[Sorcerer] emergent climax
Ron Edwards:
Hi Dave,
It may be an artifact of your phrasing, but I'm getting the idea that Brandon's story, at least, was deemed to end inappropriately, without actually ending. We don't know whether he's going into rehab? Isn't that his Kicker? And playing out the actual resolution of the Kicker would require seeing where his life went after that, i.e., after he definitively did or did not go. You're talking about an emergent climax, but I don't see one. It strikes me merely as a resolution of specific, local features of the Kicker, namely all this jockeying around with the geek kid and whether or not to keep his demon. I find myself saying, well, OK, so his initial struggling isn't getting him too far, but he's learned a lot of things about his own values. Cool - good development. Now what about that Kicker?
Do I understand correctly that the game is finished? Or am I jumping the gun and mistakenly confusing your term "climax" with "all done?"
On a non-critical but merely reflective note, although nothing stops people from playing with a zillion sorcerer characters in a given story, I find myself gravitating toward player-characters-only sorcerer, with the only exceptions being mandated strongly by descriptors like Apprentice.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Quite the opposite! We all thought the end of Brandon's story was quite appropriate. My phrasing was meant to evoke unfinished business in a good way.
Transforming Brandon's "Fuck no, I ain't getting hauled off to some dipshit military school!" into "Man, maybe I should seriously consider this," was great. And then, "I'm now considering turning my life around, but I can't do that with Typhon here, so let's give him the boot -- oh fuck, I can't!" That was a good enough ending for me. Opting to go to rehab camp / military school wouldn't have meant much with the Get You In Trouble Dog along.
It felt like a very satisfying end to Chapter One. Chapter Two: Getting Rid of Typhon would have been a whole new multi-session thing.
None of this was the plan! It's just how it worked out. We didn't discuss whether my Kicker had been resolved. Had we had another session ahead of us, that would have been an interesting question. But we didn't -- I moved from New York to Chapel Hill, NC a few days later.
Re: lotsa sorcerers, I think Marco was a good way for Typhon (via his Need) to get Brandon in trouble (Typhon bulldozed our way into a drug den, mauling bouncers and drawing the ire of cops and dealers alike), and Eisen was a good mirror image of Kimball. In general, though, your position makes sense to me.
Ps,
-Dave
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