[Sorcerer] Bonus dice: the way I'm doing it

[Rafu]

Now two full sessions into a very rewarding game of Sorcerer. The game is really singing for us, especially in terms of its "softer" components: premise, statements of setting/color, sorcerer-demon relationships, Needs and Desires, Kickers and Bangs, story-diagrams, etc. Using the dice mechanisms still feels a bit clunky, but we're learning and adapting.
Our learning and adapting might as well qualify as "hacking" by some measures, but whatever! At this point, I've decided that Sorcerer as a text (including the annotations) is as obscure to me as pre-2000 D&D texts, in that I can't really play it "as written" because I can't discern precisely enough from the written word how the game is actually supposed to be played. Thus I have fully embraced a small measure of necessary "hacking" as integral to my process of really understanding the text and putting it to actual use.

Point in question here is how to award bonus dice "for role-playing". I understand that...

• the basic math of Sorcerer assumes (and maybe, to a degree, requires) that character-players can obtain such bonus dice to their rolls sort-of routinely; however


• I purely and simply cannot be bothered to remember "awarding" dice as a GM. There's already too much I'm doing: playing a large cast of characters (including both people and demons) and thinking off-screen as well. When we reach for the dice, I usually have to decide which scores apply, and whether any victories from the immediately previous roll carry over. That's enough work already. I already know from my own experience that, no matter how long I will train myself into thinking about bonus dice as well, I'm still going to forget about 1/2 of the time. Furthermore...


• the guidelines for how many bonus dice to award are not at all clear! The bullet-points list on page 19 reads as exhaustive and matter-of-fact to me, especially with annotations... But then on page 106, concerning "Combat", I find a different list, one of "examples [which] should give guidelines". Some of these examples easily map to the page 19 list, while some don't, and overall leave me with a feeling that bonus (and penalty!) dice can be arbitrarily awarded by a the GM.

Here's what I decided to do, then:

• Mostly disregard page 106 (whenever it doesn't map to page 19) except for one thing: that much of its content can be summarized as Some kind of tactical or tangible advantage: +1 die, which I regard as an acceptable addition to page 19. Physical combat is not going to come up often in our game anyway, because of our choices in overall tone, color, main characters, etc.
• Drop any mentions of negative modifiers (-1 die or -2 dice) from page 19 entirely. "Generic gamer-boy behavior" and "repeating a simple task" are not going to happen at our table anyway (they're not happening now, never did). Should somebody "announce a task generically", such as in "I hit him", then I'll rather steal a page from Apocalypse World and just ask them: "Sure. How?"
• Involve all players in directly awarding bonus dice to each other, much like PTA "fan mail".
• Linking bonus dice to visible tokens (differently colored or shaped dice), much like in My Life with Master — which also heightens the feeling of bonus dice being something which happens by some nigh-objective measure, not a much of a judgment call on anybody's part.

Which resulted in the following rules hack/practical implementation, effective from today's session (when it appeared to work as intended):

• Two pairs of visually distinct dice stand in the middle of the table (we're using d6, btw, and the "regular" dice we're using are small-sized, either black or white).
• The very large black dice with logos instead of 1s are "fan-mail" dice. The middle-sized, pearl colored dice with numbers instead of pips are "smart" dice.
• For "a dramatic or appropriate quip" any other player can give you one of the "fan-mail" dice. For an action which "moves the plot along significantly", they give you both.
• When you have some kind of objective advantage, tactical or practical, any player can notice and give you one "smart" die. For an "especially clever version of the action", it's both "smart" dice.
• That's it. There are no other sources of "generic" bonus dice available for non-sorcerous actions, apart from victories carrying over from a previous roll.

This is apparently working as intended, though of course only time will tell. I'm not really interested in a critique of my general principles, here, nor of my rationale for wanting to implement something like this — although, for the sake of discussion, I'm fine with other people chiming in about issues they had with bonus dice and solutions they implemented.

But mostly, I'm posting here to ask: Ron, and other people with lots of experience with Sorcerer, do you think I have my math right? Am I keeping enough bonus dice in the game, or there ought to be more around? Do you anticipate other moving parts of the game "breaking" as a side-effect?

