All right…just saw the Golden Compass and I’m thinking when are they going to come out with an RPG for this?  What an awesome setting!  Aeronaut cowboys, armored ice bears, Egyptian pirates, flying witches, external souls appearing as animal familiars?!  Holy shit!

Yeah, I’ve read the two articles discussing the possibility of using Sorcerer as a vehicle for this game:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=11449.0

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=13868.0

(I guess ice bears would be immanent demons?), but it really doesn’t seem to be the right fit…heck, the demons in Golden Compass would act more like a physical measure of a sorcerer’s humanity than as an actual demon…?  Nah, not really the right game.

So anyway, while the setting certainly has echoes of Maelstrom, does anyone have a game in the works to represent this story/setting?  Can someone please develop a game before it’s sucked up and turned into another shitty D20?

Thanks!

I'm only just reading the first book now (christmas present). Never minding the grander scale, a game where you start as a child and resolve (by growing up through the game) what fixed adult form your demon/familair becomes would be interesting, since they reflect your personality. I think it'd be good if the player wrote down say four forms and mechanics slowly cross off a form during play (which form goes is the players choice), until you get to the end and get the final representative form. Err, yeah, the player could just say what form they have at the ending, but that's kind of suck for the other players. They can't see the ways he could have gone, but did not. They don't really see the process explicitly laid out bare.

You could lay in the rest of the setting as a potential influence of that growth/change.

I like it!  Maybe the whole point of the game is one of growing up and defining your soul by the final form your daemon takes…drop one animal form per game session till you become an adult…perhaps each session would represent one era of childhood with a particular session goal involving the choice of daemon dropped?

I don’t know…I should probably read the books myself. It just seemed like too cool a setting to not incorporate at least as background to a game!

How would this game be focused?

Would it be action or political, set in Lyra's world or any of the many that can be accessed (which will come up in the second film, for those of you who've not read the book)?  And also, hopefully not giving away any real spoilers here, would it be pre- or post-war?

These need to be answered before you can really think about how dæmons are going to work mechanically, although they add a nice twist to it.  I've read the whole trilogy and so can answer most questions about the setting if you want.

I read the books, and I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be Gypsies. I don't ever remember them being called "Gyptians." Not that this is terribly relevant, but I thought I'd mention it.

They are called "Gyptians", but are indeed a kind of gypsies, albeit living and travelling on river boats.

Apparently, the word gypsie originates from Egyptian, and Pullmann took the word back towards its roots. From dictionary.com:
"Origin: 1505–15; back formation of gipcyan, aph. var. of Egyptian, from a belief that Gypsies came originally from Egypt"

Per

Per Fischer,

That's interesting! Thanks for the history lesson.