First, to my players: Alessandro, Giulia, Simone, don't read this, it's full of spoilers!
I mean it! Stop right now!
OK, now that we have some privacy....
My last session of Sorcerer ended with 2 sorcerers and 2 demons beginning an attack on the house of another sorcerer, with a fourth sorcerer present, and 3 other demons, and a possessed innocent bystander. Seeing that this is by far the most complex conflict I even had to run in this game, this thread is for specific questions about the specific situation.
A quick who's who with just enough information to understand the situation (I will add other informations later if necessary)
The conflict center around Isabella (PC) and Selene (NPC), two ex-friends who collaborated for a time in occult researches, and now they are two rival sorcerers. Selene tried to have Isabella killed, Isabella thinks that her old friend is controlled by a very powerful parasite demon and that she can still be "saved". So she plans to attack Selene's house to kill the demon (or banish it or contain it) without hurting Selene (that she wants to "save" after all). To do this, Isabella ask the help of the only other Sorcerer she knows, Antonio (a guy with a very powerful demon dog, and the only other bit Isabella knows about him is that he sacrificed his best friend a few days before to raise someone from the dead...). For still unknown reasons, Antonio agreed to help her
Antonio's demon, Igriph, is a passer (dog) that can shapeshift in a monstrosity with Pow/Will 13 and stamina/lore 12, with "big", "armor", three different special attacks (claws, breath, poisonous scorpion tail), that can fly (travel+transport) and enhanced perception of sorcerers and demons (it can feel their presence even if it don't see or smell them)
Isabella's demon, Damian, is a passer (human) with stamina 6, will/power 9, lore 8, with "fast", "armor" (he can turn into mist - he is practically a vampire, his need is human blood), "vitality" (to activate it Damian needs to drinks human blood, that does not count for his need), protection from psychic attacks and 2 guns that deal special lethal damage.
Igriph take the others, flying, to the roof of Selene's house. It's multi-storey building in the center of the city, Selene lives right under the roof, there is a locked door from the apartment to the roof. Igriph sense 2 sorcerer and 3 demons inside (the second sorcerer is the third PC, that is with Selene at the moment entirely by chance. He is in fact her prisoner, and she is at the moment "talking" to his demon, a object (a book) that is not very happy about it's current owner (he was organizing the construction of a holding device to contain it and avoid having to feed it) and has the strength to break the binding if it wants (it has Pow 13 - the players were almost in a race to create the more powerful demons...)
I will have probably more questions later (and for these I will give more information about the situation inside the apartment) but for the moment, I have doubts about these things:
1) Contain: can a contain be used to keep demons OUTSIDE a place? The rules says that "containing a demon means limiting its movement, whether to a certain vicinity or relative to another person or object. A Contained demon absolutely cannot move itself outside or across the Contain's boundaries.". So reading that it would seem that it is indeed possible... but all the rest of the chapter assume as a given that the demon is contained INSIDE a barrier, not outside (the rules about the protection from the effects of the need assume this too).
I am asking because it's the very first thing a paranoid sorcerer like Selene would do to her house, to keep away any not-invited demon...
2) IF it's possible to create a barrier to keep demons away.... I don't think the monstrosity that is Igriph will have a lot of trouble breaking through anyway, but how many actions it will need to use? I mean, to be able to enter Igriph will have to break through the door (and the walls around the door... Igriph is too big to pass into that door without taking a big chunk of the wall with him), and that is an action: does it break through the contain barrier too, with the same action, of it needs two actions and two rolls?
My current thinking is that the roll to break the barrier is the only one it should need, and "breaking the wall" is the fictional descriptive description of Igriph breaking the barrier (if he doesn't beat the barrier with its roll, he can't break the walls and cannot enter). This would mean that by breaking the wall Igriph would destroy the contain spell and allow Damian to enter without rolling. Is this correct by the rules?
3) If Igriph fail the roll to break the barrier, it can try again or that's it, it can't enter? (until someone break the wall to allow it to enter, at least). Or it can try again? Under which circumstances? Can it try right away as the following action?
Leaving the questions about the contain, next I have some questions about the general conduction of the scene.
When the PCs arrived on the roof, their intention to avoid being noticed for the moment was already, I think, a conflict of interests. But, in part to allow them to say what they were doing without having to begin rolling dice (and that would have stopped the session right there, there was not the time for the conflict) and in part because the idea of rolling perception dice for anybody at that moment and any following action until they attacked did seems really a lot of trouble, I decided to conflate any chance to surprise (or not) in the first roll of conflict, following a (simpler) example in the book.
What I mean is: when the PC will attack breaking though the door, I will leave to the order of actions decided by the dice the determination about Selene (and her demons) being surprised or not: if she will act before the PC, she has heard or perceived them before they attack, if not, they surprise her.
This simplify a lot the initial setup of the battle, but lessen sensibly the effectiveness of Selene and her allies: in this way they at most get one action before the PCs can act, and they have not a lot of chances to beat the PC's demons rolls anyway.
The question is:
4) that simplification is allowed by the rules, or I should have begun to roll for Selene the very instant Igriph did land on the roof? (it's not too late, I could roll for her even now...)
Then, questions about demons rebelling and breaking bonds.
Reading the game manual, to make a demon rebel to the point of breaking the binding take a lot of time and a lot of rough treatment from the Sorcerer.
In this case, we have a controlled PC (Alessandro, taken to humanity zero with a taint from Selene's parasite demon) with lore 4, and a very, very powerful object demon (the book, Slaneesh: pow 13) that has a +3 on the binding roll, that has seen his "master" prepare a prison for it, to avoid giving it what it "needs" (the book only asked him to make his lover suffer and write how that make him fell, after all: a reasonable request in its view). And now a new sorcerer, Selene, is offering to the book to satisfy its need if it switches sides...
Following the times given in the game manual, it's much too early, Slaneesh should still give Alessandro a lot of occasions to deliver what he promised: but, "thinking in the demon's shoes"... why should it? From the point of view of the Demon, Selene is a better "master" from every point of view. She is deranged, with no moral scruples anymore, more active and she has no reason to deny Slaneesh its need. So at least Slaneesh should give it a serious thought, giving his current master a simple choice: "dude, give me what I asked for, right now, and stop even thinking about containing me, or I will break up with you and follow this nice sorceress who is promising to feed me a lot"
This is important even in the middle of the conflict and even if Slaneesh has really no offensive powers of its own, because Selene will try to flee if Igriph break the barrier (would you try fight a 4-meters high flying werewolf that breath flames and has a scorpion tail?) and she has very good chances to be able to (her parasite give her "fast", and it has more power than the only opponent with the same ability, Damian. And she has "armor" in case Damian shoot her). And Slaneesh has the power to teleport in her pocket when she run, if it wants....
So....
5) Can Slaneesh try to break the binding at this time (or menace to do so, with real "weight" behind the menace) or it still too soon?
Hi Moreno,
Quote1) Contain: can a contain be used to keep demons OUTSIDE a place?
Yes.
Quote2) IF it's possible to create a barrier to keep demons away.... I don't think the monstrosity that is Igriph will have a lot of trouble breaking through anyway, but how many actions it will need to use?
One action to challenge the Contain and one to destroy the wall. The wall counts very much in this case as an oppositional character. Challenging the Contain must come first (see below).
Quote3) If Igriph fail the roll to break the barrier, it can try again or that's it, it can't enter? (until someone break the wall to allow it to enter, at least). Or it can try again? Under which circumstances? Can it try right away as the following action?
If it fails to break the Contain, it cannot try again unless the circumstances change in some overall, conflict-altering way.
You may be underestimating the importance of a Contain as a barrier. If the sorcerer puts it up as a way to keep demons from traversing a certain way, then it will stop them from doing that. You don't "go around" a Contain; it operates on principle, not on physics. The sorceress put this Contain up to keep demons from entering her abode from the roof. If that Contain's not broken, no demons are going through that way.
It's true that demolishing the whole physical context of the Contain will ruin the Contain. However, a demon cannot do that, only someone else. Otherwise the whole point of Contains is lost; they'd only be as strong as their physical presence. So if a demon wants to destroy an item which is currently the physical "body" for the Contain, it has to break the Contain first.
QuoteWhen the PCs arrived on the roof, their intention to avoid being noticed for the moment was already, I think, a conflict of interests. But, in part to allow them to say what they were doing without having to begin rolling dice (and that would have stopped the session right there, there was not the time for the conflict) and in part because the idea of rolling perception dice for anybody at that moment and any following action until they attacked did seems really a lot of trouble, I decided to conflate any chance to surprise (or not) in the first roll of conflict, following a (simpler) example in the book.
That's fine. Fuck perception rolls anyway. The only way I'd add an intermediary step in this case is if one of the demons inside the building had some ability that was pertinent to doing so, and some reason to be using it.
QuoteThis simplify a lot the initial setup of the battle, but lessen sensibly the effectiveness of Selene and her allies: in this way they at most get one action before the PCs can act, and they have not a lot of chances to beat the PC's demons rolls anyway.
That's what she gets for pissing off a sorcerous friend and then not stationing a demon right there at the roof with its ears twitching. There are two kinds of sorcerers: paranoid and dead.
About Slaneesh, you play the demons, and that's the end of that whole set of questions. I suggest that given the brief history of conflict between Slaneesh and its master, that you have Slaneesh tell the character its concerns, in no uncertain terms: if the character refuses to promse to quit this course of action Slaneesh doesn't like, then it will abandon him right this minute. Choose.
That seems to me to satisfy your twin concerns that (i) Slaneesh is at the end of its rope and (ii) the history of conflict seems too brief to justify a full-on, all-done rebellion.
Best, Ron
Hi Ron! Thanks! Now it's much more clear!
Still about contains: a contain that is not specific to a particular demon, does disappear when one demon overcome it (as it would seem from the use of the verb "break"), or it will still block another demon, or it depends on the kind of contain and what was specified when it was made?
Talking again about the situation in my game: there are two demons that want to enter but are blocked by the contain. From what the player said last time, the first one to enter will be Igriph (breaking through the contain, the door and the wall)
1st case: Igriph does break through the contain, and then the wall. Damian quickly follow in the breach. Does Damian still have to roll to pass the magic barrier? And if he does, did Igriph "weaken" the barrier passing through? (for example, lessening the number of dice for the barrier by the number of Igriph's victories). Does the GM roll again for the barrier or, at least for the same scene, he keep the rolled values?
A demon that pass the barrier can destroy the physical object that cause the barrier - in this case, Igriph could bring down the entire wall, instead of simply passing through - or even after overcoming it, the demon can't destroy it physically?
2nd case: Igriph fail, the barrier still stand. Can Damian try to pass, even if he is less "strong" (both in Stamina and Power) than Igriph? If he can try, does the GM roll again for the barrier, or Damian has to overcame the same rolled values?
If Damian get to pass, and this weaken the barrier, does this allow Igriph to try again, or the situations is not "changed enough" for that?
If both Igriph and Damien fail, the only way the Sorcerers have to allow them to pass is to physically destroy the barrier (the wall in this case), or they can try to change or delete the contain using Lore?
3) This did come up when Isabella and Antonio were debating the best way to attack Selene: what about parasites and possessor demons passing a "contain" barrier? Does the host get stopped too, or the host can pass freely and the demon stay behind if not physically tied to the host? What about "trap" contains, the ones that capture a demon that touch them, for example? Could a trap of this kind "trap" a possessor demon if the host touch it?
Leaving contains for now, let's see another guest at Selene's apartment. It's Peter, the assassin possessor with hop, range, cloak and perception (he can perceive humanity and the associated stamina, so he is able to hop into victims he can't see and he can choose the weakest victims around. This work only when it hops, though, so at this moment he is not able to perceive the PC in the roof). He is currently possessing the innocent bystander.
My concept for this demon is that it's a disembodied spirit that uses bodies without any care for their well-being, seeing that it has never any problem in finding others. None of its powers protect the host. At the same time I don't want it to be too easy to kill. So I added armor (for himself). It should work like this: when the host body is attacked, and both rolls to defend, the damage to the demon is lessened by the Armor, the damage to the body is not. Then, i wanted to use the death of the body as a cut-off to the damage to the demon: I mean, if the host body dies during an attack, the very first thing the demon will do when it will be able to act again is to "hop" into a new body, but in the meantime, between the death of the host and the hop, no physical attack of any kind can hurt the demon (a mental attack with psychic force could, if the user is able to perceive the disembodied spirit of the demon). I don't think I need to add any new power to get this, it's simply a matter of "to be able to kill it you have to be able to attack it", am I right?
(I like this because it give the demon even more reasons to choose weak people as bodies, and force PCs to be creative to kill it instead of using the usual "kill the host" approach...)
Having a hopping possessor demon and a Sorcerer currently at zero humanity (being hit by a taint) cause another question: if the demon possess the sorcerer, does this mean that the Sorcerer consciousness is destroyed, or the demon victories have to be more than the "untainted" humanity for that to happen? What about NPC Sorcerers that are at zero humanity?
--
Last, something I thought I had understood, but reading the preview pdf of a chapter or "play Sorcerer" (from some years ago) made me doubt I got it wrong.
X and Y are fighting X hit Y giving him 2 penalties (against Y's stamina of 3). Let's suppose that the next one to attack will still be X, after both rolled again for their next action. Y rolls only one die for a Stamina action, AND X has a 2-dice bonus to his attack roll against B, right? So, X gets to add the roll-over victories to his next attack (if it logically follow from the previous one, something I think it's almost a given if you are continuing to pummel the same adversary) and Y gets damage penalties, right? You don't have to choose between the two....
I am asking because in that pdf, instead, the actions that cause damage ONLY give penalties (but gets no roll-over bonus), and the actions that don't cause damage directly ONLY give roll-over bonus dice....
When a demon overcomes a Contain, the Contain is destroyed. I believe this clarifies all your problems with the two demons and the Contain.
QuoteA demon that pass the barrier can destroy the physical object that cause the barrier - in this case, Igriph could bring down the entire wall, instead of simply passing through - or even after overcoming it, the demon can't destroy it physically?
This question makes no sense at all. My previous post explained this already. First, the Contain must be overcome, and if it is, then the Contain is gone, vanished, extinguished. Second, then the demon can bring down the wall, which I understood was necessary because the demon was too big to go through the constructed entryway. I am confused by your phrase "... instead of simply passing through" because you described the demon as too big to do that. If the demon is not too big to go through the constructed entryway, then all this talk of bringing down the wall is completely irrelevant.
Quote2nd case: Igriph fail, the barrier still stand. Can Damian try to pass, even if he is less "strong" (both in Stamina and Power) than Igriph? If he can try, does the GM roll again for the barrier, or Damian has to overcame the same rolled values?
If Damian get to pass, and this weaken the barrier, does this allow Igriph to try again, or the situations is not "changed enough" for that?
You are making this SO DIFFICULT that I am becoming frustrated. If Igrish fails, then Damian can challenge the Contain (or Damian could have tried first, it doesn't matter). If the Contain is successfully challenged, it goes away. It breaks. It is gone. It is no longer there. It is an ex-Contain.
If the first demon fails to overcome the Contain, then the second demon faces a new roll from the Contain's creator. I'll give you credit here for asking a good question.
QuoteIf both Igriph and Damien fail, the only way the Sorcerers have to allow them to pass is to physically destroy the barrier (the wall in this case), or they can try to change or delete the contain using Lore?
The sorcerers cannot challenge the Contain as if they were demons. They can use Lore rolls (against the Contain, i.e., the sorceress' defensive roll) to modify their attempt to destroy the door.
But why you are obsessing about this when the demon has a Power of fucking 13, I do not understand. If its Stamina is 12, it can rip that door apart. Why are you bothering me with this nonsense?
Quote3) This did come up when Isabella and Antonio were debating the best way to attack Selene: what about parasites and possessor demons passing a "contain" barrier? Does the host get stopped too, or the host can pass freely and the demon stay behind if not physically tied to the host?
I am about to fly over to Italy and beat all of you with a stick. What about, what about, what about ...? Jesus, are you all playing AD&D2? Is this some kind of group-assisted schizophrenia? Quit it!
