[Sorcerer] resetting the Demon's meal

[Moreno R.]

Hi!

I just played the third session of the Sorcerer game I talked about here and I have some doubts about how one of the demons is feeded.

The demon (and the Sorcerer) are detailed here

The most important (and most often used) power of the parasite demon (conferred to the host) is the capacity for time travel. The host consciousness travel back in time to his own body, taking the demon back with him (the sorcerer did bind the demons after decades of studies, but he is currently around 20 years old, having traveled back into his younger body).

The player used that power to avoid most the hassles of having a demon. For example, the feeding: the demon's need is to be near a human at the moment of his/her death. At first the player did believe that he had never any need to provide for that need, because the sorcerer works in an hospital where people die all the time. I corrected him, after the start of the game, when he tried to do that, specifying that to provide for that need he had to act specifically for that result, actively going into the same room or really nearly people who were dying. This is only a small inconvenience during the "daily routine" pre-kicker, because all he had to do was to visit the room of the patients dying of terminal illness, but during the post-kicker phase, the demon required to be fed much more often.

So what did the sorcerer do? He did leave some wounded (not by him) bystanders to die, to feed the demon. Then he traveled back in time to save them.

The question is not what to do to limit or make this more difficult, but it's... should I?

The players had made abundantly clear that he is not interested in moral choices, he is playing a sort of "cosmic outlaw" that want to beat the odds. His sorcerer is now actually fighting to stay alive against a group of very organized professional hitmen, and the last sessions were a series of possible storylines where he is critically wounded, use the power to go back, and use his knowledge of the future to beat his enemies. It's a sort of temporal maze, that I build to give him a lot of opposition (using things like travel times and distances and the amount of time some people had useful information before being killed to make it at least more complicated - or he would have solved everything in the first session)

So, at the moment, he has opposition, but it's purely tactical. Humanity rolls don't happen and the need is something that he takes care about using a less than a minute every session.

Now, I have read in many threads that it's not necessary that the demons become a big problem in the game, and that the GM should not push them to become one, but that is one of the points of the game that I am least sure about. I some thread it seems that the demons should always be front and center, in others it seems they can be practically ignored. And I am not sure where this situation falls.

Possible options about the relationship demon-need-sorcerer-time travel

1) The demon go back in time fully fed, no problem, exactly as the player say.
2) The demon go back in time, fully fed, but when the sorcerer save the people it did feed upon, it goes into need again.
3) The demon goes back in time in need because the timeline where he did feed was erased (I don't like this very much because it would open a very big can of worms: if the resetting of the timeline erase the feeding, what about wounds, fatigue, etc? Should they be erased too?)
4) other?

My inclination at the moment would be to go with the flow, avoid other discussions at the table, have the demon be an happy puppy and playing the game as a Tarantino movie with time travel added. What is your advice?

[glandis]

Hi Moreno,

I'm a sideline-Sorcerer commentator - no game I've tried to play/run has ever taken off - but ... something about this post made me want to respond anyway. Take it for what it's worth.

I'd be really concerned about playing Sorcerer with someone with no interest in moral choices, but that "cosmic outlaw" - that's fine, it's clearly one of the possible outcomes in Sorcerer (pretty exactly in the text, actually). But the thing is that it is NOT a guaranteed outcome - the character may end up dead, irredeemable, hating himself, etc. The only way I can imagine GMing Sorcerer is to make sure everyone understands that, and are interested in it. That would be my key to discuss with the player. In Sorcerer, I as GM am not out to make his Cosmic Outlaw approach guaranteed or easy - it's my job to challenge it constantly. Not as a mechanical/tactical challenge, but as an, um, ideological challenge, a trying-to-live-life-with-a-Demon challenge, a (at least potentially) moral challenge.

I've no clue about your four options - what would matter to me as GM is making the situation with the Need problematic and interesting. He works in the hospital and is around people who die all the time? He gets a rep as bad-luck, death-comes-with-him. He tries to shrug off the significance of that? Sounds like a Humanity roll to me. I can imagine a player saying "What? A Humanity roll because I don't care what others think? But I'm a Cosmic Rebel!" But in Sorcerer, I'm the GM, I decide Humanity rolls, and that sounds like one to me (insert lots of stuff about shared understanding of Humanity for this game and etc.) If it really doesn't sound like one (again, given shared etc.) to the player ...

