Now I get it.

[James V. West]

My copy of Sorcerer was in the mailbox today. I sat in the parking lot of the USPO and eagerly flipped through the book, drinking in paragraphs and statements like wine.

Immediately a few things hit me like a sledgehammer. The first was that this guy, this Ron Edwards character, really does understand role-playing. Its scary, really.

Imagine you're a young stud deciding to give Madonna a go. You walk up and say "I'm gonna rock your world, blondie.". She politely, but firmly hands you a photo journal which features the highlights of her experience as a woman over the years. You look at it, your eyes bug out, and you start to mumble things like "But.." and "How.." and "I didn't know humans could.." and so forth.

She pats you on the head and you dazedly stagger out of her dressing room. She gives you a little wink and a nod as you leave, letting you know that she understands why you came. But you're not a stud anymore. Man...you've got so much to learn.

That's one of the many things I was feeling while reading Sorcerer. I have so much to learn and so many avenues to explore. Its amazing and frightening at once. Getting your book, Ron, was a booster shot for me and I haven't had it 12 hours yet. I'm already cutting through some nasty boundaries that had me blocked up.

I really liked the bibliography. There are so many things on the list that I've always loved like Elric and REH. In fact, you used my favorite quote from Elric: "it is only about things that concern us most that we lie clearly and with utter conviction". Awesome.

The book itself is a wonderfully slim little volume that packs the whollop of a bible. You've created something that proves quality kicks quantity's ass.

Guess I'll be playing Sorcerer sooner than I had expected. Thanks Ron.

[hardcoremoose]

Heh.  You haven't seen anything yet.  Wait until you read Sorcerer&Sword.

- Moose

[James V. West]

Yeah, S&S is next on my hit list. Like I told you before, I'm certain it will eliminate my desire to make my own S&S genre game. Then again, it might just spark my imagination anew. Who knows?

I'm probably going over stuff that others have went on about long ago, but since I'm a late comer to the Sorcerer game I'll indulge myself.

The one thing about this game that has been on my mind all night is its simple dedication to a genre. Maybe genre is not the right word, I'm not sure. Dark fantasy is what it is in a nutshell, but specifically its demonic dark fantasy and I'm finding it staggering to think of how many applications it has.

Not only does the game describe very well the elements of pure demonical movies like The Exorcist, but it has the power to go even further into ambiguous territory. The film Leaving Las Vegas. That's a Sorcerer scenario waiting to happen. Or Moby Dick. Hell, pretty much anything featuring either a twisted and driven character or one who has something unusually mysterious in the way they simply are. You can get ideas from anyplace and they easily fit the game's premise.

I tend to get bogged down in the idea of setting. I like setting, and I have huge desires to create intricate worlds. But when it comes to making a game of it, I lose faith fast because I feel like the ideas I come up with are too narrow. Seeing Ron's game puts a new light on that feeling. I think we all want our games to transcend something as finite as a map.

[/i]

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I appreciate the compliments in this thread, but I also want to point out that I am aware of some shortcomings in the book as well.

I don't think I dealt well with the "audience" issue. The PDF was written very much for people who had reached a certain brink of frustration with role-playing as a whole, especially in the early-mid 90s. If you wanted to play "story," you played Vampire - yet it didn't work. If you wanted to play "anything," you played GURPS - yet it didn't work. If you wanted to play "fantasy," you played AD&D2, Rolemaster, or Warhammer - yet it didnt' work. In each case, the game itself seemed to set parameters for behavior that took over whatever aesthetic impulse had been originally involved. Gamer culture seemed to be all about those "takeover elements" as opposed to any desire to create and develop anything.

Those of you who had reached this point on their own tend to have reactions like James'. Those who hadn't tended to say "Well, I'm intrigued, but you seem to be over in left field somewhere" (and some of these were so intrigued by left-field that they started wandering over to see what it was like, like Jesse). And then there are those who just shake their heads and say, "Man, who do you think you are?"

The book is still primarily written for the first group, perhaps overly so. I really don't see any way for it to have been done otherwise, and the supplements both seem to be pretty successful in bringing the second group into things.

