Duelling Imperatives

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks to Ralph and Eric. They've said what needed saying.

Best,
Ron

[Julian]

If I took the basic Sorcerer book and gave it to the guys I played D&D with a few years back, and gave them no other clarifications, would I see conflict resolution appearing in play? Would they be running sorcerous rituals in terms of the underlying conflict?

I seriously doubt it. I just haven't seen any indication it can be extracted from the book by people who are not familiar with the concept.

Now, if it's actually supposed to be in there, there's a problem, probably with the book itself.

Because neither you, nor your old D&D group were the target audience for Sorcerer.  It was not written to enable them "to get it".  It was targeted squarely on that group of people who already got it.  To the people who were running Champions and other games Ron was familiar with in a manner very similar to how Ron was running them and encountering the same "rules getting in the way" problems.  The people he wrote Sorcerer for were the people who already had the same primordial ideas about conflict resolution burbling away in their heads and didn't need to have their hands held and walked through the process in careful language.

If the only people who come out of it with conflict resolution are the ones who had it coming in, it's not really in the game, is it?

(And I get conflict resolution. Like most really good ideas, it made perfect sense once somebody explained it. But, even armed with this knowledge, I can't find a whit of textual support for it in the book. I'm willing to believe I may have overlooked it. A page number. A citation. That's all I ask.)

And if those guys aren't the target audience, they ought to be. Based on that D&D game, I'd expect a pretty damn good game of Sorcerer. But I wouldn't expect conflict resolution.

I believe Ron has expressed his astonishment before at how many people were actually in that same boat and flocked to Sorcerer like drowning sailors to a life raft.  People who didn't need to have it explained to them.  They read it, and they knew what they needed to know to run it the way it was meant to be run.

So yes, as Sorcerer has gotten more attention from mainstream gamers, there are more and more people who don't already come with that ability encountering the game, scratching their heads and not seeing what they thought they were going to see from all the discussion.  It isn't there because it isn't meant to be there.  To put it blunty...if you can't see it...it wasn't designed with you in mind.  (and that's not an insult, because I couldn't see it either...my first reaction to Sorcerer was along the lines of "what piece of crap trying to pass itself off as an RPG is this...its only got three stats for chrissake")

I read it, and saw nothing particularly unusual. Still don't. Most of my problems with the system emerged during play, and involve implementation details. (And the base die mechanic being kind of annoying.)

Its like buying a high end router for fine carpentry work.  The instructions can tell you all about plugging it in, turning it on, wearing goggles, and how to change bits; but it doesn't (and can't) tell you how to produce fine furniture with it.  If you're already a master carpenter, you already know how to produce fine furniture and don't need to be told.  If you're not...well...that's hardly the manufacturer's responsibility.  You should fully expect your first few pieces of furniture to look like utter crap.

And if a perfectly capable carpenter can't figure out how to turn it on, that _is_ the manufacturer's responsibility.

As far as I'm concerned, that's what I'm seeing here. the response I'm seeing to "I can't find the power switch" is "See the manual."

[Ron Edwards]

All right, that's enough.

Julian, I've responded to your inquiry, others have been exemplary in their help and explanations for you, and you've progressed to being a mulish pain in the ass.

You are either seeking some kind of specific response you're not getting, or you're getting attention by being stubborn. I don't care which, and I don't see any particular reason for you to keep posting in the forum. Find somewhere else.

Best,
Ron