If you’ve been hanging around the Alexandrian for awhile, then you know that I like procedural content generators. A few examples from the past include:

• The Poor Man’s Hex Stocker
• Factions in the Dungeon
• Breathing Life Into the Wandering Monster
• Fun With Vornheim

They’re useful for rapidly refreshing the core content of an open table. They’re valuable improvisation tools while running the game. And they’re an excellent way of getting your creative juices flowing when you’re creating content.

MAGIC THE GATHERING

Here’s a system proposed by Baldr12 on reddit recently. Take your Magic the Gathering cards (or use a random card generator) and draw five times to determine:

THE PROBLEM (Creature/Enchantment): This is the problem. It may have just appeared or it may have just gotten worse.

THE SETTING (Non-Base Land): This is the primary location. It’s either where the problem is located, where it needs to be solved, or both.

THE SOLUTION (Artifact/Sorcery): The macguffin that will solve the problem.

THE FRIEND (Creature): This is somebody that wants the problem removed or can help the PCs remove it.

THE ANTAGONIST (Creature): This is the person who doesn’t want the problem resolved. They may have been the one to cause it or they might be profiting from it.

EXAMPLE SCENARIO

THE PROBLEM (Emissary of Hope): An “angel” claiming to represent the Nine Gods is offering people absolution from their sins with the promise of immediate entry into a heavenly afterlife. Those who agree to the Emissary of Hope’s offer, however, turn up dead.

THE SETTING (Cursed Land): A place known as Devil’s Hollow, deep within the Old Wood.

THE SOLUTION (Envelop): An old holy ritual which will unknit the flames of the soulbright flamekin. Unfortunately, the Emissary of Hope has destroyed all the local holy books which contain the ritual.

THE FRIEND (Canker Abomination): These evil creatures of legend are coming out of the Old Wood. The local church is condemning them. But if the heroes investigate, they’ll discover that some of the canker abominations are speaking with the voices of those “taken to Heaven” by the Emissary of Hope.

THE ANTAGONIST (Soulbright Flamekin): The source of all this confusion and horror is a soulbright flamekin sorcerer who has taken up residence in Devil’s Hollow. The Emissary of Hope is the soulbright’s creation, trapping the souls of its victims into trees which become canker abominations. The soulbright then draws the canker abominations to itself and burns the wood, claiming the souls for itself.

NETRUNNER

Here’s a quick variant I threw together for using Netrunner cards to generate cyberpunk heists.

THE CLIENT (Identity): This is either the person looking to hire the PCs or the corporation the pseudonymous Mr. Johnson works for.

THE TARGET (Agenda/Asset/Upgrade): This is what they want.

THE JOB (Operation/Event): This desscribes the nature of the job. (You can draw this option multiple times to enrich the difficulty or the complications of the mission.)

THE PROBLEM (Asset/Hardware): This is a hurdle that is going to make finishing the job difficult. (You generally want to draw one problem for each job card you pull.)

THE TWIST (Operation/Resource): Finally, no heist is complete without an unexpected complication somewhere along the way.

 EXAMPLE SCENARIO

THE CLIENT (The Foundry): A lunar mining facility that produces the advanced materials required to build bioroids.

THE TARGET (Net Police): A division of the Lunar PD that recently executed a secret warrant on the Foundry’s databases. The Net Police now have a dossier containing information that the Foundry can’t afford to let out into the wild.

THE JOB (Traffic Accident): The lead investigator for the Lunar PD needs to be taken out of the equation, but it needs to look like an accident. Literally. The PCs need to sabotage her flier. Once she’s out of commission, the case will pass to her deputy.

THE PROBLEM (Deep Red): The deputy is clean, but the Foundry has access to the deputy’s passkeys. Unfortunately, the only way to use the passkeys is to gain access to the Lunar PD’s evidence databases. And those are hyper-secure. The only way to get reliable access from outside Lunar PD headquarters? Cutting edge Caissa ICE. You’ll have to heist a Deep Red unit with the latest Caissa releases.

THE TWIST (Rework): When they pull the file and burn the evidence database, the PCs discover that a copy of the secure file has already been made to a grand jury database. To finish the job, they’re gonna have to hit the courthouse!

In my review of the Magic the Gathering Official Encyclopedia yesterday I mentioned how Magic cards can be used to great effect as a quick source of inspiration. Here are a couple quick examples of this from my own campaigns.

ARBORETUM GROTTO

“Clay Golem” – Magic the Gathering: Fourth Edition

• A thick, tiered cleft. Magical lights clinging to the ceiling seem to cast daylight down onto the thick pleats of overgrowth choking the miniature, underground veil.
• SPINDERS: 8 spinders roam through the overgrowth. (These can be found in the Book of Fiends, one of the best bestiaries ever produced.)
• STATUE OF LIGHT: In the middle of the grotto sits a squat statue of clay clasping a bowl which seems lit from within. (See visual handout, above.)
  • LIQUID LIGHT: The bowl is filled with liquid light. Anyone touching the liquid will cause it to flow up over their hand (or hands). From that point forward, their hands will permanently glow white — producing the effects of a daylight spell.
• ALCHEMY (DC 25): Recognize that most of the plants growing here are actually valuable alchemical ingredients. 6 hours harvesting could yield 5,000 gp of raw ingredients.