Best,
Ron

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Not only does the game describe very well the elements of pure demonical movies like The Exorcist, but it has the power to go even further into ambiguous territory. The film Leaving Las Vegas. That's a Sorcerer scenario waiting to happen. Or Moby Dick. Hell, pretty much anything featuring either a twisted and driven character or one who has something unusually mysterious in the way they simply are. You can get ideas from anyplace and they easily fit the game's premise.

One of the things I greatly about the World of Darkness series, that I'd completely forgotten about, was taking a game and looking for examples of it in real life, or fiction. Y'know, after buying Changeling, I'd look at all the obvious Changelingy games. And then I'd look at things like the X-Files in a Changeling light. It was so much fun.

But Sorceror, woo. It's so keenly pared down, so finely written, it suits *so* many different settings or combinations of characters. I spent 2 hours explaining it to a player (as my brand new copy is on loan to another player at the moment), and used all sorts of movie examples. Riggs' Kicker in Lethal Weapon is his death wish, whereas Murtaugh is 'getting too old for this shit'. The Sorceror/Demon relationship can be like Doctor Who (!), or Fight Club, or any number of Cronenberg/Lynch movies, or as straightforward as Hellraiser. Etc.

It's peachy.

Joe.

[Bankuei]

Ron said:

If you wanted to play "story," you played Vampire - yet it didn't work. If you wanted to play "anything," you played GURPS - yet it didn't work. If you wanted to play "fantasy," you played AD&D2, Rolemaster, or Warhammer - yet it didnt' work. In each case, the game itself seemed to set parameters for behavior that took over whatever aesthetic impulse had been originally involved. Gamer culture seemed to be all about those "takeover elements" as opposed to any desire to create and develop anything.

I think this is where I was aiming at with my way old gaming goals thread, in that the stated genre design of the game did not provide the mechanics to give you the genre goal.  What is rather disturbing as well is that the gamer culture has now come back and affected what is considered sci-fi and fantasy today.

The highest level of dissatisfaction I've gone through is that very few people really look at the mechanics and actually design a game to match the intent, style, genre and mechanics to work together.  

I've been impressed not only with the level of thought that's gone into the game, but also in that Sorcerer as a whole began by throwing away old standards that designers and gamers have failed to question altogether.  Many games are still just D&D/wargame knockoffs, and really just amount to stat/skill/spell/power lists and numbers, lists of enemies, monsters, and places, and nothing about what really makes a story run.  

Instead of giving you a new list, Sorcerer is about giving you tools to make what you want, on the fly, or your own list if you want one.  The most useful information isn't specific to the system, but good roleplaying concepts you can take to any game.  

Has anyone else recently picked up Sorcerer?  If so, what's your thoughts?

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Chris wrote,

I think this is where I was aiming at with my way old gaming goals thread, in that the stated genre design of the game did not provide the mechanics to give you the genre goal.

Extend the word "genre" to "content" and I'm with you all the way.

What is rather disturbing as well is that the gamer culture has now come back and affected what is considered sci-fi and fantasy today.

Absolutely. Abso-fucking-lutely. This terrible recursion into the source material has utterly gutted fantasy fiction over the last twenty years. I can see why many of the older authors dislike gaming intensely.

Best,
Ron

[Blake Hutchins]

Ron, your comment about many older authors disliking gaming sounds right on the money, though a number of other writers shrug and accept that writing novels for WotC is a great way to get published and make some bucks in the process.  A lot of the younger writers in the Pac NW SF&F community are gamers or former gamers, but only a few of these at all try to produce your traditional, DnD-clone "epic" fantasy.

I see "traditional" fantasy as being to fantasy what Star Trek and Star Wars books are to S-F:  watered down settings supporting socially-oriented stories that follow long-established patterns familiar to the consumer.  Sure, they're moribund, but at the same time incredibly profitable.

