Sorcerer & Sword

SORCERER AND SWORD

Good news: everyone on this mailing list will get a FREE copy of the first manuscript -- alpha-alpha-alpha, you realize.

Once it's been cleaned up some, and I hope to play it over the summer, then I'm thinking of combining it with my other outlaw RPG, Fantasy for Real. So the two of them together are my personal thumb in the eye of so-called "fantasy" which has invaded my roleplaying and fantasy literature until I can barely stand even to walk down those aisles in the bookstore.

(what's Fantasy for Real? It's based on the light, sexy, cartoony fantasy of the middle 70s; think Vaughn Bode. It uses a system I wrote that's way different from Sorcerer.)

That double-package, then, is what I'd like to be the second product available off the website. I'll probably put a teaser section up to whet people's interest. Man, art for either of those would be GREAT ... but I'm tapped out on artist money, those guys know how valuable they are.

Notions on these tactics? Any suggestions on Sorcerer & Sword? (hey, has anyone on the list read the Kane books by Karl Edward Wagner? How about the Nifft the Lean books by Michael Shea?) **********

RON EDWARDS: Who's your favorite sword-and-sorcery hero? Conan, Kane, Elric, Tomoe Gozen, Owen, Skafloc, Nifft the Lean, Tiana, Jirel, or someone else?

Controversy-starter -- even Conan and the other mundane "fighter" characters count as sorcerers, if you go by the guidelines of the Sorcerer rules.

Anyone recognize these names? Anra Devadoris, Tascela, Xaltotun, Tsotha-Lanti, Pelleas, Khemsa

Wow, the more I look at it, the more sword-and-sorcery looks like HORROR ADVENTURE and less like FANTASY (in the modern sense).

P.S. I'm coming up with some really ugly necromancy rules ... anyone want to share their favorite necromancy scene from S&S fiction? ************

RAN: > Who's your favorite sword-and-sorcery hero? > Conan, Kane, Elric, Tomoe Gozen, Owen, Skafloc, Nifft the Lean, Tiana, > Jirel, or someone else? >

OK, so Solomon Kane isn't *exactly* S&S -- he's close enough for me. Hmm... Corum, definitely... Give a nod to What's-his-face, the big, bad Dragonlord from the Vlad Taltos books (A far more interesting character than Vlad himself, in my opinion, in spite of the fact I can't remember his friggin' name)... The protagonist of Heinlein's Glory Road (OK, so I suck at names).

> P.S. I'm coming up with some really ugly necromancy rules ... anyone want > to share their favorite necromancy scene from S&S fiction?

Sure... Elric vs. the world from Stormbringer -- the scene with The Chaos Ship... even better, the Four Who Are One vs. Agak and Gagak (now why the hell was I able to remember *those* names?)... the demon prince Raum flooding the bay and tearing down the castle, from the book of the same name ("Raum," that is -- not "Flooding the Bay and Tearing Down the Castle"). How's that fir a start? *********

RON EDWARDS:

Ran wrote: >Solomon Kane ... Corum, definitely... What's-his-face, the big, bad Dragonlord from the Vlad Taltos books

Morrolan! Agreed, much more interesting than Vlad, whose entire role was to channel for Brust anyway.

>The protagonist of Heinlein's Glory Road (OK, so I suck at names).

Oscar (actually, his given name was Evelyn!).

Mine would be: the REAL Conan, Pelleas and Khemsa from the Conan stories (The Scarlet Citadel and People of the Black Circle, respectively), Kane, Anra Devadoris (from the Leiber story Adept's Gambit), and Owen (from David Mason's little-known, brilliant novel, The Sorcerer's Skull).

It's interesting to point out that Khemsa, a martial artist, was able to fight Conan to a standstill hand-to-hand, and Anra was able to out-fence the Gray Mouser. These sorcerers are not physical pansies.

>>favorite necromancy scene from S&S fiction?

>Sure... ... Stormbringer -- the scene with The Chaos Ship... even better, the Four Who Are One ... the demon prince Raum

Hey, good one! I always thought Raum was one of the great short, little-known S&S novels, and it's VERY "Sorcerer" in many ways.

