08 May 2021

Actual test: Liche's Librams MtG location generator

This is a test of using the very neat set up by Liches Libram to delve into the amazing settings of Magic the Gathering to create interesting locations. This is something very dear to my heart - I have always found the Magic settings to be awesome fodder for tabletop RPGs, going all the way back - what has been a bit of a nuisance is working through the sheer volume of cards that now exist. This problem is now fixed thanks to Liche's Libram and I suggest you give it a whirl.

I mashed all the buttons on the widget to see what we got - and it told the story almost without me having to think about it like any good card reading. First the place:
Cinder Marsh with Mishra's Workshop - we are looking at an installation deep in a destroyed, polluted waste.

Next - who are the dwellers here.

So - first we get a Voiceless Spirit - huh, so this place is no longer active perhaps? Next we have a Gnarled Sage - in these trashed wastes? I guess this also speaks to the place being no longer so active; the one-time inhabitants before this region was destroyed are returning. Lastly we have Cathartic Adept - so there remains some kind of skeleton crew at the facility.

At this point I skipped to 'what is the treasure here' to get a sense of what is left behind.

We get a Mirari - some kind of scrying, hypnotic, false reality thing, a temptation that kept the original masters of this place distracted while it burned the landscape. All relics of a bygone era - this place is forgotten, haunted

We generate some faction leaders.
The spider queen and a human secret-seeker. This is promising - the spider-queen is in residence, the human is the intruder.

Lastly we see what is our dread threat.

A colossus - a terrible construct that lies dormant, perhaps the reason the place was abandoned, perhaps a quiescent guardian waiting to be awoken.

All of this fits together easily - in a few clicks we create an intriguing hex fill. I could spin this content out for sessions, just what I have here. Some sort of abandoned workshop in the centre of despoiled lands. The creators and main users abandoned it after the damage they wrought was too much. They left artefacts behind, one that is cursed but draws in treasure seekers, another that is forgotten but deadly if awoken. The inhabitants are the last caretakers and some ghostly remnants and a few of those driven away when the place was created. The leader of the residents is a spider-queen. Another has come, one who seeks the secrets within, not for treasure like the others but for knowledge alone because it ties to her own past.

Super useful stuff - a spark list generator drawing on all of Magic - this I can use!

2 comments:

  1. This microsetting rocks, and not just because I'm biased.

    Spiders like to make shit, right? So I wonder if the spider-queen was like, biologically engineered by the original creators, and all her spider babies are these workers that are endlessly working to repair this stuff before they expire. But they don't have the tools to do it - can you get it for them?

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  2. Spiderqueen as the repair staff could very well work - reading back the flavour on the 'Cathartic Adept' and given a spiders talent for cocooning they could also be the mothballing crew rather than the one-time operators. Here to contain, store and bury this place, challenged by the sheer scale of the task - can you help them get rid of some of these unquiet spirits so they can do their job?

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