Cantrip
A downloadable game
You've made it! Welcome!
I'm so excited for you to check this game out!
Cantrip is a roleplaying game about witches who are coming of age while studying at a magical Academy. They will grapple with their place in the world at large, their emotions, their budding relationships, the expectations placed on them by everyone in their lives, the secrets held by the Academy, the weird and wonderful creatures that reside within it, and the constant scheming of their fellow witches.
This game takes inspiration from a lot of media involving the magical and supernatural coexisting and clashing with a mundane world. The most direct inspiration is Studio Trigger’s Little Witch Academia and you’ll find that the playbooks closely resemble many of the characters in that anime. Other sources of inspiration include Witch Hat Atelier, The Owl House, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. More tangentially, slice-of-life anime like Yuru-Camp and Non Non Biyori provide a lot of the tonal inspiration.
Cantrip is unabashedly queer and explicitly rejects the reactionary and unfun tropes that tend to show up in Magical Academy media and opts to tell a story that, while not free of conflict, is decidedly about girls living their best lives.
What will you find here?
In Cantrip you will play as one of the six archetypical witches you might find at The Academy:
- the wonder-filled if magically uninclined Star-Struck
- the swamp-loving Hedge mycologist
- the aristocratic and resourceful Posh
- the perpetually flustered but highly capable Senior
- the show-stopping and prank-loving Breaker
- the mystical and powerful Sybil
Throughout a session or a campaign of Cantrip your witches will come to terms with school life, city life, the semi-sentient Weave of magic witches draw their power from, the school’s authorities, their fellow students (including the comically powerful student council), the nearby townspeople and the many mythological and magical creatures that inhabit the world. The world of Cantrip is brought to life in Celeste Cruz’s (@caelstyx) striking, colorful art.
Okay but what's the game like?
You can let this glowing review by the wonderful Philippa Mort speak for the game
You can also see what the amazing Maddie from Dicebreaker had to say about it along with other cozy tabletop RPGs! (video hopefully correctly timestamped)
Watch it played!
You can also watch Roll For Felicity play a wonderful Cantrip one-shot on their stream!
Cantrip is meant to be picked up and played very quickly, with no pre-game preparation needed. You will begin play by choosing and defining your playbook, and then working as a group to define the nature of the academy - what it's like, where it is, what wonders and dangers and weird little secrets it might contain.
Play progresses by turns and always gives you the option to skip the spotlight and simply make something cool up - another player can grab that thread and spin a fun scene out of it. Adversaries, helpful people, opportunities and obstacles are represented by Aspects anyone can pick up at any point. Witches are rad and powerful but they do need a little adversity to really shine and show off!
One of the coolest parts about Cantrip is that you're encouraged to be as engaged as you want to be. There's room - and mechanics - to support highly elaborate scenes as well as chill, short snippets. Whatever you're in the mood for when it's your turn is fine. It's your game and I tried to make that come through in the text.
I've got a really neat idea for this game!
I'll figure out an actual license for this but let me just say: you can and should make content for Cantrip. Make a new playbook! Make more aspects! Expand the rules! Tear it apart and show it to me! Just credit me when you do it, and let me know about it so I can play it too.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
The Academy Scholarship Fund
If you can't afford a copy right now, please help yourself to one of the free copies of the game! No questions asked. I didn't see anything.
Comments
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Hiya! Are there materials for printing?
Hello! I’ve been looking for a gm-less chill 2 player ttrpg to introduce someone to ttrpgs and this seems like a fantastic choice! But I don’t see player count anywhere… would it be okay to play with 2 players or possible to adapt play to 2 players? Or would you need more? Many thanks!
Hi! I think this plays really well with two players, in my experience. The one thing you'd have to keep in mind is that when you Get A Read On The Academy, you will likely have to have each player represent more than one person or group involved.
Hi.
I want to play with a newbie as well. Did you give it a go? How was it?
I've started playing this with my group and we're two sessions in. It's been really fun. The world creation process is a joy and presents alot of great concepts to help our magic academy take shape. My group was in particular enchanted by the concept of the denizen's having a labor union.
I do have a couple of gripes, although overall I would recommend this game:
1) I wish this game had a section about online play, since I would venture a majority of players play online. This isn't too big of a deal as the game is simple and can be made to be played online without too much trouble. For anyone who like me is considering playing this with an online group, I used discord, and made a channel with just the characters names on them, and whenever a player gets a token they react to their character's name. To keep track of aspects, I made a channel with all of the aspect moves and players react to which aspect they currently have picked up. You'll want to make a google doc for all of the characters and another one with all of the worldbuilding details decided on session 0 including NPCs and keep adding to it as sessions go on.
