Realms of Sorcery trivia

They say 'genius is hiding your sources'

And sometimes they'd be right.

But this isn't one of those times.

Meet Cat Wizard. He's sort of an office mascot. He arrived after the sales guys brought him home from Essen game fair in Germany. Every time we go to a convention we try to bring him home a friend or two in the form of cat related fantasy artwork- cat dragons, fairy cats- that sort of thing. One day we hope to have quite a collection...but that's another tail.

This story is about how cat wizard brought a little of his magic to Realms of Sorcery.

We started work on the book way back in Spring. Obviously, the first stage in a sourcebook's life is deciding what's going to be in it. For ROS it was pretty clear what we'd be covering- new spells, background on magic, day in the life of a Wizard, rune magic- that sort of thing.

Still, there were a couple of things we weren't too sure about, so we held a brainstorming meeting. Ewan read out a list of things we'd agreed to cover...but we wanted to add more. "Oozing with options" was the exact phrase. A book about Wizards had to cover as much about them as we could think of. We mooted some more ideas- expanded Tzeentch's curse tables, rules for making up rituals, potions with horrible side effects, a discussion on Witch Hunters and so on.

Then someone looked up. And what did they see? You guessed it...

"We should add familars! just like catwizard!"

Simon paused, and looked at the picture.

"I'm not putting that in any book with my name on it. I'd rather lick sick off a nettle"

The room paused for a moment

"Unless..." he continued, idea dawning "unless we can make it explode. If we can do that it's fine by me"

"Well" said Kate "I'm sure we can make that happen"

So we spoke to Green Ronin and lo! a mechanic was created. They were pretty good about it really, considering the bizarreness of the request- "Hi, we'd like to add rules on familiars- but they have to explode..."

So, when you get your hands on Realms of Sorcery you'll see that under certain conditions familiars can indeed explode in showers of gristle and flesh.

If you're playing a wizard with a yen for a familiar, just make sure you don't screw up those casting rolls- otherwise it could be 'bye bye catwizard', and 'hello drycleaning bill'

And no one wants that sort of stain on their conscience.

-The Black Industries Dev team