I think there are other games for "a Tarantino movie with time travel added," at least the version of that movie where the time traveler is a clear (if "rebellious") hero and not potentially just another criminal thug.

[Moreno R.]

Hi Gordon!

The "Cosmic Outlaw" bit is a direct citation from the Sorcerer manual, and it was used by the player (that has read the manual) to explain how (in his opinion, but I am not sure he is wrong) the game allow for this kind of play.

He is not guaranteed to succeed, he is against professionals that want to frame/kill him (I know why in some time-line they want to kill him and in others they want to frame him for murder, but for the player is still a mystery) and last session he did survive damage bigger than double stamina only because there was medical help available (he was shot near the hospital where he works). But it's a chance of tactical failure, or being out-of-luck with the dice or making a tactical mistake.

To be clear: up until now it's working, we are enjoying the game. But I was organizing these Sorcerer games by hangout to learn how to play the game, and my doubt is about this: am I really learning to run Sorcerer, or am I playing another game, really?

[glandis]

Moreno,

Yeah, "The Outlaw Prevails", one of the big four outcomes. To quote Ron in the annotations " ...I cannot over-stress that they are, and can only be, outcomes of playing." If the GM and/or player are STARTING play thinking "OK, this is going to be a Cosmic Rebel" ... my sense is that's a very unproductive approach in Sorcerer. Play is how we find out IF it happens, and why or why not.

That said - "he has opposition, but it's purely tactical. Humanity rolls don't happen and the need is something that he takes care about using a less than a minute every session" does sound like a different game than Sorcerer. To make it more Sorcerer - look at the PCs diagram. I assume you have some way the professional hit squad ties into (looking at a google-translate of the character) Pauline, the landlady, his mom, the journalist - something. Use that. Tangle up the time travel with your "darkness, cruelty, sin, damnation and pentacles" rather than tactics and timeline logic. Yeah, he changed time and saved the people he previously let die, but ... never mind the Demon and its Need, that's creepy. Wasn't letting them die in the first place cruel? Humanity check. And then saving them - Humanity gain roll? You decide whether to call for the rolls, and the dice will say how it goes. Maybe fine. Maybe the people let die/saved feel like they *should* have died. Like they're somehow soulless now, damned for reasons they don't even know. Or maybe they've developed an inexplicable fear/disgust of (again, from the google translate) Victor Rigo. Maybe they all have developed a mysterious problem - a buzzing in the ears that's starting to drive them mad.

That's the kind of thing I'd always imagined doing in Sorcerer, never mind the mechanics. Throw the color at the PCs and see what happens. Look at the diagrams and see which piece should be put into play now.

Again, I'm a ... does the phrase "armchair quarterback" translate to Italian? A "barstool futbol manager"? Those with practical experience may guide you better, but something in your post reminded me of all my "what would I have to do to get Sorcerer right" thoughts, so ... hope there's some use in it.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Are you hesitant about the creative robustness of your co-player playing the cosmic outlaw, Moreno? Do you think that you have difficulties talking about creative goals and desires with them? Have you done any sort of creative negotiation in an effort to seek compromises, or has it always been you who has given way in your interaction so as to keep them happy?

I'm asking because there seems to be a hidden premise to your conundrum: you're assuming that this player will not (or can not) actually put their character's nature up for play to establish. Rather, you are assuming (perhaps correctly) that they will only accept the game and your creative activity if they are allowed to get their way in this regard: their character shall be a cosmic outlaw, and the elements of the game that would ordinarily be sources of complication and conundrum instead become affirmations of this choice (a choice not naturally available in the game, note - you're supposed to discover the character's fate, not choose it): the demon affirms that they get to be a sorcerer, the handling of the demon's Need affirms that they don't need to rearrange their life around this new unnatural family member they now have, the humanity definition blesses this sacred choice, and the GM certainly services it by providing content of play appropriate to this choice of cosmic outlawry. They're Wolverine, and your task is to make sure that remains so.

Assuming that you don't have actual socio-creative issues between the two of you (maturity or different expectations or whatever), it seems to me that your concerns here would be most succintly laid to rest by asking the player: are they cool with you actually for real contesting their choice of heroic exceptionality? Are they willing to play their character with an open mind and honesty, so that the group gets to factually consider their life and situation as it develops in play? If the answers to either of those questions is negative, then you're probably on the way to discovering some other game that is not Sorcerer.

