I have been writing a supplement for Sorcerer. I’ll be playtesting that next week after a long hiatus when playtesting stalled with a different group.

I will be running it with Jeff and Julie, a married couple, as the only two players. I’m not sure how that is going to work out. We’ll see. Should be an interesting gaming dynamic.

The following is the e-mail I sent them introducing them to the setting.

Sorcerer is a game that quite frankly intimidates me as a GM but I think I’ve got a good handle on it now.

I’m writing a mini-supplement for an amazing game called Sorcerer. The supplement is called The Dictionary of Mu. I’ve included a taste of it below. If you have any questions or a thirst for more things Mu-ish (funny, he doesn’ t look Mu-ish…sorry, bad joke) let me know and I’ll gladly send you what I’ve got but I didn’t want to overwhelm you.

We’ll deal with character stuff on Monday, face to face. If you get ideas, that’s fine but don’t be in any mad rush or think that this e-mail was intended to give you a dozen ideas. This is just to give you a taste of the world.

This is a gritty setting. Picture the Scorpion King if it had a rockin’ flick, chock full of sex and violence, directed by David Lynch. It is inspired by old swords and sorcery fantasy stories like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric of Melnibone, Book of the New Sun and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars books.

Sorcerer is a game where all of the players are -you guessed it- Sorcerers who gain their power by summoning and binding Demons. This doesn’t mean that everyone in the party is a bearded wizard, far from it and it doesn’t mean the Demons summoned from Mu will have horns and a red tail. Strike D&D archetypes from your mind. It is a game about what your character is willing to do for power and survival.

Excerpts from the Dictionary of Mu:

Lemuria – A dark land on the edge of the Red Waste ruled by the Witch-King and his consorts. Whores though his consorts may be, they are all powerful warlocks and witches who owe their power, their place in the world and their petty baronies to the King’s cunning.

The Witch-King has gathered armies by tooth and claw and holds them together by devil and spirit. Lemurian opinion of their new King varies greatly with some seeing him as their own messiah and others seeing just as another blight from the waste.

Armies amass from all over Lemuria and word is out that war with the holy lands of Hy-Brasil or even that a siege on pristine Atlantis isn’t far in the future.

As a Lemurian it is perhaps a good time for a boy born in Mu’s Bed to fashion words concerning the Witch-King’s sudden rise to power and the changes to the face of Lemuria. However, this is not political commentary but a dictionary and opinion on matter would not be prudent.

Mu’s Bed – Mu’s Bed is the capital city of Lemuria, seething in the red sand wastes like a pregnant beetle. When the giants Lemur and Mu fought, the Mu fell and this city was built on his body. Most take this tale as only a metaphor. Fools.

This is Oghma’s birthplace and it is a hodge-podge of desert cultures from the Red Waste, witch and warlock refugees hoping for a crumb from the Witch-King’s plate and Lemurian peasant-folk who no longer wish to be subjected to the harsh law of the waste. Any number of languages and songs can be heard on its streets as nomads barter with water stolen from a shallow oasis hundreds of glares away as their currency and seers offer to read your sands for only a few wheels.

Mu’s Bed is a bowl, the slums are around the rim of the bowl, where the wind is the most unforgiving and the Witch King’s keep is in the center of the bowl, where the wind only howls rather than the rending and clawing it achieves in the higher streets. Bonesmiths who wish to see a corpse picked of its meat and sinew need only leave the dead beast out during a sandstorm on the outer rim of Mu’s Bed, where only the plebians make their hovels. In the morning, when the storms have died down, only virgin white bones will remain.

Life on the Bed is particularly desperate. Children in Mu’s Bed play games that mostly consist of wrestling over the ownership of sharp rocks or throwing said rocks with deadly accuracy once they chip apart. If one is weak, there is always the choice to lie down, let the red dust crawl down your throat and join Mu.