I think Sorcerer is a very interesting game for many reasons. I am not a One-true-way'er when it comes to roleplaying, though I definitely believe that system matters. Sorcerer is a game that seems to find its players as much as they find it. People looking for 300 pages of rules can tell just by looking at it that they have not found what they want. The same is true for people looking for 300 pages of background and story material. In a way, it seems like the game "protects" itself from players who wouldn't really appreciate it. And I think Sorcerer has really grown since its inception.

While all that is well and good, I think that Sorcerer has a wide potential audience who have never experienced all it offers. I think roleplaying lends itself naturally to being spread about in a sort of missionary fashion, and passionate gamers really want to share the games they love (and sometimes cram them down your throat). What do you do, if anything, to promote the game and help it thrive? I wonder what Ron would like us to do?

I know I have bought copies for people I thought would like it, and a few for people I thought might not! I have considered offering free demos of the game at a FLGS, but that got a lukewarm reception at said FLGS. I wnat to keep the game going strong, as much for selfish enjoyment as anything else, and I wonder if any of you had luck growing the game where you live.

I have debated with some whether or not promoting the game would dilute its intensity. They point to commercialization of D&D and White Wolf as evidence that a game too widely promoted will be robbed of what made it special in the first place. Imagine, they say, how special Starbucks was when it was just one place, and look at it now!

In response, I say I am not sure sorcerer is the type of game that can even allow that to happen. It has creator control, and the game does not really lend itself to commercialization. That tends to occur more with Gamist and Simulationist games than Narrativist. I do not believe that the game will be damaged by encouraging others to try it. And sorcerer lends itself well to so many possibilities, the game would have to be
GURPS-esque to even begin to test its limits. What are your 2 cents?

Thanks

-Angelo

Play.

Play hard.

Play loud.

I can not tell if that is more Zen or Nike!

-Angelo

Paka wrote: Play.

Play hard.

Play loud.

I know, I have read most Paka's threads on RPG.net. I thought it was great answer.

I write three paragraphs, he answers in three lines.

I just see myself getting this answer in a bamboo forest at the foot of a mountain in Japan.

-Angelo

Besides, I stole Paka's entire gun-fu campaign idea, little plagiarizer that I am.

-Angelo

Hello,

What a nice thread topic. Here's my wish-list for people who'd like to promote Sorcerer.

1. Play it. Let the people in the game touch and use the book(s). Loan them, open them, read from them.

2. Refer to the books when you use something that you learned from them or value in them. "Learned that in The Sorcerer's Soul," e.g., when you're playing something else. Honesty is all you need, no point in interjecting false references.

3. Post about playing, here or at RPG.net. Post a review at a public site, or at your website. Ask questions, or help answer them.

4. Congratulate your retailer on carrying the game, or if it disappears off the shelves, suggest that he re-order it. If one of your friends buys the game from the store, point that out to the retailer - "Look, it sold again. Funny, it just keeps going."

Sorcerer has a remarkable sell rate in terms of the long haul, but it doesn't grab the retailer's eye because they tend to think in one-month or six-week terms, focusing on market share within that short period.

5. Keep an eye out for people who kind of like role-playing, but haven't necessarily enjoyed it immensely. Spouses and romantic partners of avid gamers are perfect; so are people who played a little back in high school but didn't get into gamer culture. There are a lot of these people around, far more than most role-players think. Loan them a copy of the game to paw through.

6. Buy Raven's t-shirt from Cafe Press and wear it.

7. When concepts in the books are relevant to an on-line discussion somewhere, articulate them and reference them. No need to divert the topic to a Sorcerer thing, but cite where the idea comes from and apply to the topic that the other people are interested in.

8. Get interested in others' games. Talk about their experiences, ask questions, and learn who people are as practitioners. Expand the social horizons within the role-player culture you're part of.

Those are what come to mind first, anyway.

Best,
Ron

Ron's not going to like this, but I think the best thing for Sorcerer is a new edition.

