The Magnus Mythos

For over two hundred years, since 1818, the Magnus Institute has stood on a quiet street in London, its doors open to those who have a suspicion as to the true nature of the world and those who have strange encounters that they cannot explain, yet want to tell someone, to tell some body or organisation, to tell someone who will listen to what they say and not dismiss it out of hand. To take the details without dismissing them out of hand or telling them that they are mad. For over two hundred years, the staff at the Magnus Institute have been taking such statements from members of the public and not just archiving them, but investigating them, and cataloguing the results. Over the decades, the Magnus Institute has collected and collated thousands and thousands of such statements, yet years of poor management and misfiling has mislaid the reports and only in recent years, under the management of head archivist, Jonathan Simms, has the library begun to be organised such that connections and hypothesises can be formulated… and worse, the realisation that there is a darkness stirring. A darkness that is growing and could threaten the world… There are cosmic horrors, identified as ‘Entities’, but also called the Fears, which lie beyond and beyond human understanding, which seek to break into our world and in seeking to do so, are believed to be responsible for the supernatural phenomena that occur again and again in the statements. In doing so, they invoke fear in their victims and feed on it, grant their occult power to the Avatars who serve them and create yet more fear in our own world.

This is the set-up for The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game and also the long-running podcast, The Magnus Archives, it is based on. Published by Monte Cook Games, it is a cosmic horror roleplaying game set in the here and now—whether that is the United Kingdom where The Magnus Archive are set, or elsewhere—which uses the Cypher System, first seen in Numenera in 2013. The play of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game begins with the investigation of Statements made by members of the public who walk into the Magnus Archives. These form the basis of the investigation and will lead to confrontation with the Avatars, cultists, and artefacts of the Fears, though this will not be without its consequences. A Statement can be created as normal by the Game Master, but it can also be created as a collective endeavour with the players taking turns to develop the statement. A campaign can be run in conjunction with the existing Magnus Archives heard in the podcast with the Player Characters working alongside the staff, or the Player Characters can create their own Magnus Archives. The Magnus Archive podcast consists of five seasons and two hundred episodes, but there is a radical shift in the storytelling in the fifth season. This shift is not reflected in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, which set during the first four seasons.

A Player Character in the Cypher System and The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game has three stats or Pools. These are Might, Speed, and Intellect, and represent a combination of effort and health for a character. Typically, they range between eight and twenty in value. Might covers physical activity, strength, and melee combat; Speed, any activity involving agility, movement, stealth, or ranged combat; and Intellect, intelligence, charisma, and magical capacity. In game, points from these pools will be spent to lower the difficulty of a task, but they can also be lost through damage, whether physical or mental. A Player Character has an Edge score, tied to one of the three pools. This reduces the cost of points spent from the associated pool to lower the difficulty of a task, possibly even to zero depending upon the Edge rating.

A Player Character will also have a Type, which can either be Investigator, Protector, Elocutionist, or Occultist. The Investigator is a key role in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, librarians, researchers, and archivists checking the Magnus Archives and the Statements archived there, but can also be ex-policemen or private investigators. The Protector is physical, often an ex-bodyguard, policeman, or member of the armed forces, who stops others from getting hurt. The Elocutionist is good at talking to people and could be an ex-team leader, politician, or even a conman. The Occultist is similar to the Investigator, but takes a deep interest in the supernatural, and could be a simple researcher, but also an ex-magician or scam artist.

What defines a Player Character is a simple statement—“I am an adjective noun who verbs.” The noun is the Player Character’s Type, whereas the adjective is a Descriptor which describes the character and verb is the Focus, or what the character does. For example, “I am an Inquisitive Investigator who Would Rather Be Reading”, “I am a No-Nonsense Protector who Needs No Weapon”, “I am a Likeable Elocutionist who Leads”, and “I am an Enigmatic Occultist who Solves Mysteries”. This encapsulates the Player Character in the case of the Descriptor, Type, and Focus, provides points to assign to his three Pools, special abilities, skills, and a point in an Edge. To this is added a connection to world and through this to the other Player Characters, plus a Character Arc, which provides a story that the character and player can invest themselves in as well as providing a means of earning Experience Points. Example Arcs include ‘Assist an Organisation’, ‘Instruction’, ‘Repay a Debt’, and ‘Uncover a Secret’. They are voluntary, but do provide a personal element to the play of the game. The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game lists twenty-seven Descriptors and eighteen Foci for a player to choose from, providing for a decent range of Player Characters in a simple, familiar format. To create a character, a player selects a Descriptor, Type, and Focus ,and chooses from the options given under each.

