[Sorcerers] Angels of the Abyss: Sorcerer and Space Opera

[Erik Weissengruber]

I don't even have a one sheet for this.

I am messing around with a few PC/Demon designs, the angel rules, and some ephemera to generate a space opera intrigue feel.

But here is my starting pitch.

Any advice would be welcome.

I am drawing on some old Sorcerer and Playing Cards threads from the way back days.

______________________________

I want to set up mechanisms to adapt Sorcerer for telling stories of political space opera. Think of House of Cards meets Dune.

The game depends on the visceral clash of sorcerers and their demons all up in each other's face. Yet I have the feeling that we can tell stories of leaders who toss space fleets and insurgent factions around like so many playing cards. And who get up in each other's face with power swords and nanobot-parasite familiars.

And in true space-opera fashion, mysterious precursors have left powerful guardian intelligences on several planets. Prove yourself a champion of the angel's principles and garner their blessings.

Or burn and twist your underlings as you reach into the void to win mysterious powers from trans-dimensional, tachyonic, or mathematico-noetic intelligences. The 30th century equivalent of necromancy.

I am envisioning a massive Imperial agglomeration above the void, a Forbidden City where the sorcerers keep up appearances as they work their intrigues quietly in the presence of the Throne but violently in the provinces.

No scrappy underdog do-gooders. The power is in your hands. The Empire is about to collapse. Will you be able to stay human while you get your hands dirty? Will we still be human when you are done with us?

[Erik Weissengruber]

Some colour/mechanics decisions

Cover can do a lot to cover the use of proxies and agents, and space fights etc.

Demons allow the sorcerers to break the rules.

So: you are stuck in the void a while while you cruise between worlds. No one can find you or interfere with you. UNLESS THEY USE SORCERY

Intragalatic warships are huge and ungainly transport mechanisms with no real fighting capacity or offensive weaponry: UNLESS THEY WERE SUMMONED BY SORCERY

We can frame conflicts on the face to face level, or at the space ship vs. space ship level, or the planetary grab level, and no mixing. UNLESS YOU USE SORCERY

(a spacecraft that can target and affect an individual, that's sorcery; a personal device that can mess with a ship in nearspace, that's sorcery, a cybernetic enhancement that affects planetary espionage -- sorcery).

A humanity definition still eludes me. For now.

Maybe I'll set up some sort of ideological restraints -- no AI, no genetic engineering, kind of mashing up Frank Herbert and Peter Hamilton -- that the Empire obeys as its definition of human but which sorcerers must blaspheme.

And plenty of aerodynamic shocking blue plastic codpieces.

[Erik Weissengruber]

I meant intergalactic transports

[Erik Weissengruber]

I just want to be in a game where people bust out lines like this one from Sean Williams' story "Inevitable":

The Guild of Great Ships was made of clones and avatars, but love was just a powerful a force to them as it had ever been to any human."

[Joshua Bearden]

Hey Erik, speaking of a definition of humanity in a far flung future...


I remember a listening to sci-fi short on the radio once. It was dry and tongue-in-cheek and I liked it. The protagonist was a lone space-pilot trader scavenger who was mortally injured dismembered etc. out past the edge of civilized space.  The ship's medical bots save his life by replacing most (like 79% by mass or something) of his body with robotic parts.

Flash forward - he's in court facing robbery and murder charges; Victim---himself.

Under the prevailing law in the jurisdiction he's subject to, a 'human' with full rights and responsibility is defined by a minimum organic ratio, say 50% or something. Any entity with more than 50% robotic parts is not a human, and cannot assume a human's identity.  The case against him is circumstantial but iron-clad.  Ron the human (RtH) is missing presumed dead and Ron the cyborg (RtC) is found in possession of his ship and belongings.  The only reasonable inference is that RtC MURDERED RtH.

The punchline is that he avoids the death penalty by binge eating until he enough of his body is organic to qualify as human again. It ends with the furious Judge or prosecutor or perhaps his own cynical heirs swearing to see that he reports for mandatory weigh-ins for the rest of his life with the threat of summary execution looming should he ever slip under the 'human ratio'.  He's left facing a life going forward of debilitating obesity.

-----

[Erik Weissengruber]

Wow!

[Erik Weissengruber]

On BODIES and COLOR

The Shared Imaginative Space in Sorcerer depends on bodies and their range of action and perception. Declaring an intention is not the setting of stakes. Rather, it is putting a body in motion.

You don't declare "I am attacking the Snake Demon because I want to find a way  through the crowd to get to the machine and pull the lever so that the enemy ship gets distacted."

You say: "I'm close enought to hit with my fists? OK, I am staying in my solid stance, gripping the floor with my demon-inhanced toe claws, and giving a short, sharp punch the the Snake demon's exposed belly. Shotokan Karate 101, baby."

