Circular campaign design (not a good thing)

[Ron Edwards]

Great quotes, Gareth, and they sound like the ideal openers for the mathematical-sorcery mini-supplement Jesse's going to do one day.

What's that, Jesse? "What mini-supplement," you say? Ha ha! As if you think you could escape ...

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Ah, yes, mathematics Sorcerer.  The ideas for mathematics Sorcerer has actually grown out into Academic Sorcerer mainly because I don't think that mathematical mysticism could sustain MY groups interest, so I broadened it a little.  However, I WOULD like to do a supplement focused on just mathematicians.  The problem is however, that I'd like to include a lot of factual information about the links between mathematics, philosophy and mysticism.  While I have read a lot along these lines my retention for specific detail is quite poor and I would not wish to diseminate historical fact without references to back it up.  This of course means compiling and expanding my library of mathematical history books and doing a thurough culling of information.

So, some day, Ron, some day.  I just have to actually get around to doing some baseline research so that I know what I'm talking about.

Jesse

[Tor Erickson]

On 2001-10-12 02:42, Ron Edwards wrote:
Hey Tor, the "demon becoming the master" is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the sorcerer's Humanity going to zero.

I liked the writeup a lot. You certainly are being willing to fly blind into the get-together session, as you didn't even hint at setting or other context material. It'll be interesting to see what you all come up with.

Best,
Ron

Perhaps I should clarify a bit.  We won't be exactly flying in blind.  I've spoken to each of the players (there are three) either on the phone or in person and discussed different kinds of games, various meanings of humanity and what-not.  So people are actually thinking about stuff before we sit down to our pre-character-creation meeting this Wednesday.
 Interestingly enough, the sort of games that are really appealing to me as I go through the sorcerer stuff are the really classic ones: the characters are members of a sorcerous assassins guild and begin to question the morality of their actions (think Le Femme Nikita and Bill Sienkiewicz's Elektra: Assassin); the characters all share a common master before they finish their apprenticeship, he gets wacked.  Whodunnit?  Can they figure it out and get to the bottom of the matter before he whacks them as well?
 I think the first would probably use humanity as empathy and the second as mastery.
 But again, I've been surprised at how appealing these sort of standard Sorcerer ideas are.  Something else that has struck me is how effective it has been to think of possible endings to the stories, and actually discuss those endings with the players.  I sort of feared a shocked reaction, but they seemed to get it immediately: "So either my character frees himself from the assassins guild or achieves a moral victory by dying in the process!  Cool!"
-Tor