[Sorcerer] telltales and dice

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

Rolling to see if the PC notices a telltale is by itself a telltale, if players can see your roll. The book (before the annotations) imply rolling secretly for some things, but you said that you don't bother with secret rolls anymore. What do you do when the PC have the chance to notice a telltale? Do you roll openly? Do you say what the roll is for?

[Ron Edwards]

I roll openly but don't say what the roll is for. Or sometimes I do.

What does it matter if the players know? The roll only concerns what the fictional characters know.

Oh wait, this is about the "even the houseplants" line in the core book, isn't it? In remembering the events of play which inspired that phrase, what happened is that the characters were often unsure about who was or wasn't a demon, and the players were really into their characters, playing them viscerally and with a lot of identification. So the phrasing should most accurately refer to the characters.

[Moreno R.]

Wwhen you say that usually you roll but you don't say why, you mean that in these occasion you roll for the players, too, or you say "roll lore", or you say "roll this number of dice"? (I am obviously talking about a case when you don't simply say "roll to see if you notice its telltale"...)

What make you usually decide between complete openness at the table and the "roll without saying why" solution? I mean, it's something you decide depending on the specific roll, depending on the fictional situation, or when you play with one group, for example, you always say why you roll, and with another you don't?

I am asking because I don't think I have a good grasp of the right level of information sharing at the table for the game: in some parts the book says to avoid telling players too much, but I am not sure about how much is too much... (in the last session I jumped from an extreme to the other, rolling secretly in one scene and telling too much informations in another...)

[Adams Tower]

What make you usually decide between complete openness at the table and the "roll without saying why" solution?

I'm also really curious about the answer to this question. As I read the rules, I've been assuming extreme openness, where-in one might say "There's a demon here trying to hide from you. Roll to see if you notice them." If the demon wins the conflict, either the player might describe how and why they fail to notice the demon, or the GM might describe how the demon hides from them, or some combination of the two. Is that a reasonable way to do it? I guess a d20 style spot check, with the GM's roll hidden and the results secret could also work, but for some reason it doesn't seem to me to fit the rest of the game.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

This is one of the most difficult issues to discuss on-line regarding any game. Personal conversations and discussions of real-live play-sessions with us actually in them, is the way to go, to the extent of maybe a 10:1 comparison in the chance of a successful communication.

Wwhen you say that usually you roll but you don't say why, you mean that in these occasion you roll for the players, too, or you say "roll lore", or you say "roll this number of dice"? (I am obviously talking about a case when you don't simply say "roll to see if you notice its telltale"...)

I typically name the score I want the person to use; I don't monitor their numbers or their current penalties assiduously enough to do all that myself.

What make you usually decide between complete openness at the table and the "roll without saying why" solution? I mean, it's something you decide depending on the specific roll, depending on the fictional situation, or when you play with one group, for example, you always say why you roll, and with another you don't?

This is the tough part. Playing Sorcerer focuses on the imagined fiction. We play the imagined fiction with a very strict mandate to roll the dice in certain (common) fictional circumstances, and heavy reference to the outcomes of rolls. All that is non-negotiable; it's bedrock.

Therefore there is no need at all for extra talk concerning what one might have one's character do, and especially not what the others at the table might think about it if it were done. Discussing what to do as a group concerning one character's actions, or explaining those actions in a context of approval or disapproval, is toxic to the game. All of that also goes for the outcome of scenes, or planning and expecting that certain scenes are forthcoming. And it definitely goes for explaining the outlooks of NPCs of any kind at any time, or their actions when out of the perception of any player-character.

Please keep that in mind as I explain the next bit: that table-talk, chatter, commentary, and general overt engagement with what is going on as we play and listen to one another, is a great thing. The GM is certainly a part of that, on a completely equal footing with everyone else - with the exception that he or she calls for the two kinds of Humanity rolls, which is not relevant to my present point.

You see, I cannot tell what you mean by "complete openness." Are you talking about the fiction itself, regarding things the characters do not know but which may well be involved in proactive dice rolls, as Adam describes? Are you talking about merely naming the score which is being used, based on the obvious but trivial point that the player suddenly knows "there's something about Lore going on?" Are you talking about something else?

But merely saying that outright has a very, very high chance of delivering to both of you a precisely incorrect message, or more acccurately a customized incorrect message for each of you, because this is a profoundly wrong way to be discussing this at all.

