It was an interesting thing, when I wrote about the game session that Jackie and Randy did with the Sorcerer rules — Margie had read the game session and commented to me about it, but at that time Dave hadn’t read it yet.
When he did, the first I heard about it was a fairly determined “I want to play this.”
As I understand it, when he mentioned this desire to Margie, she shook her head, smiled and said “you go right ahead, dear.” The setting, the disfunctional relationships, the ‘take me to the brink of destruction and see what happens’ set up… it just wasn’t her cuppa.
Completely understandable. Heck, I can look at most of my games and think “this person will like this… this person won’t”, and I’m usually right — I never expected Margie to enjoy Sorcerer the way she might, for example, enjoy Trollbabe (which interestingly is written by the same guy).
Anyway, my point is, we both knew that about the game at first glance.
Now, we didn’t do the normal DnD game tonight, and I’ve been talking about trying out some other games when that game finished up, so I jumped on this opportunity to run… something. Whatever. Dave G and Robert were into the idea of the far-future, apocalyptic, sword-n-sorcery style “Clicking Sands” set up, so we decided to make up some characters and give it a try. Robert, Dave G, Jackie, and Margie, that is.
Well, with the session over, I can say that Margie and I had our intuitions in the right place.
Sometimes things don’t click. Sometimes you just can’t seem to get to the point where the upsides seem like they outweight the downsides. Sometimes the mechanics or the feel or the outlook just rubs you the wrong way, and sometimes it’s all of those things put together.
When the night was over, three people enjoyed their stuff and one didn’t and I feel kind of bad about that.
But, as the subject line implies — we both basically already guessed it would happen. Still, it’s too bad, since there was a lot from all four players that I really liked — I hope everyone still interested gets a chance to try that setting out again.
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I think a lot of it boils down to that core premise behind the game — “what will you give up for power?” That is simply not a question that interests some folks — if it doesn’t, there’s not a lot that sorcerer has to offer, because that question’s so intrinsically tied to the game.
Actual Doyce the thing that didn’t click with me was that I didn’t get to do much story. I felt I gave you a decent kicker and then tried to put some image around it, only to have you say OK a volcano – now you are walking across the great salt flat of Japan. After which I get wacked in the head by a kid – end session
Not much story there.
I like my character, in fact I have a better idea of who he is than in trollbabe. I just don’t think we did much with him.
Yeah. The kicker as it stood kind of left me cold. The substitute version didn’t work any better, for that matter, but I wanted to move forward and do something.
It comes down to the definition of a Kicker being “something happens that (a) changes ‘the way the world is’ for the character and forces the PC to take action, where there are many possible actions.”
To use both your kicker and mine as examples of something that didn’t really work:
1. My clan is dead. Their death was long, gradual, almost gentle, and forseen.
The Problem: (a) nothing about that really changes anything for the character, because it’s something that you’ve had a couple hundred years to get used to and it’s something you were expecting, so there’s no real life-altering change. (b) there’s not really a bunch of choices presented as a result of the Kicker — no one lives there anymore, so it’s pretty much time to leave… that’s really the only choice you’ve got.
2. My clan is dead because a nearby volcano blew up. This one isn’t any better.
The Problem: (a) nothing about that really changes anything for the character, because it’s something you were pretty much expecting and (more to the point) doesn’t functionally change any of the relationships you’ve established for the character, so there’s no real life-altering change. (b) same problem — there’s not really a bunch of choices presented as a result of the Kicker — no one lives there anymore, so it’s pretty much time to leave… that’s really the only choice you’ve got.
Here’s one that might have worked in an interesting way:
By community vote, the clan (my own descendants/children/grandchildren, whom I’ve raised and taught and nurtured!) name me a heretic and unanimously vote to have my exiled from the place I built.
It’s a perfect Kicker either, but there’s a little more pathos and drama there, maybe. It establishes a number of new things about the PC’s life (those I love revile me — I’m outcast from the one place I call home). It also presents a number of interesting possible choices. (What do I do? Leave Peacefully? Kill everyone on the council and declare a theocracy led by myself? Set up a puppet governor possessed by my Demon? Kill everyone and leave a burning village behind me?)
Hmm. That’s probably the problem with rushing right from chargen into playing kickers — some of this stuff really needs a few hours to think about. 🙁