This question comes from GM Roy, who wrote: “I need some inspiration to create cool names for spell components. I have 5 [scales of rarity = Mike]: Common (flesh, breath, water, dust) Uncommon (earth from a cemetery, humanoid blood) Rare (head of a Medusa, Minotaur’s horn, black dragon blood) very Rare (Essence of the ghost of a mass murderer, Adamantium armor forged in hell by a celestial), and Unique (The Tear of the ancient God of death, Essence of the Terrasque). I need a lot of these, Where can I find some?”

I guess it was inevitable that sooner or later there would be an Ask-the-GMs question that was simply too big for a single blog post in response. The short answer to GM Roy’s question, is to create them yourself. But, like a lot of readers, the first question that had to be answered was “Why Bother?” The popular perception of Material Components is that they are nothing but unnecessary paperwork, after all. Before I could take a solid swing at answering the question, I needed to find an answer to that first question that satisfied me, AND that did away with that popular perception, hopefully by doing away with the majority of the paperwork. I tackled that task in Part One, “The Sales Pitch”, in which I tried to “sell” the value of Material Components to both myself and my readers at the same time. The consensus seems to be that I hit the mark in that respect. Along the way, I had to revise the categories offered by GM Roy in such a way that they were logically defined. That proved a little more controversial, largely because, instead of reducing the number of categories, I increased them. That was a direct result of the need to accommodate a spell-design process that I had come up with, based on the Material Component rarity. Because I’m really happy with that system, I’m sticking with the 6-step scale of rarity that I came up with. Now, it’s time to look at ways of populating those categories, and that’s the subject of today’s article. The obvious place to start is by recapitulating the categories and the examples that I’ve already created for them…

Contributors

I’ve relied heavily on past discussions regarding D&D/PFRPG with Ian Gray and in D&D and the Zenith-3 campaign with Nick Deane for these articles. Ian’s contributions were a major element of Part 1 of this series, Nick’s are part of what’s below – possibly morphed beyond his recognition! I also have to acknowledge discussions on the subject with Graham McDonald before he passed away several years ago. Graham was the first to suggest to me a more systematic approach to Material Components in spell design, while echoing the complaints about “Unnecessary Paperwork” that Ian would later make.

The Scale Of Rarity (with examples)

My revised scale of rarity is based on the principle of each level being the previous one plus one of four things:

• Inherently Greater Rarity;
• Inherently Greater Danger in procurement;
• An additional process of conversion which is inherently difficult and may be unknown;
• Greater journeys to procure, even extending into other planes at higher rarity levels;
• Qualities with a metaphysical significance relevant to the arcane purpose to which the material is to be put.

For most purposes relating to known spells, the first three levels are all you need, and most of those are reasonably readily available. Spellcasters can derive some additional benefits by using material components of one step greater rarity than those which are normally associated with the standard spells, or can have some minor variations on the basic spell results by using variations on components of similar rarity.

It’s in developing new variations on existing spells and standardizing them, or developing entirely new spells and standardizing them, or creating Epic spells, that the higher levels of rarity become important. With those in mind, here are the categories that I have defined and examples of the sort of Material Component that occupies that level of the rarity scale.