My faves: - the duel between the decapitated necromancer and his two sons, by Clark Ashton Smith -- damn, what was that story's name, it's in the collection called Xothique. - Pelleas resurrecting the dead jailer ("Dead or not, he shall open the door for us. Rise, Shukeli! Rise from Hell and the bloody floor ..." Brrrr.) - Corum's really cool eye in the first trilogy (Moorcock, the Book of Swords) -- replacing each servitor with the animated corpses of what the last one killed. - Asenath transplanting her husband's soul into her dead body, then him clawing his way out of the grave to stop her plans (Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep). (okay, modern example, sue me) - "When he said it the third time, they would have to go." Pause. "The Bleak Shore." (from The Bleak Shore, by Fritz Leiber) Ran, I can't believe you forgot to mention this one! - Xaltotun, in Conan the Conqueror (more correctly called Hour of the Dragon), when challenged by an ally as to why he employs mundane armies: "Because blood aids great sorcery!"

Just thinking about this stuff, which I've been reading avidly all my life starting with Greek and Norse mythology, creates a sense of excitement, aggression, intensity, transgression. Ultimately, I would like to achieve that feeling DURING PLAY using Sorcerer, modern-day OR pulp-fantasy. To finish a play session and everyone closes the folders and gathers the dice, but with a difference: what Leiber called in The Lords of Quarmall the "leopard look," in our eyes. *************

LARRY: > Who's your favorite sword-and-sorcery hero? > Conan, Kane, Elric, Tomoe Gozen, Owen, Skafloc, Nifft the Lean, Tiana, Jirel, or someone else?

i must confes to a sore lack of having read enough to comment meaningfully. Sad, but i associate Conan with Arnie, not the other way 'round.

> Controversy-starter -- even Conan and the other mundane "fighter" > characters count as sorcerers, if you go by the guidelines of the > Sorcerer rules.

Yea, and? Why for is that a controversy?

> Anyone recognize these names? > Anra Devadoris, Tascela, Xaltotun, Tsotha-Lanti, Pelleas, Khemsa

not a one. guess next time you visit, yer gonna drop off a box full o' required readin' eh?

> P.S. I'm coming up with some really ugly necromancy rules ... anyone want to share their favorite necromancy scene

well, there was this one where the Romans got really tired of one particular revolutionary... nailed him up then threw him in a cave but then he came back ...

> from S&S fiction?

oh. er... nevermind. *************

CHARLES: > Controversy-starter -- even Conan and the other mundane "fighter" characters count as sorcerers, if you go by the guidelines of the Sorcerer rules.

Umm--sorry to be a dummy, but how so?

BTW, these sword & sorcery classics are really getting me fired up. I'm wishing I could re-read those I've read, & get a hold of those I haven't--& am becoming impatient as hell [so to speak :)] to see the new supplement...

V. interested to see how you integrate some of the core game philosophies/tenets into a pulp-fantasy/medieval setting, Ron: specifically, the rule on demons not publically manifesting themselves, & the premise that Sorcerer is based on transgression. After all, in a many fantasy & historical cultures, the existence & appeasement/ exploitation of malign supernatural powers were widely recognized facts of life.

> P.S. I'm coming up with some really ugly necromancy rules ... anyone want to share their favorite necromancy scene from S&S fiction?

I think your earlier comment about s & s being horror is right on the mark. I'm thinking Evil Dead, armies of rotting zombies (this is almost straight out of Howard as well as Romero), severed body parts scuttling back to their owners' crypts before daybreak...

Hope I'm not jumping the gun or anything but--maybe some kind of 'swarm' possessor that animates multiple corpses, so you can get that undead legion thing happening? You know, the old "kill the chief zombie and all the other zombies turn back to heaps of putrid (non-walking) dogmeat/soupbones". *************

RON EDWARDS: Oh boy, fun stuff:

>>even Conan and the other mundane "fighter" characters count as sorcerers, if you go by the guidelines of the Sorcerer rules.

Charles wrote: >Umm--sorry to be a dummy, but how so?

Here's my thinking on Conan himself (18 short stories, one novella, by Robert E. Howard). The often-repeated stereotype that he is scared of magic is total bullshit. I found instances of banishment (Khosatral Khel, the dog-demon in The Phoenix on the Sword, Thoth-Amon's demon), summoning (Belit's ghost scene in Queen of the Black Coast), commanding (the mummy in Hour of the Dragon), etc, performed BY HIM. Even binding!! (consider Yogah of Yag in The Tower of the Elephant) He's a (game terms) sorcerer!

