Good discussion about NaN (split)

[Plotin]

This is nog a strict reply to the opening of this post, and I also hope that you (Ron!) don't think I am neither hairsplitting nor nitpicking, bit this aspect of your answer intrigued me:

just say "no" to diversity. The need for "Seven worlds!" "Two dimensions!" "Four schools of magic!" is an artifact of gamer history, and it's a blight and a curse. Sorcerer works best when there's one fictional setting and one basic look-and-feel for sorcery.

I am thinking about your generic setting from the main rulebook - are the two schools of both Classicists and Ragicals not very different "schools" of sorcery, with cery different "flavours" to them? How does this compute with your answer to Krul's question? Just being curious and wanting to play your game the way it is intended to.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

That is a good question. The full answer is actually found in the first chapter of the supplement Sex & Sorcery.

Let's work with the information in the main book first. None of the approaches to sorcery (basically death, sex, madness) described in Chapter 7 of the main book are based on different metaphysics or any other setting elements, as in "types of magic" as usually construed in role-playing texts. Instead, they only reflect different ways that people in the setting have formalized sorcery according to their understanding and needs.

More profoundly, not only are not several ways sorcery works, there is no actual way that sorcery "works in the setting," in fact, it's fundamental to the concept of the game that there is no magic, and that demons do not exist. That's why Sorcerer is not about hidden secrets about the universe that only a few people know; it's about the few people who have defied the universe they live in. That's also why types and styles of sorcery, in a given setting, do not reflect setting but rather characters.

Now, when looking at the first chapter of Sex & Sorcery, you can find a lot of text which refers back to that same chapter 7 (in the main book), in which transgressions against sex, sanity, and death are interlinked on a diagram. All of them represent paths of insight through breaking accepted boundaries of behavior. For instance, transgressions against death are utilized as a path toward justice. But each path or approach is also capable of becoming "stuck" and each can also be confused or tainted with either of the other paths.

I first wrote that diagram long before Sorcerer was first made available in 1996, let's see ... back in 1994 and early 1995, when we were playing the game a lot. I wrote the diagram on a piece of scrap paper in a roadside restaurant in Florida, while eating lunch, because I was thinking about all the ways the player-characters were dealing with the concept of Humanity, and how they were clearly interlinked into one thing. That is, I was realizing that we only needed one definition of Humanity, not three or four, despite the radically different styles and approaches to sorcery represented by the characters.

I used that game as my model for Chapter 7 in the main book, and was able to revisit it and to present the diagram for the first time in Chapter 1 of Sex & Sorcery.

Best, Ron

[Plotin]

Hello Ron,

and thanks for the clarification. But first, please accept my apologies for the horrible spelling in my previous post; I was incredibly tired when I wrote it.

Let's work with the information in the main book first. None of the approaches to sorcery (basically death, sex, madness) described in Chapter 7 of the main book are based on different metaphysics or any other setting elements, as in "types of magic" as usually construed in role-playing texts. Instead, they only reflect different ways that people in the setting have formalized sorcery according to their understanding and needs.

More profoundly, not only are not several ways sorcery works, there is no actual way that sorcery "works in the setting," in fact, it's fundamental to the concept of the game that there is no magic, and that demons do not exist. That's why Sorcerer is not about hidden secrets about the universe that only a few people know; it's about the few people who have defied the universe they live in. That's also why types and styles of sorcery, in a given setting, do not reflect setting but rather characters.

Let me paraphrase this to see if I got your ideas right:

This might be different in other settings, but at least in the setting from the main rulebook, the core belief of real-world occultists holds true: Belief Defines Reality. The reason that Black Wheelers summon Objects and Parasites and Dark Ladies summon Passers and Possessors is really not a difference in their lore (though they might believe this themselves), it is due to the personalities of the sorcerers, their drives and wishes. They do not so much invoke the demons (from dimension X) as they evoke the demons. The demons could be termed externalisations of their psychological problems, some kind of poltergeist effect. This is also the reason why sorcerers are always rare and never integrated into society as an institution – they can't be, as they are basically disturbed individuals at odds with the world around them.

Sorcerers deal with demons – their own inner demons. That's also why those demons are not preexisting in some other dimension.

Hm. I think something clicked just now. Thanks!

Did I understand you correctly? And if I did, do these statements also hold true for &Sword?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Michael,

Actually, that's not correct. In Sorcerer, belief doesn't mean shit. Reality, whatever it may be, cares nothing for human belief. Such belief is limited to within the human experience and can only "talk to itself."

