[Sorcerer & Sword // Dictionary of Mu] Setup

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

I am running Sorcerer & Sword, using the Dictionary of Mu setting book. We're doing setup and character creation in a few days.

I am extremely excited and a little nervous. I have one previous experience with Sorcerer (just the "main" game), a multi-session game of 7 sessions or so run by Jesse Burneko (posted about here and here).

I am the only one of this play group who has read or has experience with Sorcerer. I've talked at length and in some depth about the game, and about what everyone will need to be bought into in order for the game to work for us. All three of the players are excited about it, and only became more so the more I described to them how Sorcerer works and the specific color of the world and sorcery of Marr'd.

So: I think we're off to a good start. I want to make sure momentum keeps going in the right direction. To that end, there seem to be a few things to really emphasize to the group going into the game (the books are full of a lot of great stuff, and as such I can only underline a few things; these seem to me the most important concepts to get going into a S&S setup session):



1. The players are the primary authors, and the GM is there to facilitate their authorship and protagonism. They need to swagger into the fiction and grab it by the throat.

2. The players need to create larger-than-life heroes who loom in our imaginations, people we all of us at the table are fans of, people whose stories we are as excited to play as we are to read about Conan or Elric. This will obviously include getting down 'n dirty with figuring out who the demons are and buying into their color, as well (everyone in the group is already hot for the Dictionary of Mu's definition of Demons as "dead things", and have enjoyed some of the book's entries that I've read aloud).

3. How do we view this fiction: a movie and its sequel, short stories, etc.? This seems important to lay down early as we're planning on playing only 4-7 sessions. I want us to start ready to kick ass and take names, not just ramp up to epic-ness as we end.

4. Marr'd is a bleak and blasted place, rattling its way toward death. However, the protagonists that are created have to at least cling to some semblance of hope, and believe that a better future can be created for Marr'd. Playing degenerate Sorcerers for the sake of wallowing in degeneracy doesn't work (this is true for regular Sorcerer as well, but the point probably needs to be made double for DoM, as the setting is so grim).

5. We need to create localized Kickers. Jesse strongly suggested that I as GM pick one element from the Dictionary of Mu as a starting thing to coalesce around. I have been waffling a bit on this in my mind as it seems very limited, but re-reading Sorcerer & Sword today made me realize it's the way to go. P.42: "...the Kicker needs to be built very locally. That is, it applies to a specific adventure, in a specific time and place for the character." One entry to start with, it is. I'll have plenty of leeway and authority to pick and choose my favorite bits from the Dictionary to enter into play later, anyway.


This is more of a sidenote, but I am taking Destinies off the table. Is this an OK thing for the GM to determine pre-play, or is it best if I discuss it with the group? The reason I want to do this is to keep things as straightforward as possible, especially for my first Sorcerer GMing experience and everyone else's first play experience. Essentially, I'm doing it for the same reasons I'm not going to go on about the Necromancy rules while we create characters.

Please let me know if you feel like there are other things to emphasize that are more important, or things that you think I'm giving too much weight to. I'd like to talk about our experiences here as we have them, so the general point of this thread is simply to setup how I'm approaching this as the GM.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hans,

Here are some things to consider.

1. Don't pressure yourself any more. I've seen too many people ramp up their expectations for their Sorcerer game to impossible levels. The problem is not that the game is too hard or requires too much, but that it's way simpler than most people expect. Enjoying it is more about what not to do, not what to do.

In Italy, I found myself reversing Apocalypse World terminology, saying that all the Player moves in that game boil down to "play my character," stripped of various baggage; and that all the MC moves in that game boil down to "everything matters," stripped of pre-intended plot. In Sorcerer terms, these two concepts are the essence of Bangs. Everything else is a subroutine.

2. Don't over-prep beyond the romance. Color First, especially for Sorcerer & Sword!

3. Take this point as seriously as you want, including ignoring it if you don't like it ... I suggest paying more attention to Sorcerer & Sword and using Mu strictly as inspirational sourcebook, not as the primary text. In other words, yes, it's Mu, but you don't have to be playing in the Mu that's in that text. I have no particular axe to grind against the book, but I think you may be overwhelmed unless you pick one of the books as what you're primarily doing, with the other as inspiration. And if you're doing Sorcerer & Sword, part of the point is to create the setting, not to romp around in one that's already made.

4. I completely agree about the Destiny and necromancy mechanics. They're great, but the best way to get into them is when play takes a character there, perhaps on the second or third Kicker.

