Something keeps crawling in the window...

[rafial]

So I'm looking for some guidance on what to do with failed castings that result in "unwanted summonings". What sort of stuff is likely to come through, and what is it going to do? I took a quick look at the Summoning chapter, and even stuff like Lesser Imps look like big trouble. Are there weaker "things" that might show up? And is an accidently summoned thing going to want to clobber the caster, or might it just run away?

It occurs to me that if you have wizards around, over time a lot of creepy crawlies of one sort or another are going to get pulled through by accident. After awhile, you'd get quite the population build up...

[luke]

Have you read Ursula LeGuin's The Wizard of Earthsea?

[rafial]

I have, but it was so long ago I can only remember it in the broadest of outlines... (Wizard named Ged, magic uses true names, that's about it).

[luke]

I mention Wizard of Earthsea because in addition to all those great elements, and being impeccably written, a major dramatic point in the book is centered around an unwanted summoning. That narrative is the inspirational source of these rules.

As for us? In the past year of play we've had two unwanted summonings, one of them just the other night!

In the first, it was a Great Daemon that I had waiting for just such an opportunity. He was a plot point. In the most recent, it was randomly conjured Greater Imp -- we used the new Failed Casting/Unwanted Summoning rules described in Abstraction. This new variant basically just tells you to use the Summoning rules rather than GM discretion (though that always is an option).

-L