[Sorcerer] Bibliophage Seven: Whiteout

[Doyce]

We had our seventh session of the Bibliophage Sorcerer story Friday night. The whole thing is detailed here, along with previous session logs.

This was an interesting, but kind of "in-between" session, mostly because so much had happened in the previous session and folks were still processing it.  

Right, on with the show.

Last session, everyone (which is to say the three PCs, Yvonne, Ken's rescued girlfriend (Susan), and his sister Hanae) were basically trapped in Ken's house by the blizzard with a bunch of Need-y demons.  In the process of feeding those Needs and summoning up a new demon to help with healing folks up, Val ended up seducing Ken's sister Hanae, Yvonne revealed that most of what had been happening had been at the order of Candace Lynn Voight (Val's mentor), and Val lost 3 humanity during the demon summoning and was feeling a bit less than on top of the world.

I don't have my notes with me, and until the end of the session the order of things don't quite matter, so I'm just going to summarize a bit by character and try not to miss anything.

Ken
Faced with a laundry list of 'to-do' items and worried that they might be interrupted by CLV at any point, Ken opted for an activity that he could cut off at any point and started calling back the board members of OsatoSoft.   That done (and Ken missing empathy-type Humanity tests to read between the lines of these conversations), he sat down in his study to start the preliminary coding of a ritual to bind his father's amulet (which demon is becoming more and more insistent about its Need -- it's not far from seeking greener pastures).

Val
Val's having a bit of a rough time following the demonic summoning and binding.  He'd always been more of a dabbler when it came to things sorcerous, and reaching out to the Place Beyond had left him feeling a bit hollow... the kind of hollow he felt like filling up with something from Ken's liquor cabinet.  Unfortunately (Ken's extensive vodka selection notwithstanding), he didn't really feel like that was a great idea, considering what he now knew of CLV and what might happen.

While he pondered a half-dozen flavors of Absolut, Hanae sidled up to him and started a conversation.  Very obliquely, the two discussed the situation.  A translation follows:

Hanae: I sort of thought my brother and father were in to this kind of thing, but this is bit more serious and fucked up than I'd imagined.
Val: Yes.
Hanae: But you know about this stuff.
Val: Yes.
Hanae: Listen... my brother and father use this stuff to get ahead in the Company, and I want to get ahead in the Company, so how's about you show me how this stuff works and I shag you like a tour groupie for the duration?
Val: Umm... let's go back in that other room and... work out the details... again.
Hanae: Sweet.

GM's Bang-note: Hanae asks Val to train her as a Sorcerer, since Ken never will.

Shannon
Shannon is in a deep sleep of exhaustion from the ritual work, dreaming and re-dreaming the vision she was assaulted with when Osato-san Hint-ed her.  After some time (and a few Lore checks), she wakes with a start to realize that the text that the three sorcerers were using in her vision (see Session Three) is one that she's seen before... in fact, there's a copy (or the original?) in her personal texts at the Library.

GM Bang-note: Shannon realizes that the key to what's going on is in the Library... over hill, dale, and snowdrift.

Shannon gets up and starts looking, then shouting, for Shade (the only demon around with a decent chance of getting to the Library with any kind of speed) and/or Val.  Shade resists her orders to 'come here', since he's got all kinds of bonus dice at the moment, due to getting his Need fed (again).  She eventually figures out that Val, Hanae, and Shade are all missing and that there's a locked bedroom door -- ahh.  While they're all 'wrapping up', she brings Ken up to speed.

Ken starts poking around the campus computer system again and notices that someone has accessed the old "soniel" (Sean O'Neil's) account again... from the computer in Shannon's office at the Library... recently... and it's apparently still on.  He checks the activity log and notes that the account user simply logged and printed off a file from the 'soniel' network home-drive.  Ken accesses the same file, downloads and prints it.

Finally, everyone gets back to the same room (Hanae asked to leave, but listening in from nearby).  Val agrees to send Shade for the Book In Question while Shannon sets about 'warding' the house in case CLV makes a move with demonic servants. (We decided 'warding' was basically a reverse-Contain around the house).  They leave the Contain un-finished until Shade gets back with the book.

Shade returns with the book, commenting that it looked like someone had been in the office, but hadn't touched much of anything.  Shannon looks over the book -- she hadn't read up on it much in the past since it didn't deal with sorcererous rituals as much as with various demonic and sorcerer-plagues and curses...  the pages that looked familiar from her vision deal with a ... creature?  demon?  curse? known as the Bibliophage... something that hunted down and killed (kill-ected? curse this ancient Sumerian->Greek translation!) Sorcerers.

