DMing with Gramarie
How to gramarie (and you can too!)

Games that involve gramarie are very very different from games that do not. The entire point of the system is to allow interaction by players into the technology level and culture of the world that you've constructed. The important thing to understand are the ramifications of the different levels of power that gramarie allows.

In general, there are three levels to gramarie. The first is what I call "low-impact magitek". This is the setting that comes from having only Baccalaureate-level principles around, it's what's in E6, and in general it's what you'll find in default low-magic campaign settings where few people even make it to 7th level. The tech level of this kind of setting is pretty close to normal D&D, and is similar to what you might find in Eberron, for instance. Some of the interesting things that you can probably expect in a low-impact magitek setting are rudimentary automobiles, materials that are stronger and more durable than you'd find in most settings, and some interesting construction techniques that leverage kaleidomantic and arcanodynamic abilities to build stuff that would be hard to build in the real world. Yggdratectural semi-spaces allow for things like portable cover for armies and excellent food and supply storage, which makes warfare much more plausible than a setting where half the population eats dirt for a living. In general, there are some interesting technologies available at this point, but they aren't necessarily widespread, and anything complicated requires a skilled psychic technician to operate (heuristical circuits still need Autohypnosis checks to operate at this point). If that's a tech level that you feel comfortable with, feel free to keep it nailed there for your entire campaign. There's not much impact from higher level technologies if the PCs are the only ones with it, since the abilities and techniques can't be leveraged for society as a whole. This approach is also pretty good for an introduction to gramarie, and to explore if it's something you want to go more in-depth into.

The second level of tech is probably my personal favourite, which I call "magitek renaissance". It comes online at 7th level with magisterial principles. In a magitek renaissance you've really got technology blossoming. This level allows rayguns, airships, giant robots, cannons, submarines, and a lot of other really cool stuff. This is where the applications start to open up, and more importantly, they become accesible to an untrained citizenry. It's like the difference between having the internet in universities and government, and putting it into the hands of the people. With control points and programming now available in circuits, anyone can use gramarie, or it can even basically run itself. In general, this level of technology is great for exploration and having fun with the ideas and world-building gramarie makes possible. I'd recommend it for any kind of magical empire or high-magic society. A great approach for a group that wants to have a little more fun and invent crazy stuff.

The final level of tech is pretty extreme; I call it "doomsday magitek". This is a post-scarcity, post-everything setting. It's pretty nuts, but then, it only exists when the population is 14th level and higher, so yeah. Anything you can imagine is pretty much possible here, from building artificial intelligences to manage a demiplane, to flying island fortresses that jump between Planes and bring their citizenry with them in giant alternate-dimension prisons that they use to power their nuclear weapons. I reserve this level of tech for PCs that make it to that point and want to have some high-level fun, or for extraplanar societies that are explicitly supposed to be lightyears more advanced than the Material Plane. This is seriously crazy-town, and is just incredible as a toolkit for a clever DM. This is the stuff that you can use to actually show how the magical empire operates, while still having the rules to allow PCs to interact with it. This is why you're here.

Now, a super-important point to make here which I touched on in the renaissance section is that the level of the PCs is not the same as the tech level of the setting. Any particular player character is limited by both his particular field of study (remember that a lot of the coolest tricks are Specialist only) and his time that he can invest. As a DM you're totally in control of how much time the PCs have to invent, practice, and explore the options that this system allows. Just because a player character has doctorate level principles doesn't mean your setting will implode, because there's only so much that one PC working on his own can do with this system. Massive societal changes require groups of high-level gramarists working together to get huge stuff accomplished.

Basically, there are a lot of possibilities with this system, but that's not a bad thing. It's sort of an equalizer between the DM and the players. Players have access to abilities which can cause permanent, visible changes in the world, but the DM has all of the same tools to construct a setting around. However you use it, just remember to have fun!

Pricing Gramarie

This is a really interesting topic. How do you price something made out of gramarie? The answer depends very much on the technology level of your setting, and the gramarie-tech that's already out there. That being said, when you get right down to it, gramarist is a job. It happens to be a very well-paying job, but then, so is manufacturing walls of iron as a wizard or binding efreeti in your spare time. Gramarists have to make a living somehow; the primary resource for a gramarist, as you may have noticed, is time. They can make a lot of really awesome stuff, but it takes some time, and in some cases that amount of time is ludicrously large. The only stuff that they will be able to churn out in fast production cycles are small-scale personal equipment, like rayguns and jetpacks. Large-scale engineering projects are going to require massive investments of time, large teams of gramarists working together, or preferably both.

When you buy something made of gramarie, you're essentially buying a set of principles that have been prepared on your behalf, and you're buying the raw materials. Every principle that has been used has a value of anywhere from 1 to 9. Every principle starts at a value of 0 for price. Principles that have been prepared multiple times are treated as separate principles for pricing.
Factor Value
Baccalaureate Principle                      +1
Magisterial Principle                           +3
Doctorate Principle                             +5
Baccalaureate Tech-Level Setting     +2
Magisterial Tech-Level Setting           +1
Doctorate Tech-Level Setting             +0
[Specialist] Principle                            +2

Once you establish the value of each principle that went into the thing you're buying, check this chart for the price of purchasing it:

Value Price
1      3 gp
2      9 gp
3      27 gp
4      81 gp
5      243 gp
6      729 gp
7      2,187 gp
8      6,561 gp
9      19,683 gp

Now, this means that in most settings, gramarists (even at 1st level) can make a pretty decent wage. If you're going to include gramarie at those levels, you're going to have to get used to that reality. Gramarists do awesome stuff for the setting, and they get rewarded for it. If you have an aversion to this kind of economic power, feel free to place things like tariffs on gramarie profits, taboos against comissioning it, political reasons they can't sell their work, and so on. But seriously, making money is not as big of a deal as most people feel like it is, because any adventurer can make money if they decide to start up a business or farm for a hundred years or something. Please consider allowing people to make money in your game and buy stuff with it that people actually do buy with money, like land, property, people, and bling. Glossary

There is a lot of terminology that goes together with gramarie. I've tried to make the new key words and phrases as self-explanatory, consistent, and easy to follow as I can, but if you're curious what a particular term means, check this reference guide!