• Common:
  • Flesh, Breath, Water, Dust, Candles, Salt, Leather, Copper, Silver, Gold [D&D / Pathfinder only], Wood, Nails, Hide, Humanoid Blood, Meat,
    i.e. Anything you could routinely obtain from a country fair or marketplace, costing an SP or less. Readily replenished for the Spell Components Pouch.
• Uncommon:
  • Earth from a cemetery, Inhaled Breath, Spring Water, Swamp Water, Emerald Dust, Ruby Dust or shards, the flesh or blood of an Uncommon creature, Platinum, Spices, possibly tropical plants (tomatoes, banana skins, bamboo), Bat Guano, Amber Sticks, colored candles, candles that burn with a specific color of flame, inks of a specific color,
    i.e. items that are generally available in larger towns and small cities, possibly with a short wait, but that are not going to be routinely available in a small country town. In general, think of Common materials with an extra qualifier.
• Rare:
  • Body parts of a Rare creature, Gemstones of at least 5gp value, diamond dust, possibly Adamantium, Ethereal Vapor, Breath of a Djinn, Water from one of the Waterfalls of Elysium,
    i.e. anything that is inherently valuable and that aren’t waste products (that’s why ruby and emerald dust don’t fit this category) – (Diamonds are rare enough that even the dust falls into this category), and anything that is inherently dangerous to obtain, or that involves travel to other realms of existence, but is reasonably freely available in the right place.
• Very Rare:
  • Essence Of A Ghost, Adamantium forged in Hell, Adamantium Forged by a Celestial, Blood of a Celestial, Eyes Of A Demon, anything with an inherent worth of more than about 50gp (larger gemstones, gemstones carved with a particular scene or symbol), shrunken heads, a cursed monkey’s paw, the Blood Of A Tree, the Heart of a Mountain, Bottled Lightning, Essence Of The Terrasque,
    i.e. body parts of a rare creature, or body parts of a creature which is uncommon and only found in an extra-planar location, anything that is inherently dangerous AND only found in an extra-planar location, anything worth more than about 50gp, and anything that is metaphysical and not so rare that it qualifies for the “Exotic” category. The common pattern is either an elevated risk in obtaining the item, or travel that is inherently dangerous and which leads to an opportunity that is itself dangerous. Also anything Rare that requires some form of processing before it is ready to use, the specifics of which are not commonly known.
• Exotic:
  • Essence Of The Ghost Of A Mass Murderer,
    i.e. Anything very rare with an additional qualification or a third source of danger involved, or that have multiple unknowns that have to be resolved in separate adventures, the personal property or a body part of a specific individual of immense power whose precise location is unknown.
• Unique:
  • The Tear Of The Ancient God Of Death (with caveats – refer to the discussion in the comments to part 1), Excalibur, a branch of Yggdrasil, the Skin of the Midgard Serpent, the Horn Of Cornucopia,
    i.e Unique items have to be one-of-a-kind or improbably dangerous AND difficult to obtain.

So, now that we’re all caught up, let’s look at general principles of populating the different categories.

Industrialized Adventuring

The first consideration, and most dominant at the low end of the rarity scale, is this question: How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?

This is a question that GMs generally don’t consider nearly often enough or deeply enough. I have seen games in which a GM has plunked an “Adventurer’s Store” into every village and hamlet in which anything (including Material Components) that the adventurer might need can be obtained, whether it is a suit of +4 Chain Mail or a spare Wand Of Orcus (I kid you not!) No thought of the chains of suppliers and required infrastructure necessary to make this happen, they are just there.

As GMs grow in experience, they tend to swing the other way, making anything and everything hard to obtain and modeling their game worlds far more strongly on real-world models – usually without enough research into how things worked back then.

Most then settle down into a happy medium – still never having given the real question any thought.

The Fumanor Example

When I was first developing the Fumanor background, this was one of main creative focuses of the game world. I devised a situation in which “Adventuring” was a state-sponsored industry, with training, examinations, incentives, and rewards for successful advancement (which just happened to match those that the “rule book” says characters should receive.

What I didn’t tell the players (leaving the characters to discover it the hard way) was that this was economically unsustainable, but I made it clear that the Kingdom had grown entirely dependent on the adventuring industry. Defensive and Military spending had been undermined, resources diverted to continue funneling money into the Adventuring Programme, for example. Villages had, as their primary economic activity, farming; and a close second was preparing their populace for the life of an adventurer.

