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Old 06-18-2007, 07:40 AM
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Bailywolf Bailywolf is offline
Creepy and He's Kooky
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Athens, GA
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Re: [RPG]: Monsters and Other Childish Things, reviewed by The Unshaven (5/4)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scorpio Rising View Post
Hunh.

I was excited to buy this anyway, because it's ORE, because it sounds quirky and cool, and because it's by Bailywolf.

But this review just pushed this over into must-buy territory for me. Cool sounding stuff.

Baily, if you're reading this, can you comment on the influence of Sorcerer on your game? Seems like you're kind of mining a similar territory to one that Mr Edwards attacks in that game. (And I tend to think of Sorcerer's rules as ORE's nearest kin in terms of the random sequencing approach to conflict resolution.)

Cheers,

SR.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this question- got distracted. The faeries stole my attention.

Sorcerer was always there, in the back of my head while I was writing this, but I was trying for something both more focused and a bit broader than a basic Sorcerer one-sheet. As the big focused "people who do magic by conjuring demons" sort of game, Sorcerer comparisons are inevitable- and entirely fair. I think Sorcerer gets stretched too far sometimes, and its basic definitions for things like Humanity redefined so radically so as to make me wonder why someone didn't just customize and optimize a new system for their concept.

Sorcerer also focused a lot of energy on the acquiring of demons- summoning, binding, punishing... and that's all done 'off screen' in M&OCT. Characters have monster friends. Just cause. There's no summoning or anything like that.

The basic question is also different. Sorcerer's 'what would you sacrifice for power?' is served well by the ritual mechanics. In Monsters the question (or one of them anyone) could be summed as "How do you balance the wondrous and magical and wonderful and horrible against everything else important in your life."

It also uses a pretty pimped version of ORE, if I do say so.

-B
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