demon cops!

[joshua neff]

As a reference for "The True History of the Planets", I bought Demon Cops. I wanted to see Ron's "anime Sorcerer", as a comparison & inspiration for my own "Sorcery Opera".

Damn. I really wish I'd bought it before I'd started running "Hellfire". There are some really good ideas on running a gaming session as if it were a cop show, in terms of pacing & releasing of information. There are also some great ideas & tips for using anime imagery & mood. But what I really like about the tips is that they're directed at the whole gaming group, not just the GM. It further expands on the idea that the gaming group as a whole are creating the story, not the GM as "storyteller" showing off how good s/he is at creating cool imagery & nifty plots.

That stuff would've been invaluable for "Hellfire". And if I ever run it again (either with the same Players, as a "second season", or with a different group), I'll be using that stuff from Demon Cops.

I'm also tempted to run Demon Cops itself. I like the setting, I like the anime style of it all. (Well, not completely "anime"--Ron also makes frequent references to one of my all-time favorite cartoons, Batman. It's really good stuff.

So, now I'm thinking more about "Sorcery Opera"--how to run it, what kinds of rules adjustments to make.

Anyway, has anyone else read Demon Cops? Or if Mario's around--you've played both Demon Cops & "regular" Sorcerer, right? (And has Dav, too?) I'd love to hear what it's like to play both.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Anyway, has anyone else read Demon Cops? Or if Mario's around--you've played both Demon Cops & "regular" Sorcerer, right? (And has Dav, too?) I'd love to hear what it's like to play both.

Demon Cops is great. And unlike BESM (aka GURPS: Anime), it's really a game that dives whole-hog into the high-kinetic, high-weirdness, high-budget flair of the movies it references. It's been awhile since I looked it over, but I do remember that I was impressed. It's not a game where a pat system is used to generate pastiche...it's really a game where the players are creating their own original anime series, in the style of Wicked City, et al.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I love Demon Cops. It was an entirely successful play experience, for me, and I think the mini-supplement is exactly what I would give as an example to anyone who says, "But what do I do?" regarding Sorcerer. "Here," I say. "Do this, if you want, or make something that's structurally just like it." It's low-to-absent on tweaked rules and high on plain old application of the existing rules. It even has a one-sheet.

Perhaps one thing we should emphasize more in the discussion of playing Sorcerer is how important it is to sit down and work out a distinct, limited set of descriptors for the scores. After Humanity and sorcery/demons, that's one of the primary design/application features of a given Sorcerer setting.

Best,
Ron

[Bailywolf]

You want to see the BEST bar none Sorcerer Cop reference?  Check out the FX network on Tuesdays and catch an episode of The Shield.  This is one of the best damned shows I've ever seen...they make demon deals all the time, but the show is entirely mundane.  If you haven't watched an episode of this yet, please do yourself a good turn and check it out.

I had an idea for a revolving-cast episodic Sorcerer.  Astral Talents, the occult temp service.  Each player contributes some character to a pool of talent (three to five sorcerers and their demons per player) and each episode an assignment comes down the pipe...so a team is assembled from this talent pool on a session by session basis...one night you play Jane Sky the 8 year old reincarnated buddivista mystic...then next you play Marco Agono sorcerer hit man.  Gradualy, extremely complex relationship maps form from this pool of 15+ characters.

I'm flat in love with Joshua's TV-mode episodic campaign scheme.  My players (even the diehard D&Ders dig it too- each session gives them a sense of having completed something).

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

One thing that got left out of Demon Cops is the relationship map for the scenario at the end. I just re-drew it, and it should be available at the site next week (along with the one for the third scenario in The Sorcerer's Soul).

One of the things that I really liked about Demon Cops is that I never felt the need for the stories or prep to be villain-driven. I would make a relationship map, and yes, there would be people on there who (a) had committed a crime, (b) were real scuzzfucks, or (c) both, but no one was tagged as the Bad Guy, who Must Be Stopped. None of the scenarios actually threatened the city, for example.

In play, the players would learn more and more about the hassles and relationships and crimes of the scenario - but they were the ones who laid down moral judgment and then had to modulate that through the idiom of playing law-enforcement characters.

I liked it. I actually miss it a lot, and yesterday I surprised myself by sketching out another relationship map or two that would just perfect for this setting ...

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

What do you mean you miss it Ron?  Has it gone somewhere?  Is it a dead game now that you can't play any more because there won't be any more supplements for it?

heh, heh <cackling evily>

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

"That's funny," Ralph said, poking again. "This button doesn't work!"

Best,
Ron