So where do demons come from? The answer is, they don't. There aren't demons. They don't exist. Reality doesn't permit demons to exist. Demons are not in the setting, not in another dimension, not in Hell, and not in any sort of alternate or even psychological space.

Demons don't exist.

So that means that not only do demons not exist, they aren't created either. You can't explain them as psi-manifestations or psychological effects on reality either, because all of that is just more "this is why they exist" explanations. You have to throw out any and all justification of demons' presence, at the level of understanding the setting.

That's what I mean by defying the universe to be a sorcerer. You don't just whip into existence some sort of "thing" which you happen to believe in. That's boring, just more magical thinking. Magical thinking is expressly stupid and meaningless in Sorcerer.

No, to get a demon and Bind it, in Sorcerer, means the character stepped fully outside any and all explanations of any kind. The character had to break the universe to do it. No one can explain it, most especially anything resembling "order" or "purpose" in the universe, if indeed there is such a thing, and equally, anything like "the power lies within you" as well.

Sorcerer settings are full of rationalizations of sorcery, but that's all Lore is. I want to emphasize that this sentence applies fully to faith-based and emotion-based explanations too.

Best, Ron

[Plotin]

I don't want to hijack this thread, but as the conversation is already underway....

So that means that not only do demons not exist, they aren't created either.

Okay, this is the ultimate in defiance. But one question springs to my mind that's so simple that I almost feel ashamed to ask it:

If demons do neither preexist nor are created, how do they effect anything (apart from the imagination)?

I mean, something that neither was nor comes into being simply does not exist. Believing in it and dealing with it is defiance, all right – a complete madman's utter defiance of reality, a defiance that, in itself, effects nothing but the defiant person.

Or am I to understand "do not exist and are not created" as hinting at a third option, something completely incompatible with reality and ungraspable by the mind? Is this simply a device to make demons utterly alien and completely ununderstandable at the core?

You see, the combination of your statements that

not only do demons not exist, they aren't created either,

and that

(r)eality doesn't permit demons to exist,

and that

to get a demon and Bind it, in Sorcerer, means the character stepped fully outside any and all explanations of any kind

does sound to me like another kind of rationalization, as if you said: "Demons don't exist in our reality and are not created  in it; instead, they are brought into existence from some other place by the ultimate act of defiance."

This would seem to me like some other "Dimension X" explanation; but maybe my mistake is trying to understand this as anything but a deliberately unsolvable paradox.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

It's OK to keep all of this in one thread for now. I might split it later, or not, either way is OK and not a problem.

I think you'll like this thread: Not-Here, Not-Here plus demons, and NaN, in which Jesse lays out his insights about this very issue. Please feel free to ask anything you'd like about it.

For purposes of respecting your post:

If demons do neither preexist nor are created, how do they effect anything (apart from the imagination)?

I mean, something that neither was nor comes into being simply does not exist. Believing in it and dealing with it is defiance, all right – a complete madman's utter defiance of reality, a defiance that, in itself, effects nothing but the defiant person.

Getting colder, getting colder ...

Or am I to understand "do not exist and are not created" as hinting at a third option, something completely incompatible with reality and ungraspable by the mind? Is this simply a device to make demons utterly alien and completely ununderstandable at the core?

Hot! Yes, it is a device toward that purpose, but it's an important device, much in the same way that the phrase "Once upon a time" is a device, or perhaps the phrase in modern film theater experience, "Feature presentation," is a device.

I am also keeping in mind your original question, concerning "types of sorcery" and whether that's an indicator of different metaphysics (i.e. core setting elements) in play. I am not sure whether that's been answered to your satisfaction, or whether the current demons-don't-exist topic is a necessary subroutine for that answer to be completed.

Best, Ron

[Plotin]

I am also keeping in mind your original question, concerning "types of sorcery" and whether that's an indicator of different metaphysics (i.e. core setting elements) in play. I am not sure whether that's been answered to your satisfaction, or whether the current demons-don't-exist topic is a necessary subroutine for that answer to be completed.

My original question has been answered to my complete satisfaction. I never cared about different schools of magic á la Rolemaster anyway - sorcery is sorcery, and everything else is stage dressing. I posed the question just because I felt your reply to Krul was not consistent with the main rulebook. My current concern is therefore not a subroutine but an independent and much more intriguing spawn of the original question.

