{"id":6698,"date":"2004-07-31T08:38:15","date_gmt":"2004-07-31T15:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/07\/31\/thats-a-wrap.html"},"modified":"2004-07-31T08:38:15","modified_gmt":"2004-07-31T15:38:15","slug":"thats_a_wrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/31\/thats_a_wrap.html","title":{"rendered":"That’s a wrap"},"content":{"rendered":"

We finished up Doyce’s Sorcerer<\/a> <\/em>game, “Bibliophage,”<\/a> last night, with a “last temptation” and big, desperate battle that turned into a major and relatively painless victory. At least for the victors.<\/p>\n

\"\"For my character, the arrogant Ken Osato<\/a>, it also meant losing a bit more humanity (both permanently, for tossing the lead bad guy — Jackie’s Shannon<\/a>‘s dad — into a very nasty demon’s liquid maw, and temporarily for summoning my own dad’s ghost and letting him feed on my blood). He was tempted by the offer to be on the “inside” as the Bibliophage — a legendary sorcerer-eating knowledge-harvesting demon — was unleashed. The bloodshed involved didn’t really faze him (this is Ken we’re talking about), but the prospect of later betrayal, the risk to his sister, the previous threat to his girlfriend, and the fact that he’d just (sort of) gotten rid of one dominating father figure and had no desire to replace him with another, led him to poker-faced reject the deal and try to figure out how to stop it — even as Shannon was clearly on the same team and Val was apparently willing to proceed.<\/p>\n

The final resolution — we all ended up rejecting the deal, and launched a surprise attack on the two senior sorcerers behind it, knocking them down quickly enough that they never got a chance to recover and act against us — was both harrowing and satisfying. Had either of them, especially Shannon’s dad, managed to “get a shot off,” things would have gotten pretty desperate pretty quickly.<\/p>\n

The resolution did end up truncating some story-lines: with the previous owners of the Bibliophage portal now, um, permanent denizens, the place is way too dangerous to leave unguarded. And though there’s no intent by Ken, Shannon, or Randy’s Val<\/a> to actually use the damned thing (well, not immediately, anyway), we certainly don’t want to be on the outside <\/em>if someone else stumbles on it and tries to use it.<\/p>\n

So, no CEO position for OsatoSoft in Japan. Which actually may be okay, since Ken’s sister Hanae <\/a>would desperately love the job (and, Ken would be willing to admit, would probably do okay in it, not to mention royally pissing off Dad). Ken can continue to manage the OsatoSoft USA, continue to stick around the Bibliophage portal, and continue to keep an eye on the others. That ends that thread, but he still has plenty of others — his sisters, his dad, the amulet he got from the latter, etc. If we ever return to the campaign again, there’s plenty to carry along with.<\/p>\n

As for the Sorcerer <\/a>system .. well, it’s certainly not any simpler than other simulations. Certainly trying to translate real-world tactics, and multi-character conflict required significant cogitation and rules-consultation by Doyce, no less (nor more) than other RPG systems. And on the bright side, it does both support the underlying theme of the system (struggling to retain one’s humanity while making use of infernal powers. And it does seem to scale up well, it’s “add more dice to the pool” mechanic working very nicely (and yet never leaving anyone completely helpless). I’d call that a success.<\/p>\n

I’m ready to move on from Ken, at least for the time being (though I came up with a couple of keen t-shirt ideas for OsatoSoft). He’s not a pleasant fellow to play, though sort of fascinatingly nasty and self-centered. But I look forward to “something completely different” next outing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We finished up Doyce’s Sorcerer game, “Bibliophage,” last night, with a “last temptation” and big, desperate battle that turned into a major and relatively painless victory. At least for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6693,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/02\/weekend_update.html","url_meta":{"origin":6698,"position":0},"title":"Weekend Update","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 2-Aug-04 6:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"The weekend was largely about playing games, which, I suppose, is not as bad as some other passtimes. Friday we wrapped up the current arc in the Sorcerer Bibliophage game....","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5880,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/05\/playing_to_and.html","url_meta":{"origin":6698,"position":1},"title":"Playing to (and against) type","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Jul-04 9:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Game Dream 3: Is It Me or Is It Memorex? 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Nice conclusion, as a younger brother was rescued from Faerie (against...","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7137,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/10\/21\/have_gun_will_t.html","url_meta":{"origin":6698,"position":3},"title":"Have gun, will travel …","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 21-Oct-04 10:28am","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, enough politics! Let's talk about violence and religion! Or, perhaps, about gaming. Actually, not much to say, except that I've about 3\/4 of the way through the Dogs in...","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"ditv.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/ditv.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6399,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/10\/sinking_it.html","url_meta":{"origin":6698,"position":4},"title":"Sinking it","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 10-Sep-04 7:10am","format":false,"excerpt":"Doyce mixes the twisted psychological rules setting of Sorcerer with my favorite public recreation and comes up with Eighteen: A Golfing Epic for Sorcerer. Needs some play-testing (hint), but it...","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50085,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/15\/its-hard-to-keep-a-good-sorcerer-down.html","url_meta":{"origin":6698,"position":5},"title":"It's hard to keep a good sorcerer down","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 15-Apr-15 12:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently \"Constantine\" isn't cancelled. Yet.Yeah, that John's a slippery fellow ... Constantine Cancellation? Not Yet, Contrary to Rumor Read about the rumored, and since-redacted news of a Constantine cancellation. View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}