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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8086797" data-attributes="member: 42582">Dunno the answer to this one - I don't have a copy of Sorcerer, so my knowledge of this is via posts/essays on The Forge.My intuitive feeling is that a new round of kickers might make sense after a period of "downtime" - ie the immediate sequence of GM-framed scenes has come to a natural pause. From my point of view, what is key to the kicker as a technique is that it puts the PC at the centre of the action as the player conceives of it. So the writing of new kickers would have to be related to the bigger issue of whose job is it, at this point in play, to be deciding what is happening?I'm also thinking just now that there is a (loose) parallel or analogy here to the patron encounter in Classic Traveller. The Traveller player can always seek to generate a new scenario/situation by having his/her PC hang out in a likely place to try and meet a patron. The rules give the GM authority over the who and what, but not the if and when - the player has his/her PC look for a patron and the encounter dice are rolled (with Carousing-1+ giving a DM of +1 on the check). A player writing a kicker is one step further than this - not just when but key aspects of the who and what with a further dimension of in media res.At least as I understand the technique, it's the in media res element of a kicker that allows key aspects of the narrative control to pass, fairly seamlessly, from the player to the GM.Again as per my understanding, this is central to a kicker. And it's what allows that pivot from player to GM, ie it's what keeps us in a RPG rather than a shared storytelling game. The player frames but doesn't resolve. And doesn't even set all the stakes. Eg in the example I developed from what you set out, we don't know (i) why exactly the wizard chose this building, (ii) what exactly the mephit is doing there, (iii) whether the wizard is linked to the (2) group, or their enemy, or . . . , etc.The one time I used kickers - in the Dark Sun session I posted a bit of upthread - each player created a kicker and I used my GM-fu to interweave them.Given that Ron Edwards tends to push away from traditional party play, I suspect (again without actually knowing) that he might take a similar approach.I think the tendency of D&D to rely on party play is one obstacle to establishing some of the sorts of connections between PCs and events that we're talking about in this thread, but it doesn't have to be insuperable I don't think.And of course there's always the possibility of the players discussing among themselves as they write their kickers.</blockquote>

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