The thread you pointed out was very helpful, thank you, especially because of its analogy with a mathematical impossibility. If nothing else, it at least opened my eyes in as far as that I have been bogged down by years and years of training in deductive Aristotelean logic. But instead of asking questions, let me paraphrase what I think Jesse's analogy says about demons and their non-existence, with my own interpretation added.

Though demons have Needs and Desires just like humans do, they are not humans. They have no Humanity. And they do not exist. No need to get philosophical or pseudo-scientifical abot their preexistence or inception, they simply do not exist. Period. The paradox of their non-existence and their Summoning etc is just a device to doom any attempt on part of the players to somehow assign demons their own cozy little niche of existence in Reality. It is this non-existence that irrevokably seperates demons and their Needs and Desires from the obviously existing humans with their needs and desires. The device of the non-existence creates a gulf between human and demon that can never be bridged. Demons don't exist, therefore a human can never have a proper relationship with a demon. Any relationship with it is a dysfunctional one.

And that's all there is about the entire does-not-exist thing.

Right?

[lumpley]

It seems to me that this is a big difference between fantasy fiction and horror fiction. You'd say of Underworld, for instance, that it's set in the real world except for vampires and werewolves exist. However, you'd never say of The Ring that it's set in the real world except for magic exists. The freaky stuff in the ring is transgressive, not (just) fantastical, if that makes sense.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I think that's a great personal paraphrase of the issue. You've rounded it out with emotional details ("and that's all there is to it," for instance), which is what any of us does with a personal paraphrase, and that's fine. As far as strict content goes, yes, we agree.

I would like some feedback about my answer to you about the different sorts (or rather, not-different sorts) of sorcery. You said my answer was "satisfactory," but I do not know whether that's because you see my point and agree with it, or because you see something that's not my point and agree with that, or because you disagree with my point but understand it, or because you think I'm full of shit, or anything else. Please let me know.

Hi Vincent! I can't speak to the horror/fantasy distinction because I think both terms have been co-opted by marketing, movie tie-ins, and the need for agents to sell books to distributors, as opposed to authors selling to readers. But in terms of content, without reference to labels, I do think the distinction you're making is valid.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

Thinking about Vincent's post about horror and fantasy,  I would like to ask you if demons don't exist in Sorcerer & Sword, too...

(because I have read at least a couple of supplements - Charnel Gods and Dictionary of Mu - where demons have a role in the setting, and I would like to know if they are exceptions, or this is a normal difference between playing Sorcerer and playing S&S))

[Plotin]

I would like some feedback about my answer to you about the different sorts (or rather, not-different sorts) of sorcery. You said my answer was "satisfactory," but I do not know whether that's because you see my point and agree with it, or because you see something that's not my point and agree with that, or because you disagree with my point but understand it, or because you think I'm full of shit, or anything else.

It was satisfactory as all that was really needed to make things fall into place was to remind me of the forgotten death-sex-madness diagram. As I understand it, the Black Wheelers, Dark Ladies and Psyche Junkies don't actually represent different schools of magic (though they do so in-game through the way they have ritualized and formalized their dealings with demons) but different kinds of transgressional human bevaviour. A Black Wheeler is different from a Psyche Junkie not because he has learned and is using a different kind of magic, but because he represents a different human archetype with fundamentally different issues and needs. The "schools" of sorcery from the main rulebook are not there to add flavour to the setting, they represent entirely different human approaches to sorcery and, much more fundamentally, to the riddle of human existence, to life itself.

Thank you for your very important clarification. Whenever I think I have finally "got" Sorcerer (as I do now) something else seems to crop up, showing me that I was on the wrong track.

I was about to pose the same question as Moreno, but then I reflected upon it and desisted as I thought that I was able to answer it for myself.

The demons-don't-exist thing is not to be taken too literally. In any game of Sorcerer and in any setting, they do obviously exist, as they are actually there. The nonexistence is just a device, an extremely powerful metaphorical way of saying: "Demons can never be understood and related to, whatever is assumed about demons is utlimately wrong."

It doesn't matter that Elric's people have been intimate with demons for over ten millennia, or that Xaltotun is the most powerful Sorcerer of the entire Hyborian Age, in their dealings with demons they can still not comfortably rely on their immense knowledge about demons. Because all of this knowledge is only assumptions, assumptions that are flawed from the outset, as demons do not exist.

[Plotin]

Another interpretation just came to my mind. It is possible to take does-not-exist literally anyway, if we simply accept the reality of something that's outside our empirical knowledge.