5. Don't forget that a good Sorcerer character is already a sorcerer, pre-Kicker. I ran into this with all three players in Italy recently; I really had to walk each one through the idea that character creation meant making someone who was good at it, and getting what they wanted with it, and then and only then did writing a Kicker come into the picture.

Let me know if any of that makes sense.

Best, Ron

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the admonition to chill. That helps. I'm fully prepared for it not to be the Best Thing Ever, but I'm also going into it really believing that it could be. I feel pretty solid about being able to provide good Bangs (MCing a ton of Apocalypse World helped immensely with this), as well as starting Color-foot-first, as it were.

As for (3), I believe that's kind of how I've been seeing it, though that clarification helps. I think the Mu text does well in this regard; orienting the players to take things piecemeal and make it their own (well, duh: that's the whole point). In other words, yes, I'm taking my cues primarily from S&S as far as how the game is meant to be played (i.e., my 1-3 above), though we will be using Mu's rules tweaks (they're fairly minor and seem to really evoke the setting without prescribing specific color, which is what we're supposed to make).

(5) is a good one to remember going into the set-up session. I remember Jesse saying (maybe quoting Christopher Kubasik) that Sorcerer is about having a), this normal dude who wants things, like any normal person, and then b) this dude has a demon that helps him get it (he's a sorcerer first), and then, c), he has a Kicker, which turns shit pear-shaped. That seems like a good enough process for character creation! I believe Jesse also said something about a Sorcerer story starting about 20 minutes into the movie--we have all the basic setup (which in this case is character and background generation), and then comes the Kicker. I'll remind my friends of this non-intuitive point.

Thanks,

Hans

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Warning: Long but dripping-with-energy post.

Last night we made characters. It took a whopping five hours, but I'd say it was worth every minute. We came out of it with some of the most interesting, well-defined characters with which I've ever started a game.

Funnily, choosing Descriptors took a looong-ass time. I was also vicious about drilling down to the details, and asking folks what they meant by this or that--especially physical details; I made them shape vague descriptions into concrete physicality. This also happened with character concepts, motivations, and demons: we had some really fascinating but also really airy ideas floating around, and I knew none of it would mean anything unless it was concrete. This drilling down into concreteness was also a big contributor to the time it took.

So, the characters, and their demons, one by one. We have three characters. I sort of used "Appearance" to describe not only the physical appearance but the holistic picture of the character.

Another note: I picked one entry from the Dictionary of Mu to be the centralized force or place the characters would coalesce around, following the rules in S&S to create localized Kickers. The entry I picked was "The Damsel Messiah"--a cross between Eve and Jesus, a powerful sorcerer who has bound the Serpent from the Garden and rules Hy-Brasil from her seat in Battlehymn.

PC number one.

Name: Harèrè the Km-Oemmi (no idea how to pronounce this one; I didn't harp on S&S's "names that sound as if they could be real", and perhaps I should have. I think it will work; we just have to figure out how to say it).

Appearance:  Km-Oemmi appears to be a fourteen-year-old girl. She's a husk of skin and bones, with her skin blasted and blackened by life in the waste. A living skeleton, she has a dead conjoined twin fetus attached to her head, that she covers in robes and rags. In reality she's thousands and thousands of years old (see her Lore Descriptor), and has been around since the days of the ancient Cydonians, a proud and beautiful race that fell in the first of many apocalypses (sp?). The pride of the Cydonians was their downfall, and Marr'd itself threw down the stars to crush them. She was a part of the Cydonian Original Sin and bears a guilt that she cannot wash away, as well as a demon, Truth, that is part of her punishment. She has used Truth to dominate people's will with the darkness of the truth, and has a group of slaves that she commands. She also seeks to speak the Truth to people and to make Marr'd a better place for her children, which at this point is more of  diluted bloodline throughout Marr'd, considering how old she is.

Telltale: Her second, conjoined head gasps as if it's trying to breathe.

Stamina: 2 - Whipped by Marr'd

Will: 5 - Survive This Rock, Born to Rule

Lore: 3 - Through the Epochs

Past: 5 - Cydonian Visionary, Vengeful Martyr

Humanity: 5

Price: Absolute Guilt (-1 when being honest)

Kicker: Km-Oemmi has just discovered, through forcing one of the Damsel Messiah's generals into the truth, that the
Damsel Messiah's promises of leading 144,000 of the faithful off of Marr'd are false hopes. She either can't do this or doesn't mean to. She must be punished for offering false hope.