2) The Aspects really should come up earlier in the book instead of being shoved to the end, because otherwise you get told these are how gm responsibilities are split and then you don't actually see what they are and what they do. I also think the book can give more solid advice on how to use them. When should they be employed? How many times per scene? I understand these answers can be variable, but I would appreciate a bit more advice from the book on how to use these mechanics to recreate the feel of the genre its going for
3) The scenes are kind of confusing. So here's my experience - its a player's turn, they set up an orientation slice of life scene. I have the adult witches aspect and use the move "Change up the rules without warning" to have the headmistress institute a school uniform. I trade away this aspect as my Posh character uses their Weak Move to Make a Scene. This leads to a new scene in detention, where we do some stuff, and I pick up the Academy Itself to Reveal Something Hidden, and a file that mentions "a secret in the lake" shows up. Because of my aspect, a sudden question has been introduced to the group, what is the secret in the lake. Does this turn the scene into a major scene? What about the turn order, does that matter here? Idk. Our group has mostly solved this by not worrying too much about it, but the scene structure described in the book feels kind of rigid for when things come up in play.
Hi! This is so thorough and detailed and also extremely valuable feedback. Goes to show that no matter how much playtesting you run, everyone's going to have a very different experience with a game. Online play aids (in the form of a semi-interactive Google Sheets doc/character keeper) are in the works and I'm 100% looking forward to eventually getting around to a Cantrip Second Edition that incorporates this + other issues people have encountered, especially in terms of play examples and how the book itself is structured.
Hope you all continue to have fun despite the gripes!
So my group is a few more sessions in (We're on like 8 or 9 now) and a couple of observations. One is that the game is better on producing the sort of unexpected narrative twists you get from traditional dice games than I thought initially. At first I had a bit of trouble with dominating the narrative due to traditionally being the gm, but once I relaxed and experimented with taking my character out of scenes more, my fellow players ended up filling that gap with alot of cool story hooks and plot ideas I've never considered. Also the turn based system of scenes really has helped draw out a player who's a little more reluctant to take an active role in shaping the narrative, and while they're still mostly a passenger to the main thrust of the campaign we're playing, they've had some fun storylines for themselves involving buying shady weaponsgrade fertilizer for a project they're working (they're a hedge witch). Aspect use is still weird, feels like I'm the one who mostly invokes them, will need to talk to the group about why that is, might just be a me acting too much like a gm and stifling the group from interacting with the tools as often as intended problem.
Overall this has been a 9/10 ttrpg. Btw do you have an estimate on when 2.0 will come out along with the online tools? Or is that uncertain?
This was the game that convinced me to buy the Queer Games Bundle. You had me with the description and the illustration of the wheelchair-using witch chilling with birds. It's an even better game than I imagined. I just finished the second session of what became a magical college campaign that I am running. I modified it to have a GM because my players weren't comfortable juggling both Characters and Aspects. Even with that, it is still challenging for players not used to gmless games, but very worthwhile. The level of detail for all the moving parts is just right. We love the world and characters we created together. It really is quite magical!
This is so sweet! I'm so glad you're enjoying. It can certainly be a pretty demanding game for players so I think you 100% did the right thing giving it a GM for your table (I assume it's kind of like a full-time facilitator handling all the Aspects at once?). I hope your game keeps going strong!
The main job has been exactly as you assumed. I helped set scenes outside of the aspects too and handled miscellaneous administrative tasks like illustrating the map and organizing all the choices the players made. Having too many good choices is the most common issue we've ran into, and that's a great thing!
Just giving a 10/10 review! This was amazingly fun for me. I LOVED how there isn’t one DM who decides everything, but that you get to work together with fellow players to create the setting and plot. It’s also versatile, as in you can have several sessions or just a one-shot. All in all, this is one of my absolute favorite RPG systems!!
A really amazing game, I love how it seems easy to play. The playbooks are awesome, a great belonging outside belonging game design!
I was wondering if there may be community copies soon? Thanks!
Also if this game is kid appropriate or something I can adapt to use with my students. If so I would like to request a community copy toward my insane journaling project for the coming year. :)
Hello! Any chance of new community copies soon? I really wanted to get this game but there is no way I can buy it with the conversion to the currency of my country (dollar is way too expensive!).
I am enchanted by the idea of the game and the art by the way!
Hi there! I've added ten new ones. If they've run out by the time you see this message, let me know and I'll DM you a key :)
Oh my god, thank you!!! I got one of them and I'll start reading right away! <3
Are there separate character sheets for Cantrip anywhere? I love the game!
