[Sorcerer] Sorcerers who talk a lot, and then die.

[Moreno R.]

OK, this evening I killed my first player character in Sorcerer. Fourth session of the saga I talked about in a lot of other threads. The murder victim is Alessandro, the Killer is Peter, the possessor Demon.

Last session, Alessandro did try to contain his demon, Slaneesh, betraying an agreement with Slaneesh and Selene (a Sorcerer NPC). As a reaction, Slaneesh did break the bond, teleporting away, swearing vengeance on its old summoner. Slaneesh that know everything about Alessandro and Sara, having lived with him for almost a year.

I thought about when they would do: Slaneesh teleporting to Selene, their rage at this betrayal, Selene that bind Slaneesh (using a long 8-hours ritual to try the upper hand, and promising Slaneesh that she will kill Alessandro right in that same day to get the demon in a better mood - I gave her a 2 dice bonus like if she had satisfied its desire, because that was another strong desire). This started at dawn. Selene would not send Peter to kill Alessandro during the ritual, to avoid being distracted by the link they share.  The ritual would end at 14-15 o'clock. Then Selene would send Peter first to Alessandro's apartment, and then, if it had not found him there, to Sara's apartment (around 17:00).

This is what I had at the start of the session: "Peter will go to spy Alessandro, at his apartment or later at Sara's house, with orders to possess Sara and use her to kill Alessandro".

At the beginning of the session Alessandro is at Sara's house, they talk, he explain to her that they are in danger, but then he walks away to meet Isabella (and later Antonio) at 15:00, two hours before Peter arrive, without putting any protection, contain, nothing, in Sara's house.

At this point...  pass almost the entire session, and what happened during this time is what I want to talk about later, but for now, let's stay on the killing.

After almost two hours of real-time, four hours have passed of in-fiction-time, it's late, Alessandro receive a SMS from Sara asking him where he is. He had already agreed to go with Isabella and Antonio in a hideout to prepare an attack on Selene, but he returns to Sara's home to talk to her and finally put some contain for protection.

Peter's is already inside Sara, Selene's orders are to kill Alessandro in his sleep, but when the Sorcerer start to talk about making contains (without explaining to Sara what they are for) I decide that Peter would attack him right there and now.

The first part of the conversation (a little more than ten minutes of real time) I play-acted Sara/Peter without saying anything the could give away the demon presence, then I asked Alessandro to roll Lore against the Demon's cover (the possessor demon cover that allow to mimic the host), 4 dice against 7.  And at this time I tell Alessandro that he is rolling to see if he notices something suspicious in Sara, because she is possessed by the demon.

Peter win with a single victory, and this is the "amount of surprise" he gets (the number of bonus dice it gets in his attack). I was very happy of the way the system treat these situation, using roll-over dice and victories to see who surprise who and with how much effect in this way is very simple and elegant. There are situations that I still have not well understood how to play with this system or where I am not so satisfied by the way it works, but not this one. I liked this part of the system right from the first time I read the manual. So I was very frustrated when the player had a lot of problem in understanding how it worked. From this moment until the end of the fight I had practically to guide the player over every single roll explaining what it did, what were his options, and this way of treating surprise and the way the "roll to act" could be discarded to roll for defense and that the second roll was the real defense, not the first roll, etc...  it seemed to go against his understanding of the fiction and the situation, even if this is the fourth session and his PC was already in three orthogonal conflicts before this. Oh, well, he clearly didn't like the system and it showed. To play these few next roll we took more than 15 minutes and it was the last scene of the session....

Anyway, returning to Peter and Alessandro... Peter try to stab Alessandro, attacking with 8 dice (7 stamina - the demon was using a common kitchen knife, not a special attack - plus the roll-over surprise die). Seeing that Alessandro is not really doing anything at this moment and he didn't notice the possession, I decided that this was a simple oppositional conflict. I walk the player between his options, his PC's stamina is very low (2) but he was not able to think about another way of avoiding the knife (what about giving an order to the demon? Remember that the player is having a really hard time getting to grasp the system, when I see his confusion at the idea of trying to roll to stop a demon that his character don't even know being there is clearly too much and after listing it in a quick list of options I stop even talking about it. in his place, I would have turned the conflict orthogonal trying to yell an order to the demon before it could finish the attack, but seeing that the stamina defense was more in line with his idea of the situation, we went for it.

