Michael McCune
updated 1 October 2025
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Planeswalker is a rules-light improvisational role-playing game set in a reality based on the lore of Magic the Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. It is played as a back-and-forth conversation between a group of players to tell a cooperative story. One of the players takes the role of the Game Master, they will be responsible for being the master of ceremonies for the game, describing the multiverse, animating its inhabitants, and being the final arbiter of game conflicts. The other players will take the role of Planeswalkers; people with the ability to travel between the planes of the multiverse, who are the primary protagonists of the story, and are the best equipped to defend the multiverse from the forces of annihilation. The Planeswalker players are responsible for driving the story forward, for bringing life to their characters, and for describing their character’s reactions to the events of the multiverse.
The game is played using a set of cards with art on them depicting the people, places, things, and events of the multiverse. Before the game begins, the Game Master will places the cards in a pile face up where all the players can access them. The Planeswalker players can feel free to start looking through the cards for inspiration, but remember to share!
Each player will also need a pencil and paper, or equivalent, to record their Planeswalker’s name and the names of the spells they cast during play.
The Game Master will usually give some background for the players and may describe the multiverse for new players. This is a good time for players to ask questions and to discuss the game and intentions of the group. After this, the players can begin creating their Planeswalkers.
To begin creating their Planeswalker, each player should think about the type of character they are making. Where they come from, their history and motivations, and their relationship to magic and the multiverse. Planeswalkers are incredibly powerful beings with varying appetites and impulses, they are long-lived, and are able to sculpt the multiverse to their liking. At their root however, all Planeswalkers are motivated in varying degrees by their sense of self-preservation and their drive to master the powers they have awakened.
To create a Planeswalker, each player will need to select five cards that will provide the inspiration for the character’s actions, abilities, and experiences. During play, each player will use their cards to describe the magic that their character uses to influence the multiverse.
The players should loosely familiarize themselves with the cards and then determine an order for choosing. Then, in order, each player selects a single card, then the group repeats the process until every Planeswalker player has five cards.
Players should write their character’s name down, and describe them to the group. Once everyone’s Planeswalker has been introduced, the Game Master will select the initial multiverse cards and begin the first chapter.
After the Planeswalkers have selected their cards, the Game Master will select the cards that will become the initial multiverse. These cards will become the story elements that set the scenes for play and create scenarios for the Planeswalkers.
The Game Master starts the game with five cards, plus one card for each Planeswalker. For example, in a play group with 5 players: 1 Game Master, and 4 Planeswalkers, the Game Master will start with 9 cards.
During the course of play, the Game Master will have opportunities to gain more cards, but at the beginning of the game they will have a limited pool. In most cases, once the Game Master has played a card, it will remain face up in the common area of play for players to reference.
After characters have been created, and the Game Master has created the initial multiverse, the Game Master will begin describing the first chapter of the game. They will begin by placing one card face up in front of the Planeswalker group, then they will tell the players about the scenario that their characters find themselves in, and how the art on the card relates to that predicament.
The game now shifts into the back-and-forth discussion between the players that form the heart of any role-playing game. The players should discuss what their characters are doing, they should emote as their characters, ask questions, and interact with the scenario and the Game Master.
At some point, the Game Master will present a challenge to the Planeswalkers, or a conflict will arise. When this happens, the players have an opportunity to use their cards to affect the multiverse by casting spells. In this manner, the players will advance the story by role-playing with the scenarios and characters that the Game Master presents while playing cards for the multiverse. These exchanges can be loosely thought of as the chapters of the story.
Planeswalkers have the unique ability to channel mana into spells that can affect reality. The scope and breadth of how those spells work is nearly infinite and bounded only by the imagination and creativity of the Planeswalker.
During the course of play, encounters will arise that challenge the Planeswalkers. These encounters may be in the form of enemies physically confronting the Planeswalkers, or they may be more existential such as worlds being torn asunder by destructive magics, or anywhere in-between. Players can react to these events by having their Planeswalkers cast spells to alter reality in their favor.
To cast a spell, the player first identifies a card that they will use as inspiration for the effects. Then they will show the card to the other players and announce the spell’s name. When announcing the spell’s name, the player should write it down on their character sheet, they may reuse spell names on future castings. Spell names are free-form, players are encouraged to use descriptive and stylistic names for their spells, the key element should be something that relates back to the inspirational art and the effect of the spell. After naming the spell, the casting player describe what the spell is doing and how it is changing reality, and ultimately what the outcome will be.