Use your mind. 1. A person hosting a parasite or possessor cannot get through a Contain, obviously. 2. The phrase "... not physically tied to a host" is infuriating. A parasite or possessor is necessarily tied to a host, unless it is currently not in a host. If either were currently not in a host, then the whole question becomes irrelevant.
QuoteWhat about "trap" contains, the ones that capture a demon that touch them, for example? Could a trap of this kind "trap" a possessor demon if the host touch it?
When people yap about "what about" like this, they are trying to get around rules. It isn't honest, Moreno. And for whatever reason, you are vulnerable to it, following them down the rabbit hole and trying to debate with them in the land of already-crazy.
Use your mind II. A trap-Contain traps the demon. Contains do not work on people. Period. What do you fucking
think that means for a parasite or a possessor? There is one, single, clear, and only answer to this question. The demon is trapped and the person hosting the demon is now limited by that trap. If the person continues to host the demon, they remain trapped together. If the person and demon become separated, then the person can leave but the demon cannot. (sigh)
And, no, simply passing through the boundary of a Contain does not automatically separate the demon and the host.
Peter is a pretty cool demon.
Quote... in the meantime, between the death of the host and the hop, no physical attack of any kind can hurt the demon (a mental attack with psychic force could, if the user is able to perceive the disembodied spirit of the demon). I don't think I need to add any new power to get this, it's simply a matter of "to be able to kill it you have to be able to attack it", am I right?
No. The ability is well-conceived but it is not free. You are adding a significant ability for free by cheating. It is very difficult to talk about this game with you because both you and the players seem to want to cheat, very badly, at all times. Peter is not and cannot ever be immune to attack; that is cheating. No demon is ever free from the rule that a demon is at all times a "person" in mechanics terms except where its abilities alter that template. Being outside a host body does not sidestep that rule.
The best you can do to get this effect is for Peter to have Cloak, defined as "invisible outside a host." There is no real "disembodied" in Sorcerer, but Cloak and the Armor it already has will provide the feature you want. Given Peter's Power, that should work very well.
QuoteHaving a hopping possessor demon and a Sorcerer currently at zero humanity (being hit by a taint) cause another question: if the demon possess the sorcerer, does this mean that the Sorcerer consciousness is destroyed, or the demon victories have to be more than the "untainted" humanity for that to happen? What about NPC Sorcerers that are at zero humanity?
The tainted person will roll a single die and the demon will get a bonus die. That should have been obvious. NPC or PC makes no difference at all.
QuoteX and Y are fighting X hit Y giving him 2 penalties (against Y's stamina of 3). Let's suppose that the next one to attack will still be X, after both rolled again for their next action.
I'm already confused. What happened to Y's action? Did Y act first? If so, then your phrase "the next one to attack will still be X" makes no sense at all. This confusion may make it impossible to answer your next question. You may have discovered by now that trying to ask questions about ten-steps-later in a conflict is impossible.
All right, let's presume that Y had gone first in the previous round and failed to do something, with no mechanical effects, and then X hits him. So the new round begins with Y at two penalties.
QuoteY rolls only one die for a Stamina action, AND X has a 2-dice bonus to his attack roll against B, right?
That's not automatic. It only applies if X's new action flowed from the prior action. "I hit him again" is definitely not enough to establish that flow. It is
not "almost a given" – it is a defined game mechanic with very specific requirements and those requirements have to be met. Specifically the player has to
say something that makes that flow/connection
apparent. You are trying to be the player, a distinctive fault which arises directly from the play-experience you described so well above. This is a fault and you should stop it.
I believe that answers your question. The injured character has two penalties from being hit. The attacking character gets two bonus dice if his action flows well from the previous action. These are two different things, independent of one another. Don't be distracted by the fact that the values for each are the same.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on February 14, 2014, 08:36:55 AM
When a demon overcomes a Contain, the Contain is destroyed. I believe this clarifies all your problems with the two demons and the Contain.
Yes, this clarify a lot the Contain situation.
QuoteQuoteIf both Igriph and Damien fail, the only way the Sorcerers have to allow them to pass is to physically destroy the barrier (the wall in this case), or they can try to change or delete the contain using Lore?
The sorcerers cannot challenge the Contain as if they were demons. They can use Lore rolls (against the Contain, i.e., the sorceress' defensive roll) to modify their attempt to destroy the door.
But why you are obsessing about this when the demon has a Power of fucking 13, I do not understand. If its Stamina is 12, it can rip that door apart. Why are you bothering me with this nonsense?
Because even if probably Igriph will have no trouble in breaking down the contain, there is still a noticeable chance that he will lose the roll (around 22% by my calculations, not considering possible bonus dice or penalties), and there is a 8% chance that BOTH demons will fail to break through. Small, but still that number make me wish to be able to answer the players questions if that happen (I am the player that made a 1% chance roll to call for divine intervention in D&D, after all, ruining "the GM's story" for a while...). Being able to bring down the contain WITHOUT bringing down the wall make a really big difference in that situation (it means they can do it from the outside, where their demon still can defend them if attacked.
What I was thinking, and what I was asking, was something more on the type "with my knowledge of sorcery, I know how to remove this contain spell from this door, all I have to do is write these countering runes exactly here and here with chalk and blood" but what you say is interesting too: so a Sorcerer can, with a Lore roll against the Contain strength, tell the demon "a different way" different enough to allow it another roll to break the contain? How it works, telling that is an action? (so one action for the roll, one action to tell the demon, one action for the demon to try again to enter) and it needs to be a different attempt in the fiction ("now try closing your eyes and going backwards" ) or not?
Quote
Quote... in the meantime, between the death of the host and the hop, no physical attack of any kind can hurt the demon (a mental attack with psychic force could, if the user is able to perceive the disembodied spirit of the demon). I don't think I need to add any new power to get this, it's simply a matter of "to be able to kill it you have to be able to attack it", am I right?
No. The ability is well-conceived but it is not free. You are adding a significant ability for free by cheating. It is very difficult to talk about this game with you because both you and the players seem to want to cheat, very badly, at all times. Peter is not and cannot ever be immune to attack; that is cheating. No demon is ever free from the rule that a demon is at all times a "person" in mechanics terms except where its abilities alter that template. Being outside a host body does not sidestep that rule.
The best you can do to get this effect is for Peter to have Cloak, defined as "invisible outside a host." There is no real "disembodied" in Sorcerer, but Cloak and the Armor it already has will provide the feature you want. Given Peter's Power, that should work very well.
Ah, but Peter already had cloak ("Peter, the assassin possessor with hop, range, cloak and perception") exactly for that reason, to avoid being seen when it enter or leaves host bodies. The fictional description of the cloak effect is "disembodied invisible spirit" more than simply "invisible" tough...
The way I imagine Peter, it can be hurt in two ways: using the host (hurting the host pass some of the hurting to Peter - but the death of the host sever this connection) or directly (but to hurt it directly, you have to be able to directly perceive Peter). To hurt it directly you have to use a form of attack able to "hit a spirit" (psychic force, or some sort of special attack - for example the demonic guns used by Damian are able to hurt it, but a normal gun would not. Igriph's scorpion tail sting could, Isabella's fist could not).
This is the sticky point: you have to be able to perceive it (making your roll against cloak) AND use a psychic or special attack to be able to hurt Peter "between hosts". This is allowable by the rules, or if someone is able to perceive Peter at that point, is able to attack it with a normal gun too, and the Armor at most can shift the damage to the fist table?
Quote
QuoteHaving a hopping possessor demon and a Sorcerer currently at zero humanity (being hit by a taint) cause another question: if the demon possess the sorcerer, does this mean that the Sorcerer consciousness is destroyed, or the demon victories have to be more than the "untainted" humanity for that to happen? What about NPC Sorcerers that are at zero humanity?
The tainted person will roll a single die and the demon will get a bonus die. That should have been obvious. NPC or PC makes no difference at all.
This answer confuse me. Probably it's better I repeat the question using the concrete numbers.
Peter is hopping. In the room there is Alessandro, a PC with stamina and humanity both at 2. At this moment Alessandro is under the effect of a taint from Abaddon, the other demon bound by Selene (a parasite) and his current humanity is at zero. (fictionally, he is under Abaddon's control. Not like a puppet, he still act independently, but he obey automatically any of the demon's suggestions - it's what happen to zero-humanity sorcerers here, they become in practice slaves of their demons. The effect of the taint stop when he is no longer in Abaddon's presence or at dawn, the one that come earlier)
The roll to take Alessandro as host is Peter's Power vs Alessandro's Stamina (not humanity), BUT, if the number of victories is greater than the host's humanity, the host personality dies forever.
There is no roll against humanity here (at least, not in the manual), no roll against zero dice. There is a roll against stamina (2), and... even if the roll is won with a SINGLE VICTORY, it's still greater than Alessandro current humanity (zero). So at the end of the roll, Alessandro ha only two possible states: (1) alive and unpossessed (if he won the roll) or (2) possessed and dead.
This, if the humanity value to consider is the current one. But if, instead, we use the "untainted" value of humanity (2) to compare to the demon's victories, after the roll Alessandro has three possible states:
(1) alive and unpossessed (if he won the roll) or (2) possessed and dead, if the demon won with 3 or more victories, or (3) possessed, but Alessandro remains "as a flickering bit of consciousness barely hanging on" if the demon won the roll with 1 or 2 victories.
What is the value to consider, "current" or "untainted"?
Quote
QuoteY rolls only one die for a Stamina action, AND X has a 2-dice bonus to his attack roll against B, right?
That's not automatic. It only applies if X's new action flowed from the prior action. "I hit him again" is definitely not enough to establish that flow. It is not "almost a given" – it is a defined game mechanic with very specific requirements and those requirements have to be met. Specifically the player has to say something that makes that flow/connection apparent. You are trying to be the player, a distinctive fault which arises directly from the play-experience you described so well above. This is a fault and you should stop it.
Let's use again a concrete example:
The player says "I hit him with my fist", we roll, the player has the higher roll, I abort my action to roll again, I lose again, the player has one victory, so automatically this give me a 2 points penalty on stamina (and will, lore, etc.), of which 1 is only for the next roll and the other is lasting.
After this, we declare actions again, and the players says "I hit him again, so I add the two victories to my roll, right?", and I answer "no, saying that you hit him again is not enough to get the roll-over victories as bonus dice. You have to say something that make that flow/connection apparent" (I would probably say "evident")
The player asks "like what? Give me an example"
So, of these, what would be enough?
A) "I take advantage of him still reeling from my blow to hit him again" [citing the previous action as the reason he is able to do that at all, this I think qualify, the other options are less clear]
B) "After hitting him with my right, now I swing at him with my left" [narrating the two actions as a linear continuous narrative]
C) "I press my advantage hitting him again" [as the first version but with less details]
D) "I say 'don't go down with a single blow, I have another one for you' and hit him again" [simply citing the previous action in character dialogue]
E) other cases?
Hi Moreno,
Quote... so a Sorcerer can, with a Lore roll against the Contain strength, tell the demon "a different way" different enough to allow it another roll to break the contain? How it works, telling that is an action? (so one action for the roll, one action to tell the demon, one action for the demon to try again to enter) and it needs to be a different attempt in the fiction ("now try closing your eyes and going backwards" ) or not?
I didn't say anything like that, not even one little bit. Forget it.
You are becoming a big pain about this stupid Contain. I keep telling you how the rules work and you keep inventing stuff I didn't say or that the rules don't say.
QuoteAh, but Peter already had cloak ("Peter, the assassin possessor with hop, range, cloak and perception") exactly for that reason, to avoid being seen when it enter or leaves host bodies. The fictional description of the cloak effect is "disembodied invisible spirit" more than simply "invisible" tough...
That's exactly what I was talking about. Your "ah, but" makes no sense. And if you can see a difference between those two "invisiblity" phrases, then I think you must be back in infinite-spikes land.
Your description of hurting Peter is generally correct, but perhaps it will help to remember that Cloak has no effect when the demon is acting directly toward someone. That would include Peter trying to enter your body, for example. Otherwise, yes, you are dealing with a demon who is quite hard to hurt directly, which is exactly how you chose to build him.
Don't under-rate Fists damage. Enough victories means Peter might be stunned into ineffectiveness, and thus quite vulnerable to a second attack or Banishing.
QuotePeter is hopping. In the room there is Alessandro, a PC with stamina and humanity both at 2. At this moment Alessandro ...current humanity is at zero.
The roll to take Alessandro as host is Peter's Power vs Alessandro's Stamina (not humanity), BUT, if the number of victories is greater than the host's humanity, the host personality dies forever.
Too bad. Use the current Humanity of zero. If Peter gets into Alessandro, Alessandro is dead, or rather will be revealed to be dead when Peter eventually leaves. Sucks to be him.
QuoteLet's use again a concrete example:
The player says "I hit him with my fist", we roll, the player has the higher roll, I abort my action to roll again, I lose again, the player has one victory, so automatically this give me a 2 points penalty on stamina (and will, lore, etc.), of which 1 is only for the next roll and the other is lasting.
After this, we declare actions again, and the players says "I hit him again, so I add the two victories to my roll, right?", and I answer "no, saying that you hit him again is not enough to get the roll-over victories as bonus dice. You have to say something that make that flow/connection apparent" (I would probably say "evident")
The player asks "like what? Give me an example"
NO! No, a thousand times no. You do not say "You have to say something that makes the flow et cetera." You say "No, I'm not feeling it," and that is the end of that discussion, do not stop, do not argue, do not let this player sit there and (i) expect free bonus dice, then (ii) whore for bonus dice, and then (iii) demand that you tell him how he can get away with it. NO!
QuoteSo, of these, what would be enough?
All of them are complete bullshit. You are missing the point of the bonus dice. This is about heightening the engagement intuitively and honestly; it's not about precise phrasing.
The other night, Mark and Sarah and I ran a little Sorcerer-conflict dice exercise, and Sarah's character had aborted an action to throw herself out of the way of an attack, successfully. For the next round, she said, without any prompting or knowledge of the rollover dice rules, "OK, I turn this graceless dodge into a backwards somersault, and I come out of the roll right into the other guy's path, and I come up already hitting him." Mark and I both leaned forward, because we were imagining the action much better than we were a moment beforehand, and we had a shared sense of dynamic staging as well as an appreciation for Sarah's character's presence of mind.
With certain players, most of the time, if they even mention the bonus dice, then they're already full of shit. (Not true for everyone.) And 100% of the time, if you don't see and feel it as GM, or even better, see it around the table in general, then it didn't work.
New questions!
1) About the "free and clear" phase... when it begins?
Talking about the specific situation: To breach the contain, and the wall, Igriph will need two actions, so the characters will not see each other for a time at the beginning. It could be played in three way, thinking about it:
A) Simple oppositional roll for the first try of breaking the contain, with the other characters doing unopposed actions in preparation of the battle if they want, then everybody goes to orthogonal conflict rules to play the breaking of the wall to see if they act before or later (so I tell the players what the NPC are trying to do at this time)
B) We play ALL the rolls to break the contains and the wall (at least two, maybe more) as simple oppositional rolls, and we start to play the orthogonal conflict only when the characters really meet each other
C) We are in orthogonal conflict right from the beginning, and I tell the players what Selene and the others are trying to do in the time Igriph spend breaking contain and walls.
I am 90% sure that the right answer is (B), but I was wrong before in the interpretation of the rules so I prefer to check first.
2) At a certain point maybe Peter will try to hop on a sorcerer on the roof. If this happen does this start the orthogonal conflict right there (before rolling for possession) or does it start only if Peter start it afterwards doing some action?
My guess is that in any case the conflict at this time is only between the possible host and Peter, and the choice between oppositional or orthogonal depends on the possible host reaction: if he/she decide to try to attack Peter in some way (special attack, quick contain, quick banish, ordering by a will vs will roll, etc.) before it has a chance to possess the host, the conflict is orthogonal, if the possible host only try to resist the possession, the roll is oppositional (does the host get a +2 for total defense in this case?)