The document Ken prints out from his hacking foray seems to be key excerpts from the text Shannon's reading, plus a few extra notes that seem to be directions to and lock combinations for a storage room in the basement of the library...

Oh crap.

Shannon suddenly rolls her eyes and points out that they have one of the three sorcerers who were involved in this thing in the first place right in the house -- Osato-san could provide answers and should be compelled to do so.

Ken trys to ask nicely for Osato-san to show up, but the ghost is having none of it.  A summoning roll is used instead -- the roll itself is successful, but Ken blows the Humanity check, so I actually have Osato-san temporarily possess Ken and talk through his body.  Osato-san explains that he and the other two in the coven considered releasing the Bibliophage when they were young and foolish -- it kills sorcerers and binds all of their knowledge into books that appear within a chamber deep in the Earth that's (symbolically, they hope) referred to as the Belly of the Beast... those who waken the Bibliophage are immune to its pedations, so if it's left to run its course, the thing will eventually (a) destroy all the other sorcerers in the world (b) give you all their knowledge.   Pretty sweet deal if you can get it.

Apparently, the old coven started to waken the thing when they were younger, but (no explanation) decided not to... or put it back to sleep without letting it finish the extermination... something.  Osato-san is unclear on this and no one asks for details while he's around.

It seems Candace Lynn Voight (who was an apprentice to both Alonzo Clarence Shaw and Sean O'Neil at different points in her early career and present during the old coven's first attempt) has decided to loose the thing on her own.  (What's better than being a powerful sorcerer in a world full of mundane people?  Being the only one.)   Osato-san still thinks CLV doesn't have the guts to try something like this, but he's also a misogynist of the first order.

Val has Shade search the garages of Ken's neighbors for a likely SUV.  Shade finds a good Landrover and together the two of them take it out through a Warped hole in the garage door.  Everyone piles in and heads for the library.

Long story short, they get to the library through the white-out conditions (though they are forced to walk the last couple blocks due to drifting between campus buildings) and, following the directions on the print-out, find a passage behind some racks in the aforementioned storage room that lead down into the bowels of the earth.  

(Yay!  Roleplaying in the steam tunnels under a college campus! Yay! :P)

The cement stairs give way to teakwood after an interminable descent and finally let out into a vast, many-pillared, shadowy space with a well-lit circular area at it's center, lined with shelves-upon-shelves of books-that-were-once-sorcerers.  Shannon is, at this point, telling everyone to shoot first and fuck the questions, Ken wants to split up, and Val wants to stick together.

From somewhere out in the pillars, CLV calls out "we're so glad you figured everything out in time, it's very exciting to have you here for this."

[Insert PCs grumbling profanity here.]

CLV: "We were hoping we could have a chance to explain the whole thing to you and bring you in, now that we've made all the preparations."

Shannon: "I don't think so."

CLV: "Shannon, you particularly have some things you need to hear."

Shannon: "I doubt that."

Sean O'Neil steps from behind a pillar near her, not looking at all several-years-dead.  "Hello, Shannon."

Shannon blinks, then punches him in the face.

[End Session]

-----

I've been pretty pleased with how this whole thing has come together, despite the fact that I was shoe-horning in a Relationship Map not one but two sessions after starting the game.  At the beginning of this session, I handed out a print-out of the r-map for the first time (on-line here), at least in part to help people recall previous events, since we hadn't played in several weeks).

I expect events to wrap-up during the next session: one way or the other, some portion of all the character's kickers will be resolved (Shannon's search for more info on her father, Val's murdered girlfriend, Ken's dying/dead father).   I'm trying to go into this situation prepared for anything but expecting nothing -- in my mind, it's as likely that the whole group will join up with Sean O'Neil and CLV as it is they'll tell them to go jump or that the group will splinter even further.  I'm particularly interested in that comes of Shannon/Sean's confrontation, because Shannon is currently firmly entrenched in two opposing statements: (a) no one gets to hurt my dad and (b) this ritual is wrong.

[Rob Carriere]

Doyce,
This is a `me one' (as opposed to a `me too' :-) post.

That is, I don't have any particular comment to make, except that I saw your thread slide downscreen unanswered and I wanted to tell you that I read these things of yours. Eagerly. Please keep it up.

SR
--

[JamesDJIII]

Doyce,

In terms of the band-anaology, do you see the game as a knit group of eager participants, all committed to a really great outcome? Or, rephrasing that slightly, are they already these things?