(side note: the Howard Conan also loses fights occasionally, quips funny one-liners, gets blue-balls, instantly commands the respect [not fear] of anyone he works with, rather likes "civilization," and delivers a gratuitous macho line only once in nineteen stories, which Howard immediately explains is only bravado because he almost lost.)

Check out the "warrior" stereotype in the Sorc rules, Chapter 2. With a little less emphasis on go-and-hunt-the-demons, that applies to Tomoe Gozen, Conan, Owen, and others, all of whom are frequently haunted, consulted, bothered, and otherwise interacting (not just killing) with demons.

Clearly they are not the same as the "real" sorcerers like Elric, Kane, and a zillion Howardian bad guys. But it doesn't differ much from the "naive sorcerer" definition -- THEY don't consider themselves sorcerers, but the demons do. These sword-wielding buttkickers, in this branch of fiction and I hope by the parameters of this RPG, have far more in common with sorcerous protagonists like Kane and Elric than they do with the AD&D fighter.

>V. interested to see how you integrate some of the core game philosophies/tenets into a pulp-fantasy/medieval setting, ... the rule on demons not publically manifesting themselves, & ... in a many fantasy & historical cultures, the existence & appeasement/ exploitation of malign supernatural powers were widely recognized facts of life.

Ah, Point Two. In fact, in nearly all the fiction I'm dealing with, especially Howard, the general ruck and run of the populace is not much different from today's. People do NOT consider the Supernally Awful as a fact of life. Instead, they react much like we would: "Oh shit! What's THAT? [realize it's not a myth after all] No, no! AAAAH!" Recall that in Elric's Young Kingdoms, very little magic happened outside of Melnibone, until the War gets going. And in Conan fiction, when the Bad Guy takes over the kingdom with evil magic (Xaltotun, Thugra Khotan), it is widely considered hideous, unnatural, "couldn't happen here," etc.

Granted, in (e.g.) the Tomoe Gozen trilogy, pagan or semi-magical creatures abounded ... but note it is TOMOE'S reaction we see, and she, by my definition, is a sorcerer! If you look at the more mundane characters, high and low in society, they react to sorcery by being manipulated ("oh, that's silly, we aren't living in ancient times, you know!") or terrified.

I agree with you regarding the public-appearance thing; the demons don't seem to care much. It's easy enough simply to relax that element of the guidelines (which is what that is, not a "rule" anyway). On the other hand, they also seem to spend a lot of time in Contains (The Scarlet Citadel) ... so it's not like they get much chance ...

>Hope I'm not jumping the gun or anything but--maybe some kind of 'swarm' possessor that animates multiple corpses, so you can get that undead legion thing happening?

The Spawn ability ought to do it, especially since I'm also considering a new principle, powering-up based on killing, which is tremendously flexible. Binding is getting a much more specific, short-term sub-category called Pacting. Summoning and long-term Binding turn out to be much less common in this setting.

Many thanks for the comments!

More, more! ***************

RAVEN: >> Who's your favorite sword-and-sorcery hero? Conan, Kane, Elric, Tomoe Gozen, Owen, Skafloc, Nifft the Lean, Tiana, Jirel, or someone else?

Conan! Basically because he was the first taste of S&S I ever had, and I adore REH's writing to the point that I consider him a personal God (well, maybe not quite). Interestingly, it seems my main influences were all pulp writers, REH and HP Lovecraft and mostly, and both are definitely great places to draw Sorcerer material from.

Speaking of which, I was thinking about wizards...not sorcerers...wizards. Weird old hermits with non-demonic, mystical powers. Like the (and forgive me for mentioning Schwartzy Conan) little wizard that ran around with Conan in his movies, specifically in "Destroyer" (as "Barbarian" involved the wizard chasing off those little demon creatures and paying homage to the old Gods of the place he lived), where he and the other wizard have that little magical battle over whether the "dragon's mouth" is open or closed. Any rules for that sort of thing in the upcoming S&S supplements, or will it too be covered by control of demons?