Henry ‘Harry’ Brinded
“I am a Fastidious Investigator who Practically Lives Online.”
Tier 1 Investigator
Might 10 Speed 9 [Edge 1] Intellect 11 [Edge 1]
Effort 1
Inability: Intellect Defence
Abilities: Decipher, Missing Detail, Online Research
Skills: Forensics [Trained], Perception [Trained], Programming [Trained], Researching [Trained], light and medium weapons [Practised]
Arc: Uncover a Secret

What The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game does not provide for—at least at the very start—is for Player Characters who have had paranormal experiences or possess supernatural abilities. This does not mean that they do not have an interest or belief in the paranormal, but rather that they have yet to encounter definitive evidence of it. This is intended to come through play and investigation, but it is also possible through play, if a Player Character suffers enough Stress from supernatural sources, effectively touched by the influence of the Entities, he can select supernatural abilities. These are only available at higher Tiers after some extended play, though the Occultist character Type may have access to them earlier.

Mechanically, as a Cypher System roleplaying game, The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is player facing. Thus, in combat, a player not only rolls for his character to make an attack, but also rolls to avoid any attacks made against his character. Essentially this shifts the game’s mechanical elements from the Game Master to the player, leaving the Game Master to focus on the story, on roleplaying NPCs, and so on. When it comes to tasks, the Player Character is attempting to overcome a Task Difficulty, ranging from one and Simple to ten and Impossible. The target number is actually three times the Task Difficulty. So, a Task Difficulty of four or Difficult, means that the target number is twelve, whilst a Task Difficulty of seven or Formidable, means that the target number is twenty-one. The aim of the player is lower this Task Difficulty. This can be done in a number of ways.

Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. Trained skills—skills can either be Practised or Trained—can reduce the Difficulty, but the primary method is for a player to spend points from his relevant Stat pools. This is called applying Effort. Applying the first level of Effort, which will reduce the target number by one, is three points from the relevant Stat pool. Additional applications of Effort beyond this cost two points. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, which if the Edge is high enough, can reduce the Effort to zero, which means that the Player Character gets to do the action for free—or effortlessly!

Rolls of one enable a free GM Intrusion—essentially a complication to the current situation that does reward the Player Character with any Experience Points, whereas rolls of seventeen and eighteen in combat grant damage bonuses. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in combat can also grant damage bonuses, but alternatively, can grant minor and major effects. For example, distracting an opponent or striking a specific body part. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in non-combat situations grant minor and major effects, which the player and Game Master can decide on in play. In combat, light weapons always inflict two points of damage, medium weapons four points, and heavy weapons six points, and damage is reduced by armour. NPCs simply possess a Level, which like the Task Difficulty ranges between one and ten and is multiplied by three to get a target number to successfully attack them.

Experience Points in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game are earned in several ways, primarily through achieving objectives, making horrifying discoveries, and so on. There are two significant means of a Player Character gaining Experience Points. The first is ‘GM Intrusion’. These are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. Suggested Intrusions are given for the four character Types and the Foci. When this occurs, the Game Master makes an Intrusion and offers the player and his character two Experience Points. The player does not have to accept this ‘GM Intrusion’, but this costs an Experience Point. If he does accept the Intrusion, the player receives the two Experience Points, keeps one and then gives the other to another player, explaining why he and his character deserves the other Experience Point. The ‘GM Intrusion’ mechanic encourages a player to accept story and situational complications and place their character in danger, making the story much more exciting.

