High School Was Hell

[Bailywolf]

Has anyone toyed with running a High School sorcerer game?

You've got a huge pimple.

The girl you love doesn't even know you exist.

You have a biology test on monday.

And All The Forces of Darkness want to devour your soul.



High School Is Hell

[Ron Edwards]

I believe Clinton was the last one to bat that idea around, and Paul Czege before that (his was dark and twisted, big surprise). I like the idea, but have a hard time seeing how it could avoid being a Buffy-clone. That is to say, Buffy is really good, and it seems easy to "slide" into imitation.

Thoughts?

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

The first Sorcerer game I run will be a Buffy clone. But I'm really into that show right now.

Oh, & I won't set it in high school but in college.

I suppose one way to make it less Buffy-ish would be to make the demons much more subtle--no scaly monsters with horns & claws, but just psychedelic effects, strange whispers, & odd-looking people. That would make it less Buffy...but not any less Roswell or Smallville. If you set it at high school, it'll pretty much end up a WB show. That, or anime (if you go the other direction & pump up the fx to 11).

[jburneko]

It's funny this subject has come up.  I just finished reading a book titled "Ready, Okay" by Adam Cadre.  It's not supernatural or anything but if you're interested in a High School tale that centers around some heavy Humanity laddened issues, I'd take a look at it.  Very Funny, Very Dark and VERY far away from Buffy.

Just a suggestion.

Jesse

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

Go tonight to the video store and rent The Virgin Suicides, then come back to this thread. Don't read any further if you haven't seen it.

Back? Good.

This was an idea for a demo scenario that I never completely worked the bugs out of. I was planning on pre-generated characters.

With a title like The Virgin Suicides, you'd think the story was about the girls. But it's really not. It's about the group of boys who're enamored of them. The player characters are the boys, who're naive sorcerers, low Lore. The stiflingly controlling mother of the girls is a sorcerer with five gorgeous adolescent female demons bound to her, and rebelling, or so it seems. Trip Fontaine, a confident and handsome stoner, and sorcerer, arranges to take the oldest girl to the prom. My initial thought was to define Humanity as Purity/Virginity, but I think Purity/Innocence is probably more appropriate. So Trip Fontaine, sexually active since the summer before his freshman year of high school, popular with the ladies, who always has a little dope when you need some, is the archetype of Humanity loss. And the boys are the opposite of that, innocent, high Humanity sorcerers with object or parasite demons only.

The youngest of the girls has "committed suicide" prior to the beginning of the scenario, and Trip Fontaine has interpreted that as a slipping of the mother's hold on the demons. He witnessed something that clued him in, maybe the mother forcing the other "sisters" to create a fake dead body. And he's right about one thing, the mother's hold is definitely weakening. The mother isn't meeting its Need. So the situation for him is a big opportunity to bind one of these awesome, sexy demons. He's wrong about other stuff though. It's not five demons, but one demon with multiple Spawn. And he hasn't guessed the demon's Need right.

The other boys look up to him. He's helped them with Contacts and Binds for their demons. He's either an old enemy of the mother of the girls, or is callously advantaging himself of the growing sorcerous abilities of the boys, putting them in the position of destroying themselves trying to Bind powerful demons just so he can have a chance with the oldest one. But he'd never let that be known. When he offers them the chance to take these demons to the prom and bind one, it isn't because he needs them:

"Listen, if you're chicken, forget it. You know I could snap my fingers and get any of the guys to go. Steve has a better car than you do anyway. The only reason I asked you first is because I like you guys. Because we're cool."

Letting the idea play out through the rest of the events of the movie, Trip failed in his Bind attempt with the oldest "sister" on the football field after the prom because he incorrectly guessed her Need. He thought she Needed sex. He Contains her on the football field and negotiates the Binding. But it's her Desire that's sex. Her need is the Love of an Innocent. And that's why the mother is failing to meet the demon's Need. She was meeting it through the father, who's a rather clueless math teacher at the high school. But he's getting increasingly bizarre. He's becoming certifiable, standing inside the school talking to the plants outside through the glass, etc. His love isn't doing the trick and she's losing control.

But after the prom, the demon has completely rebelled, so the mother Contains it in its room.

All that stuff with the record player over the phone? Now that's how you bind a demon. And the scenes where you can see that the youngest daughter is still an eerie inhabitant of the neighborhood after her suicide? I wonder if the other four girls are really gone after their suicides at the end of the movie

Paul

[furashgf]

There's a limit to how much horror I want in my spare time hobby.  I made it through High School once and am not sure I could relive it succesfully in a Sorcerer game.  '-)