As to my favorite sorcerer, well, I'd have to say there are two. For those that watched "Storm of the Century", I saw some Sorcerer material in there, especially with the main antagonist (well, duh!), but my absolute favorite sorcerer of all time is the one in the ice-palace in "Conan the Destroyer". ***********

RON EDWARDS: As told by his sister, Ahura:

I saw his pride - a silver-armored wound. I watched his ambition stalk among the stars as if they were jewels set on black velvet in his treasure house to be. I felt, almost as if it were my own, his choking hatred of the bland, miserly gods - almighty fathers who lock up the secrets of the universe, smile at our pleas, frown, shake their heads, forbid, chastise; and his groaning rage at the bonds of space and time, as if each cubit he could not see and tread upon were a silver manacle upon his wrist, as if each moment before or after his own life were a silver crucifying nail. I walked through the gale-blown halls of his loneliness and glimpsed the beauty that he cherished - shadowy, glittering forms that cut the soul like knives - and once I came upon the dungeons of his love, where no light came to show it was corpses that were fondled and bones kissed. I grew familiar with his desires, which demanded a universe of miracles peopled by unveiled gods. And his lust, which quivered at the world as at a woman, frantic to know each secret part. - Fritz Leiber, Adept's Gambit

Brrrr! *********

RON EDWARDS: Has anyone read:

The Sorcerer's Skull by David Mason? Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee? any of the Ryre stories by Ramsey Campbell? (The Sustenance of Hoak, The Pit of Wings, The Changer of Names) The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson?

Good stuff, all.

A consideration I'm grappling with: in this whole genre, authors made up "the world" AFTER they made up the character. Or rather, as the stories were written, the world and time-line filled in more or less haphazardly. Fafhrd and the Mouser, for example, were originally set in historical Tyre and were rewritten into Nehwon later.

(also worth pointing out: the first Elric stories written were the sack of Melnibone, the final battle of Law and Chaos, and Elric's acquiring of Stormbringer; 3rd, 6th, and 1st in the series as known today) (and the first Conan stories were of him AS A KING; all the rest were written with that eventual fate firmly in mind)

This presents problems for people who are used to RPGs and 80s-90s fantasy, where the first consideration is THE MAP and weather patterns and national boundaries and the last 100 or 1000 years. The idea from this point of view is that you do the world first, then have rules to make up a PC totally native to it, totally consistent with its assumptions. Also, the order of stories played is usually considered a simulationist time-line in "game history;" no system, to my knowledge, freely permits jumping about in a character's life from the players' point of view and not the character's.

Very difficult -- I want to be absolutely faithful to the genre, in which the main character(s) WEARS the world; it is HIS backdrop for very specific, personal conflicts. He is not a sketchy slate, traipsing about in the well-realized world, impressed by its grandeur.

All this leads me to think that nearly anyone who likes fantasy RPGs and subculture AS IT NOW EXISTS will be mightily puzzled by Sorcerer and Sword. ***********

RAN: > Has anyone read: Yes to Kill the Dead; no to everything else. And let's not forget Cyrion, also by Tanith Lee.

[...]

> This presents problems for people who are used to RPGs and 80s-90s fantasy, where the first consideration is THE MAP and weather patterns and national boundaries and the last 100 or 1000 years. The idea from this point of view is that you do the world first, then have rules to make up a PC totally native to it, totally consistent with its assumptions. Also, the order of stories played is usually considered a simulationist time-line in "game history;" no system, to my knowledge, freely permits jumping about in a character's life from the players' point of view and not the character's. [...]

> All this leads me to think that nearly anyone who likes fantasy RPGs and subculture AS IT NOW EXISTS will be mightily puzzled by Sorcerer and Sword.

It seems to me that the well-defined milieu was a reaction to the questioning that began to popup in gaming circles after D&D made its original run of success: "But *why* are the ogres living in a dungeon next to a room full of giant spiders?" That sort of thing... the game co.'s response was to program a detailed world that explained such things... of course, they went overboard, and even though the stuff was great to look at, it took a lot of the fun out of the game (think Harn). It became difficult to make great changes to the programmed world because there *was* so much "realistic" cause-and-effect going on.

Another consideration, though, is that for an RPG to be moderately successful, it needs to be flexible enough to allow all sorts of characters in (the better to sell more copies to a wider audience). Again, the reaction/over-reaction to the old D&D character classes was to pile on more rules pertaining to "customizing" a character, and eventually the reaction against *that* was to minimize the rules as a way of increasing diversity. Thus, most RPGs of the 80's and early 90's were "generic" in their genre, if I can assemble such a phrase: FRPGs remained generic medieval European with the odd Asian bits thrown in; super hero games (other than the comic book companys' own games) had no particular philosophy behind them, all to better appeal to a wide audience.

