[Sorcerer]Sorcerers in Casablanca - AP
Ron Edwards:
Hiya,
I think that you guys seem a bit fixated on "keeping the group together" or perhaps "making sure the storylines stay together" or something of this kind.
I suggest instead embracing chaos - let play proceed strictly on the basis of what you want your characters to do. Not where you want them to go eventually, not how you want things to turn out, not what kind of climax it should be aiming for - but what you are most satisfied with having your characters go right now. This is for Paiku as well, concerning his NPCs (especially all the demons and those family guys).
Key advice? Re-do the diagrams, and when you do that, think in terms of moving the names on that diagram as if you were nudging physical objects. Add anyone new who needs to come in. Get rid of anyone genuinely dead or gone for good. Move names into whole new sectors of the diagram if that's what's called for. Then look at the diagrams and see what's obviously there to do next.
By "do next," I simply and only mean, play the characters. Have them go where you are happiest and most fulfilled at this moment to see them go. By "go" I mean talk to someone, do something, go somewhere.
Never mind keeping them together. Never mind having the stories stay together. Never mind what that means for anything in the future; the future of play should be, for you, always one scene later, and never beyond that.
As long as you play those characters hard, you'll be fine. And guys? Worried about how to play scenes with the characters in different places or even maybe different times? No problem. When one guy gets into a conflict situation, "freeze" him there, and keep going with the others, until one by one they get into conflicts too. Then run the three conflicts simultaneously, using the combat rules as if the characters were in the same place, for purposes of ordering and resolving actions. Obviously, direct interactions among characters are limited only to those who are in the same locations.
This is a magnificent technique that Sorcerer taught me long ago. I call it "flashpoint." In time, you will find that it's one of the most exciting elements of playing the game, especially when you learn that the combat rules are admirably suited to this purpose.
Here's another technique, which I talk about a lot in Sex & Sorcery: Crossing. Use elements of character A's story in character B's ... but not in the forced and lame-ass way that puts the characters into the same room as if shoved by stagehands. Instead, simply show that both stories are happening in the same time and place through effects of past scenes. If character A punches a guy in a bar, then later, character B, stepping out of his apartment to call a cab, sees the punched guy stumbling along the street holding his face. These are not hooks to force the players to interact. Character B can simply get his cab, and probably should as the default. These are instead simply "crosses," business that informs everyone (the real people) how the scenes are present in the same general fictional space.
Crosses should be common, and if that's the case, only when people want, do they turn them into Weaves - genuine causal interconnection between the stories. Forcing Weaves fucking sucks donkey dicks. Frequent Crossing, with opportunistic Weaving when and only when someone really wants to (and thus acts upon the Cross to interconnect), is wonderful. The GM simply needs to let go of all 'story control' in the ordinary role-playing sense, and genuinely get into authorship of who's where and what's happening when, and who's seeing whom next, period.
It does work. All the story-power you'll ever need is firing in those characters, both NPC and PC, and the demons. Right now, trying to "keep it together" and any related stuff actually diminishes and muzzles the real story-power that at this moment, I am not sure you guys are ready to trust in action.
Best, Ron
Andrew Norris:
Hi John and Ry,
It's exciting to hear about your campaign. I just wanted to throw in some information about my experiences running the game.
When I posted about our sessions a few years back, Ron gave some very specific advice, and I ignored it. Now, I didn't intend to ignore it, in fact I made a note of it, but I sort of missed the point and in actual play failed to follow up on the points he'd raised.
You guys are emphatically not doing that, which is my way of patting you on the back. (And being a bit jealous. I didn't really grok Sorceror until a few months after we ran the campaign. It's also the game that showed me one of our perennial group members simply couldn't imagine his character suffering adversity in any way, and boy howdy that was helpful in understanding our problems.)
This is also my way of leading up to this point: What Ron is saying about adjusting the diagram on the back of the character sheets, and looking at them during play, is very important. It seems like a minor thing, but it's the bit I most wish I could whack my past self with a rolled-up newspaper and say "Pay attention!" about. Same with the "don't worry about PCs staying together". I did follow that advice to the letter, and it led to a number of situations in which the PCs actions had a strong effect on the other PC's situations, the characters didn't know about it but the players did, and the resulting tension was dynamite in terms of spurring play onward.
Paiku:
Awesome advice guys, thanks Ron and Andrew. I think I said this before, but: you should give the rulebooks away and charge for access to The Forge ;-)
After the latest session we did a gut check, and everyone was okay with the way the session went, even though the three characters were acting independently most of the night. But I thought: maybe they were just being polite Canadians. As the GM I feel bad about seeing two of the three players sitting out of the action at any given point in time. But then... sometimes the inseparable party, the three-headed-six-legged monster, doesn't fully engage all the players either. For tomorrow I'll trust to the story power of the characters, and to the story-making power of the players, and we'll see where it leads us.
A few of my ideas for tomorrow's session would count as "crosses," and I'll keep an eye out for other opportunities to cross the plotlines. The players can "weave" when it feels right to them.
And we'll let you know how it goes! Thanks all,
-John
Ry:
Oh, just a little piece - you know how we were calling Serge's wife "Michelle" at the table, but "Anna" in the prep work? That's where I got the idea that her name is Anna-Michelle. If that's cool, her Dad calls (er... called) her Anna, but Serge calls her Michelle.
Paul T:
This game sounds like it's a blast!
I'm sure you'll find a way to balance "everyone off in their own plotline" and "PCs form a party" play that works with the tone of the story developing in your game. It sounds like you've gone from one extreme to the other. Since you're all paying attention to the issue, I'm sure you'll find a happy medium that works for this game very quickly.
We'll have to talk whenever we get together! I've been playing this game Land of Nodd that's all about the crossing and weaving, and shows how easy a thing it can be to do. I have quite a few thoughts on the matter, depending on whether you want those crosses to be surprising and mysterious or thematically charged and therefore inevitable: almost expected, which would allow you to foreshadow and build expectations, rather than creating a sense of mystery and discovery.
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