It's one of the best feelings I can remember, when, as a group, some years back, we could all show up to the game, and we did have that going for us. Seems to me that games like Sorcerer are tools to engineer and then focus groups that could be like that.

Whadya think?

Personal note: maybe what I need to do is to start ActualPlay.com, since it's the thing I dig the most.

[Doyce]

First: Rob, thanks very much for the note.  I always find it encouraging to know folks are enjoying these posts -- right now, I'm facing a lot of mid-summer scheduling problems, which means that we end up with 3 or 4 weeks between games instead of the normal bi-weekly schedule, so I'll take all the attaboys I can get :)

And sometimes the posts even garner a question or two...

Doyce,

In terms of the band-analogy, do you see the game as a knit group of eager participants, all committed to a really great outcome? Or, rephrasing that slightly, are they already these things?

I'll stick with the band analogy as long as I can and we'll see how it holds up.

There are three people other than myself in the game.  
* Certainly, everyone shows up ready to play.
* Yes, I'd say they are eager.
* Yes, I'd say they are a closely knit group: in one campaign or another these four people have been gaming together at least once a week for about six to eight years, which is a pretty good run for a group of thirty- and forty-somethings.  They are certainly some of my closest friends.

* Are they all committed to a really great outcome?  Well... yes and no.  A lot of that answer boils down to play style.

First, the emphatically 'yes' answer: we are all adults with demanding full-time jobs and our commitment to spend time on gamin in the face of lawn care, home improvement, jobs, kids, spouses (all of whom also game, luckily) means that we don't sign up for these kinds of things thinking it's going to be a lark -- everyone wants to have a good time and wants to have a good time.

But I interpret your question to mean "is the group committed to a Narrativist-style, premise-addressing, thematic resolution?"  That would be the 'not exactly' answer, which requires that I break it down by person:

Jackie (Shannon O'Neil, my wife, Gamist, 30), the Drummer
As I said, Jackie's really a Gamist at heart and finds enjoyment in the game by digging through the conflict resolution system to dig out those dice bonuses from good tactics, planning, dialogue, and roll-overs -- Shannon is a (rather, the) high-Lore character and she spends a lot of time in-character doing research and storing away tidbits of useful knowledge on everyone and everything she can: her list of 'Lore successes I can roll-over later in the event I need to punish [another PC's demon]' fills up the margin of her character sheet most of the time.  Now, that is her Gamist inclinations coming through -- Jackie also has a very strong sense of her character's motivations that informs her play and makes her a character that makes things happen in the game.  She's the "Drummer" because she definitely has a "this is the beat, y'all better keep up" approach to the whole thing and likes those drum-solos.  Jackie finds the idea of Narrativism interesting and thinks it's cool how everything can be 'tied together' by the Theme and Premise, but to her this is usually (not always) something that is seen strictly in hindsight, rather than actively sought out during the sessions.  (Frankly, she sees this particular game/system as being set up in such a way that no matter what happens, it's going to address Premise without anyone really thinking about it, so she just doesn't worry about it.  Maybe that's a reverse compliment to the Bass-player or the guy that wrote the sheet music, maybe not.)

Randy (Val, single (divorced), Gamist, mid-40s), Rhythm/Lead Guitar
Randy's a planner, a Gamist, and very away of the system-side pros and cons of any given action -- his recent demon summoning and resultant 3-point drop in Humanity left him convinced that actually going out of your way to contact/summon/bind a new Demon (rather than simply Binding one that already exists in-game) is a fool's option -- he may not be wrong, but his decision is solely based on the system-results.   Randy's instincts in the game are to find out 'what's going on', figure out what his character wants to do about it, get some help (even if it doesn't seem like he'd actually need any), and get folks moving that direction -- that's why I say he's the Guitarist -- he's out on the front of the stage, apparently leading things and sometimes even taking a 4-bar solo.   For him, the Theme that results from addressing Premise is an afterthought -- something that I'm retroactively 'seeing' in the game-story from a situation that had little or nothing to do with events as they happened at the time for either the player or the character; most of this stems directly from the simple fact that that's how he plays.  For example, when faced with a situation that might result in Humanity loss, his consideration is not 'what will this mean to the story?' it's 'what might this do to me?'  This very much a Gamist risk-taking-for-prestige approach (not that there's anything wrong with that :) -- one of the disappointments that stemmed from the recent summoning of a "healer demon" was probably the fact that he didn't really get a lot of props from his fellow players for the 'humanity hit' he took in summoning the thing -- some recognition for that really would have lessened the blow, I think. :)

Luckily, he's playing someone who takes calculated risks in order to reap the benefits, so it's certainly not a pawn-stance kind of thing -- everything is naturally expressed in character.

