I'll be honest: one reason I've always avoided Sorcerer is that I have a ridiculous, irrational, personal-faith-based objection to the idea of roleplaying summoning demons.

Understand: I don't know if I believe in demons or not, let alone whether it's possible to summon them in reality. What I believe in is not taking chances with your immortal soul -- and thus the notion of doing so in a literal way, using Sorcerer's original terminology, just turns me off on a basic level. Understand also this is in no way a criticism of the game itself, merely an explanation of my reaction to it.

So here's the question. How would you -- or could you -- define the "demons" of Sorcerer in such a way that they were essentially impersonal and amoral forces, and their danger came from their power and unpredictability? The idea being that the sorcerer conjures "forces" rather than beings, and wrestles with a Power Man Was Not Meant To Wield in a Cthulhic sense of magic.

I realize that essentially the moral quandaries are the same, but like I said, it's an irrational reaction -- I just don't like the "summoning demons" terminology, and I've seen some truly original "respins" on the game here. So I was curious as to what else was available.

My understanding of the game is that you as the GM decide what demons really are, its part of your prep. And the definition that you mention is perfectly adequate.

cheers

Trevis

Trevis is right on the mark. Part of preparing to play a game of Sorcerer is defining what a demon is in your setting.

I see demons as metaphors for dysfunctional relationships. So far, we've defined them as actual demons, capricious nature spirits, and a part of the character's own spirit.

I'm tempted to play a game of Sorcerer where the characters are vampires and the demons represent the Hunger within them. Gotta feed that need ... literally!

Roy

A long time ago I proposed completely stripping demons of their allegory. This can take one of two forms as I see it. The first is to consider demons to be the people that you're in dysfunctional relationships with. The second is to think of demons as addictions or other simlar problems. I gave the example of the workaholic father.

In this sort of game demons don't give you superpowers or anything. But they do give the character something which makes the relationship attractive. For an SO demon, it might be the sex. For a job demon it might be the prestige, or just the pay. Whatever. This could be handled mechanically, still. It just takes stretching the meanings of the powers quite a bit. The job becomes a Boost to the Cover stat, maybe. That sort of thing.

Mike

Stephen wrote: I'll be honest: one reason I've always avoided Sorcerer is that I have a ridiculous, irrational, personal-faith-based objection to the idea of roleplaying summoning demons.

Hi there,

Stephen, as you've probably inferred already, Sorcerer is not an occultist game, nor possibly even a horror game, necessarily. People's replies so far have already presented my standard response to your question (which I've been periodically answering since the game was first made available in 1996). I'm especially sorry that the Gaming Outpost forums are not available, as our own estimable M. J. Young once asked me this very question, leading to an excellent couple of threads which I used to reference routinely. For example, the existence of a "soul" in Sorcerer is strictly a matter of among-group customization and interpretation as well as the interpretation of the term "demon."

So the answer to your basic question, about making the demons more impersonal and "raw power" like, is emphatically Yes. No problem at all.

But given that "define demons as you see fit" is part of the game's design, let's move past that point and go deeper. I really want to focus on this sentence in your post:

"I don't know if I believe in demons or not,"

... and to combine it with one of my observations, which is that everyone has an emotional reaction to the word "demon" regardless of religious orientation. This is important - we aren't talking about "beliefs" at all, but about a concept that is apparently universal to the human mind and emotional profile.

Let's say, for sake of discussion, that you and I agree that "demons" in the common superstition/religion sense of the word do not exist in real life. That they are pure metaphor for something that is itself very real, very troubling, and instantly mentally-accessible to nearly any human being. So when I say "my game is about summoning and commanding demons," two reactions can ensue. The trivial one is to pop the whole issue into denial and turn it into some adolescent, bogus thing like what White Wolf games do (and do, and do, most recently and most literally in Hunter: the Reckoning). The meaty one is to shudder. Just to shudder.

The person who shudders is the one who can play Sorcerer. My question, embodied in the game as a whole, asked in all seriousness and with great personal empathy, is, What are you shuddering about? Answer (to yourself, not here) in terms of real people, real behavior, real events in the actual world. And this answer is supposed to be the core of defining "demon," defining the game term Humanity, setting parameters for sorcerous rituals, and defining the descriptors for character-creation during play.

The really scary point is that whatever it is you're reacting to, there are people who see no way out except to embrace it. This person must want something, and consider it justified in the eyes of God and man (speaking loosely; "God" is yet another issue Sorcerer leaves up to you). And the scary point under that is that there exists, infinitesmally, the chance for heroism arising from that state, with a very, very high price to pay for the more-common result of failure. We are talking about existential trauma and deep-psychology horror in the context of an emotionally-engaging, utterly unavoidable conflict.

Now, I spill the beans on my answer to this question in the thread Navel gazing on the nature of demons. But that's not your answer, necessarily, and I highly encourage you to examine what your answer might be - again, without referring to specific/codified religious beliefs - and to consider how that might be the core of an effective and powerful story premise.