Every child was tested for potential, and the top 5% received subsidized further education. From these, at the age of adulthood (15 or equivalent for non-human species), they were tested again, and the top 1% were adopted by the state, gathered at training academies, and given the training needed to achieve first level as an adventurer. The state then outfitted each with the minimum equipment needed, gave each a small starting fund, and tried to get existing adventuring parties to take them on as apprentices – with cash incentives. If no adventuring party wanted the individual, they were encouraged (more cash incentives and group resources) to form their own party with their fellow novices. From that point until they reached 5th level, there was further training, involving state-sponsored dungeon explorations (artificial ones, with salted treasures), mentoring, and so on. From 5th level to 8th level, the mentoring continued, though the adventurers were free to strike out on their own (and soon discovered the difference between a manicured and controlled dungeon “simulation” and the real thing). Beyond 8th level, the mentor became an advisor, but no longer received subsidies from the government.

That’s a huge outlay by the society, and even with the semi-sheltering of simulated dungeons etc, only about 5% of novice adventurers survived to reach independence, so a lot of the outlay was lost. But it was in recovering lost treasures (taxes) and subsequent public service that the Kingdom recouped its expenses (in theory); by the time the PCs entered the picture, this approach was already starting to break down. So long as the Kingdom had continued to expand at breakneck speed, new income sources (ie dungeons to loot) could stave off disaster, but the Kingdom did not exist in isolation, and it was rubbing shoulders with neighbors (who had their own problems) or with impassable physical boundaries. Growth had slowed and was all but stopped. On top of that, other social problems were coming to the surface, such as the loss of revenue-providing resources to the Church, which was wealthy and increasingly corrupt. In such an environment, Adventurers were an elite force, and nowhere near as cost-effective as a large number of relatively untrained conscripts (the more traditional medieval model). The lesson in all this?

I had looked at how the Society would have evolved to accommodate adventurers in the post-apocalyptic environment that I had created, and then projected forward. I had integrated “Adventurers” into the game world as a social and economic factor, looked at what was required to support them, and extrapolated.

(It’s worth noting that this all emerged from the need to explain the existence of traditional dungeons to be looted. That led to the apocalypse a century prior to game-start, and that led to the impacts on society of Adventurers at an economic, social, and political level.)

The Relevance

The more Adventurers are integrated into society, the more society will adapt and evolve to service their needs (and relieve them of their cash). Those needs include Material Components. And the government will want its share. If you have a society in which Adventurers have to fill out income-tax forms and get taxed on the treasure they loot, that’s one thing, but it doesn’t really fit the pseudo-medieval setting, does it? A goods-and-services tax on the merchandise bought and sold by adventurers is a far more logical and easily-administered approach, because it turns every merchant into an internal revenue officer.

All this affects the availability (and price) of common, uncommon, and “rare” material components. Merchants exist to make a profit, so they need to sell regularly to Adventurers, and that means there have to be enough adventurers stopping by to make it worth their while to stock the things that Adventurers are likely to want to buy.

These general principles were already taken into account to some extent in the category definitions provided; I mention it here because changes to the way these principles are embodied within the game world will also affect the contents of those categories, ie what is available, where.

Controlled Substances

Here’s another thought. Bat Guano and Amber Rods. These enable mages to cast Fireball and Lightning Bolt, respectively, spells that can be quite harmful in the wrong hands. Is it unreasonable that a society might seek to restrict the availability of these Spell Components, say by whacking a huge tax on them, controlling their import and trade, and generally pricing them out of the market? Of course, if the proposals regarding alternative spell components are implemented, this won’t work – there are too many things that burn. But if you don’t adopt that flexibility, government control of the Material Components is a practical certainty – for everyone but an elite force maintained by the government, of course. The inevitable result is a Black Market, which will happily supply them to anyone willing to break the law – so you end up in a situation where everyone except the PCs have access to these spells’ components.

Or perhaps, in a half-way point between these extremes, the “ideal” components are restricted, leaving “independent civilian” spellcasters a choice of less-effective Material Component Alternatives?

In Summary:

While the list of material component examples offered above is all well and good in theory, it does not take into account social and economic restrictions that might apply, shifting specific components up or down the rarity scale. Or, to put it another way, the list offered is a theoretical one based on availability in the natural world; Social, economic, political and military factors – which will differ from game to game – will alter the availability within the humanoid world.

