[Sorcerer] Charnel Gods - The Irthan Epoch

[Bret Gillan]

Ron,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions. I feel like I have a solid grasp of Sorcerer play using the concepts you've discussed. The only thing I'm slightly muddy on is, in assigning a number of opposition dice to Cliff or Erupting Volcano, how one uses the Opposition Dice chart in Sorcerer to do this, but I'm positive I've seen threads on this in your Adept Press so I'll browse them and the wiki. I'll have another Actual Play later this week.

And Eric, thank you as well.

-Bret

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Bret,

The only thing I'm slightly muddy on is, in assigning a number of opposition dice to Cliff or Erupting Volcano, how one uses the Opposition Dice chart in Sorcerer to do this

I don't blame you one bit for the muddiness. Here's a related point that I could not articulate ten years ago:

Introduce opposition from inanimate objects or conditions (when they "act" like characters), just as if you were introducing an NPC.

That wouldn't be so bad, right? Whether it's during prep or during play itself, let's say you have a need to introduce an NPC and assign him scores. How hard is that, in Sorcerer? As I see it, compared to most RPGs, not hard at all. Although not as bog-easy as in PTA or The Pool, granted.

So the score for the cliff (or "score," as it has no name except "cliff") is just the same. If that chauffeur ought to have a Will of 4, and that's not hard to arrive at, then the cliff has a score of whatever (let's say 3), and that shouldn't be hard either - because the logic and aesthetics of picking either one are exactly the same.

Again, the above point applies when (a) doing this before play in your prep notes or (b) during play because the need arises then and there.

The chart in Sorcerer should be a pretty good guide, once you get the basic idea down. Since we're talking about "inconvenience"  or even danger to the character, you can think about how hard (oppositional) this situation is for them and use the chart's recommendations. But I freely cop to the fact that all the text about "difficulty" is misleading if you're looking for Forge-style talk about conflict resolution.

Best, Ron

P.S. For folks who don't know, the Sorcerer text was primarily written during 1996, for its first release in the fall of that year. It was refined via more playtesting for the PDF version in 1998. The book version's rules are further refined and finalized (having needed no revisions since), but much of the explanatory text is best understood as "Ron's mind struggles with dark and awful things, only partly successfully forcing them to obey Euclidean geometry."

[greyorm]

Use such Stakes in their designated fashion for the games they work well in, based on many other design factors - but don't think you're dealing with anything more applicable than that.

Ron, might defining the Stakes in Sorcerer (and games similar to it) be described as the answer to the question "What is the conflict of interest?" rather than the answer to "What do I want to do?"