3) This is not even a question, so much as a request of confirmation on something that I noticed just now writing this post... if the Sorcerer try to do a quick-contain on himself/herself to keep the possessor away, he/she should get the 2 dice bonus for defensive action, and IF the sorcerer roll highest, the demon can't possess him/her in any case, because it needs at least one action to breach the contain... and if the demon is faster, the Sorcerer can still abort the contain and roll stamina to defend himself/herself. Right?
4) If the demon is faster, and the Sorcerer abort his/her action (whatever it is) to defend, does this defense have to be the stamina roll to avoid being possessed, or the Sorcerer can still try to "jump out of the way" with a stamina (or cover, if applicable) roll, and only if this second roll fail, he/she has to roll stamina to defend against possession?
5) If, after possessing someone, Peter start a orthogonal conflict on the roof, who does it include, among the enemies inside of the house? My guess is that at that time the conflict only include the people on the roof and Peter (and Selene if she wants to give an order to Peter using the link they share), not the other people still inside the house (if they don't do nothing that require a roll to determinate the correct order of the actions)
Quote from: Moreno R. on February 17, 2014, 10:49:57 AM
3) This is not even a question, so much as a request of confirmation on something that I noticed just now writing this post... if the Sorcerer try to do a quick-contain on himself/herself to keep the possessor away, he/she should get the 2 dice bonus for defensive action, and IF the sorcerer roll highest, the demon can't possess him/her in any case, because it needs at least one action to breach the contain... and if the demon is faster, the Sorcerer can still abort the contain and roll stamina to defend himself/herself. Right?
I'm just going to comment on this one here, as it's mentioned in the book on page 85 (the first page of Chapter 5). "All of the listed rituals take anywhere from half an hour to three hours to perform correctly. A Sorcerer may attempt to speed things up [...] right there in combat, for example, but in doing so his or her relevant score is reduced to one die." So if your Sorcerer attempts to perform a contain during combat, he's only rolling one die of Lore (plus any rollover and bonus dice) for the Contain action.
Quote from: Dragon Master on February 18, 2014, 10:03:44 AM
Quote from: Moreno R. on February 17, 2014, 10:49:57 AM
3) This is not even a question, so much as a request of confirmation on something that I noticed just now writing this post... if the Sorcerer try to do a quick-contain on himself/herself to keep the possessor away, he/she should get the 2 dice bonus for defensive action, and IF the sorcerer roll highest, the demon can't possess him/her in any case, because it needs at least one action to breach the contain... and if the demon is faster, the Sorcerer can still abort the contain and roll stamina to defend himself/herself. Right?
I'm just going to comment on this one here, as it's mentioned in the book on page 85 (the first page of Chapter 5). "All of the listed rituals take anywhere from half an hour to three hours to perform correctly. A Sorcerer may attempt to speed things up [...] right there in combat, for example, but in doing so his or her relevant score is reduced to one die." So if your Sorcerer attempts to perform a contain during combat, he's only rolling one die of Lore (plus any rollover and bonus dice) for the Contain action.
Yes, this is clear. "quick-contain" is short for "a contain using only one die". But still, it's a contain: no matter if the demon has POW 12 or even POW 20, it still need an action to break it.
In this case, it's important because there are other 3 characters on the roof that can act if they notice that something is happening, and some of them can hurt Peter directly when it's outside of an host body.
Apart from this... I thought a little more about that situation after i posted that questions, and now I have another doubt...
Let's review the situation. Peter is rolling its Power trying to possess the sorcerer. The sorcerer is trying to keep Peter away with a barrier (a quick-contain). The demon is rolling a lot more dice so probably it's too fast for the contain (the sorcerer would have a better chance trying to order it to go away, using his full will instead, but I have seen that the players always forgets about this. Maybe seeing the NPC sorcerer ordering THEIR demons to go away will cure this...) but let's say that the Sorcerer do it anyway, and his roll result is higher than the demon's
What happen at this point? What is the roll of the demon to break the contain?
A) It's the roll it already made (it was to enter into the Sorcerer, so it was directly opposed to the contain). This means that not only the contain was build before the demon could reach the Sorcerer, but that the demon can't break it, having already failed the roll.
B) The roll already made by the demon is not the roll to break the contain. The demon can't reach the sorcerer, though, so it abort its action. It can try to break that contain in the next round, if it wants.
C) The roll already made by the demon is not the roll to break the contain. But the demon can try to "defend" against the contain with a single die, and if it win that roll, it can use the first roll to try to possess the Sorcerer.
The option "C" consider the contain as a form of attack on the demon. But nowhere in the rules I have found mention of contains used to attack or doing damage to the demons, so I don't think it's a valid option. But I am unsure about what is the right answer between "A" and "B"... if I had to choose right now I probably would choose B.
Quote from: Moreno R. on February 18, 2014, 10:55:47 AM
Quote from: Dragon Master on February 18, 2014, 10:03:44 AM
Quote from: Moreno R. on February 17, 2014, 10:49:57 AM
3) This is not even a question, so much as a request of confirmation on something that I noticed just now writing this post... if the Sorcerer try to do a quick-contain on himself/herself to keep the possessor away, he/she should get the 2 dice bonus for defensive action, and IF the sorcerer roll highest, the demon can't possess him/her in any case, because it needs at least one action to breach the contain... and if the demon is faster, the Sorcerer can still abort the contain and roll stamina to defend himself/herself. Right?
I'm just going to comment on this one here, as it's mentioned in the book on page 85 (the first page of Chapter 5). "All of the listed rituals take anywhere from half an hour to three hours to perform correctly. A Sorcerer may attempt to speed things up [...] right there in combat, for example, but in doing so his or her relevant score is reduced to one die." So if your Sorcerer attempts to perform a contain during combat, he's only rolling one die of Lore (plus any rollover and bonus dice) for the Contain action.
Yes, this is clear. "quick-contain" is short for "a contain using only one die". But still, it's a contain: no matter if the demon has POW 12 or even POW 20, it still need an action to break it.
In this case, it's important because there are other 3 characters on the roof that can act if they notice that something is happening, and some of them can hurt Peter directly when it's outside of an host body.
Apart from this... I thought a little more about that situation after i posted that questions, and now I have another doubt...
Let's review the situation. Peter is rolling its Power trying to possess the sorcerer. The sorcerer is trying to keep Peter away with a barrier (a quick-contain). The demon is rolling a lot more dice so probably it's too fast for the contain (the sorcerer would have a better chance trying to order it to go away, using his full will instead, but I have seen that the players always forgets about this. Maybe seeing the NPC sorcerer ordering THEIR demons to go away will cure this...) but let's say that the Sorcerer do it anyway, and his roll result is higher than the demon's
What happen at this point? What is the roll of the demon to break the contain?
A) It's the roll it already made (it was to enter into the Sorcerer, so it was directly opposed to the contain). This means that not only the contain was build before the demon could reach the Sorcerer, but that the demon can't break it, having already failed the roll.
B) The roll already made by the demon is not the roll to break the contain. The demon can't reach the sorcerer, though, so it abort its action. It can try to break that contain in the next round, if it wants.
C) The roll already made by the demon is not the roll to break the contain. But the demon can try to "defend" against the contain with a single die, and if it win that roll, it can use the first roll to try to possess the Sorcerer.
The option "C" consider the contain as a form of attack on the demon. But nowhere in the rules I have found mention of contains used to attack or doing damage to the demons, so I don't think it's a valid option. But I am unsure about what is the right answer between "A" and "B"... if I had to choose right now I probably would choose B.
The point I was aiming at was that it's unlikely, given how many dice your demons are rolling with, that the Sorcerer would be better served by a contain than simply by attempting an attack. In either case the Sorcerer can drop to full defense if he/she doesn't roll higher than the demon.
Assuming that the Contain you're talking about is the Sorcerer performing a Contain on themselves to keep Possessor Demons out (which is what it sounds like he's doing), then the Contain isn't an action against the Demon, just an action the Demon wants to prevent. You can't defend against any action that isn't against yourself. Just like you can't go to Full Defense to prevent an attack against someone else, as was discussed on the forum last week.
I believe that Option B is the correct one above, but I'll leave it to Ron to clarify it, as he's better at seeing to the heart of confusion than I tend to be.
Though now that the issue has been raised... No, I'll create a new post for it so that we don't confuse things here.
Quote from: Dragon Master on February 18, 2014, 11:21:57 AM
The point I was aiming at was that it's unlikely, given how many dice your demons are rolling with, that the Sorcerer would be better served by a contain than simply by attempting an attack.
It depends if these actions get the 2-dice bonus for total defense. My guess is that a desperate ritual hastily done just "to keep the demon away" (and not to trap it) can be called a total defense and get the bonus, making it not so penalized as an option as it would seem. But yes, if it doesn't get the bonus as a total defense, it's a very poor tactical choice.
Quote1) About the "free and clear" phase... when it begins?
(B) works very well and is your best model, as you begin to play. Be prepared for announced actions which force an earlier start to the multi-person orthogonal rolling - you never know what a player will announce that will overturn your preconceived notions about this issue.
Quote2) At a certain point maybe Peter will try to ...
Everything you said here is correct.
Quoteif the possible host only try to resist the possession, the roll is oppositional (does the host get a +2 for total defense in this case?)
No. This is a little bit unfair, so let me clarify. The +2 for full defense applies in the context of an orthogonal conflict in which a character "switches" to pure opposition. It's not used when the only rolls at the moment are oppositional.
As I say, it's unfair- why not get the +2 when it's just you and Peter, as opposed to everyone shooting and hollering and jumping around while you resist Peter? I'm not sure I have an easy answer for this except to say, "Enjoy the free bonus when it applies," and to leave it at that.
Quote3) This is not even a question, so much as a request of confirmation on something that I noticed just now writing this post... if the Sorcerer try to do a quick-contain on himself/herself to keep the possessor away, he/she should get the 2 dice bonus for defensive action, and IF the sorcerer roll highest, the demon can't possess him/her in any case, because it needs at least one action to breach the contain... and if the demon is faster, the Sorcerer can still abort the contain and roll stamina to defend himself/herself. Right?
As usual, this is many questions in one. Everything you say about the highest roll and aborting the action is correct. However, the 2-dice defense bonus does not apply. I think you are getting a little too enthusiastic about that rule. Think of it as being reserved for extreme, full, nothing-complicated, totally-defensive action. Not for plain and simple resistance of all kinds.
Your reading of the rule is bordering on everyone getting a +2 for any and all oppositional rolling, which is over-extending the rule. I
might allow it in this case if the resistance to possession were occurring in the larger context of a big set of others' orthogonal actions, but perhaps it's better just to say "no" and keep your newfound enthusiasm for this mechanic to a minimum.
Quote4) If the demon is faster, and the Sorcerer abort his/her action (whatever it is) to defend, does this defense have to be the stamina roll to avoid being possessed, or the Sorcerer can still try to "jump out of the way" with a stamina (or cover, if applicable) roll, and only if this second roll fail, he/she has to roll stamina to defend against possession?
The abortive defensive roll could only and ever apply to simply getting out of the way. It would not be the resistance roll - you're right that if it fails, then the resistance to possession has to be conducted.
Quote5) If, after possessing someone, Peter start a orthogonal conflict on the roof, who does it include, among the enemies inside of the house? My guess is that at that time the conflict only include the people on the roof and Peter (and Selene if she wants to give an order to Peter using the link they share), not the other people still inside the house (if they don't do nothing that require a roll to determinate the correct order of the actions)
I think you answered the question. If the events concern only the people on the roof, then roll only among them; if the events concern people on the inside as well, then roll for them too. It shouldn't be hard.
Best, Ron
Hi! We played the session this evening, this is what happened...
At the beginning, everybody on the roof did stand at a distance, looking at Igriph breaking down the door (and the wall). No one had any protection against demons (naive sorcerers, even if their descriptor says differently...)
Igriph did meet the contain barrier, that turned visible as a sort of burning wire mesh for an instant just before Igriph tore it apart. The noise of the barrier breaking alerted the people inside the house.
I asked the players what their character were doing, Antonio did stay behind, while Isabella and Damian began to follow Igriph. Below, Selene did a fast-contain to form another barrier in front of her, and Alessandro (tainted to 0 humanity and under her influence) tried to help her. Peter hopped on the roof.
Peter can sense the weakest target, the only two humans on the roof had stamina 3 (Isabella) and 1 (Antonio), so it tried to possess Antonio. I told Antonio's player about this attack and asked if he wanted to revise his declared action. Sure he did, he wanted to order the demon to stop (good, finally someone remembered that they can give orders to other sorcerer's demons...)
Antonio rolled 4 dice (will: 6 7 8 10 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392755543)) against Peter's 7 dice (1 3 5 5 6 6 9 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392755564)) and won the roll, stopping the demon in its track. He has shouted "stop" so the others noticed that something was happening (they still could not see Peter), but Igriph in that moment had brought down the wall (no roll necessary) so they decided to follow him below anyway.
Next round, seeing a 4-meter high monster breaking her wall Selene decide that the best course of action is to flee as fast as she can, Alessandro stay where he was, in the middle between the fleeing Selene and Igriph, to defend her, Igriph easily break the fast contain just created by Selene, Daimon and Isabelle enter the room and see the situation, on the roof Antonio roll again will (with the 1 die rollover bonus) vs Peter's will, and win again ordering Peter to tell him what is that it does for Selene, the demon reply is a hissing "I kill".
At this point, having everybody in conflict of interest with somebody, I make everybody declare actions and roll
Selene flee down the stairs, she is using Fast, so she rolls the demon's power, 11 dice: 2 2 3 3 4 4 7 7 8 10 10 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392756613) (I am not bothering separating the bonus dice, she is doing nothing apart running. I don't give her the 2 dice bonus because she is not only defending, she is going away)
Igriph wants to attack Selene, Alessandro is in the way, so the demon attack him for now, rolling his claw special damage: 1 2 2 2 3 4 4 5 5 5 7 9 10 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392756666)
Daimon is running after Selene too, he is using fast too, so I decide that he has no problem going around Alessandro without slowing down. His power is "only" 9, though... 1 1 1 3 4 5 6 7 7 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392756632)
Alessandro comes to his senses (he gets his humanity back) at the moment Selene goes outside the room, so the player can declare an action... as a 4-meter high monster is about to hit him. He rolls his pitiful 2 dice stamina to jump out of the way (and I don't even give him the total defense bonus! See Ron, I am a cruel and merciless GM. Oh, well, let's be honest, I am simply a forgetful GM and the player didn't know the rules enough to ask for them... ) 1 6 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392756448)
Isabella knows that she has no chance to catch Selene and she try to yell to Igriph to don't hurt the guy (Alessandro, she doesn't know him but she don't want to kill anybody, not even Selene). She roll will 1 4 5 6 (http://dadi.lapo.it/1392756796)
(to velocize the rolls with the online dice roller I had the players roll for their demons too)
Selene clearly has the best roll, so she is too fast for Damian (or anybody else), that is still running down the stair when she reach bottom. Igriph hit Alessandro with 3 victories and a total of 6 penalties for next roll and 16 lasting (he is thrown across the room like a rag doll hitting the wall with a loud sound of broken bones and a lot of splattering blood) before Isabella have the time to even start talking.
At the same moment, Antonio is trying to fast-banish Peter, that is instead trying to flee (Peter can perceive Humanity and stamina, not will. This guy is able to stop him in his track and force it to talk, so Peter is scared of him now, not knowing that the Sorcerer was just very lucky). I played this as a simple quick-banish roll, separated from the fight downstairs. Peter easily win this roll and hop away before Antonio have the chance to finish the banishment.
Next: seeing that it can't reach Selene, Damian try to shoot her (disobeying Isabella's direct orders to take her old friend alive. But Damian really prefer dead enemies to alive ones). Nobody apart them is really still in conflict, Igriph is slower, and is slowed down still by the small size or the corridor. Antonio call it back when he goes downstairs and see what happened. (and after hearing the old building rumble and tremble every time the demon smash a wall)
Selene wins this roll, too, and when Damian try to aim for her, she already disappeared in the dark street outside.
Even halved, Alessandro's lasting damage is more than enough to kill him. Isabella and Antonio call an ambulance and both stays with him. The amount of damage is so much that I am in doubt about saying that he survive, but medical help is near after all (half of the building tenants has already called the police by now) so they take him to an hospital in time.
