Greetings, Internet! These past couple of weeks have been sparse as far as Magic: The Gathering mobile apps are concerned. I haven’t seen any new releases, and only a couple of apps have actually released updates. With that in mind, I thought I would share with you a gem I came across recently while scouring the Internet for Magic-related software.

Along with being a software developer and devoted Magic fan, I am also a huge pen-and-paper RPG nerd. I have been RPGing for over a decade now, and have played most role-playing games that you can name, as well as having developed a couple of my own homebrewed systems. So, when I came across this homebrewed MtG role-playing game in my Web surfing, I knew I had to give it a shot.

I gathered five of my regular players and had them begin going through character generation, letting them choose to be from any plane in the multiverse. I didn’t want to limit their choices as far as races went, and it allowed each player to use what he knew about his favorite block in Magic. I did have a bit of trouble with one player who was not familiar with any of the Magic backstory and decided he wanted to have been trapped in some sort of hell since his spark ignited. The system actually provides a relatively simple solution to this in its color-identity system.

Color identity in the game works almost identically to how it does in Commander. During character-generation, a character picks three color identities (they can all be the same) that represent important moments in his life when he pushed toward a certain color in Magic, or toward being connected to artifacts.

Back to the problem I was having: I began by asking the player what kind of plane he wanted to be from. He responded by saying he wanted to be from a plane similar to feudal Japan. This was extremely convenient, and I let him know he was from the plane of Kamigawa. I then asked him questions about where his character grew up, how he responded to the Kami war, and how it pushed him toward being his chosen color of Red. I really like this system, and it forces the characters to put a little more thought into their motivations and actions; when you gain a new color identity through leveling up, you are required to give a moment in the last adventure that pushed you toward that color identity.

The game has an impressive stats system that regulates how much mana you can spend a turn, your starting hand size, and much more. Players actually build a deck for use during the game that represents the spells they know. The recommended deck size is ten to fifteen cards, and I let my players start with one regular rare, three uncommons, and eleven commons. There were some caveats, such as no Legendary creatures, no planeswalkers, and nothing that said “You win the game” or “Target opponent loses the game.”

From my experience, players start out by building a deck, and then build their stats to work with said deck. This is completely okay, and it was cool to see everyone digging through the old long boxes at my house trying to find something to fit what they had in mind for a character.

Being a homebrewed system, the combat system is a little vague. The book definitely mentions six-sided die rolls, but not whether to roll 1d6 and add your power/toughness or to roll a number of d6 equal to your power and toughness. My playgroup tried both ways, and rolling 1d6 and adding seems to work much better. Building encounters can be a little rough, as it’s a skill-based system instead of a standard level-up system, but after running a few test encounters, you should be able to get the hang of it. Based on what plane my players were on, I would search through Gatherer for creatures in that block to throw against them, saving me a lot of time that would normally be used during game prep for NPC generation. For bigger boss battles, against powerful wizards and other planeswalkers, I would draw up a quick sheet for the character and then type out a deck list for them to use in battle.

The skill system listed on the game’s page only covers a few base skills, and by the end of the first session, I was just asking my players to give me a particular color-identity check. For example, for perception, I would tell the players to give me a “Blue/Green check.” They would then roll 1d6, plus 1d6 for each time one of those colors appeared in their color identity, trying to hit whatever target number I set in my mind. I found myself biasing a lot of skills toward blue, due to it’s being the mental color, but pushed myself away from that by our third session. Make sure you make the skill checks varied enough that other colors can join in as well.

That’s it for this week! I hope some of you give the game a shot, because it’s definitely a blast to play. Just remember to be flexible with how cards work, and you should be fine. In the coming weeks, I’ll be going back to covering new app updates that have come out recently, as well as talking about some of the software available on the Web to help you improve your game!