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Micronomicon: A Compendium of Magic for Tiny Dungeon 2e

Created by John D. Payne

A supplement for TD2e and other tabletop RPGs, the MICRONOMICON is packed with spells, potions, items, and new magical micro-settings!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Reminders + Stretch Goal 7 details
over 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 11:57:26 AM

Happy Monday, everyone.  We're on the final stretch and sprinting in to the finish line.  As I write this, we are 93% of the way to funding Stretch Goal 4, which is great!  I am super excited to play a dream defender, and an arctic adventurer.

We're also at 343 backers, which means we're 43% of the way to getting another Backer's Choice microsetting.  So please keep spreading the word.  (And if you're a backer and you haven't voted in the Backers Choice III poll, you can do so right HERE).  

One other reminder: We've got some great add-ons, including original art and an amazing deck of spell cards-- only $5 per deck!  And as I said in response to a comment this weekend, once the campaign is over, we're no longer working toward stretch goals.  So if you want more art and more microsettings in this book, please don't hold back and wait to add things in BackerKit.  

And speaking of stretch goals... Let's talk about Stretch 7!  When we get over $8k in funding, we're going to add more art as well as two new microsettings, both of which are focused on the magic of music.


The Sonorous

by William L. Munn

In Epithil, Discordants are born without the gift of music. For centuries, children with musical ability have been taken and trained as Sonorous. The Protectorate Order of the Sonorous is invested to keep order in Epithil by the Maestro and his six Conductors (each is a supreme master of one of the six bardic spellsongs). 

Limitation: Magic only comes from music and cantrips. Story hooks: young Sonorous charged with keeping order discovering they are not on the side of "right", characters taught to hide their musical ability resisting the Sonorous, or Discordants surviving under the heel of the Sonorous boot.

William L. Munn’s work in tabletop gaming can be seen in multiple games including Tiny Frontiers: Revised and the forthcoming Zorro: The Roleplaying Game from Gallant Knight Games. Will has a deep passion for storytelling, gaming, and writing. In his free time, you’ll find him playing and running tabletop games with family and friends in person and on actual play streams. Oh, and adding to his gaming pile of shame. Always adding.


Songs of Oversea

by Justin Finley

Inspired by Filipino and Polynesian mythology, Songs of Oversea lets you play out the saga of the People, island-dwelling survivors of a heavenly apocalypse that unleashed monstrous beasts from Undersea upon the world.  Discover powerful Bardic songs to lull the Unleashed to sleep, or awaken them to their divine purpose.  Use Shamanic magic to steal power from the Unleashed, or even the Gods themselves.  But beware!  It is said that on the darkest of nights, the monstrous serpent Bakunawa the Scorned, the Gods' greatest mistake, rises from the deeps to hunt and consume those who do not pay her homage.  

Justin Finley is the father of two dogs, a cook by trade, and a Filipino-American who loves myth, magic, and his Lola's delicious food.  An avid reader and roleplayer, he also enjoys writing fiction and homebrew game aids.  In addition to this microsetting, he has an adventure and supplement in the works for Gallant Knight Games' Tiny Trove line.    He lives in a place of beaches and sun, which inspires him to write of tropical places (full of monsters).


These two make me want to rock out, bard-style!  (If only I could play an instrument.)  So please keep spreading the word and sharing the love for the Micronomicon, and we'll get these settings funded.  

Rock on!

Stretch Goal 6 details
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 11:12:29 PM

Wow!  So we are already more than 2/3 of the way to Stretch Goal 4!  Nice job, everyone!  

Now, you all know what's in Stretch 4 already, and Stretch 5.  So I thought we could look down the road a little bit at Stretch 6, which we will get when we hit $7k.  (Which we absolutely will.)

Stretch 6 comes with more art from our existing team (woo-hoo!) plus two awesome microsettings.  These are incredible, y'all.


Dark Alleys of the Soul 

by Steve Diamond

You know what fantasy needs more of? Noir. Detective stories. Femme fatales. Shadowed, smoke-filled rooms. You know the ones. 

Cities all have one thing in common: crime. Murder isn’t unique to “real life”. Neither are drugs, black markets, or thieves. But magic...magic makes all of those things infinitely worse. Infinitely more dangerous. This is where you come in. Fighting fire with fire. Or, perhaps, “shadow with shadow”

Someone has to track down the city’s magic users when they go off-rails. It’s not a job for the weak of heart or mind. There are nightmares in those shadows that make the distinction between man and monster very thin indeed. 