Spell- ie Purpose- Driven

There are two possible approaches to populating the categories. The first is to list every possible Material Component you can think of, then look at what spells they might be appropriate for. The alternative is to work from a list of spells available to spellcasters that require material components and think of possible alternatives as and when necessary.

The first is so much work that I definitely and emphatically don’t recommend it. The second is far more practical; for a start, you only have to worry about the spells that the spellcaster can actually cast. Don’t worry about 2nd level spells, and up, until you are dealing with a mage who can cast such spells.

Furthermore, you can decide not to worry about those spells until the mage actually decides to cast one. That’s when you need to know what variation is in the spell component pouch, and what impact (if any) the substitution will have on the spell. Decide that, tell the player, and let him decide whether or not to continue with that proposed action in light of the information.

Anything Goes?

Another approach – at least for the low-level spells that will get cast relatively frequently – is to make this a question for the player. Instead of telling them what they have available for material components, you can ask “What are you using for material component? You need something that…”

If the spell is fire-based, you might conclude that sentence with “…burns or is symbolic of fire”. This permits the choice of component to become part of the personality of the character, especially once the player gets used to the ground rules we’ve discussed. All that is necessary is for him to choose something that plausibly belongs in the rarity category required.

Let’s consider the possible justifications for an item to be the Material Component of a spell.

1. A metaphor or symbol for the spell

I’ve mentioned this one above. Consider, for example, the first level spell, Alarm (Pathfinder version). The spell description lists a small silver bell and piece of silver wire as a focus for the spell. What if you don’t have those? Well, the GM (under these rules) should be willing to permit the substitution of lesser-rarity components that will be consumed by the spell (Silver is a “common” material, available in coins, but requiring it to worked into the specified forms raises the focus into the “uncommon” category. Step 7 on the creating/importing spells process (in Part One) states that a focus raises the rarity level by one, so the non-focus version should revert back to the “common” category. So, what common materials would be metaphoric or symbolic of the spell? Answer: anything that makes a noise. If you wanted to be a little more representative, a nail tied to a horseshoe by a bit of string or fishing line would do. If you’re more generously-inclined, a tin whistle, or a trumpet, or a reed flute, or anything along those lines would qualify, together with a piece of string or fishing line in place of the silver wire.

However, the fact that none of these would be noisemakers if it weren’t for their shape might lift them back up a level, meaning that the GM can either let them be limited-reuse Material Components or even let these substitute directly for the spell focus AS a spell focus.

2. Iconic Representation of the target or target quality

Another approach that has a long history of use in some circles (wax figures, etc), when generalized a little, offers another set of appropriate Material Components.

Consider the Pathfinder 1st level spell, Protection from Evil/Good/Chaos/Law. According to the spell description, the arcane version of this spell uses a material component, but fails to specify what it should be. As a 1st-level spell, barring any other considerations, this should be something common. My first thought, of course, is to use an iconic representation of the spell – a small piece of armor or shell – but that’s not illustrative of the type of component we’re considering. But a piece of paper bearing a symbol of Evil would work for a Protection From Evil, because it is representative of what the caster is being protected against. A coin with the face of an evil (past) Ruler might also qualify. An inverted symbol of good is often considered representative of evil.

Or you could take the position that it’s the caster who is being affected, and not the thing being warded against, so you would need something symbolic of the caster – a uniquely personal item, a depiction of a humanoid, a mirror (contains a reflection of the caster)… lots of choices, but – given that the Material Component is destroyed in the process of casting the spell, a depiction of a humanoid (even a crude stick figure) would be perfect. Put it on a piece of paper an inch or two square, and bob’s your uncle.

But this type of focus is best when considering components for spells whose effect is hard to symbolize, because it gives you something else to symbolize that may be easier.

