[Sorcerer] Watery karma of the dead or vengeful sea sprites?

[Joshua Bearden]

I am starting this thread to seek general coaching, advice, and encouragement as I gear up to play Sorcerer for the first time.  For a many months now I've been nurturing an 'indie gaming scene' in my town. One of the chief motivators to do so was to cultivate a circle of friends who might agree to try playing Sorcerer with me.  At our last Thursday session, after playing Lady Blackbird, I started discussing Sorcerer with some members of the nascent 'scene' and saw some eyes light up.  I think the time may be coming soon.  I've started to think about what I need to do to prepare.

I want to play here and now which is Halifax, Nova Scotia, an ornery little port city on the eastern edge of Canada. We're really too small to be called a city but we're the biggest thing going in all Atlantic Canada so we do our best to fulfil the role. We punch way above our weight for violence and crime by Canadian standards and we probably have more "history" (from a eurocentric view) than most other provincial capitals. The massive harbour, cargo terminals and shipyards dominate the geography and more recently the economy.  Nautical and military tragedies - the Halifax explosion, the sinking of the Titanic, many wars - leave quiet traces in historical cemeteries. Beyond the Harbour the North Atlantic relentlessly pounds an inhospitable granite shoreline.

My thoughts about sorcery and demons is that demons are either or both of the following:  (1) Restless and tortured spirits of women, children, and men who died or were lost at sea or in sea-touched tragedies, or  (2) raw primal inhuman spirits of the sea itself recognizable in legends as mer-folk, kelpies, sirens, nerieds, leviathan etc.

Sorcery in the first case would involve ghoulish historical research:  A pouring over fishing reports, war records, new clippings and obituaries for deaths suitably traumatic or horrific to create the desired demon  and would require the uncovering of a morbid artefact to complete a binding ritual. My sorcerers would haunt archives and museums and possibly be driven to grave robbing to find the needed ingredients. 

In the second case I imagine Lore might tread the waters between science and mythology: amateur marine biologists armed with underwater cameras and diving gear slipping into the depths seeking secret evidence of  impossible organisms. Evidence not to share with the world but for the sake of contacting and summoning. (Much inspiration for this second thread comes from Patricia A. Mckillip's Something Rich and Strange).

Earlier I tried to define my intentions for the game by providing some constraints for character development. For example I was going to tell players to create characters with high pressure professional careers (nurses, social workers, doctors, police officers, public defenders or prosecutors) and who resorted to sorcery to attempt to meet the endless demands. But I later felt this would require a shared interest in and knowledge of the respective professional workplaces and routine. Without that, I can only see our play drawing on the most hackneyed tropes from relavant TV shows.  Also, these roles are by definition reactive and as a GM I'd have to  generate a continual stream of cases, clients, patients etc. (As is de rigeur in the popular fiction).

Next I thought I should suggest players, play "themselves" if they were able to live a perfectly self-indulgent life.  Ie. have a life they might fantasize about but aren't willing to pursue in real life.  In the game they  were able to reach it by the shortcuts provided by sorcery. My problem with this constraint is that I couldn't imagine such characters choosing to live in Halifax. Finally it occurred to me that perhaps that as GM I should choose only the constraints necessary to spotlight subject matter that I'm interested in exploring but leave everything else open so that each player is able bring something they are equally interested to the game.   

So that brings me to the two statements above.  The game is in Halifax now. Demons are either: lost souls recovered from a sea of heartbreak or mythical creatures called up out of the blue abyss.  Characters are anyone the players want them to be as long as they live in Halifax and have summoned a demon. Depending on their Lore, they will be more or less adept at performing the tasks necessary to exploit said demons.

Humanity? No idea yet.

Comments and advice please.  I don't expect to start playing until the new year, but I will play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Joshua! Hard-won advice ...

The two statements, nothing more. You have them, and the next move is, shut the pie-hole. Fortunately, you already figured that one out beautifully, when you realized that trying to specify characters was a bad idea. Let'em make up the characters they want from there, and the most you should do is say, "C'mon man, not Vasquez from Aliens again," if she shows up. Even better if they make up the characters to about 50% done without consulting with one another.

So I think you're on the right track! Pretty cool idea, too.

Best, Ron

[Christoph]

As a Swiss citizen having heard of Halifax the first time when the Swissair plane blew up, the form of sorcery you're proposing is quite shocking, in a relevant way. In comparison, the spirits of the sea seem kind of quaint.

I was wondering if you'd seen a possible link to Necromancy (Chapter 5 of Sword & Sorcery). This could help you in defining Humanity. There's a big difference though in your setting: a sorcerer doesn't have to kill anybody themselves. This makes sorcery more ambiguous in an interesting way: you use the deaths of people, but don't actually provoke them. This might also inform you of the definition of Humanity by the way! Linking the details of the death, or the history of the victim, to the demon's powers could be quite ghoulish indeed...

Anyway, this sounds like a really gut-grabbing setting to me!

[Joshua Bearden]

Thanks Christof for reminding me of SwissAir.  It is definitely one of the more haunting of the recent tragedies that shape the consciousness of bluenosers, especially in the rural South Shore. Compulsively I started googling for information and learned so many things I hadn't known before.  I also found this...

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9809/07/swissair.victims.list/index.html

I wonder if this game will send all my players on morbid quests for information between sessions as they hunt for sad stories to inform their lore. I'd like them to do that to a degree so that when they claim to have found a candidate ghost/demon to contact, summon, and bind, they will have some tidbits I can use as inspiration to decide on their demon's need and desire.

[RangerEd]

Joshua,

I read your original post some time ago, but couldn't think of anything constructive to add. Instead of admiring like a troll, I'd like to tell you how impressive your setting is. Keep it up. I'm sure you players are loving it!

Best,
Ed