(I don't remember to do it at the time, but at the end of the session I remember to give both Antonio and Isabella a humanity gaining roll for staying with him even if it means being caught by the police... Antonio has "cynic" as a price so he does roll 2 dice vs 3 and fail, Isabella increase humanity from 3 to 4)
The rest of the session, in less detail (I wanted to detail the big fight to check if I had made some blunder - apart from not giving Alessandro the 2 dice bonus, that I already know...):
Antonio and Isabella get released after telling a agreed-on story to the police, they will be probably interrogated again but they are not in prison
Alessandro stay in a coma for some days, with his (now) girlfriend Sara at his side. Antonio visit him sometimes to try to get informations about him - he did notice his telltale - but gets nothing from the clueless Sara.
Alessandro's demon - Slaaneesh, that was in Selene's pocket when she ran away - talk to Alessandro in his dreams, telling him that what happened to him is the proof that he is nothing without his help, but that that he will be forgiven, and the demon will help him again, if Alessandro swears that he will never try to betray it again. And that, if Alessandro want to walk again, the demon know a woman that can help him (he is at the moment in a full-body cast: Slaneesh is melodramatic here, Alessandro will walk again like before even without magical help... in a year or two).
Alessandro promise everything (and the player win an really difficult 3 vs 13 dice roll to convince the demon of his good faith) and the same night Selene sneak in the hospital, use Vitality on him (to do so a part of the parasite has to walk a little while inside Alessandro, entering from the mouth) returning him to full health, and then tell him what she wants in returns: he has to use the powers given to him by Slaanesh to seduce Isabella and bring her to a trap, alone.
Alessandro agrees, then goes home... and start a contain ritual for Slaneesh. It's the last straw, the demon break the binding, swearing vengeance, and teleport back to Selene.
Afterwards, Alessandro talk to Sara (that he was able to seduce only using Slaneesh's powers), and calm her doubts about his impossibly quick healing (here I think that in my haste I made a mistake, in hindsight it was a thing so impossible that there was no way that Sara could be convinced by Alessandro's explanation, no matter if he won the will roll: at most he should have been able to calm her, not to convince her that everything was ok). Then he ask her forgiveness for the way he had taken advantage of her (she has no idea about what he is saying now, she was completely fooled by Slaneesh) and that if she wants he will leave her alone, even if he love her.
I didn't think that this was a will roll at all, it was a humanity roll against not Sara, but the difficulty of explaining all that without talking of anything unnatural. He did roll humanity against 3 dice, he did win that roll too, and the scene ended with kisses, pink hearts and a decisive excess of sugar. I pulled a veil gasping "ah! gasp! Too much sugar! This is not the kind of scene I thought I would see in this game! Oh, well, I think that your kicker is resolved now, what do you think?". The player agreed, he rolled an increase in will, and will rewrite the descriptors with a new kicker (something around having a powerful demon wanting to hurt him for revenge, I think) for the next session.
I wanted to talk about this part of the session to show the use of humanity for a roll and the kicker resolution. I think that both were by-the-rules (and that was a nice "redemption" ending) but it doesn't hurt to check...
The part with Isabella and Antonio was interesting too, but less decisive: at the end of the session they did found where Selene is hiding now, and this time they will protect themselves first, before attacking.... (they are thinking about a contain large enough to keep Peter inside a city block, where Igriph can "smell" it, too...)
Talking about the PC's demons: Slaneesh has become a villain in his own right. Daimon is always "protecting" Isabella and until now has done nothing too monstrous or gruesome... but I can't help thinking about it as the most evil demon in the entire game. It drinks Isabelle's blood, it tells her that it "loves" her, and that it will protect her. Forever. Even from her friends, family and every other human contact. For now he is doing his "good soldier" bit to defeat Selene, that is the most dangerous one (both as a rival sorceress...and as a possible "saved" grateful friend for Isabelle), but if Antonio become too friendly with Isabelle, he will be the next target...
Igriph is a happy demon. For all its power, Igriph is a simple bully, all it wants is to continue to kill and destroy (or, to be more exact, "show these weaklings who is the bigger, badder demon on the beach"), and it's very happy at the moment with his "master". The problems will rise if Antonio will ever find himself without enemies to attack, or if will try to stop Igriph from hurting someone. The most important problems with a demon that Antonio has at the moment is not with Igriph or Peter: is with the demon who helped him resurrect his son, telling him "you thought that one human sacrifice was enough? Oh, maybe I forgot to tell you that you need to do one every month, or your son will totally turn into a demon, forever..."
This sounds great! It seems to me that your most important concerns were well-managed, such as the Contain-based events and the transition into orthogonal rolling. I also really, really like the way you've shifted into being the "demon player" instead of "events controller."
Hooray for Antonio resisting possession! That was a crucial moment.
I am often surprised at how badly people mis-play ordering demons. You have a vicious, dangerous, lethal demon whom you've risked everything to order around, and you win the roll ... and you ask "What do you do for Selene." What? My God, man, tell it to jump off the roof. Tell it to kill Selene. Tell it to get some snow for you from Alaska. Tell it to eat its own foot.
I've seen this a lot in Sorcerer. People switch into Call of Cthulhu mode and see this moment as an opportunity to "look at the GM's notes," when they really should be ordering a fucking demon around.
In the beginning of the orthogonal contest: (1) correct, Selene does not get the defensive bonus; (2) correct, Daimon's Fast justifies unusual movement such as getting past a person in his path.
Poor Alessandro. No +2 dice bonus for you, even after Moreno started posting here with a whole bag of +2 bonuses to pass out like candy. I agree that he'd live, although if even one of the details had been different, he probably wouldn't have. Using Vitality on him is a good solid justifier to close that question for good. It really is a wonderful ability.
Your use of the timing is also perfect, especially that Selene wasn't fast enough to keep it from maiming Alessandro. Also, isolating the conversation between Peter and Antonio to its own oppositional resolution on the rooftop was also a good idea.
Selene was pretty lucky. I'm a bit surprised she didn't have more offensive power available to her, but I suppose this is her sharp lesson that her old friend is not to be pushed around.
I agree with you that you over-estimated the power of the Humanity roll. As for whether Humanity was the right score or not, I treat it as an issue of emotional sincerity. If Alessandro's point was to keep Sara ignorant and under his control, then it should be Will; if he was opening his fears and vulnerability to her scrutiny, then it should be Humanity.
Alessandro's in a lot of trouble! He has pissed off and lost his demon, and he needed that demon to keep his bargain with Selene. I do not think that Alessandro's Kicker was resolved. These are outstanding problems which remain to be dealt with which arose from his Kicker. Kickers aren't like legal statements; you don't resolve them strictly by referring to their wording. They spawn multiple problems, and sometimes one of those becomes the character's true crisis. I think Alessandro was in this situation.
However, I think you didn't violate the rules with these decisions. I'm making my points to show you how I interpret the rules, so you can compare views.
Best, Ron
edited to fix some stray text - RE
Ops, I noticed another error just now...
When Peter attacked Antonio on the roof, and Antonio tried to stop the demon, Antonio 4 dice roll did beat the demon's 7 dice... And at that point I completely forgot that we were playing a orthogonal conflict between the two and considered these rolls as oppositional (and the demon's roll as a will roll, not a power roll).
Peter should have the choice, at that point, to try to beat Antonio's roll with a single die, or abort its action (the possession) to defend with its full will... Only if Peter had lost with that defensive roll it would have had to follow Antonio's orders...
I wouldn't worry about that one too much. Interpreting a simple command action as a sudden oppositional simplification within an otherwise orthogonal conflict isn't entirely out of bounds, as I see it. At least retroactively, you can say it "broke" nothing.
This week I avoided thinking so much about the preparation of the game session (it used really too much time for it the last weeks...), now I have the session in 1 hour... and I am finding new things I am not sure about...
Ah, well, I will post the question, in any case the answer will be useful next time....
1) Alessandro's old demon, Slaneesh, is currently bound to Selene. So at this time Selene has both a parasite demon that give her (among other things) the "fast" ability, and this object demon that can confer her the power to "confuse" a target simply by looking at him.
Thinking about how this would change her combat tactics, I was thinking that now she can confuse two targets with a single action (and a single roll), when suddenly I remembered that the examples I have found in the book of "fast" acting this way were always with powers given by the same demon or with the sorcerer's abilities (even if augmented with a cover given by the demon). But in this case we have a sorceress that is using a power given by another demon, with a different "source" of power and stamina. I can see her moving more quickly and being able to "look" at two targets with a single game action, but can the power work in half the time? Or it's still "slow" like the demon that is conferring it?
This evening I will probably have "fast" work even on that confuse, but I not sure I am following the rules in this case...
2) About the same combination of "fast" and "confuse": the demon with "fast" has a lower power than the demon with "confuse", so even if I use them together, I roll the normal number of dice for the "confuse", with no different-color added dice: the only effect of the "fast" in this case is the "can do a little bit more in the fiction" effect, right?
3) The "fast" effect is always working for Selene (the parasite demon stamina limit the number of times she can use it, not the availability). Let's say that the parasite demon boost her will to allow her to give orders even on high-power demons like Igriph. So we have the parasite demon's roll to give the boost, and the Sorcerer roll to give the order (the demon is obviously hoping to give the boost before the sorcerer give the order, and it has good chances to be able to do so, having power more than double the will of the sorcerer). The "fast" bonus dice apply to both of these rolls, or only the roll of the sorcerer? The demon can choose to "limit" the number of dice it's giving to the sorceress for a certain roll? And doing so it's an action by itself so it can't do any other action that round, or not?
4) If the parasite demon boost Selene's will to more than double her initial value, she should be confused, but Vitality can negate that effect. Only, the demon that is giving her "vitality" is at Pow 1 as an effect of the boost. The "Vitality" protection apply even in this case?
To help give the context for the previous questions, and to check if I am not violating the rules elsewhere, this is the Selene character and her parasite demon:
Selene
stamina 4 Chemically heightened
will 4 rageful and vengeful
lore 2 solitary adept
cover 4 student
price Cynical (-1 humanity rolls)
humanity 0
Her demon, Abaddon:
Demon type: parasite (blood) Binding Strenght: +4 per the demon
stamina 10
will 11
lore 10
power 11
Desire Sensual gratification
Need: the sorcerer must cause strong emotions in people around just for the demon's enjoyment (if the sorcerer has other motivations, it doesn't count)
Abilities:
Armor conferred to Selene (in fiction: fast regeneration)
Vitality to Selene. the regeneration continue even after the fight.
Protection Fire
Cloak on itself
Fast
Special Damage: rot attack
Boost Will
Boost Stamina
Taint at touch, take control of the victims using the victim's base desires and the demon's suggestions.
Cover the sorcerer can use a lot of martial arts and fighting styles.
I wanted Selene to be very, very hard to kill. She is fast, can boost stamina and regenerate even killing damage totally (the armor + vitality cover more than the amount of damage that would kill her, and vitality counts as having always medical help). Even using fire has little effect, having protection from fire.
I didn't give her long-range special attacks because she has her demon assassin, the possessor, for that. But if she has to fight, bare-handed or with mundane weapons, she is inhumanly skilled (cover: fighter at 11...)
The special attack is simply that her touch dissolve nonliving matter and rot living matter. When the demon activate that power, her skin secrete a powerful acid-like substance over all her body (apart from the feet). And now I have a question about this attacks, too.
When I gave her that power, my reasoning was that I wanted her to dangerous even to touch (and the weapons used to attack her being damaged from the contact). But what happen when she is attacked?
If she attack someone, it's simple: she rolls the attack as any other special attack. But when someone hit her?
I am thinking about using the damage inflicted to her (before applying the armor) as a kind of attack on the weapon used (or the character who touched her), but is is not as giving her two attacks in the same round? (it could be said that the special attack is really the demon's action, but this means that the demon can't do anything apart this in the round?).
Hi,
First, with all that unbelievable combat nastiness, why does Selene keep running away from fights?
About the damage power you have described, the best way to do this is to define it as an area attack, applicable only to those in the area who touch her during that combat round. It's a single roll - you can also invoke the Fast to designate targets that she makes sure are touching her (i.e. she hits them).
So she rolls the Special Damage as her action. It becomes effective on her turn in the sequence. Immediately, the individual(s) she has designated as actually hitting are attacked. Also, the people who have touched her previously during this round are targets too. (See what I did there?)
People who hit her after that are not attacked by the ability. There is no reliable "electric eel" "shock shield" power in Sorcerer.
My logic should apply: what you are trying to do is something which hurts people who touch her. I've made that the priority.
If you really want more of a "shock shield," in addition to doing the same thing to people she hits, then you'll need two abilities, one under her control for hitting, and the other under the demon's control as a reactive attack much like the one I just described.
Hi Ron! Thanks for the reply, did you see the question before these, too? (the post is http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=280.msg2583#msg2583 )
Quote from: Ron Edwards on February 25, 2014, 07:32:57 PM
First, with all that unbelievable combat nastiness, why does Selene keep running away from fights?
Because she value her life. And fighting against two powerful demon and two sorcerer at the same time is a risk she don't want to take. (not when she has a demon that can kill her enemies without any risk for her)
When I created her demons, I was torn between different considerations: your advice in the annotations is to avoid having NPC sorcerers, but Selene was directly named in a character's kicker. More than that: it was implied in the kicker that she would try to summon a demon so terrible that her more knowledgeable parner-in-crime (Isabella) refused even to continue studying how to contact it.
For a while, I thought about having that demon being one of the demons of other two players characters (both at Power 13), it did seem overkill to have another demon so powerful that even the people who summon POW 13 demons were scared of it. So, Selene as not-yet-a-sorcerer wanna-be, but one of the other demons as a conspirator-in-disguise with a hidden agenda.
Thinking a little more about that, I recognized all that like another effect of bad habits, and I didn't want to have the kickers tied too much together: hangout games have a high rate of players dropping out, and in any case the players at the time of these deliberations still had not even finished reading the manual, I was not even sure they would have like the game. I wanted to be able to play even with one player dropping out or missing a session, and I wanted to follow as much as I could the letter of the kickers, verbatim, without meddling too much.
So, I limited my "demon depopulation" measures to having some demon having a part in different kickers (having in that manner avoided the creation of a different demon) but not in the same "plan": for example, the demon who did resurrect Antonio's son and the demon who did teach Selene and the demon who is monitoring Isabella trying to have her resurrect her mother are the same one, a demonic house bound to Isabella's mother, protected by a contain, that was waiting for Isabella to find it, but passed the time during that waiting satisfying its desire contacting people online (the demon house has a modern internet connection, and it's... infesting a lot of forums and newsgroups). The house is in all three stories, but each one could disappear completely and the house's role in the other two would not be diminished (and having the PC visit the same place at the time of their own choosing was a great idea that did allow them to meet or avoid each others, as they wished)
This did leave me a problem, though: what manner of demon was Abaddon, to scare people who summon and bind Pow 13 demons? I didn't want to go over these numbers, so I went instead for horror and personal violation: this demon go inside you, it removes parts of you so that you risk dying if it ever leave you, it "taints" people turning them into cruel puppets and it shows as a snake or worm moving under your skin. (and, even if it probably will never come up in play: it taints its host, too, any time it wants, to push her to do more despicable acts and summon more demons)
That amount of invulnerability is not there to kill PC, but to add to that sense of horror and body violation: she can be hacked, slashed, burned, but she still goes at you. If you hack her in pieces they start to crawl together again. In play is not so difficult to avoid this happening - all you need to do is to do so much damage to the pieces to overcame even that vitality, or simply banishing the demon with a ritual over the pieces. But think of the scene if they do "kill" her, simply to see her stand up again, and again, and again...
(the telltale has two function: to cause revulsion in players when I first describe it, and to trick them into "searching for the serpent" in her body if they defeat her: there is no serpent, the parasite is her blood. The serpent is an illusion caused by the way her "blood" moves. So if they search for it and they don't find it, in the body... where it's gone?)
Someone would wonder why Selene would bind an horror like this, and this is why I added that "control people" taint, too: Selene was Isabella sidekick, is the weaker one: now she is strong and can command people into doing her will...
