I recently ran a one-shot of Inside, and the question came up: When your character is not Inside, are they a Sorcerer at all? The specific issue was whether or not one of the players could use the 'mastering themselves' roll if they were Outside.

My initial response was yes, because it's a core part of the Sorcerer combat system, which gets very harsh if you can't use that mechanic. But it struck m as odd that only Hackers can do this, since Hacking isn't supposed to grant any benefits that aren't Inside-related.

Now in a specifically Matrix-like setting, where being one of the few people who can get Outside (or cross the Inside/Outside barrier with relatively little difficulty) is special enough to warrant such benefits. But in a harsher, more Gibsonian setting, I'm not sure this should be the case?

Should there be a default? Or is this one of those purely setting-dependent tweaks?

I'd allow it, personally, with the rationale that the characters have the special sort of will that it takes to be a Sorcerer, so they should get the bonus. That is, I see the special ability as not at all supernatural, but based just on the same will that allows the sorcerer to break the laws of reality in another place in this case.

And that's just the in-game explanation. From a metagame POV, the idea is that in movies and such, the protagonists just do this quite a lot. That is, if you made a One page that had demons being completely just a mechanical construct, and not at all percieved as present in the game - completely allegorical - even then I'd allow the will roll to get your dice back. Think of it like the Fate Points in Top Secret, just there to reinforce that the protagonist is special.

Mike