Hi there.
I'm a clueless newbie. Since I don't see a forum labelled "clueless newbies post here"
I'll discuss my cluelessness about the char-gen process in what seems to be the most appropriate forum.
I have a major problem specific to Sorcerer: the Humanity rating.
If the primary motivation of gamers is "Kill things and take their stuff," how can the Humanity rating be adapted to a gaming group that expects intense violence and low empathy from players?
If you were to ask me what I would do once I had power, I would probably say, "I'd do horrific things X, Y, and Z, which would cause great pain, chaos, and social disruption. Maybe it would improve the world and maybe not, but there would definitely be a long period of horrifying behavior."
And the premise of Sorcerer is, "How far out of your comfort zone would you go for power?"
Well, I and my characters might go pretty far. But there wouldn't be much point if we couldn't stay in power once we got there.
When I'm playing common games like D&D, my character usually has a pragmaticallly brutal attitude toward actions that many characters find morally repugnant. Sometimes the party backs me up and sometimes they don't.
Example 1:
My character destroys a group of orc women and children in order to deny bases to the enemy. Most of the party thinks I'm entirelly justified but the D.M. thinks I'm a war criminal.
Example 2:
My character uses non-humane means to restrain, interrogate, and execute orc prisoners. The party doesn't stop me, but one of them claims I have Evil alignment.
Example 3:
My character regards an entire class of persons in his own community as "targets of opportunity," to be killed whenever it is convenient. The character may rationalize this, but many parties will regard any violence within the community as treason (whereas violence to orcs outside city walls is profitable freebooting).
Initially, one can say, "Well, Sorcerer only works if violence is rare and shocking," but obviously other folks posting on this forum use movies like "Last Man Standing" to inspire stuff, so some people can make violent games work.
Then one can say (reading from "The Sorcerer's Soul," p.18) that humanity tracks stability of personality, not morality of actions.
Well, okay.
I can dream up campaigns where Humanity rarely, if ever is challenged. I could say that my players won't face Humanity checks for sensible levels of violence. (And I could say, "The U.S. armed forces use violence reasonably. The party can be as violent as a U.S. military unit, except that the party has no civilian command superstructure and the whole world is its battlefield.") That makes Sorcerer a trivial game. You can make overpowered beginning characters who will play smart, never lose Humanity, and act like rampaging sociopaths, destroying all that gets in their way. It would be a campaign with two My Lai massacres per evening -- minimum.
I can also dream up campaigns where Humanity is challenged for every dehumanizing act -- in which case the whole party will be down to Humanity 0 by the second session or sooner, and they won't enjoy the downward slide. Real life is full of no-win situations (which is why situations like My Lai happen in real life).
Finally, I could urge the characters to adopt don't-rock-the-boat characters. In a modern-day American setting, this would be characters who use Cloak and Teleport forms of travel to thwart law enforcement and commit victimless crimes in order to satisfy their Demons' desires. So great ... the characters don't have to work for a living, but there's no drama in the game. I'm not terribly good at telling stories about the subtle emotional tensions in (e.g.) a messy divorce. If I were, I could write great Sorcerer scenarios about how emotional it is when a Sorcerer gets divorced and his Demon is out of control when he has to appear in family court. If I could tell that kind of story, I could make Humanity work ... but I can't tell that kind of story. It doesn't motivate me.
So I guess I just don't get it.
(The Humanity thing is just my biggest problem. I really, really like Sorcerer and Sword, but I need to figure out the Humanity angle first.
As a slightly less new newbie, I have a couple thoughts:
1) Sorcerer, by design, asks "What would you do to get what you want?"
If your default answer is "anything and everything, all the time", then it makes that question less interesting.
2) Consider the Humanity definitions in Sorcerer and Sword.
Perhaps the definitions of Humanity used in that book would work better for you. Even a brutal warrior can have a personal code of conduct. I could easily imagine a definition of Humanity which took absolutely no account of one's behavior towards orcs, but rather focused on issues of personal honor, loyalty to the tribe, etc. After all, in real world societies, groups have frequently had codes of conduct allowing them to murder and torture their neighbors, while still remaining solid citizens.
