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Magister's Guide: A Spire RPG GM Handbook
THE MAGISTER’S GUIDE is the essential gamesmaster supplement for Spire: the City Must Fall. This book is packed with advice, new systems, and additional materials for the core game that should make running each session more enjoyable than ever and provide exciting new options for seasoned GMs and players alike. Featured within are:
* New advances, equipment, fallout and specialised adversaries for every Spire class, including those released in the Strata and Sin sourcebooks
* Full rules for Safehouses, which provide a Ministry cell with a fully-furnished base of operations and cult headquarters
* Acquisitions, which make multiclassing and getting hold of equipment both easy to adjudicate and fun to do
* Liberty, a new shared resistance, which represents the efforts of the aelfir to oppress the drow all across the city
* Beats, an alternate method for advancement adapted from our ENnie-award-winning Heart which lets you focus on individual goals and scenes
* Tips and advice on running games of Spire
This is a sourcebook for the Spire: the City Must Fall roleplaying game.
A copy of Spire is required to use this book.
* New advances, equipment, fallout and specialised adversaries for every Spire class, including those released in the Strata and Sin sourcebooks
* Full rules for Safehouses, which provide a Ministry cell with a fully-furnished base of operations and cult headquarters
* Acquisitions, which make multiclassing and getting hold of equipment both easy to adjudicate and fun to do
* Liberty, a new shared resistance, which represents the efforts of the aelfir to oppress the drow all across the city
* Beats, an alternate method for advancement adapted from our ENnie-award-winning Heart which lets you focus on individual goals and scenes
* Tips and advice on running games of Spire
This is a sourcebook for the Spire: the City Must Fall roleplaying game.
A copy of Spire is required to use this book.
- GenresRole Playing GamesGaming
56 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2011
10 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 17, 2024
Spire is an RPG in its totality, with all its source books, is a masterpiece. The standard book struggles to stand on its own, and benefits from additional support, and fuck if this isen't the support I feel this core book needed.
The core book has a wealth of lore and worldbuilding, but struggles to tie that worldbuilding into systems and mechanics that players can interact with. This book marry's those mechanics to the lore in such beautiful, elegant design that I am downright in awe of. This is a masterclass of TTRPG design, and I see myself lifting mechanics from it for Spire and beyond. Hell, there's a rework of the beats system that improves the progression in Heart dramatically, and that's not even the same *system*.
And more. New fallout specific for every class that speaks to the way each class interacts with the narrative uniquely; the Bound have a fallout that results in them becoming a Cult of Knives, a lore connection that I *gasped* at discovering. Therse a robust but simple system for creating a safe haven with signifigent customization and new dimension of threats added at the bond level. New class features come peppered with scenes / setups for each class, as well as additional interesting edge cases.
A masterclass of a supplement with additional material for such a wide variety of GM and player tools that I dearly wish it was included in the core book.
The core book has a wealth of lore and worldbuilding, but struggles to tie that worldbuilding into systems and mechanics that players can interact with. This book marry's those mechanics to the lore in such beautiful, elegant design that I am downright in awe of. This is a masterclass of TTRPG design, and I see myself lifting mechanics from it for Spire and beyond. Hell, there's a rework of the beats system that improves the progression in Heart dramatically, and that's not even the same *system*.
And more. New fallout specific for every class that speaks to the way each class interacts with the narrative uniquely; the Bound have a fallout that results in them becoming a Cult of Knives, a lore connection that I *gasped* at discovering. Therse a robust but simple system for creating a safe haven with signifigent customization and new dimension of threats added at the bond level. New class features come peppered with scenes / setups for each class, as well as additional interesting edge cases.
A masterclass of a supplement with additional material for such a wide variety of GM and player tools that I dearly wish it was included in the core book.
February 15, 2022
Oh, this was a delightful tool to add to a GM's arsenal for Spire. Some of the optional rules I'll probably use (Advancement Beats, Safehouses), some I won't (Liberty system just seems to work better to my group's style if it provides a flexible framework for the story to take place in, but I can see how adding that as a Fallout system would work generally!)
The further advancements and equipment for the classes is where this really shines, and I found myself loving the list of useful elements not just as helpful spanners to throw into the campaign to get relevant characters involved but -- if rephrased a bit and shortened to their core -- a great way to list what the classes are to get party members interested in, ie, "Play a Bound if you want to face supremely murderable villains with interruptible monologues, hope to encounter other solitary murderous weirdos for you to hunt down/fall in love with/both, and to climb around in high places while putting your trust in a small god you shoved into a knife."
The advice on how to run the game is also golden - not from a mechanical side but from how to step back and figure out your approach to running and not overthinking things.
Loved this.
The further advancements and equipment for the classes is where this really shines, and I found myself loving the list of useful elements not just as helpful spanners to throw into the campaign to get relevant characters involved but -- if rephrased a bit and shortened to their core -- a great way to list what the classes are to get party members interested in, ie, "Play a Bound if you want to face supremely murderable villains with interruptible monologues, hope to encounter other solitary murderous weirdos for you to hunt down/fall in love with/both, and to climb around in high places while putting your trust in a small god you shoved into a knife."
The advice on how to run the game is also golden - not from a mechanical side but from how to step back and figure out your approach to running and not overthinking things.
Loved this.
January 15, 2023
More of a collection of handy tools than a truly essential book, but those tools are very, very handy. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
January 14, 2026
Consejos muy normalitos para DMs de Spire, pero está okay. A menos que quieras adaptar el sistema de latidos de Heart a Spire no lo veo muy obligatorio !
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews