Sorcerer (role-playing game)

Sorcerer is an occult-themed indie tabletop role-playing game designed by Ron Edwards, self-published in 1998 and later issued in hardcover by Edwards' own Adept Press in 2001. Players take the roles of sorcerers who summon, bind, and bargain with demons, powerful non-human entities that can work with or against their summoner. Each group defines a shared concept called Humanity at the start of play, and characters make choices throughout the game that either uphold or risk that definition, giving the game a strong thematic throughline about what a character will sacrifice for power. Conflicts are resolved through opposed dice pools where the single highest die wins, with the margin of victory determining how severe the outcome is. The game also uses structured story hooks called bangs, situations built to force a concrete choice from a player about how their character responds. Sorcerer won the second annual Diana Jones Award for excellence in gaming in 2002 and is regarded as an influential early work of independently published tabletop game design.