[Rafu]

The above post was supposed to be formatted with lists, both numbered and bullet-points, which instead don't show. I'm sorry it's only half as readily readable as it should have been.

[Ron Edwards]

It seems to me you should add one more die to the pool, the equivalent of the My Life with Master Sincerity die.

[Rafu]

It seems to me you should add one more die to the pool, the equivalent of the My Life with Master Sincerity die.

Cool! Do you mean, literally a sincerity die? It sounds like a pretty good fit, thematically. :)

Is there any textual reference to this you can point me to, btw? In the annotations, maybe? Perhaps this is also part of the "moving the story forward" discussion? Just curious.

[Ron Edwards]

I'm glad the game is going well for you. You apparently dislike the text and my experience suggests that discussing it isn't going to be much help. I can comb through its parts to find what I think corresponds to my advice, with the only result being more "what about" questions, because the person's motive is apparently to work out their frustration on me. My best policy for players who don't like the book is merely to answer questions about play and to provide advice that makes sense, or try to.

I don't know what you mean by "literally." My understanding is that you are using more dice of the same size as designated bonus dice, for designated purposes. It reminds me a little bit of Artha in Burning Wheel. My suggestion is to place one more die out there on the table with the others, of the same size, perhaps of a distinctive color (because you're doing that), and anyone can assign it to a player because that person just played with a special or notable degree of sincerity.

[Rafu]

I'm glad the game is going well for you.

It really is! And, by the way: thank you for designing it. :)

You apparently dislike the text and my experience suggests that discussing it isn't going to be much help.

Eh. I fully admit I actually dislike all game-instructions texts by you which I've read, with the only notable exception of S/lay w/Me (which I do quite like). I did vent a little bit of frustration about this through a number of venues during the last few weeks (prompted by re-reading The Annotated Sorcerer with the explicit purpose of running it, on short notice), but now I think I got over it.

On the other hand, I pretty much enjoy the content of those texts — in that all games designed by you which I played ranked somewhere on the spectrum from "I pretty much liked it" to "I totally loved it" (and I'm not one to say such a thing lightly). Furthermore, I do enjoy reading your essays a lot, curiously enough, including all of the non-game parts of both Spione and Shahida: I love those, actually.

I can comb through its parts to find what I think corresponds to my advice, with the only result being more "what about" questions, because the person's motive is apparently to work out their frustration on me.

I promise I overcame my frustration already and by no means I want to work it out on you (or anybody, actually). I worked it out by working with the text, like it or not, and making the game work for me, and really enjoying the outcome. :)
Thus, should I attempt any further investigation of Sorcerer as a text, my only motive for doing so would be sincere curiosity, and nothing else. No frustrations to work out anymore.
Of course, I'm not demanding you spend time combing through a book just to satisfy my curiosity.

I don't know what you mean by "literally."

My bad. I meant: "Would this Sincerity die be working just as in MLWM?" To which I believe you already answered, the answer being "yes".

My understanding is that you are using more dice of the same size as designated bonus dice, for designated purposes.

Your understanding is correct.

It reminds me a little bit of Artha in Burning Wheel.

This I cannot confirm nor deny, lacking any experience with BW.

My suggestion is to place one more die out there on the table with the others, of the same size, perhaps of a distinctive color (because you're doing that), and anyone can assign it to a player because that person just played with a special or notable degree of sincerity.

Indeed. I shall do this, exactly. :)

[Rafu]

I confirm the Sincerity die is working for us.

[Ron Edwards]

Hooray! Thanks Rafu.

[Rafu]

Story/chapter over, next story/chapter arranged to begin in a week, with new kickers established (and a new PC to replace the one who hit Humanity=0).
We're basically loving it, with a few minor hiccups. Making very small adjustments as I go, which I might be posting about sometime later.

[Rafu]

Since the "Story-forwarding! +2 bonus dice" is not getting used much, I've just replaced it with what follows:
There are two "Wow, fanmail!" bonus dice available. Wow one fellow player, you get one; wow two players, you get both. Of course this makes the more sense since there's only three of us playing.
One session in, I'm not super-satisfied how this method is turning out, either, but I'll wait some more before I revert to the previous one.

