This experiment is inspired by traditions and fiction about secret magical orders and summoned entities who have an important role in revealing hidden knowledge and assisting with intrigue.
The gameplay uses Pathfinder 1st Edition rules with modifications.
House rules and setting summary:
~ Humans are the only humanoid species.
~ All mortal inhabitants of the material world (with perhaps some extremely rare exceptions) are true neutral in alignment. Summoned outsiders are almost always lawful neutral or chaotic neutral. The precise meaning of the distinction between lawful and chaotic is something that the PCs may discover during the story. (Of course, humans and outsiders can still behave in ways that would generally be considered good or evil, but this is subjective and has no implications for the mechanics of the game.)
~ Arcane and divine magic do not exist. Psychic spellcasters almost always keep their abilities hidden from the general populace, for reasons that will become apparent in the story.
~ Some NPCs (and perhaps eventually the PCs) will have access to ritual magic that will allow them to cast more powerful magic than they can when acting alone.
~ Magic items are extremely rare, and are always mysterious and powerful. Magic item crafting feats are unavailable.
~ The duration of the summon monster series of spells is 1 hour/level (D) unless (roughly speaking) the summoned creature becomes involved in combat - at that point, the remaining duration changes back to 1 round/level (D).
~ All summoned creatures are variants of a single type of outsider. A summoned creature who is slain in the material world will return to its home plane and can be summoned again (and it will remember the events of its previous visit).
~ The phrenology skill unlock is unavailable.
~ Note that the story is expected to be relatively low combat, and the PCs’ main adversaries will be summoned outsiders and psychic spellcasters.
~ The story begins in a city-state; the Duke who is mentioned early on is the head of state, ruling over a fairly small geographic area.
Playtesting method:
~ This is a solo playtest - I’m GMing and also running the three PCs. To reflect the ability of players to make unpredictable contributions to the storyline of an RPG, some of the PCs’ decisions will be determined by dice rolls. Not every decision will be randomised - the choices should make a meaningful difference, and the options must all be justifiable given the personality and moral code of the PC.
~ To add a little more unpredictably to the PCs’ actions, each PC will receive a randomly selected card from the Plot twist deck or the Flashbacks deck once per chapter.
