The Thief & The Necromancer 

Jim’s note: an initial version of this was originally published in the TEETH RPG newsletter, some years ago.

We’ve not had a great deal of opportunity to play new RPGs lately (at the time of writing), so it was a delight and a relief to indulge in an interesting one this week. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with Chris Gardiner of Failbetter Games, James Hewitt of Needy Cat Games, and Kieron Gillen of in the Garrick’s Head, or at least that’s where I remember first meeting him, a long, long time ago.

Together, at Gardiner’s prompting, we played a game of multiple GM PBtA journalling game, The Thief & The Necromancer, by D. Vincent Baker (aka Lumpley Games). It was a rather an interesting experience, and I shall tell you about it!

The Thief & The Necromancer is based on and is a sort of chapter within Baker’s The Wizard’s Grimoire series . Do not let these tropey names have you imagine some trad clone, because this one fascinates; not least because The Wizard’s Grimoire reverses the relationship between player and GM. As the author explains: “Instead of a GM saying, “hey, I have this game I’d like to run, who’s in?” you say, “hey, I’m trying to get my wizard through this spellbook, do you have a minute?”” 

This isn’t about a GM offering to run an adventure based on a game he’s read the rules for, it’s about a player asking GMs to run a game that the player has read the rules for.

In this version the players have a ruleset for each of The Thief and The Necromancer characters, and they set up some initial stats (which feed into dice rolls made later) by asking themselves some binary questions. The answers to these queries feed into this stat or that, rounding out the character’s personality at the same time as defining their ability scores (I am always impressed when RPGs make these two character-creating tasks go hand in hand, rather than being distinct steps in the process.) The GM meanwhile needs do little more than read half a side of A4 guidelines to prepare themselves for what lies ahead.

In practice this means that the GMs (or “volunteers”) are taught how to play by the player (or players, in the case of TT&TN) because the players are the ones getting through the thing. Or at least one of them is, because it’s the Necromancer who gets to explore the all-important grimoire as events unfold.

So the players choose the starting scenario, tell the GMs about it, and then the group plays that through. Later, between scenes (or “sessions”, as the game somewhat awkwardly calls them) the Necromancer takes a moment to research the grimoire, unlocking its various powers and developments by “studying at the feet of your ghostly tutor”. This tutor, Goerne, is the only defined NPC in the game, although there are some useful guidelines for the world generally, and for the world the Thief and The Necromancer find themselves in. 

What’s most unusual, however, (to me, at least) is that the same GMs are not really required for continuity. You could readily play with the same two players, or even just the Necromancer and a fresh Thief, and have two entirely different “volunteer” GMs. There might be some context to explain once you were a way into it, but it’s very much set up with this sort of approach in mind. (The top of the hierarchy, the “real” player here is The Necromancer, which is clearly a genetic inheritance from the original Wizard’s Grimoire, but it nevertheless feels quite transgressive. There is a hierarchy of importance through the players? Reversed from the usual expectation of things? Naughty! But also clearly the intention.) 

As we played Hewitt observed that it the entire Grimoire game is readily akin to a solo journaling game, only you need other people to complete the story with you. You could, in theory, run the game sequentially with entirely different “volunteers” – yes volunteers plural – because, as mentioned, it is the Necromancer player’s experience that matters here. In one version of TT&TN we played with two GMs going back and forth, answering questions, sketching the world, and occasionally even finishing each other’s sentences. It probably helped that we were all experienced GMs, but it also challenged them to nix assumptions.

We started with a “Dream Swallower” attacking the pair of characters at a tomb, and ad libbed from there. Figuring out what a dream swallower was and establishing that pulp action novels were a thing in that world, for some reason, led us quickly into a Christmassy theme complete with comedy action scenes and jealous ghosts. The scenes unfolded as improv underscored by (now more familiar) crunchy and interesting stat-driven dice rolls. Anyone, player or GM, could call an end to that chunk of narrative by deciding it was done, which was a little twist on the live editing of role-playing that I rather liked.

At the end of the scenes the Necromancer could spend some time studying with his ghostly teacher, and have more things to throw at events in the future.

Clearly I came at this through the lens of being one of the volunteers (Gardiner took the main role), but aside from anything else, the experience of sharing the GM role with another, in this case Mr Hewitt, was immediately interesting. I’ve played a game (Alas Vegas) where the GM responsibility rotates from session to session, and others where there is no GM (Fiasco, Thistle & Hearth) in which the story simply emerges from the interactions or moves between the players, but this is my first time running it both as a partnership and an auxiliary. We really were just there to supply answers to questions, and to build a world that we had done no prior prep for. The players were running things. And having a co-GM is an amazing thing. Stall out? They pick up. Need to shift gears? The other GM can do it. And then there’s conversation to be bad between you, spotaneously generating ideas. Why should it just be one GM?

(I wonder to what extent big APs could be, or are already, supported by producer/GMs sat off the side remembering things to prompting things for the actual GM. I could imagine having stuff piped your earpiece: “Don’t forget to apply the debuff!”)

And I love this idea at a day to day table level. Imagine a world where GMs could just turn up and run things without prep or even know what they game was going to be. Wild.

I was going to edit the Bilbo “after all, why not” meme to comment on the idea of the player in these games also being the person whose Thing it was, “why shouldn’t I be the player”, but it was too much effort, and it’s better in your imagination anyway.

I’ve edited this conclusion a bit from the original, because I was waffling. The key lesson is: The Wizard’s Grimoire structure is one that I could immediately imagine taking and playing with other groups and other people in a way that I seldom do when I play a new RPG, one-shot or otherwise. Indeed, Mr Hewitt DID go and play with another group literally the following evening, he was that taken with it. It’s such a surprising idea, structurally, that people immediately warm to it.

I think you can take that as our general, vague recommendation. Quite good. That sort of thing.