Punch Wizards, Steal their Spells, Topple their Empires

A collaborative storytelling game for 3-6 players, including one GM. You need a deck of cards per player (no Jokers) and some Sharpies or pens to write with.

Wizards rule the world. They’ve traded their stone towers for skyscrapers of steel and glass, their homunculus servants for warehouse workers, their tea leaf readings for a subscription to The Economist, and their robes emblazoned with stars for three-piece suits and sensible skirts (still emblazoned with stars, though). The rest of the world might consider them clever business people or daring entrepreneurs, but you know better. Their empires of power and influence are built on magical secrets torn unwillingly from the fabric of reality and bound into powerful grimoires: collections of spell fragments and lost secrets pinned beneath written words, illustrations, and codes. Wizards control knowledge of magic, guarding their grimoires jealously. Their grimoires are the source of their power.

So we’re gonna take them.

Let's F*** Up Some Wizards

You are the grimoire punks: a network of gutter magicians democratising magic by stealing it from wizards and passing it secretly to where it’s needed most. You communicate in Signal threads and private Discords. You publish arcane zines and search through op-shop books for scraps of forgotten lore. Punks like you maintain their own grimoires—books of spells and coded notes, pale imitations of the leatherbound tomes of the powerful wizards, but packed with potential nonetheless. Every spell was stolen from a far more powerful mage, and you use them to liberate more magic. For all their power, wizards are still human. They can be careless. They can be proud. They can be tricked, and they can be robbed.

In GrimoirePunk, you and your friends will create your punks and each build a unique grimoire on a deck of cards that you will add to and destroy until you have a book that is unique to you, shaped by your adventures.

The aim is to have fun telling exciting stories full of daring action and cool magic. The punks are out-gunned and out-classed, and surviving on the fringes. Their daring raids on mighty wizards at the height of their power are the stuff of legends. 

But be careful... because infinite cosmic power... comes with some risks.

Created in two days for #GameDunk 2021!

Theme: NounPunk

Bonus:

• Anything but Dice ✅
• Legacy Play ✅
• Mysterious Mixtapes ❌
• Ska Music (Paddy Bribery) Kinda
• The Complete Works of Morris Gleitzman (Lee Bribery) ❌

The Game Dunk version of this game is available for free. This version is what was submitted to the Game Dunk jam, and is available as a plain text .pdf only. This version does not receive additional content or updates.

Roadmap

• Expanded GM section
• Community building rules to flesh out your punks' world Now available as part of v1.1 update!
• Downtime rules for in between heists Now available as part of v1.1 update!

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I respectfully acknowledge the Bunurong people as the traditional owners of the land on which the majority of my work takes place, and pay respect to Elders past and present. I recognise their ongoing connections to land, waters, and culture. Sovereignty was never ceded.