3. Traditional Reasonings

There are a couple of traditional “rules of magic” that the GM might permit to be used as justification for Material Components.

3a. Contagion

The rule of Contagion holds that any object that was once part of something can be a focus/material component for spells affecting that something. If it was taken unwillingly, the danger level presumably increases, so it is raised one rarity level. It is often an unwritten rule that the caster was the person who took the item, but there are any number of examples of a third party bringing such an item to a witch, so that’s up to the GM to decide.

Personally, I feel that if the caster does their own dirty work, it’s more in keeping with the “increased danger” basis of elevation of rarity, so if the item is to be provided by a third party, such as the Fighter in the party, it must be elevated a rarity level in some other way – something more valuable, for example. The implication is that for a common creature, the mage has to do his own dirty work; if the creature is uncommon, the mage can use the fighter’s leavings for spells that need only common material components, and so on. But I can’t speak for everyone on this issue.

3b. Similarity

It might seem that categories 1 and 2 have “similarity” nailed. I can’t think of any examples that would not fall into those categories, off-hand. But I’m including it here for the sake of completeness; I’ll probably think of an example as soon as I hit “publish,” that’s the way these things usually work!

3c. Traditional Symbolism

Gemstones have long been held to be symbolic of various “supernatural qualities” – this is full of pages for researching the subject. The same holds true for all sorts of other objects and substances. Flowers, for example – see this . Even if you only accept a sub-set of these offerings, for example Birthstones as symbolic of a person of particular birth-date, these are too useful to ignore.

4. Iconic Representation of the effect

A perennial favorite of mine (though not necessarily for D&D / Pathfinder). If you want to symbolize an earthquake affecting a castle wall, do a quick sketch of the wall (some crenelations and quick-and-dirty bricks), cast the spell and tear the paper. Maybe, in order to qualify on the rarity scale, it would have to be expensive paper (which is harder to tear).

5. Iconic Representation of the source

Where the effect is coming from somewhere or something, you may be able to get away with symbolizing the source. For an Ice Storm, a piece of steel shaped like a cloud, for example.

Sidebar: Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?

A related question comes to mind: If you are a cleric who has been taken prisoner, and your Holy Symbol taken from you, can you create your own temporary replacement? Ingredients would be something symbolic of the deity and a Bless Spell. Normally, the latter requires a divine focus to cast, but I would – under these general principles – the Bless to bootstrap itself into existence, transforming the symbolic item into a Divine Focus for the duration of the Bless – and consuming it when the Bless runs out. At least, this would give you an opportunity to retrieve your real focus in an adventurous manner!

1001 uses for a piece of string

It used to be that if you stripped a mage, you greatly restricted their effectiveness. The “component substitution” concept makes capturing a mage far more dangerous, by making the mage far more dangerous. To some extent, they can seize anything that’s handy and – depending on their cleverness – use that as the component requirement for all manner of spells.

Regardless of whether or not you allow Spell Pouches for Material Components, there would be a natural trend towards items that can be the Material Components for more than one spell to become part of the standard “kit” of a mage. A polished stone has the qualities of stone, of smoothness, of reflectivity, and so on. String can be tied around the finger (reminders/memory), tied into knots, laid out in a pattern (symbols), burned, producing smoke, used to bind something, unraveled – and that’s all before we start thinking about its color, the material it’s made of, and so on.

No doubt, there will be some shonky operators out there who would try to promote something as “the wonder of the ages, material component for 1,001 different spells” – when it’s actually just cheap junk. Component substitution opens the door for con-men even wider than it was before (ever sell a mage a “diamond” for use in a spell only for it to turn out to be some lesser crystal)?

Compound Components

Common-level components, then, are very easily filled. The world is full of them. The requirements get a little stiffer with “Uncommon” and “Rare” but not onerously so.

Things get more tricky when you start looking to populate the higher end of the rarity scale, and this, I suspect, was the real point of GM Roy’s question. if you have to do something to it (even if you can do that in advance) then you can climb a step on the rarity table. These are what I think of as “Compound Components”.