What's the real issue here? Of course I'm not sure, yet, but I'm beginning to form an opinion. It's something like: as the baseline of play, we expect most things happening to be significant and story-forwarding (otherwise, why are we playing this particular scene, rather than skip forward to an interesting one?) and, also, we expect to "wow" each other on a regular basis. Which means, a very literal application of the rule would cause us to attach bonus dice to most, almost all rolls (excluding those which feel merely "perfunctory" — I can expand on this if required), but that's not what we do... Rather, we're trying to identify moments which are especially (=more than ordinarily) wow-ing or story-forwarding — which becomes a distraction. The end result being: we award bonus dice irregularly, when we happen to remember to do so.

"Sincerity" is getting its fair share of use. "Objective advantage" is doing its job, however lackluster, but we never got to put a second dice in for "especially clever version of the action", probably because cleverness is not the sort of things we actually like to discuss at our table.

I'm considering adding a new category: a bonus die to be awarded for "escalation".

I've also tooled around a bit with the way we're handling penalty dice (from Price, harm suffered, specific demonic abilities). In hindsight, I realized we (I) handled those poorly and confusingly during our first "story", and that was a most significant component of the major "hiccup" we experienced (the one "fight" scene, basically). I'm provisionally satisfied with how I'm handling it now, but before writing more about it (possibly as a separate thread?) I want to go back to the text and realize how much the way I did it previously was a legitimate interpretation of the rules, as opposed to plain mistaken.

Should I mention that everybody is constantly like "Wow! One full week before we can play again? I can't wait." — That's to say, very strongly engaged with the fiction.

[Ron Edwards]

Letting you know that I'm reading with interest.

The issue you've raised is very important. If a game has incentivizing mechanics, then at what point has the behavior being incentivized become routine (a good thing apparently), and therefore devaluing the "exceptional" application of the mechanics? Or to put it another way, if the game designer has assumed that the players are incompetent and puts in mechanics to reward what is, when all is said and one, ordinarily good play, then what use have such mechanics for people who are not incompetent and ordinarily play well already?

This is why I often advise people who send me manuscripts, especially those which they think are very Forge-y, to stop putting in incentive mechanics. I think looking at them this way is actually mis-reading the whole family of techniques which include Sorcerer bonus dice, My Life with Master's Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice, The Shadow of Yesterday's bonus dice, and Primetime Adventures' fanmail.

As I see it, these games are specifically designed such that ordinary resolution is pretty hard, mechanically. In fact, they all border on being "whiff" resolution. The idea is to add the expected level of audience/full-table engagement into the resolution system, not to make it happen when it's not, but rather to make use of it because it's there. So characters are vastly more effective when the whole table is involved in their situation and in how the currently-responsible player is

I think there's a reason for that interaction being GM-centric in Sorcerer, which you prefer not to employ, and that is OK - it's a minor rules-alteration which I can talk about later. If I'm remembering correctly, MLWM also puts the decision to involve these extra dice into the GM's hands, whereas The Shadow of Yesterday and PTA famously reverse it so that only players can do it. These design decisions are a separate feature from what I'm talking about now.

For the issue at hand, the point is not to offer treats to otherwise incompetent participants so they will (Jesus Christ! come on already!) play adequately after all. The point is to recognize that competent, effective play is actually built of shared engagement at the table, and to celebrate its presence through the mechanics.

Let me know if that makes sense.

[Rafu]

Hey, Ron! I like the way this conversation is taking us. Plus, I'll be stuck on a train for several ours with no Internet connection, but with this thread downloaded on my HDD. I'm going to speak my mind, then, even if not in the most structured way, and who knows where we'll end up?