Best,

Blake

[James V. West]

I hadn't given this much thought before, but I can see the trend. We have a few local bookstores that boast modest fantasy sections and I'd wager 10-20% of the shelf space is devoted to rpg tie-ins like Forgotten Realms and WoD. I'm a gamer and even I tend to shun these books, although I did go through an R. A. Salvatore period (despite the transparent plotting and cheesiness, he's not bad).

What's funny is that I came rather innocently upon what I consider the 3 biggest influences on fantasy, all within about a 1-year period: Tolkien, R.E. Howard, and DnD. I was 14, not very social, and prone to daydreaming. These things absolutely blasted my world and changed my life forever. And one of them is a game. So, yeah, I can easily see where gaming culture has had an imprint on fantasy.

Maybe this ought to be another thread. Personally, although I know exactly what you're talking about when you say the influence has not been all good, I also easily see how it has not been all bad. My own ideas have been profoundly influenced by gaming thoughts, which is why I've landed into rpg design as an art.

I don't have much in the way of examples or theory to support my stance on this, its just a hunch. So I'll leave it at that.

Back on the actual topic, I'm reading Sorcerer bits here and there, chunks at a time, and looking forward to putting it to play. Its a fascinating game. Five minutes of reading it and I had already been hit with a few revelations about my own self-imposed limitations.

And the book itself looks cool as hell.

[Manu]

What can I say?

When i received my copy of Sorcerer, I had been roleplaying (or was that roll-playing?) on and off for 18 years. I collect games, I have a room full of them, and yet, like Ron said of some gamers, I was dissatisfied. I thought a game was just a setting + a system, and there wasn't a way to combine them I thought I hadn't tried. I was about to start converting Fading Suns (great setting, lousy rules, i thought) to either GURPS or Fuzion, and bam! I realized it was pointless, as none of these systems supported the passion play type of campaign I desired; all this thanks to Ron Edwards.

Sorcerer rocked my world instantly. I had to read some sections several times, not because I didn't get it, but because the scope of the implied ideas was so grand. See, I draw my Rping pleasure partly from the youthful innocence lost i'm trying to regain, remembering the Gamist campaigns of D&D, almost always in Pawn Stance, the Simulationists explorations of Call of Cthulhu...but also from a vision I have of an epic that should unfold, more or less naturally (at the time it implied heavy railroading); I was aiming for a feeling; sometimes I could almost grasp it, but since I tried to voice it in terms of my RPG experience so far, it usually miserably failed.

Me: "I have this vision of a lone man standing in armour near the body of his friend; he's sad, you can see ages of strife in his eyes, and the smouldering anger at the powers that play him for a fool. A storm is gathering in the distance, and terrified peasants flee the scene."

My players: "cool, so what's the game about?"

Me:"it's about that, it's about a theme, an ideal, passions..."

My players: "yeah, yeah, but what is it ABOUT?"

Me: " Er, I don't know, wanna use GURPS or Stormbringer?"

My players: "How many starting points?"

That's the way it went for years. Sorcerer smashed these boundaries. I understood RPGs could exist about some idea, not in spite of that idea as it often seemed to be the case.I understood Premise wasn't just some colorful property of the setting, that the rules used could and should mirror the goals sought, that sci fi toys and Elder Races were poor substitutes for exploring what it meant to be human after all. I realized you could develop a world as you played, a character as he/she interacted with this world, and with YOU, that i had been obsessed with Fortune all these years, when all those myriad options now opened up to me.

I also started looking for sorcery everywhere, and finding it (yes, even on Arrakis). I look at every campaign I wanna start, at every game I played, and something's missing. A small grey booklet defeated my armada of grimoires. I feel I've reached a new level thanks to Ron, because so many concepts in Sorcerer and the GNS article make perfect sense, and moreover, are actually easy to implement. It's only a matter of knowing where you want to go; so I understand that this is a certain percentage of the gaming community, and that not everyone is ready, willing, or even (shudders) able to apply these ideas.


Sorcerer and the GNS essay should be required reading for game designers (ok, maybe Robin Laws need not apply ;-)) - I really don't have the words to make justice to their impact on me. I see many years of satisfying gaming ahead of me now, when I had before almost given up on enjoying a session.