There is the reverse of the ‘GM Intrusion’, which is ‘Player Intrusion’. With this, a player spends an Experience Point to present a solution to a problem or complication. These make relatively small, quite immediate changes to a situation, such as an old friend suddenly showing up, a device used by a NPC malfunctioning, and so on.

The other means of gaining Experience Points is the Character Arc. A Player Character begins play with one Character Arc for free, but extra can be purchased at the cost of Experience Points to reflect a Player Character’s dedication to the arc’s aim. Each Character Arc consists of several steps—Opening, two or three development steps, followed by a Climax and a Resolution. Suggested Character Arcs include Avenge, Birth, Develop a Bond, Mysterious Background, and more. For example, Henry Brinded has the ‘Uncover a Secret’ Arc, which involves naming the secret, steps such as investigation, research, and tracking, leading to a climax involving a revelation and discovery as to the nature of the secret, followed by contemplation about the discovery and how affects him and the world around him. The selection of the Character Arc during character creation signals to the Game Master what sort of story a player wants to explore with his character.

One of the aspects inherent to The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game and all Cypher System roleplaying games and settings are the Cypher System’s namesake—Cyphers. Again, first seen in Numenera, Cyphers are typically one-use things which help a Player Character. In the Science Fantasy world of Numenera, they are physical or Manifest devices and objects which might heal a Player Character, inflict damage on an opponent or hinder him, aid an attack, turn him invisible or reveal something that is invisible, increase or decrease gravity, and so on. In a modern setting like that of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, Cyphers do aid a Player Character, but they are Subtle rather than Manifest, and represent luck or inspiration. For example, ‘Binary’ means that the Player Character guesses the PIN code to a mobile phone or a door luck, whilst ‘What We All Ignore’ enables the Player Character to partially withstand the effects of mental shock or despair for an hour. The degree to which Cyphers play a role varies from one Cypher System roleplaying game to another, but in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game it is to a lesser degree.

As a horror roleplaying game, The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game handles shock and fear through Stress. If a Player Character witnesses the supernatural from a distance or finds himself hanging from a roof, he will suffer one Stress; encountering a supernatural event or creature up close or discovering a gruesomely mutilated corpse, two points of Stress; and watching someone you care about die or have a supernatural event or creature directly harm him, three points of Stress. For every three points of Stress, the Player Character gains a Level of Stress. Each Stress Level hinders a Player Character’s actions by one step, but at four Stress Levels, further Levels will result in injury.

It is possible to avoid Stress, but not always, and it can be used in as a single, one-off bonus to an action in a tense situation. However, this triggers a ‘GM Intrusion’. Stress can be reduced and removed through various ways, but the long term, the player must track how many Levels of Stress his character suffers. Ten or more and the character becomes able to gain supernatural powers.

As a horror roleplaying game, what the Game Master can do in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is trigger ‘Horror Mode’. This can occur when the Player Characters encounter a specific creature or person, but usually happens when they enter a particular location. It is the metagaming equivalent of spooky horror sting in a film, ratchetting up the tension, signalling to the players—though not their characters, that the situation is about to get dangerous. In Horror Mode, the range in which a player can roll an Intrusion, increases from the base one to one to two. Worse, if a player does roll an Intrusion, it heightens the Horror Mode, so that there is the potential for a spiralling escalation back and forth between the Horror Mode and the range for Intrusion.

More than half of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is a dedicated to the background of The Magnus Archive. These include the details of the Fears, like ‘The Buried’, ‘The Spiral’, and ‘The Extinction’, making clear that they not gods and are mostly mindless. Nevertheless, this does not stop them from wanting to manifest in the world, working through Avatars and cultists to perform the complex and demanding ritual that will achieve this. There is also a bestiary of monsters and NPCs drawn from the podcast. The NPCs are created as archetypes so that the Game Master can use their roles in a Magnus Archives campaign of her own rather than use the character from the Podcast, but includes their names and quotes from them if she instead wants to use the characters that appear in the stories. So, for example, Jonathan Sims is presented as the Archivist, Mikaele Salesa as the Artefact Dealer, Jurgen Leitner as the Book Collector, and so on. Besides this, there are numerous creatures and servants of the Entities—Cultists of the Divine Host, Clown Dolls, Dabblers, the Notthem, the Perfect Stranger, and much, much more. All come with complete stats, lore, and a GM Intrusion, such as the Player Character finding, tripping over, or is sent a bag of human teeth as a result of, or prior to, encountering one of the Perfect Strangers. Where necessary, the entries also have their own Stress values. All are very nicely illustrated.

