Do I know when to roll in Sorcerer?

[David Berg]

I might be running Dictionary of Mu in a few months.  I don't currently have a copy of the core Sorcerer book.  I've played it and discussed it and I remember the phrase "roll only for conflicts of interest", and I think I know how to apply that in practice, but I wanted to check.

"Conflicts of interest" sounds to me like two agents butting heads, but I'm pretty sure there are times when you roll when no NPC or player wants the PC to fail, right?

Your guy is showing off for his girlfriend and jumps off a dangerously high roof.  There's no one who's invested in your guy breaking his ankle, but if it's obvious to me as a possible consequence, I as GM might make you roll to avoid it, right?  I have the choice to say either (a) "The landing doesn't hurt you," or (b) "I think that landing could hurt you, so roll," as an elegant substitute for the following:

GM: I don't see a conflict here.  No roll.  You land and break your ankle.
Player: What?!  I don't want that to happen!
GM: Oh, okay, now you and I are in conflict.  Roll.

Is this correct?

It also occurs to me that we might roll to see if you impress your girlfriend, which was your actual intent, leaving open the possibility that you land uninjured but look like a jackass.  But I'm assuming that's incorrect -- instead, we roll to determine how your action completes, and then I as GM subsequently decide how your girlfriend feels about it.

Right?

Thanks,
-David

[Ron Edwards]

I write about this pretty extensively in the annotations to chapter 6.

You need to investigate your understanding of the term "highly dangerous roof." Put it this way: most NPCs are agents who may well obstruct or harm a player character (easy), most physical circumstances are not such agents and as such are either surmountable without a roll or insurmountable and hence require no roll (easy); BUT (and all of this is hard for you, I think) some NPCs are mere furniture and of no significance requiring rolling, and some physical circumstances are oppositional to the extent that they might as well be characters.

For that  fourth, latter circumstance, your roof might qualify. Can you think of it as an active agent in the situation that in fictional terms wants that character to be hurt? Think of how it might be described in the fiction, whether prose or cinema - the audience can always tell when physical circumstances are being granted this kind of active weight in the situation.

Utt! No buts. Always.

Use that logic and you'll be fine. Give the roof a score (number of dice) that seems about right toward that assessment.

If the roof doesn't qualify as such an agent., then either he can jump it ('cause everyone with that Cover can jump it, silly), or he can't - and if he tries, you simply narrate the disastrous outcome and the player eats it, shut up.

One other thing. Those active agents that I listed, the easy kind and the harder kind? Never don't roll. When they're doing their thing which either opposes a PC, or harms a PC, you frigging well roll. There is no "give" in Sorcerer mechanics, when the stated actions generate conflict.

Best, Ron

[David Berg]

Ah!  Cool.  That was very helpful.  Thanks!  I definitely hear you on "never don't roll" -- on board 100%.

I think I get everything you said, but there's one point I'd like to verify:

The "opponent" status of the roof is granted not by factoids such as "20 feet high" but rather by style of GM presentation, such as "from the bright rooftop, the dim street below seems close; the ample space and lack of guard rails beckons 'Go ahead and jump!'."

If, as GM, I can narrate a villainous roof into the fiction, tempting characters into jumps that are more dangerous than they appear, then I can roll dice for it.  If, on the other hand, the player goes ahead and narrates a jump before I get the chance to present my roof as malicious, then there's no roll, and I make my judgment call on whether a 20-foot jump -- which could go either way -- does or doesn't injure your guy.

Correct?

My speaking style as GM is usually visual & factual, and never anthropomorphic, so with me in the GM chair, non-sentient opposition will probably be limited to active processes like avalanches.  I'm trying to think of a film where something static like a roof provides antagonism, and I'm not coming up with anything that doesn't involve Sauron.

Ps,
-David

[Ron Edwards]

Hi David,

My take is that although it's always better to be working from narrated/understood content, you as the GM make that decision as you see fit no matter what's been narrated. They can find out the roof is malevolent if they say, "I jump it!!" and you call for a roll. That's probably not too likely so I wouldn't sweat it - also, in Sorcerer, speaking isn't as binding as in many games, so you can always say "wait, I want to talk about that roof first" and let them state actions after that even if they said they'd jump.

So given that in the majority or even totality of cases you get to do some contextual description of stuff like the roof, I also want to clarify that there's no reason to be "tempting" them into anything. They should know the rule in full - if Cover or another descriptor is dealing with "furniture," then it's either automatic or they have enough knowledge to know they can't do it. And if you call for a roll, or if they ask and you say "yes there's a roll," then it's in the opponent-category. Your job is only to let them know that, one way or another.

Best, Ron

P.S. As long as we're talking about Tolkien, I can give no better example than the line which closes one of the chapters: "Caradhras had defeated them."

[David Berg]

Yeah, "beckoning" was a crappy example; I simply couldn't come up with anything better for a friggin' roof.  Caradhras is perfect!  When is a chasm not just a chasm?  When is deep snow not just deep snow?  When they're part of a mountain that's trying to bar your way!

