Name This Alchemical Book

You have the one, true book of alchemy. 

This arcane text provides a framework to steal the powers of monsters and craft fabulous potions, feasts, and elixirs.  

I will not name this book. You will. 

When you interact with this book, it undergoes an alchemical change. Secrets are revealed only to you that show you the true nature of the universe. 

Pour over this text thoroughly and have many secrets revealed to you.

Wait...what is this?

This is a bundle of alchemical systems that you can bolt on to the game of your choice. 

• Alchemy can let you steal the powers of monsters like Mega Man or Kirby
• Alchemy can be a field guide to rare plants in your campaign setting
• Alchemy can tame monsters like Pokemon
• Alchemy can be a cozy subsystem for making delicious meals

How does alchemy work?

Here's the essential gimmick: Alchemical substances bottle up the powers of monsters. When you use an alchemical substance, you’re using a monster’s ability.

• Drink a potion to gain a dire spider’s wall climbing ability.
• Throw a bomb to poison a foe with the spider’s venom.
• Distill the spider’s webbing into a glue-like oil that bonds together whatever it touches.

So, if your party defeats a monster and you harvest its black, squishy heart, you gain weird tools which can be used in many ways to solve puzzles.

This book contains tons of example alchemical substances as well as structures to build this system out. It is relatively little work to develop new alchemical substances for homebrewed monsters that  invent. Discovering what a monster’s guts do is half the fun.

What game system is this for?

This supplement contains rules from the forthcoming game His Majesty the Worm. However, with a little work, you can adapt these subsystems for any old-school role-playing game. A conversion guide is included at the end of the book. 

Wait, what's His Majesty the Worm?

His Majesty the Worm is a fantasy dungeon crawling game that is currently in development. It attempts to make the boring parts of dungeon crawls (mapping, resource management, food and water, light, interparty conflict) actually fun and central to game play. 

Any revenue gathered from this supplement will be funneled to paying cool artists good money for His Majesty the Worm. If this sort of thing sounds cool, please throw in a few dollars to help fund the game!

Downloading and using the dang thing

There are two versions of this book to download. 

The Complex Version undergoes an alchemical change when you interact with it. To view and play with this version, you will need to open the file using Adobe Reader. You can get Adobe Reader for free.

You can also download the No Nonsense PDF. This PDF doesn't have any of the same functionality, but can be opened in your browser window, with your e-reader, with your screen reader, etc.

All images for both PDFs are on a separate layer than the text. If you wish to print this book, just turn off the image layers.