Mystical Inspiration for 5E Spellcasters
My Swords & Sorceries campaign and adventures are inspired by myth and history. I am fascinated by the challenge and opportunities of playing 5E adventures in a setting that evokes the mythologies that inspired D&D, and that inspired the sword & sorcery fiction that inspired D&D. In my campaign, a large part of that is rethinking the way magic works.
Magic in the Broken Empire, as I run it, is not a font of energy to be mechanistically tapped but the working of otherworldly powers upon the world. It is a mystical connection to the unseen. It is almost always an exchange. You ask some particular spiritual creature to change the world around you, and you either offer it something that makes its exercise of power worthwhile or you call on ancient obligations to compel it.
There are exceptions, of course. Monks have meditated so deeply upon the connection between the mortal and the sublime that they can work power for themselves in limited ways. Sorcerers and nonhuman characters with innate spellcasting abilities have the blood of magical beings or the gods in their veins.
Because I’m a big believer in encouragement rather than requirement, I frame this in play with my own descriptions of spellcasting and by granting inspiration when players narrate gaining magic through mysticism.
—Shane Ivey
