Historical Sorcerer

[Bailywolf]

Another new post.  Anyone mess with running Sorcerer in a historical setting?  I've toyed with a sort of Pulp Sorcerer (inspired in no small part by Hellboy) in which an allied agency (read: the PC's) seeks to counter the occult forces of the Axis.  

WWII provides the supernatural with an almost perfect cover to indulge in their favorite horrors, and sorcerers who have traded all their humanity away for power find a whole nation willing to excuse their atrocities...

Perhaps the fact that I'm currently reading Tim Powers book Declare has something to do with it...

[Ben Morgan]

I've been toying with the idea of Victorian Sorcerer, but nothing concrete yet.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

The Thirty Years War, The Thirty Years War, The Thirty Years War.

If I were told that I could work on one, single gaming/Sorcerer project ever again in my life, that would be the one.

Best,
Ron

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

I had no idea what The Thirty years War was, then found http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14648b.htm">this. What is it about that period that appeals to you, Ron?

Joe.

[Blake Hutchins]

Ron and I share a fascination for that period, so I'll give you my hit on why it's so compelling.

In the first place, it's a time of incredible tumult and passion, the ultimate in sectarian wars.  There's upheaval, grand battles, the birth of European nationalism, the introduction of artillery as a modern military component, a watershed between the older "chivalric" feudal levies dominated by knights and the inception of professional military.  In the second place, there's still potential for swashbuckling (the Musketeer stories are set just prior to the outbreak of the War), but there's great atrocity as well (the Rape of Magdeburg).  Civilians are caught up in a struggle to survive.  Swedish and German armies clash in Poland and Prussia, and you have a number of larger than life characters running the scenes (Tilly, Gustavus Adolphus, Cardinal Mazarin, and the like).  There's black powder weaponry, but most personal battles still rely on cold steel.  You've got Puritans, Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox, Russians, Germans, French, Poles, Swedes, and Italians all snarled up in a terrible struggle.  The Spanish Inquisition is in force (don't recall whether this is Torquemada's time), and the Turks are pushing into the Balkans while the Euros tear each other up.  This is just an overview, but the salient theme for me is the shift from feudalism to nationalism amid the throes of titanic religious conflict.

I'm not as knowledgeable about this time as I'd like to be, though.  I'm sure Ron can add plenty to what I've touched on here.

Best,

Blake

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I've been fascinated by this historical period since my freshman history class in high school. It's so sordid - total cultural devastation over most of central Europe, impoverishment of all major powers (with attendant in-house social changes resulting), rampaging mercenary companies, at least three sides at any given moment and usually more, thousands and thousands of people slaughtered, plagues flaring up all over the place, and tremendous consequences that reverberate up to this very day. It is the nastiest, ugliest example of human destructiveness on purpose, pre-industrially, that I can think of.

Yet, for nothing. It's marked as either Europe's "last religious war" or its "first modern-political war," and yet no side won in any way, no issues were settled, most of the boundaries and treaties and concerns stayed pretty much just the same. The Peace of Westphalia reads more like "let's take our marbles and go home" than anything else. The behavior or policy of war, expressed over these (approximately) thirty years seems totally disconnected from any justification, claim, point, or goal that was touted at the time. We all know that wars are overlaid by rhetoric and high-flown justifications, but in this particular instance, the disconnection seems so obvious between [war over here, in reality] and [babble over here, in policy]. In this one, a "religious war" ends up with Catholic vs. Catholic. A property war devastates the real estate in question. I can see these occurring over a little while, sure, but for thirty friggin' years, with every major power involved? Bizarre.

I especially like Albrecht von Wallenstein, one of the great bastards of pre-Napoleonic military history. One of these days I'll do a little research on the guy and get some idea of what the hell he was doing, if anything, besides killing people for fun and getting paid for it. He ends up getting speared on a staircase in some ugly little brawl in ... 1634, I think, just a couple of years after defeating Gustavus Adolphus ... anyway, never mind. I'm history-enthusing again.

Best,
Ron

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Thanks, Blake and Ron for the history. =) I didn't know a thing about that period.

But why Sorceror? What sort of sorcery fits in there, and why?

Joe.

[Ron Edwards]

Joe,

My interest in Thirty Years War period as a specifically-Sorcerer setting stems in part from the personal take on Humanity that I enjoyed playing or running the most a few years ago. In a lot of my Sorcerer play, loss of Humanity is related to transgression that may achieve something, but may also go awry. The transgression can be artistic, religious, social, or any number of things. Think of "paying the price for your art" and you're on the right track. It may or may not provide insights and even joy for others, eventually - but while you are there, doing it, others would (at best) say, "God damn, who would do that."

[This version of Humanity is too abstract for most written versions of Sorcerer; I find myself only able to express it in terms of "the point" through play itself.]

The main key to this approach is that it has no direct correspondence to any formal basis for achievement or insight. It also makes the most sense in combination with the baseline assumption of Sorcerer that "magic" or any other belief system as popularly understood is nonsense. Thus historical periods in which all value-systems go up for grabs, and no one can distinguish any more between "what's right" or "what's over the line" make for very interesting play. Characters generate whole value systems through their actions - and even through transgression, end up providing more structure and meaning to others than any given acknowledged belief system.

Well, all that's pretty heavy - or it's babble, who knows. But it strikes me that a fairly intensely-prepped historical 1620s-1640s setting would do very well in this regard.

Best,
Ron

[Uncle Dark]

On one of my back burners (my gods, but I have a lot of back burners!) is an idea for a Victorian/Historical Sorcerer game:

The rise and fall of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (the historical group that more-or-less brought about the real-world modern Occult scene) as a grudge match between sorcerers trying to build covens of flunkies.

It would be set between 187- (I forget the exact date of HOGD's founding) and 190- (Again, I forget the date of it's collapse), mostly in London and Paris.  The two or three main contenders (Mathers, Crowley, Waite) would be sorcerers, the rest (like W.B. Yeats) would be talented normals drawn into the charismatic web of the sorcerers.

Mind you, all this would be (well-researched) backstory...

Lon

[Fabrice G.]

Hi Lon,

I would recommend reading the Golden Dawn supplement for CoC, by Pagan publishing (if you haven't already). It describe the order in a simple and precise way, all interesting infirmations.

And the bibliography is quite comprehensive...

Well, BTW do it and make it available on the web, it'll ease me some trouble of making it myself...lazzy, lazzy me ! ;-)

Fabrice

[Uncle Dark]

Nicky,

I probably own (or can have in hand this time tomorrow) more GD source material then I could use in a mini-sup.  One of the reason's I'd do this would be to allow me to mix two of my favorite arcane pursuits: indie gaming and ceremonial magick.

Not that the Order of the Silver Twilight (the CoC incarnation of the HOGD) isn't good stuff.  I'd just want my backstory to be more historically accurate.

Lon

[contracycle]

My interest in Thirty Years War period as a specifically-Sorcerer setting stems in part from the personal take on Humanity that I enjoyed playing or running the most a few years ago. In a lot of my Sorcerer play, loss of Humanity is related to transgression that may achieve something, but may also go awry. The transgression can be artistic, religious, social, or any number of things. Think of "paying the price

Would you be interested in this in a manner that reinterprets demons as ideologies, or keep demons "real" in a fictionalised world?  IOW, does the focus of Humanity shift to ideology (which I think of on the basis of your interest in transgression), or do the fracturing ideologies merely provide character motivation?  Just curious as to how you are seeing it.

There has been some argument about sorcerer-for-spies recently.  There might be, umm, scope he says delicately, to tackle large amounts of social interaction through the synthesis of the Network concept and a demon-as-ideology concept.