A Compound Component is a material or substance that has to be processed before it becomes the Component required. This extends to metaphysical components, too – “essence of a Ghost” requires not only that you somehow trap a Ghost, but that you then distill its metaphysical form into an essence somehow. Neither of these are tasks that any given character knows how to do – though it might also be metaphysical language for something more prosaic, reducing the rarity.

Ectoplasm, frequently described as coating something that the ghost passes through, like a wall, might be “Essence of A Ghost”, for example. Still not easy to obtain, but not as difficult as actually reducing a ghost to its essence – and that’s entirely ignoring the moral issues of doing so, which go away if you choose the “Ectoplasm” option.

Another interpretation is suggested by alchemy and early chemistry, where “essence” could refer to whatever is left after a substance is burned – the ash – implying that the burning is driving off impurities, or to the vapor produced by burning when trapped in water or sometimes oil.

In general, taking a (potential) material component and adding a more specific requirement that excludes most examples of the material in question, or adding a preparatory process of some sort, or adding a substantial additional element of danger, produces a compound component. Subsequent iterations or combinations of these additional requirements further carry you up the rarity scale.

Innately Magical Components

Some materials may be considered innately magical, either because it is one property of the material in question, or because it has previously been enchanted in some fashion. These materials may be considered a rarer form of the substance, or may have a restricted use. These usually require some thought on the part of the GM before they can be allocated onto the rarity scale.

In Fumanor, for example, Mithril is not an inherently superior material – in fact, it is brittle and rather difficult to work – but, if treated gently, it is more easily enchanted by Elven Magics (Fumanor Elves practice a different form of magic to that of Humans). The impurities cannot simply be beaten out of it the way you can with steel. If not treated properly, its qualities are those of brass. When correctly prepared, it has the strength of a piece of steel four times as thick, and the weight per volume of silver. This means that you can construct a lighter version of armor that is nevertheless tougher than the equivalent volume in steel. But, the thicker you make it, the less of these qualities that it retains – if you were to make mithril mail as thick as normal steel, it is no stronger than steel, because the magic placed within it by the Elves becomes too diffuse.

Adamantium, on the other hand, is too tough for humans to work; their furnaces don’t get hot enough, for one thing, and they lack the stamina to work it continuously for the length of time required. Dwarves are tailor-made for forging this material, which inherently resists being enchanted – but which is inherently much harder than steel, and can accept a limited amount of enchantment while it is white-hot but in its’ final form.

I have no problem with the Material Component of a prototype 9th-level or Epic-Level Superior Fireball spell being a fully-charged Wand Of Fireballs – price alone makes this a spell to be cast infrequently.

Magical Institutions as Components

Another idea worth contemplating is that Membership in a particular Magical Institution might constitute either a “virtual material component” or might provide a standard component that is upgraded in rarity due to something the Institution does to it.

The result is that mages with such membership, once schooled by the institution, find spells of a nature appropriate to the Institution easier to cast in terms of the material components.

An Institution dedicated to fire magic, for example, might allow for the casting of first level fire-related spells without a material component at all, the Institution Membership being the equivalent of an Arcane Focus of the particular type. They might be able to substitute common components (normally for spell levels 0 to 2 or 3) in spells of 4th level. How much more effective might a fire-mage be if he can use a piece of coal in place of bat guano, especially if the bat guano is a “controlled substance”?

Know your game Cosmology

Some “naturally occurring” materials might also be inherently magical – water from an exotic location (on another plane of existence, for example) might qualify, especially if that location is dangerous or guarded.

Exotic Qualities

Finally, imbuing objects or materials with qualities that they don’t normally posses can create Material Components with greatly increased rankings on the rarity scale. Whether these objects and/or materials qualify for the “Very Rare”, “Exotic” or “Unique” categories is up to the GM and the proposed material in question.

Of course, you can’t simply put two words together to create an exotic material. You can’t blindly add a process to a material that isn’t subject to that process.

