The Intoxicated Sorcerer

Generic (fantasy) [one page]

Self Published

2020

Complexity: 1

The Intoxicated Sorcerer is a game where you play as a broom that has been accidentally given life by the eponymous intoxicated sorcerer due to a magical accident. Which may not be the strangest premise for a game that I’ve reviewed, but it is certainly up there.

Character Creation: N/A

Players create their broom by rolling 3d6 to determine their handle, bristles, and sweeping action. So for example a broom may have a chocolate handle, thinning bristles, and a pretty inefficient sweeping action, all of which have no actual effect on your character. Brooms also have three attributes: Magic Absorbed, Handle Strength, and Bristle Integrity, all of which start at 3. So musically all characters start with identical mechanical stats.

There’s also a similar 3d6 table for generating the sorcerer, which I don’t really know where else to put so I’m putting it here.

Mechanics: 2/5

The mechanics are pretty basic, when you want to do a thing you roll 1d6 against the relevant broom stat, with success on a result equal to or under that attribute’s value. Where it gets a little more interesting is that on a success you also move 1 point to the tested attribute from another, and on a failure the sorcerer “takes another sip of crunk juice” and casts a spell, which is rolled on another table and reduces the broom’s Handle Strength or Bristle Integrity and increases their Magic Absorbed by 1. And if your Magic Absorbed reaches 7, you become a wand and lose. This is where the issues come in, as in theory the idea of shifting around a supply of points seems interesting, but in practice that fact that one of them also determines when you lose effectively makes it a game of shifting points out of that attribute.

Writing and Presentation: 1/5

As is often the case with one-page games, everything is fairly-minimally explained, but the rules themselves are also fairly minimal so it kinda works out. The layout on the other hand… well, the only way I can explain it is if you asked me to guess when this game was released, I would have probably said some time in the early 2000s. The text is just kinda thrown on the page in what seems like arbitrary placement with some clip art and somewhat obnoxiously-colorful text and highlights. The overall look is somewhat nostalgic for a Web veteran like myself, but I also have the distinct impression that that was very much not the intention.

Final Remarks

So I guess that was The Intoxicated Sorcerer, a… game? I mean it’s more or less functional, and certainly not the worst thing I’ve looked at, but it just very much feels like something that was made just to make a thing.

Score Summary

Base Points: 4

Character Creation: N/A, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5

Adjustments: +0

Setting: N/A, Content: N/A, Writing: −1

Overall Score: 30% (3/10 Points)