Sometimes, you just want to ponder an orb. You know what I mean? Consult the grimoires. Channel the harmony of the celestial spheres. Go full wizard. But despite the prominence of wizards in fantasy fiction, their representation in most TTRPGs is utterly lackluster – walking artillery pieces who are only one fight away from needing a nap. That looks set to change with the upcoming Seven-Part Pact, an RPG so tricked out with bespoke systems and custom props I’m fairly sure it was designed by actual wizards.
Seven-Part Pact is a TTRPG for three to seven players, each playing one of the seven wizards of the distant Isha archipelago, all of them mystics with great power and crushing responsibilities. An ancient Pact binds them together and sustains the world order: but as each wizard has the power to change the world and even the very rules of the game, it’s up to the players whether they will uphold the status quo, remake the world, or bring it to ruin.
Wizard-forward TTRPG fans may be put in mind of Ars Magica, the current gold standard for wizardly roleplaying: a game with open-ended Latin based spellcasting, generational storytelling, which gives you control of a whole troupe of your wizard’s hangers on as well as the mage themselves. But it’s still a game with stats, target numbers, and dice rolls, a branch of the original TTRPG family tree. Seven-Part Pact meanwhile seems to have arrived from a portal to another dimension.
First, each of the seven wizards has their own Codex book, complete with lore about the corner of the world that concerns them, and their unique rules. Then they have their Domain, a bespoke board game that models their perspective on the world, both physical and mystical. Those Domains are in turn shaped by the Orrery, a shared board that represents the movements of the heavens.
Domains connect to each wizard’s powers and their role within the Pact. So the Warlock’s Domain is the Court of the King, and they’re responsible for keeping peace among the fractious nobles and clans of the archipelago, ever on the brink of war; the Sage has the Dreamscape where they attempt to balance cosmic destiny, and assign tarot cards to other wizards to try and engineer their behaviour towards a stable future.
Each game month, wizards have four weeks to tinker with their Domains, train apprentices, aid the layfolk, and of course cast magic. The game contains a whole Grimoire of spells, with effects that might be to “capture the soul of a gnome, open a portal to hell, or even create new life itself”. Working magic uses custom dice covered in alchemical symbols: more powerful magic requires rarer symbols only found on dice with other, dangerous effects.
Mechanically, then, this is a game where every player has their own unique, utterly arcane system, giving them specific motivations that aren’t always aligned with the peers they’re notionally working with – peak wizard. Wizards will also arrange meetings with one another, whether to collaborate or quarrel, and any player whose character isn’t in a scene joins the ‘Celestial Audience’, a collective game master that handles the response of the world to the wizards’ actions.
Despite their great power, or perhaps because of it, every wizard has much to worry about. Their domain is ever on the verge of collapse – and when that domain is the Faustian’s unwinnable Devil’s Game, or the Gates of Death guarded by the Necromancer, it’s immediately obvious how that could be a problem. And in addition to their isolating and incomprehensible duties, the loneliness of sitting apart from common humanity, wizards are expected to believe like men – even if they actually aren’t.
Seven-Part Pact is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter, and pledges are open until 5pm EDT / 2pm PDT / 10pm BST on August 13. The extravagant physical edition costs $150 (£112) plus shipping and taxes, and there’s an even more luxurious version for $300 (£224) – or if you fancy printing all these components at home, you can get a PDF for $30 (£23). Publisher Steve Jackson Games projects it will release in late 2027.
The game has been in development for a long time – the first version was released via Itch.Io and was developed for the Possum Creek Games Patreon. YouTubers Darling Demon Games ran playtest streams of it two years ago, which you can watch here:
Like so many indie TTRPGs, this game aims to do something extremely specific in theme, tone, and setting, in a way that I haven’t seen before. It seems to have quite a lot of rules crunch (or at least, a lot of procedure), but that strikes me as a good thematic fit for a wizard’s arcane rites and rituals; similarly, the lavish physical components are also there to underpin that central wizardly fantasy. Nothing about it makes me wonder ‘why did they bother doing it like that?’ It’s self evident – it’s there to make you feel like a wizard.
Not that I’ve played it! The Kickstarter page has glowing quotes from Brendan Lee Mulligan, Quintin Smith, and Kieron Gillen, three RPG experts I trust immensely, but that doesn’t automatically make it one of the best tabletop RPGs ever. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most promising titles I’ve seen in an age. My colleague Mollie has already backed the Kickstarter, and I’m sure you’ll see a review from her when it arrives.
What has been your most entertaining wizard experience in a TTRPG? Do you have any favorite systems that do things unlike any other game in the world? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