Many people believe in the existence of some kind of Almighty God. And yet this whole notion would basically break down if we simply ask the question "Can an almighty god create a stone that is so heavy that he is unable to lift it". The reason that this question is paradox and unsolvable lies with the properties of "almighty" – we simply do not know them. "Almighty" is completely outside our empirical knowledge, we can not concretely imagine what it is like to be almighty, and therefore we can not reflect upon it in any meaningful way.

Does this keep anybody from believing in an Almighty God?

We can view the statement "A demon is a thing that is there and does not exist" in a similar way. If we do not reject the notion of "almighty", we need also not reject this statement about demons. If we instead simply accept it  as a true statement about the nature of demons, we thereby immediately remove demons into the realm of the utterly unknowable, into the space of what is inaccessible for our empiric knowledge, thinking and unerstanding.

And "does-not-exist" can, in any setting, be taken as literally as "almighty".

A demon is a thing that is there and does not exist.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

All of my interest in the subject applies only to the process of role-playing in the Sorcerer sense, or loosely, Story Now - people in the act of creating fiction. As far as what the "here but doesn't exist" might mean or how it might pertain to real people's experience of life, real lives, actual existence, and anything like that, I don't know and don't care. I'm clarifying that because your last post, Michael, may have wandered off the reservation, so to speak.

Anyway, looking through the last few posts, I'm seeing all sorts of phrases and points which spawn conversations in group environments, which is fine, but I also think that pursuing them will result in more and more dense posting about less and less relevant stuff. I'm pretty sure that somewhere on the internet people are discussing NaN and God in the same posts, and probably it's better to take further concerns about it (or them) to those sites.

Here are a couple of things to wrap up about playing Sorcerer.

1. Regarding the original question about the types of sorcery in the core book (and in Sex & Sorcery), thanks! I appreciate that.

2. The issue of various Sorcerer settings in which demons do, in fact, seem to be "here."

Many of them are like that, actually, including my Demon Cops and the Azk'Arn setting in Sex & Sorcery. In my settings, though, if you hunt through them, you'll find phrases and points which always clarify that demons are not features of the landscape like cats and lampposts, but something other, even if the setting is already pretty damn "other." That concept is also upheld by Charnel Gods. (Electric Ghosts, Schism, and Urge are definitely more in the primal Sorcerer zone, in which demons are stylistically well-defined but otherwise inexplicable, particularly in terms of control.)

As for Hellbound, the same still holds, which gives the whole thing a certain disturbing fillip. Just because a demon appears in a fiery blaze and seems to be obsessed with the sorcerer's "soul," and just because it insists on speaking [pick Biblical-language-of-choice], and just because it has a tail with a little point on it, doesn't mean there's a Hell and God is in his Heaven and everything they told you in Sunday school is true (i.e. in the game-fiction). Not even if the character sees it with his or her own eyes. Not even if the demon believes it. Not even if Humanity is defined verbally as "soul." No one ever knows for sure.

I think that if you examine the source literature, whether horror-fantasy (e.g. a lot of Fritz Leiber), myth, or sword-and-sorcery, you'll also find that those stories do not support the notion that "magic works in this world," or "the gods exist!", in the same way that modern fantasy and role-playing games typically do. There are some fantastic magic-really-works books out there - the Earthsea trilogy is usually my touchpoint for enjoying and talking about it, for instance. But Sorcerer isn't based on that material at all.

3. Michael, one part of your post still seems a weeny bit schizophrenic to me:

The demons-don't-exist thing is not to be taken too literally. In any game of Sorcerer and in any setting, they do obviously exist, as they are actually there. The nonexistence is just a device, an extremely powerful metaphorical way of saying: "Demons can never be understood and related to, whatever is assumed about demons is utlimately wrong."

That's potentially off-track, as I see it - not totally, not "gotcha you're wrong," but potentially. There's a verbal difference between me saying "it's an important device," and you saying, "it's just a device." Let's try to erase that verbal difference. I didn't say "just," and I didn't dismiss the issue by using the term "device." The device is hugely important, in the sense that the device called a piston is hugely important to an engine.

The device says, "they are there (most importantly, the character has one), but they don't exist." Yes, the demon just ripped your enemy's guts out, yes, it just rebelled and ripped your friend's guts out. Yes, those are the guts strewn all over the place. The demon doesn't exist. It's here. It still doesn't exist. You (the character) brought it here or released it or whatever, and you committed to it. It doesn't exist, but it's here, and it gives great power and causes great trouble. You do exist and therefore its actions are your doing. How's your Humanity feeling?

