Dark Places

Saturday I ran Sorcerer & Sword at Nerdinburgh, a small, cosy homespun convention I held at my house here in Edinburgh. This was very much a demo of Sorcerer, being a one-shot over 4 hours, which meant I had to cut a few corners to get as much play in there as possible. Sorcerer is notoriously bad at these sort of things, but I’ve built up a reasonable experience in how the game works, so I thought I would be able to handle it OK.
My idea was to present the players with a tight situation and half-done characters - after the players had decided how their characters connected to the R-map and/or situation, all they had to do was to write a Kicker and we were off. That succeeded very well, I think. Here’s how I did it.
Firstly I chose to use the Charnel Gods supplement, because it narrows down a few things - there is one main type of Demon, the Fell weapons, and Humanity is also pretty straightforward. To quickly get inspired for a pulpy and explosive situation, I went to one of the In a Wicked Age oracles, the God Kings of War, and got:

•     A local warlord's ancestral sword, much honored.
•     The ghost of a tyrant king, strangled by his own daughter.
•     A warrior-woman, queen of her small wild tribe, hard-pressed by advancing civilization.
•     A vengeful and jealous god, displeased by the lapses of his followers, however scrupulously they observe.

From that I build a small R-map, looking like below. I since added a couple of extra characters, but this was the version I presented to the players, along with a short description of the situation.

The Blatonn village, inhabited by pale-skinned people, mostly farmers, was expanding north of the Southern Mountains and had reached the borders of the Black Tooth Forest, home of the Black Tooth Tribe. The tribe people were darker skinned and with their bodies covered in elaborate tattoos. King Alfreth is dead and there are rumours he’s walking around undead. He was killed, strangled. Blatonn is therefore without a King, as its formal leader at the moment is the Fell weilder Faldur, who is the protector of the village.
I premade three characters with stats and descriptors, and assigned each a Fell weapon from the Charnel Gods book, but nothing else. Here are two of the templates - Gregor must have kept his, as I can’t find it.

STA 5 (Savage-raised, Trained soldier), WILL 4 (Righteous), LORE 1 (Naive), PAST 4 (Captain in the Amber Guard), Flaw -1 (Disbelief).
Demon: Trinfendel, a black sword. STA 10, WILL 11, LORE 5, POW 11. Need: Flattery and praise. Desire: Tyranny.
David chose this guy and named him Markos. David decided not to be connected to the R-map beforehand, and arrived as a travelling swordsman from the south. His Kicker was that he landed in the middle of a skirmish between the Black Tooth tribe and the villagers (at this point without their warrior Faldur).
Next character.

STA 3 (Throwback), WILL 4 (Driven), LORE 3 (Mentored), Past 4 (Nomad), Flaw -1 (Paranoid).
Demon: Irkspire, a long pike/spear with a black metal handle and inscribed glyphs. STA 8, WILL 9, LORE 5, POW 9. Need: Wielder must promise in not to part with it. Desire: Melancholia.
Gordon took this one and the character became Shara Grieffinder, the lover of King Alfreth. Gordon’s Kicker was spot on with the village guard arriving to arrest Shara for killing the King. Bam!
Gregor decided that his character was Thulan, a tribesman, brother to the Queen, who had been away to the south and arrived back expecting to lead the tribe, only to see his sister on the throne. And that wasn’t even the Kicker, no no, Gregor threw himself fully into action: Thulan wakes up after a battle, captured by the villagers and his Fell Sword Periffon is gone.

Here’s the R-Map including the player characters.

And, finally, the entire R-Map with extra characters added, some of which never came into play.