Km-Oemmi's Demon: Truth

Type: Inconspicuous (all of our demons seemed to be True Demons, per S&S)

Appearance: When any truth is spoken by Km-Oemmi, it is allowed to stand (worried that this may be problematic; seems
vague, requires adjudication of what's objectively true).

Telltale: When Km-Oemmi writes something that is true, no matter the medium, it never fades.

Stamina: 5

Will: 8

Lore: 7

Power: 8

Desire: Knowledge/Concrete facts.

Need: To consume personal experiences from people's minds.

Abilities: Boost Will, Confuse--tell truth, Hint, Perception--Guilt, Perception--Innocence, Psychic Force (the shock and force of the truth), Vitality. (also Natural Fists Attack, per Inconspicuous).

Binding Strength: 2, in the demon's favor.


Km-Oemmi and Truth are red-hot in my mind. Stuff I'm concerned about: does that Need work? We envisioned it as Km-Oemmi having to provide truth with "alone time" with a person, whom they would torment for hours and steal emotional experiences from.


PC number two.


Name: Admeal

Appearance: A man who is unnaturally tall and lanky--no matter where he travels on Marr'd, he is seen as a foreigner due to his slightly weird proportions and facial structure. He wears a robe of flowing metal with ornate, pearlescent markings on the wrists and hood. Admeal crash-landed on Marr'd when he was but a boy, with a group of people whom he can't remember his connection to. They were fleeing another planet, and all but Admeal died in the crash. In fact, Admeal saved himself by binding the Adirion to him as he crawled out of the ship's wreckage. He knows he is a child of Somewhere Else. He was raised in the town of Tethure and was trained in sorcery by Sangul, his teacher. Since he was young he has wandered the Red Wastes, looking at the stars where he has come from, and seeking his place in the world. As the last (that he knows of) of his race, he has a special hatred for the genocide demon Black Rock, and seeks its undoing.

Telltale: Celestial Voice Modulator. Admeal has some sort of computer chip externally embedded in his throat. The
telltale is that those in the know hear his voice modulated by this chip with dulcet, angelic harmonization.

Stamina: 4 - Child of the Waste

Will: 3 - Survive this Rock

Lore: 3 - Solar Schooled

Past: 4 - Shipwrecked Wanderer

Humanity: 4

Price: Not completely fluent in the languages of Marr'd (-1 when communicating anything complex)

Kicker: (In our Marr'd, Black Rock does not rest in one place, instead burying itself in the sands every so often and re-appearing somewhere else). The Damsel Messiah, who hates Black Rock and knows of my quest, just informed me that Black Rock appeared outside of Battlehymn yesterday.


Admeal's Demon: The Adirion. These are the combined spirits of all of the dead of Admeal's people.

Type: Object

Appearance: Metallic-fiber cloak, like liquid shining silver.

Telltale: The pattern on the cloak's wrists and hood shines with its own inner, pearlescent light.


Stamina: 3

Will: 7

Lore: 6

Power: 7

Desire: Knowledge

Need: To consume the living or very recently dead brains of a sentient species.

Abilities: Boost Lore, Armor, Confuse, Travel (teleport short distances), Perception (for the teleport), Protection.
Binding Strength: 3 in the demon's favor.

I also like this demon a lot. I'm wondering if it makes sense that somehow Admeal's dead people manifest as a cloak? A shining cloak of protection, confusion, and magical travel for its last son? Ok, it makes sense to me now.


PC number three.

Name: Estigù

Appearance: He was born in Atlantean birthing vats, and as such is a keen physical specimen--tall, muscular, a survivor. The concept that the player came up with was "rags and riches"--he appears poor on first glance, but on second, you notice that among his rags he carries various ancient and valuable trinkets. He is a political prophet of sorts, seeking to make Marr'd better through changing the structure of societies. He does this through banishing demons! "By demons he casts out demons", that kind of twisted biblical color. His demon was bound to him at his creation, an infusion of nanomachines into his blood that are a combination of the extinct Cydonians, the spirits of Dragons, and the science of the Atlanteans.

Telltale: When exposed to air, his bodily fluids boil.

Stamina: 3 - Atlantean Trained

Will: 3 - Wasteland Wisdom

Lore: 4 - Blood of the Old Ones

Past: 3 - Wasteland Prophet

Humanity: 3

Price: Weird experiment. As an experiment of the Atlanteans, they view him as unnatural and uncanny (-1 to social interactions with Atlanteans).

