Game Prep

[Tor Erickson]

Hello,
 I've been re-reading the scenarios in Soul and have a question.  Given that character creation (including kicker, technicality, etc.) is an essential process not included in the scenarios (for obvious reasons), are the scenarios, as presented, sufficient to be run on their own? Or, to put it a different way, would any of you run the scenarios as presented without adding more background, extra detail etc.?  
 I mean, as it stands, Ron makes it look (deceptively?) easy to prepare a narrativist, humanity based scenario.  You make the map, you modify it to Sorcerer, you add some sketchy background (here I mean sketchy in the Edwardsian sense, not bad, just light).  
 Which makes me nervous because in preparing the game I'm about to run I'm sweating over how much work I should be doing.  Part of me just wants to try it doing the minimal prep described in the post above, and part of me gets all sweaty-palmed and scared when I consider running a game without massive background/NPC preparation.
 Signed,
  Sweaty-palmed and scared in Iowa

[Ron Edwards]

Tor,

As I've told others, prepping Sorcerer play is not a light matter. Most especially, the material presented in Soul is SUPPLEMENTAL rather than sufficient. The scenarios presented there are not, and cannot be, like a Call of Cthulhu scenario (which is a lot like an idling car, waiting to be driven). You do not "run" them. You may use them as material for YOUR game.

Always, to play Sorcerer, consider the Sorcerous Technicality, the Back-story, and possible Endings (or means of endings). The relationship map method in Soul is considered to be a "deepener" of the back-story element, largely based on Humanity. But the map is only a diagram to help keep things straight. You are supposed to have contributed a great deal of your own judgment and creative "self" into this historical, emotionally-intense soup, most especially into how you'd like to play the NPCs and their potential fates.

As if that weren't enough, you also need to integrate it - and this is crucial - with one or more of the player-character Kickers. I can't do that for you; you have to consider what you are being offered by your co-authors (the players) and treat it as a serious piece of material on a par with the above.

It seems to me as if you are right to be nervous about "running" one of the Soul scenarios "as written." That's because they aren't scenarios in the classic role-playing sense, at all. Unless you have done that work I've described, you have no scenario.

The work that this method SAVES you, and frankly makes for more fun play in general, is the laborious pre-planning of clues and forcing players to make certain decisions. It also allows the confrontations and climaxes of play to arise from player-characters' impacts on NPCs, rather than the GM's pre-play vision.

The GM prep level is still extremely demanding. It IS easy, though! Just demanding. To answer your question in full: no, do not treat the scenarios in Soul as "ready to run" engines of play. They are only back-story, and "to be tweaked" back-story at that.

Best,
Ron

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-09-24 12:23 ]