Initial Ideas

[Henry Fitch]

I think it's pretty hard to read Sorcerer material without getting a burst of ideas, particularly along the lines of "This'd be great for playing..." or "There should be a mini-supp about..."

I think it would be enlightening for everyone to really briefly describe the first few ideas of this sort that came to their mind. Or the ones that are buzzing around in their head now. For my part, I rapidly thought:

1. High-school occult conspiracy!

and

2. Post-apocalyptic vampires!

I doubt if the first really fits the system, on further reflection, but who knows. Anyway, let's hear some more! Unless this doesn't belong in this forum, or doesn't belong at all... I'm still pretty nervous about these things...

[Bailywolf]

actualy, the first would make a great episodic series... I mean the source material abounds.  You could run Buffy with almost untouched Sorcerer in about 5 minutes.  

Buffy
Stamina 6
Will 3
Lore 1

Demon (paasite):  The Primal Slayer (vitality, Speed, Boost ect)






How easy is this?

[Mike Holmes]

actualy, the first would make a great episodic series... I mean the source material abounds.  You could run Buffy with almost untouched Sorcerer in about 5 minutes.  

Buffy
Stamina 6
Will 3
Lore 1

Demon (paasite):  The Primal Slayer (vitality, Speed, Boost ect)

Hmmm, take another five minutes.

What's her demon's need? Desire? Not to slay vampires. In fact slaying is usually just something that happens accidental to the plot. I can't think of anything that she needs which if not recieved would result in loss of her powers. Desire is obvious, though, for relationships, especially with vampires. ;-)

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

(sharp tones) Hey!

The high-school Buffy Sorcerer thing has been done to death on this forum before, and it moved into Actual Play with Josh's Hellfire game. I'm really, profoundly, totally uninterested in doing that all over again.

Henry's question is a good one. If people want to respond with "what I thought to play on my first reading," well and good. I'm interested. So far, no one has.

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

Actually, that is a good question. When I first read Sorcerer, I think the first idea that popped into my head was much more surreal & subtle than Hellfire. Demons were shadowy figures rarely seen, and sorcery rituals involved lots of weird lighting & odd camera angles. Humanity was actually a lot like Hellfire, in that it represented empathy & human understanding, but sorcery meant you had to violate that in much more direct and unsettling ways than what I'm doing in Hellfire (where the sorcery is pretty standard "draw a chalk circle & speak in Sumerian" stuff). Nothing particularly "out there", really. Your basic Twin Peaks meets The X-Files kind of thing.

[J B Bell]

My first couple thoughts, well, I'm not gonna share 'em.  But my third thought was "Mage done right," or rather "my magic system done right."  (I came up with the system before Mage was published; I assumed I'd steal from Mage, but aside from the use of the word "Gnosis" (which came from my own study and is incidentally repeated in Werewolf), it bears little resemblance to any WW property.

In spite of the amazingly inspired ways that have been shown to get Sorcerer to handle almost anything, I eventually decided that my game isn't really about Humanity.  It ran quite well under FUDGE in an Illusionistic sort of way, but it's still waiting for a heart, methinks.  Meantime it makes a decently clever magic system for FUDGE.  However, I do owe Ron and the Forge for strongly clarifying my thinking, which previously had been badly muddled by attempting to create a "realistic" magic system.  (I was a Chaos Mage, I was in the Ordo Templi Orientis, I still have a big rack of occult books; and well, all that stuff was fun and interesting, but it's more sanity-threatening trying to create a "realistic magic system" than commanding the forces of Hell, if you ask me.)

"I read the Necronomicon."

"OK.  You have some bad dreams."

"I summon Abraxas to eat my neighbor's head."

"Your neighbor gets a headache."

"I join in the terrible rites of the Hellfire Club."

"You get a venereal disease."

"I try to design a game that incorporates all known sources of magical theory into a cohesive unit with one simple resolution mechanic, preserving their unique traits that make them distinct from one another."

"You work at it for months, then years.  Your SAN drops perilously close to zero.  One day, just before publication, the Byakhee come and take you away, exposing you to the outer wastes of space, which are so beautiful, so beautiful . . . you are insane.  Then you eat vacuum.  You die."

--JB

[Ron Edwards]

Very nice, JB, and I really like it ....

But spill. What were the first two ideas? You're among friends here.

Best,
Ron

[Clay]

When I first read Sorcerer, the idea that I came up with was The Northern Forest.  Set the sorcerers loose in a black forest, grim's fairy tales type setting.  

We ran a few sessions, but it ultimately fizzled, primarily due to me having a schedule that was way too busy. Some discussion with the players afterward showed that I also didn't make proper use of their kickers--they lacked story involvement.  This was due partly to my own incomplete understanding of the concept at the time

[Henry Fitch]

I don't want to bring this up again, really, but just for the record, I didn't mean like buffy. Mine was more like... Delta Green with teenagers? Something like that.