However the sci-fi machinery in my game goes, it has to involve bodies initiating non-recallable actions and dealing with the consequences. The mechanics, including the demon powers, cannot be implemented unless you think what human bodies are doing and how far they are from each other.

So bodies have to be kept in proximity to each other: and I need a fictional and colour justification.
And I have one. Paul Atreides is close to the people that matter. He does not file memos or send emails. He is not Henry Kissinger with psychic powers.

One reason for that is the needs of narration in an romance tale: The heroic body in action in a fantastic environment doing exciting things is what I am there to read. Not a simulation of feudal politics.

Another is the nature of feudal politics. The body of the sovereign is the locus of activity. You have to be near it. And so much is dependent on the access of courtiers to each others' presences. Safety is always a concern. But even deadly rivals must be amenable to face-to-face interaction. NOT talking to someone or NOT going to the ball NOT going for a walk is a decision with consequences. Try to fob off someone with an excuse, fine. But that is a DECISION with consequences. Ophelia just stops talking to Hamlet at the command of her father. And he freaks. When he stops following courtly protocol and does not interact with she freaks.

If I do not see my clients at my morning levee just as I arise from my bedchambers, they will be distressed. If I miss the king's levee I am going to miss a chance to get him to patronize by projects. I better have a damned good excuse for not showing up at the dance to celebrate his birthday. The king's most trusted advisor was the one who accompanied him to the toilet and helped him to get all of the gear out of the way while the royal business was done. That courtier was the most trusted because he would know the state of the king's health in addition to being near the kind at his most vulnerable.

So hiding in your room and avoiding people is not an option. Even as you are going to take your summer visit to your villa as an opportunity to buy up material for arming your peasants for an upcoming putsch.

The Emperor and the Assassin is my guiding light for this.

[Erik Weissengruber]

And of course, sex:

http://9gag.com/gag/aZP2zgz?ref=fb.s

Family relationships are cool. But sci-fi asks us to imagine radically different kinds of family. So there might be a sci-fi implementation of my ideas.

[Erik Weissengruber]

A little note on our Meetup board. A reflection on playing "Race for the Galaxy"

"People were good [at the meetup]. The game is a little tricky -- the visual symbols have to be grokked before you play quickly. Deep strategy is in there. The "race" game concept -- reaching for a goal behind the scenes -- has RPG implications. But not being able to reach across and mess with other people's setups is a bit frustrating."

[Erik Weissengruber]

Additions to the reading list:

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (for visuals, NO anthropomorphic aliens allowed) http://tinyurl.com/mgmglgb
A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (note: Sorcerers are in societies already destroying themselves, the rot is the extant society) http://tinyurl.com/cyrtaa2
Guns, Germs, and Steel (the challenge is to compress the millennial scale of bad social decision making into the dramatic actions of individuals, OR to situate dramatic action in the context of a pivotal point)
Sheehan, Neil. A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. (paradigmatic example of an person who knows that the system isn't working but gives his all to make the system work. My sorcerers are those who have admitted to themselves that the system is out of control and that doing ANY authentic action requires breaking the rules. In other words, no Robert Kennedy liberalism for them.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bright_Shining_Lie

[Ron Edwards]

That's my kind of reading list! No "Princess Mononoke + Traveller" talk at all.

[Erik Weissengruber]

Wait a sec: if someone WANTS to go out as a noble self-sacrificing loyal soldier to a system they know cannot word ... fine. That's a kicker resolved and a character arc done.

[Dragon Master]

Are you planing to work up a one-sheet for this setting? I'd love to see what you come up with :-)

[Erik Weissengruber]

The annotations in the Sorcerer text are a help, esp. the injunction to remember
* a sorcerer is a person
* a sorcerer is using demons + rituals already
* then the Kicker comes

I want to use necromancy so I am bringing in Tokens and Demons into character creation. Note: killing means destroying them utterly SOCIALLY in addition to slaying. Think of a Kurosawa character driven to suicide because of some shame, or Charles II/Louis XIV courtier/mistress/client banished to a country estate. So Kurosawa meets Dangerous Liaisons and Restoration. To be cast out of the Royal Presence or the Forbidden City/Kyoto/Versailles/Moscow/Washington/London means you are NOBODY. You are a pale shade haunting the The Eternal City. No dice for you, you help no-one, you do nothing, you are pale tragic colour. Crushed NPCs may float by from time to time but they are no longer agents.