Some call you rejects. Unpromotable. But together, maybe—juuuust maybe—you can put together a taskforce capable of bringing a little relief to the your city.

Steve Diamond is the author of the YA Supernatural Thriller, Residue. He writes for Baen, WordFire Press, Gallant Knight Games, Privateer Press, and numerous other publications. He founded the Hugo Nominated review site, Elitist Book Reviews, and is the editor of the horror anthology, Shared Nightmares.

Steve lives in Utah with his wife and two children. He works as a finance manager for a Department of Defense contractor, and does all his writing in the evenings. He’s an avid baseball (Oakland A’s) and football (New Orleans Saints) fan. You can follow him at http://thethroneofbooks.com/.


 Mother of Invention 

by Stephanie Bryant

Your magic awoke at an important milestone in your life, a day of growth and awakening-- it was the day your soul stepped on the border between life and death, and somehow made it back. Over the next weeks and months, your magic took the form of whatever you needed the most. 

For many, this meant domestic skills, as recuperation from whatever nearly took your life (an illness? injury? childbirth) found you in need of telekinesis or short bursts of supernatural speed. For some, though, the needs were more malevolent-- revenge, or warfare, or simple hatred. 

Your magic is defined by the story of who you were before it awoke, and what you needed the most. In this setting, the majority of magic users are new mothers and war veterans, and their stories are those of people who had another life before the magic came to change their world. 

Stephanie Bryant is a writer, game designer, bassist, and knitter from Las Vegas, Nevada. She wrote and published Threadbare RPG, a PBTA game about broken toys rebuilding the world after the apocalypse. She has also written and contributed to several other games, including Timewatch, Mythic Mortals, and Trilemma Adventures. Most recently, she's project managing Jinkies!, a mystery adventure RPG, by Toby Strauss. In her day job, she is the scrum master for Roll20. You can find her at mortaine.com/blog, or find Threadbare at threadbarerpg.com.


Neato!  Let's keep sharing and spreading the word and bringing in more backers so we can get these funded and play them!

Thanks, everyone!

Micronomi-Cards now available as an add-on!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 07:40:11 PM

Earlier this evening during the Random Worlds Q&A, I was happy to announce that the Micronomi-Cards are now officially available as an add-on.  Simply add $5 to your pledge and you will receive a Print-and-Play PDF of the deck, plus an at-cost coupon for the physical deck.  

The deck will contain 52 spell cards.  Each will labeled on the front with a spell name, description, and associated Trait.  And on the back, each will display the Micronomicon logo.  

The spell cards can be used by GMs to randomly generate scrolls or potions, Enemy spells, magic items, trap effects, etc.  They can also be used by players as a handy reference for their character's spells.   

4 of Skulls, card back, 7 of Goatheads.
4 of Skulls, card back, 7 of Goatheads.

Each card is also labeled as a playing card in one of four new custom suits (themed for the Rule of Three setting). There will also be three Jokers, which you may recognize from Nicolas Giacondino's cover art for the Micronomicon.  

This means the deck can also be used to play absolutely any card game that uses a standard US Poker deck.  Gin Rummy, Hearts, Spades, Blackjack, Solitaire, Spoons-- you name it! 

10 of Octopi, Joker, King of Flowers.
10 of Octopi, Joker, King of Flowers.

BUT ALSO we've designed some games specifically for this deck that take advantage of the fact that each card is both a spell card and  a playing card.  Here are a couple of examples. 

Wizard's Duel, by Gregory Israel.  Two opponents play out a wizard's duel, using the Micronomicon card deck and 3 six-sided dice.  Match cards in your hands by suits, runs, or sets of numbers.  Better matches yield more powerful spells.  Win by reducing your adversary's Hit Points to zero. 

Catacombs, by John D. Payne.  Three to five players try to get rid of the cards in their hand, one at a time, by matching numbers in horizontal rows or Traits in vertical columns.  At the end of the game, the cards on the table can also be used as a random map for a magic-filled dungeon crawl! 

Rules for these games (and more) will be included with the deck.  We think they'll add a lot of play value to the deck, and that the deck itself will add a lot of play value to the Micronomicon.

Just add $5 to any pledge level to get yourself a print-and-play PDF and an at-cost code for a physical deck.  Thanks!  

(And keep spreading the word! More backers, more funding, more stretch goals, more awesome. W00t!)