Rolling 8 dice against 2, the demon gets 3 victories, Alessandro is stabbed for 6 penalties (3 only for the next roll, 3 standing). It's more than double damage, so the pain is enough to make him drop on the floor, helpless (it seems).

Peter at this moment could quickly kill the defenseless Sorcerer, I think about some reason for Peter to wait, and there are some: Peter has killed a lot of people until now, but not sorcerers. It has never seen anybody rise again after a wound like that. Why should he hurry?  At the same time, even without any roll during this action, I decided that if Alessandro could have even only a couple of seconds of respite, he could lose three penalties even without a roll (I am not sure about this rule interpretation, even now)

Peter, without hurry, is going to cut Alessandro's throat and finish him. I realize that the player has forgotten everything about the "will roll" option so I explain it to him (we never used it before in this saga). I even suggest to roll against only one die as is written in the annotations.  The player clearly is losing contact with what is happening in the fiction, I consider for a moment the option of simply saying "you don't remember that rule? Too bad, I told you to read the manual, your PC is dead", but this saga is a way for me to learn the game, too, and I want to see the "will roll" rule in action, so I try to explain to him the whys and the hows and he roll will (4 dice) against a single die, winning with one victory.

At this time, if I remember well the rules, the Sorcerer can use that single victory to get a single die to use without any penalty from his wound, right? In any case this is what I told him. But he was lost at this stage about how to use it. We narrowed the option to (1) try to order it to go away, 1 die vs Will, (2) try to cast a fast contain, 1 die vs Power - practically the same exact roll in this case, or (3) try to banish the demon rolling 3 dice (1 + 2 humanity) against Will+Power.  He did ask me for advice and I told him to choose the option (3) because it was the one that gave him more chances to at least beat the knife attack of the demon: then, even if he could not banish the demon, he could have another action and another will roll to try.

Orthogonal conflict, the demon is trying to finish him (stamina roll, 6 dice), the sorcerer try to fast-banish it, rolling 3 dice. The demon win with one single victory. The player can choose to continue the banishment defending with a single die... or abort it to defend with the full...  single die he has.

The player ask about "what difference it does", and thinking about it, I am not sure about the answer. My take is that if he choose to continue the banishment, he doesn't have to roll "will" again, the single die for his defense is "freely given by the rules", but if he does abort, the die he did get with the first Will roll is discarded, and he has to roll will again to get dice to defend himself. This could give him a chance to get more than one die. So he decide to try this second option, aborting the banishment. His will roll give him only one victory again, he roll that single die but it's not enough, the Demon hit him with two victories, he is dead and the demon continue to hack him for a while to be sure.

I have a question now: what are the options?

This player in particular has already decided that he will simply drop off the game, seeing that he don't like the system, but what if he didn't? He could have created a new sorcerer and continue to play using that PC? He could have taken as a PC a (not-Sorcerer) NPC given to him by the GM? Or the game simply assume that he is out of the game until all the other kickers are resolved? In the manual it's always taken as a given that everybody finish to address their kickers in the same session, if not at the same time...

[Ron Edwards]

I decided that if Alessandro could have even only a couple of seconds of respite, he could lose three penalties even without a roll (I am not sure about this rule interpretation, even now)

Invalid. Next roll is next roll, in pure mechanlcal terms. This is definitely not "fiction first," it is "make the fiction work with this mechanical constraint no matter what." However, I do not think you ruined anything with this minor mis-interpretation. As far as learning curves go, your use of the rules over the past four sessions gets high marks, as far as I can tell.