I'll try again. I do not explain "there's a demon in the closet," but I do call for a Lore roll in the context of people caring about what's in this area (let's say its Telltale is an odor to keep this example simple). Such a roll isn't usually a generic perception-check so much as an auxiliary to some other relevant rolling going on. ... Shit, this isn't going to work. Please don't get bogged down in perception-check hell in reading this, just focus on what I'm saying - When the fictional circumstances of a conflict occur, then you roll. You use the dice that matter. As GM, you don't roll any player's dice, ever.

Can you work with that? Can you try it without asking me why-why-why all the time?

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

Ron, I think that you underestimate your capacity for clear, rational explanations of rpg matters. The very fact that I often find what you really clear and useful is the reason I continue to risk your snark, pestering you with all these questions (and the reason it's so frustrating when you give up without even trying).

That explanation is what I was searching for, and explain some of the difficulties I am having in practice with that: the line about "explaining those actions in a context of approval or disapproval" is the one that better describe the problem: I played as the GM so many times in a environment of covert or open contestation (the "buzz" of the player trying to push the GM to decide in their favor in AD&D, and after that, frequent creative difference and "two big egos at the same table" afterward) that I locked into two habit as a GM: when I was in a good mood and there was no mystery involved I readily explained to the players every rule I used, why the NPCs did what they did, the why and how of every decision (to forestall any objection, because I did know that there were people at the table ready to contest even the way the NPCs acted), and when there was some mystery involved or I got irritated, I did clam up and refused to give any explanation for anything, "this is what you see, period" (rolling everything behind the screen, with fake rolls added just to scare them).

These days I have no problem in avoiding these behaviors when I play games that give me strict guidelines to follow (DitV, MLwM, Trollbabe, etc.) or that don't give all that "power" to the GM,  but when I have to "play the GM" in a way more similar to the one I practiced for so long, in particular when I am tired or distracted (or there is even a tiny contestation at the table), I tend to fall back into old habits.

By the way: this is a very big part of the reason I am playing Sorcerer today: I am fed up with this and I wanted to "take the bull by the horns" and de-train myself from the last remains of these habits.

At this moment I still NOT de-trained, though.. so when I GM Sorcerer I have to watch myself from falling in either of these extremes, and it was difficult without having some concrete guideline to follow. Your reply is the one I searched for, thanks.

What happened last time: it was the second session of the game, there were two scenes in particular where this happened.

The first scene was a dinner between Isabella (the PC) and Selene (the NPC). I don't know if you remember the character's description or the thread where they were posted, but, in short: A big part of Isabella's kicker, the motivation behind her latest choices, was that she was afraid that Selene, who was once her friend and had helped her "studying magic" at the beginning before getting jealous, would follow her steps and become a Sorcerer, too - and attack her. One of the bangs I thought for the character was having Selene call her, telling her that she wanted them to be friends again, asking forgiveness.
They meet at the restaurant, they do small talk at the beginning, and Isabella's player ask if she notice some kind of telltale that show that Selene is, in fact, a sorcerer now.
Selene is in fact a sorcerer, with a parasite studied for gross-out effect: it appear like a big worm, or snake, moving under her skin. And she is not going to hide it after all, she plan to show it to Isabella after the dinner, saying that they are now "the same" and that she forgive her (she is sincere, but prepared to kill if her offer is refused. At this point Selene is quite deranged and she did lose the last of her humanity a long time ago)
Even if I did know that "the secret" would be unveiled in a few minutes, I still rolled secretly, and (winning the roll) I said Isabella's player that she did not notice any telltale on Selene. The player was wary anyway and avoided contact with Selene, and after a while the NPC openly did show her demon.
Thinking about this scene now, I think it still worked OK, rolling secretly did not damage the game in any way. In hindsight, I simply was bothered too much about something inconsequential.

