# What TTRPG shaped you as a person? tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/sorcerer ![[Sorcerer (cover).png|400]] Hmmm, thinking about it, that's a rough call. There's a number that have claimed to that based on simply being early and there are some that were critical based on when they came along. But I'll pick something perhaps unexpected. I was already a bit of an outsider indie RPG guy even before I got involved with The Forge early on, debating the finer points of theory, radical new approaches to tabletop role-playing games, and looking for designs which tickled a very specific part of my pickle were compelling. I had, after all, never gotten into RPGs through **[[Dungeons and Dragons]]**. That was never my pathway. I came through weirder angles in the 80s. You throw a copy of **[[Traveller]]** down in front of me and I can do orbital mechanics. You throw **[[Call of Cthulhu]]** and I can ramble about mythos cults for days on end. You hand me an old school copy of **[[Robotech]]** and I will get you right into the fight on the bleeding edge of Protoculture. I could speak **[[Cyberpunk (RPG)|Cyberpunk]]** as fluently as I could **[[Shadowrun|ShadowRun]]**. But it wasn't until I really got enmeshed in the online community around the philosophy and design of games, really going hammer and tongs fighting with one another to try and express not just your personal approach but general approaches in a theoretical sense that I really think I found something I was *good* at. Yes, I'm saying that I am particularly talented at arguing with people over purely fictional narrative things that make no difference to anyone's life whatsoever. I would have made a *great politician*, but here I am in RPGs. Regardless, things like **[[Fudge]]** had already entered my personal consciousness, but I really needed a game with a setup and a system that spoke to my personal needs. And despite the fact that *Ron Edwards* was often the subject of my mockery and derision, it wasn't because he wasn't an excellent designer of games. He was just a pompous fuck that generally demanded a good, swift kick in the ding whenever he started getting above himself. We all have a calling, right? That one was mine. For the record those kicks and the ding were never successful but they did provide a certain level of joy to deliver. But **[[Sorcerer]]**—**Sorcerer** was a game that felt like it was meant for me, like a glove for a hand. - Minimal traits for descriptors, but each of them had a freeform element which meant they could be covering anything. - Demons as a primary element of the setting, both struggling against them and struggling to keep their needs met so that they would be there when you want to call on their power. - A society which felt a lot like those I had been a part of since entering the digital world in my high school years. Now **Sorcerer** was the absolute shit for me, and I was a huge fan. It didn't keep me from arguing with Ron; quite the opposite, it gave me more impetus to try and convince him that he was wrong in certain ways. I wanted to make the game better, and to do so, I vaguely believed that the author should agree with me more often. Hint: *that was wrong of me*. Nothing would make the game better. The author's opinion of what I thought had absolutely nothing to do with it. There were a lot of learning opportunities involved. But **Sorcerer**, in its original series of smaller books, was one of the most formative RPGs in my young life right there with Call of Cthulhu and Robotech. It's the most amazing thing. I can almost guarantee no one else responding here will be able to say that they played it and fewer still would be willing to admit to it. I will cheerfully do both. It was a fantastic piece of work and remains so.