The art is beautiful and the design of the book really hits that 90's teen whimsy vibe for me. The tone is playful and fun, and when I showed the PDF to my friend their first comment was "wow so readable" so that's a win in my world :)
This is wonderful to hear! Thank you so much for the kind words. And yeah I love the BIG FONT Francita picked, it makes it extremely legible even with the slanted paragraphs
Che, pregunta, tengo ganas de tener una copia física del libro, podría imprimir el PDF pero exalted funeral tiene la versión hecha profesional en stock, si les compro a ellos ¿Esa plata te llega? Osea,. obviamente me imagino que no te llega el 100%, pero me gustaría saber si te llega algo porque estaría bueno apoyar un poco el esfuerzo, me gustó mucho el sistema qque crearon, es un poco más estructurado que los RPGs usuales pero no tan complejo como PbtA.
¡Hola! Sí, las copias que tienen Exalted Funeral, Knave of Cups, etc se las compran a SoulMuppet (la editorial) así que sí, de cualquier lado que lo compres me llega la plata de un modo u otro. Muchísimas gracias <3 (también podés comprarle directamente a SoulMuppet pero no sé qué ondis el costo de envío). ¡Y muchísimas gracias por las lindas palabras sobre el juego! Espero que lo disfrutes una banda.
I'm curious are you planning a supplement or variant for boys living their best lives? (If you don't feel you can address that topic because of being female, that's alright.)
Hi! It's not in my plans personally but I've been itching to make a Cantrip jam lately and people are more than welcome and encouraged to create boywitch content! I'm very intrigued about it too and I'd love to see what people come up with.
Awesome! Good to know, thank you!
Do you guys have any more community copies please?
Just added ten new copies!
Is this game able to be played solo?
I don't think there's anything stopping you but also you'd need to bend the mechanics to figure out how to play both a character and as Aspect at the same time. Likewise, the Get A Read on the Academy option does not make sense if people aren't voting on it. Do let me know if you figure out how to make it work!
Hate to be that guy, but finances are really tight at present... Any chance for Community Copies in the near future?
Just added a few new copies :)
YAY THANK YOU!
Hi, sorry to bother, but do you plan to put more community copies? Thank you for your attention
Hi! So sorry for the huge delay on this, but I've just added new copies.
Oh my god thank you so much, I'll play when I can, it looks great
Wholesome BoB game!🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
This is me and my friend's first Belonging Outside Belonging game and we are currently having AN ABSOLUTE BLAST telling the witch high school story of our dreams. The amount of prompts in setup is so varied yet mixes so well together which gives us a good way to communicate to each other what kind of game we want to play.
Our game went from dorm room drama to discovering the dark secrets of the academy to worrying about grades and the game gives us enough tools to make us flow through all the fun story beats with ease.
This is wonderful to hear! Thank you for sharing with me. I'm so so thrilled you're enjoying this game so much <3
This game is so fun! I love the framework for setting scenes, and I think it's a really good introduction to the Belonging Outside Belonging system for anyone who hasn't played a game in this system before. The different playbooks of witches use tropes and archetypes without becoming tired cliches.
I also like that the book presents a plethora of topics for the players to explore and interact with, of various levels of seriousness. The Adult Witches in your game could have very silly traditions or could be perpetuating real-world systems of marginalization, all based on what the table is interested in exploring.
I also HAVE to mention that the artwork for this game is lovely. Overall a very fun time, and I look forward to playing this even more in the future!
Un juego ligero pero hermoso, que no solo versa sobre la magia, sino que esta lleno de ella y tambien de amor.
Su diseño es de lectura agil lo cual no impide que se puedan crear historias complejas mas llenas de ternura.
Sin duda un gran descubrimiento, ideal para contar y vivir historias de exploración y crecimiento, llenas de magia y desafios.
Ahora a esperar la traduccion para que el disfrute sea muchísimo mas!
So glad this is on itch finally! This is an amazing little game and it radiates quality all around. It is also a great introduction to BoB games and GMless ttrpgs in general. One of the best ways to spend an afternoon with your friends.
10/10 would cast a spell to shrink my cats and bring them to class in my backpack again.
A lovely GMless game, wholesome and cozy.
Creating your witch and interacting with others is a marvelous experience that I always want to do again.
If you're into gay witches, witchy animes/mangas, and school drama and don't like to be bossed around by GMs, this game is for you!
A wonderfully magical and fun game. I love the artwork and the nods to Little Witch Academia!
I made a video quick look:
This is such a wonderful video! Thank you so much Philippa <3