Thoughts on reading Jared sorensen's "Schism"

After I finished Dictionary of Mu, I had Sorcerer on the brain and wanted to see another setting supplement to compare the Dictionary with.  I had purchased of copy of Jared Sorensen’s “Schism” a while back and figured now was the perfect time to explore it.
 
The strength of this setting is the ferocity of Sorensen’s vision.  This game presents a harsh world with protagonists who have been brutalized, tortured, experimented upon, outcast, used, and dismissed.  The players play characters who have health-ruining psychic powers that isolate them from the rest of humanity and make them prey for those who wish to use their powers for their own ends.  Sorensen describes the game’s ideal play in chapter six:

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Games should be brief and intense.  The characters should never be given a chance to rest of plan their next move.  There should be an ever-present sense that the walls are closing in, even if this feeling is purely imagined.  Use confusion and chaos to heighten paranoia.  Pit character against character and have them face awful choices (29)

And here are a collection of phrases Sorensen uses to describe how the GM should describe the world throughout play:

The key to Schism is alienation.  The world should feel familiar but slightly ‘off,’ as if turned one degree from reality.  At times, the city should have a strange and desolate atmosphere, as if large segments of the populace were just lifted from the earth. . . . Put the characters in the midst of a crowd and try to make them understand how alone they really are. Don’t describe color or texture. Focus on details that are so magnified and out-of-scale that they become meaningless.  Make comparisons between the city and the human body . . . so that the characters will constantly wonder if their perceptions are accurate or influenced by some strange force. . . .
 
While the source material is often flashy, noisy, and flamboyant, the world of Schism itself is not.  Music is muted and distant and pre-programmed.  Fashions are likewise muted and understated, as if outrage is far out of vogue and no one has cared enough to inspire such an emotion. . . .
 
[In the city, t]hings are always being built—construction and the signs o[f] progress is everywhere, but the result of that progress is nowhere to be seen.
 
Finally, remember that in this setting, ‘The City’ is not some neo-gothic monstrosity or an open sewer of filth and depravity.  Rather, it is ambiguous, anonymous and ambivalent—as though it was designed by a cadre of absentee scientists for a grand abandoned experiment.
 
One might say that God is that absentee scientist (29)

Indeed, one might.  I quoted that section at length because I think it exemplifies some of Sorensen’s best writing and captures the heart of what feelings he wants this game to evoke in play.  And I think it’s that strong vision that makes readers remember this game so strongly and fondly.
 
The actual rules are cool, and it is interesting how much it changes Sorcerer’s central mechanics.  Demons are not demons in this game, but the psychic powers that the PCs wield.  They do not have independent characteristics or desires or needs.  Instead, they are a well-conceived and delineated list of powers that all have a price to pay.  The powers are not statted up like demons; the only stat they have is “power” which is derived from the PC’s “origin” stat, which replaces the “lore” stat in the original game.  Players decide how their character got their powers or first discovered they had powers and give it a score just as lore has a score.  That origin stat become the power stat for each psychic power the PC wields.  Your cover is how you are being used or how you are employing yourself by using your power, and instead of having covens, each PC starts play belonging to a cabal, either by force or by choice.
 
The cabal is central to the game.  In the sixth chapter, Sorensen lays out his vision for how he expects most games of “Schism” will go.   In this vision, characters begin as part of a cabal and then discover how the cabal is using them.  They then have to escape from the cabal and are consequently hunted by the cabal.  As they use their powers and face their immediate problems, the PCs’ humanity plummets and the character dies according to play.  In fact, the player is instructed to imagine their character’s death during character creation.  Players are not beholden to this vision, but it gets them thinking of their character’s arc from the moment of their birth.  When the character’s humanity hits zero, the player gets a session to bring that character to a satisfying death, giving them a chance to go down swinging, seeking or rejecting redemption.
 
It’s a neat interpretation of the Sorcerer system, and it shows how far the system can be used to tell the story of powerful characters who have to decide how far they will go to get the thing they want or do the thing they want to do.
 
Naturally, I have gone back to reread Sorcerer after reading these supplements and am finding even more there than the last time I read it.  I can see why it inspired so many interpretations by so many designers.