What contesting their choice means in practice is simply that you don't shy away from actually problematizing their life, and actually letting the player crash and burn if that's what their choices point towards. I can totally understand if this player can't handle that; I've met a significant number of roleplayers who absolutely hate it when the GM messes with the way they've planned to depict their character. It can be the height of ass-hattery from certain perspectives when the GM doesn't even play fair and just put a bullet in the PC's head, but rather incidiously questions their motives and dares to paint them as a villain or (worse still) a fool - that pretty much ruins all the investment a certain kind of creative process engenders in play.

On the other hand, there's no need to be shy and assume that of course other players want to be molly-coddled; I've also encountered a lot of situations where players only properly perk up when their unsaid hope of real play (in a narrativist or gamist sense) is satisfied by a GM who actually plays hard moves on them. So for all I know, this player's answer might be an enthusiastic affirmative if you ask them about whether it's cool to actually explore the consequences and nuances of their life choices. Maybe they're not Wolverine, but merely are offering Wolverine to you so you can examine his life together and see whether Wolverine might win or lose in the game of life.

I should say, by the way, that I love the idea of a demon with a time-travel power. I'm a big fan of M.J. Young's time travel nerdery website, and I love running time travel stories myself in rpgs. Excellent idea to combine that with Sorcerer. Were I GMing, and the cosmology allowed it, I would either assume that the time-travel does not return souls to the sacrifices (they live, but as more-or-less philosophical zombies), or that their restoration is a loss for the demon; its Need is more fundamental than mere voyeuristic kicks, it needs to see the permanent extinguishment of human life.

[Moreno R.]

Hi Eero!

About the player: I have known him for almost 20 years, being both very active (at the time) in usenet rpg discussions, and we met and played a lot of time in one-shots in various Italian conventions, but this is the first time we are able to play a multisessions game together (thanks to Google Hangout) apart from a Amber RPG play-by-email run by him more than a decade ago .

He is no stranger to forge games, he goes to InterNosCon every year from the very first 17-people edition six years ago, and he brought the first edition of Sorcerer more than ten years ago. He did play Nordic Larps, too. Even Jeepforms.

Said that, he really enjoy playing trying to outsmarts opponents (and the GM), a trait shared by a lot of old-time gamers (me included, sometimes). His game of choice these days is Torchbearer, and he did run Burning Wheel a lot before that.

And, I must add, he too was not able to "make Sorcerer work" years ago when he tried, so he is in the game to understand how it works, too.

I don't think he is rejecting thematic "emotional" elements: if you read his kicker and his character backstory, for example, he designed a character front-loaded with a very big revenge/protection theme, giving himself as objective to save a 9 years old girl... but to do so he must, sooner or later, return to his 9-years-old body to fight the killer.

Probably, to avoid writing too much ending up with my usual walls of text, I did not describe well the situation: he is not playing the character as a robot or without any connection. But he did make "tactical" choices during character creation and playing that defuse and avoid a lot of "usual problems" for a Sorcerer (feeding the demon, humanity rolls, etc.).

During the game, the rule discussions we had were relative to the effectiveness of these choices: when I said that, trying for a "real world" aesthetic, I would not consider his character enhanced hearing as a sort of "lie detector" (Daredevil reference...), or when I said that his "danger sense" (modified by me from his first version, that was a sort of "time travel with no risk" ability that bypassed the system) only alerted him of dangers, but it doesn't give him visions of the future, things like that. Or when I didn't give him bonus dice for said ability successful roll when he did try to run, unarmed, toward a gun-wielding killer (my reasons: the killer is shooting where you are now. No matter if you sense danger, you can't dodge bullets). Things like that.

Trying to rephrase the question for better clarity: he had made choices to avoid these typical "sorcerer's problems. And he did.

So....

1) Should I try to make these tactical  choices irrelevant, using my "GM's powers"? Would that not be illusionism? A situation where "I think you must have problems feeding the demon, so even if you found a way to avoid that, it will happen anyway"? How that's different from old WoD-style illusionism?

