The Magus was my first foray into solo TTRPGs. I started it last year in the deep isolation of a Wisconsin winter. At the time, I was leaving a decade-long career, so my RL journey wasn’t so different from the game’s titular “magus.” My mage and I both sought knowledge and power only to realize the cost and leave our ivory towers.
Overall, The Magus was a dark and strangely therapeutic writing experience made possible by momatoes’ narrative-driven game mechanics, high-stakes dice rolls, and tender and cutting writing prompts.
Mechanics (a brief descriptive synopsis)
The Magus is primarily a journaling game. Over the course of seven “events” (resolved through dice rolls and narrative prompts), the magus forges (or breaks) “bonds,” gains knowledge of arcane “spells,” and by the end leaves their lofty arcane tower, whether by their own volition or by forces outside their control.
The consequences and complications of the story are shaped by dice rolls and the magus’s traits. As the magus attempts to forge bonds or learn spells you adjust their four main traits: focus, power, control, and scar. A magus can gain or lose any of these traits by failing a dice roll. As failures accumulate, so does the chance of a calamity.
The story is also shaped by the role that magic plays in the world, something that is established at character creation. In the world I created, magic is rare and mages are punished under the current political regime.
Gameplay
The act of journaling throughout The Magus felt like a balance of creation and reflection: as the writer inventing my character’s history in response to each event, and as the magus reflecting on my life’s trajectory and the path that brought me to the lonely tower.
I felt urged to write with optimism and remorse at the beginning of the journey. But toward the end, when my character was closer to achieving their quest for knowledge and mastery over language and the material world, my mage and I lost our optimism.
Here are some examples from my play through of The Magus. So much of what I wrote was too earnest and vulnerable to share.
My mage’s name was Severin, and here are some of the events she experienced.
Severin formed her first bond with a surly librarian named Selwin who harbored their own secret.
I practiced my magic deep in the recesses of the protectorate’s records–a corner of the library no one ever visited. There I hid a tome in the old tongue, and I was slowly translating its arcane language. I found that if I sang the words at the correct pitch I could move light and air.
One day, I was making flames dance, when Selwin found me. They stared, silent and fierce. Then, they spoke slowly:
“You are more than you appear. But know this: so am I.
“I will not betray your secret. But one day I will ask a favor of you. I will ask you to use your song. I request this not as a favor, though it may seem like I am holding your secret hostage. Treat my request as a kindness, if you think me worthy of one kindness.
“In exchange I offer you my own secret, my own weakness. You may hold my secret as a token of our bond, a small recompense I can offer for stumbling upon yours.
“Here is my secret: I am the bastard sibling of the current Protector. My mother was a sorceress, and the Protector was jealous of her power over our father and the city.
“My loyalties are to my mother and the other magi the Protector has destroyed. You see, I would not betray you because I am compelled to protect those like you from that tyrant.
“There is much that you must come to understand if you stay in this province, perhaps more mundane secrets too.”
In this event, I chose to nurture an existing bond, in doing so my mage gained +1 focus. Focus represents the character’s inner strength, and gaining focus means you have prevailed in situations of adversity.
Later on, my magus discovered a powerful spell while wandering through a cemetery at night.
The stones of the crypt were damaged by fire magic. It was clear that some time ago someone tried to erase the memory of the dead. Inside the crypt, leaves gathered in corners and a statue lay smashed on the floor. Somehow enough moonlight crept in at just the right angle to catch on a golden broach. The broken statue almost seemed to shift in order to reveal it further.
I gazed into the opal stone in its center and felt its arcane energy. The leaves rustled around me and I felt a voice in my mind say in a rasping voice: “Beware, gold tempts and knowledge is power. Those with both will not lightly lose either.”
I shuddered because I felt an affinity with the power here. I could stare into the stone and lose myself. “Annihilation of Thought,” the stone whispered in my mind. I jerked my gaze away, knowing that I could wield that power against others. And for the first time in weeks, I felt some measure of greedy hope.
I succeeded in the (difficult) dice roll to learn this spell and was able to remorse one of the scars I gained earlier in the game. My magus retired soon after. She became addicted to dreaming and would rather escape from the material and arcane worlds into sleep.
Next month: VOID 1680 AM, a solo playlist building game by Ken Lowery
Next year, I’ll return to The Magus and explore the expansion, “Through the Looking Glass”
Sara Gabler 