3) On a similar note, you can always draw the line a little lower than where you stand. Your character may be an outright sociopath, but at least he doesn't kill when there's no reason, and he takes no pleasure in it. That's a rudimentary code right there. Or, in some games, the character may be a sadistic killer but at least he's fighting against the Big Bad, so it's alright.
4) There are real reasons why the US military tries to adhere to some code of conduct besides flabby Christian slave morality. There are real-world consequences for committing atrocities. In the games you mentioned, how do you take it when other PC's or NPC's react to the awful things your guy does? It's only logical that there will be in-game consequences for violations of the social contract. If your character is hunting down and killing city dwellers, does he get in trouble with the authorities and other members of the despised class?
5) I think your mention of the raw amount of violence is quite misleading; the context, meaning, and significance of the violence is much more important than the number of fictious civilians killed. Also, the GM should be calling for Humanity rolls based on the definition of Humanity, which might include being unfaithful to one's spouse, ignoring an insult, or engaging in vigilantism.
Danny
Edit: changed the wording in #2 slightly.
A quick addition on point #4: Reactions by NPCs to atrocity need not be negative. Sometimes a positive response from a group you despise says far more than violent opposition from authority.
There's nothing quite like getting an "attaboy" from the head of the local grave-robbers guild, and an invitation to their christmas formal, to give people a sense that their character may be edging toward something no longer defined as "heroic" :-)
Quote from: DannyK
4) There are real reasons why the US military tries to adhere to some code of conduct besides flabby Christian slave morality. There are real-world consequences for committing atrocities. In the games you mentioned, how do you take it when other PC's or NPC's react to the awful things your guy does? It's only logical that there will be in-game consequences for violations of the social contract. If your character is hunting down and killing city dwellers, does he get in trouble with the authorities and other members of the despised class?
All your points are good. I'll just reply to 4.
There are usually in-game consequences for acting like an unemotional, professional killer. They are usually manageable, especially if you've played various RPGs in a similar way. I don't have much emotional reaction when the other players or ref think I'm a freak. It neither interests me nor concerns me. If I had a nice, juicy emotional reaction, I might be able to squeeze some drama out of it.
The reactions of other PCs and NPCs can be managed. I have a hard time making characters that don't have an internal code of conduct, whether I'm making PCs as a player or NPCs as a ref. As a result, the other real-life humans instinctively realize that I play by rules, even if they are freaky rules, and they usually let me do the dirty work of the party. In goofy parties where everyone else is saying, "My character gropes the barmaid!" I am usually the only player with my back to the wall, watching the door for combatants and trying to formulate a plan to accomplish the next task in the party's mission.
The problem is that my characters don't have the emotional depth required for Sorcerer. Their codes of conduct are usually comprehensive enough to foresee all the problems the game can throw at them, and they're inevitably willing to die for their codes, so the ref can't threaten them into risky behavior with the threat of killing their characters.
My characters inevitably do what I think suits their code. They don't transgress. In Sorcerer terms, the PCs would get their starting demon, bind it, and possibly never take risks to grab a lot of power, never form attachments, etc.
Also, my characters are rarely tempted by the bait of reward systems unless rewards can be held securely. So I don't see a lot of appeal in grabbing for demons that might turn out to be hard to handle.
The funny thing is that there is clearly a lot of emotional resonance of some kind in the military history that inspires my gaming. I get ideas for games by reading about Charles Whitman, Pol Pot, the Tet Offensive, Nguyen Ngoc Luan shooting the VC prisoner with his revolver and photographed just as the bullet hits... etc. These images are emotional on some level, it's just not readily put into the character-driven terms that fiction and RPGs use.
Quite a few of my adventures challenge a party of non-serious beer-and-pretzel gamers to rise to the challenge of bitter warfare rather than self-serving freebooting and looting. Often my moral conflicts are no-win situations. They don't inspire much terror, just dread: the players are standing amid hundreds of bodies and have to choose the lesser of two evils -- e.g. either risk demonic possession by the Hand of Vecna or allow its current possessee to destroy a village. Neither one is good, but the sheer immensity of the horror makes it impersonal.
Sorcerer seems to require a lot of personal emotion in its horror.
I did look at the Humanity definition in Sword and Sorcerer. Violence only prompts checks when applied to close associates and the like. That's a big help, actually.