I don't imagine I was the crowd he was preaching when he wrote it, but I really think that Sorcerer has a lot to offer people and that the game has transformed over time and through the various supplements that it really is time to revisit the material.

I bought Sorcerer half off at Wizards of the Coast when it went out of sale, and I breezed through it real quick and thought: I don't think I'll use this. I didn't get the concept at first, I suppose I was looking for some new fangled mechanics or some awesome setting material. So I took it back (I later repurchased it...)

Happened to buy Sorcerer and Sword since it was really cheap at Spitalfields Market and I read it. And as the months went by it started to grow on me. There is some stuff in that book that should be in the main rulebook. Same with relationship maps. The game itself has changed, and I find stuff written in the rulebook to be contradicted by the popular wisdom of today.

I've introduced at least six new gamers to Sorcerer, and none of them probably would have ever touched the game if I hadn't gotten them into it. If Sorcerer wants to reach out and share its techniques and concepts with those least familiar with its ideas, it needs to shift focus and draw them in.

--Garett

Old_Scratch wrote: Ron's not going to like this, but I think the best thing for Sorcerer is a new edition.

I think the slim, elegant books works as it is, but I'd love to see a Sorcerer's companion -- a book which, rather than trying to extend the rules in new and exciting ways as the supplements do, goes back and fills in the rules with lots of meaty examples and sample material.

Paka wrote:

Old_Scratch wrote: Ron's not going to like this, but I think the best thing for Sorcerer is a new edition.

If you were given a copy of D&D's text would you want to play it?

Or

Would you play it after seeing a game or hearing other people talk about their games and getting into a game?

I'm not sure a new edition is where its at.

Hi folks,

I'll say it again: that any percentage of "gamerdom" likes the book at all is gravy. That was never my design goal or intended audience, and it still isn't. You guys are the exception because you've made the effort to get closer, here in this forum. That's worth my time; the other folks ... well, they aren't.

I'm after people who want to role-play Narrativist and who can't see how to do it in the context of gamer culture and existing rules-sets. Most of those folks read the book with no trouble at all; these are the folks who send me enthusiastic emails but never participate here or at RPG.net. Why should they? They're just playing.

If I were to reach out to gamerdom assembled and try to push Narrativist play at them, I wouldn't use Sorcerer. Nor would I use Trollbabe, or my currently fast-developing Zero at the Bone. Hell, I don't think I'd be able to write that game.

Nah. You need someone else. I'm too underground, too rude, and too dope-slap oriented. It still astounds me that the game has any attractive value to anyone who's fairly well-entrenched in gamer culture. Why or how that is, is beyond me. I wouldn't even know what aspects of the current book to preserve and emphasize.

Best,
Ron

Part of the reason that entrenched gamers respond to Sorcerer is White Wolf. The World of Darkness games made those hungry for a "story first" Narrativist game ravenous for one.

Add to this groups that are mixed entrenched gamers and creative types and Sorcerer had a base among those you seem to expect it to not have a base among.

Then again those are both just-so stories, which are pretty much bunk. Popularity and movements are complex things and trying to chase them instead of quality and devotion to product is a fool's game. Why do entrenched gamers like Sorcerer? Because it is good. Why are you surprised that entrenched gamers like Sorcerer? Because your just-so stories give you a distorted perspective on gamers. Why is this post sort of rambling? Because it is two in the morning.

Hello Tim,

There's no current controversy over why it turned out that many entrenched gamers turned out to want something like Sorcerer.

My point is twofold:

1. Ten years ago, they were economically and culturally invisible. I thought I was all alone, with maybe a few other wandering souls out there.

2. Then and now, I am entirely unsympathetic to those folks who might kind of sort of be interested in Sorcerer if only I were to cater to their misconceptions and confusions a little, tiny bit more.

The core audience exists, and I usually only hear from those folks through isolated emails of praise or acknowledgment, which arrive pretty regularly. The secondary audience (most of the people who participate here) receives an immense amount of attention and effort from me to clear up their minor confusions.

