This is another solo journaling game, a very recent one which i got because some ttrpg person i follow tweeted about it, not so much because they were super impressed by it (which they were) as the fact that it sounded relevant to my videogame side-project 'Seasons of the Tower'. It is beautifully presented - a pdf made of powerpoint slides with Mork Borg like handling of font and brilliant use of AI generated images and public domain paintings as backgrounds. It took me about 3 hours to play.
The game reminded a bit of My Life with Master, only here you play Master. After playing English Eerie I had actually been thinking that MLWM might make a fine solo game as the system is there to shape a story.
You start by deciding some background details about the world and who you are, then the game progresses by way of Events, of which 17 are provided in sequence. Each event involves either learning a new Spell or gaining a new Bond (relationship with another person). After resolving the event you roll 1d4 and 1d6, subtract the lowest from the highest and jump that many events ahead. The game ends after 7 events, or when a Calamity occurs, whichever comes first.
In terms of character stats there is Focus, Power, Control and you can accumulate ‘Scars’, evocative tags relating to event outcomes.
Focus is gained from positive event outcomes, lost from negative ones, can be spent to re-roll dice, and 3 can be exchanged for a point of Power (I only got one during the whole game and I think I was quite lucky with my rolls).
Power determines what dice you roll when resolving a Spell Event (i.e. a d10, d12 & d20), with each event dictating a Difficulty (they get increasingly higher). Every die roll equal to or greater than the difficulty counts as a success, the more successes the better the outcome, this essentially creates the cost of learning the new spell.
You can increase your Power by sacrificing a Bond. I did not do this, I only had one bond throughout my entire game and I had to sacrifice that (a frog familiar) to gain a spell. Max Power is 3, at 1 you roll a d8, d10 & d12.
Control has 3 levels; Perfect, Cracked and Broken. Once you've reached Cracked you have to start rolling a d8 Risk die with every future roll, should it come up 1 a Calamity occurs and the game ends. At Broken the risk die becomes a d4. I went from perfect to broken over the last 2 events of my game (as I had nothing else to spend to stave off the failed spell rolls).
Each Spell Event presents a table of adjectives to roll on, and from this you decide the details of the spell that you are trying to learn.
I really enjoyed the game, it is very evocative. I would have liked some pointers at the start for creating my character - there are some, but a random table for ‘who you are’ would have got things off to a faster start. I decided my character began as an undertaker which definitely gave the whole game a dark cast from the outset.
The only bond I got during the whole thing was the first one, which I feel did likely rob my game of some intensity; I did not get to make the choice of sacrificing Bonds for Power which is kind of what the game is about - like Ron Edwards seminal Sorcerer it asks what are you willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of power? This does make me wonder if playing cards might be better for progressing through events than dice rolls, though the specific dice roll mechanic, subtracting one from the other somehow feels resonant with the theme (and I realize now is inspired by Thousand Year Old Vampire).
I bought The Magus on itch.io
And my play through (I couldn't really call it a journal) is recorded in a google doc here
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