Hi there!

After reading "Sorcerer & Sword", I'm totally jazzed about the genre and have bought a collection of Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories, "The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" (DelRay 2003), which was rightly recommended around here.

And who knows? Maybe I'll even get my first Sorcerer game off the ground...

And to that end, I'm reading the stories with an eye towards mining them for bangs. I've never run Sorcerer and have very little experience with narrativist games, so I'm worried about running out of bangs, throwing out duds or bangs which are resolved too quickly.

Anyway, I won't bore you with an overly long list of the inspirations I got and am getting from the stories. Instead, I'll just relate my reactions to the first three stories to demonstrate the process.

WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead.

1. The Phoenix on the Sword (where Conan is king of Aquilonia)

My take:
Poor imagery, inappropriate dialogue (e.g. "before the first man crawled out of the slimy sea"), lots of cumbersome exposition (handled by way of the villain explaining things to a henchman) and a vision which feels like a deus ex machina make this an abysmal story. 1 out of 4 stars.

Bangs:
Rinaldo => the PC's enemy turns out to be a truly gifted artist (optionally with his full potential unrealized or past his prime)
the Serpent Ring of Set => a secret (optionally an item) which grants great power over an NPC falls into the PC's hands
Dion => a treacherous NPC (e.g. an ally) gets cold feet and betrays his co-conspirators to the PC

The Frost-Giant's Daughter (where Conan is a mercenary in lands of frost and snow)
My take: The story is all about atmosphere and no plot gets in the way. Simply fantastic! 4 out of 4 stars.

Bangs:
the Frost-Giant's Daughter => a supernatural being toys with the PC as he is hurt and alone

This doesn't seem like a proper bang to me, but I'm somewhat unsure of what to do when a PC loses a conflict where the enemy's goal is to kill him. Maybe the PC is left for dead and then this encounter is run? Or is this heavy-handed GMing?

The God in the Bowl (where Conan is a thief)
My take: The story offers a ho-hum (magic) mystery, a cool sticky situation for Conan and one excellent fight scene: deliciously anticipated, very gory and very stylish. 3 out of 4 stars on account of the fight.

Bangs:
Conan's burglary => while committing a lesser crime, the PC is framed for a greater one by fate (optionally by an employer)

Again, this might be heavy-handed GMing. If the player wants to commit a burglary, it'd be pretty deprotagonising if the GM ruled that he stumbles into a situation which renders the burglary a moot point, wouldn't it?

The story also offers a minor, but cool villain, who has cruelly tortured and maimed a woman who would not betray her lover. I'm sure there's a bang here somewhere.

(Though aiming for the kind of poetic justice this villain has coming - or perhaps Conan does what he does deliberately? - sounds like a recipe for poor GMing. And it's probably not necessary -- I would hope that my players come up with that sort of thing.)

*-*-*

I hope this post hasn't been too much of a personal ramble. Inspiration is a fickle and personal thing – one man's epiphany makes another man yawn or something to that effect.

Regards

Hal

I found this post very useful, and got some ideas from it for future use in my own campaign. Thanks!

Hello,

One of the difficult things about utilizing literature or movies as inspiration for role-playing is that the actual text of a story/movie does not map 1:1 to the role-playing processes, even if you include character creation, prep, and play.

In other words, what if we played a game which just happened to correspond in all particulars to the content of The Phoenix on the Sword? My point is that the "correspondence" ranges very widely.

It could be that actual play concerned mainly how Conan dealt with the conspiracy and failed, up until that night. The Kicker might be "becoming king." The textual contents of the written story might have occupied the last 5% of play itself.

Or conversely, it could be that most of the textual story corresponds with character creation and prep. Who knows, the Kicker might even be the dream. In this case, the whole of play would concern that single fight.

Finally, is there more than one protagonist, actually? I suggest that this story works best when you consider that Conan and Thoth-Amon are two equally-central and equally-present protagonists, and bear in mind that the two of them have unique and interesting conflicts, with nothing especially against one another.

Any analysis of Bangs, then, has to take these variations into consideration. A Bang exists relative to at leasts one particular protagonist, and relative to how scenes and conflicts are generated during play itself.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: One of the difficult things about utilizing literature or movies as inspiration for role-playing is that the actual text of a story/movie does not map 1:1 to the role-playing processes, even if you include character creation, prep, and play.

Any analysis of Bangs, then, has to take these variations into consideration. A Bang exists relative to at leasts one particular protagonist, and relative to how scenes and conflicts are generated during play itself.

Halzebier wrote:

Ron Edwards wrote:

Regards (& hoping I haven't got this whole bang-thing backwards),

Hal

Aye Hal,

At what point during the process of playing Sorcerer do you make up Bangs?

I'll tell ya when I do.

1) Decide on, make up world (Humanity, Descriptors, etc.)

2) Think of concepts, put descriptors in place, assign stats, make demons.

3) Make kickers.

4) Write up bangs.


I only begin to write up my bangs when I have the players' kickers all in a row. If I write up 10, I probably use 3 or 4 and sometimes less with the rest of the bangs coming out through play.

But those kickers have a direct relationship with the players' kickers and descriptors and covers.

Thoughts?

Hence, what I have here is to be used with the right combination of PC, player and situation.

Valamir wrote: You want to wait to create the bangs until after you know what the player and situation are.

The risks of doing it ahead of time is not just that you might have the wrong player and it doesn't work, but that you might become too enamored of a bang that you've had on hold for a long time waiting for the perfect time to use it.