An urban fantasy road trip.

Witchgates is a tabletop roleplaying game set in our modern world at the precipice of fantastical incursion. Magic has swept across the world, altering lands, creatures, people, and cultures. However, there is no single event or epicenter to separate the past and new world. The change is happening now. Many reject the magic on the news and before their eyes; some seek to define it to a science; some see it as a new opportunity to exploit; and many have extrapolated whole new meanings from the changes. At its simplest, Witchgates is a game about a world in change.

Witchgates themselves are are the boundaries between mundane land and that which has been altered in some fantastical manner.  Some are permanent and expansive, while many more are fleeting and small. Witchgates, and the phenomenon they have created, have become commonplace enough to garner and force society’s attention. Fields of crystalline wheat hiding glass insects; once barren caves now overgrown with gravity defying lichen; traveling clouds of vaporous iron and shrieking terrors; dark forests that glow within perpetual black smog.

The players take on the roles of witches, wielders of magic who seek out and explore the witchgates that have appeared in the world. Witches come in all shapes and sizes and with all types of magic. When creating a character or when following the story, player characters can acquire different legacies that provide them with unique abilities and new magical aptitudes.

This is a game of many mysteries and intrigues to uncover. It is both a game that encourages the physical, literal exploration of fantastical lands, and the conceptual exploration of the many ways people and our cultures would adapt to a magical world.  Corrupt businessmen, criminals, and politicians may attempt to exploit newly found magics. Magical beast may threaten unprotected rural country. Stubborn citizens may reject and distrust anyone altered by the witchgates. People now have the chance to overcome once insurmountable odds, and even those who seek to misuse magic have to fear the unknown, as magic topples even the most secure power structures.

The idea of magic is out in the open. The potential of magic remains to be discovered.

What are the most important aspects of Witchgates?

• Weird and Wonderful, and Only Somewhat Familiar
  

  Witchgates is designed to explore all the fantastical ways our world could change with some magic. Whole new environments have appeared around the world; there are new sprawling landscapes risen from the ocean and tiny ecosystems unique to a single alleyway between buildings. New creatures roam the wilds and fantastical trinkets find use in all markets. People define the limits of new magic only to debate and be disproven by others seeking the same knowledge. Most importantly, there are only a few years of magical history to be found – most of it is being made now.

• The Final Frontier is Everywhere
  

  People still don’t understand what causes the appearance of a witchgate. The phenomenon that alters lands, creatures, and people can appear anywhere. They can be small or expansive, with drastic or only subtle changes. The identification and monitoring, let alone exploration of witchgates is a fruitful if dangerous field of work. The further they appear from a city, the fewer people there are to report what they’ve seen, and the more unknowns that yet remain to be discovered.

• Rumor Runs Wild
  

  People are bad at retelling stories with accuracy. Our imaginations love to fill in details and add information that was never there. Now, anything seems possible, so who’s to tell someone what they saw is a lie. Anything is possible, but that doesn’t mean everything is real. Folktales, cryptids, and local legends will always persist. 

• The Value of Magic

  Money is useful for the mundane, but when trading magical objects, who knows what unique items will be worth to someone else in the future. Magical objects, esoterics, are their own form of currency. They have intrinsic, unique value that changes hand to hand. If you are interested in magic, you need to find it yourself or be willing to barter with those who have; usually with your time and service, or with your own collection of esoterics, or maybe some living stories held in a lost word.

• A System to Justify Cool Stuff

  Witchgates does not outline every possible action, but provides a framework for which players can discuss and justify the actions and capabilities of their characters, with mechanics to assist when a compromise is necessary. Players are expected to look for clever ways to use the environment, merits, and items to help their actions. Players take the lead in deciding what their magical ingredients, esoterics, can do on their own, or what they can create when put together. 

• No Levels, but an Everchanging and Expanding Toolbelt

  Player characters in Witchgates do not have character levels. Instead, they use experience to enhance new merits, or enhance old ones. Experience is slow to accumulate, but players can also advance by creating temporary merits, limited use items, and by finding new magical components in the wilds. As players get used to their unique tools and expand their toolbelt, they’ll find themselves able to better prepare against a wider array of challenges and larger threats.

Coming from another RPG?

First and once again, welcome to Witchgates! The world’s excited to have you! Witchgates has a few traits that players coming from other ttrpgs may take time to adapt to, so here are a a few of the most common traits that players may want to be aware of:

• Not a Combat Focused Game

  Witchgates does not have a separate system whereby players can enter in and out of combat. Combat is run just like the rest of the game. However, there are a few things to note about this:

  • “Health” is directly tied to a character’s special abilities known as merits. Unharmed characters are quite durable, but may lose access to their merits very quickly if not cautious. Healing is slow even with dedicated healers.
  • Damage is often low, but objectives also normally have small tracks. If a character wants to deal lots of damage, they will need to invest at least one merit into a damage-focused weapon, and/or learn about their target’s vulnerabilities and utilize them to stronger effects.
  • Although there is no initiative, the Game Master manages the spot light between players, NPCs, and monsters. In fast-paced encounters, they may use an action tracker to help give an even spread of actions to characters.

• No Difficulty Checks (DCs), but…

  When taking an action, characters do not roll to beat a specific target number. Instead they seek to roll a success (4, 5, or 6).  A 4 or 5 may come with a complication, but is still a success. 
  So how are tasks of various difficulties measured?

  1. Position and Effect measure the relative riskiness and potential benefit of an action – determining the potential outcomes of any check.
  2. Cuts reduce the number of dice a player rolls. Though most often invoked by the player themselves, the GM can invoke cuts onto especially difficult tasks.

• Use tools and the environment for better rolls!

  Skills can only provide up to 3 dice towards any action check. If a player wants to roll more dice, they need to be creative. They can gain additional dice by using something in the scene, a magical item, or one their merits. Note, using a merit doesn’t necessarily using the merit’s ability. A fancy dagger can become a workable crowbar in a pinch.

• Player Narrative Control

  Many rules and abilities give players limited narrative control. A player’s narrative control extends not just to their character, but to many of their character’s possessions. The above bullet “A System to Justify Cool Stuff” covers some of the same point, but here are some other examples:

  • A Moirai who’s foretold the probable future of a character getting attacked by a monster might invoke that fortune at an opportune time: forcing the event to occur.
  • A player who’s character has the esoteric “float toad” may decide that spending it will cause a target start floating off the ground for a few seconds.
  • A character may shout the lost words “Thunderous Boom” into the air in an attempt to create an explosive distraction some nearby.
  • A player may temporarily play as the summoned demon for another player, choosing what the demon does instead of the GM.

Where to go from here?