Ron, maybe you should ask what were our preconceptions in specific areas of game design, so I had a chance to catch my breath and reply more precisely, what do you guys think?


cheers,
Manu

[Paul Czege]

Hey Manu,

I understood Premise wasn't just some colorful property of the setting, that the rules used could and should mirror the goals sought, that sci fi toys and Elder Races were poor substitutes for exploring what it meant to be human after all.

Nicely said.

Paul

[James V. West]

Indeed. Perhaps the reason I haven't played enough games in the past 10 years to fill a decent week is because I didn't see how any of them could really satisfy my hunger for drama, tragedy and all that stuff. Sorcerer is the best game I've seen to smash those foggy walls and open up a vista of possibilites.

I'm afraid Ron is going to find a lot of people modeling their games after Sorcerer--even when they don't realize they're doing it. Why? Because he's tapped into some serious shit and serious shit can't be contained.

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

I offered to playtest some game, from some guy, somewhere on rpg.net. He mailed me the zipped Word docs today.

So I had a look through. I giggled to myself initially, as the game looked to be great - it was exactly the sort of setting that appealed to me. It was just the sort of blurb that got me hooked on Vampire, or Nephilim, or Unknown Armies. Dark, shadowy world, hidden monsters, yada. I'm a sucker for that gothy marshmallowy goodness.

Then I read through the rules system, the 'what roleplaying is about' essay, the advice for players, the character generation system, the two fluffy magic systems, the half-page on 'ravager demons', the character sheet (gawd)... I couldn't bear to read it anymore, much less mention it to my group.

Sorceror has spoiled me. I'm not sure I'll ever recover.

I just want to hug this author, buy him a cup of tea and give him a copy of Sorceror. It's not that Sorceror is the be-all and end-all of roleplaying this millenium (though I'm taking bets, and it's the best thing I've read since Over the Edge), but it's such a breath of air. Crazy.

Joe.

[Bankuei]

<p>I totally understand how you feel.  I find that when I talk about innovation in game design, people think in terms of new background, or a system that is fundamentally the same as a previous system, just with different dice, or different skill/stat lists.  D20 is not different than Interlock, except in stats, dice, and skills.  Period.

<p>I've tried looking at various games in the net, since the ones in the shops really aren't that different, what I've found, besides billions of chat, pbp, pbem games, is really crap.   I guess what makes it bad is that most games are about as innovative as Palladium was to D&D, which is to say not much.

<p>I wouldn't even say that people would need to read the essays, as much as look at two things:  What are you trying to accomplish, and what creates similar results?  Looking at All Flesh Must Be Eaten, really any system could fit the bill to do that.  Just because other roleplaying games have created "working" systems, doesn't mean its a good system.   When I say similar results, I don't mean roleplaying games, I mean anything.  I look at Jenga for suspense, I look at Dominoes for Fortune/Karma mechanics, I look at Rock Paper Scissors for strategy systems, etc.

<p>What makes Sorcerer work is that it threw out the assumptions that had nothing to do with the design goal. Second, it was designed to be a limited product, that is, it wasn't designed to be turned into a merchandising thing with spin off books, clanbooks, collectible cards, etc.  It is what its supposed to be, nothing more, nothing less. You know what you're getting, and it's the tools to make what you need.  Not lists of Demons that you have to choose from, with new "Pitbooks" ever season.

<p>Ron, what made you decide to put your essays into your games?  Was this a goal before, during, or after developing Sorcerer?

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hi everyone, and many thanks for the continuing good word. A lot of what I'm seeing is hitting the personal bar I'd set for myself about ten years ago, in terms of reader/user response. Feels good.

I started putting essays into the gaming stuff with The Sorcerer's Soul (PDF), for better or worse. It's a pure attempt at communication, just because I'm a theory-type guy. Some people think that such editorializing is not what they paid for. But I've also seen that enough folks are provoked and intrigued, positively speaking, to make it seem worthwhile.

Best,
Ron