[Sorcerer] Miyazaki + Wuxia + Westmark = Druids! (one-sheet help)

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James_Nostack:
Though I haven't played Sorcerer in four years, it remains one of my favorite game, and periodically I get the urge to run it again.  Now's such a time, and I dug out some notes from 18 months ago.  I need a helpful nudge with a one-sheet, though.

Various Inspirations
This is a setting inspired by my girlfriend's fascination with My Life as King.  I'm mainly stealing the game's visuals: manga-style Renaissance Europe with little hints of steampunk and fantasy-stuff.  The game involves a child-king who must build a capital through elemental magic, which is fueled by sending incompetent D&D adventurers off to TPK's.  (Players of the game will realize I'm teasing.) 

Somehow this got me thinking about Individuals, the State, Nature, and Magic . . . which very naturally led to the films of Hayao Miyazaki.
* Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
* Howl's Moving Castle
* Castle in the Sky
* My Neighbor Totoro
* Spirited Away
* Ponyo

Children's books about 18th Century statecraft and its demands on individuals put me in mind of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark Trilogy.  A Korean version of this theme is Iron Empress, which my girlfriend was watching regularly around the time she was playing My Life as King.  (Plot of Iron Empress: good widow-queen gets captured and enslaved by Kingdom of Terrifically Evil Henchmen, and falls in love with enslaved lower-class person; meanwhile good queen's corrupt brother rules as regent for epileptic little prince and tries to keep them apart.) 

In my head, these themes of love, duty and social expectation also sort of connect to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, which take contrasting views on the subject.  And of course, Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomoe Gozen trilogy of novels, which have been the victims of criminal neglect by fantasy fans.

Adding Some of This Up
Miyazaki's films are the major influence here.  The archetypal Miyazaki film features a good-hearted, youthful protagonist who becomes initiated, possibly against her will, into an intimidating spirit-world closely linked to natural process. (I'd say "Faerie" but that word has gamer baggage.)  After the shock of exposure, the protagonist finds that the nature spirits are both awe-inspiring and friendly . . . so long as you respect them.  Involvement with the spirit-world, however, alienates the protagonist from normal society, and may in time transform her into a heartless abomination.  Balancing these requirements is usually difficult, since the ravenous demands of the State (typically warfare, industrialization, and maybe even agriculture) encroach on the spirit-world.  The State may also seek by-gone relics of prior States: enormously destructive artifacts of high technology.

So: vaguely post-apocalyptic feudal cultures.  The apocalypse was relatively mild and long-ago, and we've managed to bounce back reasonably well.  Or, shoot, maybe it's another world entirely, with a mixture of science and 18th Century politics.

Some facts about the world:
It's got steam-punk technology, because that's interesting.  Steam-punk stuff isn't sorcerous: it's just how things get done.  And it's not aggressive steam-punk either: just tucked away, a little bit fancier than it was in the late 18th Century.Politics: some absolute monarchies.  I like the idea of “King Colgrevaunce” and other names from Arthurian myth, to suggest that there's an older layer here, still played-up by the aristocracy.  Those sorts of names, however, are deliberately archaic.  Old like Gormenghast traditions.  This is stuff of an immensely conservative First Estate.  It's possible that they literally don't acknowledge that 100 years have gone by: there might be some big event that nobody's informed them of yet, and they just keep re-using old calendars.Radical revolutionary stuff, mixed with hints of anachronistic 1930's politics ala White's Once and Future King: proto-Communists, Fascists, Anarchists.Party of the Swine, Party of the Curs, Party of the Worm, Party of the Crow, ad nauseum The aristocracy still believes in duels.  They even engage in primitive dogfights if they've got Wright-brothers style aero-planes and gyrocopters.  But fencing is a big thing, with lots of special moves, like in the martial arts rules from Sex & Sorcery.The dudes manning the Sky Navy are serious, practical people who are used to scrambling around with emergencies all the time.Still, it all comes down to holding ground.  So there are guerrilla partisans in some ethnic parts of this territory, trying to resist occupation, and doing a pretty good job as the Empire pours zillions of funds into schemes to drive out the rebels.  Within the Empire, people don't care about the occupied territories for their own sake, but only in so far as the occupation can be used to disgrace or praise the ruling party.
Some random names for things: The Crescent Kingdoms, the Great North Woods, Red Stick and the South-Lands, the Scorch.  Marlucca, Illyria, Nithia . . . the Southern Archives . . . Szegge the Vulture.  The Money Groups as a form of criminal conspiracy back when people were illiterate by law and used accounting as a type of language?  (Some of this is old, like pre-history stuff.)  Kotor and Scutari and Zembla.  The Time-Traveler.  And some vampires.  Thunder-Stick the Rifle.  Viking Cherokee Gods: Crow, Deer, Otter, Snake, etc.  Westland.  Sark, Zirid.  Grimsby, Toadcroft.  Jarrow and Abernorton.  Vortigern, Colgrevaunce, Yseult, Bagdemagus.  Maybe a family stolen from Finnegans Wake.

One Sheet Stuff
Humanity is . . . reciprocal devotion to a community (family, crew, corporation, town, nation).  Saying a wholehearted “Yes I will yes” to some claim made by (a subset of) human society.

Demons are . . . manifestations the Waste Land.  Needs of natural demons are typically kind of cute.  Needs of techno-demons, which we might treat as undead under the rules, have really wicked, awful Needs which often will lead to horrific Humanity loss.

