Sorcerer at Orccon - followup

[WildElf]

Sorry, to dredge up an old topic, but how did the Con game on Friday go?

I tried to get into the Saturday game, but it looks like it must have been cancelled since no one else showed up. :(

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Quick note to say that this post is a follow-up to My first Sorcerer game: Orccon 2003.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Actually, I was wondering about this myself.  I was all set to go on that Saturday but I got a message from Christopher VERY late Friday Night/Saturday Morning where he said he was too tired to run.  So, I didn't go.

But that's the last I've heard from Christopher.  I've sent both Private Messages to him here on the board and to his normal email account via The Forge's capabilities.  Nothing.  I can't find his phone number so I haven't been able to call him.

Has ANYONE heard from Christopher since the last con?   I'm kind of worried.

Jesse

[Noble]

Yes, the rpg supervisor of the con never heard anything from him the rest of the weekend so the games weren't officially canceled; players signed up for his Sunday session which never went off.

I think I might have his number around here somewhere.... if so I'll pass it via PM to Jesse.

[Valamir]

Has anyone heard from Christopher?  Should we be worried?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi folks,

I've heard from Christopher. No one should worry.

When he gets to this forum, he'll post, so it's a matter of real life and patience. Forge members have lots of both, right (right?)?

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Kubasik]

Wow.

Hi guys.  No.  Don't be worried.  I've just been plowed under with work, writing, job search and such.  But thank you so much for the concern.

As for the session cancelations: I tried calling the con folks to tell them I'd have to cancel Sat and Sun's games.  I felt under the weather waking up Saturday morning and was in bed most of the weekend.  (We played until the wee hours Friday night and, while I had great time, I was *shot* even after getting some sleep).  But every number I tried to reach the con folks kept ringing and ringing with no one answering and no voice mail picking up.  I called the hotel's front desk and asked them to deliver a note to the RPG Command Center -- but I'm assuming it never got there.

I've had no time to write out my thoughts and impressions of the game session I ran yet.  (I know, it's been a month.  But really, trust me, there's been no time.)

So, since I'me here, let's hash it out.

* I'll say quickly I lucked out with four terrific players.  I mean, really: these guys got a hook into the possibility of Nar play right away.  Three players in particular seems delivered from Nar heaven-- really into adding stuff, making it up, adding more and new problems for their PCs.  Just delicious.

* I think I was way over ambitious in how much I could get done in a con session.  We broke for a meal a little before midnight, reconvened in an open gaming area and went for a few more hours.  I believe I pushed myself, and maybe the players, into the realm of diminishing returns in the later hours.  There was an expectency eventually it would wrap up that night since we were heavily invested into reaching some sort of conclusion.  So, lesson one: Nar play finishes when it finishes.  If you force it, you lose a great deal of what's been good.

* The first half of the night was the best part for me.  The players had such human characters I swear you'd never know we were in the same hobby that produced the Forgotten Realms.  And it was in the first hours of play these human qualities really got to shine.

Favorite moments:

-- The wheeler-dealer with a schizo homeless man for a demon having to host his mom who's come into town after her husband's left.  (He's been so busy setting up his improbable get-rich-networking-gladhanding schemes he's sort of not been paying attention to what's happening back home.)  The way the player almost seemed to be sweating (he wasn't) with his character's "gee, mom, you know, you only had to tell me these things," comments -- all while he just wanted to get back to his schemes while really wishing he knew how to pay attention to his mome were just -- well, it was just beautiful character work.  That's just it.  I mean, I was watching someone riff dialogue and acting while sitting down at a table in a hotel room.

-- The drug-dealing computer game designer fuck up who's getting chewed out by his lover-mother-of-his-son after they come home and find his fucked up chased-by-angry-drug-dealer mistress waiting for him in their living room when the baby sitter was unable to keep her out their house.  The player's investment of a man who constantly looks at the world of his over-committment to the women in his life while thinking, "One day I'll have this all sorted out," was priceless.

-- And the interaction between the obsessive archeologist and his sister (the sister played by me, a girl who had fallen into drugs and well on her way to prostitution, pregant now with the above-mentioned drug dealer's child) was -- again -- so simple and true.  He wanted to help her, but knew the more he did, the more he'd get sucked into her shit.

There was just a lot of simple, emotional truth.  I dug it immensely.

* Which is why the game got so strange after midnight. That's when the demons were called on to do more.  And the thing that happened, which I can't still sort out, is that the game got kind of scattered.  It was almost as if the arrival of the magic seemed to scuttle all the cool, plain emotinal truth that had arrived earlier.  This, combined with the pressing (forced) desire to move toward a conclusion deflated a lot of the good work that had come before.

