epic sorcery (long & rambling)

[joshua neff]

I was in Borders the other day, & I found myself, as I often do, flipping through the Doctor Who novels. Doctor Who is one of my all-time favorite shows, & I love the novels--not the writing (I haven't read one in years, after being sorely disappointed with what was coming out) but the covers, which are these bright & eerie pieces of pop art. I was looking at one, & the story involved a Tolkien-like writer who wrote an epic fantasy novel called "The True History of the Planets" (or something like that). To me, the title suggested some weird space opera or a baroque conspiracy theory book. But in the DW novel it was a Lord of the Rings-esque fantasy with elves & swords & magic. There was something about the juxtaposition of my expectations & the actual (fake) epic that sparked my imagination in a big, big way. I started getting ideas for an epic RPG narrative called "The True History of the Planets" that would hint at space opera-y stuff (the stars, other planets, other galaxies, time travel, alien races, whizbang action) but would be set firmly on Earth, either in the past or the present (or maybe both) & would involve magic, faeries, ghosts, monsters, secret societies, & occult conspiracies. In my head I saw a golden age comic book of Lord of the Rings if Tolkien had done loads of shrooms & read Borges & Philip K. Dick. Or a gonzo pulp fantasy done by Charles deLint, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Angela Carter, Daniel Manus Pinkwater, Joss Whedon, Robert Anton Wilson, Umberto Eco, Brian Froud, & Tony Diterlizzi. Or maybe it would be Tim Burton doing the Illuminatus trilogy in stop-motion animation. Somewhere in my brainstorming the title got shortened to the shorter, zippier "Planet Zero".

Well, this led me to wonder what RPG system to use. The first thing to come to mind was Changeling--it's got modern-day faeries, magic, lunatics, dreams. That would be perfect, right? But then I read Jesse Burneko's excellent pegging of the Storyteller system (which you can find here: http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1989). He's right, Storyteller has no pizzaz, it's got nothing to support protagonism of the PCs, it's got nothing that makes me really want to run it. So I thought about adapting Adventure (the one White Wolf game I like, precisely because it's got zing to it) or Over the Edge.

And then it hit me--Sorcerer.

So, here's the set-up so far. Sorcerers & demons alike work to keep sorcery secret, because if everyone knew about it, sorcerers & demons would be exploited or hunted (with witch burnings & demon Banishings). In fact, there may be a secret society/subculture devoted to Banishing demons. "Demons" in this setting are faeries, ghosts, mythical beasts, & monsters. I'd use the Sorcerer & Sword rules for Immanents & Pacts. I want the sorcery, even in the modern world, to have the feel--the weirdness, the creepiness, the hint of an age disappearing--of sorcery in Sword & Sorcery fiction--Pulp surrealism. Humanity would be sanity--drop to zero & you lose the ability to interact with the common person, to participate in the collective reality construct. (Although take a look at all the "sane" people, who live lives devoid of magic & wonder & mystery. Look at those people who work to wipe out demons & sorcerers. Maybe sanity ain't all that great after all.) Also, demons frequently make oblique references to some sort of elaborate & baroque cosmology, & a war going on for the fate of the various planets/realms/dimensions/planes of existence. Are they telling the truth? Who knows. But they seem to think what they do has an impact on some greater conflict, & they'll push their sorcerers to act on this. Regardless, the narrative would be set in one small corner of the world--the backdrop would be epic, but the immediate setting would be local & personal.

I'm not sure about the title. "Planet Zero" has a nice B-grade SF comic book sound to it which I'm partial to. But "The True History of the Planets" has a good scholarly fantasy epic ring to it. And I may even run it as Sorcerer & Sword, for that "fantasy epic set in the vague prehistory of our world"  riff. Or maybe, someday, I'll end up running both.

So...thoughts?

[Uncle Dark]

What first strikes me is that you could haul the planetary references back in with the astrological attributions of the planets, either overtly (with the boggles and bugaboos referenceing them) or covertly, as themes.

