The Fucked Up Sorcerer

[Ben Lehman]

From over in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12754&highlight=">The Mechanics of Hellraiser...

There is such a thing as playing Sorcerer too tight. This would be something like ...

Character history = terrible traumatic experiences about X. Descriptors = all derived from or related to X. Demon = embodiment of X. Need = the sorcerer must do the "wrong side" of X. Kicker = ... well, there isn't any. Because nothing's here except X and the guy's whole fuckin' life is already X'd to the gills. No Kicker is possible.

BL>  I'd like to suggestion that a good Kicker here any chance to live an ordinary life or be a person who isn't monomaniacally obsessed and dominated by their own traumatic experiences.  Kickers like "I've got a date" or "A friend of mine (this guy has friends?) just offered me a job in Peru" or even just "someone seems like they might want to be my friend."  Hey "Someone smiled at me on the street today" or even "I walked outside" could be a kicker.

Now, this might seem a little too easy, because of course we are all rooting for the guy to get over himself and go get a life.  That said, it can be problematized in a lot of ways.

yrs--
--Ben

edit: early morning typos.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

Agreed in full. Interestingly enough, most people who've presented these sorts of character concepts shy away from such Kickers. I'm thinking specifically of those who embrace Completed Theme like octopi and also are inclined to cling to their characters' marginalized-outsider status.

I think a Kicker of this sort would do well to include an initial positive response to the new/normal opportunity on the sorcerer's part, as some of your examples demonstrate.

I get sort of a kick out of thinking of the guy's demon as fed-up with this monomaniacal existence ... "More Need? I'm full already! Jeez! Can't we go see a movie once in a while?"

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Agreed in full. Interestingly enough, most people who've presented these sorts of character concepts shy away from such Kickers. I'm thinking specifically of those who embrace Completed Theme like octopi and also are inclined to cling to their characters' marginalized-outsider status.

BL>  Yeah, pretty much.  I've seen that a lot in Vampire, perhaps not surprisingly although, to be fair, I've also seen a lot of honest-to-goodness struggle over the same situations, though mainly in short games (where it is "okay" to have your vampire die or be consumed in hunger.)  

I think some of this might tie into character protection as player power protection: If my guy changes in any way, I'm losing my credibility!  Thus, the "serious" role-players want to make a character about a "serious" issue, but since they can't accept change to that character, they end up as slasher movie villains.

Can I say here that I think that particular thematic statement (traumatized people can never recover and are doomed to replicate their trauma on others forever in a monomanicial and inhuman, nearly mechanical fashion) really abhorrent?  And that I'm particularly upset that it seems really common in the context of RPGs?

Good.  Glad I can.  'cause I just did.

I think a Kicker of this sort would do well to include an initial positive response to the new/normal opportunity on the sorcerer's part, as some of your examples demonstrate.

BL>  To some degree.  Can I take your point to mean "it is totally disingenuous to have a kicker 'I left the house for the first time in ten years' and then immediately say 'I run inside and never go out again?'"  Because I totally agree with that.  I think that negativity and eventual rejection towards the outside opportunity is a viable ending (if a tragic one), but the character certainly needs to engage with it somehow.  Otherwise, it ain't a Kicker.

I get sort of a kick out of thinking of the guy's demon as fed-up with this monomaniacal existence ... "More Need? I'm full already! Jeez! Can't we go see a movie once in a while?"

I laughed at this.

Although I actually see these demons as the happiest little demons in the world (well, pending their desire, but we can assume it also ties to X).  And that scares me.  What the demons want is for all of us to be that guy, doing his thing forever, alone, afraid, and disconnected.

Did I mention that this scares me?  It does.

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

Scares me too. Especially since it reminds me of the following.

1. Gamers.

2. Too many girlfriends.

3. Myself and most of those girlfriends.

4. Academics.

Best,
Ron

[erithromycin]

With reference to Ron's post, isn't the perfect kicker the demon suddenly announcing that "things don't feel the same any more"?

I mean, all soap opera aside, in this sort of happy within the dysfunction situation (and I have a feeling that if you've been to University or been in any way involved in roleplaying as a 'hobby' or science fiction and fantasy fandom you'll either have been in said situation or have witnessed them) the real motivator of cosmic destructofests of emotional trauma is a seemingly spontaneous eruption of boredom on the part of one party within the relationship. The point where the dysfunction surfaces, so to speak, and I'm fascinated by this notion:

That the binding is the process of the relationship to the point of the start of play, and the whole essence of play is the renegotiation of the 'contract' between the entities involved in the relationship, to the extent that the utter destruction (of one party or another) is a viable goal. Which then, I think, requires that Banish should have some momentous Humanity cost, but how to bring that about, I'm not sure.

Anyway, yes, more talk of this fucked up sorcerer please - genuinely frightening is good. I mean, seeing people eaten by demon things is one thing, finding yourself standing outside someone's house at three in the morning with no real idea how you got there is another.

No?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Drew,

finding yourself standing outside someone's house at three in the morning with no real idea how you got there

That's a little too vague for me. "Standing outside" means what - you just left the house? Or you've been standing there for hours? Or?

And "someone," who's that?

Gimme some specifics; I can't tell what you're saying.

Best,
Ron

[erithromycin]

Erm, with reference to genuine fright/despair, within a relationship context -

Sudden awareness that you don't know where you are exactly, and you don't know why you are there exactly, but you're pretty much certain that it's connected to a situation that you are in that is connected to a dysfunctional relationship - the moment of awareness that comes after a blackout - waking up sober - wondering why you are wearing what you are wearing - That moment of realisation when you are suddenly aware that something has happened and they you were involved and that you don't know what it was.

It's vague because I wanted to avoid making it a "I have had these screwed up gamer/fandom relationships" and wouldn't it be fun to play them thread, as opposed to a "feelings of alienation, isolation, and confusion within and at the end of relationships are quite common within the nesting subcultures who tend to engage in roleplaying, and they make excellent, if uncomfortable, ground for examination as a bed for storytelling". Then I remember that you wrote Sex & Sorcery for much the same purpose.

What I suppose I'm talking about is a game of Sorcerer where the primary expectaction is that the relationship between demon and sorcerer is going to change, and drastically, and that's what everythings about - the end of relationships, and chaos that their ending leaves.

Which basically means that I wasn't appealing to your lofty academic hat or your wandering around beating up the cult of Ron hat but the hat that most of us wear when we know that we've really fucked up but aren't quite sure what we did. I want to talk about a game about that hat.

The, um, sickening hangover of dead love.