Dave (Ken, married, Sim GM/Sim-Narr player, mid-40s), Keyboards
As a GM, Dave finds games in which a tremendous amount of story-control is handed over to the player to be somewhat off-putting (he's currently running Fate, which is probably the outer limit of player-influence he's likely to be comfortable with): InSpectres is fine as a lark, but he'd never want to run it long-term -- ditto for something like Trollbabe -- his opinion is that any sort of over-arcing metaplot that the GM had in mind is going to dissolve in the face of too much player plot influence.  That said, he has no qualms about playing in such a game (and even allows that this is a personal lack of confidence on his part as a GM and that other GMs can, have, and do run very good games with uber-plots that don't t get blown up by the players using such systems).  He enjoys the immersion of Sim-style play and in a game such as Sorcerer in which the player is given a lot of front-loaded director stance at the beginning of play (via the Kicker), he promptly set out to create a very detailed environment for Ken (close to a dozen significant NPCs, complex politics in several arenas, et cetera).  Like any good Keyboard player, he provides depth and 'colors' in the music, ranging from backbeat-assisting chords to melodies to 2-bar riffs to proper solos.  Dave is a writer as well and naturally provides extra details for any scene he's in (and many he's not), but I don't think he sees this as a directorial power as much as he does "Doyce's style of GMing".  Similarly, he appreciates the elegant mechanics of Humanity and how they naturally help the character's actions address Premise, but again he tends to see that as something that the System does in reaction to player decisions -- I have yet to see him make a decision from the purely authorial "what sort of thing does this say about Ken as regards the Premise?" -- his approach is purely "my guy":  Ken would do this... the consequences of 'this' (from his point of view) sort of cascade into the System and result in a Statement About Ken that Relates to the Premise.  He appreciates that Narrativist message after-the-fact, he uses and enjoys the heightened level of directorial control we use in the game, but at the heart of it he enjoys Sim-style play the most and everything else comes as a result of that.

-----

I'm going back over this and thinking that it all sounds like a horribly dysfunctional group with everyone working to cross-purposes.  That's really not the case -- what each person enjoys from the gaming sessions is (in my opinion) somewhat hard-wired -- I'd no more judge that than I would their sexual preferences.  This particular group of players approach the Narrativist use of Premise and Theme as a good way to focus the resultant story of the game, even though it's obvious to them that the GM uses it and interfaces with it much more directly and consciously than they do -- perhaps they think it's more of a GM tool for story-construction than a way of in-game play.

The key thing to the success of the Premise and Theme in the game is that each of the players really does appreciate them and their inclusion into the game -- they are all intelligent people and enjoy good stories and this type of game has resulted in an intelligent, tightly-woven, and interesting story.

That they differ in the ways they think a player interacts with the Premise means that I will still answer "no" when asked if they are all focused on addressing the Premise in play... the bottom line is that they are all being 'true' to their characters (and respecting that their characters are produced by a premise-addressing system), and that the result of this 'true' play will be Theme, whether they're consciously thinking about doing it or not.

Whew.  Long post, and almost a split from the Actual Play.  I'm also sure it's incoherent as hell, so feel free to ask for clarifications.  Thanks![/i]

[JamesDJIII]

Doyce,

How did your group arrive at the conditions for the game? Was there a lot fo discussion about "Yeah, yeah! Let's play a game where Premise is this and the background is that!"

Since I've never been in a game that made Premise a part of what was gong on at the table, I'm curious. I'd like to hear from an experienced Sorcerer GM before I talk myself into anxiety about it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Speakin' for my own experiences, I've never played Sorcerer with that kind of analytical introductory dialogue. Taking a step back from the material, one can certainly see such things in (for instance) my handouts or the discussions surrounding character creation, but never separated from the imaginative material itself.

I think it would be valuable for you and also for you, Doyce, to consider that "Narrativist is as Narrativist does." A lot of the strategizing that you're describing, Doyce, is what Gordon Landis likes to call "small g" rather than "big G Gamism." It's spice, or intensity - not Gamism as an overriding priority.

For example,

Jackie finds the idea of Narrativism interesting and thinks it's cool how everything can be 'tied together' by the Theme and Premise, but to her this is usually (not always) something that is seen strictly in hindsight, rather than actively sought out during the sessions. (Frankly, she sees this particular game/system as being set up in such a way that no matter what happens, it's going to address Premise without anyone really thinking about it, so she just doesn't worry about it.

