It’s Only Magic helps GMs and players bring modern magic / urban fantasy / supernatural elements into their games. From cozy witchcore to dark demonic threats, this supplement integrates magic into society and culture, modern tech, and the weird underbelly of the supernatural.
This is a genre-book / white-book supplement for the Cypher System, published by Monte Cook Games. It requires the Cypher System Rulebook for use.
⚙ Contents & Tools — What You Actually Get
It’s Only Magic includes the following notable offerings:
- New Character Options: Descriptors, foci, species descriptors. For example, you can play magical hackers, “gun wizard” archetypes, or drive-mages. New species descriptors include things like chimera, dragon, ghost, hunter, nix, sylph.
- Optional Magic Rules / Modules: Support for a range of magic styles—from cantrips and familiars to more intense spells and supernatural threats. “Optional rules for magic cozy or grand” are part of the offering.
- Setting Material: It’s Only Magic includes two campaign settings. One is The Axial (a coffee-shop-magic neighborhood, richly detailed, drop-in ready). The other bonus setting is called New Grimsby by Eric Campbell and Jody Houser.
- Creatures & Supernatural Threats: A collection of magical creatures and supernatural foes: bargainer demons, gargoyles, haunted cars, Bloody Mary, even more whimsical ones like a centaur barista. Also species descriptors usable for PCs.
- Adventures & Worldbuilding Advice: Three complete adventures included. Worldbuilding guidance for integrating magic into modern society, building stories that mix mundane life with magical weirdness.
🎯 Play Experience
For groups or GMs wanting to play in urban fantasy / modern magic settings, It’s Only Magic offers enough tools to shift tone and pacing without having to homebrew heavily.
Strengths at the table include:
- Flexibility of tone: The book supports styles from cozy magical realism to dark supernatural horror, allowing campaigns to lean one direction or swing between moods. Players wanting whimsical magic and those wanting uncanny threats both get material.
- Low barrier to integration: If your campaign already uses Cypher, this book slots in without needing to change base mechanics. New descriptors, optional rules, etc., are all built for plug-and-play. The modular rules let GMs enable or disable features to match the style of play.
- Inspiration & atmosphere: The settings like The Axial are well-constructed. The coffee-shop magic, the neighborhood flavor, the modern magic tropes (magical hackers, gun wizards, etc.) help establish mood quickly. The lore helps bring magic into everyday life without breaking suspension.
- Useful mechanical additions: The foci and new species descriptors give players more expressive character hooks. The magic styles / modules help define what magic does, not just that it exists—who controls it, how dangerous it is, how visible or hidden.
Some trade-offs or things to prepare for:
- Balance & power creep concerns: With many magical options, foci, new descriptors, and supernatural threats, there’s a risk that some combinations will be more powerful or versatile than others. GMs may need to anticipate and moderate or modify threats so that the magic doesn’t overshadow mundane parts of the game.
- Genre blending might require decisions: If your players lean more toward mundane modern settings (superhero light, or very grounded supernatural), parts of the supplement (bigger spells or darker supernatural threats) may feel out of tone. The GM needs to calibrate whether to include all or only parts of the book.
- Content density: Because there’s a lot in the book (creatures, setting, magic styles, adventures), it may take some time to digest fully and decide which parts to emphasize. New GMs might feel overwhelmed by options.
✨ What It Does Especially Well
- The blend of everyday and magical, including integrating modern tech, culture, and social norms with the magical. Magical hackers, gun magic, tech-touched spells, etc., are well thought-through.
- The whimsical flavor: settings like The Axial and creatures like centaur baristas or haunted cars add charm without losing the potential for serious storytelling.
- The support for both kinds of players: those who want cozy portion of magic (familiars, cantrips, neighborhood magic) and those who want more epic or threatening supernatural arcs.
- Strong layout/design: reviewers praise the art, the readability of the text, sidebars, inspiration tables, genre flavor examples. The map poster of Colvin Park setting is noted as a nice touch.
🗡 Final Verdict
It’s Only Magic is a robust, thematically rich, mechanically flexible supplement for modern magic / urban fantasy campaigns using the Cypher System. It delivers on its promise: enabling multiple styles of magical storytelling—from small spells in coffee shops to bargaining with demons—while retaining the ease and flexibility that Cypher games are known for.
If you run—or want to run—games where magic is part of daily life, where supernatural threats emerge from hidden corners, and where character identity includes both the mundane and the fantastical, this book will be a strong asset. It’s particularly suited for groups who enjoy mixing tones or want to build “magical neighborhoods” or urban fantasy narratives.
If you prefer strictly low-magic or non-magic modern settings, or are uncomfortable with supernatural horror, you may only use a subset of what this book offers—but the modular design allows that without too much friction. Either way, for those interested in modern magic, It’s Only Magic is one of the better options.