...but she is still scared of personal confrontation with powerful people (and bullies. And Igriph as I said some post before, is a bully...). She will fight personally only when cornered.
Quote
About the damage power you have described, the best way to do this is to define it as an area attack, applicable only to those in the area who touch her during that combat round. It's a single roll - you can also invoke the Fast to designate targets that she makes sure are touching her (i.e. she hits them).
So she rolls the Special Damage as her action. It becomes effective on her turn in the sequence. Immediately, the individual(s) she has designated as actually hitting are attacked. Also, the people who have touched her previously during this round are targets too. (See what I did there?)
Yes. And I was thinking... if it's possible to target the people who did touch Selene in this round... it's possible to target all the people (or objects) that touched her in the PREVIOUS round, or even in the previous X rounds, from the time the secretions started?
This would solve the "people who attack her before or after are treated differently" problem, with the added bonus of having the power act a little more like a corrosive substance, that takes time to do damage (and could be scraped off)
Quote
If you really want more of a "shock shield," in addition to doing the same thing to people she hits, then you'll need two abilities, one under her control for hitting, and the other under the demon's control as a reactive attack much like the one I just described.
For "reactive attack" you mean an action?
Because I thought another thing [a DIFFERENT way to define that power, not the one I asked about before): if the demon is doing another action as an attack, could it use this ability for a DEFEND roll is Selene (and him) is attacked?
What I mean is: let's say that someone attacks Selene with a weapon that require contact. Even if she is doing something using fast and the demon's warrior cover, the demon can still put itself into "total defense" mode secreting acid?
A concrete example of what I am saying
Adam attack Selene with a sword. Selene try to stab him with a knife, using the demonic cover "fighter: 11" and "fast". Abaddon goes into total defense protecting itself with acid.
Abaddon goes first, being on total defense it doesn't attack anyone, Adam goes second, Selene decide to defend with a single die, she loses the roll, but Abaddon total defense still beat his roll, the weapon melts without doing any serious damage.
It seems "wrong" to call that a total defense, seeing that it damages weapons, but still... it doesn't do nothing if someone don't attack,
Maybe it's a defense, but not "total", so it doesn't get the 2 dice bonus, but can it works by the rules?
Quote1) ... But in this case we have a sorceress that is using a power given by another demon, with a different "source" of power and stamina. I can see her moving more quickly and being able to "look" at two targets with a single game action, but can the power work in half the time? Or it's still "slow" like the demon that is conferring it?
If Selene is the user of both Fast and the other power she is using, in this case Confuse, then Fast can be
used with/upon the other power.
Quote2) About the same combination of "fast" and "confuse": the demon with "fast" has a lower power than the demon with "confuse", so even if I use them together, I roll the normal number of dice for the "confuse", with no different-color added dice: the only effect of the "fast" in this case is the "can do a little bit more in the fiction" effect, right?
Yes. Except that you are confusing me again; the way you state it here sounds as if the demon with Fast is the user. Perhaps you should review the "user" concept before proceeding.
Quote3) The "fast" effect is always working for Selene (the parasite demon stamina limit the number of times she can use it, not the availability). Let's say that the parasite demon boost her will to allow her to give orders even on high-power demons like Igriph. So we have the parasite demon's roll to give the boost, and the Sorcerer roll to give the order (the demon is obviously hoping to give the boost before the sorcerer give the order, and it has good chances to be able to do so, having power more than double the will of the sorcerer). The "fast" bonus dice apply to both of these rolls, or only the roll of the sorcerer? The demon can choose to "limit" the number of dice it's giving to the sorceress for a certain roll? And doing so it's an action by itself so it can't do any other action that round, or not?
You have confused me so badly I don't know what to tell you. You seem very confused about who "owns" an ability, and the rule is that only one character uses it, and that distinction is set in the ability's definition. Or more accurately, either the demon is the user, so only the demon ever uses it; or someone else is the user, and the demon can designate who that person is at any time, or withhold the use, but it cannot ever use the ability itself.
Quote4) If the parasite demon boost Selene's will to more than double her initial value, she should be confused, but Vitality can negate that effect. Only, the demon that is giving her "vitality" is at Pow 1 as an effect of the boost. The "Vitality" protection apply even in this case?
Vitality 1 is sufficient. Yet another reason why this ability is so good.
I think your continued wrestling with the desired ability is based on the user confusion, so maybe we need to work with that first.
Reading again my questions, I think the confusion is caused by possessor or parasite demons... in their case there is the problem of the target, too.. who is protected by the protection? The Sorcerer? The Demon? Both? the other kinds are easier...
With this exception: link. Can both the Sorcerer and the Demon use it? The text on the game manual seems to imply that this is the case, that both can start the communication, but then, talking about demon powers in general it says that the user is only one and it has to be defined... "link" is an exception, or to allow true two-ways communication it has to be taken 2 times?
Then, taking Selene and her demon apart, bit by bit, ability by ability...
- Fast: this is always active. Selene decide to use it simply deciding to run (and at that time it start to fatigue the demon), but starting to use it it's not an added action, she simply do her action... fast. So, it's enough to say that Selene is the user?
The target: is the demon fast, like Selene? Or she is considered the user and only her rolls have added dice?
- Armor Always active. Being in her case a fast regenerative ability, the "activation" is simply... being wounded. Each time that regeneration works, it causes the demon fatigue. There is no actual thought involved in the use of that power, from the demon or Selene. Who is the user?
The demon is armored (regenerates) too?
- Vitality: Like Armor above: fictionally it's the long-term effect of the same regenerative ability (the demon can "cure" lasting damage equal to his Power, then the regeneration finally stop). The questions are the same, the parasite has Vitality, too?
During play, Selene used this ability to cure Alessandro: the parasite temporarily did leave her (not totally, she would be dead: only in part and for a very limited time) taking him as host, and using vitality to cure him, and then returning to Selene's body. But the description says specifically that "the user" is cured...
- Protection (from Fire). The same questions as with Armor and Vitality: the protection is always active, if the user is protected... does this mean that the demon has no protection?
- Cloak: this is simpler, I think: The demon is the user, the cloak is to allow Selene to go around people without having people around her screaming in horror seeing her skin move... fictionally, is a simple "the demon keep his telltale hidden under the dress, and it can even suppress it - by not moving, or moving very little - for a little time".
- Boost the demon is always the user, and it's a voluntary action to use the power, so these are simpler: the demon decide when to boost and who, and it's always an action. I have still one doubt, though: can Abaddon boost Stamina and Will at the same time? And they are both boosted by the demon's power value, or one of the two is boosted only by 1?
- Cover: like for Fast, Selene always has that knowledge: she is the user, but to "activate" it she only need to fight.
- Taint: the demon is the user. It can use the taint even against Selene's wishes, or even on Selene herself (at this time it has no affect on Selene anymore, she is already at 0 humanity, but it was useful at the beginning...). When Isabella and Selene did meet at the restaurant, Selene was not attacking Isabelle when she wanted to shake hands. But the demon would have used the taint anyway. Selene knows that it's the demon that is making all these people around her so accommodating and responsive, but she don't care.
- Special attack: well, this one is a mess, I don't think it's doing what I wanted it do do (see the previous posts for the desired effect and questions about how to obtain it...
QUICK FIX
You're right about the penalty vanishing into thin air. All it takes is a single combat round, whether the character acts or not. I confused myself by thinking about rollover bonuses, which is a different topic. So everything you said about that was correct.
VERY IMPORTANT
I suggest classifying abilities a little more precisely along these lines: Protection, Armor, Fast, Vitality, and similar abilities do not have targets. The user benefits from using them, and that is all. Do not confuse
conferring with
targeting. I think this idea will solve many of your confusions quickly.
Nothing about parasitizing changes the rules. If a parasite confers Protection upon its host, then it does
not itself receive Protection. Remember, "confer" is not targeting; this means the host
has Protection that the host uses at will, not that the demon is "casting" Protection "upon" the host.
What if a person hosting a parasite demon is hit by (e.g.) fire, and the demon confers Protection vs. fire upon the host? Does the fire attack hurt the unprotected demon? The answer is no. A parasite demon can only be hurt by direct targeting, which is possibly only by a sorcerer who knows it's there and has managed to "spot" it using Lore. If such a sorcerer were to attack the demon directly using fire, it would be unprotected, but I hope you can see that is a case that takes some effort and perhaps analysis beyond merely spotting, by the sorcerer.
Since parasites can only confer abilities (except for Boost), this is their Achilles' heel. They are quite vulnerable to direct attack by such characters. Otherwise they are nicely encased in their host.
Possession, on the other hand, does alter the picture a little. The demon isn't merely inside the body, it has become the body's primary mind; the host body
is its body. Its abilities confer to itself, and so for possessors, that means the host's body is indeed protected by such things as Armor and Protection, along with the demon. When the demon is injured, it is fair to consider the host's body injured too, and to save brain-melting, I suggest merely treating the host's body as
similarly injured, rather than counting on your fingers to figure out the exact values. In other words, the host won't be killed by damage unless the demon is.
SELENE
I think most of the confusion is cleared up by my points above.
Quotelink. Can both the Sorcerer and the Demon use it? The text on the game manual seems to imply that this is the case, that both can start the communication, but then, talking about demon powers in general it says that the user is only one and it has to be defined... "link" is an exception, or to allow true two-ways communication it has to be taken 2 times?
Either demon or sorcerer is always the user for Link, meaning who says "I'm using it now." I think every time I've seen it in play, the user has been the sorcerer. But the
effect of Link is two-way perception. So the meaning of "user" is mainly about who controls its operation. In the most boring use of Link, this isn't very consequential. But the choice does matter, sooner or later. If the sorcerer is the user, and is using it, then the demon cannot turn it off except in the most extreme way (circuit-breaking), and if the demon is the user and is using it, then the sorcerer cannot turn it off.
Quote- Boost ... can Abaddon boost Stamina and Will at the same time? And they are both boosted by the demon's power value, or one of the two is boosted only by 1?
Answering in reverse order, one of the Boosts should be designated "first," so the other one only provides +1. With this in mind, two nigh-simultaneous Boosts are permissible by the rules, but if they are defined that way, then they
always have to be used together. And my God, the demon would be utterly fried after that, to the extent of being in dire Need, penalties and all.
Best, Ron
Thanks! After these clarifications, this is Selene:
Selene
stamina 4 Chemically heightened
will 4 rageful and vengeful
lore 2 solitary adept
cover 4 student
price Cynical (-1 humanity rolls)
humanity 0
Her demon, Abaddon:
Demon type: parasite (blood) Binding Strenght: +4 per the demon
stamina 10
will 11
lore 10
power 11
Desire Sensual gratification
Need: the sorcerer must cause strong emotions in people around just for the demon's enjoyment (if the sorcerer has other motivations, it doesn't count)
- Abilities that Selene can use (she is the user) and are always active:
Armor (fast regeneration)
Vitality (the regeneration continue even after the fight)
Protection (from Fire)
Fast
Cover the sorcerer can use a lot of martial arts and fighting styles.
- Abilities that Selene can use (she is the user) but require an action:
Special Damage: rot attack (she can dissolve nonliving matter and cause rot to living matter with a touch of her hand)
- Abilities that Abaddon can use (It's the user) and are always active:
Cloak (the telltale is not obvious if the demon doesn't want to show itself)
- Abilities that Abaddon can use (It's the user) but require an action:
Boost Will (alone)
Boost Stamina (alone)
Taint (target: people who just touched Selene) take control of the victims.
I have made some changes: the "acid" ability didn't do what I wanted, and thinking about it, I didn't like it very much. Luckily Selene still has not used it during the game. I changed the special attack turning it into a kind of attack she can do only with her hands.
For the effect of "even touching her is dangerous", I changed a little the "Taint" ability. I changed the area of effect from "people she is touching right now", that required too much coordination between the taint and touching someone, into "people who have touched Selene in the last few seconds (a single round). Now it works like an infection: in the action round following the one where the touch happened the demon can "activate" the traces left on the victims skin by the touch trying to taint them. I the demon don't activate them right in the next round, these traces disappear.
Question 1: it's possible to target "all people who touched Selene in the last round"? (and possibly the ones who already did it this round)?
The second Demon, Peter:
Demone: Peter possessor Binding Strenght +2 selene
stamina 6
will 7
lore 6
power 7
telltale cold eyes
Desire Mayem
Need: Bood
Abilities that are always active:
Cloak (it's very difficult to see, bot inside or outside a host)
Cover (see question below)
Abilities used together when changing host:
Hop
Range
perception (the stamina of available hosts in range)
- the range of these abilities cover more than a city block, Peter can travel very fast jumping from body to body.
- Others
Link : I thought that Selene was the user, but this thread reminded me that the user must be the possessor, so it's Peter that can open communication, not Selene (Selene can still command him to go to her at any time, though, by the rules).
Question 2: In the manual it's written that the possessor can use Cover to mimic the host abilities, but how it works? The demon can have a Cover "mimic host" and another kind of cover ("cover: spy" for example) or one cover can do both, or it can have only the first kind of cover?
The third demon, Alessandro's old demon, Slaneesh:
Demon: Slaneesh (Object) Binding Strenght: (I still have to roll: you would roll or choose a binding strength?)
stamina 12
will 13
lore 12
power 13
telltale the leather cover feels kinda hot and soft, like warm skin
Desire Sensual Gratification
Need to eat lustful memories
description A moleskin diary
Abilities:
Slaneesh bestows these powers to its Master:
cover Seductive (13)
cover Salesman (13)
Perception enhanced: body-language (+13)
Perception weird: your secret lust (+13)
confusion
Hint
Slanees uses these powers only on its own physical form (the diary) :
travel teleport
perception: where to teleport
armor hard to break
cloak unassuming, difficult to notice
link It's the book that decide "when to call"
Warp (only self, to be light or heavy, bigger or smaller, to write and erase its handwritten contents, to disguise or otherwise alter its cover, etc)
Question 3: see the note above on "binding strength": you choose a number or you roll for NPCs?
Question 4: how do you use Hint in practice during the game when used by NPCs? Making all the rolls seems overly complicated, but deciding that the NPC know the facts that I want her to know seems too convenient.
Question 5; what happen when 2 demons give a (different) cover at the same time? The abilities are in effect at the same time, the strongest cancel the other, or the user (the Sorcerer) decide which one to use case by case?
Question 6: If the sorcerer has multiple applicable covers, can roll support rolls for every cover? How it works in practice, every cover is rolled separately (so even if the last one fail, the sorcerer still get bonus dice for the first ones) or as a chain of support rolls, each omne getting the victories from the previous one, and if the last one fail, the sorcerer gets no bonus dice?
Hi Moreno,
QuoteQuestion 1: it's possible to target "all people who touched Selene in the last round"? (and possibly the ones who already did it this round)?
Sure. A bit unusual but not rules-breaking.
QuoteQuestion 2: In the manual it's written that the possessor can use Cover to mimic the host abilities, but how it works? The demon can have a Cover "mimic host" and another kind of cover ("cover: spy" for example) or one cover can do both, or it can have only the first kind of cover?
The demon can have a Cover "mimic host" and another kind of cover ("cover: spy" for example). That's exactly how to do it.
QuoteQuestion 3: see the note above on "binding strength": you choose a number or you roll for NPCs?
Yet another reason not to use NPC sorcerers ...
I roll for the NPCs, a simple score vs. Will roll and work from there. Rather than tracking or changing the value, I typically keep it as is, but think in terms of the demon's current loyalty.
QuoteQuestion 4: how do you use Hint in practice during the game when used by NPCs? Making all the rolls seems overly complicated, but deciding that the NPC know the facts that I want her to know seems too convenient.
I'm not sure I've ever done that. I imagine that I might go through the rolls to see whether the NPC succeeds and whether he or she is damaged by the experience.
QuoteQuestion 5; what happen when 2 demons give a (different) cover at the same time? The abilities are in effect at the same time, the strongest cancel the other, or the user (the Sorcerer) decide which one to use case by case?
OK, hold on.
If and only if the user is the sorcerer, for
both abilities, then he or she can choose which Cover will apply at any given time. Otherwise, the demon(s) decide(s), which could be quite interesting.