Scrolls of Divinity + Genius Loci
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 07:40:06 PM

Good morning, Micronominators.  Today begins our last week, and so it's time for me to share a special surprise with you all.  

Scrolls of Divinity

Would you like to own an original, one-of-a-kind, hand-drawn and signed illustration from Nicolás Giacondino?  Something you can frame and hang on your wall?  Well, as it turns out, we can help you with that. 

It's as easy as... a Healer vaporizing zombies, using the Purifier Prestige Trait he picked up from the Micronomicon!

Purifier: Iconic Mage illustration by Nicolás Giacondino.
Purifier: Iconic Mage illustration by Nicolás Giacondino.

We have a new pledge tier, Scrolls of Divinity, allowing 8 lucky backers to purchase the physical original illustrations produced for this book by renowned artist Nicolás Giacondino, the Rembrandt of the Tiny D6 system.  (You will probably want to do this as an add-on, but I wanted to put it up as a reward tier so you all can see how many are left.)  

These are the Iconic Mage illustrations that will be included in the Micronomicon. They are black and white by default, but for another $75, you can get them in glorious full color.  And typically they are about half the size of a standard A4 piece of paper, making them easy to frame and find space for on your wall.  

Artificer sketch, by Nicolás Giacondino.  Cover illustration and pen included for reference.
Artificer sketch, by Nicolás Giacondino. Cover illustration and pen included for reference.

Shipping to the US and Canada is included in the cost of the pledge.  (Please inquire if you are interested in international shipping.)  

Illustrations (ordered and in progress) are currently available for the following chapters: Alchemist, Artificer, Beastspeaker, Familiar, Healer, Psionics, Shaman, Spell-Touched.  (Contact me for more details.)  First to pledge will be first to pick.

Because Nicolás is in the middle of a move, we are unfortunately unable at this time to show finished art for all of these.  But we hope to be able to share more sketches (and finished B&W illustrations) over the next week.  


Genius Loci

Speaking of awesome art, I wanted to share this amazing illustration of a necromancer from artist Reed Hill.  (Boy, I'd love to see him duke it out with Nic's Purifier!)  This piece will be included in the Micronomicon as part of the Rule of Three microsetting.  

Malchior, custom illustration for the Rule of Three microsetting by Reed Hill.
Malchior, custom illustration for the Rule of Three microsetting by Reed Hill.

As you might remember, Reed is doing custom illustrations for the Micronomicon as part of the Genius Loci pledge tier.  What you see above is one of these custom works of art, drawn to backer specifications.   ("[A]bsolutely stunning!" says the backer.  "I envy those art skills.")

We have 3 pledges left in this tier, so if you want Reed to draw your character (or yourself!) into one of our microsettings, sign right up.  

This is our last week, and we're going to try to sprint to the finish.  I'm amazed at how far we've come, and excited to see how far we will go.  (Adding a last few stretch goals soon!)  

Thank you all for all you've done to make this fantastic success possible.  You guys are the best.  :)

Stretch 3 funded!
over 4 years ago – Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 04:15:50 AM

We've crossed over $4,000! Hooray!  This means we will be getting the Inkslingers microsetting from Joe McGee and Fellbright, City of Bliss, from Brad Lyon.  (This makes for a total of 10 microsettings guaranteed to be in the book, for those of you counting at home.) 

It also means that every microsetting in the book is going to get one new unique illustration from artist Anthony Cournoyer.  And as it turns out, I cheated a bit and had Anthony start early, so I can show you what he has produced so far.

Illustrations by Anthony Cournoyer for Keep on the Wastelands (by John D. Payne) and Avalant (by Christopher Ruocchio).
Illustrations by Anthony Cournoyer for Keep on the Wastelands (by John D. Payne) and Avalant (by Christopher Ruocchio).

Anthony did a lot of the interior art for Tiny Dungeon 2e, and I think you will agree that his skills have only grown since then.  

Illustrations by Anthony Cournoyer for Price of Power (by Gregory Israel) and Mage Hunters (by John D. Payne).
Illustrations by Anthony Cournoyer for Price of Power (by Gregory Israel) and Mage Hunters (by John D. Payne).

This book just keeps getting better and better, and it's all because of you.  Thank you all for everything you're doing to spread the word, attract new backers, and help this project increase in awesomeness.  

PS - Reddit AMA still going.

PPS - Random Worlds Q&A Wednesday 7:30 PM CDT.

PPPS - Good night! More good news tomorrow!