* I found, and I think the players found, the idea of Sorcerer's being these rare magic users while dealing with these mundane issues as being disconcertingly disconnted.  I found a touch of the same issue in the game I played in Jesse's Fantasy Gothic: if the stakes are so low, why use demons? And if the stakes are big, why don't the demons do more--have more power or something?

*That said, the players came up with really rich goals for their Sorcerers.  The archeologist was looking for the true source of the universe's creation, for jimminy cricket's sake.  But none of us really knew how to get the demon to help him do that.  Since the premise was about intellectual obsession at the cost of human relationships, this was a good agenda --but did it ever have a chance of coming off?  With more prep time on my part, maybe.  But on the fly, I felt I was floundering when the sorcerous events were flying near the end.

* Having written the last paragraph I suddenly realized what worked really well, really fucking well: we were playing the Premise strong the first half of the night.  The tension between knowledge and human relations was stretched taugt over play.  Everyone knew their job and, without doing anything but mentioning it at the start of character creation, everyone stayed on the Premise.  

And this was my frustration: the first half of the evening the Premise was explored with all this great character work, subtle character moments and little bits of lovely detail.  (Just that moment when the archeologist returned to his apartment to find his sister -- and all his electronics gone -- after he offered to take her home and pay for her abortion... The way the player was shocked, disappointed, suddenly world weary, then world wise and said, "Okay, back to my demonic book."  I mean, I saw a guy who was moving bit by bit down that road of, "If I never care again, I'll never get burned again" all in his facial expressions!

But once the demons were called up to do nasty powers, that element seemed to dissolve.  The first half was as emotionally cool as Hellraiser.  The subsequent hours felt like the special effects meanderings of the sequels.

* Humanity rolls (and I don't think I called for enough of them), were made for ignoring other people in need, and for giving attention to people in need.  We made about six or eight for the whole night.  Not enough, but I loved it when they were made.  (I say not enough only because this seemed to be the strenght of the session.)

* The magic and powers... I found myself just not caring about this aspect of the game.  I really don't know what else to say.  Against all the other work I'd seen by the players, this stuff seemed fatty and inappropriately flashy.  

Writing, this, however, I think I didn't have a good enough handle on each demon's unique needs and desires.  In my attempt not to protagonize the demons (see the link above Ron provided), I think I might have gone too far and not hit them with *any* really imperative or personallity.

In fact, I think that's it.  That was the problem right there.  Okay. Now I know what do next time.  I think if we'd broken for a week after the first four hours I would have figured that out.  But as it was, lack of sleep, a rising exhaustion and a need to sort out the game on the fly let me slip by this fact as I tried to press on to the end.

*****

Okay.  Thanks again for the concern.  As you can see, there was a lot that happened, a lot to hash out.

Any questions or comments will be addressed in more timely fashion than this last round on this thread.

Take care,
Christopher

[Christopher Kubasik]

Oh, two more things:

Jesse, I swear I thought I replied to you a few weeks ago.  I must have dreamed it.  Sorry about that.  My mistake.

WildElf (and anyone else who showed up to a no-show that weekend): My apologies.  If I'd felt better, I swear I'd have shown up.  It's a crappy thing to have happen at a Con -- but I wouldn't have been in any shape to run anyway.

Christopher

[Paul Czege]

Hey Christopher,

The archeologist was looking for the true source of the universe's creation, for jimminy cricket's sake. But none of us really knew how to get the demon to help him do that. Since the premise was about intellectual obsession at the cost of human relationships, this was a good agenda --but did it ever have a chance of coming off?

I think I might have done something with cellular archeology, ala Altered States. The source of the universe's creation is encoded in cellular memory. And then put the character in the position of having to aggravate his sister's drug addiction by inducing trance states and doping her with experimental shit.

Paul

[Mike Holmes]

I think I might have done something with cellular archeology, ala Altered States. The source of the universe's creation is encoded in cellular memory. And then put the character in the position of having to aggravate his sister's drug addiction by inducing trance states and doping her with experimental shit.

Seriously. Can you say, "Hint!" Yep that's where I'da gone with that, too. Lolts of cool ground there, I think.

Chris, not protagonize the demons? Surely you mean not use them in such a way as to make the PCs less protaginists, right? Beacuse they are supposed to be antagonists, for sure. Sounds like you fell into the trap that I and a lot of other Sorcerer GMs do where you sorta forget the existence of the Demons in terms of active NPCs and as active foils for the PCs.

I call for a thread on that subject right now so that we might all get illuminated on how to better keep that in mind. Off to the AP forum to post it.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I could not agree more with Paul and Mike. Trailing off to the Adept forum in hopes that Mike's making good on his word.

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Kubasik]

Zounds!  Hey guys!  Wait for me...  SWOOSH!