QuoteQuestion 6: If the sorcerer has multiple applicable covers, can roll support rolls for every cover? How it works in practice, every cover is rolled separately (so even if the last one fail, the sorcerer still get bonus dice for the first ones) or as a chain of support rolls, each omne getting the victories from the previous one, and if the last one fail, the sorcerer gets no bonus dice?
OK, that's cuckoo. You have to give me a better and more specific example.
Best, Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards on February 27, 2014, 04:00:37 PM
I'm not sure I've ever done that. I imagine that I might go through the rolls to see whether the NPC succeeds and whether he or she is damaged by the experience.
Yes, I can see the wisdom in avoiding NPC sorcerers, or at least, of not giving them access to Hint (in this case it was the player's fault, though: he never did use that power, too...)
Quote
QuoteQuestion 5; what happen when 2 demons give a (different) cover at the same time? The abilities are in effect at the same time, the strongest cancel the other, or the user (the Sorcerer) decide which one to use case by case?
OK, hold on. If and only if the user is the sorcerer, for both abilities, then he or she can choose which Cover will apply at any given time. Otherwise, the demon(s) decide(s), which could be quite interesting.
QuoteQuestion 6: If the sorcerer has multiple applicable covers, can roll support rolls for every cover? How it works in practice, every cover is rolled separately (so even if the last one fail, the sorcerer still get bonus dice for the first ones) or as a chain of support rolls, each omne getting the victories from the previous one, and if the last one fail, the sorcerer gets no bonus dice?
OK, that's cuckoo. You have to give me a better and more specific example.
I think you already answered my chosen example, above: I was thinking about a Sorcerer as the user of two different covers given by two different demons, but from your answer it seems that he would have to choose which cover to use.
So let's use a different case:
Jack is a mercenary, stamina 4, cover (mercenary) 4, and he is a Sorcerer, too, with a demon what give him a cover of cat-like reflexes at 5.
Jack is wandering in the darkness in a enemy base, when someone, somewhere, flip a switch and the whole base is illuminated by very bright light, showing the presence of Jack and of a couple of enemy guards at around 50 feet from him. The guards call for help and try to shoot him.
Jack want to shoot them first, with his automatic rifle. It's a stamina roll, and a situation where both his combat experience and cat-like reflexes would apply.
Jack can:
A: roll cat-like reflexes to see how much faster he is to assess the situation (getting bonus dice), then he can add the bonus dice to his cover (mercenary) roll to see hom much his training allow him to use that split-second advantage, to get a final bonus of dice (or not, if he fails) to add to the stamina roll
or...
B) as above, but the two covers are rolled separately, and the bonus dice added together to the Stamina roll.
or...
C) the player has to choose, Jack can use his own cover or the demon cover, not both at the same time.
or...
D) Both cover apply, but they don't add up bonuses, the player can roll the highest (cat-like reflexes at 5) and it counts for both.
"Cat-like reflexes" is not a viable option for Cover.
Mmm... I am thinking about a cover to put in that example, but the examples that I am imagining push the answer in one direction or the other... that is probably the very reason you need a concrete example...
The covers that i am thinking about are...
1) Covers that apply to that situation in the same way (or with little difference) as "Mercenary", giving combat experience and training: for example "soldier", "killer", or even "ninja", etc.
2) Covers that could apply a support for "Mercenary", giving knowledge ("tactician"), or raw physical enhancement ("athlete", "acrobat") or maybe better aim ("sharpshooter")
3) Something not-natural, maybe tied to the setting, like "wolfman" (or even "panther man", to go back to the cat-like reflexes), tied with the other powers of the demon (for example, if the demon turn the sorcerer into a Werewolf, that cover would be associated with armor against not-silver weapons, shapechange, special damage, etc.)
If the ones in the first category make me tent towards the "only the bigger one apply" answer, the second category would make me go with the chain of rolls, each augmenting the other. And the third would be "player choice" or "both apply independently" depending on the covers and situation...
I don't know, can you at least give me some advice about how to judge these situations? (for example, if one of the solutions I listed in the previous post is NEVER to be used in Sorcerer).
Did you even encountered a situation where you had the same character rolling two cover rolls for the same actions? Or in your experience is something that simply never happen?
"Killer," "acrobat," "tactician," "athlete," "sharpshooter," and "panther man" are not valid Covers. I am beginning to think you are not quite getting what a Cover is. It must be a real-world human designation with well-understood professional and/or life-style memes. "City politician," "housewife," "homeless person," "university professor," and "Special Forces veteran," are all good Covers. Your suggestions sound like Advantages from all those 1990s games. Instead, think of a Cover as what everyone else will call the character or identify them as, in purely societal terms.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on February 27, 2014, 09:48:01 PM
"Killer," "acrobat," "tactician," "athlete," "sharpshooter," and "panther man" are not valid Covers. I am beginning to think you are not quite getting what a Cover is. It must be a real-world human designation with well-understood professional and/or life-style memes.
Mmmm... "well-understood" taken literally would cut out a lot of real-word professions (I have really no idea about the daily life of a Journalist, a Senate member or a Roman Gladiator, so I could not accept these cover at my table, for example) and all the fantasy ones, so I think it can be compatible with professions people know only from movie tropes or some description at the gaming table. like the ones I used as examples... I think they are all professions (apart one).
"Killer" ---> like Leon, from the Besson movie, or any hitman from any movie (I was not specifically referring to a "here, now" setting). Maybe it's case of a English word that has taken another meaning in common use in Italy: I considered it equivalent to "hitman", "killer" is the word commonly used here for the profession. If it's not in English, use "Hitman".
"Acrobat" ---> you can find some working in any circus.
"Tactician" ---> this could refer to a lot of professions, true, but at the same time I don't think it's impossible for the system to have a cover for that, without having to call that cover "commander of armies now in retirement and working as a tactician consultant"
"Athlete" can be professionals (even if they use nitpicking and rules-lawyering to get into the Olympic games)
"Panther man" is a particular case, being defined as part of a fantasy setting, it leave open what it is and what is not, without defining much better the setting. But it could be a profession, like "frog-man" in the Navy.
Apart from these specific examples, returning to the general case: I think I get in general the use of Cover, the problem is one of color
when used as a demon power: if my Sorcerer want to summon a demon that will turn him into somebody who will be followed by the masses, "Cover: Demagogue" is much more apt than "populist politician able to write his own speech by himself", even if they would be equivalent for that character.
Anyway, I am seeing that question going more and more off the rail trying to imagine imaginary situation, so let's return to actual play: the real question, I realized, is my last one in the previous post:
"Did you even encountered a situation where you had the same character rolling two cover rolls for the same actions? Or in your experience is something that simply never happen?"
I haven't had to deal with two Covers being simultaneously used. I can answer any question about it as long as it names specific Covers, who the users are, and if you don't provide any guesses about the answers.
I wish you wouldn't fight my answers like that.
1. "Well-understood" in-setting. Cover is very much about what NPCs see, think, say, and do about the character. If you don't know enough about the Cover to handle playing the NPCs appropriately because of it, then either you should do research or you should not be playing with that look-and-feel in the first place.
Your statement about the movie-tropes understanding is perfectly valid. However, it might be useful to say so, so that the local table expert on Roman gladiators isn't instantly at odds with the fan of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and with the person who knows vaguely that Romans employed slavery, but only has tropes from the American South to associate with that.
This is one of the minor reasons I always, always recommend using "here and now" or something more specific but also rooted in familiar reality ("New York!" with exclamation mark), for first-time play.
2. None of your terms is a profession. There is a huge difference between "acrobat" and "circus acrobat." One is a vague, ungrounded, cheap try at being able to do stuff. The other is a useful way to invoke hundreds of skills, social connections, knowledge base, physical appearance, and more. The same goes for all your other points in the post. Especially "demagogue!" "Local politician," "congressman," are great. "Demagogue" is a particular behavior one does with power, not the professional description of the power.
I think you should be exacting and highly, highly specific above Covers permitted in your game, both for characters and for demon abilities. Your stubbornness about it makes me very suspicious that somewhere in here, there's a habit of GMing and of character concepts that you are unwilling to acknowledge or break.
Preparing for this evening session, I just noticed one thing...
Now Selene has a object demon with "Hint"... and another demon that can boost her will. Her Will roll to use Hint can be boosted to 15 dice, against Slaneesh' power (13).
Not only that... if she can use that boosted will to "punish" Slanesh, she can reduce it to power 1... and use 15 dice against 1 to use Hint.
The only limitation on her use of hint is the boosting demon's stamina (10) that can be easily recovered with rest...
She was already a formidable fighter, now, thanks to Alessandro's mistreatment of Slaneesh, she could be unbeatable, knowing every secrets of the PC, where to attack, and their weaknesses...
OK, question time...
1) Selene can use the boosted will against the reduced (by the punish) score of the other demon?
2) She can use the boosted will to reduce the other demon at Power 1 before using Hint?
3): I am not sure I understand how to use Hint: in the annotations you say:
The first clarification is that Hint is a communicative ability, and hence subject to the demon's perceptual limits. With no special perception-enhancing abilities, the demon cannot answer questions outside the scope of ordinary human perception.
The second clarification is that Hint does not consult the demon but rather elicits a GM-knowledge answer, as if the demon had opened a reality-bending door. Therefore the answer has nothing to do with the demon's knowledge, opinions, or personality.
Aren't these clarifications totally at odds with each other? How can that ability be dependent on the demon's perception, and at the same time be not be dependent on its knowledge?
Example: Selene wants to know if Isabella has discovered where she is hiding, and ask that using hint. Slaneesh obviously don't know the answer, but that's no problem. But Slaneesh don't perceive the answer, and it's a big problem?
4) When "play the NPCs" is a way to add adversity, and when it's a massacre? Did you ever create a enemy for the Sorcerer and discovered that it was by far too strong for them? What did you do?
Having lurked through weeks of your conversations with Ron I feel I can almost predict his answers to your punish then ask for a hint shenanigans. But I wont. Instead I'll just share my opinion about the hint rules.
Quote from: Moreno R. on March 03, 2014, 11:18:14 PM
3): I am not sure I understand how to use Hint: in the annotations you say:
The first clarification is that Hint is a communicative ability, and hence subject to the demon's perceptual limits. With no special perception-enhancing abilities, the demon cannot answer questions outside the scope of ordinary human perception.
The second clarification is that Hint does not consult the demon but rather elicits a GM-knowledge answer, as if the demon had opened a reality-bending door. Therefore the answer has nothing to do with the demon's knowledge, opinions, or personality.
Aren't these clarifications totally at odds with each other? How can that ability be dependent on the demon's perception, and at the same time be not be dependent on its knowledge?
I don't see any confusion. "Perceptual limits" merely sets parameters about the type of knowledge the demon is able to communicate. It means it can answer a question that "could be perceived" by a hypothetical human being with normal senses in the right place at the right time.
Quote from: Moreno R. on March 03, 2014, 11:18:14 PM
Example: Selene wants to know if Isabella has discovered where she is hiding, and ask that using hint. Slaneesh obviously don't know the answer, but that's no problem. But Slaneesh don't perceive the answer, and it's a big problem?
"If Isabella has discovered" - if this is a question about what's in Isabella's mind then it should be outside all demon and human perception. On the other hand if Isabella is taking obvious actions that demonstrate her knowledge of the hiding places, then I'd guess it would be perceivable and therefore hintable.
Joshua for the win.
And then Ron ask why I post multiple-choice questions....
Let's review the situation:
Selene can punish Slaneesh without worrying about it rebelling (see the annotations about page 89 - even if it seems rather strange to me that punishing can't cause rebellion), and Slaneesh is a very well-fed demon (Selene LOVES writing about what she does...).
The only thing that is problematic is the name of the rite: she is not punishing Slaneesh, she is doing a rite that cause the demon to suffer and be weak, saying to it "sorry about this, but in exchange I will write on you all the juicy details of my slaughtering every one of them, afterwards...".
The demon hates it as one could hate a visit to the dentist, but it's doing that willingly.
From Ron non-reaction to these, I think that the answer to both these two question is "yes", right?
1) Selene can use the boosted will against the reduced (by the punish) score of the other demon?
2) She can use the boosted will to reduce the other demon at Power 1 before using Hint?
So yes, she can use "hint" rolling 15 dice against 1.
Slaneesh's stamina is higher than Abaddon, so it's the parasite stamina the limit to the use of the power (at least if she wants to use it rolling the full 15 dice). But Selene isn't in combat, she can take it slow, make the demon rest: she has to feed it, but she can do it at the end of the day, after asking dozens of questions... even with the limitation of a "yes/no" answer, that can go a lomg way...
If Joshua is correct, then Selene can know anything the PC are planning: they are planning together, talking about what they will do...
What about the future? if something can be perceived (the rain, for example) but it still not there.. for example a question like "it will rain tomorrow in Chicago" can be answered by a Hint?
------------
Thinking about it, the real problem with this NPC Sorcerer is not that she's too powerful - "powerful" is fine, and she got this last bit of power by the errors of a PC after all -. It's that the "NPC that can know everything and can predict your move and can know your secrets and can attack you every time she wants" works in fiction, but not so much in rpgs. In my experience, it tend to flatten the gameplay into a series of attacks, attacks, attacks, with the PCs relegated to a reactive mode. The PC in this case were PLANNING a combined action, having the NPC know everything beforehand risk producing a gameplay not too different from the one of a illusionist GM that "push the PC to follow his story" by attacking them whenever they go...
Ron, you didn't answer the last question: did you ever have similar problems with a powerful NPC sorcerer? What did you do? (from the annotations warning about NPC sorcerers it seems that you have, but you don't go in details about it in the annotations)
Quote from: Moreno R. on March 04, 2014, 11:49:27 AM
It's that the "NPC that can know everything and can predict your move and can know your secrets and can attack you every time she wants" works in fiction, but not so much in rpgs. In my experience, it tend to flatten the gameplay into a series of attacks, attacks, attacks, with the PCs relegated to a reactive mode.
Hey Moreno, I hope this isn't derailing but I think I have a rather critical question. I went back through the thread looking for Selene's motivation. All I found was this:
QuoteThe conflict center around Isabella (PC) and Selene (NPC), two ex-friends who collaborated for a time in occult researches, and now they are two rival sorcerers.
But why were Isabella and Selene looking into the occult in the first place? What did they hope to get out of it? Why did they have a falling out?
I think you're having a problem with your game devolving into a series of demon fueled action sequences because the two principle characters don't have anything motivating them beside undefined "rivalry".
Since Selene is your NPC let's focus on her for a minute. If Isabella were suddenly no longer an issue what would she go do with all her power?
Jesse
Hi Jesse! Thanks for the question, it made me reflect on that character motivations, and the reasons for that. I was going to show that more in play... and then this evening session was canceled for Internet connection problems for a player (the Intenet situation in certain parts of Italy is so bad that heavy rain is enough to disturb it... I am lucky to be in one of the well connected area...)
Let's look at Selene from two point of view, from the "game" point of view for the real people at the table, and in the character's head.
As a NPC in a game, Selene's real motivation is "the player who created her depicted her like that", but obviously that is only half the answer. Isabella's player used Selene as the direct motivation for Isabella's summoning and binding of a demon (until then, Isabella had only contacted them). So, the fear of Selene is a powerful character motivation (and this is the reason I made her... fearsome. I needed somebody that could be a credible source of fear for characters that deal day-by-day with very high-power demons). And attached to Selene there were a lot of other themes, too: friendship betrayed, jealousy, the price of power, etc.
I had made a conscious choice, starting this saga, that I would be as faithful as possible to the player's vision of these character, so I probably even went overboard with this, asking a lot of details, backstop, etc (this, being my first true Sorcerer game after all, was designed by the beginning as a learning experience, and I have learned to avoid doing that again, it meant a lot more work for both me and the players that could have been avoided). All the backstory, the way they met, why they began to practice sorcery together, why they parted ways angrily, etc, is player-dictated, in writing.