Alchemetry: A discipline of gramarie that deals with altering material statistics. Fantasy analogue to materials engineering.
Ambient Temperature: The average temperature in degrees Centigrade of the environment, not any particular object in it. More than half of the area must be this temperature for it to be the ambient temperature.
Arcanodynamics: A discipline of gramarie that deals with converting energy from one form to another. Fantasy analogue to energy engineering.
Ascended Metal: A planetary metal can be ascended with ALCH 364, which gives it some kind of supernatural property.
Biollurgy: A discipline of gramarie that deals with creating life and shaping it. Fantasy analogue to biomedical engineering.
Biostructure: A gross building material that shares traits with both objects and creatures.
Blueprint: A written reference of a principle. Allows a layman to use the principle.
Bubble: A spherical shape commonly used by gramarie.
Bulk: A rating that provides an estimate of how bulky something is. Based off of size and density.
Chassis: A mass of biostructure given life.
Circuit: A heuristical bubble that connects various things together into a control system.
Controller (Kaleidomantics): The person controlling the motion of a kaleidomantic filter.
Control Point: A location built into a circuit where anyone can make logical decisions for the circuit.
Eldrikinetics: A discipline of gramarie that deals with motion and engines. Two main focuses are ballistics and transport. Fantasy analogue to mechanical engineering.
Energy Damage: There are five kinds of energy damage in D&D: acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic.
Engine: A machine you build with eldrikinetics which transforms fuel or puissance into motion of some kind.
Ferrous: Ferrous metals are in this document defined as any kind of metal which either is a magnet or reacts to a magnet.
Filter: A 2D shape of light that separates out some agent based on its colour.
Flux: An yggdratectural field where some weird physics effect occurs.
Form (Imachination): The way an illusion interacts with what it's covering. This can be adding, changing, or removing the sensory information already present.
Function (Imachination): The way an illusion interacts with the rest of the world through its behaviour.
Fundamental Disconnect: Happens when an illusion presents information which is logically impossible. Offers a chance to disbelieve the illusion.
Geoccultism: A discipline of gramarie that deals with the environment and ecology. Fantasy analogue to environmental engineering.
Gramarie: Fantasy equivalent of science and technology which provides a different way to interact with magic.
Gramarist: Someone who uses gramarie, or more specifically a character class that teaches principles of gramarie.
Heuristicism: A discipline of gramarie that deals with control and programming. Fantasy analogue to computer engineering.
Imachination: A discipline of gramarie that deals with senses and false information. Fantasy analogue to social engineering.
Inside: The term inside describes what space an object is on. In Yggdratecture it means that that object is more than 50% on one side of a portal or another, and the effect it produces takes place on the space it's inside.
Kaleidomantics: A discipline of gramarie that deals with light and filtration. Fantasy analogue to civil engineering.
Key Skill: Every discipline has a key skill which is used when you prepare a principle from it. Gramarists can substitute Knowledge (architecture and engineering) checks for a key skill check at a penalty.
Logical Decision: Any kind of decision which changes the way a principle or component works. Logical decisions can also be changed in a circuit.
Planetary Metal: There are eight metals that are very important to gramarie, and are based on the alchemical planetary beliefs from real life. They are copper, gold, iron, lead, mercury, platinum, silver, and tin.
Portal: The entryway to an extradimensional space or other plane.
Principle: The gramarie equivalent of spells. Principles come in three grades: Baccalaureate, Magisterial, and Doctorate. Some principles are marked with the [Specialist] tag, and can only be learned by a specialist in that discipline.
Puissance: Puissance is a generic form of magical energy. Think of it like the electricity that drives magic. Puissance is measured in ebbs (eb).
Push: A kind of imparted momentum granted by an engine. It creates a speed for the target for one round.
Radiomantic: A metal which gives off arcane decay continually. Very dangerous and hard to handle.
Semi-Space: A small extradimensional space created by yggdratecture.
Sense Output: The sensory component given off by an illusion. Keyed to a particular sense.
Sensory Mismatch: Happens when two senses don't agree about what's they're sensing. Offers a chance to disbelieve an illusion.
Spatial Reference: A point in space designated as a reference point to the location and orientation of some effect. Can be fixed in space, or attached to a creature or object. Moving a reference moves the effect.
Spectroconstruction: The way that a gramarist gets mundane construction and labour accomplished on his own. References possibly the most ambiguous magic item ever, sorry about that.
Transformer: An arcanodynamic transformer is a chunk of metal which either absorbs energy or emits energy. By sticking two of them together you can convert energy from one form to another.
Trigger/Response: A combination of a specific set of circumstances or requirements to be met, and the decision that a circuit will make in such an event.
Two-Part Engine: An abstraction created when you have a powered simple orthogonal and an ascending or descending engine. You can treat the vessel as if it had a fly or swim speed for ease of gameplay.
Yggdratecture: A discipline of gramarie dealing with extradimensional spaces, planes, and magnetism. Fantasy analogue to structural engineering.