I'm with you on "incentive" mechanics, word by word. There's another big issue I noticed with them, one which convinced me to try and expurge any such thing from my own designs: wishful thinking based (bluntly) on a failure to grasp Creative Agenda. Your typical "incentive" is increased character effectiveness, obtained for playing in a way which is desiderable to the game designer. This assumes effectiveness matters to the player, i.e. that "succeeding" is what matters to them. And that, if you as a game-designer want them to pursue other priorities, you can "goad" them into it. Which as good as "awarding XPs for good roleplaying". Something akin to the "gameification" of real-life tasks, and I can't help but note that gameification as a designer-user interaction is inherently adversarial, to the point that introducing it recursively within a game design is blatantly disingenious. If effectiveness really is a player priority, the focus on effectiveness is at odds with the designer's desired play-behavior it means table C.A. doesn't align with designer expectations – or, if some player (the GM?) is actually expected to "goad" others into the desired behavior via incentive mechanics, then we're designing for a CA-clash (expecting CA-clash to be the default state of play, even inviting it).
I daresay that PC effectiveness is usually taken as a very minor concern at my table, because of our CA or range of CAs (through multiple games, I mean) and aesthetic (color?) preferences – but more on this later (probably in another post).

With all of the above out of the way (and out of my system), we can then discuss the exceptional case of "incentive" mechanics not entailing CA-clash, including the interesting topic of incentivized behavior becoming routine and your juicy point about that family of techniques *not* being "incentives". Let me say, regarding Sorcerer, that I have nothing but your word to take for it... That is, if I only had the 2001 text in front of me, I too would read (i.e. discount) bonus dice as "incentive": bump up your PC's effectiveness when you play in a way which is pleasing to the GM, with the implied assumption that the GM is going to be pleased by the same play-behavior which would be pleasing to Ron Edwards. The facing annotations inform me that it ought not be the case, with a plea I understand bonus dice as being not a dysfunctional "incentive" technique but something better. So much for showing-not-telling, Ron! :(

As for MLWM's Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice being GM-centric, I can't remember now how the text actually goes. As for my MLWM actual play experiences, those came after Moreno's outspoken crusade (one of many) on some Italian forum or some other, defending MLWM against accusations of being another "Gee, I'm stroking my chin and deciding whether you're 'acting' well enough" game. Whatever in the text, then, the (Moreno-originated) oral tradition which informed my play was that Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice are not "awarded" by anyone in particular, but taken from the table on a nigh-objective, self-evident basis. Even if I don't believe in "objectivity" anymore (even more so in a conversation game of fabricated fiction), "self-evident" works for me, and it's the basis for how I'm playing a number of other games, including Sorcerer.

In fact (still speaking of MLWM's Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice and of the Sincerity die as ported to Sorcerer) I like to bring it a step further. With a physical token of a technique (the die) activated by fictional content (such as a character acting with "a special or notable degree of sincerity"), you can:
— award the die to another player, because you noticed and acknowledged their character's sincerity;
— pick up the die yourself because the sincerity of your character is self-evident;
— and (my favorite) pick up the dice yourself as a statement that your character is sincere!
I like to mix all three, using #3 quite sparingly (and I witnessed this a few times only in our Sorcerer), but it's the possibilities entailed but this case #3 that I find most artistically exciting currently. Making a statement which leaves other players doubtful about your sincerity, then shockingly pick up the die to show that indeed you're sincere. Maybe making statements which tempt other players into offering you the sincerity die but then refusing it, in a surprise reveal that deep at their heart the character's being duplicitous? The point is: the simple act of picking up a specific small item with your hand now carries so much significance that it becomes a powerful mean of communication.

Back on topic... You mentioned TSOY "gift dice" and PTA "fan mail" as part of the same family of techniques, but turned other-player-centric (as opposed to GM-centric). I'd like to point out another difference with MLWM which matters a lot to me: gift dice and fan mail are awarded for introducing fictional content which is pleasing to the awarding player (not specifying which specific sort of content), whereas Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice are awarded for introducing acts of intimacy, desperation and sincerity, always – that people liked it or not doesn't matter, though there's an unstated implication that this is exactly the sort of content we should be rooting for.
I understand the latter technique (MLWM) as being an authorial statement from the game-designer. The technique shows (as opposite to just the text telling) which kind of content is to be privileged and expected in the game. Making this into a character-effectiveness boost works, here, because of how the outcome of each conflict ties into the "story arc" of the whole game – that is, through effectiveness in conflict resolution, intimacy and desperation and especially sincerity ultimately feed into the reward cycle, because players of MLWM presumably want to get to the final catharsis. A similarly conceived technique in Sorcerer is Humanity checks for contacting, summoning and binding: it's you, as the designer, showing (rather than telling) that practicing sorcery is inherently adverse to humanity. Should I desire to play a game where sorcery is not anti-human, I'd have to hack the rules so as to reflect such a thematic change.