In the second scene, another PC Sorcerer, Antonio, was walking on the street with his passing demon dog (with cover: "dog" at power 13: it's the doggiest dog ever...) that has among his powers "Perception: demons".
Suspecting that he was followed by something, he did ask his dog to be on guard, and bark at the first sign of demonic activity.
In hindsight, I should have probably simply made the roll, and said to him afterwards "your dog start to bark, pointing in the direction of a small group of children"
And this is what I said...  but I added afterwards "there is a possessor demon inside one of the children, when it notice the dog barking, he hop to another host and flee away, he has range, perception for possible hosts and cloak, what all the people around see is only the child fall down on the ground, unconscious"
Why all this info-dump? Well, probably it was the effect of the secret roll before: still doubting that I had made the right call, I was probably wary about the risk of playing too much as a "poker face" GM... and so I readily did fall back in the other direction into habits forged when I played with guys who could have considered the demon fleeing a GM railroad without an explanation (and it must be said that at the time I WAS railroading the hell of every adventure, so I felt guilty when accused of that...)

[Ron Edwards]

That's a useful perspective and helps me understand that you're undergoing positive reflection. I will be nicer about it.

Let's talk about mechanics. Has the game seen any multi-participant, orthogonal action? What happened?

[Moreno R.]

Let's talk about mechanics. Has the game seen any multi-participant, orthogonal action? What happened?

A couple of times, but with only one PC present (two PCs, Antonio and Isabella, did meet only at the end of last session, the third one at this moment had no contact with the others).

The first one happened with the third player, who is having some problem with the game system. He had never read the game before joining the game. No player did, but I insisted that I wanted to play only with people who had read the game manual (having to play and teach the game at the same time is the thing I am most fed up in absolute, never again!) so we waited a couple of weeks to give everyone the time to read it before playing. I think he did create the character after reading only the first part of the book, with a lot of assumptions about the game from Internet hearsay, and during the game a lot of time commented about the game not being what he thought. In a lot of ways it's a case that should have warranted a chapter in the balking essay...  in any case there were issues during the game, it was difficult to convince him that the diagram was necessary and the one he did come up is almost unusable. (this in turn caused me to return into "GM-mother goose" traditional GM mode, worrying about defending the game, feeling responsible for other's enjoyment, etc...  well, I am playing this game to learn, and in this way I learned the wisdom of what you wrote in the notes about these case: I should have spiked what he did give me and stop worrying so much...)

Anyway, the fictional situation was this: the Sorcerer and this guy, Renzo, are (figuratively) at each other's throat because the PC had sex (helped by the demon) with the other guy's girlfriend. This cause menacing phone calls, damages to a parked car, etc, until the PC calls by phone Renzo and set up a meeting, in the middle of the night, in the city park. And he goes there with a knife, with the intention of killing him. I thought about what Renzo would do, and I realized that NO WAY he was to go alone in a appointment in the middle of the night in a isolated place with a guy who hated his guts, so I decided he would ask someone to come with him (friends? No, this was more a family thing... so I decided that he would ask his two brothers. Up until that time I had no idea about his family size, I made it up on the spot)

At the meeting, after a few words the Sorcerer has the knife in hand and the two brothers show up (the Sorcerer was already aware they were there hiding, thanks to the demon's powers), with a steel bar and a baseball bat as weapons.

(I realized at this time that both me and the player did skip a point of the character creation rules, the check for combat readiness: his demon - a book - make him a irresistible seducer and salesman, but the only fight ability they have in total is "confusion" conferred to the PC as user, with power 13, defined in play (after a lot of prodding) as "they feel like drunk". At this time we discovered a different interpretation of the effect of that power: without some additional power associated to it, like "fast" or "perception" for example, or a fictional explanation as an area effect (a strong odor, for example), I said that he could attack only one person at a time, while he had assumed that he could choose to target how many people he wanted)

Anyway, the three NPC attack rolling 3, 4 and 4 dice (stamina), the PC rolls the confusion (13 dice) targeting Renzo. He easily gets to act before everybody else, I make Renzo abort his action to defend, he lose, and gets confused, with one victory to the Sorcerer. The Sorcerer then defend successfully (with his pitiful Stamina of... 2! Plus the 2 rollover die from the previous roll) first from one and then the other attacker, continuing to carry victories to the following roll, and at the end of the round has two victories for the next roll.

