Ye Auld Skool Spell Creator

This is post number 500 for me here at Blood of Prokopius. Having noticed that I was quickly approaching this milestone, I came to the realization that there is a ton of gaming material that I have produced over the last several years that either isn't organized as well as it could be or left fallow. As a result, I have been sifting through all of this output and determining what can easily be developed, organized and finished and what of all this output I still have an interest in.

The first project to come out of this process is something I've called Ye Auld Skool Spell Creator. Quite awhile ago, I started excavating the spells of 0e. At the time, I was interested in pushing the rules as far as they could go to see if they were able to handle a variety of genres, specifically some of the pulp serials of the 20s and 30s. One of the big hurdles was the spell system — how to create new powers and spells that are mechanically similar to the 0e spell list, but aren't tied specifically to the fantasy genre?

I started down the road of breaking the spells down mechanically and seeing how to build new spells based upon those mechanics. The various posts can be found here. Unfortunately, I pushed too hard and in play testing what I had started wasn't really all that fun to play. In addition, the process of breaking down the 0e spell system mechanically proved to be a very difficult — especially when one started to look at enchantment-type spells and transform-type spells. Thus, the system that was developing was far from perfect, was a departure from the 0e rules as written, and in some cases a serious departure.

As a result, the project never got finished, despite my own stated intent to put all of it into a .pdf to share with those interested. That is, until now.

Ye Auld Skool Spell Creator is far from perfect, probably has a lot of errors and might very well prove to be a lot less useful that I had originally envisioned. It is, however, a fascinating exercise in gaming archeology that I hope those who are interested in such things will find worth their while.

The link to download the .pdf is here. Enjoy.