[Bailywolf]

Sorry to offend or jump the gun... but I quite like Buffy (when I get the chance to watch it... not so often of late).  I must have missed the doing-to-death...but when you consider the number of posts I'm responsible for, I suppose there is no excuse.

Also, a specific apology to the Winged Howling one.  You have a good angle with that... and having all the character be under 18 makes for an added angle of horror- not only will no one believe your expereinces because they sound crazy, but no one will believe your experiences because teenagers are all "crazy drug and sex addled gang members with ADD and Dysfunctional Familias".  

"I swear to christ officer!  Cultists are responsible for the baby kidnappings!"

"Yeah right son... what have you been smoking?"

Set it in a small sleepy Southern town...one part FootLoose, one part  Twin Peaks one part  Cuthulu High.

The creepy shit that can go on in a small town is astounding... and if the Authorities are dedicated to keeping it quiet...


***Ron, please stop reading after this point...;) ***



As for Buffy's demon stuff how about...

Desire:  Action- yer basic surface urge to go out and slay.

Need: Loss- the inherent nihilistic nature of the Slayer (a force with no purpose other than destruction) is fueled and made stronger by personal tragedy.  Slayers are moody and often mercurial; they're friends and family frequently suffer the consequences.  The primal slayer feeds on tragedy, personal destruction, loss.  Slayers rarely live to reach 25.  Simply, a slayer's life sucks and keeps getting worse until ultimate nullity is reached- death.

[J B Bell]

Ron asks, what were my first two ideas?

Um, well, I forgot one.  I meant the "first two" notion to be a kind of shorthand, honestly, and didn't mean for it to be a tease.  

By way of penance, though, I do vaguely remember that I thought it would be fun to actually use the list of 72 Goetic demons from the Lesser Key of Solomon.  (Anybody else remember SPI's Demons?  Those guys had balls putting out that game in the heyday of "D&D makes kids into devil-worshippers!"  They even offered a free manuscript of the Lesser Key for sending in a SASE!  Brass fucking balls, man.)  These guys can tend to be a bit prosaic sometimes (tons of them "give Knowledge of the Arts & Sciences, and locate Hidden Treasures"), but could be spiced up with appropriate Desires & Needs.  A fine source would be Brin's little-known, um.  Crimony, hang on . . . oh, actually I think it's The Devil's Day by James Blish, cited right in Sorcerer.  Is that the one where the world ends and the final part of the novel is written (a bit gratuitously, IMO) in play form?  Anyway, that one.

All right, all right, that was incoherent.  I'll post my design in Indie Game Design, and then we can see if it works as a mini-supp and I'm just being cranky, or if it is its own critter.  (Or if doing it both ways might be fun.)

--JB

[Ron Edwards]

JB, are you referring to the Mayfair Games' "AD&D compatible" Demons boxed sets? Demons, and Demons II? Written by the ever-brilliant Mike Nystul? They're amazing.

Those are cited in Sorcerer too.

Best,
Ron

[Henry Fitch]

Heh.. anyone new to this thread, don't read this. Just post your ideas.

---

Now. My first inspiration for High School Conspiracy in general was listening to the long litany of "Students who normally ride bus 1114 will today ride bus 1113... Students who normally ride..." etc. Happens every day, sometimes up to 10 or 15 changes. They're obviously transmitting some kind of code. And think about how easy it would be to callously manipulate highschool students. Just as one example, we have something at my school called "code red" where everyone has to crowd into the corner of a classroom and lock the door, to defend against psycho shooters. Fire drills too, and that sort of thing. Move'em around at will, fake disasters easily, perfect for collecting sacrifices.

[J B Bell]

JB, are you referring to the Mayfair Games' "AD&D compatible" Demons boxed sets? Demons, and Demons II? Written by the ever-brilliant Mike Nystul? They're amazing.

Actually, no.  It was an SPI "microgame" (in a ziploc bag, god I miss those little games.  Remember when Star Fleet Battles was a little ziploc-bagged game?  And then Starfire?  And then they turned that into an 80-page-rulebook boxed edition?  Sheesh), alongside such greats as Death Maze and Intruder.  I never played it, and I suspect play was probably pretty weak anyway.  You had a conjuror, and you moved around on a hex map, getting treasure, impressing your patron royalty, messing up the other magicians' lives, and so on.  It had those die-cut counters with accurate sigils of the various demons.  I got the later boxed edition, and sold it at auction many years ago.

--JB

[Gordon C. Landis]

When I (recently) read Sorcerer & Soul (especially the Angel stuff, which for some reason blew the lid open on what a "demon" could be more than all the discussion here ever had), I thought "maybe I could do Keyes' "Newton's Canon" stuff with this", and "maybe I could do Brian Stablefords' "Werewolves of London" with this."  Then I started to wonder if I *liked* either one enough to actually do it . . .

I do not, as yet, have an answer.

Gordon