2) Should I make these choices relevant, and fruitful... so that he can play a Sorcerer with no problem with feeding demons or humanity? But would that game be Sorcerer?

Both seems like wrong choices. The first most of all. So, what I am searching for probably is a way to trouble his sorcerer with these issues WITHOUT depowering his choices...

About the "cosmic outlaw" things... I don't think that the books says what you and Gordon says it does.

The "cosmic outlaw" ending can't be guaranteed because it depends on the Sorcerer WINNING, in the sense of "reaching his objectives", and you can't be guaranteed to win.

But this make very, very clear that your character is NOT neutral on this: your character is trying to "win", to get these objectives. And you can't "make my character lose because it would be more dramatic", that would be a violation of basic character advocacy and in any case it usually result in a very boring game session.

So, this thing that you both are saying that the player can't aim for a "cosmic outlaw" things... I think it can't be more wrong! Because the "cosmic outlaw" ending is BASED on reaching his objectives, it means that IF HE HAS ANY OBJECTIVE, playing with advocacy means "trying to get the cosmic outlaw ending", and if you don't have any objective or if you are not playing to get them... what are you playing for?

[glandis]

Moreno,

Just my way of thinking about it - the character isn't playing, they're living their life. They don't have a "cosmic outlaw" goal, they want to save the nine year-old girl and not lose their soul (or something) in the process. The character wants distinct, concrete, in-the-fiction things. They have a goal, and only play can tell the outcome. Maybe it turns out not to be possible (Retribution). If possible, maybe only through abandoning "the plan" (Redemption), or at a cost we see (AFTER it happens) was too high (Remorse). Or maybe we thread the needle, and The Outlaw Prevails.

The player can want that "The Outlaw Prevails" result, but Sorcerer is saying "you might (MIGHT) find that achieving that ("save the girl"), or what you do trying to achieve that, leads somewhere other than The Outlaw Prevails." You'll have to play the character pursuing that goal, use the Need/Desire/Humanity/etc. rules, and no promises that Cosmic Outlaw turns out to be (in this particular case, because of color, decisions, die luck, whatever) something that works. You might (MIGHT) end up having to choose between saving the girl and being a Cosmic Outlaw, and be unable to have both. And you'll only know (for certain) AFTER it's already happened.

Prioritize the character pursing the actual, in-fiction, concrete goal, not the player wanting a "The Outlaw Prevails" philosophical approach. With the current character/situation - *I* find the questions "Can you save the girl? At what cost? Do you have to give up your demon to save the girl? If so, will you?" fascinating. And I think Sorcerer requires everyone to let play - fully-nuanced, Color-rich, shared and emotionally-relevant play, not just tactical success/failure - answer the question. It's not just WINNING, it's what we learn in trying to win - both about the character and the situation.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I agree with Gordon's point about cosmic outlawry. There is a difference between playing to advocate your character's viewpoint, and playing with the presumption that you can just choose to win, and interfering with that would be GM fiat. Could be that you're not having problems with this detail in your game, of course.

Regarding your restatement, Moreno, I got you the first time. Your dichotomy of choice still looks to me like it is ignoring the other player's role in the process of play: you're wondering about whether you should be problematizing or affirming the player's choices, when the answer would seem to lie in what the other player expects of the interaction. Will they cry if you put up actual adversity to their designs?

If they're on board with you actually playing the game, then I don't really see a downside to you utilizing your creative powers and challenging their character: you're the one who develops the demons, plays the demons, develops the scenario and plays the scenario - it would be amazing if you could not utilize these far-flung creative freedoms to develop interesting situations that put the character and their values at risk. If the presently at hand situation does not provide content of note, you move on to new situations that do.

Worrying about the demon specifically as a source of complication doesn't strike me as fruitful: the demon in Sorcerer is like a street racing car would be in a game about illegal street racing, in that it's a huge obvious default part of the present scheme of play, and likely to get a PC into trouble and out of trouble, but you never know if the player might decide to abandon that particular car and choose to drive another. They could even choose to not drive at all and still have a role to play in the margins of the street racing scene. Similarly it's possible for PCs in Sorcerer to never end up in trouble about their demons, if they consistently make smart choices.