Oddly enough, the more I read these forums the more I get the sense that I haven't understood the rules at all despite multiple readings. For example, Ron Edwards posted somewhere that Lore is used to boost all die rolls against demons... I had totally missed that. I thought Lore was of very limited usefulness, such as spotting telltales, but apparently one can roll Lore and add the successes to all of one's subsequent dealings with an encountered demon. I had missed that in the books.
Red, you speak as if your characters are calling the shots, and you (the player) are just an innocent victim of their uninspired play-style. If you don't like what they're doing, what stops you from having them do something else?
Quote from: TonyLBRed, you speak as if your characters are calling the shots, and you (the player) are just an innocent victim of their uninspired play-style. If you don't like what they're doing, what stops you from having them do something else?
Well, my characters aren't vivid enough to be anywhere close to real. If I really felt that my characters were real personalities, I would either be teaching character acting at a drama school, or eating oatmeal in a straitjacket at a mental institution. My characters are acceptable as characters for a action-adventure story, which is what most gaming sessions produce. I think better role-players than myself can produce nuanced characters that could serve even in an emotional drama with no action.
I can obviously forbid myself from following my typical stereotype, and play against habit. I just don't have much success in such attempts.
When I'm in a game or running a game, I end up striking a balance between the atmosphere of the game, the energy of the other participants, and my own inspirations. My grimly-efficient-killer roles are well adapted to the average role-playing game (D&D, Vampire, RoleMaster, Deadlands, etc.) and the average "casts" of fellow actors/gamers.
Part of it is recruiting creative people to make up a creative gaming group ... and that's just as hard as finding good actors to make a small film. Another part is finding a premise for campaigns that doesn't encourage violence. (Sorcerer in a modern setting doesn't encourage stereotypical violence; Sword and Sorcerer does, but that's a separate issue.)
The single most useful thing I could do would be stop trying to actively create, find refs who tend to discourage violent players, and try to explore emotive, non-violent role-playing as a player in those campaigns. That would take time, as finding such a ref is not easy. Even if I could find a game that encouraged nuanced, relatively non-violent play, it would take practice.
Let me add another thing: The second most useful thing I could do is stop hopping between different gaming groups. The longer I stick with any given group, the more nuanced and emotional my characters get. Half the problem is that I am totally stereotyped until I've gamed with a group for several sessions, and I often don't put forth the commitment to stick with a group long enough.
Quote from: redwalker
The problem is that my characters don't have the emotional depth required for Sorcerer. Their codes of conduct are usually comprehensive enough to foresee all the problems the game can throw at them, and they're inevitably willing to die for their codes, so the ref can't threaten them into risky behavior with the threat of killing their characters. My characters inevitably do what I think suits their code. They don't transgress. In Sorcerer terms, the PCs would get their starting demon, bind it, and possibly never take risks to grab a lot of power, never form attachments, etc.
Actually, that's okay, and can be a strong part of a very good game, if your PC's code is properly tangled up with the definition of Humanity.
To be concrete, suppose that the game is a chambara samurai fantasy game, and that sorcerers are the supremely badass samurai and ninja serving the daimyos trying to become shogun. A sorcerer is the warrior who can kill twenty men even when he is ambushed, naked and in bed simply because his zanshin warrior awareness is so great that he is ready for battle even when he sleeps. In this setting full of blood, honor and violence, Humanity gets defined as its opposite: freedom, spontaneity and joy. Humanity 0 is means you meet the warrior's end: death. When you hit zero, the player gets to set up the death-scene which may possibly make his death meaningful -- but his death will come, meaningful or not.
So if you make a character with a bushido code you know he won't break, then you know what's in store for him, how his story will end. But that's
okay -- the thematic structure of the game is improved when the different characters make different choices, and come to different ends. Having someone walk all the way down to the end of the warrior path makes a good contrast to the other choices.
Hi Red,
I've mentioned it before and I'll say it again: Sorcerer, in my experience, has 0 fat on it. Almost everything in that book has Implications which are not spelled out. Those implicatioins are explicitly intended. Ron has mentioned that at the time he was writing for a very specific auidience highly experienced in a specific type and history of play. So he didn't always make an effort to spell out all the implications of the rules. I suggest you reread them again (I do it all the time) and recognize that from the point something is mentioned it is assumed to be applicable to everything that follows even if it isn't explicitly referenced ever again. Esp cosider the implications of chapter 1 for the rest of the game.
