Catastrophes of the Five Agents

Wood,   Fire,   Earth,

Metal,   &   Water

These are the 5 Agents that define our world.
I am the wizard "Warra", and these are my research notes on the arcana of the 5 Agents
... and how they can go horribly, horribly wrong.

At your tabletop roleplaying games,
do you ever want magic to feel more dangerous?
A little harder to predict & more difficult to control?
Do you want something to shake your games up a bit?
Or maybe a new tool for your spellcasters? 
Has D&D 5e's Monk class ever felt out of place,
with too few other connections to East Asian fantasy traditions? 
Is D&D's flavour & philosophy a bit too Eurocentric
for the game or campaign you have planned?

"Catastrophes of the Five Agents" is a booklet with a response to each of those questions. Empower your table's spellcasters with the "Undercasting" & "Overcasting" rules - a dangerous system that breaks the limitations of their magic in exchange for immense risk. Learn ways to utilise the 5 Agents of Chinese, Vietnamese, and other Sinosphere traditions in your games. Peruse playthings to wreak havoc at the table... and a few tools to get you out of that trouble, too.

This zine includes:

• 58 pages of "research notes", illustrations, and game material.
• A brief overview of how the 5 Agents system of tradition works.
• A system & reasons to cause magical catastrophes in your ttrpg games.
• 100 possible catastrophes related to the 5 Agents for uncareful spellcasters.
• 8 new spells
• 2 mundane items
• 1 monster

About the zine series:

"Catastrophes of the Five Agents" is the first issue of a new monthly ttrpg zine called "Catastrophic Issue". Each issue will cover a particular theme, a table of random magical catastrophes, and a few extras that tie into the theme & catastrophes of that issue.

This first issue is optimised for D&D 5e, but barring the spells & monster statistics, should be pretty system agnostic and can be used in many other fantasy tabletop roleplaying games where players may want to engage with more East Asian fantasy.

This issue of the zine mirrors my own research & notes on the Vietnamese philosophy of "ngũ hành" (called 五行 - "wǔxíng" - in China). I have lived in Việt Nam for 7 years, where I have been running a D&D campaign in a fictional fantasy SE Asia with my friends; this zine is an amalgam of my game notes, local Việt illustrations, original concepts, and personal research on the deep philosophy & traditions of the Five Agents.
I hope this booklet is a fun, free addition to your own home games and that it gives you more non-European-inspired tools to blow up your tables!

Enjoy! See you next month!

images by Cao Thái Bảo of Nguyễn Dynasty floral motifs