Bearing in mind that the system cannot do anything "by itself," Jackie is playing Narrativist "without worrying about it." And my observation then becomes, "exactly." No one ever said this mode of play was conducted by worrying about it at the time!

Definitions are not sensations. This is a crucial element of understanding the Big Model and the role of Creative Agenda within it. When you read the definition of, say, Narrativist play, and if you check into your own sensations as a "test" of it ... you'll come up negative. And you'll probably do that for any Creative Agenda.

Because the definitions are not descriptions of what you think and feel as you play that way, but rather descriptions of what your attention and effort turns toward when you (the person) typically are not reflecting on what you're doing.

All of this is to say two things:

1. James, no need for anxiety. The less over-intellectualized analysis of what the Premise is or will be, the better. As long as the folks' attention and imagination are tuned that way, then it's happening.

2. Doyce, I agree with you - not a shred of dysfunction or GNS-mismatching is going on.

Final point about the play-process ... this run seemed to me to be, well, kind of cerebral. You find out this, talk about that, look up this, talk about this other thing, all decide to go somewhere, and then say something. Every so often, such a session works very well, as a kind of "re-grouping" or lull, especially after a big blowout or before one that seems to be coming up. As an ongoing description of session after session, it can be pretty dull, however. So refresh my memory - this was just after a session or two of blow-out action, right?

Best,
Ron

P.S. I'm a U of Chicago alum. Steam tunnels and white-outs, yay!

[Doyce]

So many good questions and observations.  I'm going to reply to them into two posts.  So...

How did your group arrive at the conditions for the game? Was there a lot fo discussion about "Yeah, yeah! Let's play a game where Premise is this and the background is that!"

Since I've never been in a game that made Premise a part of what was gong on at the table, I'm curious. I'd like to hear from an experienced Sorcerer GM before I talk myself into anxiety about it.

(Dear god, someone thinks I'm an experienced Sorcerer GM... someone hold them down and feed them the Art Deco Melodrama thread :)

Ahem.  On to the question...

The very first session of play in this series was somewhat impromptu -- the players weren't very familiar with the game, so I proposed some pretty familiar definitions of Humanity and we picked something that sounded right.  (As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, we did something weird and actually had two different definitions of Humanity during session one -- one character was using 'Mastery' and one was using 'Empathy'.  That was just confusion on my part... live and learn.)  

As for setting, I just suggested a University background just for the internal politics of it and the possibility of (a) rich alumni backers or (b) corporate interest in grad student work, etc.  I didn't know what would come of that, but I thought it might provide a good background.  I ran the Test Run from the Book and made Alonzo a rich school Alumni.

Anyway, before session two, I asked the players if they wanted to keep using the same characters from the test run and continue with one more player.  They did.  Then I said "Say, we really need to narrow things down on the Humanity definitions, so let's pick just one to use."  So we did that, (Choosing Empathy) and talked a little bit how that would reflect on each of the chracters.

Then I think I said something like "we're all at a university, so how about the Premise being something like "What would you do for Knowledge/Power, emphasis on Knowledge?"

They asked me what 'premise' did, and I explained that when I set up Bangs, the situations those bangs created would basically be asking that question, and how they reacted would be one answer to that question.

They said cool, and that that sounded about right for the setting and the characters, so we went with it.   It really wasn't more formalized than that, and we rarely talked about it after that.

What resulted, however, was a sort of Alchemic reaction between the Humanity definition and the Premise.   Bangs were often based on Premise, and Bangs sometimes resulted in character decisions that caused Humanity Checks -- the result was that we often got scenes in which Empathy for one's fellow man was either sacrificed or clung to in the face of the Temptation of Power.   I think this sort of Humanity/Premise conflict will almost always happen in a Sorcerer game (probably stating the obvious).

[Doyce]

Speakin' for my own experiences, I've never played Sorcerer with that kind of analytical introductory dialogue. Taking a step back from the material, one can certainly see such things in (for instance) my handouts or the discussions surrounding character creation, but never separated from the imaginative material itself.

Right.  Phrasing it that way would be pretty boring.  When we've talked about doing new Sorcerer games in other settings, the talk usually has to mention 'what would the definition of Humanity be?", because that sort of thing sometimes really matters when considering the setting, but we never get heavily academic about it (frankly, that would be boring :).

Premise is something that I think might either evolve out of the first couple sessions of play, or it could go the opposite route and be the first thing you think of, even before Setting :)

Bearing in mind that the system cannot do anything "by itself," Jackie is playing Narrativist "without worrying about it." And my observation then becomes, "exactly." No one ever said this mode of play was conducted by worrying about it at the time!