I would say that it is not an issue for Sorcerer if a PC manages to make their demon relationship work well. However, it is an issue if this occurs due to GM negligence - the GM's got to play his hand, and if the player still triumphs, then good for him. This makes your conundrum a bit less clear-cut than it would otherwise be, for you're basically simultaneously questioning the GM's role in the proceedings, and the demon's role in the game. It is easy for me to say that the player should get away with it if they can, but if they're getting away with it because you're considering legit GM powers to be illusionism, then they're not actually being tested by the conditions.

But then again, that's just my impression of your musings - maybe you're exercising the GM powers fully, and the player is making legit choices about what's important and what's not. If that is the case, then carry on I say.

I should emphasize, though, that the fact that the player expects time travel or demon soul collecting to work in a certain way is not a fool-proof defense against unexpected consequences when they mess about with such. It is vehemently not the case that a GM would be exercising illusionism if they chose to involve unforeseen consequences when a PC in their hubris decides to play god with human lives. This sort of game really only limits the GM with a credibility test in exercising their imagination in these sorts of situations; there is no player right to not have black magic blow up in your face.

Whether the GM chooses to bring these types of consequences is up to them, and an artistic choice: does the scenario have room for even more complication, are we interested in seeing this character scramble a bit, is it an interesting situation, does it make great sense or is it even an over-riding logical consequence that cannot be ignored... you weight the options and you make the choice. No way around that in this sort of game. The players bring the protagonism, the GM orchestrates the gauntlet of adversity to show us who the protagonists are - that's the deal, and it includes the GM sometimes making choices about adversity.

That was a bit rambling, but I guess that I gave one answer to your original question: you should not complicate a sorcerer's life with their demon automatically, as if they did not have a right to having it easy when that makes sense. However, it is your task in the game to recognize opportunities for complication, so if you're seeing an interesting place to insert some adversity and content, go for it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Moreno,

There are two issues here and I recommend you separate them carefully.

1. The whole "cosmic outlaw," "why-and-how to play" issue, which has received the majority of attention in the replies.

2. The question of what to do as the GM.

The first question is easily answered with this question: Why are you asking this? Because unless the player sees it as an issue, there is nothing you can do, and nothing we can do for you. It serves no purpose to dissect and qualify and otherwise deconstruct all these posts so far. The discussion is useless. It's not your problem, your business, or anything you can solve in any way.

Obviously I know the player. I don't know who he is exactly, but obviously I've met him, interacted with him, probably exchanged emails with him, and probably played games with him. I am reasonably certain he is not developmentally delayed or otherwise impaired and unable to post here. So the single valid thing you can do with him, for issue #1, is say, "I really need you to talk to Ron at the forum." You, Moreno, are precisely the wrong person to try to deal with this, both in generic role (GM in the game) and personally, you specifically.

The second question is also simple, as it is a basic rules point: one can never cheat a demon at its Need. It is simply not possible. Time-travel won't do it any better than anything else. When he brings the demon near a dying person, and does not help the dying person in any way, then he gets a Humanity check. Period. It does not matter a bit whether he saves the person "later" (self-chronologically speaking) or "beforehand" (in-fiction time-travel speaking).

It really is that simple. Do not solve it in a complicated way with in-game consequences or any of that other dysfunctional bullshit. Merely assign the Humanity check right where and when it belongs and that is all.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

About the first issue, I don't consider it an issue at all, as I think made clear in my last replies. But I think that all part of the discussion was caused by misunderstandings about what we were talking about.

The second issue, instead, it's what I am talking about:
"2. The question of what to do as the GM."

(and not only in this thread, most of my problems with Sorcerer are various aspect of that question)

By the way, about talking to the player: after every session, we reserve a bit of time (stopping before the end of the alloted time) for discussions about what happened during the game, about what worked and what didn't. The problem with this specific question is that I will be able to talk about it with the players only at the end of saga, being a "entire saga" issue. Talking about the kind of opposition I will use BEFORE playing it doesn't usually work and smell too much of "play before" for my tastes.  (added to this, is that I am trying to run Sorcerer with much less rule-speak this time, seeing that it caused problem before)

The second question is also simple, as it is a basic rules point: one can never cheat a demon at its Need. It is simply not possible. Time-travel won't do it any better than anything else. When he brings the demon near a dying person, and does not help the dying person in any way, then he gets a Humanity check. Period. It does not matter a bit whether he saves the person "later" (self-chronologically speaking) or "beforehand" (in-fiction time-travel speaking).