Artefacts are given a similar treatment, most possessing a related Entity, an amount of Stress they inflict, and Fear effect triggered by a GM Intrusion. For example, the ‘Gorilla Skin’ is a taxidermized hide of a gorilla worn as a cape, which worn, turns the wearer into a stranger to anyone and everyone. It is associated with The Stranger and its Fear causes the wearer to no longer recognise himself in the mirror. Although it is not the case with every artefact, the ‘Gorilla Skin’ can be used as part of the ritual to summon the Entity with which it is associated.

There is advice for the Game Master on creating her own artefacts and monsters, even on adapting such entities as The Mothman. This is addition to solid advice on running the game—handling the rules, NPCs, and the players, and narrating and running the game. There is a discussion on the type of horror in The Magnus Archive and The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, cosmic horror, drawing parallels between it and the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. However, it makes clear that although there are parallels, the horror of the podcast and this roleplaying game is not that of Lovecraft. The advice extends to creating investigations and writing Statements which are the spur for the players and their characters to investigate. This is a corollary to the advice already given on the process of the players collectively writing a Statement which will form the basis of the investigation. This adds a storytelling element prior to the play of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, the aim being to create a story in miniature which raises questions, but does not answer them and which the Game Master can then develop into a proper investigation. It does mean that the Game Master has relatively little time between the Statement process and running the resulting sessions, so she needs to be able to prepare content on the fly. Consequently, this option is better suited to the more experienced Game Master rather someone who is a fan of the podcast and is running a roleplaying game for the first time.

Rounding out The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game are two scenarios. Both begin with Statements that are also available as recordings made by the cast of the podcast via a QR code and in both cases add a nice little bit of verisimilitude. ‘The Resurrection Mound’ is a short, introductory investigation a strange insect-infested mound in the back garden that appears to resurrect the dead. It is a creepy little affair whose action really all takes place in a single house. The second adventure, ‘Liquify’, begins with the Statement from a dead man and draws the Player Characters out into the countryside to confirm the Statement and determine if the man reported trying to get into the dead man’s home was responsible. It is a more expansive investigation, though only by a little. It is written as introductory adventure, but is intended for characters and players with a little more experience. Overall, both are good little adventures.

Physically, The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is very well presented and everything is clearly explained. Extensive use of the sidebars is made to suggest further links elsewhere in the book and to add commentary and advice. There are innumerable references and extracts from The Magnus Archive podcast throughout the book that add flavour and detail from the source material. The artwork is excellent throughout.

The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is not the definitive sourcebook for The Magnus Archive podcast, although there is a great deal of content drawn and adapted from the podcast within its pages. That content will not only interest fans of the podcast, but also make them want to play The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game. It is also clear from the introduction to the makers of The Magnus Archive that they roleplayers already, so it very likely that fans of the podcast will be aware of what roleplaying is. That said, it is not necessary for a roleplayer to be a fan of, or even known anything about, The Magnus Archive podcast, in order to play The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game. The set-up for the podcast and thus The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is simple enough that a roleplayer could play this as an urban horror and cosmic horror roleplaying game and enjoy it, but be none the wiser. Fans of the podcast will enjoy the references and drawing parallels between the adventures of their characters and those on the podcast.

Above all, the The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is a good adaptation of The Magnus Archive that offers investigative urban horror and cosmic horror in an engaging and well written fashion, backed up with plenty of good advice and two creepy starting Statements to look into.