Welcome to Magno, the finest set of shops since 20XX! You’ll find the coziest array of stores and cafes to suit any of your needs. You look new in town! Let me guess—need plants? Lotus is at the end of the street. Coffee? Books? Buckstar is above Noble & Barnes, right before the crosswalk.Wait—you must be the new folks Ross hired! Ferry’s Ink is right in between Lotus and Noble & Barnes. Keep walking and you won't miss it—yup, right there!
How to Play
You and your motley crew are new hires at Ferry’s Ink, a tattoo shop in Magno. Players will
work under one of Ferry’s resident artists, design tattoos, and amass the favor of their clients.TL;DR: Magno is a 5-player drawing game, where players rotate between the role of a "Client," who creates the Drawing Prompt each round, and an "Apprentice," who draws a design each round. During a round, the Client gets to pick the best design, and the winning Apprentice earns +3 Favor Tokens
each round. If another Apprentice has a particularly fantastic design, the Client can give someone else an Ace Token; or, if another Apprentice has a
particularly gnarly-looking design, the Client can give someone a Penalty Token. The first Apprentice to earn 15 Favor Tokens wins the game.
The Apprentice's Artist also has certain advantages that can be used during the game, so pick your artist wisely and play wisely!
Clients will select a Prompt and
a Place; a Please is optional.
The Cards + The Drawing
Clients will select a Prompt card and a Place card from shuffled decks. If the Client wants to make things harder for the Apprentices (or make the drawing prompt even more absurd), the Client can select an optional Please card. All 3 cards will be used to form the Client's official request for the round, declared as such: "I would like PROMPT on my PLACE. Also, please keep in mind that PLEASE."The Apprentices will then work from the Client's request and draw a tattoo design that fulfills the Prompt (and the Please, if applicable) and fits the Client's Place. (e.g. "I would like the best character from George Orwell's Animal Farm on my arm. Also, please keep in mind that blue is my favorite color.")Timing may be set to the players' liking; 60 to 90 seconds of drawing time per round is advised to ensure quality work!
Players don't start with anything besides an Ace Token and a Penalty Token. Work your way from the ground up!
The Best + The Tokens
When the round is over, the Client will review all designs and pick the best of the best. The winning Apprentice will receive 3 Favor Tokens. If the Client deems another Apprentice's design to be particularly impressive, the Client may also bestow their Ace Token upon a different Apprentice during a round. On the other hand, if the Client considers another Apprentice's design to be particularly unsavory, the Client may grant a different Apprentice with a Penalty Token during a round.Winning conditions may be set to the players' discretion. In a standard game, the first player to acquire 15 Favor Tokens wins the game!NOTE: The Apprentice's Artist can also provide Apprentices with different advantages.
The Artists
Apprentices can work under one of five of Ferry's resident Artists: Ross, Sasha G., Thompson, Misha, or Lohan.
Each Artist has a unique ability that Apprentices can use once per game session, so pick your Artist wisely!To learn more about each of these characters (and more about the world of Magno, click here.
Ross
Big Shot
Gain +1 additional
Favor Token
when you receive
an Ace Token.
Sasha G.
Nirvana
Deflect a
Penalty Token.
Thompson
Sabotage!
Add ONE (1) line
to another
Apprentice's
drawing.
Misha
Poor Man's Beggar
If you earn a Penalty
Token, steal +1 Favor
Token from the
Apprentice with the
most amount of Favor.
Lohan
Confidante
The Client must
pick a new
Prompt card
for the round.
About Magno
Magno is a fictional street-complex of quaint shops, including, but not limited to, a plant shop (Lotus), a tattoo shop (Ferry's Ink—the setting for the game), and a combination bookstore-cafe (Buckstar + Nobles & Barne). I dreamt up the "world" for Magno back in high school, these characters have been developing for years, complete with their own sets of boyfriends, hobbies, *credit card scores, and blood types.Misha was the first that came to fruition out of all of the characters, along with characters that aren't included in the game, like Sebastian, Misha's BFF/younger brother (basically) and Lohan's boyfriend. Other characters that didn't make the cut include Sasha Lüzer, an antagonistic barista at Buckstar that comes from old money in Eastern Europe; Asahi, the frontman of the 8-TWELVE Convenience Store and an ex-physician trying to evade charges for medical malpractice; and Nasir, Deen, and Ezra, three triplets that work at Lotus, Buckstar, and Nobles & Barne. These characters are so old that there aren't even pictures of them!*I'm kidding about those last two, kind of."Magno" was originally named "Magnolia Boulevard," an arbitrary placeholder name at the time. Magnolia Street, however, was an actual street that existed in real life; it was hidden within one of the neighborhoods in my area, and I had first spotted it in passing for a few seconds. After I realized I was not, in fact, hallucinating, I kept the name and took the chance-sighting as a sign.In present-day Magno, Ross is the owner of Ferry's Ink; the entire Ferry's crew has been working there for years, so they're all established artists with their own sense of style. Sasha G. and Thompson are practically Ross' two right-hand-men, although Sasha's a biiiit more responsible than Thompson. Lohan and Misha are two of the "newer" artists at the shop, in the sense that they have a few years' less experience than the others. Lohan and Misha apprenticed under Thompson and Ross, respectively, when they first started at Ferry's.
About Magno (the Game)
Magno (the Game) is a fusion of the party games I've enjoyed the most and some of the video games that I've loved. Putting it into an equation:
Magno, the Concept
+ Jackbox's TeeKO (a drawing game where you pair absurd captions and more absurd drawings)
+ Gartic Phone (an online multiplayer mix of Telephone and Pictionary)
+ Cards Against Humanity (infamous for its breadth of prompts)
+ Disco Elysium (a non-traditional role-playing game known for its painterly art style, its unique, personality-based stats/mechanic system, and its extensive worldbuilding)
= Magno, the GameI’ve been a long-time fan of @siobhanchiffon’s method of visual development, especially with her long-term project, “Meridian’s Witch Detectives.” I was also inspired by Adam Ellis’ project, “Fever Knights.” Originally developed as an artistic project for a fake video game strategy manual, Adam Ellis was able to develop Fever Knights into a playable TTRPG with the lore he developed.As a game, Magno is fairly simple and is hopefully easy & fun to play. In future professional endeavors, if I ever get the opportunity to develop Magno into a physical prototype & pitch the game to developers, I'd love to create a compendium-type manual of lore about the characters and the world of Magno as a fun addition to the game itself.The Sell Sheet for Magno (the Game) is attached on the left.
Visual Development
All assets featured on this website were created & designed by A. Sultana using a combination of vector and raster artwork on Clip Studio Paint.
Mockups (2023)
Concept Development (2021-present)
