[GenCon Sorcerer demo] Zhanna

[Tim C Koppang]

Not to toot Ron's horn any more than I have to, but one protagonist for three players worked really well. Granted, I was coming into the demo with Sorcerer experience. Still, I was able to think back to my first Sorcerer demo. In short, all of the confusion that comes from trying to understand multiple characters, demons, and game mechanics seemed nonexistent. It allowed the players to focus on less, and therefore understand more about what was going on in general with the dice, etc.

That said, I think the real key is to get every player involved. I feel that some people will inevitably use the other players as a crutch, and be content to sit and watch. Watching is not a demo. Luckily, the other players tend to come enthused, and seek input from the the quiet one out of politeness and a desire to share the spotlight. I hope everyone else's experience was similar.

[GreatWolf]

I'm glad that this thread came along when it did.  I was contemplating running a demo of Legends of Alyria for a church talent night (not the normal roleplaying environment), and I was struggling with figuring out a good way to do this, given the uniform inexperience of the proposed audience and the time constraints put in place by the format of the event.  This could be a good way to do it.  I'll try it out and write up my experiences in another thread.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

It'd work great for Alyria, Seth! Especially if you do the situation-creation as usual.

"We've created these dozen people interlinked by conflict. Which one shall we now choose to play as the principal?"

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Ron, yeah, you're right that you have to push for 15 minutes to get 25 minute demos. That's just one of those strange rules in life that deal with things being imperfect.


For reference, the Mike Meg references isn't me, as I didn't get to try the demo. Mike Miller, I'm guessing?


Jake, I understand your reasoning, and there are probably worse dangers you'll face in Iraq, but...taking a game called Sorcerer? And I thought that Luke, Thor and Dro were crazy for taking a bag of supplements with "Jihad" on the cover on board their flight to GenCon.

Mike

[LordSmerf]

I got to sit in on the demo Saturday, after Ron had clearly had some time to polish and practice it.  Setup was snap-snap-snap done, and I think all four of us demo-ees were onboard.  Now, I have to say that certain aspects of the demo rocked, but some of them didn't work for me.

The good:

The aforementioned character + rote description.  The way this all came about to give us a real sense of "I know who this character is and what motivates her, now lets get on with the playing!" was great.

Sharing the character was good.  As Eric mentioned: if you didn't have any good ideas you could let someone else pick up the slack, and if you had something good you could jump right in.

Humanity roll.  Seeing the mechanic at work was cool, and seeing the situations in which they should/could be used was also cool.

The not-so-good:

In the demo we didn't ever see dice as currency.  No successes rolling over into a later conflict.  Now, that's not too bad, but it's a super-cool part of the mechanics and I think some oppurtunity was lost there.

The opening bang (Ron mentioned the captain and the "this is not your story" statement) was a bit of a monkey wrench for me.  I wasn't entirely clear on what was meant by the specific phrase employed ("this is not your story").  I'm pretty sure I understood it, but I consume the source materiel for S&S like nobody's business so I've probably got a bit of a leg up.

The humanity roll (again).  The specific situation that we made ours in felt a bit forced.  It didn't feel like a powerful mechanic to me.

That's it off the top of my head.

Thomas (the guy with the neck brace)

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

In the demo we didn't ever see dice as currency.  No successes rolling over into a later conflict.  Now, that's not too bad, but it's a super-cool part of the mechanics and I think some oppurtunity was lost there.

That's funny. I did it a lot in the demos. Could have missed it that time, though. As I recall, your demo went a bit easily for the protagonist, roll-wise, and most of the conflicts were settled and moved on. Was that the one with the captain's psyche laid naked in the dream? If so, then we certainly did some victory-rolling-over.

The Humanity checks varied a lot from demo to demo. Some of them were savage enough for therapy; others were pro forma.

Best,
Ron

[LordSmerf]

No, ours wasn't the psyche-laid-bare session.  Ours was the "Order demon to attack" followed by "Full defense" session.  Oh, and something else I didn't mention:  I'm not sure if this was just our session or something you did more often, but the shift out of the demo scenario to demonstrate the way turn order worked in rolling was a bit jarring to me.

I hear you on the Humanity rolls, and for what it's worth I think it's probably better to have them possibly weakly than not have them at all for the demo.

Thomas

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Ah. Yes, that one was boring. Frankly, that demo group was boring, and in Sorcerer, the character is whatever you decide to do with her, so she was boring. You were clearly in pain, Thomas, and said as much at one point, so I forgive you.

Perhaps I ought to clarify some of the history, too. When I demo this game without explaining the dice, people bitch about not getting how it works. When I demo with explaining the dice, people bitch about getting jarred out of the imagining, or something.

I decided a while ago that these were, indeed, teaching demos. We aren't playing Sorcerer. We are getting a little taste of it, then explaining what we're doing. This is the opposite of Tony's approach, which works for him, but not for me or for my game - if I play "ignore half the rules" Sorcerer, or even "Ron handles the rules and just tells how many dice" Sorcerer, then I am doomed to a dozen actual play threads all screaming bloody murder that their play failed, and when I ask what they did, they describe horrible humpbacked misapplications of the rules, claiming that's what I did right in front of them.

Been there. Not doing it again. Sorcerer demos are for getting a taste of playing a sorcerer, then learning just what those dice are doing, because (until recently) not one single game these people had experienced, in their lives, had used statements, dice, and interactions the way Sorcerer does.

So no, my demos are not intended to be amazing hallucinatory flights of fancy into which the customer may sink, and be dazzled with wonder. You'll learn how a bonus die works and if possible, how easy it is to run a complex conflict with five characters all doing wild things.

Best,
Ron