MTG Color Pie Personalities

inspiration
#1

Color%20Personality
Color Personality.jpg2333x3656 2.16 MB

The Magic the Gathering card game has a great “color pie” philosophy system built into it that I personally adore. I’ve been using to create NPC personalities for awhile now and a player of mine asked me to make a guide for players to optionally use for when making PCs. This is pretty much a riff on DnD’s alignment system and thought Id share with the community for anyone who would be interested.

Edit**

Here is an example of it when used on an NPC and how much it changes a scenario.

Scene
PCs are on the road and need a ride into town. A wagon shows up heading in the direction of town. The PCs wave the driver down…

White Mana Driver - “Need a ride? Sure hop on! No need to pay me, we are all children of the goddess!”

Black Mana Driver - “You want a ride? Ok but its gonna cost you coin and I don’t see any other wagons around here so the price is triple.”

Red Mana Driver - “Finally someone to talk to. Hop on! Let me show you how fast I can push the horses!” 50% chance the wagon crashes and 50% chance they missed a turn and are now going the wrong way.

Blue Mana Driver - " You want a ride? Who are you? Where are you coming from? Why are you going to town? Ok that checks out and you all look like you can handle yourself in a fight. Sure you can come along and your job is to protect my wagon from bandits."

Green Mana Driver - Sees people trying to wave them down. Ignores them. Drives passed them. Strangers could be dangerous and I don’t need that drama in my life. I just want to deliver this wagon to town ASAP.

Its fun to make a scene and then randomly assign a color to npcs and figure out how they would react to the PCs.

Edit

I changed up the template so its easier to mix 2 colors. You pick one color’s WANT and then pick another color’s method. This creates 10 combinations of what I think are interesting PCs / NPCs on the fly.

Roleplaying Social Encounters: The Swamp
#2

This is awesome!
Far better than alignment for us MTG players.

#3

Glad you like it

I edited the main post to give an example of the colors in action for npc design.

#4

The five milestone paths originally presented in Worlds—Amber, Iron, Oak, Smoke, and the Hawk—have a five-way flavor and set of mechanical themes that is very congruent to the way in which the color system is used in MTG.

#5

Nice catch! I did not even realise that until I read your comment! :ok_hand:

For my part, I just can’t get enough of the MTG color pie! Speaking of which, look up Tap Untap Burn for 5E… which can easily be used for ICRPG as well! :grin:

#6

I reworked the colors and posted the updated version to those who are interested.

I changed up the template so its easier to mix 2 colors. You pick one color’s WANT and then pick another color’s method. This creates 10 combinations of what I think are interesting PCs / NPCs on the fly.