Sorceror / A critique by Stephen and Andrew Gilham

Back in S&T nr 44 Feedback, one of the suggested new titles was
'Sorcerer - a fantasy science fiction game on the tactical level
depicting all sorts of weird things'. In S&T 48 it resurfaced as
'Sorcerer - a fantasy/ Science fiction game, primarily involved with
sword and sorcery. Various types of magic and magic practitioners are as
critical, if not more so, than the actual use of conventional weapons.
Many scenarios to cover the many different approaches to this subject'.
With jaundiced 20/20 hindsight, we can see that even at this juncture,
elements of the present turkey were emerging where we expected the
definitive fantasy game.

By Moves 19 (the next month) it had been given the go ahead, and we
found to our delight that Redmond Simonsen, fresh from his great success
with Starforce, had been given design-responsibility for the project.
S&T 49 promised an unusual game, trading on the success of Starforce.
'Colour' surfaced in Moves 20 - very pretty, but eventually boring. We
were promised popular 'Sword and Sorcery' super-heroes (sic) and a 'fast
moving slam-banging game with a lot of weird surprises built into the
system'. Next issue, passers-by on East 23rd Street would have been
surprised by the magic bolts being flung about at SPl's offices - not to
mention the demons and vortices lurking in dark corners and alley ways.
At this point we still had great hope for the game, which seemed to be
living up to its expectations. Even in Moves 22 we were assured that
there would be 'scenarios flexible enough to assume the characters of a
given literary work are operating in them'.

A month later, the finished game was announced, complete with impressive
full page back of S&T advert, including a fairly elaborate shaggy dog
story.

Opening the game, and donning sunglasses (not supplied), we examined the
lurid four-colour map. Did we find realms of colour, with borders for
the Sorcerers to do battle over? Did we tie our tongues in knots trying
to pronounce 'Wollobett akyrvydritta?' Did we find well known S&S
super-heroes? Did we find a lot of weird surprises? Did we find even one
werewolf or vampire? Did we find an exciting game? Are we discouraged?
No, yes, no, no, no, no, yes!!

To be blunt, the game is boring. In more detail, movement is boring,
conjuration is boring, teleportation is boring, magic bolts and vortices
are boring, attrition is boring, combat is boring and hex conversion is
as bad, if not worse than the rest.

To be fair, however, let us examine the points upon which these
conclusions rest.

The sequence of play, is in its essentials 'first player moves, both
fight, second player moves, both fight'. In as far as it goes this is
all right, but little would have been needed to be done to institute
continuous combat as in 'Punic Wars' - give a Sorcerer 20MP, and make
the cost-to-fight 5MP, give all other units one extra MP, and make their
cost-to-fight 1 MP if you really want to try this.

Game equipment. The map resembles a psychadaelic dayglo patchwork quilt.
Only the rather splendid magical units - 7-3 trolls, 5-9 demons, 3-15
dragons, and fortresses of various flavours, and the 'snowflake'
colour-value chart show the special influence of the Art Director at
SPI. The Sorcerers themselves look like Jackie Pallo in silhouette, and
the human infantry are dull (at least though, they aren't cross in-box
symbols).

Movement is almost standard, but... Essentially, independently operating
magicals have to pay a movement point penalty to leave their first hex
of the phase, a penalty equal to the combat strength augmentation they
enjoy in that hex. This practically renders trolls immobile, and reduces
a game to the point where only sorcerers and their retinues can move.
This counts against a game, even when there are a comparatively large
number of leaders - e.g. 'Frederick the Great' - but when there may only
be one or two Sorcerers per side, this is a fatal flaw.

The limited area covered by the map - 23 x 23 hexes - with the fringes
of the map virtually out of play - combined with the vast (15MP)
allowances of Sorcerers reduces any importance of position, without even
requiring teleportation. Teleportation consists of moving from a hex of
your power colour to a similar, non-Enemy occupied hex at a cost of 1
MP, or five MP if a human infantry unit comes along for the ride. This
is effectively shifting with out randomization (Starforce). For a quick
and-dirty fix use the randomization table from Starforce, reading 1 hex
for 1 lite, with depletion instead of neutralisation.

Conjuration; why, oh why does it take sixteen hours (5MP out of 15) to
conjure a demon army? Can they not tape-record the spell, then play it
back faster?(1) Periandrenn's nonsense verse must have been rather
serendipitous - one Tra-la-la instead of a Fol-de-rol and anything could
have happened! But, to be serious, this is what happens: in a hex of
your colour, you expend MP's to combat the strength of the unit to be
conjured - and what is more, the hex may contain no other magicals.
Apart from the strength differences of the unit types, they do not
differ. This is the weakness in the system - one's only decision is to
conjure whatever can be afforded .

Magic bolts. These are a means of attacking other units during your
movement phase, to soften up enemy stacks to weaken them for their
coming combat phase. The trouble with bolts is that they are too weak -
a two colour sorcerer can fling bolts only of strength ten, and against
stacks typically worth fifteen this verges upon the ineffectual.
Possibly they have all been equipped with copper wire so they can ground
their weapons, leading the bolts harmlessly to earth?(2) In fact, they
are just another reason for not playing fast-and-loose with lone units.