On the humanity issue I'm struggling with how to express this to you. Sorcerer is a game about significant choices and consequences of those acchoices. Humanity, whatever it represents, is the issue that your group has agreed to address through their characters. Its definition changes the general question of Sorcerery from the general 'what would you do to get what you want' to the specific 'Is the loss of X (where x is your definition of humanity) worth the Y (where y is what the character wants and is dealing with demons to get) you get in exchange?' Humanity can be anything appropriate. If self-mastery, then the question becomes Is what you want worth the loss of control over yourself? The characters answer that everytime they choose a decision that gives them more power. The key question that has to be answered for players at the outset is 'what do you want.'
The most important thing is humanity is group agreed upon. And by agreeing on it, the group is agreeing to address the premise it represents through their characters. Consider that the fundamental acts of the game: contacting, summoning and binding demons all automatically risk humanity loss (and since pacting is a subset of binding, I have to assume it does to, though I can't find it specifically.) Sorcerer doesn't use humanity to pose a moral standard that is enforced throughout play, instead humanity is simply something that acts as a value against which the characters wants are weighed during the game. A character who continually makes choices that cause them to loose humanity aren't necessarily bad, the player is saying that whatever it is the character wants IS indeed worth the loss of whatever humanity represents.
Also, frequency of humanity checks is no garuntee of deterioration. I've had characters that have survived many humanity checks in a row with no loss. The point was though, that whatever my character did to get a check was a statement about humanity, and that the decisions connected to it contained real risk and is marked and stands out in the game because of it.
How and why the party faces humanity checks is their decision. It is the fundamental authoring act in Sorcerer. The first part of that is customizing and or agreeing to the humanity definition, the second part is when they choose to have their characters do stuff that earns them a check.
Your job as GM is to pose situations that cause the question to be put to them.
Hmmm...I find I'm sounding a bit obscure. I hope it helps though.
regards,
Trevis
Quote from: neelk
So if you make a character with a bushido code you know he won't break, then you know what's in store for him, how his story will end. But that's okay -- the thematic structure of the game is improved when the different characters make different choices, and come to different ends. Having someone walk all the way down to the end of the warrior path makes a good contrast to the other choices.
I really like that.
In particular, I like the sort of Zen overtones of samurai "cherry-blossom" life -- a short and beautiful life.
It would be particularly delightful if there were other ways of Zen -- but that raises a problem. A samurai on the road of choosing death would be allowed to kill, but if he ever gave up being a samurai, he would have different duties. (Consider the many historical samurai who became physicians.)
If I get to run a game of Sorcerer (and I suspect I should find a more stable group before trying) I think I would use that -- not medieval Japan, necessarily, but possibly a modern version -- Dirty Harry Callahan or the yakuza thugs from a Fukasaku movie.
Another twist that I would like to see would be characters who start out with a strong sense of morality who somehow decide that they want to change their code after they've seen how the game progresses.
If you're familiar with Dark Ages Vampire, you'll remember that vampires can have different "Roads." A vampire who follows one "Road" has one set of standards for conduct, but a party-member on a different road gets judged differently.
It would be really cool if I could start out some players as samurai who are looking for glorious life and honorable death -- but then surprise them and shock them into some kind of epiphany, so that one player decides to become a master of tea ceremony, another decides to try to become a masterful flower arranger, et cetera. All of them are still looking for some kind of Zen perfection.
I guess the universal dynamic should be that if your Humanity reaches 0, you are no longer able to do whatever makes your life meaningful, and the character is no longer a playable NPC. For a samurai, this means getting inevitably killed. For a calligrapher, if might mean losing your eyesight and hands so that you can't write anything. In any event, the player would roll up a new character.
Quote from: DannyK
5) I think your mention of the raw amount of violence is quite misleading; the context, meaning, and significance of the violence is much more important than the number of fictious civilians killed. Also, the GM should be calling for Humanity rolls based on the definition of Humanity, which might include being unfaithful to one's spouse, ignoring an insult, or engaging in vigilantism.
I've been looking at the thread on creating the same character over and over.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1095&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
and there are some definite applicable points from that thread.
So, I tend to make stone-cold killers partially to resolve some personal issues, but also partially for pragmatic reasons.