As for establishing antagonism before hand, I hear you -- it's not a hard requirement as long as my internal concept as GM is solid.  Also, roger on not every utterance being binding.  I'll still try to get my narrations in before the announcement of character actions they'd impact, but I'll chalk that up to personal preference, and allow myself some wiggle room if needed.

As for "you can jump it" / "you can't jump it", I will definitely communicate such things when they are clear, but when they aren't clear, do you see "Here's the risk; try it if you want!" as problematic?  This is my general habit from other games with different resolution rules.  If Sorcerer runs better, though, with me just making and announcing a decision -- this 20-foot jump will sprain your ankle, no uncertainty -- then I'm happy to do that instead.

Thanks,
-David

[Callan S.]

if you're trying to impress the NPC girlfriend, I would think you are in conflict with her? The more she resists being impressed, the more dice - which itself can be taken as an indication of how damn high a roof you had to jump from?

[Ron Edwards]

"Impress a girl" isn't a conflict in Sorcerer, and she doesn't "resist." All conflicts in Sorcerer are concrete actions or directives to concrete actions. If you're telling her to jump off the roof with you, or physically forcing her to do it, those would qualify.

Given that, you've brought up a good point, which is that David's question is already a minority case. Most of the time, physical complications are merely context for conflicts among individuals, so the basic dice set against one another are those of the characters. In that case, the physical complications are either color (stuff to jump around which Covers or other descriptors handle, like pirates fighting marines on a ship's deck), hard limits to ordinary action (a blind alley, deep space outside the hull and you have no suit), or grounds for a dice modifier here or there, or better, an auxiliary roll to see if you can use it to your advantage.

If you are being chased, and there's a fence in the way, the roll needs to be between you and the guy chasing you. The only question is which category it falls into.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

Does "Impress her into going to the movies with me" qualify as a directive to a concrete action? I'd grant just impressing her is vague in regards to what actual events occur if she is impressed.

[Ron Edwards]

It's rock solid in Sorcerer that you don't (can't) frame rolled-resolution content in terms of feelings and interior states. You simply have to leave all that "she's impressed" talk out of it. I say to you, as GM, "What do you do?" With some players, I'm like a broken record, clarifying if necessary like I'm doing here, until they finally figure that out. Quit talking about how they feel or will feel or how you want them to feel. Same goes for "think," "believe," or anything like these words at all.

And next, you cannot pick up the dice, say "I try to get her to go to the movies with me," and roll. Functional dialogue at the table has to be a lot more concrete than that. Playing Sorcerer never works off bird's-eye-view descriptive statements like "I try to get her to go to the movies with me." If someone talks like that during play, again, my job as GM is to say, "What do you do [or say]?" Unless I see motion in my experience of the fiction, or hear dialogue in it, or both, then the dice are miles away from being employed at all. In fact, unless I and everyone sees motion or hears dialogue, or both, then it's not play, as far as Sorcerer is concerned.

Best, Ron

[David Berg]

This is confirming what I already thought, so that's good news; no confusion on those scores.  Part of what I like about Sorcerer is that it doesn't do zoomed-out "roll for intent without concrete fictional action".  Similarly, not viewing internal states as ends is A+ in my book.  You want that girl to be impressed?  Tell us what you want to get her to do, that will prove that to you.

My only remaining uncertainty has nothing to do with rolling.  I'm only wondering, when you don't roll, whether the Sorcerer GM ever can/should say, "That thing you want to do?  It's risky and could go either way.  You might break your ankle.  If you jump, then I'll decide whether or not you do break your ankle."

To me, the difference between "Try it and see" vs always saying, "If you jump, you will be fine" / "If you jump, you will break your ankle," is important.  The GM-player interaction feels different in both cases.

Thanks,
-David

[Ron Edwards]

If you're not rolling, then don't say "it can go either way." That makes zero sense to me. If you don't roll, it's because the outcome is flatly deterministic, either 0.00 or 1.00. Introducing stochasticity at that point in the form of "well I'll decide after you say you do it," is madness.

Best, Ron

[David Berg]

The reason I might have done it the "try it and see" way would have been to assist POV-based character identification.  Some players don't want to find out what will happen until their character finds out, even if the uncertainty doesn't fall into the class of Things You Roll For in Sorcerer.  Telling the player "You will break your ankle" when all the character knows is "I could break my ankle" is not everybody's first preference.  If that's how Sorcerer rolls, though, no problem, that's how I'll play it.

Thanks,
-David

[David Berg]

Maybe my questions will make more sense with this note:

I am accustomed to rolling when outcomes as mandated by the fiction are uncertain.  So, coming across an uncertain fictional event, like jumping down 20 feet... and then resolving that to a deterministic outcome myself (without dice), because it's not a conflict of interest and thus not roll-worthy... will take a little getting used to.

But I'm game!  I can imagine many possible upsides to this, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out from the GM chair (it didn't really jump out to me as a player).

[Ron Edwards]

Heh. In my last post, I actually wrote a paragraph dealing with that issue, attuned precisely to you, and decided it would be problematic without back-and-forth dialogue. It seems like you've worked it out and I hesitate to try to articulate it further - let's see how it goes in play.

Best, Ron

[Judd]

Looking forward to hearing how the game goes, Dave.

Yay Mu! Yay Sorcerer!