Vortexes: these are just as useless. We have never seen these do
anything worthwhile. They are only effective against lone magicals, and
one-colour sorcerers tomfool enough to leave their hexes of power. Even
if one finds a hex susceptible to vortex damage, often as not (if not
more so) the vortexes will scatter in some other direction. Conjuring
them is a waste of time, and destroying them all the more so. You could
try allowing new vortexes to be aimed on their first turn, giving some
reason for conjuring them in the first place. Hex conversion. For just
15MP's you have the privilege of being able to convert a white (all six
colours at once) hex to one of your own favorite colours. This is also
an important victory condition for many scenarios (yawn).

Attrition; or 'Old demons never die, they only fade away! This
unfortunately sums it up, lone magicals left to their own devices will
fade away back to their own continua. This makes them that much more
ineffective especially as attrition is fiercest on the most favourable
colours for combat

Combat: like the test matchs, combat usually ends in an ineffectual
draw. Combat is by differential, using effectively a different table for
each pair of colour relation ships.

Results are in the form of loss points; for each loss point, a unit must
be 'depleted', i.e. flipped, to reveal a weaker unit. The form of the
combat results table makes it very difficult to successfully attack
units on hexes of their own colour, and if you can work up some sort of
parity of forces, losses for both sides will be about even, and usually
only about one loss point each. Since depletion can be 'repaired' by
sorcerers in their next movement phase, by the time the next combat
phase comes around the defending units are back to full strength and
can repulse the attackers. Fortresses especially are virtually immune
to attack. (One interesting anomaly is that a sorcerer in a fortress
enables it to use its normally bracketed combat strength in attack. One
wonders how this is achieved).(3)

Some units, however, are relatively easy to destroy, to wit, lone
magical units. In fact, the whole system seems engineered to prevent
magical units from exercising any independent action. This is quite
correct within the rationale given for the game, but effectively reduces
your unit count to two or three (the number of sorcerers you start
with): a recipe for a dull game.

Optional rules, or 'stopcloning around': these probably represent a last
minute attempt to add interest to the game. They usually are not worth
the trouble. Cloning allows multicolour sorcerers to split down into two
or three one colour sorcerers. It is hard to think of situations where
this is worthwhile, even though it does enable you to convert more white
hexes to colour. In theory, it enables more units to be conjured, but
this is the least of your worries. Many games, in their later stages,
see 'expendable' magical units fading away through attrition.

The stacking and combat rules forbid more than two units to attack a
given hex, so surplus units are quite useless.

So much for cloning: cloak of invisibility, hiding and assassination are
just paperwork; magic flux means one colour disappears for a turn, and
if your colour goes too often, you might as well resign; Shir, the black
sorcerer, son of Gorm, is a bit of local colour (joke). He exists merely
to stir and unfortunately requires an extra player. He is the offspring
of a two-colour sorcerer and a demon (or demoness, is it?). He is a
12-15 intelligent vortex who can conjure undead human infantry.

The module on creation of new spells is very attractive at first glance,
but, as the cookery book said, first catch your spells. The suggested
spells are a bit ludicrous (give me a workable time travel rule), and in
inventing one's own spells, the difficulty is in finding one which is
worthwhile but will not win the game on its own, thus making the game
slightly silly. It's too much like the atom bomb in 'Global War', only
more risky to build (sorcerers can get killed developing spells, and
this is one of those games where the sorcerer represents you).

Still, the game might survive all this if only the scenarios were fun.
They're not. 'Education of Periandrenn' teaches you that optimum play
requires no imagination, and is very dull (worse than the 'rescue
mission' in 'Starforce'). Most of the Two-player scenarios are
overbalanced, and turn on victory points - and you get lots of points
for converting hexes. So, you ignore the other player, and spend your
time converting hexes. The, uh, 'historical notes' are the most
interesting part of any scenario. They sure do have loose morals, those
sorcerers. They are about on the level of certain of the Roman
Emperors.(4)

Arnold Handrick's additional scenarios in Moves 25 are a better bunch
altogether, though the sorcerers have some unusual pastimes. In
'Starforce', the twist was that the commanders were female. In
'Sorcerer' the twist is slightly different.

All in all, 'Sorcerer' is pretty bad. It suffers from Redmond Simonsen's
'points for this, points for that' idea, which was great in 'Starforce',
so-so in 'Dixie' and just out of context in 'Sorcerer'. The system if
original, even unique, and that too is a problem. It is virtually
impossible to represent your favourite fictional heroes within the
colour framework, so you are stuck with the rather nameless, faceless
crowd of alphabetically coded sorcerers (Nbar,, Btha, Benm, and
Yyri--solicitors and commissioners for oaths). The odd system means that
any obscure rules point must be hunted down and checked, there being no
'common-sense' solution. The mathematical nature of the combat routine
is not what is wanted here, and makes the game too predictable. The
Player's Notes are either obvious or irrelevant. Maybe someone knows how
to play this game for fun and is not telling. From where we sit, it is a
lemon.

Footnotes:

1: 'Operation Chaos' by Paul Anderson. Lancer Books 1971. A mention of a
device to turn or implode a shell within microseconds.

2: 'Swords Against Death' by Fritz Leiber. Mayflower, c.1968. This
tactic was success fully employed by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser .

3: 'Earthman Come Home' by James Blish. Faber, We favour the piledriver
technique used by the Interstellar Master Traders, formerly
Gravitogorsk, Mars, in their outrages on Vega Five.

4: 'The Twelve Caesars' by Suetonius. Penguin. The section on Tiberias
is representative.