Well, our third and what turned out to be our final session of my Gothic Fantasy Sorcerer game has come and gone.

Where things ended up:

Karl (Christopher's character) not only made amends to the memory of his dead son, by accepting his son's pregnant unwed lover as his own child, but brought harmony to the crumbling Fenris family. The climax of this story happened when Karl led a group banishing of Lord Fenris's demon Gorg, a Ruin Demon, who "worked" for Lord Fenris as a servant named Argyle Dagwood. The two reforged families met in the chapel, had Argyle meet them there and then after a brief explination of the new/reaffirmed unities, Karl simply told Gorg/Argyle, "Your services, are no longer required." Brilliant.

The end of Tich's story was on one hand slightly disappointing and on the other hand par for the course considering the player. After bouncing around a few NPC's Tich simply decided to pack up and leave town, mostly driven by fear of being inprisoned or re-enslaved. In some sense he never truly found freedom. I sort of felt like this was The Incredible Hulk ending -- alienated hero, never quite finds peace with his surroundings and is forced to move on. I think Ron once said that a perfectly acceptable answer to the Premise is, "I don't know." I felt like this was the, "I don't know" ending.

When I first started studying Narrativism in general and Sorcerer in particular, I used to pester Ron about a) how do things ever come to a climax without the GM driving it there and b) if the players aren't operating as a group how do you ensure that everyone reaches a climax point together. Now that I've experienced it, I'm not entirely sure I could answer those questions myself.

It just happens. In fact it sort of creeps up on you unexpectedly. So here you are playing along, things are happening, things are getting intense, then there's a REALLY cool moment and you sort of go, "I think that's it. I think that's the end." I sat for a long moment in this sort of stunned silence. Christopher thought I was disappointed but I wasn't. I was shocked.

I was shocked because the ending crept up on me (on all of us, I think) the same way it does while you're watching a movie. How is that possible? I'm helping to write this damn thing. How could I not see the ending coming from three scenes away?

In case any of you are wondering the player who's character had the undead bride decided to leave the group after the first session. I don't think it had anything to do with the game. A lot of personal and work related issues had croped up and he decided that he needed to take a hiatus from gaming.

I think the result was roughly neglagable but there was a bit of a lopsidedness in that Lord Fenris's family came into play in a BIG way in the last couple of scenes of Karl's story. Had Levant's player stuck around we would have seen more of the Fenris family and particularly Gorg/Argyle because Levant was tied into that situation directly via his Kicker.

Overall, I was VERY happy. VERY VERY happy. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. It never dragged. It was always exciting.

Hope this was interesting.

Jesse

Congratulations! It sounds like it was fantastic.

Paul

Hi everybody,

I've just been crazybusy... But wanted to add I had a great time too.

It was great making those Humanity gain checks this time around. And I found it interesting my fellow player was so involved with making sure I got a chance to make those rolls whenever Karl did an action he thought worthy of a roll... He seemed, as far as I could tell, caught up in what Karl was doing.

For my part, I found his wandering toward the end a bit... wandering... And I pin this squarely on the Kicker he chose. It made perfect sense when he simply walked away with the Kicker as is... But I would have loved to have seen the other character more dramatically tied into something... (Even if it was to gain a ruby and live the rest of his life in a drunken stooper).

Humanity checks (gains) were made for accepting my son's unwed and pregnant daughter into my household, for comforting my lord when he confessed how he had bound a demon to himself to appear brave in battle, for confessing my own sins to him, and a couple of other rolls I've since forgotten about.

I really enjoyed grabbing authorship and directorial power. When I said, "Karl remembers everything now," to Jesse toward the end of the evening, it wasn't until a beat had passed that I realized how wonderfully encouraging and loose he had been.

I might have done that first, and then summoned the lord's family, the pregnant girl, and my lord's demon to do in the banisishing at the site of my son's "Final Return" -- just to close up everything in one beat... But I didn't think of that at the time.

Anyway, it was swell. I think I might have restaged the events a bit. The last moment of the game for me was having my son dug up from the pauper's grave where he'd been buried after I denied him and had him murdered, and moved into the family tomb on family land. Thus, the kicker, "Jurgen returns home after 20 years," was closed.

Take care,
Christopher