[Sorcerer] Humanity scores for NPCs

[Rafu]

I'm playing Sorcerer as the GM, at last! Last week we had a long preparatory session, establishing look and feel for the game, discussing Humanity and, especially, creating characters (and their demons). Now I'm in the process of filling a small notebook with scribbled notes about the NPCs found in the sorcerers' Diagrams (plus some which occurred me as interesting/obvious/implied connections).
This includes jotting down scores and descriptors for most of them, which helps me build a better picture of them while keeping ready for any possible conflicts. The book provides a reference scale for Stamina and Will scores, and I'm typically using either as my baseline for Cover, but what about Humanity?
I'm finding it especially difficult to come up with Humanity scores for NPCs. Maybe it's because I don't have the "feel" for those NPCs yet - a clear enough picture of them - but I suspect it's because I simply can't reconcile Humanity to the same scale I'm using for other scores.
How do you guys do it? How do you assign Humanity scores to NPCs?

[Ron Edwards]

Use the higher of either Stamina or Will.

Drop anyone you think is "low Humanity" to 1.

Don't do anything else.

[Rafu]

Thank you!

So, it is the same range as for other scores. And thus the Sorcerer PC starting with Humanity=3, whom the player deems to be dangerously low in Humanity, could actually still qualify as a pretty decent person. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Numerically that reply is correct.

Qualitatively, it contains a red flag.

Humanity is not an indicator of mental state or the character's current range of behavior.

Say that to yourself. Drive that into your brain. This is the absolute opposite of Humanity in games like Cyberpunk or Vampire, in which there is a little table saying what the character is like with every different value of Humanity (these systems are all derived from SAN in Call of Cthulhu).

A character in Sorcerer may act, think, feel, and otherwise be exactly what the player wants at every moment of play. Humanity has nothing whatever to do with that range of being or of expression.

Make sure your player understands that.

[Jonas Ferry]

Thank you!

So, it is the same range as for other scores. And thus the Sorcerer PC starting with Humanity=3, whom the player deems to be dangerously low in Humanity, could actually still qualify as a pretty decent person. :)

The Humanity score doesn't say if he's decent or not, just how big the buffer is before Humanity becomes a real problem for him in the story. An "indecent" PC at Humanity 5 can just keep at it longer than someone at Humanity 1, but they are both free to act in the same way.

[Rafu]

Humanity is not an indicator of mental state or the character's current range of behavior.

Hey, that's exactly the thing I stated out loud while we were setting PC's scores, and I insisted on this point until I was satisfied that everybody got it. We even elaborated at length on how this is different from Cyberpunk 2020 or Call of Cthulhu or Vampire for a comparison.

I may have chosen my words unwisely in my previous post in this thread ("pretty decent person"), but don't worry: nobody in this play group is looking at a character sheet to dictate their portrayal of their character, in terms of ethics and actual behavior.
In fact, I'm absolutely confident the point of playing this game is well understood by everybody. We have a long history of playing together, functionally and satisfactorily. No misunderstanding is possible regarding our Creative Agenda for this Sorcerer game, our shared priorities, or anything major. Relax: that red flag was a false positive.

What actually concerns the player is Humanity as a moral event horizon (I did say "dangerously low", didn't I?), that is, that her experience playing this character might be short-lived. I was never especially concerned myself, as I can well see how the normal range of options during character generation might have yielded an even lower score.

On the other hand, I just came out of re-reading The Annotated Sorcerer over a couple days, and I'm now wondering whether something in that text made me devolve into such language as "could actually still qualify as a pretty decent person"... You know, I'm struggling hard with that book, no matter the annotations; but I have my own experience of functional, successful Sorcerer play as a yardstick for what I'm doing, no matter that I sometimes have to squint hard to find validation of my own experience within the (quite confusing) text. I just wish I had a better, more streamlined rules-reference handy. :(

[Rafu]

First session went alright. Having a great time, much as anticipated. :)
Only minor hiccup was with [me remembering to award] bonus dice, for which I'm envisioning fixes which might become the topic for a follow-up thread.

[Ron Edwards]

Excellent! Thanks Rafu.