Lore is . . . Familiarity with the Waste Land and the powers of the natural world.
* Goodman or Goodwife, the heroine of Howl's Moving Castle.  Repressed, maybe mistrustful.
* Field Biologist, like Ash and Professor Oak.  Analytical.
* Wayfarer, like Patrick Stewart's guy in Nausicaa and Nausicaa herself.  Experiential, intuitive.
* Just a Kid, like the boy in Ponyo.  Unsophisticated, wide-eyed, and marginalized.
* Hermit, like Ponyo's father or Howl.  Obsessive.

Sorcery is . . . um . . . alienation?  Malcontents, anarchists, runaways, hermits, disaffected wives, sociopaths, etc. are potential sorcerers, but I'm not sure what the catalyzing event might be. 

Other Rules Stuff
The spirit-world is a Mystic Otherworld like in Sorcerer & Sword.

People with the Royal Blood as a Will description can inflict the milder form of Hypnotism from Sorcerer & Sword.

Sword fights among those with Past: Swashbuckler may use the martial arts rules from Sex & Sorcery.

Characters with the Field Biologist as a Lore description can choose to cap Humanity per Sorcerer & Sword.  Your rationalism prevents you from getting too emotionally bound up with society.

Characters with the Hermit as a Lore description can trade down their Humanity per Sorcerer & Sword.  Turning your back on other people for good can give you unnatural power.

Where I'm Stumbling
So far, so good!  But . . .
Are these nature demons actually Angels instead?  They tend to be pretty beneficent, despite being pretty frightening at first.Do I have Humanity all backwards?  The really low-Humanity characters in Miyazaki's films tend to be "There Must Be Progress!" types: military = industry = applied science = politics, etc.  He's a complete hippie.What to do with the various techno-monsters, like the God-Warrior in Nausicaa?  Are they demons?  Or maybe lost technologies like from Sorcerer & Sword?  (This part of the rules seems to go unused by the majority of players, and I'd like to be able to say I used them at some point.)What turns somebody on to sorcery?

Chris_Chinn:
Hi James,

Here's the thing about Miyazaki's "nice spirits" - in the end, most of the protagonists have to leave them at some point anyway, or, at least, he ends the story before having to answer that question.  For example, if only kids can see Totoro, what happens when they grow up?  Is it simply age, or is there a choice to be made? 

His less nice movie- Princess Mononoke, pretty much shows off San at 1 Humanity at the end of it, but still choosing to go kick it with the wolves.   Just imagine the kind of person she'd have turned out, if she survived and wasn't even friends with Ashitaka...

So yeah, I'd keep the nice spirits as demons too.  If you plan on doing long term play, maybe do it like this:  Sorcerers have a cap on Humanity, which starts at 9.   The first time in any story they actually decide to feed a demon's need, the cap drops by 1.   Sooner or later, they either have to decide to no longer Bind & use demons, or they're going to get pulled into the spirit world.  (I like to imagine Yubaba as an example of an old sorceress who probably fell in a long time ago...)

On the note of Humanity, I think Princess Mononoke is a damn good example all around of both industrialized and nature-types with low humanity.  Your basic definition works both ways, and that's pretty cool.

Chris

James_Nostack:
Hmmm, Princess Mononoke is one I haven't seen.  I'll have to check it out, thanks!

Ron Edwards:
Hi James,

More comments to come later, but for the moment, I dug up this older thread: The Evils of Civilization. The links to other threads in it are worth pursuing too.

Best, Ron

James_Nostack:
Ron, thanks for the link: that's kind of what I was getting at by suggesting that the nature-spirits might actually be Angels under the rules.  I don't think I've presented Civilization, and all its accouterments, in a very flattering light.  It's one-sided. 

Here's one of the things I've been kicking around in my head - not about RPG's in particular, just about life & politics.  There's stuff in the modern world that is fucking awesome: medicine, the Internet, weekends, fresh pineapple.  But I have access to these things thanks to a planet-sized, clanking, rumbling, huffing-and-puffing Civilization Machine, whose operation (at least in its present phase) is likely unsustainable and, maybe, inherently immoral.  Speaking in extreme generalities, there ain't no iPad without Guantanamo Bay. 

So it's occasionally tempting to say, "Fuck it, I don't want any part of all this.  Get rid of the state, fire the jailers, let people just be people like they've always been."  But it's always been pretty sucky--until right around now, right around here, in the eye of the storm.  So the question is, how can you say "yes" to certain parts of the modern world, without inviting the whole military-industrial complex into your rec room?  Where do you draw the line?

What I'm describing here is a binding with a demon - a binding very much in its favor.  But a binding that's extremely seductive, to the point where it's almost impossible to imagine any serious alternative.  And you know, maybe if you work with the demon a little bit, you can make it do good things.  Sure you can.  From the inside.

Moving back to the nature stuff - there's this strain of . . . I don't know the right word, like, pastoral utopianism in Miyazaki's work.  Chris wrote, "For example, if only kids can see Totoro, what happens when they grow up?  Is it simply age, or is there a choice to be made?"  Within Miyazaki's fairy-tale, that seems like a category error: the kids aren't meant to be real people who will age, have regrets, and die.  But natural disasters don't seem to be a present concern in Miyazaki's work.  (Sounds like Mononoke is the exception.)  I want nature demons to be like bears - all cool and nifty-looking and awesome, until you accidentally do the wrong thing and they rip your fucking face off.

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