BTW, have you (or anyone else) read Alan Moore's Promethea?

Lon

[joshua neff]

Lon--

That's exactly what I was thinking of, in terms of bringing the "spaciness" of space opera into the game.

And I really like Promethea. Good stuff. It's definitely an influence on this.

On the way home from work tonight I had a thought: what this would be is not Space Opera, not Soap Opera, but...Sorcery Opera. That combination of the grand & epic with the personal & immediate.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Josh,

You might consider making Humanity a continuum between Truthfulness and Deception.

Paul

[joshua neff]

Paul--

Could you expand on that? What would happen when a character hits zero Humanity?

[Paul Czege]

Hmm...they believe their own lies?

[joshua neff]

I don't know. Sounds a bit too subtle for Sorcery Opera. When Humanity hits zero, it needs to be big & obvious. Psychotics stumbling around the streets of New York, LA, London, Paris, Tokyo, who know to keep their demons a secret from the forces that would seek to destroy them, but beyond that their whole worldview is completely screwy (compared to most of us).

[Bailywolf]

What are the demons?  Alien space-creatures summoned down with arcano-mathmatical equations from the planets themselves?  Cuthulu's ugly little runts half folded up in knotted spacetime?  Ghosts of dead humans drawn by the metaphysical pull of their ascendant astrological planet then twisted by dark forces which swirl in the ether between worlds?  Fragments of the mind drawn out with astrological association and given flesh through sacrifice of blood over meteor rock?

How is Sorcerery preformed?  Huge building sized calcualtion engines churning out the mathmatical true names for eldrich horrors?  Biogenicly grown host bodies connected to radio-scope recievers which draw alien souls to inhabit them?  Arcane plotting of planatery alignments so as to locate natural dimensional rifts?

How does the nature of the demonic (1) tempt people to use it (2) offer more power than possible through mundane means (3) erode humanity?



Why is sorcery kept secret?  What precisly about it will cause the population to rise up enmass and banish/burn?  On the surface, a Sorcerer is just a guy with intresting friends and pets...unless he does something horrible with them.  In the default Sorcerer there is a vague general rule of secrecy...the Demons like to keep a low profile (for some reason).  How come?  People love to air their personal sins openly- many of which would have gotten you burned or stoned in an earlier age.  Why is being a sorcerer so much worse than being a "Prostitue and Loving It- on the next Jerry Springer"?

[Uncle Dark]

Perhaps 0 Humanity could represent an obsession with one of the planetary themes, to the almost total exclusion of any other areas of life?

Lon

[joshua neff]

BW--

"What are the demons?"--Yes. All of those.* At least, that's what they'll seem like. I'm loathe to nail down exactly what demons are before play, especially just me here by my l'il lonesome, with no Player input. I'd rather leave things somewhat vague, with a "this is what it looks like" & let things get filled in through play, rather than detailing everything out as some rich setting that the Players have to fit into somehow.

"How does sorcery work?"--I quite like the "Arcane plotting of planetary alignments so as to locate natural dimensional rifts". Stuff that bends your sanity. Puzzles, enigmas, conundrums, paradoxes. Non-Euclidean geometry, nonsensical language, obscure astrology...yeah, good stuff.

"Why is sorcery kept secret?"--Well, like I said, there are people (possibly secret groups) working to exploit sorcerers & demons, not willing to risk their own sanity but quite willing to risk others' to get what they want. And there are other folks who just want to banish all the demons & kill all the sorcerers. This stuff isn't just "kinda kinky", it's a direct assault on consensual reality & mainstream society. You're not marrying your cousin, you're dealing with hobgoblins & the ghost of your great-grandfather. (It's one thing for John Edwards--hey, that sounds kind of like "Ron Edwards"...coincidence?--to speak to the dead. It's another thing to summon them up & have them help you blackmail your business partner.) Plus, the demons push the sorcerers to keep it all secret--"It's all part of the Great War. If this planet falls, the whole 5th Sector will fall. And you don't want that to happen, trust me. If the Purple Empress gets control of this Intersection, bad things are gonna happen."