The tertiary audience is, as I say, perfectly free either to transform into the secondary one or to flail about in a sea of "it's not written for me, waaah" until they drown, horribly.

Best,
Ron

Hello guys,

I agree with Old_Scratch, and brought up the same thing in the posting of my campaign prep post (see the tail end of the thread), and received some cool comments from Valamir and Ron.

I also think Tim articulates his points very nicely, and I belive that Ron might be selling gamerdom short. Sorcerer is hard to get into, perhaps due to us being f'ed up by the "regular" non-NAR RPGs, but I had to read all four books and spend a months online at the forge and the wiki in order to understand it all.

Ron, would you let someone else sell a mini-supplement for Sorcerer that explains how to put it all together, without having to sift through numerous forge posts to get the picture? This supplement would then be geared towards gamerdom alone, as your in-crowd of people who "get it" could simply just not buy it.

TTFN,

Yokiboy


P.S. I have rarely made so many notes in preparing to play a new RPG as for Sorcerer. Normally this would entail system notes on specific rules and such, in this case it is regarding how to actually put a game together to get this NAR thing to work.

Hiya,

Ron, would you let someone else sell a mini-supplement for Sorcerer that explains how to put it all together, without having to sift through numerous forge posts to get the picture? This supplement would then be geared towards gamerdom alone, as your in-crowd of people who "get it" could simply just not buy it.

Ron Edwards wrote: I'm after people who want to role-play Narrativist and who can't see how to do it in the context of gamer culture and existing rules-sets. Most of those folks read the book with no trouble at all; these are the folks who send me enthusiastic emails but never participate here or at RPG.net. Why should they? They're just playing.

Nah. You need someone else. I'm too underground, too rude, and too dope-slap oriented. It still astounds me that the game has any attractive value to anyone who's fairly well-entrenched in gamer culture. Why or how that is, is beyond me. I wouldn't even know what aspects of the current book to preserve and emphasize.

Ron Edwards wrote: Hiya,

Ron, would you let someone else sell a mini-supplement for Sorcerer that explains how to put it all together, without having to sift through numerous forge posts to get the picture? This supplement would then be geared towards gamerdom alone, as your in-crowd of people who "get it" could simply just not buy it.

Yup. Jesse Burneko proposed this idea a while ago, and I'd sure like to see someone do it.

Best,
Ron

Hello,

No one listens. No one listens.

Garett,

1) While some of the newer narrative games have a conflict and a format, Sorcerer has a relationship at its root: the relationship between the Sorcerer and the Demon AND a conflict: What are you willing to do for Power? Its a compelling question which gives nearly all Sorcerer games something shared thematically.

2) It empowers the players to tell their own stories instead of passively responding to some prescripted scenario. The players have a vested stake in the story.

Ron Edwards wrote: These things spoke to you insofar as you are not a gamer. Insofar as one is a gamer, they mean nothing, or are confusing, or are obviously wrong.

Hiya,

Nathan - "gamer" is a pejorative in my book, unless I'm being very polite. It's characterized by a weird and crappy social context in which, sometimes, once in a while, a person with a genuine aesthetic interest in what they're doing (G, N, S) actually manages to get a glimmer of satisfaction. Economically, gamer culture is characterized by people forking over money in order to feel like they belong.

Our hobby currently raises its head above gamer culture, or subculture. When it does, people enjoy themselves.

I'll be very clear: "gamer" is a bad thing; "role-playing" is a fun thing. Very few gamers role-play. The fact that many of them huddle together, make up characters, roll dice, spend hours and hours, etc, etc, does not mean they are role-playing.

Pitching any role-playing activity which is based on an understandable Creative Agenda into gamer culture is like fishing in radioactive muck. You will get a few hardy fellows who managed to have survive so far, many of whom say, "yeah, I got it too." You will get a number of damaged, confused, yet still-determined fellows, all of whom seize your bait because it's actually what they want, but they struggle with it, because it's new, not at all suited to what they're used to doing to survive the muck. You will occasionally find a beautiful and disturbing new creature, too.