Here are some references, back from the old Sorcerer mailing list (1997-1999), which show you some of the influences that went into the seminal demon/morality supplement, The Sorcerer's Soul. (To clarify: the word "soul" is still to be customized, which the supplement develops very deeply.)

What is a demon?
Demon motives
Demon motives 2

As a general rule, I encourage everyone to browse the Archives page on the website. Some of them are obsolete, and some of them managed to work their way into the actual supplement texts, and some of them are still as full of untapped-potential as ever.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Let's say, for sake of discussion, that you and I agree that "demons" in the common superstition/religion sense of the word do not exist in real life. That they are pure metaphor for something that is itself very real, very troubling, and instantly mentally-accessible to nearly any human being. So when I say "my game is about summoning and commanding demons," two reactions can ensue. ... The meaty one is to shudder. Just to shudder.

The person who shudders is the one who can play Sorcerer. My question, embodied in the game as a whole, asked in all seriousness and with great personal empathy, is, What are you shuddering about? Answer (to yourself, not here) in terms of real people, real behavior, real events in the actual world.

Stephen wrote: Ah, well. I still intend to pick up Sorcerer & Sword fairly soon, as it sounds like an invaluable resource for pulp-fantasy games.

Hi Stephen,

You wrote,

I guess my problem is that anything that makes me shudder at all in the context of this model makes me shudder too much to enjoy the idea of "playing" with it.

But yes - that's the point. I am not kidding when I say that Sorcerer is intense, or that it's the role-playing equivalent of hard liquor. There's a place you have to choose to go in order to see what it's most deeply about, and there's no just "visiting" that head-space. You come back changed.

I want to thank Ron for calling my attention to this thread. I kept up on every thread on the Sorcerer forum at Gaming Outpost, but having only lately started trying to get through The Forge forums as part of my daily routine I have been hesitant to jump into any of the game-specific ones for the sheer volume. However, this is an interesting thread, certainly, and I hope I can contribute something meaningful to it.

Stephen wrote: I'll be honest: one reason I've always avoided Sorcerer is that I have a ridiculous, irrational, personal-faith-based objection to the idea of roleplaying summoning demons.

Understand: I don't know if I believe in demons or not, let alone whether it's possible to summon them in reality. What I believe in is not taking chances with your immortal soul -- and thus the notion of doing so in a literal way, using Sorcerer's original terminology, just turns me off on a basic level. Understand also this is in no way a criticism of the game itself, merely an explanation of my reaction to it.

Thanks, M. J. Strong words and strong ideas.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Thanks, M. J.

M. J. Young wrote: I have no problem at all with playing a game in which my character loses his soul because he dabbles with the devil. The idea of losing my soul should terrify me. That I can actually see how it could happen to me, through my own choices, is a fabulous lesson to explore. It's a great idea for a game. Do you think playing that would make you more or less likely to make such a deal with the devil in reality?

Stephen, I can certainly understand character identification and wish fulfillment as issues; I'd recommend you try Multiverser, but that this is not my forum and it would cost you a bit more than $17.50. There is a degree to which character identification and wish fulfillment are part of the Sorcerer experience; the game is about consequences, too, and that is perhaps where the rub lies.

There are gamers for whom "character identification" and "wish-fulfillment" mean "I can do whatever I want and no one will stop me." I have a lot of trouble with that kind of play, as player characters will kill any non-player character who gets in their way, or merely as a target to rob or a means to some other goal. This gets dangerously close, in my assessment, to really selling your soul to the devil: imagining that the world might be so constituted that no one could stop you from taking whatever you wanted.

Sorcerer, by contrast, says, you can take whatever you want, but there's a price to pay for it; are you willing to pay the price? How much will you pay, and will you be satisfied with what you get for that? Some who push the envelope will reach their desires; others will go down in flames. Sometimes stopping, counting the cost and deciding that what you want is not worth it, may be the best move.

At least, that's how I see play unfolding. Others on this forum are much better informed on that sort of thing.

--M. J. Young

Hello,

This is a great discussion, but I'd like to caution everyone to remember that no one is trying to convince anyone else to do anything. Stephen, especially, there's no agenda here to say, "You must play Sorcerer." We're all just talkin'.

I think one issue that should be stressed is that Sorcerer play emphatically does not encourage character identification. In fact, it's explicit in all the books, most especially the supplements, that Author stance is the appropriate default for play.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Stephen, especially, there's no agenda here to say, "You must play Sorcerer." We're all just talkin'.

I think one issue that should be stressed is that Sorcerer play emphatically does not encourage character identification. In fact, it's explicit in all the books, most especially the supplements, that Author stance is the appropriate default for play.

Stephen wrote: I prefer to reserve my Author stances for when I'm actually writing stuff!