In the absence of a long-running campaign, I feel the need to get lots of action into the game quickly, because there may never be a second session for that campaign.
And while my characters are very self-sufficient in that they systematically distance themselves from dependent children or lovers which could be used as hostages against them, they are *very* loyal to something -- Church, principles, vow of specific revenge, etc. A friend of mine cast me as a Batman-style vigilante "knight" and it worked. It's not that I object to being a paladin, I just object to D&D's take on the paladin. Being a highly principled, largely self-reliant man dedicated to a life of violence for the sake of principle/honor/duty is the core of the stereotype.
Now, in the context of gritty settings, the self-reliant killer is often an outlaw, a yakuza, or some other glamorous rebel -- but I always play my outcasts as if I wanted some audience to feel, deep down, that the outcast is a good guy.
The tricky thing is that just one definition of Humanity for every character won't work in most groups because I can't find play-groups that can agree on a single code of ethics for characters -- they want to be able to have a range of "alignments" to make character differentiation easier. The Dark Ages Vampire system of "Roads" is a possible patch for this problem.
And of course, one of Ron Edwards' comments elsewhere is applicable to my original whining. My original whining was, "I don't get Humanity." Edwards' comment to a different thread was along the lines of, "What persons or institutions will your character inconvenience himself for?" If I want to make a good Sorcerer character, I have to find a way to reconcile my desire for self-sufficiency with a capacity for vulnerability, for choosing to have attachment to something vulnerable that will cause the player to sacrifice his priorities.
Red,
Humanity in sorcerer isn't a 'code of ethics.' It never limits or defines what actions any character in Sorcerer is capable of taking. Ron has stated elsewhere that a character is capable of any type of action at any time. Humanity is a metagame indicator of how close your character is to the 'edge' however you've defined it. Its also binary. either you have humanity or you don't. If you don't then by default you no longer have your PC either. The main purpose of the scale is to see how close you are to falling off that edge. And how much risk your character is taking when making a particular decision.
So, because humanity doesn't limit behavior, a definition of it can exist for entire groups. Its what keeps a group making a commentary and thus a unified 'story' about the same idea, which is what I was trying to explain above.
-Trevis
Hello, I've read Sorcerer and Sorcerer's Soul but not played it.
Quote from: redwalker
... If I want to make a good Sorcerer character, I have to find a way to reconcile my desire for self-sufficiency with a capacity for vulnerability, for choosing to have attachment to something vulnerable that will cause the player to sacrifice his priorities.
I think that's a good definition of Humanity for some sort of game. The Kurosawa movie Sanjuro comes to mind.
John
Hey , if mass machiavellian slaughter appeals to you try the Charnel Gods supplement for Sorcerer, It allows you to destroy the entire world! You might check out the review I did of the game here:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9289.phtml
Two quick things:
1) You would definitely enjoy Charnel Gods, even if you never use the Sorcerer material for anything other than cannibalizing for other games. Your posts indicate it's right up your alley stylistically. The note in it about characters who go straight for an endgame also speaks to the problem you're discussing.
2) I think that you have to 'care' about your humanity in some sense to play Sorcerer. In a dungeon crawl RPG conflict is essentially along one axis: keep your body alive. Challenges are really all physical challenges, even if they're called things like 'soul drain' or whatever. Mental challenges and traps are there to see if you're smart enough to think your way out of the consequences - which will always ultimately be a really smashing physical assault. D&D 3.0 breaks that down into nine bazillion different damage types to try to keep things interesting - I think Arduin was the first game that really broke out damage types so broadly, but never mind the history.
On the other hand, in Call of Cthulhu you can also go insane, and that invovles a different set of mechanics. Likewise, in Sorcerer, you can lose your Humanity. So you kind of need (mechanically speaking) to 'care' about the ethical standing of your character, just like you need to care about what's happening to your character's body. In fact, you may need to care more about your character's ethical standing, insofar as Sorcerer combat never reduces you below 'dying' and the GM has to make a choice to turn that into 'death'; but hitting Humanity 0 almost always has a specific, well-defined meaning that isn't good.
Furthermore, a Sorcerer GM is effectively involved in challenging your characters ethically with situations that involve hard choices, and making moral judgments about the characters by calling for Humanity checks.
Hello,
I'll throw my thoughts in on this.
