Notes on Spellcrafter

     Spellcrafter is a homebrew system which was written by Richard Garfinkle, now known as author of the novels Celestial Matters and All of an Instant. I played in a number of Spellcrafter campaigns run by Richard and others while I was going to U of Chicago from 1987 to 1991, as well as running at least a one-shot using the system.

     The campaigns I played in with this system included:

Hindu Myth (1991)

This was a game set in Hindu myth, using a variant of the Spellcrafter system. Ascetics would have ratings for various portions of illusion (Maya) that they learn to ignore. Buddhists were different in that they had a single graded series of overcoming all illusion. However, using this as worldly power threatened to mire you more in illusion.
GM Richard Garfinkle. Players Craig Neumeier, John Kim, ??.

Oathbreaker / Secrecy Game (Sep 1988 - May 1989)

This was a game set in the modern world with secret magic going on underneath it. A powerful enchantment ("The Secrecy") kept magic and miracles hidden, which was key in the fight against a rogue god that founded Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ("The Oathbreaker"). There was a second-generation campaign with new PC's set after the Oathbreaker god was killed and the Secrecy broken.
GM Richard Garfinkle. Players Craig Neumeier, Ron Levy, John Kim, Robert Ellis, Michael Schiffer, Ingrid de Beus, Will Flaschbart, Ralph.

Mirrorworld (Nov 1987 - May 1988)

This was an experimental game set in an original fantasy world, where the players tackled an open-ended magical challenge. The cosmology was quite complex, with a sequence (1-4-16-64-256) of small worlds that are distorted reflections of the one true land. The game was set in the "Orchard World", where culture centered on cultivated groves of trees. The challenge was that our world was being invaded by a forest from a neighboring world, which we open-endedly worked on solving. The rule system was a printed homebrew called Spellcrafter.
GM Richard Garfinkle. Players Craig Neumeier, Ron Levy, John Kim, Robert Ellis, Allesandra Kelly.