The Game Master will then describe how the spell has worked, and what it has done to the current situation. In most cases the description will match what the player has described, but the Game Master might adjust details to fit contexts that are outside the players purview.
After casting the spell, the player will turn their card face down in front of themselves. They will need to refresh their Planeswalker before casting a spell from that card again.
After the initial card is introduced by the Game Master, the players will have an opportunity to role-play and cast spells in reaction to what happens in the story. During this process, the Game Master is able to play cards in reaction to the Planeswalker’s spells. When the Game Master plays more cards, they will describe how the situation is changing and what elements the new cards are adding to the scenario at hand. This, in turn, creates more opportunities for the Planeswalkers to react, and so on.
The back-and-forth conversation between the players will develop a natural cadence between the Game Master presenting new scenarios, threats, and conflicts, and the Planeswalkers reacting to those events and making actions of their own. When the Game Master does not respond to the Planeswalkers actions and spells with a new card, a chapter is considered complete and the Game Master will start a new chapter. This does not affect the characters, but gives the Game Master a chance to introduce new scenes that are not in reaction to the Planeswalkers spells.
Mechanically, in the course of the conversation, the Game Master will be playing cards that stay face up in the common area, and the Planeswalkers will be playing cards that become turned face down. This means that all players will be draining their card pools. When any player no longer has cards to play, a choice is faced by the group as a whole: continue play by refreshing their cards, or end the session and wrap up the current chapter.
As Planeswalkers cast spells, they temporarily exhaust their capacity for casting more spells. This is represented by players turning their cards face down after casting a spell.
Likewise, as the Game Master introduces new chapters and responds to the player’s actions, they will take cards from their initial multiverse and play them into the common area for all players to interact with.
When one or more players want to refresh their pool of cards, they may offer the Game Master an entanglement. This means that the Game Master will get to choose a new card from the stock of unused cards and introduce it as a new element in the Planeswalker’s story. When the Game Master does so, the player will get to turn all their cards face up, and can use them for casting spells.
Conversely, if the Game Master runs out of cards the players must decide whether to end the current chapter and session, or to give the Game Master a refresh. If the players decide in favor of a refresh, the Game Master gets to choose five new cards from among the un-selected cards. When the Game Master gets a refresh in this manner, all the the players also get to refresh their cards. Of course, the Game Master always has the prerogative to end the chapter at a thematically appropriate time and is never forced to continue the story.
Reality is a composite made up of Planes that constitute individual contained universes with their own internal laws of nature; and the space between which is an infinite timeless ocean of violent chaotic energy known as the Blind Eternities. Together, they are the Multiverse.
Planes are self-contained universes that have internal order and consistent natural laws. They are frequently galaxies with stars and planets, but can also be a single planet or even a space defined by other boundaries. Within each plane, there are laws of nature which can be discovered and understood, regardless of how unconvential they may be.
Throughout the Multiverse whenever a sentient being is born, there is a chance that its soul may be marked in aether by the Blind Eternities. Of those beings who have been imprinted in such a manner, even fewer survive the awakening of their aether spark. Planeswalkers are the very few who have survived their awakening and have become aware of their link to the Blind Eternities. Through their spark each Planeswalker learns to travel between Planes and to channel Mana so that they can craft reality to their whims and desires. In many respects Planeswalkers are the avatars of the Blind Eternities made flesh in the planes.
In general, all planeswalkers have these inherent powers in differing quantities and measures:
The space between the planes of the Multiverse is commonly referred to by Planeswalkers as the Blind Eternities. It is a place of wild chaotic energies comprised of aether, mana, and temporal energy. Only the strongest of beings, including Planeswalkers, are able to survive the Blind Eternities. It is a place of pure chaos that will sunder any forms which exist within its boundaries.
Despite the chaos and tumult of the Blind Eternities, there is one ancient race that exists within its space. Eldrazi are a formless species of sentience that is native to the Blind Eternities whose nature is that of ceaseless hunger. They travel the Multiverse on an undying quest to satiate their hunger by devouring all life and mana within the Planes.
The scope and depth of Eldrazi powers and magic is not well known by inhabitants of the multiverse. The one common trait between all Eldrazi is their hunger to devour mana and the substance of the multiverse.