Things have to make sense of some sort. There has to be some logical way of connecting the two parts of the idea.

Using these principles, you can fill the middle- and upper- ranks on the rarity scale without too much difficulty.

This epic answer is winding its way to a close! Next Time, in “Tab A into Slot B”, I offer ten exotic materials, all dreamed up by the processes described above in just a few minutes, and available for GMs to use as “exotic substances” even if they don’t adopt any of the proposals in this series. As a bonus, I have high-resolution images for GMs to use in illustrating these components – something that I’ve been putting together for months, now. Originally, there was only going to be one, but then I thought of a second, and then a third, and then, well, you get the picture.

I have to thank my fellow GMs for their time and their insights. While I’ve done most of the talking (hopefully without misrepresenting their views) I could not have done it without their past comments and contributions. Much appreciated!

About the contributors: Mike: Mike is the owner, editor, and principle author at Campaign Mastery, responsible for most of the words of wisdom (or lack thereof) that you can read here. You can find him on Twitter as gamewriterMike, and find out more about him from the “About” page above. Ian Gray: Ian Gray resides in Sydney Australia. He has been roleplaying for more than 25 years, usually on a weekly basis, and often in Mike Bourke’s campaigns. From time to time he GMs but is that rarest of breeds, a person who can GM but is a player at heart. He has played many systems over the years including Tales Of The Floating Vagabond, Legend Of The Five Rings, Star Wars, D&D, Hero System, Gurps, Traveller, Werewolf, Vampire, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and many, many more. Over the last couple of years he has been dirtying his hands with game design. He was a contributor to Assassin’s Amulet, the first time his name appeared in the credits of a real, live, RPG supplement. Recently he has taken to GMing more frequently, with more initial success than he was probably expecting, based on his prior experiences. Nick Deane: Nick also lives in Sydney. He started roleplaying in the mid-1980s in high school with a couple of friends who got him into D&D. That group broke up a year later, but he was hooked. In late ’88 he found a few shops that specialized in RPGs, and a notice board advertising groups of gamers led him to his first long-term group. They started with AD&D, transferred that campaign to 2nd Ed when it came out, tinkered with various Palladium roleplaying games (Heroes Unlimited met Nick’s long-term fascination with Marvel’s X-Men, sparking his initial interest in superhero roleplaying), and eventually the Star Wars RPG by West End Games and Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set. This also led to his first experiences with GMing – the less said about that first AD&D 2nd Ed campaign, the better (“so much railroading I should have sold tickets”). His second time around, things went better, and his Marvel campaign turned out “halfway decent”. That group broke up in 1995 when a number of members moved interstate. Three years later, Nick heard about what is now his regular group while at a science-fiction bookstore. He showed up at one of their regular gaming Saturdays, asked around and found himself signed up for an AD&D campaign due to start the next week. A couple of weeks later, He met Mike, and hasn’t looked back since. From ’98 he’s been a regular player in most of Mike’s campaigns. There’s also been some Traveller and the Adventurer’s Club (Pulp) campaign, amongst others. Lately he’s been dipping a tentative toe back into the GMing pool, and so far things have been going well. Nick is unique amongst the GMs that Mike knows in that he has done some PbP (Play-by-post) gaming, something Mike neglected to include in an article on the evolution of RPGs and was quite rightly taken to task over (the article was updated within 24 hours to correct the omission). “I’ve played spellcasters in a number of games and systems. In Mike’s original Fumanor campaign I played a cleric-monk hybrid and later a druid, while in the spin-off, Seeds of Empire, I have run a lawful good Orcish War-priest throughout the campaign. I’ve also played spellcasters in a couple of superhero games – a couple of Marvel campaigns from 1988-1995, and my modern-Norse spellcaster Runeweaver in Mike’s current Zenith-3 campaign for getting on for a decade. I mention this at Mike’s request because it, more than my GMing experience, is how I have been able to contribute to this topic.”