Kickers, Storylines and Character Improvement

[jburneko]

I realize that character improvement isn't as central to Sorcerer as it is to other games but I was wondering if I could have clearification on what little there is.

It says that you may make improvement rolls at the end of a storyline (not necessarily every session) and that should you ever resolve your kicker then you should rewrite the character.  Okay I'm fine with this but...

My understanding is that the ideal method of play is that either the GM has a back-story into which the players hook suitable kickers or the players write their kickers and from that the GM derives a suitable and interesting back-story.

Since kickers are intrinsically (theoretically) linked to the storyline at hand then it seems like you could never complete a storyline without also resolving the kickers.  Thus the improvement roll mechanic never gets used because you're always rewriting the kickers at the end of a storyline.

Just Curious.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse,

As it turns out, there are two things that prevent the problem you anticipate.

1) Improvement rolls may certainly be more common than re-writing. There's no reason you CANNOT have improvement rolls at the end of each session, if you want, or perhaps at suitable story-break points between blocks of two or three sessions each. How you pace these is totally up to the play group.

2) Re-writing usually does not change the numerical scores. Re-writing means (a) changing any descriptors as appropriate, (b) perhaps doing some off-camera demonic re-arrangement, and (c) coming up with a new Kicker. I can't remember, off-hand, whether the text is clear about this point, so I apologize if it's not.

Best,
Ron