The chaos cores erupt!

Recently, I’ve been building a new fantasy RPG that’s intended primarily for pick-up-and-play games. Character stats are so straightforward players can quickly memorize all the relevant information, and the mechanics require no special equipment (not even dice). This lets people play in odd moments: in a car, waiting for a table at a restaurant, etc.

I also want to make running a game like this easy. That means giving the GM a setting that they can easily keep in their head. How on Oerth do you do that? Here’s one possibility I’m exploring:

Magic erupts!

Something terrible is happening to the forces of magic. Randomly, chaos magic erupts in unexpected locations, spawning monsters that attack villagers and eat nearby sheep and cattle. The PCs are tasked with charging out from their starting town, defeating the monsters, and destroying whatever chaos core spawned them.

This has the advantage of a clear, specific goal for adventures: get to the core of the chaos magic eruption and destroy it. Since players will expect some thematic consistency, the GM will need to remember a specific thematic set of monsters, such as undead or fire-themed monsters. Hopefully, that very thematic consistency should make that set of monsters easier to remember, especially since the adventure would be brief, only requiring a couple of monsters.

Here are some examples:

1. The necromantic core
   1. Will o’ wisp
   2. Zombies
   3. Ghosts guarding an artifact
   4. The core: A fusion of corpses with many heads and flailing arms
2. The diseased core
   1. Diseased plants
   2. Diseased beasts
   3. A diseased plant hoarding a magic artifact, guarded by diseased beasts
   4. The core: A massive pustule of orifices wheezing poison
3. The fire core
   1. A drake
   2. Small fire elementals
   3. Lava pools containing an artifact
   4. The core: A large fire elemental
4. The earth core
   1. Quicksand
   2. A maze of twisty little passages, all alike
   3. A mud monster powered by a magical artifact
   4. The core: An earth elemental

Need a pickup game for an upcoming session? There you go!

Hope this helps!