Kicker: Having just toured all of Marr'd with Master T'lythal, the overseer of the experiment, he has seen the Damsel Messiah abuse her power by using her demon to enslave a lesser tribe that refused to worship her. He must banish the Serpent from the Garden and strip the Damsel of her corrupting power.


Estigù's Demon: Old Powers (possibly to be renamed by the player before the first session)


Type: Parasite

Appearance: Nanomachines that live in the blood.

Telltale: When his blood is spilled, it sucks itself back into him and begins healing the wound.

Stamina: 4

Will: 9

Lore: 8

Power: 9

Desire: Retribution

Need: To consume demons

Abilities: This gets weird, and I'd like some simple rules-knowledge to correct me if we did this wrong. He chose the ability "Shapeshift", and our reading of the rules was that the demon provides two sets of mutually exclusive abilities: one when he is in his normal form, and one when he is shapeshifted.

Normal form: Vitality, Shapeshift, Protection, Boost Will

Shapeshifted form (a bestial humanoid creature with no hair and leathery skin, long claws and fangs, and huge eyes): Special Damage (fangs & claws), Boost Stamina, Fast, Travel (any sheer surface/anything with surface tension).

Binding Strength: 1 in the demon's favor


So! Really rich stuff. I'm excited to see what happens. I do have a few concerns, and want to throw them out there to see what folks think of them.

-The characters all seem to adhere a bit to the stereotypical "loner with nothing to lose" archetype. They are all outcasts or loners with pasts where those they care about are dead. This is mitigated somewhat: Km-Oemmi has her slaves, Admeal has a master/teacher, and Estigo has a master and built-in significance to Atlanteans. Still, it would've been nice for them to have some NPC that they actually care about. I didn't realize this until looking over the characters now.

-Is Km-Oemmi too dark? I drilled into the players that they would have to view their characters, if not as heroes, as potential heroes and "good guys", people that could conceivably bring hope to Marr'd. I see that with the other two characters. Km-Oemmi wants to bring the truth to people, but also, in her backstory, when she brings truth to people it's to enslave them to her will. Is this a really problematic character?

-What about Km-Oemmi's slaves? I don't want them turning into demon-surrogates, able to go all over the world and do Km-Oemmi's bidding. I suppose it's fairly easy to circumvent this by just giving them a Will of 1 or something. They'll do whatever Km-Oemmi says, but they're just as susceptible to someone else, and not very effective at anything.

- Km-Oemmi and Estigo did not choose to bind their demons. Km-Oemmi was put into a situation where someone wanted to punish her by forcing her to bind Truth to herself, and apparently succeeded in convincing her. Estigo bound the demon at his birth/had it bound to him. I stressed that this was OK as long as they were sure they meant it, and that play wouldn't consist of them trying to say, "Oh woe is me, someone gave me a demon!". I believe them when they say they want it, but it still irks me a bit.

-How do I deal with Estigo's demon's Need, practically, in play? What does consuming a demon look like? As Estigo is all about banishing demons, I'm going with the idea that as he banishes a demon then the Old Ones will consume it, but I'm not sure. This also may be a very difficult Need for Estigo to provide.

Any and all thoughts and suggestions are welcome! I realize this is long as all hell, but I wanted to get as much context in as possible.

Thanks!

[Eero Tuovinen]

Were I GMing Km-Oemmi, I'd focus on her bloodline from the outset. That seems like her most human trait, so tying members of her bloodline into your scenario seems like a good opportunity for her to make heroic choices (or condemn herself in the eyes of the group, as the case might be). An oldie-but-goodie in this regard is to have a character who reminds her of somebody from the long-ago past, a possibly reincarnated lover or child from when she was young. I'd say as an author of fantasy fiction that Km-Oemmi is an acceptable protagonist insofar as she factually cares about her progeny, and has the potential to someday recognize that through blood-dilution the people of this dying world have essentially all become the last vestige of Cydonia.

Of course you'll also want to explore her general view of humanity to figure out what kind of heroism the player sees in her: how she treats her slaves, whether she smiles at a child in play, does she have sympathy for youngsters in love, does she help an acquaintance in need, that sort of thing. She could be more of a wise yet bitter old witch than an inhuman monster despite her revolting appearance, who knows.