Edited in later: * Demons are all those things you said, plus, as I said in the first post, faeries, monsters, mythical beasts, etc. I'd lean closer to the more "traditional" faeries & such, but if a Player wanted to Summon some Lovecraftian weirdie, that would be cool, too.

[joshua neff]

Lon--

I'd rather leave the actual details of what happens when you hit Humanity 0 (beyond the vague "You go nuts") up in the air. But I love the idea of sorcerers getting obsessed with planetary symbology & associations. There would definitely need to be at least an NPC or two who are like that. ("Hm, hm. Yes. Mars is definitely ascendant right now. Can see it in the signs. Yes. War broke out yesterday in the Middle East. Yes, hm, definitely Mars.")

[Bailywolf]

I'm going to riff a bit...your ideas got my mind ticking over...


What if your decaying humanity is actualy the veils being torn away?  You begin to see the god awful truth behind all the mystic symbolism and goblygook "magic"- truths so self-anihilating they can't even be communicated, only experienced.  Demons are just be most bare and vulgar surface ripple of the krakens moving just beneath the surface of reality, picking at the tender underbelly of our world with barbed tenticles of abstract mathmatics.  

Project Sooth- a multinational black bag operation- actively hunts so called "Rogue Thaumapathic Agents" so as to study their paramathmatical insights (read: to lock them naked in glaringly white cells, implant electroes in their brains, and force them to sommon demons with measured doses of direct neural stimulation of pleasure- or pain- centers of the brain).

The Doomsday Book- an apocalyptic cult who records the names of all known sorcerers and seeks to enlis their aid in bringing about The Final Alignment.

Shiver Network- A loose association of sorcerers who watch out for each other, deal with out of control demons, and engage in blatant rumor-mongering; if it's known somewhere, it's in the Network...but trying to seperate the diamonds from the pig shit is nigh impossible.  

Regulators-  they Arn't From Here.  When sorcery gets out of hand, they descend in their amorphous vessels and lay waste to everything- the Big Stick that keeps everyone in line.

The Beast- created to manage the finances of the EU in 1996, The Beast has grown in power and reach.  No computer system connected to the Internet escapes access by The Beast.  It lives in the gaps between neural firings, it breaths in data and exhales disinformation, it contacts and binds entire nations with rituals of finances and politics.  It is sorcerer and demon and god.

[joshua neff]

BW--

Good stuff.

One thing I want to keep constant & consistent in the setting & game is that while it appears that there's this huge, epic occult conspiracy going on, & demons keep talking about some massive cosmic war that Earth is a major battlefield for--all of that may just be a lot of bosh. The demons may just be fucking with us, the sorcerers who talk about secret societies & covert organizations may just be bonkers.

I also want to avoid too much of "everybody's in on the secret conspiracy" with huge groups with lots of members who have regular meetings to discuss the hidden fate of the world. Most of the "secret societies" will be a couple of guys living in a basement apartment, printing their newsletter (which nobody reads) on an old Mac. The government agent actively pursuing the PCs? He's working alone, cos if you walk up to your supervisor & say, "Hey, sorcerers exist & we need to co-opt them for our own plans", they don't stick you in the basement with Fox Mulder, they can your ass.

In fact, in my mind, the whole "True History of the Planets" is just a pulp novel written by a schizophrenic Oxford grad student, & the PCs are just characters in the rambling novel.

But I LOVE the Shiver Network & the Doomsday Book.

[Bailywolf]

What if "The True History of the Planets" IS a pulp novel in the game...that a core group of potential nutters have taken as divine scripture...they study its every passage, every nuance.  They make it their necronomican bible.  A cult of loonies firing off emails about the deep insights coded into a bad pulp scifi novel.

[Clay]

Baily,

I think that you just gave me my daily hallcinogen dose, and no flashbacks to boot.  That's a heck of a Sorcerer setting you just dropped on us.  Think I'm gonna go drink some malted beverage or other now.