Or, How I Stopped Worrying and Decided to Make a Farming Life Sim
Spell doesn’t have a specific canon setting in the original book. However, when I run something other than one of the Spellbook modules, I default to a certain space—this vibe that I know but have never adequately explained. It’s modern fantasy like if Middle Earth was allowed to come out of the dark ages and into the world of cellphones, retail hell, and prom nights. It’s urban fantasy that’s allowed to be bright and fun, with the grit and angst tempered with a splash of silliness.
For the upcoming ABC edition, I knew I needed to write this setting down. It felt daunting because, even though I knew how this world felt, I now needed to put shapes and proper nouns down onto this amorphous vibe. I can run a game in this space, no problem, but I don’t know how to open it up to anyone else to run a game in. I couldn’t externalize it, no matter how excited I was about writing flavor text to weave legendary creatures and forgotten artifacts into the lore.
Then I played Fields of Mistria. And it clicked. It all clicked so profoundly and solidly that my bones shook and my brain nestled into place and that vibe, that space, was externalized. The world of Spell that I always imagined already existed in farming sims and cozy town managers and cutesy puzzle games. It’s always been that not-as-wholesome-as-it-seems, magical—dare I say, whimsical—world with heart and humor, where creativity is rewarded and you can take your time solving the problems you want to solve however you want to solve them.
Of course, Spell is and has always been more than that as well. My two favorite go-to scenarios for Spell are classic quests and surprisingly sinister intrigue. While Spell can invite chaos, it also thrives on structure. It’s highly adaptable, but I now have the opportunity to lay groundwork for those adaptations (not to sell Spellbook short, but anthologies can be harder for folks).
So, here’s the plan. The rough outline of Spell: The ABC Edition will be…
1. The basic setting, the history, the world, the Inciting Event that kicks us into action.
2. The core rules necessary for any given game, also all you need to read for a quick one-shot. I’m designing a “tutorial mode” that gives you a rolling start, allowing players to jump into the action and build their characters as they go.
3. Advanced rules to make things more complicated, if you’ve already played before or you have a longer campaign ahead. While this will mirror the original sections about summons, companions, and enchanted items, the rules will be more integrated both into the setting and the flow of play.
4. Quest: The players decide to go on an epic and magical adventure to find the source of the Inciting Event. This section has additional setting notes for the places visited along the way and unique applications of the rules to hone in on the challenges faced along the way.
5. Community: The players decide to stay in (or go to) a small town and help rebuild after the Inciting Event. This section features details on the characters and places in and around town, as well as guides on the daily life of a recovering community.
6. Intrigue: The players decide to take their fight to the capital where contentious reactions to the Inciting Event threaten to make life very difficult for speakers. Characters will engage in social and political schemes in a world where power is measured by more metrics than magic alone and conflict is too big and complicated to meet head on.
7+ All the other books and junk I’ve accumulated along the way. Speaking of, thanks for making it this far in my newsletter. Here’s a free download for Spelldown, a one-page version of Spell I made for a game jam a few years back. Its setting is a large point of inspiration for the Community chapter.
This was a very rewarding click and, yes, I’m very excited to add notes on how to grow crops and date villagers in the Community section.
Next time, I’ll discuss some of the exciting changes in store for Impulses. I was happy to see that feedback so far has been in line with my goals for the future of Impulses. If you haven’t yet, submit your feedback here!
Taylor Currey
Whimsy Machine