Traces of Magic

The world was filled with magic, once. But that was long ago. You were born over a century after magic’s Golden Age. You grew up hearing about the grand works that magic had accomplished in the past, and growing increasingly concerned by its creeping disappearance in the present. Some say that the loss of magic signals the world is ending. Others whisper that magic has simply gone into hiding. Some believe that magic is a finite resource, used up after centuries spent wasting it on mundane problems. Others are beginning to suggest that the world has outgrown magic, and will be just fine without it. You have set out to discover and catalogue what magic still remains. As one of a small percentage of the population capable of detecting the traces of magic in the world around you, you’ve been recruited to join a research project to determine what’s happening to magic, and whether it can be reversed. Your task is to explore the land around your assigned research site, search out the presence of magic, take careful field notes about what you discover, and ultimately report back to the project with your own theories about the disappearance of magic and recommendations for further study. What are you waiting for? Your work begins… Traces of Magic is a solo role-playing game about finding the lost magic in the world around you. To play the game, you move through and observe the real world around you, then interpret and transform these real-world locations into settings in the made-up world of the story, developing this world and your character as you go. Your research journal records both the progress of your discoveries and your character’s theories in response to this new information. While this game was designed with solo play in mind, see the end of the document for a set of multiplayer modifications. This game is still in development and I welcome any suggestions or feedback you might have to offer! You can comment here, or feel free to email me at candacemakesthings@gmail.com.