As for TSOY gift dice and PTA fan mail, I believe an important feature of these techniques is: the dice/tokens come in a limited budget, which the player(s) have to manage. A question I'm constantly facing as a player is: do I want to reward this particular thing, or sit on my/our budget and wait for something even cooler? Which means that, should the technique actually work as an incentive – that is, should we get to see more of the desired behaviors at our table – gift dice/fan mail "auto-adjust" to the ever-rising bar. Having a limited budget to manage, we can only afford to spend it on instances of play which stand well above our baseline. As soon as a good behavior becomes routine, then, people will stop rewarding it (which is not to say they have to stop celebrating it) and will start looking for something better than that – thus start trying to do better themselves. Since this "desired" or "good" is left undefined, I believe the purpose (or at least one positive effect) of this technique is to fine-tune a shared group aesthetics over several instances of play. Humanity checks outside of sorcerous rituals, as well as Humanity gain rolls, operate at a similar level in Sorcerer, in that the mechanism both invites and requires that all players keep aligning their expectations over time so that the group arrives at a shared definition of which actions count toward Humanity (a standard which is constantly in flux, both continually challenged and continually reaffirmed).

Now, I happen to think that PTA fan mail are much better than TSOY gift dice at what they do, for two reasons at least. One is that PTA includes very clear guidelines on what to look for when awarding tokens, through an overly intuitive metaphor: reward what a TV show audience would love (which is not the same as MLWM, with the designer pointing at specific pieces of content). The other one is... Well, it's the lid on a certain Pandora's box I'm itching to pry open, but maybe some other time, as this has been quite a long post already.

[Ron Edwards]

I am tired of you insulting my 2001 book. Doing so is both petty and historically ignorant. I told you to stop doing it once already. This is the last time.

I'll respond to the other content when I am less pissed off. Don't post.

[Ron Edwards]

I agree with you concerning effectiveness, incentive, and CA clash. It's been a long decade and a half grappling over the concept of reward mechanics: not as incentive, which as you say expects or even invites CA-clash, but as a way to express the genuine reward system at the table, which I see as CA-celebration.

Clearly both your understanding and application of My Life with Master bonus dice are wrapped up in some kind of Moreno-Rafu bullshit which I learned long ago simply to ignore. For your information, the GM is the sole arbiter of using those dice in a roll – make of that what you will. I'll only say that you and Moreno are similar in frequently expecting, and inviting, an adversarial GM-player relationship, and both of you find it hard to accept that GMing is both (i) a highly local, game-specific task, not transferable from game to game; and (ii) just another person at the table.

Your three-way application of bonus dice, including your emphasis on the self-awarded die, is best understood as game design at your table, and nothing to do with any of the games you're mentioning. Rather than you telling me it's the right or most exciting way to play for one or more of these games, I'd be interested in you designing something for which it simply is the right and most exciting way.

Your distinction between such dice being awarded based on enjoyment vs. eligible content is very interesting to me. Although that distinction is right there in the games' rules and in your accurate summary, I find myself surprised that I experience the two different ways identically in play itself. So whether there's a real difference in action, I can't say!

I definitely agree with the way you describe the budget effect in PTA and TSOY, and its subtler/trade-off equivalent regarding ethical checks/gains in Sorcerer – ever-improving but not invalidating baselines. It seems to me as well that a budget applies in My Life with Master, as the bonus dice can only be provided in succession or by skipping an early step. For instance, you can't get two Intimacy dice for being intimate twice for one roll; and if you go straight to Desperation, you're not going to get the Intimacy die, or straight to Sincerity, you're not going to get the other two.

