Mushrooms & Magic
A downloadable game
A New Age Begins . . .
Years after a mysterious series of magical Churnings, kingdoms of Mushrooms awoke in a world left behind by the Ancients, surrounded by strange beasts and remnants of ancient technology from when "humans" walked the soils.
In the years following, Mushroomkind fought and explored, discovered and innovated. But Mushrooms are small, and the world is large; much remains to be learned, and countless adventures are still to be had. Will you answer the call?
The Game
Mushrooms & Magic runs using a modified Powered by the Apocalypse / Monster of the Week-like system, with new mechanics for tool crafting, abilities, and several magic types. The game only requires one die - a d20 - and makes use of just four basic stats. While not necessarily rules-light, plenty of room is left within the game's structure for players to modify core abilities and attributes (and add their own!) as wanted within campaigns, and GM's are encouraged to have fun with the setting above all else.
Within basic character creation, players may play as any of 14 mushroom Clades and real-word varieties of mushroom sorted into them, or hybrids between them. Player characters also take up any of seven Roles - classifying the character's archetype and way of interacting with the world. The combination of these two factors, along with any additional history players want to flavor their character with, help determine players' movesets and Talents - though re-classing or expanding beyond that initial starting point during gameplay is always possible!
The Books
The Mushrooms & Magic rulebook includes 65 pages of content and illustrations, including gameplay instructions, lore, potential campaign ideas, lists of fellow adventurers and NPCs, a world map, character creation, and character sheets! A Quick Start Guide and an additional set of character sheets are also available as separate downloads, for ease of access and printing.
The entirety of the Mushrooms & Magic rulebook is available completely for free (though donations are always welcome!), along with an additional 12-page supplement, Shanties & Chanterelles - chock full of in-world folk songs and additional lore regarding places and cultures across the Mushroom kingdoms.
If you do choose to donate, please consider doing so by downloading a copy of the Corrhiza & Coenobia supplement! Another 12-page supplement, Corrhiza & Coenobia features two additional Clades for players to play as, and four additional Talents - including Lucksmithing, a form of Higher Magic which in the core rulebook is only used by NPCs. The supplement also comes zipped up alongside over 30 works of full-color character art, including color versions of the NPCs from the core rulebook, and 20 icons for use as custom emotes!
We hope you enjoy!
Be sure to stay tuned for future editions and updates. The current release is preliminary 1e - a new release, with corrections and typo fixes, will be coming soon! Thanks for playing!
Download
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Development log
- Welcome to Mushrooms & Magic!Jun 25, 2022
Comments
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Hello. I really love this system! I was looking into using it, but I don't really understand how one would run monsters. I've only really played D&D 5th Edition, so it only seemed like they had health? Where would I go to look further into the types of things they could do/damage/whatever else?
Thank you!
Hey and thanks so much! That's something that could definitely be made a bit clearer / fleshed in the rulebook - you've just inspired me to make a quick little monster manual, with more move-based statblocks, when I can! I can't promise speed, but I'll definitely reply again to your comment once I've done so, so you get the notification!
In the meantime:
Basic monster types are on pages 45 - 46 of the main rulebook, and combat as a broad category is on pg. 22 - though as you noted, that mainly gives lore, some basic move types, and health. They're categories, for DMs to slot monsters they want to build encounters around into if they already have a sense of what powers or effects they have.
You can actually use that to take monsters set up for D&D 5e and convert them to Mushrooms! Pick a monster you like, figure out what type of beast it most sounds like it'd fit with, and give it health in that range (and some lore / flavor from the category too, if you're feeling it!). You can still use all the moves the monster has in the source material as reference too; just know that "standard" damage in Mushrooms is 3 points, and that strategies for countering a monster's attacks or effects are more based on players having good justification and a high roll, rather than pure mechanics.
Systems based on Powered by the Apocolypse-type rules often don't have monsters take action turns of their own (that's usually reserved for enemy NPCs); instead, monsters only take moves during combat as reactions to players, with the scale of any damage or effects they deal being the flip of the player's roll. If a player only manages to create a small effect, a monster gets a chance to do a big effect (and vice versa).
Hope that helps! & I'll have more info soon(ish)!