Welcome to the Finder’s Archives. This week we take a look at spellbooks and see what we can do to freshen them up.
This particular article came to me as inspiration from reading one of Christopher Hunt’s “Old School Chart Cool” articles, and if you haven’t read those, I heartily recommend it.
So what is this about? Well, it’s something I always thought as being slightly overlooked, the wizard’s spellbook. They all have one, and each one of them should really represent and reflect the personality of the wizard who wrote (or stole) it. So that’s what this aims to do, to provide you with a series of charts and rolls for you to take inspiration from, and build upon.
So without further ado, off we go:
Roll 1d8 to determine the size of the book.
| 1 | Pamphlet Sized (less than 10 pages) |
| 2 | Small (10-20 pages) |
| 3 | Medium (20-50 pages) |
| 4 | Large (50-100) |
| 5 | Libram (100-200 pages) |
| 6 | Encyclopedia (200-500 pages) |
| 7 | Library Tome (500+ pages) |
| 8 | Singular Scroll with tiny text. |
Roll 1d10 to determine the material of the cover.
| 1 | Normal leather |
| 2 | Wood |
| 3 | Iron or steel plates |
| 4 | Dragonscales |
| 5 | Human (or humanoid) skin |
| 6 | Mithril |
| 7 | Devil (or Demon) scales |
| 8 | Gilded angel feathers |
| 9 | Fossilized leaves |
| 10 | Velvet (Sorry, my wife made me do it). |
Roll 1d10 to determine the material of the pages.
| 1 | Parchment |
| 2 | High-quality paper |
| 3 | Vellum |
| 4 | Untanned animal leather |
| 5 | Human (or humanoid) skin |
| 6 | Metal sheets (usually steel, silver or gold) |
| 7 | Pressed fungus sheets |
| 8 | Unmelting ice |
| 9 | Warm stone with letters of fire |
| 10 | Mix of paper types, with different writing styles. |
And then just to demonstrate what we can do with it, here’s an example of what it can make:
Rolls: Size: 8 – Cover: 2- Pages: 8
So we get “Singular Scroll with tiny text,” “Wood cover,” and “unmelting ice” as the page material.
So here we go:
The Icicle Scroll
The icicle scroll was created in ages past by an infamous evoker known as Markenth the Glacier Mage, who was obsessed with ice magic. When not actively read, the scroll itself looks like a large icicle, in which floating ink can be seen at the center, but when held, and in the hands of someone with magical potential, the ink itself takes on more readable form, allowing the reader access to the spells within the book. It comes inside a hardwood scroll case, wrapped with animal hide, to prevent anything from happening to it, though heat never seems to affect it.
And with that, we conclude this Finder’s Archives. Thank you to Christopher Hunt for inspiring it. 🙂
Kim Frandsen
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