Sorcerer + Kids = "YAAAAY!"
jburneko:
Christopher,
Quick question: Some of those Needs and Desires seem a little off from the way one normally formulates them. Specifically, some of the Needs seem too broad and some of the Desires seem too narrow. Were you deliberately being a little flexible with them because of the kid nature of the game?
Jesse
Ron Edwards:
The Needs are fine. Two of the Desires are a little more focused than the by-the-rules rules. (I have a terrible time explaining to people that Desires are not supposed to be customized and specified.) However, the fundamental content of the corresponding Desires (destruction, and either worship or power) seems to be present, so I think it's not a big deal.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Hi Christopher,
Quote
(I have to admit, I was really intrigued with the notion that Disney's Mary Poppins was a Demon summoned by Jane and Michael.)
Fits way too well, doesn't it? This sort of thing seems almost redundant.
Anyway, I've often wondered how Sorcerer would go with kids. I was in a game store recently, describing the game to an adult, and a kid about ten (charmingly) butted in ... and within moments, understood and paraphrased the point of play far better than I was probably capable of doing, finishing with "So it can go a good way and a bad way, no matter whether you get what you want." I looked at the adult in the conversation and said, shrugging: "Exactly what he said."
I really like the logic you applied in arriving at the various scores for the characters, and I also found their characters' back-stories to be quite good: full of potential, enough to play from almost directly, and yet not too enmeshed in story-before.
Best, Ron
Christopher Kubasik:
Notes on the Game Prep
I appreciate all the positive responses I've gotten, but I want to be clear that this was a very compressed play. That is, everyone had a good time – particularly my niece and nephews. But we only had one week to play.
This meant minimal prep time for me after the characters had been made. And because of the limited frame of time to play, I specifically made the prep very limited in scope. Usually I'll encourage Players to dig into their character's background and come up with a goodly number of NPCs. Did someone mention that his PC's daughter is in the care of the PC's sister? Okay. Who is the sister? Is she married? Okay, her husband is an NPC, too. Does she have other kids? Okay. Those kids are NPCs, too. Where does she work? Anyone of note there? And so on. We might end up with a half dozen to a dozen NPC names that the Players write down on the Lore/Kicker/Price/Cover grid on the character sheet.
It's not that I expect I'll use all these characters or that they'll all come into play. In fact, that's the point – I don't know who will be used or not used (or, more specifically, who the Players will end up being the most interested in). But I like having a big web of relationships to look at while I'm prepping. I'll take that week between the character session and the first session of play, creating more NPCs, mulling possible connections and motivations. Maybe the sister's husband is a member of the Kicker that is part of the PC's Kicker. Things like that.
By having a lot of fictional "clay" to work with (both in prep and during play) I know we all have enough to riff off of to let the branching choices of the characters intriguing, while still keeping the tale looping back within the webs of relationships that the Players have already set in motion during their own character creation. As the Players have their characters decide to risk Humanity or try to salvage it, to have them burn off alliances or make new friends, there is enough fictional clay on hand to play with. (And, again, the Players might never even find out about the sister's husband by the time the Kickers are resolved. But that isn't my concern. My concern is having enough fictional material to play with.)
Since I was using Sorcerer & Sword as my foundation, this made perfect sense anyway. The game's structure is: 1) create a setting in broad brushstrokes; 2) let the Players create their Id-Unleashed power fantasy bad-asses; 3) create the backstory and situation elements from the Kickers and other PC details. (We pretty much skipped step 1 when Graham and Ben declared the characters they wanted to create. My job at the point was to think, "Okay… we've got demons, we got trolls… and here we go!")
My point in discussing all this is that even in Sorcerer & Sword you'd still have a broader and somewhat more complicated prep than I created for this game. Half the NPCs Ben, Alexandra and Graham had created were dead before the Kickers started. And I didn't want to give them the chance to start wandering down unexpected paths that would wind and twist and prevent us from wrapping up the Kickers by the week's end. I wanted a slight, focused adventure. Something with lots of combat – because honestly, I knew the kids wanted to kick some ass with their characters and I wanted to deliver that.
The Need to Learn the Rules
In line with all this I decided the PCs demons would not be the focus of too many scenes. This was in part a time pressure element, but it was also a matter of the Players' comfort with the rules.
One of the things I've observed over the years – both in my own play as a Player and in the play of other Players – is that Players are rightly suspicious of being shoved out into an RPG adventure without a baseline understanding of the risks and rewards of the mechanics. Or, rather, if you want Players to take big chances and make interesting choices, this impulse is best supported when the Players have at least a baseline understanding of the risks and the rewards. Until that happens, Players tend to make safe choices, avoid risks and kill their more interesting impulses. The reason for this is completely rational: If I could accidently lose my guy on die roll I didn't even know I'd be making, and I don't even know when or how to roll a die, or when the odds or in or against my favor, why the heck would I risk doing anything?
My niece and nephews had never played the game before. More importantly, I had no idea how well (or not well!) the brains of a trio of 10 and 8 year-olds would grasp the mechanics. I didn't want to push them into situations where they ended up doing a lot of conflict with their demons when they really didn't know what they were getting into. Because they liked their demons and would start shutting down if the Demons were at risk and they didn't understand the implications – or worse, threw fit because I accidently sand-bagged them with a result based off the dice when they, again, didn't understand the risks going in.
The reason all this matters is that when people start ducking risks and creative choices early in play, it's hard for them to learn how to open up later on. So I wanted to build the risk elements as the game went on. And this meant focusing more on getting them to use the mechanics, interacting with the Demons as helpers so they could see their value, showing them how Humanity worked, and so on.
So, that was my thinking as I began working on the prep.
Finarvyn:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on July 25, 2009, 02:41:02 AM
I had worked up some notes for a Sorcerer setting called Goblin Lords for them: the idea is that kids get "creatures" that can do cool things when they behave badly, and the creatures only get them into more trouble. I was thinking about Where the Wild Things Are, Clifford the Big Red Dog, The Iron Giant,, Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (where Micky Mouse floods the castle with the walking brooms), and Disney's Mary Poppins and Pinocchio. (I have to admit, I was really intrigued with the notion that Disney's Mary Poppins was a Demon summoned by Jane and Michael.)
Your Goblin Lords concept is pretty sweet. Any additional details about the setting that you can share with us?
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