I suspected that much, thanks for confirming it. But up to this moment he was able to avoid even that: the people who were dying were shot by others, and he could not save them. The way he did save them, was by going back in time to avoid them being shot in the first place.

But up to this point (third session), his character seems a rather nice fellow (a by-product of being shoot, stabbed or framed for murder in every timeline explored until now, probably), so it's normal that he is not rolling (until now) humanity rolls. My question was more about the demon's need.

Thinking about it, I think I made a mistake in not demanding a more active role of the sorcerer in satisfying the demon's need. I saw that the player's description of the need (being satisfied by simply working in an hospital without any action of the Sorcerer's part) was against the rule, and I explained that he had to actively try to be in the same room at the moment of death, but thinking about it, it was too little. Even if he is in the same room, he is still... well, STANDING there, doing nothing. I should have asked for a more active role (he would have refused to do anything that would cause harm, though, as something totally against the character concept: this is a guy that summoned a demon to SAVE lives...)

But this return to that fundamental question: in this game the GM has A LOT of leverage to use the Demon's need as an inconvenience or causing problems. Depending ONLY on my choices, it could be something trivial, or something obsessive and intolerable.  How can I decide the "right" amount of pressure?

And this goes right into this last bit:

It really is that simple. Do not solve it in a complicated way with in-game consequences or any of that other dysfunctional bullshit. Merely assign the Humanity check right where and when it belongs and that is all.

Consequences. I realized that one of the problem I have with Sorcerer (and with Apocalypse World and other games) is the amount of control I have on the consequences of the character's actions.  When I can I leave most of the decisions on the carry-over bonus or other rolls, but still there is a lot to decide as a sort of "all-powerful god of the game", and I don't like being in that seat. It's a continuous line, from "everything goes like the players want" (tuning my own creative input to nothing) to "everything goes like I want" (tuning my own creative input to overbear the other's), and it's not like there is a cartel saying "from here going on in that direction, the dysfunctional bullshit start"....

Where is the functional line between "wow, this demon is a pushover, the Sorcerer is making him do all that stuff and he doesn't ever complain", and "wow, that GM is awful, he is ignoring all what the character is doing and he is playing that demon like a whiny brat crying for his need. Every scene is about his need, what a boring game"? I mean, the extremes that I have cited here are easy to spot as mistakes. But where is the middle?

Oh, well, leaving the general problem and returning to the specific case (going back in time and the people who died are still alive), I though a little more about it, and I think that the demon's need "satisfaction" would fade quickly when the Sorcerer "lives again" that moment and the people who died are still alive. He would demand new deaths, fast. This would solve, I hope, the problem without making time travel impossible (if the going back in time was enough to make all the demon's "meals" disappear, the demon would go in extreme need every time, going back for example 10 years and losing ten years of meals at the same time...). What do you think of this? Too much or too little?

[Ron Edwards]

All of this is confirming the points which I made in another thread and which upset you so much. It's also related to a long-ago email I received from another person, which I coincidentally found myself reading recently, in which he wrote that Sorcerer was supposed to be this game which gave freedom and whatnot to everyone, but which he only perceived (in its rules) as blatant illusionism. And all of that is related to some recent play I experienced in which enthusiastic story-gamers embraced appalling Force at the table in the classic "because it's the story" way.

In other words, too much to write about, emotionally exhausting, and personally demoralizing.

I refuse to get into these depths at this time, and you seem determined to make it all more complicated rather than focusing on what I'm clarifying. Just these, all right?

1. Don't invalidate a successful roll. It must and does have an impact on the fiction. This is similar to "let it ride" in Burning Wheel (which arose in part from a conversation I had with Luke about the original BW text). It's also related to yet another misappropriation of Apocalypse World text, in which "NPCs in the crosshairs" is badly interpreted as "no matter what the players roll, fuck it all up."

2. Don't treat a non-rolled statement as if it replaced a roll, when a roll is required by the rules.

3. Narration is not power. It is description and enjoyment of what everyone at the table already knows from the roll. I am getting extremely sick of narration overriding the dice before or after the roll, with everyone grabbing and jostling for the narration.

That wore me out. Can you post about something else please?