I just found those two online reviews of Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword - they're both very positive, but in german. How do the spin-doctors say it? "For your convenience", I included babelfish links, too.
Sorcerer:
http://www.ignorat-design.de/ringbote/rollenspiele/systeme/freie_sys/rezensionen/sorcerer.html
Babelfish version: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?tt=url&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ignorat-design.de%2Fringbote%2Frollenspiele%2Fsysteme%2Ffreie_sys%2Frezensionen%2Fsorcerer.html&lp=de_en
Sorcerer & Sword:
http://www.ignorat-design.de/ringbote/rollenspiele/systeme/freie_sys/rezensionen/sorcerer_sword.html
Babelfish version: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ignorat-design.de%2Fringbote%2Frollenspiele%2Fsysteme%2Ffreie_sys%2Frezensionen%2Fsorcerer_sword.html&lp=de_en&tt=url
Thanks, Juergen! I'll get some links up at the Sorcerer website.
I greatly appreciate all the nice things he's said about the books. Also, I'm thinking that perhaps two big differences between U.S. and American role-playing emerged from my reading.
1. The emphasis on colorful internal production value. I made a deliberate choice to go with plain white pages and stark illustrations, which the reviewer forgives but obviously disapproves of greatly. I've only seen a few European games, but those indicate to me that colored pages with lots of graphics are a big deal.
2. The communication mis-match about gaming culture. If the reviewer's surprised that male gamers need to be told not to stare openly at women's breasts, then he hasn't met a whole lot of American gamers. It (and giggling, and so on) are a real issue.
Best,
Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards1. The emphasis on colorful internal production value. I made a deliberate choice to go with plain white pages and stark illustrations, which the reviewer forgives but obviously disapproves of greatly. I've only seen a few European games, but those indicate to me that colored pages with lots of graphics are a big deal.
I think he doesn't complain about the lack of full color interior illustrations. Most German games are black and white, too. Of what I heard from my buddy at the FLGS, it's harder to sell Sorcerer because of the more traditional, plain layout - it seems that for the European audience, flashy layout/artwork is a bit more important than in the USA. But I'm just guessing here.
What I heard about France, there it's almost impossible to sell an RPG which isn't a graphic design / artwork explosion (e.g. Agone). How's Sorcerer doing there?
Quote from: Ron Edwards2. The communication mis-match about gaming culture. If the reviewer's surprised that male gamers need to be told not to stare openly at women's breasts, then he hasn't met a whole lot of American gamers. It (and giggling, and so on) are a real issue.
Well, we also have enough people who don't know how etiquette is spelled. I don't know if it's more of a problem in the US, but then, I can't really judge, because I'm hanging with all those well-mannered Forge people all the time ;)
But I wouldn't have thought it necessary to mention how to behave around girls, too, so maybe there's a difference in gaming culture. Maybe the average European gamer is more shy, like... um... me?
Peace,