Mundane Lore
Finarvyn:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on October 12, 2008, 07:59:17 AM
I was on the phone two days ago with Ron, and he was giving me the run down of games he tinkered with and was inspired by when designing Sorcerer.
Say ... now that would be a fun list to look through! (I assume it's not quite the same as the "source" inspirations given in any of the supplements.)
Ron Edwards:
It was pretty much the same as given in the core book, actually. None of this is secret knowledge; the conversation was more of a review than a revelation, in the context of how carefully Christopher has been reading and playing lately.
In 1990 I was wrestling with the principles I liked in Champions, Cyberpunk, and The Fantasy Trip, and had written many pages of very raw manuscript, including a fair amount of character creation and ritual rules in Interlock (Cyberpunk) terms. Yet in 1987 I'd written and played a rather quick and dirty, very fun fantasy game which was kind of like Champions stripped 'way down to the simplicity of TFT; it had little to do with demons but "summoned creatures" turned out to be really fun. In 1991-1992 I found myself noodling around with the Fighting Fantasy solo books a lot, especially while I was sick with the chicken pox, and I kept finding myself saying, "How does this work while staying so simple?" The TFT influence got a huge boost during this time with the impacts of reading Amber, Prince Valiant, and Over the Edge, the first in terms of author attitude and the latter two in terms of design principles. Eventually I remembered and carefully reviewed my1987 design, and all the ideas came together, such as the no-target-number concept from Prince Valiant and some of the character creation concepts from Over the Edge. The first really solid alpha for Sorcerer was finished in December 1994. Ongoing playtesting plus play of many other games ensued, and the one which ended up providing the most help was Zero. I've probably missed one or two as I compose this from memory, but these are the main titles involved.
The tricky thing in the first stage is how much I liked the spunky, creative elements of TFT and early Champions while throwing out every shred of their hex-map, facing-based, regimented combat systems, and how much I liked the stark alienation of the first-edition Cyberpunk game and changing its Humanity rule into something very different. All the way through, my guide was 1920s-1930s pulp horror and fantasy, plus a few later authors like Leiber. All of that was resolved by 1994; after that, the tricky thing was to realize how solid my dice-concept was and to keep removing crusty leftovers; you can see this process in action by looking at the confused combat rules in the Apprentice and comparing them with the core book.
As I said, the most important titles are acknowledged in the core book, and I've described it a few times in interviews and articles over the years.
Best, Ron
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