Unreleased Magic The Gathering RPG Manuscript Raising Money for Charity

Ever heard of the Magic The Gathering Tabletop Role-Playing Game? No? Well, there’s good reason you haven’t as there has never been a TTRPG released based upon the game. But there was one in development, called ManaStorm : The Magic Adventure Game, and now the playtest manuscript is up sale with all proceeds being donated to Planned Parenthood in the US.

The sale is being run by Jonathan Tweet, one of the lead designers of Dungeon & Dragons 3rd Edition, as well as a host of other TTRPGs such as Ars Magica, 13th Age, Over the Edge, and Everway. Tweet was already employed by Wizards of the Coast in 1996 when the playtests for ManaStorm were taking place and is in the credits as one of the playtesters.

The RPG, based upon the groundbreaking Magic The Gathering Collectible Card Game that Wizards launched in 1993, was designed by Wolfgang Baur, Michael Selinker, and Teeuwynn Woodruff. The manuscript on offer is just over 150 pages in a three-ring binder, and also includes some loose character sheets and player handouts, including a cheat sheet of core mechanics.

Little has been revealed about the mechanics of the game, but each character has five Aspects, each tied in with one of the Colours of Magic (Resolve - White / Quickness - Blue / Endurance - Black / Strength - Red / Insight - Green), and a Vitality and Life score. Magic’s mana icons are seen a lot on the pages that have been made public, seemingly to modify their corresponding Aspect.

Each player also has a Hero Deck which…

“…represents the hero’s control over exterior forces of mana in the universe. It is composed of cards based on the hero’s permanent Aspects. Vitality sets the maximum value on the cards, so if a hero has one point of Vitality, the maximum value is one. For each point in an Aspect, the hero can spend one point toward a card of that color. So a beginning character with 1 Vitality starts with 15 cards bearuing the number “1”, each linked to one point from an Aspect.

In addition, the deck contains a Mana Storm card (“+”) and a Mana Burn (“-”) card. The Mana Storm card gives a hero a number of cards remaining in his or her deck equal to his or her Vitality, and causes a reshuffle. The Mana Burn card means the hero gets no mana for that turn amd an action fails, and causes a reshuffle.”

Jonathan is taking offers for the manuscript via Direct Message over on his Facebook page. He’s running ti as a silent auction with currently an indefinite end date. So if you’re interested in putting in a bid, or possibly seeing more about the game revealed, you can find him at Jonathan Tweet on Facebook.