But the more you make your bait suitable for the muck, the less you will succeed in finding people who want to do what you're really offering. Since the middle group all sport individual wounds, your bait cannot explain to each one of them what is good about it. They all want individual help, but they cannot get it until they've decided to take the bait.

The analogy breaks down when you consider that the point is for people to enjoy themselves, not to get eaten, but otherwise, I'm OK with it.

Best,
Ron

Ron, gotcha. My misunderstanding came from not realizing that "gamer" was incorporated into the jargon. :)

(I mean, I call myself a gamer, I have gamer buddies in my orchestra, etc. But, that's another thread.)

I'm with Paganini, I refer to myself as a "gamer" as well, yet I also understand where you are coming from Ron, and your personal take on "gamers."

Ron, your "muck" analogy really explains your feelings on the matter, and now I have a clearer picture of why you don't want to edit and release a compilation of earlier work.

Old_Scratch, I would love to contribute to the project of a mini-supplement explaining Sorcerer to the few of us that have survived the muck. ;)

Your idea of adding several one-sheets would also be a perfect fit, that would illustrate some of the unlimited possibilities of the system, while providing some much needed assistance for first-timers.

TTFN,

Yokiboy

Hi guys,

I don't care if anyone calls themselves a "gamer" or not. The issue here is what I'm saying about writing a second edition, and whether it's being understood. Seems like it is, so that's good, but really, whether you use the word "gamer" in a positive way in your own life is up to you - my understanding or approval isn't necessary.

The original topic was how to make Sorcerer thrive. I submit that a second edition as popularly conceived is a terrible idea - it will entrench Sorcerer as exactly what it isn't: a game-store artifact. It will do so mainly through debt on my part. I'm not sure if any of you realize how much money it would take, or how much time it would take from other projects.

And most importantly, it would gut the supplements and render them obsolete. Is that what you guys really want? Sure, I'll mulch every book in the warehouse, right now, and start with a single book, from scratch, which is supposed to help every last little individual gamer concern with why Sorcerer isn't like GURPS. Or D&D. Or Vampire. Or Vampire Mark II. Or the Hero System. Or Rifts. Or the ideal "way to play" which every gamer-culture person is carrying in his head and somehow never manages to see in reality.

Economically impossible. Even if it were the best thing for the game as a learning-device (and I think it would be terrible for that purpose, but OK, let's say if), it isn't something that can be done.

The topic of this thread is "how can I help Sorcerer to thrive?" Hey, Second Edition, special gamer-explanation version, is not going to do it. Can you get over that, please? I'd like to read some suggestions which make sense.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: The topic of this thread is "how can I help Sorcerer to thrive?" Hey, Second Edition, special gamer-explanation version, is not going to do it. Can you get over that, please? I'd like to read some suggestions which make sense.

Hiya,

Yes, definitely the mini-supplement. Whatever makes it happen is a good thing, but I have some advice about that, which may be freely ignored by whoever steps up to do it (I could be wrong).

I think it needs a single author. He or she may accept others' suggestions, sure, but I'm seeing over and over that a publication does not get completed when you have a bunch of people who (a) all feel like their contributions should be in there and (b) lack a single person who has final decision over it.

Anyway, if someone wants to take point and start a new thread about that idea, please do so. The discussion about it probably ought to turn private eventually, among the author and anyone he or she wants to include, but that's not up to me.

Sorry 'bout the kicks, YB. Consider them directed primarily at the people who've been yelping about this for years.

Any other thriving-notions? Bear in mind that all four books are grossly successful in stores and on-line sales at this time. The Sorcerer's Soul is up for re-printing as of January 1. So we're talking about thriving, not struggling for survival.