At this time there is a clash of communication, both for the rules and the fiction: the player afterward said that he thought that, having been confused this round, Renzo could attack him now, even if I had explained (or, at least I remember doing that) again how the power worked at the time. And he saw the fiction as his character "dancing" around avoiding blows, and he did not think that "realistic", while I was thinking about him running away followed by the two brothers: It's perfectly possible that at the time I was not as clear as I recall about what was happening because I was worried about explaining the rule, too. But, anyway, seeing that he did not like the resulting fiction, he did stop using the power and tried to get behind Renzo, with his knife at the rival's throat, to force the other to stop the attack. I am sure I told him that Renzo was free to defend himself, even if confused, but he confirmed that action.  So he did roll 4  dice (stamina 2 + 2 rollover dice), winning the roll,  but Renzo successfully defended himself, and when the PC tried to defend against the two brothers afterwards with only his stamina score, he did get hit both times, dropping to more than double stamina damages, falling unconscious. The brothers, thinking that they had killed him with the blows to the head did flee away. Between the "next action" damage going away and the half lasting damage disappearance after the fight he was again at positive stamina and did get to stagger away toward the hospital...
(I did not remember to remind him of the "will roll" rule, but I don't think he would have used it anyway)

A part of the problem, I think, it's that the player is one of these "Indie game designer", do you know the type? I don't know who is that continue to encourage these guys to write games, but they always have to comment the rules during the game... I should put a sign "no game designer allowed" next time...

The second time was much less problematic and much more fast. It happened to Isabella after the dinner with Selene. Having being refuted by Isabella, Selene ordered the possessor demon (inside a waiter at the restaurant) to kill her old friend. The demon waited until Isabella was outside of the restaurant (full of people) in the deserted street to the parking lot, and tried to stab her with a knife. (the possessor has a "assassin" cover conferred to himself, too).

I told the player what was happening (even if Isabella was still unaware of the attack), saying only that the waiter attacked her (the info-dump about the demon powers happened after this scene). It could have been a simple oppositional roll, but Isabella's action was to call Damian, his passing demon (that was waiting in the car), so that turned it into a orthogonal conflict (I think: I did get this right?).

Anyway, Isabella did win the roll, even if she rolled a lot less dice than the demon, so he did notice him attacking and did call Damian before the waiter could attack. Then, she successfully rolled for defense and avoided the knife, running away toward the parking lot, with the possessor fast in pursuit and the Passer running toward them.

The passer has "fast" among his powers, so I decided that he could shoot that same round, too (his guns - special lethal damage - are in effect part of himself, he can make them appear at will). All three rolled, the passer got the first action, with a very big roll that caused enough damage to the waiter to kill him outright (the waiter did abort his attack to defend, but he didn't beat that roll anyway). In fiction the passer came running and did shoot the waiter, the possessor demon "hopped" away, Isabella and the passer jumped into the car and ran away.

[Moreno R.]

No orthogonal conflict this time, but the session ended as a very big battle was about to start...  4 sorcerers, 5 demons (2 passers, one parasite, one hopping possessor, one moving object) and a bystander, each one with different objectives and priorities...  I'll better read these rules again...

[Ron Edwards]

Find some half-size index cards (we'd say "2.5 by 3" in the U.S, but that is incomprehensible most other places). During the big conflict, put out a single card for each character, with the relevant scores on it and the name written very large. Roll dice onto each card and leave them there, and carry out all dice operations in this way. Have a few extra dice around for bonuses and for single-die defensive rolls.

[Moreno R.]

We play by hangout, I don't have a table in front of me, but a keyboard... I think I will create a spreadsheet with the characters involved, to have at least all of them on the same page.

For the rolls, I am using a very simple dice roller that was created to be used for gentechegioca play-by-forum section: it has no other use apart rolling dice but it has some very useful features for Sorcerer: it doesn't cancel rolls (so you can't do it even by mistake), you can assign descriptions to rolls, it does order the dice (so you can see at a glance the highest) and with ties it's very easy to discard mentally the exact same number of higher dice:  http://lapo.it/rpg/dadi.php?

Being written for play-by-forum, it even automatize quoting rolls in actual play post, all you have to do is click on the roll to get the link: for example this is a "taint" roll from my last session, the demon rolled 1 2 4 5 6 6 6 7 7 9 10 and the sorcerer humanity roll was 3 8 (he had humanity 2, so he did go to zero humanity for a while)

The only problem is that the dice roller doesn't create different session for different groups: if two groups play at the same time, the rolls get mingled (so it's always better to write the description for the roll, at least writing the name of the character): so, shhhh...! Don't tell too many people about this!

P.S.: another useful feature it's the timestamp of the roll, so you can see, after the session, how much time you dedicated to a scene or a conflict