So, what I had, for the game preparation, was this rather detailed back-story, and the impression I was getting from the players from this text and the way they talked about these characters. So... seeing that "fear of Selene" was a big character motivation, I had to make that fear justified, to build on that material. And Selene was depicted not as a "colleague" or "collaborator", but as a "best friend", so that friendship would have to be part of the character actions (the way at the start Selene was trying to get Isabella to be "her friend again"). The breaking of friendship ties (with Selene) and family ties (the kicker with the discovery of her mother's actions, the father that was away in another country) was another theme, so I made THAT (cut Isabella's ties with others) her true Demon's motivation (and its "cover identity" as her boyfriend was perfect for that)
Another point was that the break-up with Selene was about the summoning of a "terrible" demon and the loss of friendship and family ties aligned very neatly with my vague initial idea of humanity of this setting, and I liked the idea of having BOTH of these friends motivated by distrust and mutual paranoia.
So, at the end of all these thoughts, what is the result, in the fiction?
Selene is Isabella at the end of the road. Isabella is losing humanity, in her paranoia has summoned demons and has cut practically any tie with other friends and family. Well, Selene is the friend that was so behind, so "weaker", that when she got a chance to be the "powerful one" she took it and surpassed Isabella.. on the same road. Selene now is quite deranged (she is at humanity zero, she has to, or the fear of her parasite demon would not be justified: she can't control it, or Isabella's refusal to summon it in the first place would not be justified), She has no empathy or sentimental tie with anybody apart her demon, and satisfy its needs and desires has become her own objectives. She is paranoid like Isabella, only much more so, so she try to destroy what she can't control.
So, why Selene did what she did in the game? Well, at first, her real motivation was to try to mend bridges with Isabella: she asked forgiveness, and wanted "to be friends again", but in my mind I had very clear that she was only lonely, but was she no longer able to have a... human relationship. She would have tried to manipulate Isabella, use her, treat her... practically like a demon. But she saw herself as the noble one, like the sincere friend who is able to lower herself to ask forgiveness (even if she think she did nothing wrong) for her friend. And when Isabella refused, refusing even to touch her (with a clear show of disgust)... well, "broken friendship" is one of the themes, Selene is Isabella turned to eleven subtracted humanity, so "same reaction, but bigger, harder, stronger, and no human empathy, decency or remorse at all". Isabella did summon a demon to defend from Selene. Selene did order a demon to kill Isabella. A deformed mirror.
A this point, begin the interference from other PCs. First, Alessandro. Selene discover that there is a third sorcerer in the city. Someone who is talking to Isabella. Paranoia to eleven. She has Peter follow him... and Peter return, running away after discovering that, in some way, Alessandro's "dog" can sense Peter, and can hunt it when it travel from body to body. Paranoia to one hundred and eleven. Then, the same night, A 4-meters high monster resembling a winged fire-breathing werewolf with a scorpion tail rip apart the wall and ceiling of her home, break through her defensive contains easily, and try to kill her (She has no idea that Isabella wanted her alive). When Peter try to possess Alessandro on the roof, Alessandro simply order it to stop and Peter has to flee again to avoid being banished. Paranoia to one thousand one hundred and eleven... who is this guy that is friendly with Isabella, this Sorcerer that is trying to kill her, and she can't even have him followed by Peter without being noticed and attacked?
She try to learn more about him. She already did, even before the attack, but she did find Alessandro instead. Another Sorcerer. That at first did seems like an ally, and she even cured him of his wounds... and then Alessandro betrayed her.
At this point, she don't trust any sorcerer. Alessandro has already paid for his betrayal (and it was a promise she had made to Slaneesh). No more miss nice sociopath demon summoner, now it's time to get real, and kill everybody!
This was the starting image I had of the NPC, and how it evolved during the past sessions (Selene could even have been allied with Isabella at this point, its the mutual distrust and paranoia that is causing this escalation). In hindsight I had less clear at the beginning the reasons why these two girls decided to study Sorcery, but even that got more clear seeing Isabella in action and playing Selene.
Something that did come up during the game, from another part of Isabella's background (the Kicker), was that her mother's demon house was pushing her (from "behind the curtain") to embrace Sorcery: is was no simple chance that Isabella did found these old books, that did meet a Internet community of fans of the occult that treated her well and made her feel important, etc. [this part of the setting and backstory is full of sarcasm on traditional rpg forums, by the way: even the name of the demon/administrator/troll of that forum, "Darkustikan the Dark" is a nickname used in Italian Indie RPG forum to satirize the sort of nicknames used elsewhere. I coined that name in one of my (in)famous rants years ago, it stuck, and using it as a character in their diagram was a clear flag for "let's laugh at these guys again!"]
And why Selene did it? Because her friend did, of course! She was the wallflower, the quiet one that bask in the light of the popular one... of course she was interested in the same things that did interest Isabella!
So, as I hope I have shown... I tried to mitigate the risk that Ron talks about in the annotations, by having Selene being a sort of reflection of Isabella... She did study Sorcery because Isabella did it, she did summon a dangerous demons (and lost her mind) because she was jealous of Isabella, and after that, it was a sort of "feedback loop" between her and Isabella, with each reaction fueling even bigger reactions from the other side. In this way, until last session, Selene's actions were always depending on Isabella's actions and reactions.
This was unbalanced last session: Alessandro's player was so passive, that his murder was totally GM-planned and executed, without him being able to change anything: it was the first time in this game that I really felt like I was following "my story", because I had a powerful, motivated character doing something very direct with a clear objective... and it didn't encounter almost no opposition at all. At that moment, Ron was right, I was practically playing with myself.
Now, the other two players aren't so passive, they are planning actions and precautions, but I am worried that this substantial increase in Selene's power and knowledge will turn the nest session, too, into me playing with almost no real opposition.
This, plus the very little willingness I have to pass a lot of time rolling dice by myself trying to come up with Selene's questions and answers, is making me plan to have Selene simply ignore that massive use of hint and use it only for a couple of questions: I don't like playing NPCs ignoring tactical options "for the good of the story", but in this case it's more "for the good of me not wasting a lot of time rolling hundreds of dice for a NPC"...
I totally get this quandary now. And I sympathize. Rather than getting deeper into the details, why not resolve this with basic principles. Here's the one that comes to mind. Where there is a conflict: ROLL. The players want to plan in secret. Selene wants to know what the fuck they're up to. Looks like a conflict to me.
Only you know what makes most sense in your game, but the demon's power vs their lore makes some sense. This would have the benefit of making the demon's current power very important in the 'hint' check. Sure Selene could punish him down to 1 to avoid the risky of will damage...
The conflict might need only be as simple as to determine whether or not the players can detect that they are being observed via demons/sorcery. Once they know this then it becomes their problem not yours. In my reading of Sorcerer, the annotations, supplements, and Kubasik I don't recall a single admonishment about "balance". Evil NPC/demon too powerful? Get a bigger demon. Don't want to risk the humanity loss? Then go home. Problem solved either way and no more GM angst.
If I were you (and I'm half talking to myself right now and advising myself on my own campaign) I'd only feel responsible to remind players of these ground rules. Then let them have full agency over their players decisions.
Ops, reading again my post, I used "Alessandro" (the name of the third sorcerer, the one killed in the last session) instead of "Antonio" (the one still alive that command the monster Igriph)
That paragraph should be corrected like this:
-----------
A this point, begin the interference from other PCs. First, Antonio. Selene discover that there is a third sorcerer in the city. Someone who is talking to Isabella. Paranoia to eleven. She has Peter follow him... and Peter return, running away after discovering that, in some way, Antonio's "dog" can sense Peter, and can hunt it when it travel from body to body. Paranoia to one hundred and eleven. Then, the same night, A 4-meters high monster resembling a winged fire-breathing werewolf with a scorpion tail rip apart the wall and ceiling of her home, break through her defensive contains easily, and try to kill her (She has no idea that Isabella wanted her alive). When Peter try to possess Antonio on the roof, Antonio simply order it to stop and Peter has to flee again to avoid being banished. Paranoia to one thousand one hundred and eleven... who is this guy that is friendly with Isabella, this Sorcerer that is trying to kill her, and she can't even have him followed by Peter without being noticed and attacked?
-----------
This evening we played the last session of this "saga". A big fight between all the remaining PC and demons and Selene and other people too (the wife and son of Antonio)
Too big, far too big: 3 sorcerers, prepared with a lot of defenses and traps (I counted 10 prepared contains, between protections, barriers and traps, in the scene of the battle), 6 demons (including Antonio's "son") with four of them at Power 10 or above, a lot of armor and protections that made killing characters difficult and turned the count of everybody's penalty a logistic nightmare (and I forgot to count the uses of the demon's power, I should have counted them too). The fight lasted more than two hours, real time, with literally hundreds of dice rolled, and the details of the fiction obviously suffered from all that.
What I learned is that the complications scale up really fast with so many participants in a conflict: I made a lot of mistakes or forgot things, but I think that the situation was too complicated anyway. Next time I will scale down the number of demons and play from the beginning with only two players.
Final balance: PRO: I finally got to see how the mechanics works in a real game of Sorcerer (and it's not how it seems from reading the book). CON: it was not a very good game of Sorcerer, too many problems, errors, and at the end none of stories of the characters were really resolved. PRO: I have identified a lot of mistakes I made during the preparation and running the game, and I will avoid them next time, CON: I don't think I have really identified "how to play well this game" still, so probably even next time will be a trial run...
That seems... crazy.
I've never had anything like that happen in my games.
Here's a diagnostic: Can you tell me what the fight was over without directly referencing anyone trying to kill each other? Like did anyone in this have an objective other than "kill the other side"?
Jesse
Quote from: Jesse Burneko on March 12, 2014, 06:59:05 PM
Here's a diagnostic: Can you tell me what the fight was over without directly referencing anyone trying to kill each other? Like did anyone in this have an objective other than "kill the other side"?
Impossible: as I wrote a few days ago, the Kicker of one of the Sorcerer was "there is this other Sorcerer that want to kill me", basically. That one was there literally from the beginning....
The players all choose very powerful demons (they all had this sense - not from my writing, I didn't write anything because I wanted people who had read the manual - that the game was more "fun" if the demon was much more powerful than them, and two of them got in a sort of race to get the bigger demon), and after that they put in the kickers other sorcerer and demons that scared them.
Add to this that during the game in practice one player gave his own power-13 demon to the NPC Sorceress that at that point had three demons at 13, 10 and 7 power...
I can see, in retrospect, the choices of the players (and my own) that did lead to that result. Each one had motives behind, but the final point is: the players did not know how to use the system to get the kind of play they wanted, and ended up escalating more and more instead.
For my part, I think I took a too passive role. Even if I had seen some of the problems (not all of them) I still tried to do what the player wanted... even if it was not what they wanted.
In retrospect, the only way to avoid a ending similar to this would have been to "defuse" that kicker, having the fears of the Sorcerer made only of paranoia: make Selene a weak sorceress that had no intention to harm Isabella, or, better yet, not a Sorcerer at all, leaving the player to deal with a powerful demon that she could not control... and no enemy to keep it occupied.
I don't know if it would have been better, at the time of the first session I didn't understand even that I could do something like that, I thought that the kicker had to happen as described, verbatim.
"This other Sorcerer wants to kill me" is a problem because it doesn't describe an actual moment? How did the character come to learn this? Was a threat made? Did she right now just try to stab you? Did a demon you recognize as here chase you down an alley?
Kickers should be concrete events understandable by an outside observer. That helps nail down what the knowns and unknowns are. If the Kicker is, "so my former occult partner just showed up at my house and threw fireballs at me" makes things very clear. There's a Sorcerer and she's trying to kill me. If the kicker is more like, "I just got a death threat from my former occult partner" then that gives you more room to play. Maybe she is a Sorcerer, maybe she isn't. Maybe it's forged or written under duress.
Another thing that seems very unclear is why these people want to kill each other. "Because they have a bigger demon" is really bad motive. Every character in the game NPC and PC should be able to describe their character's agenda without referencing demons or sorcery at all. "I want her dead because she slept with my husband and he left me," That kind of thing.
Is this at least helpful for next time? I don't want to be beating a dead horse or wallowing in hindsight.
Jesse
This is the character with her backstory and the kicker. Sorry, it's in Italian, but google translate should be able to translate it into something readable.
It's the first draft, with all the data in order. It was changed before the game, with some corrections to the powers (the "protection from firearms", not allowed in the game, was changed into Armor, and "travel" was changed into fast, that was what the players really wanted) and after some questions from me about parts that weren't clear, but the changes were posted in bit and pieces, this is the post with the gist of the backstory:
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PERSONAGGIO
Name: Isabella Vargas http://goo.gl/DEZr5Q
Appearance: Anni 22. Capelli lilla lunghi e ondulati. Occhi verde chiaro e pelle chiara. Vestiti casual e corpo snello, alta sul 1,70m.
Telltale: Tatuaggio con il simbolo delle fasi di luna all'interno del'avambraccio sinistro e capelli tinti di lilla. http://goo.gl/NS9kJO
Humanity: 4
Stamina 2 = Clean living
Will 4 = Zest for life and sensation
Lore 4 = Solitary Adept
Cover 4 = Fotografa
Price: Spaventata (-1 a tutti i tiri quando Damian non è con me)
Kicker: Io e Selene siamo alla ricerca del diario di una potente strega, ora sono nella chiesa di Santa Lucia ed è qui che era nascosto. Sto tenendo in mano il diario e c'è la firma di mia madre.
Diagramma
DEMONE
Name: Damian
Bound to: Isabella Vargas
Type: Passing
Binding strength:
Appearance: http://goo.gl/M03Yrq Sul metro e ottanta, sempre vestito con completo, oppure con camicia e jeans.
Telltale: Tatuaggio di luna alla base della nuca, rappresenta la fase di luna corrente.
Stamina 6
Will 9
Lore 8
Power 9
Desire: Sensual gratification
Need: Human blood Solitamente beve il mio sangue.
Abilities:
Cover = È uno scrittore di successo. Usa diversi pseudonimi, ma ognuno di essi è molto famoso.
Link = Sento qualcosa di quello che gli accade attorno, ma è sempre un singolo senso ad essere colpito; per lui è lo stesso.
Perception = Conosce sempre qualcuno che mi può essere utile in una situazione, che sia una persona o un demone. Quando mi serve qualcuno Damian solitamente mi dice di conoscere la persona che fa al caso mio e se è umano tira fuori un cellulare e gli telefona. Per chi lo vede il cellulare è normalissimo, mentre gli stregoni notano che sembra fatto di ombre.
Protection = Armi da fuoco.
Protection = Magia.
Special damage = Pistola che si forma da ombre concretizzate.
Travel = Velocità superiore alla norma.
Vitality = Le ferite si richiudono bevendo sangue, il sangue usato per guarire non soddisfa il Need.
Descrizione del Diagramma:
- Damian è il mio demone, per il mondo è il mio compagno. Viviamo assieme in un appartamento.
- Selene era la mia migliore amica, abbiamo preso la questione dei rituali come un passatempo interessante, però lei è assolutamente negata. Abbiamo litigato perché voleva evocare Abaddon, io mi sono rifiutata conoscendo la pericolosità del convocare un demone e lei ha promesso di farlo da sola. Dopo questo ho convocato Damian e stretto il patto con lui.
- Casa mia è il luogo dove di solito faccio i rituali e dove soddisfo il Need di Damian, è un appartamento.
- La mia macchina fotografica è il mio principale strumento di lavoro e un modo per vedere il mondo, se posso la porto sempre con me.
- Antoine è il padrone di una galleria d'arte e mio principale datore di lavoro, ci conosciamo da 3 anni ormai e siamo in buoni rapporti.
- La galleria d'arte è il luogo dove sono esposte le mie foto migliori, le altre le vendo attraverso internet, come facevo prima di conoscere Antoine.
- Il forum "darkarts.net" è il luogo dove ho trovato altre persone appassionate di stregoneria, ma la maggior parte sono dei cialtroni. A volte mi è capitato di dare consigli, ma spesso i racconti che leggo sono terribilmente falsi.
- Tiger_Lily è il mio nick sul forum, molti mi conoscono solo così.
- La chiesa di Santa Lucia è il luogo dove è nascosto il diario.
- Padre Luciano conosceva mia madre e ha sempre saputo che era una strega, lei gli ha affidato il suo diario.