Ron has the great advantage of not needing to make a living from his game designs, which means he can ignore those sorts of "mass appeal" restrictions that lead to such blandness and over-programming.

It seems to me that a "first assumption" needs to be addressed in a Sorcerer & Sword situation: the players & GM are writing a collection of *short stories,* a la Conan et al, rather than a chronological novel or two. ***********

RON EDWARDS I've completed many rules tweaks and even some new-rules stuff for Sorcerer & Sword! Now it's just getting the prose into place, changing all those dashed lists and sentences fragments into something readable.

Necromancy is really, really cool. Not to mention prehistoric beasts with disturbingly high awareness, or devolved/evolved man-apes, and all manner of pagan/imp creatures ...

But the main idea is expanding on an element of basic Sorcerer that many casual readers miss: you can transfer victories on roll A into bonuses for roll B, if it seems narratively sound. Given a sorcerous/arcane justification, it can even transfer across individuals and time! This is the essence of big sorcerous plots that require many steps and tons and tons of Power. So now with necromancy, hypnotism, unnatural alien science, and good ol' demonics working for you ... well, the S&S sorcerer is way, way beyond the imaginings of little twerps and their silly fireballs.

On the other hand, the Lore 1 buttkicker is no slouch either, especially since I've scratched my li'l head and come up with ways to make combat more fun, tactically. This kind of thing always has to go through playtesting, though ...

OK, enough teasing. Here comes your alpha copy of Sorcerer and Sword. ****************

CHARLES: Wow! Man, this really blows me right into the S&S pulp-age. The concept of running a narrative game that does justice to this setting is incredibly exciting. Here are some ideas that S&S has stimulated. I raise 2 pts here, destiny & score descriptors, because the 2 will descriptors I've suggested are specifically (although not inextricably) linked to the notion of destiny.

"Theme" --> suggest changing to DESTINY --> ALL heroes must have a destiny: the thing that DEFINES their heroic role. Isn't a destiny one of the things that defines a hero? Otherwise, aren't they just another amoral sword-swinger, who's possibly better at it or more ruthless than most--ie, a glorified thug? If this is all it takes, then the top ranking Mafiosa are all heroes. --> The hero's Destiny may be actual position/ job title, ie conqueror-King of Aquilonia. Or it may be a general purpose, ie destroyer of the ancient order/ realm, or slayer of those they most love. Or, it may be a an aspect of their nature, ie they are destined to be unchanged while those they touch are transformed by their touch/ actions --> the "eye of the hurricane" (this is the 'Unchanging Star Theme' as proposed by Ron: I've incorporated it as just 1 possible Destiny under the above definition.

This might seem like merely sleight of hand: as I envison it, Destiny incorporates Theme as suggested by Ron, rather than vice versa. But to me, defining my hero's destiny & watching him play it out is a lot more inspiring & powerful than doing the same with his theme. & I do like the idea of _every_ hero having a destiny: that which _makes_ him/her a hero (& if that doesn't, then what does?)

--> thoughts on heroes getting smug about danger etc or using their Destiny (conciously or not) as a physical & psychological safety net: 'oh hey, that's right, this shit can't really hurt me, I still have to make it to the Imperial Throne yet" à remember that a destiny need not turn out to be exactly the shape the destined character is looking for; & the shape the hero is in when they attain that destiny is also open to negotiation & the influence of events that are played out (ie 'Just as the wisewoman predicted, you're the most famous king Oomlar has ever known—they've never had a *one-legged* king before"). Also the notion of the 'destiny cheated' is another option for gamers to consider: the idea that a destiny can be turned aside either by some flaw/strength or unlucky/lucky action of the hero's, or else by the intervention of another 'stronger' destiny à the idea that one individual may have a more powerful fate than those they oppose or cross paths with, & which will hijack/ circumvent these 'lesser' fates. I mention these things not to keep the players from 'taking advantage', since powergamers are unlikely to be a feature of a coperative narrative-based game like Sorc., but to toss around a few options to keep the