Sorcerer: A Generic RPG?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Sorry about the double post everybody.

I was trying to correct the spelling on "Deepist" and kept getting this "Debugging" notification that a) not only didn't make the edit (notice the seven tries), but posted up an additional copy of the post with the misspelling intact.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to fix it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Christopher,

I fixed the double post ... when something like that happens, just let me or Clinton know and we can kill it with Mighty Moderator Power.

I knew you'd like the supplements. Here's my question: do you think that they resolve or (better) extend the aspect of Sorcerer that you brought up for discussion on this thread?

Oh, and if you were to come up with a one-sheet for prospective Sorcerer players, as described in Chapter 4 of the main book, what might it have on it?

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

On the "generic" question, my answer is "yes and no".  The game IS generic in that it appears without setting or situation; it is NOT generic because it has a defined PC role.

PC's have a property which makes them PC's - Lore or whatever that is interpeted as.  They have mechanisms of power - demons.  The majority of NPC's have neither Lore nor Demons, regardless of how either are being interpreted in the setting.

PC's are not therefore normal folks; they have been made special in some way.  I think this is the distinction with GURPS - anyone can (mechanically) be a PC in GURPS, and relationship to effective powers is determined by setting and situation.  Thus, I see Sorcerer as "a generic Hidden World game".

[Christopher Kubasik]

Ron,

Yes.  Loved the Supplements.

To answer your questions:

I think they extend the aspect of Sorcerer I brought up for discussion -- in two ways.

One, by having rules, for say, Pacts and Imminents, for example, whole new ranges of stories are avaible.

Two, any Supplement that has the scenarios The Forbidden Tome, The Day of the Dupes, and The Enchanted Pool is clearly illustrating the variety of setting and kinds of themes available.

For your next trick I will embarass myself publically:  I've read through Sorcerer twice now and I don't remember seeing any mention of a one sheet for prosepctive players.  I checked the index, didn't see anything.  I'll look later today.... But if anyone can point me to the page, that'd be great.

Gareth,

I think you're right.  The game no matter what, is going to be about what the PCs do with power.  But the number of flavors available in staggering!

Also, keep in mind that in my mind the three books (Sorcerer, Socerer and Sword and Sorcerer's Soul) are now fused.  There's just too many goodies added and too many goodies revealed in the two books.  Sorcerer offers all the options, the two supplements show you how to take advantage of all of them.

So, in the scenario The Enchanted Pool, we get a game where Humanity is innocence, demons are all around (and one type are, for all practical purposes, hearth faeries -- which is a fine and excellent use of the little fellows using Demon as an open descriptor), and they are more interested in making limited Pacts rather than long term Bindings.

A game like this, where the characters must activly do acts of innocence to hang onto their humanity in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale setting is going to be a completely different *experience* than playing The Art-Deco Melodrama, for example, found elsewhere on the board.

The best comparison I can make is CoC.

Chaosium supported three main timelines, Gaslight, 20's and Modern Day.  But no matter what costumes the characters were wearing, it was still CoC.  The variety is fun -- it truly is -- but because the rules are identical game to game, it's really the same game each time -- just with different Colorform clothes laid out on top of the character sheet.

But a game using the Humanity Mechancis defined as Insanity, as Innocence or the kill-anyone-you-want but not friend and family morality of Sorcer and Sword are going to produce very different *experiences* -- consistent within themselves across several sessions of play, but varied within that consistency of actual play.

So there is something specific to Sorcerer -- the interaction with powerful creatures as the engine that defines choices that will affect a Humanity -- but all these things, for reasons Ron elaborates on in the supplements (and I babble on about above), will really create something different the moment you alter all the descriptors.

More bluntly, it's possible, if you didn't know any better and just picked up a big colorful book at game store with lots of first person journal entries that details the world of The Day of the Dupes, with the Humanity defined as Honor and lots and lots of world setting info, and all the rules and descriptors tailored to that Humanity, you wouldn't know you were flipping through a game called Sorcerer at all!

Is that Generic in the way we use the word in the RPG world.  I don't fucking know.  But according to the concerns I was writing toward on this thread, and if the preceding paragraph's thought experiment yielded a positive result ("You know, you could do a big, hard-cover coffee book set in 17th-century adventure fiction where the characters deal with demons and all behavior is judged by Honor and have a brand new spanking game and everyone over at RPG net would talk about it without knowing they could have gotten worlds of the same information in a slim $15 dollar supplement") then yes, I think it's generic in *exactly* the way I was talking about.

Could you get away with charging endless dollars for new rules sets as the spin off of from the whole Sorcerer rules set -- and short of the resolution engine and the incriminating lack of skills and stats -- and have people not know any better?  That's my new definition/test for what I was talking about.  

And for me the answer is yes.

Congrats Ron.

And thanks everybody, as always, for the fun nudging of ideas.

[Clay]

For your next trick I will embarass myself publically:  I've read through Sorcerer twice now and I don't remember seeing any mention of a one sheet for prosepctive players.  I checked the index, didn't see anything.  I'll look later today.... But if anyone can point me to the page, that'd be great.

Christopher,

There isn't a "one sheet" in the book, it's something you make yourself for your players. Use it to set the tone for the game you have in mind.  I give a quick and dirt overview of the system, including the sourcerous acts. I include information about the nature of sorcery, the flavor of the game world, and maybe some brief geography.

I try to do this up as a PDF and make it downloadable, but it always helps to bring printed copies for game night, because you'll have at least a few people who can't get to it ahead of time.  They also make handy reference sheets to keep around in-game.