an analog dial, and a flexible probe tip. In the case with it, are a series of punchcards with single word descriptions.

     When two punch cards are inserted into the slots and the probe is touched to any object, the dial will indicate roughly where that item falls between the two words.

     Exact details are impossible to discern and any ambiguities will cause the dial to swing back and forth between possible answers.

     The punch cards are labeled:
      1) Alive
      2) Cold
      3) Good
      4) Plant
      5) Honest
      6) Mundane
      7) Anomalous
      8) Bird
      9) Dead
      10) Old
      11) Edible
      12) Dangerous
      13) Dog
      14) Weapon
      15) Benign
      16) Functioning
      17) Exciting
      18) New
      19) Evil
      20) Hot

     Roll a d20 10 times. The first time a punch card is rolled all but 1 letter of its label is illegible, if it's rolled twice only the number of letters can be made out, if a card is rolled a third time nothing useful can be made out from the label.

     Also included are 6 blank punch cards, which a clever enough person might be able to program themselves after studying the labeled ones (and determining what the cards with unreadable labels are).

     If you're nice, replace some of the more esoteric descriptions with useful ones. If you're mean do the opposite.


 Smart Vacuum

     Small hemispherical robot vacuum. When found has a small blinking green panel on the top, which if touched will bio-metrically bond to the person who touched it. After this the vacuum will follow that person around, attempt to complete instructions from its owner, and if left unattended will attempt to clean the floor of whatever area it's in.

     2 HP, can store roughly 1 liter of material (wet or dry) and can perform basic analysis of whatever it is carrying (although its only forms of communication are simple emojis along with chirps, trills and beeps).

 Inverted Observer Effect Pocket Barometer 

     Brass barometer which can be used to predict future weather with 5 in 6 accuracy. Inscribed on the back is the phrase "Inverted Observer Effect".

     It also has an extra red dial not usually found on a barometer, which can be set to each of the following locations

•   Storm
•   Heavy Rain
•   Rain
•   Fog
•   Fair
•   Dry

     If set, the chosen weather will occur in the immediate area of the barometer within 10 minutes, and last for an additional 10 minutes before dissipating back to normal conditions. The needle locks in place after selecting an option and will reset after an hour (at which point it can be used again).

     Results if operated indoors will be more dramatic (and dangerous).


 Novelty Wand

     A wand made of flexible Argonium styled to look like wood. Contained in a protonium case along with a note that reads

     "I know I've been away from home for a while, so to make up for that I had the guys down at the collider help me put together something for mommy's little witch. You can cast spells just like in those books you like so much!"

     When the wand is *swished* and *flicked* and a suitably magical phrase is spoken, it will cause one of the following effects (at random) to whatever it was pointed towards

     1) Turn Invisibility
     2) Float In Place
     3) Turn a Random (but Vibrant) Color
     4) Shrink to One Quarter Size
     5) Grow to Double Size
     6) Be Totally Silent

     Each effect lasts for 10 minutes, and only one instance of each effect can be active at a time.

 Non Copyright Infringing Plasma Sword

     Six inch rod of protonium, covered with complicated tech-y looking detailing, and a metallic thumb panel. Stored in a protonium case with a note attached to it.

     "Look, I appreciate you guys trying to make something that Billy would like, but I can't let him play with this! He'll cut the dog in half!"

     Can be activated once a day to cause a tube of plasma to be projected out of one end (1d8, ignores armor). The beam of plasma can cut through just about anything, but can only be activated once per day and can only run for 10 minutes once activated.