Cutting scenes
Ron Edwards saved my Sorcerer actual play report from falling off the third page, and I’m thinking about what to answer. I haven’t read up on orthogonal conflicts yet, but it sounds like something that generated one of the two rule discussions during the game.
One thing I didn’t mention in my play report was how wonderfully effective it is to cut between scenes in a rapid manner. The three players had their characters in separate scenes most of the time, but because I kept cutting between them no one had to wait for long before their turn. Good places to cut are right after something new or cool has been revealed in the scene, or right before jumping into a conflict. I would say stuff like “he doesn’t agree… so that’s a conflict, but first…” and then cut to someone else. That means that the game is full of mini cliffhangers, which in turn means that the players and me are eager to get back to the scene to know what will happen.
You don’t have to decide if you cut away because the scene is over or because you want to keep the tension up, you can decide when you get back to the scene. I would say something like “your wife says she’s been seeing someone else… (evil grin) Cut to…”, and when we got back to the scene the player could either say he wanted to confront the wife directly or play a scene where the character complained to his friends.
On another note, right now there’s Stockholm’s Spelkonvent (Stockholm’s Gaming Convention, page in Swedish) where Anders Sveen and Jonas Möckelström are game mastering four games: AG&G, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, Polaris and Shock: Social Science Fiction. I think that’s cool.