I recently recreated my Wild Mage playbook from long ago and gave it a proper Dungeon World look and a lot of…

I recently recreated my Wild Mage playbook from long ago and gave it a proper Dungeon World look and a lot of…

I recently recreated my Wild Mage playbook from long ago and gave it a proper Dungeon World look and a lot of improvements. It is meant to be played with any list of random Wild Surges, such as: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byppa832YATUYjdrZTAyLWNheGc/view?usp=sharing

I would appreciate help with any formatting or grammar issues as well as input on how the playbook functions as a whole. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byppa832YATUN00xMHgtWk41M1k/view?usp=sharing

12 thoughts on “I recently recreated my Wild Mage playbook from long ago and gave it a proper Dungeon World look and a lot of…”

  1. The wording on Unpredictable is a little confusing, but it sounds like you let the player make GM soft moves sometimes?  That’s a little brain-bending.  Technically, “A T-Rex bamfs in from nowhere and starts eating NPCs. What do you do?” is a soft move!

  2. I actually had a lot of trouble with the Unpredictable move. I tried a couple different ways of making it capture the feeling of the Wild Mage source materials I was drawing from. The basic idea was that Wild Mages have fluctuating power levels that sometimes cause better or worse things to happen but it was hard to convey that since it did not translate into Dungeon World well since it is narrative and not number based. I tried to get the wording to mean something like “You get to add a small tweak to the action you just did”. I could use help getting the move to capture the feeling I’m going for in a way that is better than what I currently have.

  4. You could just say something like “When you cast a spell, also roll on the Wild Modifier table”, and write that table so that half the effects are things that strengthen the spell and half the effects are things that weaken it.  Something like the Wheel of Fortune table in the 3.5e class, but more balanced between positive and negative.  If you want to allow for the character getting more control over their magic as they level up, write the table so that high numbers are good, and allow the character to roll with modifiers.

  5. That is an interesting idea that I might try in a future version of the Wild Mage. For a simpler edit though, maybe adding in a clause that the soft moves must be directly related to the magic that was cast. 

  6. I found the Wild Mage and had a player take it.  We were confused that the document did not have a Wild Surge Chart.  I found one through links but I can’t print up 85 pages and roll 4d6 as often as a Wild Surge may be required.  I was thinking that a Wild Surge GM Move might be in order.  One which could lead to a chart but is more for providing a more general and believable narrative.  Here is a bit of a Start:

    The Wild Magic Surge Move

        This happens when a Wild Surge happens. A Magical Wild Move is made by the GM, The GM can choose Randomly or Select an appropriate Surge. In a given Game Session no two of the same Surge should be used.  They are Random Surges of Magic after all.

    When a (Wild) Spell is cast, Roll Spellcasting Move (Roll+Int) and modify with the Unpredictable Modifier into it.

    Natural 12: Spell is cast and has a bonus of being doubly powerful in all ways to the benefit of the PC.  The PC may opt also to gain one of the following:

        *  The Player Gains another Oddity, for a new spell or a 2nd one for a current spell.

        *  Switch out an Oddity of a current spell, permanently

        *  Full Healing for the Wild Mage’s Party

        * Magical resupply of equipment

        * An Oddity becomes a temporary Magical Item that may or may not stay magical.

    10+: The Spell is cast and no alterations to the spell,  The GM Makes a Wild Surge Move and the Player may make 2 suggestions as to it’s nature.

    7-9: The Spell is cast and can be modified by the Wild Surge Move, The Player may make one suggestion to it’s Nature.

    6-: The Spell Backfires or is out of control.  It may or may not be cast correctly BUT is definitely modified by the Wild Surge and the GM may also make a Hard Move based on the Wild Surge.

    Natural 2: Wild Surge is very bad, Spell is lost permanently, and in addition to a Negative Wild Surge the Wild Mage loses the ability to do a Wild Spell until they can rest and cleans the Wild Magic against them.  An attempt to cast a Wild Spell will result in a Hard Move by the GM, of unpredictable nature.

    Determining a Wild Magic Surge

    Step 1: Determine Target of the Surge

    Step 2: Determine Beneficial or Baneful

    Step 3: Determine Power

    Step 4: Determine what the effect is relating to.

    Having a little trouble with defining the steps a bit.

    What do you think?

  7. I appreciate the thought you put into this. I will admit that when I created the class, I did not want to make the wild surge table at the same time (Since I already had the rather large list of Chaos Bursts) so I made the class able to work with any wild surge table in theory. I think what you have is a good start in the right direction.

  8. Thanks, I have a little more and some clarifications on it that I plan on using, can I email you the file?  I may be wrong of some of my assumptions with the changes that I made.

  10. Ok, I don’t have access to Google Docs at work.  I have a start, it’s a bit rough but should be serviceable along the style but I don’t know how I can get it to you.  Is there a way to attack a file here?  Or can I email it to you?

  12. Ok, So I finally got the Wild Magic Surge Chart Done.  It does take a little inturputing but that is a part of the fun.  Things are in Tags like most of the other game.  If you have a Wild Mage, use the Casting Roll and the Unpredictable Die to determine the effects.  I figured that there are 21 possibilities on 2d6.  This is just what shows up on the Pips, not a d6% but with the Unpredictability Die being rolled as well that is times 4 or 6 (Crazy Alignment).  So 84 results, or

    126 results.  Many of the results can be read one way or another being the TYPE of die used , Given the Fact that you can read or use different tags it should be a very long time before it gets dry.  A roll of 2d6 plus wild die is used.  If you wish you can shorten it to the same roll as the casting roll for a Wild Mage.  The Tags can be re-arranged if you don’t like.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9OfugTvN6OvYjNlZUEtcWt4d0U/view?usp=sharing

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