[Sorcerer] Prefered term for long-form play

[Dragon Master]

An odd question, but what is the preferred term for long-form Sorcerer (as an example) play? The more I use the term Campaign to describe it, the more it seems to grate as not really being descriptive of what's happening. I say Campaign, and get images of dungeons, set piece battles, thinly veiled cut scenes, and escalating boss fights, but that's not really what you get with Sorcerer and other games in that vein. Is there a better term to use? I kind of feel like I'm misleading potential players when I say "let's play a Sorcerer campaign".

[Dragon Master]

The same thing can be said of other games, thinking of Valley of Eternity here, but Sorcerer is the one I run into this most often with (as it's the one I keep coming back to).

[Eero Tuovinen]

That's an interesting point, because I would've said that I just call them campaigns, but thinking about actual practice, we actually don't use that term so much with drama games that naturally span only half a dozen sessions.

With games like MLwM, Dust Devils and such, which are very specifically scenario-based, I've been known to use the terms "scenario" and "story arc" in lieu of "campaign". I think "scenario" would be a pretty cool term in Sorcerer as well, as it reveals the technical construction of the Sorcerer campaign very well. Not a very flavourful term, of course, harking back to the technical heritage of American roleplaying.

[Ron Edwards]

I think the best technical term would be "saga," but that carries the minor implication of low-tech historical settings, and the major in-hobby baggage of being the White Wolf term. So it would almost certainly invoke a host of assumptions about play which are even more detrimental to playing Sorcerer than "campaign" would.

So my conclusion is "series." Every Kicker resolution is a character arc or chapter, and arguably, a rough assemblage of such resolutions across all the characters could be considered a solid novel or dense film, long or short depending on the game. So if you decide to keep going - which is starting over in some ways, as a character is substantially developed at that point - then it's very much like a new novel or film.

It carries the possibility of being misinterpreted as a planned series, but I don't know if any term could escape that problem given the long history of conceiving long-term play as a matter of single-person planning.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

Personally I plan on inviting people to play a "season" of sorcerer with me.

[Dragon Master]

You know, I'm glad I posted this. Both Season and Series feel a lot more appropriate to me. Thank you all for your reply's.