Hi everybody,

A quick question (especially for Ron):

Why the novels? Why read a book, take the R-Map and twist it around? Why not just make up a map on your own. You know -- come up with characters, come up with stress lines in all manner of sin and emotion. By coming up with, say, ten characters, dealing them out and letting your imagination go to town, it seems to me you'll come up with a backstory right then and there. The R-Map chapters in Sorcerer & Soul gives enough examples that I can fairly well know what kinds of characters, stress lines and maps.

The best I can figure is that by using a piece of published fiction you'll juggle up your brain and create characters and stress lines that you normally wouldn't create.

But, again, since the S&Soul chapter encourages you to re-work it out of recognition anyway....

Why not just make it up?

Thanks,
Christopher

(PS: And why not do read the book? Time, leaps to mind, both in terms of reading and unravelling someone else's text.)

I think it is up to the GM. I like the book angle because I can get some plot ideas and personality ideas from it. Some of us don't "have the time" to come up with 10-15 characters from nothing (including links and personalities, etc).

Its just whatever floats your boat, some people read alot so it is easy to get stuff there, others just like doin it all themselves. Though I _do_ agree with Ron on the Detective Fiction thing being the best stuff - it is generally 100% about links of blood and sex, versus most other lit tends to branch out from there (though I am sure the George R R Martin stuff could be great, but the shear work involved in mapping that would be insane!)

-Shane

I in fact did this for my Sorcerer game. I think it would have been fine, too, but I made the mistake of binding the PCs very tightly into the r-map, which left them really only one thing to do: Kill That Dr. D. Bastard. After much thrashing, I finally allowed them to do the thing that the structure I set up practically demanded they do, and it went quite well. I don't think that it's necessary to crib from a book, but the r-maps in Soul definitely show that a really good author can come up with severely twisted stuff that might be hard for someone new to the technique to pull off. I would venture to guess that Ron wrote the advice the way he did, not in an exclusionary way, but with full knowledge that the technique is very new and that GMs would want plenty of guidance with it. Ron is very up-front about when he thinks one should not experiment, and there's no admonition against rolling your own in Soul (that I remember anyway).

BTW, there is a summation of the threads about the game I ran on the sorcerer website.

--JB

Christopher Kubasik wrote: A quick question (especially for Ron):

Why the novels? Why read a book, take the R-Map and twist it around?

...Why not just make it up?

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies so far.

For the record: Yes, detective stories. Yes, I know I could do it on my own (I have no fear of Adept Press jack-boot thugs knocking down my door). Yes, I understand that the relationship stress are about sex and violence.

I'm just curious if there's any specific advantages to doing it off someone else's work instead of your own.

(Aside from stirring up one's imagination in unexpected ways. And, of course, natural temperament: coming up with characters and relationships comes easy to me -- but others might feel less secure in this matter.)

Thanks,
Christopher

Hi Christopher,

Two quick points.

1) The book source idea is intended as a springboard method - there is a brief sentence in Soul that one may well move on to making'em up without a source reference. I'm sufficiently convinced that most people involved in role-playing are so enmeshed in the historical methods of prepping for play that they need a "training wheels" approach with a book as a source.

2) People who write fiction/movies/etc don't do it in a vacuum. Nearly any story exists, in addition to its own content, as commentary or relationship to other existing works. I think this is a fine thing and doesn't constitute plagiarism given a distinctive spin in terms of theme, in particular - MacDonald is not considered to have plagiarized Hammett and Chandler, for instance.

Much RPG scenario presentation/prep has been derivative. However, what I'd been seeing was nothing but badly-disguised imitation, not internalization of content + innovation. My thinking is that the method I've presented does two things: (a) it puts the inspiration on the table instead of in the closet, focusing on what the source material really provides in terms of story set-up; and (b) it puts the burden of innovation, via conflict resolution and theme, right onto the gaming group where it belongs, instead of relying what happened in the source reference.

Best,
Ron

Thank you much, Ron. I must have missed that sentence in there. And your explanation makes perfect sense.

Take care,
Christopher