This entire example is incredibly painful to read. The various rules were used correctly. But long experience has taught me that I cannot play anyone's character for him or her, while GMing Sorcerer. The game simply does not permit this to work. The player had lost touch with the fiction, with the character, with the system, and with anything imaginably qualifying as "really playing this game." At that point, you were playing with yourself (unfortunate pun not intended) with him as an unwilling participant. I think this distasteful circumstance turns all the discussion of using the rules in this scene irrelevant. Without people playing together, there is no "play" occurring for the rules to operate within.

Orthogonal conflict, the demon is trying to finish him (stamina roll, 6 dice), the sorcerer try to fast-banish it, rolling 3 dice. The demon win with one single victory. The player can choose to continue the banishment defending with a single die... or abort it to defend with the full...  single die he has.

The player ask about "what difference it does", and thinking about it, I am not sure about the answer.

It makes no difference at all, except that in the first case he gets to keep his banishing action if he survives, within this round. That is so simple that I think the player had managed to fry your brain by forcing it to play both sides at once. You apparently used the rule correctly, as it turns out.

You wasted a lot of time on this person. I am a bit fascinated, in the sense of witnessing a gory car crash, by your insistence on explaining every imaginable rules detail and option to him. In fact, I think this seems to be one of the features of your GMing you might want to review in general. In Sorcerer, especially, you cannot go wrong as long as you simply ask the player exactly what his or her character is doing in pure fictional terms. You can even ask leading questions like "Do you want to try to get up, defying death and every physical law to do so?" As long as you stay focused on what the character is trying to do, and asking and asking always in those terms, then you can run the game in flawless mechanical terms – without having to explain a fucking thing, ever.

The player whose character dies is out of play. Conceivably he or she, in other circumstances, could begin a new character when the current set of Kickers is finally collectively resolved.

[Moreno R.]

[crosspost with Ron]

This second post is about what happened in the game time between Alessandro going out to meet Isabella, and Alessandro returning to Sara (and being killed). A 4-hours gap in the fiction, in a little less than 2 hours of real game time.

The PCs did meet and talks with each other, for the first time all three together. First Alessandro and Isabella, then they called Antonio, too. And this is almost all they did.

The conversation did not fill the entire two hours. I cut away to a rite Antonio was doing (feeding his demon) once, I had him called by the wife of the friend he did kill (she was in tears, praying him to tell her anything he did know about her husband's disappearance, and he coldly lied to her telling that he did not know anything about that: zzzap, humanity roll, lose one point of humanity).  Then Antonio did a contain to protect his own home. We (the players, not the characters) took a little time in the middle to talk about the latest gossips in rpg-land, so the conversation was not really two hours long and Antonio did things during the part where he still wasn't there. But Alessandro and Isabella stayed there all the time, talking.

"what's the problem?", one could say, "if they enjoyed the conversation, they simply did what they find fun, so the game is more fun". Well... I am not sure about it. Even if they clearly enjoyed the conversation in-character (and I enjoyed playing the "jealous boyfriend" - Isabella passing demon -  present during the conversation, in church, with dialogue like "I would like to try confessing my sins to a priest someday... but I will have to kill him afterwards" or having him touch holy water, with no affect, and saying "In the movies holy water isn't so boring"), and there were parts where everybody clearly had fun. But other parts... it wasn't so clear. I got the impression, mostly at the end, that they were looking at me, like if they were waiting for me to act and "make something happen".

And I thought about that. I could have simply changed the NPCs plans "behind the curtain", and have them making their move - maybe someone was spying the PCs, maybe Peter was in the bar - and interrupt that very long conversation.  I used a lot of illusionist techniques to "make the story move faster" years ago. Or even without illusionism, I could have simply make something happen. I would have done it in Annalise, or other games where the GM role (or my role if there is no GM) is to make something happen, something justifiable later with other facts... that I would invent later.

