This thread is intended for player chat.

Hi! Mysterious Stranger here being mysterious and strange! :D

In reply to Mysterious Stranger (msg # 2):

lol Sorry, I kinda just made up names as I saw fit. <grin>
So the setting (which is lazily named Highmagick, even though I'm pretty sure somebody else has already used that name) is extremely high magick, as in: common peasants here know a few spells to keep the flies out of their kitchens. So you can be any of your typical fantasy archetypes, but you always have access to basic magic like warding and dispelling and scrying. I'll get magic rules posted in the wiki and it'll be more accessible, but for right now just keep that in mind as you talk out the kind of characters you're interested in playing and the type of story you're interested in telling. I don't have any plans drawn up for the campaign yet, so we can literally do whatever type of story suits your fancy: hack and slash, dungeon exploration, rags to riches, character stories, politics. Whatever. Sky's the limit.

I want to play a GODDESS!! **thunder** A being of POWAH!! UNLIMITED POWAH!!!

No crawling in dungeons for this delicate flower. I’d as soon jump off a very tall building. Face first. Upside down. Tied to a dwarf. An upside down dwarf.

Can I play an upside Down Dwarf?

In reply to Intriguing Wanderer (msg # 5):

ROFL oh, gosh, you guys are great. lol
Um. In point of fact, the... uh. 'Core races' in Hi, Fantasy! don't actually include any short people. You've got Numas, which are the equivalent of humans in any other setting, Zelfs, who have long ears, Kielings, with horns and a tail, and Kors, which are burly and strong. Now. There are some other playable races in the Adversaries appendix, and I guess I should go ahead and post those in the wiki, too, now that I think about it.
So... you gotta appreciate... I honestly intended people to take the ruleset and run with it and adapt it to whatever world they fancied, so Highmagick as a general setting was my lame attempt at satire. Although the world takes itself very seriously, you'll notice that some of its elements are kind of just poking fun at fantasy tropes. In my original draft, Zelfs were actually called 'long-ears,' but a friend pointed out that people might think I was trying to be racist... so I decided to avoid that. But. None of that means I intend for it to be campy. We can take whatever tone you guys want.

And Mysterious Stranger: yes. Within the bounds of a typical PbtA starting character (which tends to be, admittedly, underwhelming) you can absolutely be a goddess of unlimited powah. ;)

In reply to MC (msg # 6):

Okay. The 'Wild Kin' are up in the Character Creation section of the wiki. You can now choose to be a harpy or a gnoll. lol

Oh. And if you don't download anything else from the page on itch.io, I do recommend downloading Chargen Reference. The whole point of the game is that you can make up any foci and flaws you want, but it has looooooong lists of examples from which you can take inspiration.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:41, Fri 10 June 2022.

I would have to jump off a building with you but since I would do so with an upside down dwarf I would have to turn you right side up which means you would be upside down for you, right side up for me but ultimately you'd be upside down which means yes, yes you can.

Actually, Knight-Errant posed an excellent question to me in private chat regarding which playbook might be appropriate for hir, and I thought it might be a useful response for everybody. So here it is:

Architects tend to approach problems like engineers: they want to build the right tool or stratagem to get the job done. As fighters, they're Tony Stark or John Henry Irons or James Kirk. An architect thief would be maybe more like a ninja, who relies on tricks and tools to augment hir natural ability. Or Artemis Entreary, maybe. Or Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible. And architect magic users? How about Doctor Strange or The Doctor from Doctor Who? Geordi or Data from Star Trek?

Bravos tackle problems; they don't solve them. Think Chewbacca or Worf or Thor. As a thief, maybe Sandman from Spider-Man or Electro. Architect magic-users would tend to be powerful, flashy mages that love to blow things up or smash things. Kinda like the chick from Slayers? Or Wanda from the MCU.

Paragons are more like your typical paladin or cleric. They lead people instead of doing everything themselves. As fighters, think Lancelot maybe. For magic-users? Merlin, perhaps. Galadriel. Kyra from Pathfinder. Thief paragons tend to be... mm. Like Clooney or Sinatra in Ocean's Eleven, maybe? They're the ones getting the crew together and making things work.

A Virtuoso is the opposite: a talented loner, like McEnroe in tennis. Ze's a genius or a prodigy at what ze does, but ze tends to avoid relying on others. It's not that ze can't work in a team--Booster Gold and Guy Gardner did, but everybody pretty much knew to stay out of their way unless they wanted to get bulldozed. Rorschach in Watchmen, maybe. Most of the mages in Vance's Dying Earth stories.

Visionaries think outside the box. They often come up with unconventional solutions to problems and tend to be great at indirect approaches. Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Maybe Star Lord, from a certain point of view. Ezren from Pathfinder. Elrond from Lord of the Rings, perhaps. Or Frodo.

Since it focuses on the approach instead of the effect, you have tons of leeway inside the playbook to build up your character in whatever direction you fancy. And if you wind up hating the playbook you choose, you can always change it later without having to rebuild your entire character. If you don't want to lean on the playbook, you can fill out your abilities with General Talents instead of picking playbook talents and it won't make much difference. The main thing you gain from a playbook is the Basic Talent, so that's probably the main feature you wanna consider. It does have an impact on character development, but like I said. You can change playbooks later if you need to.

P.S. - Sorry, I realize now that I underrepresented femmes there except for in the "hit it until it's dead" category. So... Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Probably an Architect. Charisma from Angel? Visionary, in her own, clumsy way. Captain Marvel definitely is another Bravo, but Black Widow would likely be a Virtuoso. Supergirl? Definitely a Paragon. And Morgana from BBC's Merlin is... tricksy. Visionary? Probably. Or an Architect.
So as you can see, you can often fit characters into more than one playbook. Overlapping is fine, too.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:26, Sun 12 June 2022.

I was thinking of a Kieling earth elementalist type character

In reply to Intriguing Wanderer (msg # 10):

I like it. Lemme get some rules up in the magic chapter of the wiki, then.
Magic rules are in, except the sample magic items section. Feel free to browse and ask any questions.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:12, Mon 13 June 2022.

In reply to MC (msg # 11):

OK dumb question where do I find the wiki site?

In reply to Intriguing Wanderer (msg # 12):

Oh! Not a dumb question--thanks for asking!
You can find the game wiki from inside the campaign in RPoL.

For the classic site:


For the responsive site:

This message was last edited by the GM at 15:20, Tue 14 June 2022.

Hey, guys. Just checking in.
Life's been a little bit of a bitch the past two weeks, but I've had a couple of promising job interviews so I'm hoping things quiet down a bit in the next couple weeks. Hopefully, I'll have more time to get this started either late this month or early next.
Hope life is being a little nicer to you all.

Jonathan

Much good luck with the interviews! :)

In reply to MC (msg # 14):

how did the interviews go?