So it's not "just" a device at all. It's core to the reward mechanic of the game (Humanity), which is core to the overall reward system (Kicker resolution and related decisions).

If you can stay with that dizzying and consequential paradox, and not slip into any kind of explanation such as "so! it's a manifestation of my psyche!" or "so! it's like God stuff!", then you're on the right track. I think you are, because of that great bit you wrote earlier about how that's why relationships with demons must be dysfunctional, which was 100% perfectly stated.

It doesn't matter that Elric's people have been intimate with demons for over ten millennia, or that Xaltotun is the most powerful Sorcerer of the entire Hyborian Age, in their dealings with demons they can still not comfortably rely on their immense knowledge about demons. Because all of this knowledge is only assumptions, assumptions that are flawed from the outset, as demons do not exist.

And that's right on the money.

Rather than thrash it out and hash it out with any number of agonized, semi-metaphysical posts, I'm pretty sure that I've managed to summarize what I do not mean and what I do mean concerning playing Sorcerer. I don't want to shut the conversation down, but let's be attentive to the points that (a) we're talking about creating fiction, not "how things are" in any larger philosophical sense; and (b) it's easy to get wrapped up in a verbal knot based strictly on linguistics.

Is there any chance that we can talk about this issue specifically in regard to actual play? I'd like that.

Best, Ron

[Plotin]

If my post seem a weeny bit schizophrenic, that's due to me twisting and jumping through some mental loops.

As far as what the "here but doesn't exist" might mean or how it might pertain to real people's experience of life, real lives, actual existence, and anything like that, I don't know and don't care. I'm clarifying that because your last post, Michael, may have wandered off the reservation, so to speak.

I had no intention to spin the conversation of into the realm of religion, and I did even less intend to hurt anybody's feelings be likening a real-world God with game-world demons – which in fact I did at no point. I merely pointed out, mainly to myself, but also to Moreno if that might be of any help, that there are certain unsolvable paradoxes in the real world, which we accept without a second thought, so why not also accept that there is a paradox at the core of a game? What I was realy thinking about with the analogy was how Immanuel Kant pointed out in his "Critique of Pure Reason" the insuffiency of the human mind in dealing with anything it has no empiric knowledge of. I simply resorted to the analogy with the stone as this is infinitely much easier to grasp than Kant's original thoughts and much quicker in the telling, too.

There's a verbal difference between me saying "it's an important device," and you saying, "it's just a device." Let's try to erase that verbal difference. I didn't say "just," and I didn't dismiss the issue by using the term "device." The device is hugely important, in the sense that the device called a piston is hugely important to an engine.

When I wrote "just" a device, I didn't mean this in any sense as dismissive. I realize that it is the "trick" that forever and irrevocably seperates demons from humans and that it is therefore of paramount importance to the entire game. But my use of the word "just" is of course misleading.

Rather than thrash it out and hash it out with any number of agonized, semi-metaphysical posts, I'm pretty sure that I've managed to summarize what I do not mean and what I do mean concerning playing Sorcerer. I don't want to shut the conversation down, but let's be attentive to the points that (a) we're talking about creating fiction, not "how things are" in any larger philosophical sense; and (b) it's easy to get wrapped up in a verbal knot based strictly on linguistics.

I am acutely aware that we are talking about fiction, not anything in the real world. But even a world of fiction has to adhere to some kind of interior logic, and if I can't follow this logic, I am intensely uncomfortable with the fiction. The does-not-exist thing is therefore to me much more than metaphysical semantics – without understanding this paradox, the setting would have disgusted me to no end. That's why I very much had to get to grips with this paradox of existing nonexistence. Previously, I was of course aware of the nonexistence from the rulebook, but I understood "demons do not exist" simply as "nobody believes in demons" – utterly wrong as I do know now.

Is there any chance that we can talk about this issue specifically in regard to actual play? I'd like that.

I would like that, too. But I would like it even better to finally get to play a game of Sorcerer, or at least any rpg, for that matter. I haven't played for some 20 months now, so I am afraid I can offer no example from actual play.

But I think I have got this whole thing now anyway: Demons don't exist, which means that they are antithetical to reality, but the characters are dealing with them. In dealing with something that is antithetical to reality, the characters don't also necessarily have a dysfunctional relationship with it, they also risk their grounding in reality, their Humanity. I hope that this is a way of saying it you can agree with.

Thank you for taking all of the time.