Chapter 8: Running the Game

In the world of Monsters & Magic, your character is your entryway to your world. It’s your in-world persona, through which you’ll tell a story.

Session 0

Things to do at Session 0

Ending a Session

At the end of each session you may resolve one bond. To do so, talk to the player of the character you share the bond with and decide if the bond still describes how you relate. If it no longer does, maybe because circumstances have changed or there’s no longer a question about their actions, resolve your bond. Any time you look at a bond and think “that’s not a big factor in how we relate anymore”, the bond is at a good place to resolve. When you resolve a bond, mark 1 XP. If the bond’s resolution increases your connection with that character, increment your BOND with them by 1, if it decreases it, decrement it by 1.

Encounters & Treasure

Every monster has a tier—Easy, Medium, Hard, or Very Hard—and you build encounters by grabbing monsters until their units add up, no arithmetic or budgets required. Each tier is worth a number of units, anchored on Medium = 1 unit:

Tier	Units	Treasure
Easy	½	25g
Medium	1	50g
Hard	2	150g
Very Hard	4	300g

The treasure here represents the total value for the whole party, and should typically be dolled out as 40% gold and gems, 40% crafting material, and 20% consumables.

Rarity Table

When looking to randomly generate loot or shops, optionally use this table to determine the rarity of items available.

2d6	Rarity	Gold
2	Rare	10,000
3	Rare	10,000
4	Common	200
5	Common	200
6	Common	200
7	Common	200
8	Common	200
9	Uncommon	1,000
10	Uncommon	1,000
11	Uncommon	1,000
12	Legendary	500,000

Conditions

Tier	Conditions	Description	Fatigue
Minor	hastened, prepared, prone, protected, restrained, slowed, sundered	Single-stat shift, self-clearable, or micro-buff	1
Major	blinded, charmed, doomed, empowered, frightened, impaired, inspired, invigorated, invisible, quickened, weakened	Persistent mechanical shift with no self-clear, but still allows actions	2
Devastating	petrified, stunned, unconscious	Full action denial	4

inspired is single-use (clear it to gain and immediately spend a Luck Point) rather than a persistent state, but it is priced as Major (2F): a free Luck Point — advantage, a threshold bend, or a spotlight steal — is a major-tier effect, not a micro-buff. Generally speaking, if a condition is applied to more than one creature at a time, it costs the full fatigue for the first creature, and then half fatigue for each additional creature.

Conditions typically are applied in one of two ways: if there’s an attack roll, it gets applied automatically on a strong hit, when it’s a saving throw, it’s applied on a miss, sometimes with a lesser, narratively coherent condition applied instead on a weak hit. Attack rolls forcing a creature to make a saving throw to avoid a condition should be exceedingly rare, usually only when it’d apply a Devastating condition or a Major condition that’d last more than the typical one round.