Humanity

[Heraclitus]

Hi Mike, Ron, Sean et. al.

I think Mike asks a good question here. He says

Let's say that I want to play in Calithena's world. I need to know what demons are, Humanity is, etc. What would you tell me? Or is this so personal that you can't recount it? Or just don't care to do so?

It's probably not fair or easy to ask Sean to answer this by himself. Though he is primarily responsible for developing Calithena's persona, I've been primarily responsible for developing the world she lives in. So it's likely I could provide a clearer answer to Mike's queries. That is, if I had read Sorcerer.

Given that I haven't I'm reluctant to weigh in on definitions of Humanity in the context of the milieu. I just don't have the context yet. As far as what demons are/might be, I can offer a few thoughts.

1) One thing they are are demons, in a kind of non-Christian sense. They are not forces opposed to 'good' nor even necessarily to life. Demons are productive. But they're alien and inimical to mortals, perhaps most because of their essential unknowability. They defy things like time, space and sanity. The closest world I can think of in terms of demon-vibes might be Tekumel. The Book of Ebon-Bindings has been a big influence. However demons are dwellers of another plane in any kind of traditional sense. They exist outside of boundaries, boundaries of knowledge, boundaries of sanity, geographic boundaries. This last is generally referred to by humans when they use conventional phrases like "the demons live in the Outer Dark, past Lakaloka, the mountains at the edge of the world."

2) Thinking of the baby as a demon seems right, in several senses. At the very least, it is something that is 'consuming' Calithena and radically remaking her life, for which she is both literally and figuratively sacrificing a portion of her substance for.

3) Serbinya may or may not a be a demon. Can't say without reading the rules

Mike also said: It may well work that you have some intuitive instinct that'll make it all work. OTOH, that's not how the game is run normally, and if I were Ron, I'd declare the warranty void for such a run. You might even get successful play. But it might not be Sorcerer play.

I can't help being reminded of the old EGG proscription here: If you make to many changes "you're not playing AD&D--you're playing something else!" That's always seemed absurd to me. Everyone tinkers--and worlds should drive games, not the other way around. The hope is to get a game that operates syncretically to help genrate the world, and the story. Sorcerer seems to be very inteested in this. And so am I.

Finally, to Ron, about the vision of a fully coperative gaming experience, that transcends the player-GM dichotomy: I think that has much to recommend it. The trick seems to be retaining mystery and chance. For me, both of these are essential parts of the player experience, pleasures I don't want to deny myself (when I am the player) or my players. That said, Sean's hunger for a more articulated kind of player agency--not just tactical but also narrative and meta-story, is, I think, both justified and advantageous.

We're just trying to figure out how to facilitate it. Basically, this is the early stages of an articulation about 'letting the player behind the curtain' (to use the Wizard of Oz metaphor) and have more time at the controls. But I'd like Sean to gain more 'myth' out of this too--not just be playing with the levers and knobs.

cheers,

del

[Calithena]

THERE you are! Where were you when I had Ron and Mike all interested in talking about this stuff?

Heh. If you decide to try to develop that 'Trumps' system there are a ton of people around here who will give you more feedback than you will know what to do with - assuming you have time, which, well, you don't, but I don't either, and look who's around here posting.

I'm going to try to run Sorcerer for Del and some others next month, so we'll have more comments then, once we've had a chance to work with the system in play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I split the above from Character conversion because I felt like it.

I'll be commenting more soon.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

This is going to generate a lot of feedback I think. But I think this is key:

Everyone tinkers--and worlds should drive games, not the other way around. The hope is to get a game that operates syncretically to help genrate the world, and the story. Sorcerer seems to be very inteested in this. And so am I.

Part of the theory that we debate around here says that one of the reasons that people tinker a lot is because the games they play don't work well for what they want to do as the games are written. With that in mind, games like Sorcerer, and other designs that we work with here try to combat that by providing at least one way that the game will work well and encoding that into the text, so that it doesn't have to be tinkered with.

Which is to say that you may or may not have success with Sorcerer if you tinker with it. But if you don't tinker with it, you'll play the game as intended, and it'll work well. The question is whether or not Sorcerer is really what you want to play.

If you're just looking to put demons and rules for sorcery on top of a world that already has it's own drive, then I think that Sorcerer won't work well for you. Because of its very specific design, this may well break the system. Note that Sorcerer was written to fit into any setting not because the setting is expected to drive Sorcerer, but because Sorcerer will drive most any setting (quite to the contrary of what you said). But to do that, you have to use it in the manner intended, meaning that you have to think in terms of Humanity first, not setting first.

What's interesting is that I think that you'd actually have a cool time with Sorcerer using your setting as the backdrop. But unless you're willing to try it that way, you'll never really know what the experience would be like.

Have you considered playing Sorcerer in another setting? Making one up for play? You might then get the idea of how it's supposed to run, and that might help inform you of how it might run in your setting.

Most of this theory begins with the essay entitled System Does Matter. You're statement that "Setting should drive the system" comes close to saying that system doesn't matter. In fact, given that you've changed systems more than once already, I'm guessing that you're somewhat on that bandwagon.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm not sure, Mike. You and Del might have gone off a road of discussion that really doesn't include Sorcerer at all.

In many games, changing (for instance) "what demons are" would constitute changing the game. Debates on whether to do that would then go straight where you and Del have gone - "is that really playing the game," and so on.

Remember, Del is mainly experienced with stuff like AD&D2 in which this kind of tweaking was not only necessary for play, but actually the yardstick by which a "good GM" was measured.

And he simply hasn't read Sorcerer yet. In this book, customizing what in other games would be "rules" is required at the outset. I think that this game simply requires such a different approach to what "is" the game itself, as well as enlisting more people than the GM into the process, that trying to get at any insight between the two of you at this point is pretty unlikely.

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

I will say, Del, that your description of demons is exactly what demons are in Sorcerer--even if they're "traditional Judeo-Christian" demons. When you say things like:

They defy things like time, space and sanity.

and

They exist outside of boundaries, boundaries of knowledge, boundaries of sanity, geographic boundaries.

--you're nailing demons in Sorcerer perfectly.

Also--

The hope is to get a game that operates syncretically to help genrate the world, and the story. Sorcerer seems to be very inteested in this.

Definitely.

[Calithena]

Actually, Del and I both were pretty up to date on stuff through Ars Magica and WFRP. Just when things were starting to get interesting, I realize now after having discovered the Forge, but anyway...

Del and I have been working out the Nar/Sim split in conversation - he still thinks of these things together in a lot of ways, as do many fantasists in gaming and literature, via the idea that the well-developed secondary world is a good way to create fantasy narrative. We'll see how he reacts to ideas around the Forge as he hangs out here or (more likely) he and I talk and I report on the results.

Getting back to the original issue, I'm story-driven here. I see some great opportunities for using Sorcerer mechanics to tell some stories about an old and familiar character and world. This will involve some things changing and some things staying the same in both. Maybe we'll like that, or maybe we'll change it again. In the meantime, I see a great opportunity for creating Theme-charged stories relating to Cal's current issues, introduced in play in other games, using the Sorcerer mechanics, and so we'll talk about that together, he and I. But first I have to get the books I bought for him into his hands

I might even hazard the claim in relation to all this that if you're really Nar-prioritized, issues like whether a world is or isn't a Sorcerer world maybe won't be the most important ones to you. The issue instead is whether the rules are a good enough to tell the kind of stories you're wanting to tell, before you get onto the next phase of your gaming life. Anyhoo, onward and forward...