What I meant by 'by itself' was something like "with these definitions of Humanity in place, the system will respond to player actions/input by processing a result that, when interpreted by the players, yields a satisfyingly thematic result".  More succintly, the system is very well-built to do what it sets out to do, and doesn't require conscious player-effort to help the game produce thematic results... they can just play :)

And yes, players in Sorcerer can "just play" -- that's probably something obvious that still bears pointing out to new GMs -- the players don't have to know, understand, or even like Forge theory to really enjoy the game and create a good story.

When you read the definition of, say, Narrativist play, and if you check into your own sensations as a "test" of it ... you'll come up negative. And you'll probably do that for any Creative Agenda.

Because the definitions are not descriptions of what you think and feel as you play that way, but rather descriptions of what your attention and effort turns toward when you (the person) typically are not reflecting on what you're doing.

It takes a long time to accrue anything that I could reasonably call understanding of how to apply the theory.  This short paragraph really helped, and more to the point gives me a really good answer to folks that read the Forge theory stuff and say "but I don't think like that at all when I play."

So refresh my memory - this was just after a session or two of blow-out action, right?

Yeah.

Well, two parts here;

One is that I think I'm retelling this session somewhat poorly: there was a lot of intra-group manuvering and negotiating and suspicions being dealt with -- so it had a kind of tense locked-house murder-mystery thing going on... which I didn't convey well -- ditto things like Ken being possessed by his Dad, or the gradually-mounting horror of what CLV was planning to do with the Bibliophage.  The characters were sitting there, talking about what it might mean, and their 'what if' scenarios kept escalating into worse and worse things until they actually creeped themselves out -- that was fun, but on paper it looks like boring talk.

Two is "yes, they last couple sessions were a lot of action": two sessions ago was a massive physical confrontation with a big nasty demon, lesser demons, and a crazed sorcerer -- so there was lots of that kind of conflict.  Last session wasn't combat, but involved everyone in a snowbound house trying to feed their demon needs, forming alliances, being generally slimey, and conducting a very taxing demon summoning.

So yeah, this was kind of a down-time session that leads from the last two sessions through to our next session, which will very likely be the Last Session.[/i]

[Eero Tuovinen]

What resulted, however, was a sort of Alchemic reaction between the Humanity definition and the Premise.   Bangs were often based on Premise, and Bangs sometimes resulted in character decisions that caused Humanity Checks -- the result was that we often got scenes in which Empathy for one's fellow man was either sacrificed or clung to in the face of the Temptation of Power.   I think this sort of Humanity/Premise conflict will almost always happen in a Sorcerer game (probably stating the obvious).

For some reason the idea of explicit premise seems to keep reappearing. It's a valid way of playing, but only if all players are literary intellectuals who like to dissect their art.

Doyce: AFAIK most people would tell you that the definition of Humanity is the premise of Sorcerer. By defining Humanity as, say, "empathy", you're effectively saying "I want players to flirt with losing their empathy in exhange for getting to summon demons." Hmm... doesn't that sound suspiciously like a premise to you, namely "Will you sacrifice your empathy for power?" What I mean is that your stated premise will at best give only flavour and at worst mess up the currents put up by the rules if it's not concurrent with the actual premise set up by defining Humanity and other stuff. In your case it seems to me that the premise was "Will you sacrifice empathy for power?" and knowledge had only a flavor role. That's how Sorcerer is built: you choose Humanity, and play revolves around whether you choose to lose the point of it or not. "What will you sacrifice for power?" as it's commonly put; the question is narrowed down by the Humanity definition, and the answer nailed by the individual player.

In almost all cases of actual play, defining premise beforehand is only liable to mess up play. Even mentioning premise in the middle of the game (as in "Hey, I know! What's happening here is a deep commentary on the inner beast of every man!") would likely be awkward for many. People aren't usually interested in dissection. It's up to the rules of the game to focus a premise out of the creative energies players put in there. That's why Sorcerer, Dust Devils and MLwM, to name a few, are so friggin' cool games: they let us play with defined, clear premises, without the need for the players to direct themselves constantly towards fulfilling that premise.

