If it's OK with Ron, if anyone has a copy of the original text file version of Sorcerer, I would consider it a great favor to send it my way. I'm very interested in reading it.

ooh, ooh, me too, me too!

Jake

It's OK by me. My copies are all on very old disks in boxes, I'm afraid.

Also, there's an ashcan version that few people have seen outside of the early Gainesville/Orlando playtesting stages, which I actually think is much better than the text file. I still have a copy or two.

Best,
Ron

I believe I still have the old text files.
This isn't a promise that I do, but if I have them, and given Ron's go ahead, I'll e-mail them to you both once found (assuming someone else knows right where their copies are and beats me to it).

Ron Edwards wrote: Also, there's an ashcan version that few people have seen outside of the early Gainesville/Orlando playtesting stages, which I actually think is much better than the text file. I still have a copy or two.

Hi M.J.,

That's funny, I thought this got defined on the Forge a little while ago ...

The term "ashcan" comes from comics. If you're a comics author or artist, and your book hasn't come out from the printers yet, and you're promoting the title, you often bring a photocopy of some pages, usually in black-and-white or maybe even just pencils. Bring lots of copies, staple each set in the upper left corner, and maybe put a page up front with the title and predicted release date really big. Maybe even a mailing address so people can send letters that you can use in the first issue.

(When I was more heavily into comics, some editors would send me and other regular letter-writers ashcans for such letters, by the way. Sort of "insider ashcans.")

Anyway, so for RPGs, it's come to mean a rough short version of the game in a photocopied form, yet still formatted for distribution and use. You use it both as the game text there at the con and as a promotional device. The one I made for Sorcerer included some bootlegged art, so I never asked money for it.

Best,
Ron