The default world for STAGS suffered heavy damage due to mysterious “Event”. Think apocalypse Biblical style. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and such.
That was in the past. Unfortunately, what’s in the past is also the majority of knowledge, including that of magic. Nowadays, sorcery is but a shadow of what it once was and sorcerers are part sages, part conjurers of cheap tricks seeking and thriving on scraps of old wisdom.

In the past, STAGES featured limited list of spells split between classes. Currently Bucyrus is torn between continuing with it, or replacing it with class-relevant “icons”.
The idea is simple. You have a few slots, like:
- WHAT (the effect)
- ACTION (what will be done with it)
- WHERE (who or what is the recipient of magical doing)
- VARIATION (go wild)
Each class gets different spell icons. For example, typical Mage would get WHAT: Force (“invisible hand”), ACTION:Push and Pull, WHERE:Me(the Mage himself, obviously) and This(something or someone he might point at).
He could create for example “Jump” spell from it, meaning FORCE+PUSH+ME, which would result in him being thrown over a small chasm, or being elevated to the window one floor above. Were he to mix FORCE+PUSH+THIS and point at his enemy, it would result with “Invisible Punch” dealing some damage (since the guy wouldn’t be expected the “push”). FORCE+PULL+THIS would be something along the lines of telekinesis – selected item would fly towards Mage’s hand.
Bard would get WHAT:Emotions, ACTION: Banish and Invoke, WHERE: Us and Them.
Let’s try FEAR+INVOKE+THEM. At voila “Induce Fear” in hearts of our enemies. Or FEAR+BANISH+US. Bye bye to being scared.
And so on and so forth.
The system seems simple and entertaining, but it’s also very vague and it might be easily overused. Still, it’s so interesting.
Choices, choices…