If someone of you is playing succesfully by defining a premise beforehand, like Doyce, chill out; as I said, it's a possible way to play, but remember that it's not the only way, and it's not required. I myself like and am perfectly capable to play explicit nar, but that doesn't mean that all nar should be that. I like also letting premise, theme, protagonism and all that stuff take care of themselves. That is where a good nar-faciliating game comes to the picture - if you're going to negotiate everything anyway, why not just play freeform? To the contrary, by using a nar-faciliating game and using explicit premise you are in danger of incoherency from simply not understanding the game you play: if you define Humanity in one way in Sorcerer and then stubbornly try to address an entirely different issue, only broken systems and hearts follow.

Note for designers: actually Sorcerer premise has two parts, the price ("What are you willing to sacrifice...") and the goal ("...for power"). The game is designed to customize in preplay only the price, while the goal is customized by the player through playing (he decides what power is for him, and what he uses it for). In theory you could tinker with what demons are capable of doing and thus produce a game with more defined initial premise. For example, if you wanted to do what Doyce tried there ("What are you willing to sacrifice for Knowledge"), you could try removing any demon abilities that do not pertain to knowledge. Then summoning demons would only be a choice of humanity versus knowledge.

I'd like to illustrate the way non-explicit nar works with a little actual play story from a couple of weeks ago. Background: I've played as a player very little, being primarily the "appointed GM" everywhere I go. My brother, on the other hand, is the secret master of narrativist GMing. Let me tell you how he blew me away when I got for the first time ever to play as a player in a narrativist game a couple of weeks ago. I will concentrate on how the play was prepared.

The game was Dust Devils. No preparation at all, we basicly dragged out a world atlas and started staring at the map of USA until we realized that of the players present, the secret master (we didn't know at the time he was the MASTER) was actually the only one with a firm grasp on western genre. I promptly gave up my GM hat to him and stole his character sheet. Yeah, this was our first game of DD. Yeah, we kick ass as players, and didn't doubt our ability to come up with a game without preparation.

Now, what Humanity is to Sorcerer, the Devil is to Dust Devils. It works to focus play in essentially subconsicious ways towards whatever is the matter with the character. This as background for those who aren't familiar with this great game of postmodern western.

The first thing our impromptu GM told us after we had continued staring at the map for a while while offering non-enthuastic suggestions for topic of play was more or less: "OK, let's do it this way: one of you plays the sheriff, and the other is the stranger coming to town. It's known that a bunch of outlaws are approaching town after getting out of jail. Eero, you'll play the sheriff. Create characters." We were only three, so that was the preparation. He did clear up for me some details about sheriffs, marshals and the third kind I misremember right now, but I don't remember if this was after play started or not.

Well, now comes the important part, so pay attention: we both got to do our own characters and our own devils. I considered what kind of play I'd want out of the game, and being the sheriff, wanted some societal action. My sheriff would think highly of his image in front of the town. I vaguely remembered some western story about a sheriff and a stranger who gets into trouble when his actions start digging at the authority of the sheriff. The sheriff goes bad simply because he cannot stand another man being bigger than him. I liked the theme, so I chose as my devil "Respect of the town".

Now, I made my choice here completely naturally for me. The GM didn't instruct me in any way (I knew the rules and nar play inside out, so why should he?), and I just came up with what interested me. In my case the process happens to be somewhat abstract, with thematic considerations and stuff, but that's just me.

The other player, on the other hand... he isn't nearly as sure of himself as I am, so we supported his character creation when needed. There was no talk of premise; GM instructed him to choose a devil that concerns things that interest him. We brought up different options, and he settled on "Outlaw" after some thought.

Well, play started, and the hidden master drove us through it like a cattle herd in mating season. We aimed at getting the story finished in one session, so play was quite hectic. GM introduced scenes via strong scene framing, and we requested new ones when need arose. No need for details really, apart from noting the premises:

So, the outlaws were coming and I was the sheriff. It was known that the outlaws were after my hated rival, who wanted to oust me from town. My background was such that I was a more-or-less forgiven deserter from the Southern army (this was somewhat after the war), with no place to go if I lost my somewhat tenuous place in the town. I was dangerous as all hell (knacks like "Ambush" and "Traps" maxed out, but really bad shooting) due to my long scout background, but my handling of the town left fairness and conventionality to be desired.

Long story short: when push came to shove, I butchered the whole gang outside town without warning before they came in in the deepest night. One escaped and confronted me in town at high noon. I had already resigned, the killing of the night before was too much for me. I got shot and wounded, but recovered in time and left for Mexico.

Note the key moments: I decided to kill the gang by my warlike, unfair means to prove myself to the town and my rival whose life I saved. I decided to resign, after realizing that I had deserted for nothing if I had to continue as a brutal commando even after the war. I decided to draw when the whole town was looking. Most of all, I decided still very strongly that we'd end the session after that, so that I could escape the devil: my sheriff left the town, letting go of his devil and going free as a bitter, sad, cowardly old man. The premise? "What you're willing to do for acceptance?"