Go ahead and spit out your Pandora's box point. Based on years at the Forge reading people claim that what they have to say is too edgy for all the tender minds reading the forum, I'm doubt whether it's really that special.

[Moreno R.]

As for MLWM's Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice being GM-centric, I can't remember now how the text actually goes. As for my MLWM actual play experiences, those came after Moreno's outspoken crusade (one of many) on some Italian forum or some other, defending MLWM against accusations of being another "Gee, I'm stroking my chin and deciding whether you're 'acting' well enough" game. Whatever in the text, then, the (Moreno-originated) oral tradition which informed my play was that Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity dice are not "awarded" by anyone in particular, but taken from the table on a nigh-objective, self-evident basis. Even if I don't believe in "objectivity" anymore (even more so in a conversation game of fabricated fiction), "self-evident" works for me, and it's the basis for how I'm playing a number of other games, including Sorcerer.

Clearly both your understanding and application of My Life with Master bonus dice are wrapped up in some kind of Moreno-Rafu bullshit which I learned long ago simply to ignore. For your information, the GM is the sole arbiter of using those dice in a roll – make of that what you will. I'll only say that you and Moreno are similar in frequently expecting, and inviting, an adversarial GM-player relationship, and both of you find it hard to accept that GMing is both (i) a highly local, game-specific task, not transferable from game to game; and (ii) just another person at the table.

Whoa! I am sure I said a lot of things you would call bullshit if you even did read them and that Rafu would agree at least to some of them, but this is not the case in this specific instance! I am rather sure that I never said to anybody, ever, that the sincerity/desperation/intimacy die in MLWM is awarded by anybody apart from the GM (and I am rather strict about rules about who can award what when I play).

From the bit quoted by Rafu, if I had really said something like that to him (and he is not simply misremembering something said by other people like it was said by me) I was probably not talking about MLWM but about Sorcerer and I was simply quoting the annotations text about the GM awarding dice (so even in that case, I was surely not talking about players taking the dice directly). But the most probable explanation is simply "it wasn't me".

But, leaving what Rafu says he did remember about what I said, I want to look at your two last statements:

I'll only say that you and Moreno are similar in frequently expecting, and inviting, an adversarial GM-player relationship

This is not, by far, my objection to the way Bonus dice are awarded in Sorcerer.

First: I am not saying that GM and players are adversarial. What I often say is that two different people are two different people. It doesn't matter if one of the is a "GM", he doesn't get special magical "GM's powers" that allow him or her to become a supernatural gestalt of group consciousness. He (or she) is still a person, a different person from another player. They will have different tastes, different ways of expressing them, different sensitivities, etc.

In some cases this actually makes them incompatible at the same gaming table, at least for some games. But even if they are compatible, even if they enjoy playing together...  person A is not a better judge of person B's enjoyment of a game than person B is.  If you put person A in charge of that judgment, you give him a difficult, thankless task, that he will fail at, time and again. More work for worse results.

It's for this reason that I really, really like the sincerity/intimacy/desperation die in MLWM: because it's awarded by a person (person A) according to his own judgment, NOT according to what he thinks of person B opinion and engagement (it's for this reason that I think it's really difficult that I could have said what Rafu cited, ever: why should I modify a rule I like into one I don't?).

I like even more PTA's fan mail: every person at the table (apart from the producer) can give it, at his own complete whim. I find it immensely superior of any old bonus awarded "because it played well" or "because the character was on a higher ground"

And this is probably the reason why I don't award bonus die in Sorcerer, probably ever: it's not so much a conscious choice as much an innate refusal to judge other people's enjoyment. I start every session saying to myself to try to do it but every time I forget or even if i don't I am too occupied in other tasks in the game to lose time observing the other people's reaction and judge if they are worth a bonus die (I would really prefer the "stroking the chin" version, at least it would be MY chin...).

and both of you find it hard to accept that GMing is both (i) a highly local, game-specific task, not transferable from game to game; and (ii) just another person at the table.

Well, now this is frankly insulting. I am tempted to post in this thread the couple of dozens of rants I wrote on other forums against this very notion in the last eight years. I coined even a technical term ("Parpuzio") against this way of thinking, remember?.