THE GLASSWORKS

“Urza’s Power Plant” – Magic the Gathering: Antiquities

• A twisted morass of glass piping filled with flowing fire.
• THE ARTIFURNACE: Near the center of the twist labyrinth of glass is the Artifurnace. Eight large valves run around its circumference . (See visual handout, above.)
  • CRACKING THE ARTIFURNACE: If all eight valves are released, the Artifurnace can be opened.
  • HELM OF FIRE ELEMENTAL CONTROL: Suspended within the Artifurance is a helm of fire elemental control (crafted from brass and gold). But it doesn’t work: One wearing the helm can summon a Large fire elemental, but anyone wearing the helm will instantly provoke rage from any fire elemental.
• FIRE ELEMENTALS: If any of the glass tubing is broken or the valves of the Artifurnace opened, the fire elementals trapped within the tubing will break free in a rage.
  • 1 Huge Fire Elemental, 2 Large Fire Elementals, 16 Small Fire Elementals
• DM BACKGROUND: The idea was to create a magical item through entirely sympathetic rituals (by controlling the fire elementals physically, imbue an item with the ability to control them). Instead, the item became imbued with the rage of the imprisoned elementals.

Tagline: A valuable resource for serious Magic players or those of us who just like the art.

Let me start by explaining why I own this book.

I first encountered the phenomenon which is known as Magic the Gathering later than many of the other diehards in this industry. It was late 1993 when I first heard about the game and bought my first starter decks. I had missed the wonderful financial investment those early Alpha and Beta decks would have been (we had already entered the Unlimited Edition, which wasn’t). I had even missed the first expansion deck, Arabian Nights. Thus it was that I had my first exposure to the feeding frenzy of collectorism with the arrival of the second expansion deck, Antiquities.

It is important, I think, to remind people that this was back when the industry had lost its mind over these cards. Wizards of the Coast had proven themselves incompetent at printing to the actual demand (whether intentionally or not) and so stores were routinely ordering far more copies than they actually thought they could possibly sell (which would eventually bite everybody in the ass when Fallen Empires finally did manage to print themselves to fill all the orders from distributors). This was back when people when people were putting themselves on reserve lists for dozens of cases of cards.

Now, I liked Magic, too. Not so much for the gameplay (although it was very original and intriguing) or for the potential of deckbuilding (which didn’t appeal to me at all), but because I thought the cards were really cool. I found it interesting to look at the strange creatures and locations and spells described by these cards and have my imagination stirred by these brief glimpses and descriptions.

I did a little mathematical analysis and discovered that to get a complete set of Antiquities cards it would require the purchase of a single case. (Actually I took a random guess.) So I laid out the $70 necessary to buy the case (gah!) and, after tearing open dozens upon dozens of booster packs, finally put together my “complete set”.

And then I decided it just wasn’t worth it. I still liked the cards, I still liked the art, I still liked these little windows into the world of Dominia. I just couldn’t afford to drop $70 every couple of months (or $140+ considering that the next expansion set, IIRC, had twice as many cards). I’d rather buy, say, half a dozen roleplaying manuals with that money. Or twenty-eight paperback books.

Since that time I’ve always wished that Wizards of the Coast would publish the cards in some non-collectible, non-playable form which would let me collect the cards without going bankrupt at the same time. The Collector’s Editions they released a couple years ago were close, but ironically they were priced higher than they should have been (because they were a “special edition”), so they were still too expensive for my tastes.

Now we fast-forward five years to about six months ago when I first spotted the Official Encyclopedia on the shelf. Flipping through it I saw they had finally produced what I wanted. All of the cards produced up until 7/96 are reproduced at slightly smaller than original size, along with version notes, and some analytical text.

The book also includes a forward by Richard Garfield, an historical look at Magic, errata for the cards, misprints and oddities, promotional cards, an index for deckbuilder’s, and an index for the entire book.

So I own it because its really nice having all these cards gathered together at an affordable price. It would have been nice if the artwork had been reproduced at full size, but I won’t be too picky on that point.

It is also an interesting (if brief read) for it’s non-fiction coverage of the history of Magic.

Finally, it has a set of useful tools for deckbuilders (“professional” or otherwise).

All around this is a very nice book which fulfills a number of different roles for a number of different people. I hope it gets an update in a few years to make it more current.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Editors of Duelist
Company/Publisher: Carlton Books
Cost: n/a
Page count: 225
ISBN: 1-85868-240-1

Originally Posted: 1999/05/28

In the years since I reviewed it, this encyclopedia has, in fact, been expanded with a half dozen additional volumes and at least one new edition listing more than 7,200 cards. In recent years, of course, the internet has rendered efforts like this utterly obsolete: A quick Google search will turn up multiple sites indexing every MtG card in existence. Back in 1999, I would have salivated at the thought of it. (And, in fact, I probably did.)

I think this review also provides an excellent example of how a reviewer can bring a peculiarly idiosyncratic point of view to their treatment of a product: Most people picking up this encyclopedia would have probably been using it for deckbuilding, not lore-delving. But this is why the reviewer’s first duty to their audience is to clearly communicate their point of view while also supplying enough information about the product that those with different view points can (hopefully) intuit what their own opinions of the product might be.

MtG cards remain a wonderful goldmine of creativity that can easily be stripmined for your next D&D adventure. I’ve done it at least a half dozen times and I’ll almost certainly do it again. (As inspiration goes, it’s hard to beat a dollop of evocative text combined with lavish illustration.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.