There is a funky smell to the space. That uncomfortable mix of old paper, paint fumes, and body odor built up over years and years of time. I don't think it is intentional, just what happens with a game store after surviving for years.
The space is crowded and warm. Too warm. Not hot where you pour sweat, but enough to make you wish you were outside in the wintery cold.
Rows of shelves covered in books and the walls festooned with blister packs of metal miniatures make the space feel small. The people that work there try to be friendly, but there is a definitive sense that you are an outsider. The echoing voices of the insiders bounce unintelligibly around the space from the adjoining room.
I hate this place, but I am hungry. I have a need for something new and this is the only place for miles that might have what I crave.
Not the Wizards of the Coast stuff. Not GURPS or Rifts or any of the many, many World of Darkness books. I am hungry for something different.
The last time I was there I found a copy of De Profundis and it baked my brain. This time I didn't know what I would find, but I knew it had to be different.
I don't know why I stopped to pick up Sorcerer. It sure wasn't the cover. It never had that kind of grab on me. But I did, and a few days later, everything kind of changed for me when it comes to gaming.
When I got that book home, I devoured it. I never read a game book from cover to cover before, but with the Sorcerer RPG I absolutely couldn't put it down. Not because Ron's writing style is so amazing...
He can be pretty academic in his style. Where I would use five words, he would use fifty. Not exactly a match made in heaven...
And yet, I couldn't put it down. The ideas were so different and new to me. Even the preface was unheard of at the time.
He begins with writing about the DNA of his game. What games made it possible to manifest. What the influences were and what spirit he was trying to evoke with his game. Then goes into a discussion called Art or Game? which just spoke to me.
So much so, I am quoting it here.
I think of role-playing as playing in a band: on Sorcerer night, you get together and make cool-sounding noises. You'll have to try people out and have standards for their abilities. Everyone has to listen, everyone has to play honestly and hard, and no other group will be quite like it. It doesn't concern winning, although showing off for your friends might be part of it. It has nothing to do with losing either, although screwing up or regretting things can play its role. In a band, if someone's not having fun, they stop coming. If someone is not up to the level of the other members, or can't handle their end of things, they stop getting invited. Eventually the band might be pretty good. When all is said, the rules you hold are just some instruments. The music is up to you.
I was immediately asking myself, who writes like this in gaming? In 2002? Who draws that kind of parallel? And who goes on after this to say, no demand that you too can make your own games?
He hooked me out the gate. I became a sponge trying to absorb the questions the game asked you. I was desperate to understand this new way of thinking about play at the table.
I won't for a second tell you that I understood it all those first few days. I believe games are best understood through play, but also, I believe I mentioned Ron's writing style...
But that didn't stop me from making a character then going back to get Sorcery & Sword, the first of three supplements for the game. To try and pull something together with my friends and see what we could figure out.
But again, I didn't fully understand it. I carried the baggage or weight of a different style of play and didn't know who to unburden myself, yet. Luckily, he had his website in the book, through which I discovered he was hosting a game event at De Paul.
Some emails later, and I and a friend went over to De Paul and met the man to learn his game. We did. It was tremendous fun playing that first game. The intuitiveness became apparent at the table. But I don't think I can talk about the power of the game without addressing the author.
A lot has been written about Ron Edwards. Ron has written a lot of things about himself and games. To say he is controversial to some is to not fully paint the picture of his role in the gaming world at the time.
He is a big personality with big ideas. He is really smart and a deep thinker. He can be difficult, but he was tremendously generous to many. He sat at the center of the nascent indie game movement and was instrumental in making it possible. Without him and that moment, I don't think you have a lot of what you have today in independent games.
If he didn't exist, you would have to invent him in a lab.
He definitely invented his game in a lab where it was tested intensely. Out of it sprung the idea of the Kicker, an event that happens to your character just before play begins that springs things into action. A concept before then I had never encountered.
The game introduced me to the idea of relationship maps as a core part of play. Humanity as a stat in play that is also a key currency. The use of pacing and an openness of play where information wasn't hidden, but shared so we could create the story together.
All of these concepts and more filled my brain. How could I apply them to my own design? How do I weave these rewarding play styles into my personal explorations of culture and moral choice?
When I published my first game, Conspiracy of Shadows, the influence from Sorcerer was there, but shallow. He interrogated the game and me with a myriad questions. He embraced the things I was trying to say and challenged me to do better.
The following year, when I revised the game... Really rewrote it, pouring into it all I had gained from drinking deep of Sorcerer and other games, he did it again. He challenged me. He didn't shy away from engaging with the game and the themes I was wrestling with.
When I tried to be experimental with untitled, he encouraged it. He saw what I was trying to do and tried to help me do it better. He championed it when he didn't have to.
Honestly, I don't think there is a game I have ever seen him shy away from engaging, even if he didn't like it.
He would do this thing where he would reference Sorcerer to me in design conversations while we ate Afghani food near his house. He would use it as a framework to push on ideas. When we collaborated on games, it was always there under the surface.
Over the years, Ron and I have lost touch. He moved to Sweden. I dropped out of the gaming community for about a decade. It is a shame, but happens when the world changes and you grow old...
And yet, I found Sorcerer as a framework invaluable to me. Even after all these years and all the other games that came afterwards.
And I think that is the important point. The game has stayed with me. Its influence is felt with every issue of Yggdrasil MGZ. It shows up in how I run games. It is a lens I use when I interrogate a new game I am interested in playing.
The Sorcerer RPG isn't just a game for me. It opened my eyes to what games can mean to people. How it can be used to connect them to one another through ideas. Not just magicians and vampires, but real, human ideas like the nature of joy or the enduring damage of trauma.
It sits on my shelf and in my head, reminding me of all the lessons I have learned.
Reminding me that games can be something more than hit points and die rolls. Reminding me that you can be critical and generous when interrogating a game. Reminding me how important it is to understand the impact of your writing and the layout on the understanding of your ideas...
Reminding me that games are important...