Best,
Ron

Sorry 'bout the kicks, YB. Consider them directed primarily at the people who've been yelping about this for years.

Old_Scratch wrote:
Truth of the matter is, is that its hard for many of us to get a handle on what Ron's saying in the book. What Ron is selling is not a new set of mechanics or settings (which is what most books offer) but a relatively new concept of how to role play in relation to the way most of us have been playing.

I bought Sorcerer. Simply put, I didn't *get* it the first time. It wasn't until I read and reread Sorcerer and Sword and someone said "Story First Mother Fucker!" or something to that effect that I finally realized that Ron had been much more ambitious than I thought he was.

In many ways, Sorcerer challenges much of the prevailing paradigms and assumptions of role playing, and for me and others, it could be pitched at helping people make that conceptual leap. I suspect that many readers don't manage it. But that's pure conjecture on my own part based upon my own anecdotal experience.

Ron, I really dig what you are saying, though it also scares me a little.

The thing about trying to argue for Sorcerer's qualities, the concept of NAR play and such on a rpg gamers' discussion board is a very tough task indeed. I've been doing it on my "local" board since I bought the books. Some people listen, find it interesting - perhaps on the weird side - fewer go and buy the books. Most find it impossible to understand: "The players contribute to the story? WHAT? The GM doesn't have a pre-made plot with a secret for the PCs to discover? HUH? OOC comments are encouraged during play? Get real. And so on and so forth.

I just never thought about that a gamers' community wasn't the best place to promote it. Now I am turning towards non-playing friends. They, on the other hand, would probably not consider buying the book - or any game book - even after I played with them.

Per

You know, I occassionally squeak about a so-called "2nd Edition" in that I would like to see one. Why? The book is damn hard to parse. It needs more, lots more, examples. Big, meaty, in-your-face ones.

That would be my ideal "2nd Edition" -- don't need to change the text at all, except, perhaps, where Ron has noted through the years "I wish I'd mentioned this" or "I wish I'd never said that" regarding demon powers and such or certain word choices.

Something chock full of real, actual play examples screaming, "Lookit what I kin fuckin' do with my bad self! Hah!" Why? Inference is all well and good a method of information distribution for people who are good at it (as Ron seems to be), but it sucks a sweaty leper's balls for those of us who aren't so good at just pulling out all the permutations and so-called "obvious" possibilities and methodologies.

Also why? Sorcerer is one of the cleanest little rulebooks around. It doesn't waste space with anything. Changing text, increasing word count, painstakingly describing how such does not work like such-and-such-over-there-in-that-other-game-you-play would ruin much of that.

Examples of the rules in practice, however, would not. They would instead be incredibly valuable as a sort of secondary rules-reference for those of us who relate information together in that fashion. That is, for those of us who utilize the act of "it" happening as our standard reference of play, rather than utilizing a generalized defintion of "it" in application to play.

For example, though this is a I can read "Rolling a natural 20 on the die means a critical hit" but I won't recall the rule except by a situation wherein that actually occurred. A visual-reference in memory of the rule in practice.

I do this with saving throws: the only way I can recall how the damn things work in 1st and 2nd edition AD&D is to recall examples of them actually being used. I can never remember the rule of how they work and apply it. I have to recall, "OK, Kirk rolled a 15 last time this happened, and got hosed. He had a save of 17 against that stuff. He must have to roll under the number on his sheet."

I think back, examine a recalled situation, deconstruct the situation and derive the rule from the recalled resulting output and the input given that produced it. Examples produce the same effect, because I'm visualizing "in play" events occurring and can later reference them for the rules events they contain.

So, now explained, any chance of an edition like that ever happening, Ron? The book as it now stands but padded out with lots of "examples" -- or rather, scenes of real play that have transpired.

I know that the Actual Play forum here, various threads in this very section of the Forge, and accounts on other websites all serve (to varying degrees in varying areas) this purpose as well, but it would be nice to have in a sit-down, tied-to-the-rules, look-what-it-does format.