Person: The General
Motive: The Emperor's intelligence is bad and my demon is helping me grab enemies that his forces cannot.
Demon: ?
Token: Vance's Rebuff, a high-speed cutter (3 dice)
- must be flying, or battling in space or on the ground
- standard conditions: killing, staving off death, boost necromancy and ritual
- special conditions: horrific insights when suspect is brought in for interrogation
Kicker: finds Imperial Ward dead, flayed inside of cockpit.

Person: The Pontifex (supervising entrance and egress from the Eternal City)
Motive: The Arks guided by the Arkhans bring threats as well as tribute from the Outworlds -- I need to be able to see into them before they berth.
Demon: ?
Token: Ancient spyglass (3 dice)
- watching a spectacle of killing, shame, or humiliation
- standard conditions: killing, staving off death, boost necromancy and ritual
- special conditions: horrific insights when looking at victimized person, into -izer or -ized
Kicker: an Imperial Ward wishes to get into an Ark bound for one of the worlds overseen by an Angel (leftovers from the Precursor epoch before the Great Forgetting).

Person: The Ambassador
Motive: No-one is understanding or meeting the needs of supplicants. I have had to break with convention: my demon helps be get supplicants through the Bureaucracy.
Demon: ?
Token: Protocol Droid (AI, anthropomorphic are taboo) (3 dice)
- can function only in a situation of debate or argument (think Duel of Wits from Burning Empires)
- standard conditions: killing, staving off death, boost necromancy and ritual
- special conditions: horrific insights into the fears of participants in the duel of wits
Kicker: a supplicant has come who wishes to bring a bomb into the Imperial audience chamber.

Person: The Scholar
Motive: Our survival depends on knowing what caused the Great Forgetting. Demons help me find authentic remnants of pre-Forgetting human civilization.
Demon: ?
Token: Hand-made paper notebook (3 dice)
- can function only when character is proving another's knowledge (Lore) inferior (think Duel of Wits from Burning Empires)
- standard conditions: killing, staving off death, boost necromancy and ritual
- special conditions: horrific insights into the fears of participants in the duel of wits
Kicker: a supplicant has come who wishes to bring a bomb into the Imperial audience chamber.

[Erik Weissengruber]

Scholar's Kicker:
An Arkhan is in your estate's atrium and is holding a small scintillating box. Arkhans normally enforce the Ban on pre-Forgetting tech.

And Humanity?
Faith
-- not an abstract credo, or an ideology that befuddles some but not others
-- commitment to an enduring set of principles which can NOT be transformed into utilitarian pay offs
-- must be more than trust in concrete persons: it is dedication to non-empirical or absurd convictions for which there can be no simple sensory verification
-- it is the sort of conviction that binds together millions of strangers with no genetic ties or immediate instrumental relationships (for food, security, etc.)
-- the Emperor and his "Galactic Mandate" is the unitary faith binding billions of people
-- on a small blue planet around a yellow sun, people fought and died over Faiths with names like "Christendom," "Freedom," "Equal Rights," "Liberation"
-- "I just believe in Yoko and me / and that's reality" won't cut it
-- "We pledge our lives and sacred honor to make sure that in the new republic there will be no distinction between propertied and non-propertied men" cuts it, even if like the resolutions of the Continental Congress, it is far from perfect in formulation or execution.
- As will all sacred values, established or new Faiths depend on costly, memorable, irrevocable, ritualized, corporeal public demonstrations of commitment: a.k.a. sacrifices

Humanity Loss Rolls
- breaking common faith
- defecting from rituals of common faith
- casting aspersion on the faith
- corrupting someone's faith

Humanity Gain
- sacrificing to show common faith
- proving the faith to others
- demonstrating the superiority of the faith
- establishing new rituals
- testing someone's Faith

"Costly" means that even indirect material benefits will NOT outweigh the cost of the sacrifices made.That in the long run, individual or collective acts of sacrifice build up large networks of social trust which ensure the survival of the species is a concept that primates with very limited senses and processing power cannot entertain without a whole lot of supportive technology (books, spreadsheets, universities, podcasts, etc). It sure as heck isn't intuitive or palpable. A finite person has to take it on Faith, even if that concept reflects a real, actual state of affairs knowable in science. You (you in the meat suit) just have to have Faith that a few absurd propositions (like "this society will last forever" or "I can trust the millions of people I have never seen or met to contribute to the endurance of this entity 'Canada,' which has no body or mind but which I count on to protect me and support me") will be enough to keep the whole ensemble from collapsing. [edited here at author's request -RE]

The inhabitants my sci-fi universe are not transhuman and their limited capabilities and situatedness in very small frames of time and space (their facticity, I believe existentialists call it) make them intelligible to us. They need Faith. Even if they have spaceships.

The Empire isn't working. It won't work. And can't work. But Faith in it is what keeps billions of humans human. And away from each other's throats.