Regarding Old Powers' Need, it doesn't seem eminently difficult to me. There could be petty demons Estigo could feed from out there (meager fare to be sure, and forces him to stay in this particular dusty cave for weeks at a time as Old Powers hunt for bug-sized demons), for example. And of course it makes sense to have the Need mostly manifest when Estigo seems to be getting lazy about his exorcism work, or when tasty-seeming demons make an appearance.

The lack of NPCs is a bit difficult, but not insurmountable to my thinking. I'd say that the key would be to emphasize a pulp fantasy aesthetic where people recognize their mutual humanity at the drop of the hat. Sure, Conan comes into the story a loner, but that does not continue for long, as he instantly bonds with whoever he stumbles upon first. So as far as this individual story is concerned, the fact that the players don't give you any NPCs mostly means that they're forced to take on whoever you choose to give them. Just have a stable of sympathetic and interesting characters to throw at them, and give those characters simple and evident reasons to be significant for the character's personal Kicker. (This last bit is because my experience is that nihilistic antihero characters correlate with a bold, aggressive story understanding; players who make loner characters might understand and appreciate a NPC better if they're introduced within the context of the player's self-created goal.)

[KarlM]

They sound like pretty interesting characters. I think it was probably a good idea to focus on the concrete, as you did. It definitely helps ensure all the players are imagining similar things.

You didn't mention filling in the back of the character sheet? Don't treat this as an optional part of character creation. It might help you with the lack of NPCs as well.

This not-so-old thread might help. [Sorcerer] How do youi play it?

Also I recommend the Sorcerer wiki

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Hey Karl, we did fill in the second part of the character sheet. That's where what few NPCs we have came from, as well as most of the fleshing-out of the characters that I've written up above. The first second sheet that was filled out was full of airy stuff like "hope", "despair", and such, and I realized I forgot to tell that it's filled in with People, Places, and Things, not Concepts! That clarified it and they have pretty well-filled out second sheets (I think).

Eero: Thanks for that advice. It should be helpful to focus a lot of my prep on creating interesting NPCs.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hans,

First, my apologies for my low participation. I've been smacked by finals, by one of the notoriously high-maintenance late-year American holidays, and by a cold which kicked off my breathing issues. And I've found it personally necessary to weigh in a lot at Shalom Rav these past few days.

You can split the difference however you like between what I'm about to say and what Eero has said. I think his advice is too paternalistic, too oriented toward yourself as GM thinking about "what you'd like to see," and overall, too structured regarding play itself. You can go wild with Kicker content, and you should: cool NPCs, crazy stuff going on, things to learn, whatever turns you on about the source material and inspires you to make more of it. But as for play and where it goes, and how a player-character may act or be ... I suggest simply losing all expectations and enjoy whatever happens.

Jesse put it well. The most important rule is the unspoken one accompanying all the written ones: and don't do anything else.

But as I said, find your own path between what the two of us have said. I definitely do not intend this post to be refuting Eero's, but rather presenting a countervailing view.

Best, Ron

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Hey Ron,

No apologies needed. You don't owe me anything, though your participation is always appreciated.

Very interesting advice, that deepens my understanding (and goes along with some of the GM/MC skills I learned from playing Apocalypse World). I as the GM should care deeply about the characters and where they go, but also need to be hands-off in terms of what actually happens. I have to care but make sure that care doesn't push me to overstep my bounds. A good thing to keep in mind.

Thanks, Hans

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

I'll be starting a new thread soon to catalogue our game, but I just wanted to cap this one off with a quick report of how the first session went.

Let me put it like this: easily in the top five all-time for most satisfying single sessions of play. Maybe top three. Likely the best session I have ever GMed. We played for three and a half hours and it felt like one (to the GM, at least).

God. Why isn't everyone playing Sorcerer right now?

[Ron Edwards]

Yay!

And score another point for keeping my mouth shut regarding itsy-bitsy second-guessing regarding your preparation, especially regarding the characters' details. Use your own judgment, Hans; this game belongs to you and the other players.

Definitely start another thread about the game in action.

Best, Ron

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

And score another point for keeping my mouth shut regarding itsy-bitsy second-guessing regarding your preparation, especially regarding the characters' details. Use your own judgment, Hans; this game belongs to you and the other players.

I was thinking about exactly this after the game; upthread I have a lot of little concerns that I'm worried about having correct answers for, and in play those weren't an issue at all, or we came up with our own answers. As you said: Easier to play than folks think.

Here's the new thread: [Sorcerer & Sword] Our Marr'd