- Il diario della strega Cassandra contiene rituali, consigli, annotazioni personali e informazioni su alcuni demoni, soprattutto Abaddon. È il diario di mia madre.
- Cassandra è lo pseudonimo di mia madre come strega, così ha firmato libri e altri scritti.
- Abaddon è un demone potente, forse mia madre è l'unica ad averci avuto a che fare ed essere sopravvissuta,
- Theresa è mia madre, è il suo vero nome. Avevamo un bel rapporto noi due, purtroppo quando avevo 14 anni se ne è andata e in quel periodo sono scomparse molte persone. Finché non ho scoperto che lei è "Cassandra" le mie domande sul suo abbandono sono diventate ancora più importanti da risolvere.
- Michele è un membro del mio gruppo di amici, ci conosciamo dalle superiori. Da quando è arrivato Damian le sue speranze di avere una storia con me sono sfumate e la nostra amicizia ne ha risentito parecchio.
- Caterina e Ilaria sono altre amiche, è diverso tempo che non ci esco assieme, non mi piace molto stare in giro, soprattutto se Damian non è con me, senza di lui sono vulnerabile.
Isabella ha sempre avuto la passione per la fotografia, grazie a internet e successivamente a Antoine può tranquillamente mantenersi da sola, per questo quando il padre si è trasferito all'estero con la sua nuova moglie lei è comunque rimasta.
Theresa la madre se ne è andata quando Isabella aveva 14 anni, naturalmente lei si è sempre chiesta perché se ne fosse andata, ma non ha mai trovato una risposta soddisfacente.
Selene era la sua migliore amica dalle superiori e di solito uscivano con un gruppo di amici storico, sempre assieme dal primo superiore.
Nel momento in cui Isabella ha iniziato a interessarsi all'esoterismo e alla stregoneria in particolare, Selene l'ha seguita. Entrambe hanno iniziato a fare piccoli rituali, cercare libri e così sono anche arrivate sul forum darkarts.net, in cui hanno trovato altri appassionati.
La prima volta che Isabella ha contattato uno spirito lo ha fatto da sola, era a casa sua. Ha preso un gesso disegnando a terra un pentacolo inscritto in un cerchio, poi sulle linee tracciate ha messo del sale accendendo anche una candela blu al centro. Una volta finita l'invocazione in latino lei ha sentito una voce da uomo, che con tono dolce e amichevole le ha chiesto di se.
Quando Isabella gli ha chiesto chi fosse lui ha risposto soltanto "Mi chiamo Damian, arrivederci Isabella, spero mi contatterai ancora."
Sentendo poi il racconto Selene era entusiasta e voleva provare, hanno poi iniziato a prenderci mano, ma era sempre e solo Isabella a fare i rituali, perché Selene per quanto provasse non riusciva a farli funzionare. Nel frattempo io andavo avanti, provavo sempre cose più audaci e iniziavo a capire che solitamente quelle persone con cui parlavo non erano spettri, ma demoni, i quali a volte mi davano informazioni utili o bugie ben orchestrate per evocarli. Di tempo ne avevo dato che il mio lavoro me lo permetteva, mentre Selene doveva andare a lezione all'università.
Un giorno sul forum alcuni iniziarono a parlare della strega Cassandra, vennero riportate un sacco di voci a riguardo su quanto fosse potente. In particolare si parlava del suo diario e su dove lo avesse nascosto prima di sparire, dato che oltretutto in quel periodo scomparvero un sacco di persone. Selene mi chiese di trovare il diario, parlando con alcuni degli utenti in privato aveva saputo che in quel diario era scritto come evocare demoni molto potenti, come Abaddon. Prima di risponderle usai la stregoneria per contattare dei demoni e sapere chi era Abaddon, ma l'unica risposta che ricevevo era "Pericoloso". Cercai di convincere Selene a lasciar perdere, finimmo per litigare e lei promise che avrebbe evocato Abaddon senza di me.
Tutto questo succedeva un anno fa', Isabella iniziò ad avere paura, paura per Selene o per se stessa. Più di una volta aveva avuto a che fare con i demoni, ma non ne aveva mai convocato nessuno e non aveva idea di cosa sarebbe potuto succedere. E se il demone avesse posseduto Selene?
Per questo cercò consiglio e contattò Damian, aveva un qualcosa di karmico il fatto che chiedesse al primo demone con cui aveva parlato.
Il rituale era lo stesso, lei spiegò la situazione e lui le disse che così non sapeva come aiutarla, invece se fosse stato con lei avrebbe potuto fare molto di più. Ancora adesso Isabella non sa perché lo ha fatto, forse voleva qualcuno vicino visto che Selene non c'era più, qualcuno che la proteggesse e l'aiutasse. Con questi pensieri in testa Isabella si fece un taglio sulla mano sinistra, con il suo sangue scrisse il nome di Damian nel cerchio e facendo appello con una formula al potere del suo sangue lo chiamò al suo cospetto.
Finito di recitare la formula passò qualche minuto in cui la ragazza si chiese se aveva funzionato, o se si era immaginata tutto sporcando di sangue il pavimento. Quando sente bussare alla porta di casa e aprendo, si ritrova davanti un ragazzo, Damian.
Lei lo fa entrare e una volta seduti sul divano Isabella gli fa qualche domanda per essere certa che sia lui, Damian risponde, poi le chiede se davvero vuole il suo aiuto perché in quel caso dovranno legarsi se lei vuole che lui resti e non soffra. Isabella una volta scoltate le regole di Damian sul fatto che lo dovrà nutrire, che saranno connessi e che lui sarà al suo servizio, ma non come uno schiavo; lei accetta di legarsi a lui e gli dice "Io ti nutrirò, farò in modo che tu resti qui e se avrai delle richieste cercherò come possibile di soddisfarle, ma in cambio tu farai tutto quello che ti chiederò, mi proteggerai e per il mondo sarai il mio nuovo ragazzo."
Questi i termini del patto, il legame porterà vantaggi a entrambi e ognuno si impegnerà per aiutare l'altro.
Dopo il legame Isabella ha iniziato a passare molto tempo con Damian, hanno una relazione in tutto e per tutto, ma in quanto a sentimenti... l'importante è l'apparenza no?
Ovviamente le sue amiche sono rimaste sorprese per la novità, lui ha una certa fama come scrittore (Isabella non sa dove trovi idee tanto originali per i suoi libri). Antoine si augura che questa storia porti a Isabella nuova ispirazione, mentre Michele ha apertamente espresso la sua insofferenza per Damian, tutti ritengono che sia semplicemente geloso perché non ha trovato in tempo il coraggio per dichiararsi a Isabella e ora è tardi.
La ricerca del diario di Cassandra ha preso mesi, Isabella e Damian seguendo i contatti di lui, notizie in rete e altro sono risaliti fino alla chiesa di Santa Lucia. Una volta trovato il diario, Isabella è sbiancata leggendo le note in cui sua madre aveva scritto di aver scelto il nome Cassandra. Le prime note del diario risalivano a quando Theresa aveva 17 anni.
---------------------------
As you see, it's rather long and detailed, I encouraged this because I asked before for details, not understanding that I could change or add details myself.
The backstory describe the details of the rift between the two (ex)friends, with both searching for a book, and the kicker is that the PC get to read the book and discover that it was written by her mother, but the fact that the NPC is arriving and that she's dangerous is very clear.
If you read the backstory, you see that the PC is described as very scared of the demon that the other one summoned. The danger is explicitly that the demon could possess her and take control.
The rift is personal, very very personal. Non only there are years of resentment behind it, but the book that Selene is searching was written by Isabella's mother. With that, Selene could even summon Isabella's mother as a demon (this bit is caused by another player's character kicker)
I don't know how the conflict between the two could be made more personal...
The problem is NOT that Selene did not have motives to kill Isabella. The problem is that SHE HAD TOO MANY MOTIVES. Very good motives. THERE WAS NO WAY SHE COULD JUSTIFY NOT KILLING HER.
THIS is what turned the game into a tactical battle: there was no way to avoid a violent confrontation. It would have been BETTER if there were no motive, because in that case, they could have reached an agreement. Giving SO MANY MOTIVES blocked any other avenue apart combat.
No, I identified a lot of problems and errors, but NPC motivation was not really one of them, by far. The amount of details, of motivation given by the PC in that backstory, instead, IS a problem: in game it was clear that it was too much.
See the previous reply, up in the page, here: http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=280.msg2653#msg2653 for other info about how I used that backstory material and characterized Selene.
Reflection on the problems during the game, I think that the most damaging errors were at a more basic level, right in every use of the system:
1) Too many rules explanations. This was not a demo. I didn't want to teach the system. I asked for players that had read the manual, because I was already aware of this possible problem. But I ended up explaining the rules every single time anyway.
In part I needed that, too: thinking about the rules out loud to better understand how they worked, having to explain them in a short and rational way helped me to understand and memorize them. But I really must stop doing that.
This could cause a different set of problem, if the players don't remember their options: for example, if they don't remember the "will roll" rule to continue to act even if they have a lot of penalties, they simply will not use it. If I don't remind them, they don't even know that there is something missing. Even talking about the option would mean to explain it, how it works, and it's really one of the most anti-intuitive parts of the game, explaining that in the last session was a real problem. So, if I adopt a "no rules explanation during the game" policy, the risk is ending up playing another game. But I can't say until I try it, after all, right?
2) I didn't get, at the beginning, the requirement for roll-over victories. I thought that they were much more automatic. This really weakened the ties between rolls and fiction, and it explain a lot of differences I saw between the way the game is described by enthusiasts, and the way I saw it work. This, too, I will have to be much more strict next time (that, if all goes well, will be next week with other two players, different ones)
3) Too many demons and sorcerers. I did not understand at first how much I could "edit" the kickers, so I ended up with really a lot of them only because they were in the kickers. And too much background, too: I did leave too much of the backstory to the players
There were other problems, too, but I think it's better if I will concentrate on solving these, at the moment.
Hey Moreno,
With regard to teaching the game and what I've read here I think you may have habit of laying out lots of options. It's still possible to teach the game without enumerating everything a player could do in a given moment of play. When I run Sorcerer to an inexperienced group here is what I say almost exactly:
Before Play:
"Remember as a Sorcerer you can always: Contact, Summon, Bind new demons as well as Punish, Contain and Banish existing demons. However, remember that all of these take a really long time. It's very, very difficult to do them in the heat of the moment. Also, any Sorcerer can attempt to command any demon to do something even if that demon is not your own."
"When you roll dice we decide what score you're rolling and you roll that many dice and tell me what your highest single value is. There are three ways to get additional dice. The first is flat bonus dice. You can get a single die if your description generally evokes an honest emotional reaction from the group. You get two dice if your action is potential game changer and two more dice if your action especially surprising or unexpected.
"The second way is combo-ing actions. If you're successful at action A and then you follow up with action B and it is clear that you are taking advantage of your success then you can just tack on all the victories from action A onto the roll for action B.
"The third way is doubling up on descriptors. If you take an action that really nails, and I mean really, really unquestioningly nails two descriptors for two different stats then you can roll one stat and take the victories and add it into the main roll of the primary stat."
And that's it. That's all I say before playing. I then get into details as needed. Someone usually asks, "You said I could Banish a demon? How does that work?" Then I tell them.
Of course there are two that inevitably and always come up:
Complex Conflict: "Okay, so this situation is complicated. I want everyone to tell me exactly what your character is doing in this moment. It's okay to change your action after someone else tells you theirs." <Everyone says what they are doing.> "Okay, I want everyone to roll their dice and then DON'T TOUCH THEM. Just leave them sitting in front of you for now."
Then I start resolving actions in order of high die. If and only if someone is the target of action before their action comes up I say directly to that person, "Okay, so this thing is happening to you. You've got a choice. You can either abort your current action and roll with full dice to defend against this action OR you can leave those dice sitting in front of you and still do your action but you only get to roll 1 as defense. What do you do?"
The Will Roll Thing: So eventually someone is carrying too many penalties to act. I say this: "Okay, so right now you're stunned so badly you can't really act. However, if you'd like to act, you can try to muster your will and fight through all that pain anyway. Would you like to do that, or just stumble around in pain for moment?" Usually they want to act. So I say, "Great, decide what you would like to do. Okay, That's a <relevant stat> roll. How many of those dice would like to use?" They tell me. Okay, "So you're going to roll your Will against those dice. If you succeed then that's how many dice you can use to act. Are you still cool with trying for that many dice?"
And that's it. That's all the explaining I ever do.
Is that helpful for next time?
Jesse
That level of explanation should not have been necessary in this case.
These are games played by google hangout, and the players are chosen with a public call in a forum (gentechegioca). The only requisite: having read the Sorcerer manual, preferably the annotated version.
And this request (having read the manual) was asked specifically for this reason: I didn't want to play a Demo. I didn't want to teach a game (seeing that, as I explained right in the same forum post, I was the one who had to learn how to GM the game...). I already did know, with years of experience, that you explain a game or you play a game, you can't do both at the same time.
So, the questions weren't about what we were playing, what was a demon, or the meaning of the scores (apart from Cover that always was a source of confusion). The most frequent question, by far, was "what are my options in this situation?", followed by "what is the difference between these options?"
The amount of questions and request of explanations was not the same from all the players, at the beginning the biggest problems were cause by a single player, that as I describe in the previous posts seemed to fight against the system and try to play a different game. But in the last sessions the amount of complications (conflicts between ten active participants, Sorcerers + Demons...) caused too many request of explanation even from the other two. But I already explained this part.
I never used exactly the explanations you list, of course, but I used similar explanations about other games, and every single time they were followed by request of other explanations and always, always the same question: "what are my options". It's the very first question a gamer always ask in any game. Probably the social contest counts: I was always in three kind of situations, "he is the only one to know the rules", "he is here to teach us how to play", "he is here to show us how this game works" (the last case often in cases of possible publications: I was the one on the team who studied the rules and explained and show them to the publisher). I don't know how it works there, but here the idea that "the GM is the only one who has to read the rules" is so strong that passed unharmed from traditional games to Forge games without being even weakened. And the culture of "demo play" around conventions didn't help.
Me, trying to run Sorcerer, but requesting players able to read a game manual, is a way to fight head-on against this, after simply avoiding the issue for years playing GM-less games or very simply games like Trollbabe or Dogs in the Vineyard.
The first time didn't work, because I found myself right again at square one, having to explain all over again. And I fell in old habits and simply did.
What incentive the Players have to read the manual, if they can continue to ask me every time?
My experience with Sorcerer is limited to one, very successful game I played as a player, plus re-reading the books a couple times in the expectation of running it myself as a GM sometime soon. Which is to say: I believe I have a general feel for the game, that's why I'm chiming in, but of course I might be grossly mistaken. You "experts" will know to ignore me, then.
My point: it's very weird for me to think that, in a game like Sorcerer, the options a player is facing in the moment depend on their knowledge of the rules. I would think that their options in the moment depend entirely on the fiction being presented.
There are of course a few technicalities based on how magic works, such as «No, you cannot Summon a demon you haven't Contacted beforehand.» But that's it: it's the rules of how magic works in the fictional "world" that, lacking a real-world reference, might require occasional clarification.
Apart from that, the rules of Sorcerer look to me like they're providing a simple and flexible framework for resolving logical fictional events. Which means that one's options as a character player, in the moment, shouldn't be predicated on the rules: based on the fictional circumstances, they state what their character does — "translating" it into the rules of the game should generally be simple enough.
Which also means that, if everybody's clear enough about the fiction, and thinking of their characters' actions "fiction first", play should always go smoothly, however exactly you implement the rules toward resolving each particular conflict. Fiction feeds into the resolution mechanics and out of them, while whatever hiccup or even mistake you made with the mechanics doesn't actually carry over.
That's even true of Demon creation, or so I hope. If you're collectively very clear about the fictional capabilities of each Demon, then the long list of Demon abilities (my least favorite part of the game) gives detailed mechanical weight to each of them. But when in doubt, I'd look at the coherence of the fiction as my #1 guideline, and not much rules-wrestling should ensue.
If all player agreed on the above, I can't imagine much of a fuss ensuing, ever. Have we played different Sorcerers, or...?