But everything I have read in the Sorcerer manual goes against it. If I have to play the demon and npcs as individuals with their own plans and objectives, like they were my characters... they were occupied elsewhere at the moment. I did know where Peter was, it could not be at the bar. Selene and Slaneesh, too, and any other NPC that could add opposition and tension. There were a lot of unaccounted NPCs, true, I had no idea what Alessandro's colleagues were doing at the moment, for example, and they are in his diagram, but making them appear would not have helped, they would have simply been distractions in that situation.

I could have used aggressive scene framing... but to do what? The players were not saying "we want to go there" (allowing me to jump right to the time "they arrive there") or something like that, they were making plans and talking. I could not stop the scene saying "I know you want to talk, but this scene is over, tell me what you will do afterwards". That would aggressive scene "stopping", not framing.

So I did not know what to do for a while. And then I got it: what I "had" to do was simply nothing. The story was not mine, and what the players characters were doing was their own choice: I was there if they wanted to go somewhere and do something, but not to make choices for them.

I don't know if they were really waiting for me to do something, or it was simply my impression, as a sort of "guilty conscience" caused by feeling still responsible for everything in the game. I wanted to talk about it afterwards, but the post-game conversation was filled with the events that happened later (Alessandro's death) and I forgot. (this is the reason I am posting this by the way: I didn't get to talk about it after the game and I don't want to forget about it now)

I silently judged how much time would have taken Peter to tire of the waiting and to send that SMS to Alessandro, and I waited until that moment arrived in the fiction, no matter how much time passed for the real people at the table (I tried to keep a firm rein on the fictional time, signaling to the players how much time was passing for their character, to know exactly how much time was passing). I waited and waited and waited until 4 hours passed in the fiction (2 hours in each location for Peter and time for dinner in Italy) and then I described the SMS arriving. That pushed Alessandro to go home (alone) to meet "Sara" and they parted ways.

It's not my role to break character's conversation, it's them that have to decide if that is what they want their character do, or not...

[the original post did finish here, after this line I reply to Ron's post]

Invalid. Next roll is next roll, in pure mechanlcal terms.

This reply baffles me: when a character has total penalties bigger than 2 times his stamina, he can't roll, not even to defend himself, and he can't try to act with a will roll either, so... he can't roll. This means that he is out cold, and the "next roll penalties" stays until the end of the conflict?

About aborting the action or defending with one die when the character is using a will roll to continue to fight:

It makes no difference at all, except that in the first case he gets to keep his banishing action if he survives, within this round. That is so simple that I think the player had managed to fry your brain by forcing it to play both sides at once. You apparently used the rule correctly, as it turns out.

If there is no difference, does this means that if he had chosen to continue the banishing, he would have had to make a will roll to get even the single die for defence?

What happens if the Player fail the will roll to get dice to defend?

You wasted a lot of time on this person. I am a bit fascinated, in the sense of witnessing a gory car crash, by your insistence on explaining every imaginable rules detail and option to him. In fact, I think this seems to be one of the features of your GMing you might want to review in general.

Seeing how difficult is to lose that habit, I think I could call it "Brian Damage 2.0", caused by playing more than 30 years being the only one at the table to know the rules... I got used to "explain the rules" as a normal GM's job...
The player was one of the more enthusiastic during character generation, and I can tell that he really did care for the character (and maybe this added to the problem, causing him to be overprotective against many system features). The problems started when we got to the system's more quirky (ok, more original...) aspects. The diagram on the sheet was the first stumbling block, I should have seen the problem right there, but I didn't. Then when he started to complain about the way the system didn't do what he thought, I suppose I wanted to prove him wrong in play... stupid, in hindsight, it never works, but I still do it every time... (see "Brain Damage 2.0", above...)

[Ron Edwards]

You can close scenes too. And you can toss in Bangs, by which I do not mean "ninjas jump through the window, explanations later when I invent some," but rather, anything from the centers of the two characters' diagrams. If I remember correctly, the diagrams for these characters are too heavy in "sorcerer demon sorcerer demon" and too light in supporting cast. Perhaps that makes it harder for you to generate Bangs, even (or especially!) Bangs involving ordinary human concerns rather than action-movie sorcerous combat.