White Noise as a Sorcerer game

[greyorm]

Ok, I just watched the movie referred to in the title about an hour ago, and during the whole thing -- particularly as it moved further and further towards resolution -- I was sitting there going, "This is IT. This is EXACTLY what I wrote Electric Ghosts for. This IS a game of Electric Ghosts!"

Now, Electric Ghosts is my mini-supplement for Sorcerer. For anyone who is attempting to get a handle on EG, go watch this movie. This will provide you with everything you need to understand it. This is exactly what I mean when I wrote about ghosts speaking in the whir of the refrigerator in the darkness, in the static on a television in a dark room, or in the hum of the power lines outside.



**Here Be Spoilers**
(Seriously, I give away the whole movie. Don't read any further if you haven't watched it and want to.)



John is a sorcerer, make no mistake about that; his dead wife is definitely his bound demon. I would say the early part of the movie is a progression from a naive sorcerer, under Raymond's tutelage, to an adept in his own right.

Interestingly enough, you can also see his Humanity spiraling downwards: he begins to neglect his son, his work, his health, and so forth in his obsession with EVP as he attempts to Contact and Summon his dead wife.

Obviously, he keeps botching the attempt and draws the attention of something else; the three dark figures start communicating with him, along with a number of others, before he succeeds and gets through to her.

I would say the three dark figures are Raymond's ghosts from a botched Summoning...carrying right on over to haunt his apprentice. However, they've found their own willing servant to Bind them in the construction worker. Given that they've already been Summoned, they aren't reSummoned in a botched attempt by John. Instead, it's clear they know what he's up to and that if he probes too deeply their fun is over, so they are out to get him and anyone connected with either he or Raymond.

Here need is to love and protect her husband, and as we see, anything beyond this is of no concern to her. He keeps spurning her advice, however, and I think what we see at the end, when she manifests outside a television screen, is a Rebellion, because she does not appear or even step in to help.

Another possibility is that, as the blind psychic woman warned him, he doesn't have the rapport with his "spirit guide" necessary to call on her to help protect him because he hasn't spent years learning how to do that like psychics have. Which also showcases there are other traditions of sorcery out there! (Perhaps a difference in the various Abilities demons from each tradition can employ).

However, the movie doesn't really become Sorcerer game until well through half of it. Most of the movie background, background, background. If it were a game, only the final half to final third of the movie would be the game proper. His wife dying isn't the Kicker, meeting Raymond isn't the Kicker, heaing his wife isn't the Kicker. Randloph ending up dead...now that's a Kicker, but I don't know that it's THE Kicker.

THE Kicker could very easily be the moment he brings his first Contact information to the young woman whose grandmother died and discovers that while he's been communicating with her for a week, she only died two days ago.

What really thrilled me during the movie was the increasing use of overt supernatural events and effects as John became more and more deeply involved in the sorcerous world, culminating in the manifestation of his wife and the three dark figures that physically attack and kill him.

That is SO Sorcerer because it reinforces the idea that demons don't play by the rules, whatever man might believe those to be. They suddenly really are OTHER and That Which Should Not Be because they aren't behaving the rules of reality as the sorcerers of the setting understood them to be.

That covers everything I can think of at the moment that struck me regarding the movie and Sorcerer; feel free to chime in with more insights if you have them.

I do wish I'd either seen this movie or known more about EVP before I wrote Electric Ghosts, because they are chock-full of sorcererous goodness that I would have loved to drop into the supplement as Color and even just to have used as reference.

Regardless, if you're looking for a way to use Electric Ghosts, there you go: you've got a movie script that perfectly describes a session of play as I envisioned it when I wrote the supplement.