At the discord, as part of another conversation, Ron said this:
Here’s what I’d like to see more: plain Sorcerer, with no sorcerers beyond the player-characters, and at the start, few if any demons beyond those they’ve bound, with any other fantastic elements of the situation being considered normal within the fiction. Significantly as well, no exotic or impressive NPCs in mechanics terms, merely people and things and problems (all of which do get plenty of dice). Doing it hard and well, not exotic and clever.
A scattershot discussion followed. This post exists to collect that discussion and further it.
For my part, I noted that in the current Sorcerer game I’m running, we do have NPC sorcerers, but only ones that have come from the Lore descriptors: namely, a coven and a master. 4 sessions in, only the master has shown up, and in a relatively quiet (but menacing) scene. Interestingly, a choice by the player put that character even further in the background than he otherwise might be (here I mean background in the pictorial-metaphor sense, not the “backstory” sense): the character knows, of course, that the master sorcerer has demons, but he doesn’t know *what* they are, and fictionally we’ve collectively taken that to mean that he kind of doesn’t *want* to know what they are. Should he choose to try to “see”, we will do the normal Lore vs. Power rolls and find out what happens. Until then, or until the master has a reason to act forcefully with his demons (which would be something related to the character), this NPC sorcerer is not a big-timer, fictionally speaking. It is almost up to the player to make him one.
Regarding the coven, they haven’t shown up at all yet, and although they individually have their own backstories and statted-up demons, unless the player grabs for them or something else in the fictional situation triggers their interest or need, they will stay in the background, too.
Perhaps what I’m trying to say here is that the NPC sorcerers are simply characters, not conceived of as oppositional pawns for me to push forward on the board. They will show up when they have an interest in the situation.
One response to “Plain Sorcerer”
I think that’s the most common cause for the presence during play of sorcerer NPCs: if a PC concept explicitly includes or implies a master-apprentice situation, covens, etc.
Your last two paragraphs are sensible too and worth underlining: the demons from those sorcerer NPCs are characters in their own right, and what they do depends on their own Desires, their relashionship with their master, and what their master wants. They are not there for staged or scripted boss fights. Same for the NPC sorcerers themselves, if any: they do what makes sense they’d do, given the fictional context, their motivations, drives, etc.