Now, the other character: he was blackmailed by yours truly to help against the outlaws. He tried to negotiate with them from my bidding, but found out that their leader was the man he'd killed and got outlawed for (they were twins, he killed the wrong man, came up in game that it was the right man, except the other guy really did it). He got shot near fatally. Later on, when I launched my ambush, the leader got shot and they were both left to stare at each other. The leader shot him before dying, he realized that nobody could now prove his innocence. I left him dying, federal marshals brought him in later. I lied about his being there, claiming I didn't know him or why he had the star of debuty. He didn't dare go against my word. He accepted being instated as sheriff when I told the mayor that I'd leave (he'd have kicked me out anyway, he said). When I was shot on the street, he deliberately waited until I was shot before going after the shooter. He chased the shooter despite being seriously wounded from last night. He caught the shooter, but died from his wounds afterwards.

Note the key moments: He decided to fear me when I blackmailed him about his past. He decided to back me up in front of the marshals. He decided to let me die in the shoot-out. He decided to apprehend the shooter, even when it cost his own life. The premise? "What are you willing to do for acceptance?"

Now, that game was magic (believe me, I was there). The devils drove the play constantly, and we never made any "thematic" decisions in play. We just considered character motivation and what would be cool, while the hidden master banged away towards the weakest points our characters had. Note: the same premise surfaced for both characters. Note: the premise came up largely from reacting towards the devil, either following it or denying it. My answer to worth of acceptance was that there is a limit, and that limit is killing. The other player answered that anything, even dying, was worth it if it meant finally gaining a place and respect. Note: I couldn't have told you the premise before the game ended. Or let's say that I realized why we were so excited about it at the time of the shootout, which was the last scene of my character. Up to that everything was formed through following instinctual inspiration, guided by the robust mechanics and the secret master who threw up just the right issues for each of us.

For those reading this for DD kicks: absolutely a fabulous game. I had no idea from reading it how many delicate meanings the devil packs. I had no idea that "giving up the devil" actually can mean losing storywise, and "letting devil win" can be being the hero.

I hope the example helped to clear things somewhat. I haven't got any opportunity for playing Sorcerer, otherwise I'd give an example from Sorcerer play. The important thing to learn from the above is that when we addressed premise, we did it without thinking about it. Instead we thought about concrete, defined play mechanics or system facts. "I'll go with him to avoid the devil.", "I'll resign because the killing was too much for me." It's up to the system and human instincts to take the devils, character backgrounds and other stuff and create a coherent premise. Narrativism is not some mystical litcrit discipline where you ommmm with your pals about abstractions. Not unless you want it to be, that is.

[Doyce]

For some reason the idea of explicit premise seems to keep reappearing.

Yeah... to paraphrase Xander Harris, "If it sounds that way, then I'm telling it wrong."

By defining Humanity as, say, "empathy", you're effectively saying "I want players to flirt with losing their empathy in exhange for getting to summon demons." Hmm... doesn't that sound suspiciously like a premise to you, namely "Will you sacrifice your empathy for power?"

You're absolutely right, and thank you for voicing something I've been trying to figure out how to say clearly for about three days :).  In both theory and practice that's exactly what came out of our Actual Play, and the 'knowledge' thing was just color-text, really.

Bibliophage was the first Sorcerer game I ran and pre-defining Premise was something I did... really because I sort of thought I was supposed to.  I think I avoided having that really jinx-up the game simply because I didn't keep trying to go back to it and 'make it work' -- so I sort of lucked out.

I attribute some of this to alot of Forge-reading before/during/after reading Sorcerer and running the first game -- in some ways it obviously helped me, but in others it intellectualized the whole thing a bit too much.

To use the analogy from this post, I was going to take the group white-water rafting for the first time, but I'd read so many essays about how the rafting trip was supposed to make you feel afterwards that I tried to talk about how it was going to make us feel before we started, instead of just making sure we remembered all of our equipment (humanity definitions, demons definitions, rituals, descriptors, et cetera).

For the record, Bibliophage was the only game in which I bothered to say 'this is probably the Premise' beforehand.  In the (three) other games I've started since then using Sorcerer, I've focused on filling out the checklist of Humanity definition, demons definitions, rituals, descriptors, kickers, and setting, and Premise/Theme simply comes out of that.

Live and learn :)