1) It's entirely possible that Sorcerer just isn't the game for you. Nothing wrong with that. But obviously it's caught your interest.
2) You might want to check out The Riddle of Steel. Ron has often said that Sorcerer and The Riddle of Steel are two different solutions to the same set of design problems. When you compare the two and can see that yes indeed they are two different versions of the same kind-of game most of your stated problems go away.
3) A lot of people have the impression that Sorcerer is some kind of deep psycho-drama designed to produce supernatural versions of Steel Magnolias. That's someting that I think characterizes more recent play but Ron has said that his earliest play testing of Sorcerer was inspired by stuff like the Mortal Kombat movie and Sorcerer and Sword's primary reference is Conan! Sorcerer really is a game all about Sex and Violence, really it is.
So let me show you how Humanity works in a violent/adventurous setting by doing something that Ron really hates, mapping Humanity to a pre-existing story. But please bear in mind that I'm doing this for illustration purposes only with A LOT of assumptions. I'm assuming first of all that the game plays out exactly as this story goes, it is a guide for how Humanity would be handled in a game that went like this, NOT as an example how to prepare or otherwise plan for MAKING a game that goes like this.
So, I've been reading Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. One of my favorites has been Jewels in the Forest. The setup is that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are off to find this ancient sorcerer's house that supposedly contains a fortune in treasure.
They arrive late and are supprised to find a small peasent family living nearby. They decide to pay the peasents for room and board. But in addition they proceed to entertain the peasents with stories and magic tricks. (Humanity Gain checks for both characters).
As they set off the next morning the youngest child of the peasent family begs them not to go as she believes the place they are going is protected by an evil giant. They dismiss her warning as fanciful childhood fear. (No check or gain either way. They don't really devalue her genuine concern, they just don't believe the source of her concern is real. This is highly personal decision on my part and may very well be a Check in the eys of some GMs.)
Upon arriving at the house they discover that their primary rival for the treasure and six of his guards have arrived first. They end up in a long extended battle with the guards and end up killing all six of them. (No check or gain, either way. I'll explain why in a minute).
Inside the house they find their rival cowering in a room claiming that "it" is toying with him. In a blind panic the rival attacks Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and they kill him. (Humainty Check for both characters. Why? It is established earlier in the story that this character is a direct rival of the two characters. The kind of rival that also carries a kind of mutual respect. This killing was personal unlike the six guards outside. From Fafhrd and Grey Mouser's reactions in the story one gets the impression that it's kind of a tragety that it had to end like this. Here I'm working directly off the Humanity discussion in Sorcerer and Sword.)
Next a Sorcerer shows up and claims that he has arrived to banish the evil that lies within the house. He walks into a room and is instantly crushed to death by something Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser don't (and can't see).
Finally, the two locate the treasure and Fafhrd busies himself removing the wall stone that covers it. During the process the Grey Mouser looks out a window and sees the young peasent girl fearfully approaching the house. Motivated by his growing sense of unease the Mouser dashes out of the building in attempt to get the girl away from house (Humanity Gain for the Mouser alone).
The story ends with Fafhrd discovering that the large jewel behind the wall stone is infact the "brain" of the house (in Sorcerer terms an Object Demon with Warp and Special Leathal Damage, maybe Big and Armor). The walls begin to animate and try to kill Fafhrd as he tries to flee. He ends up breaking the jewel in the process effectively killing the house. End of story.
See? No deep psycho-drama. Just a simple action-adventure story about two guys going to get some jewels in a house.
Does that help?
Jesse
Quote from: b_bankheadHey , if mass machiavellian slaughter appeals to you try the Charnel Gods supplement for Sorcerer, It allows you to destroy the entire world! You might check out the review I did of the game here:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9289.phtml
It sounds promising.
There was a theory called "Catastrophism." I think it started in geology (perhaps with Lyell?) and spread to Theosophy and Velikovsky and the like.
"Charnel Gods" sounds like a very useful supplement for widely read folks with knowledge of the historical fad of "Catastrophist" theories.
There, that's the relevant bit. Now I'm going to ramble.
The whole Howard/Lovecraft milieu was only able to arise because the Occult Revival meant that a lot of early 20th century pop culture was concerned with Spiritualism, Theosophy, Cataclysm theories of archaeology/geology, eugenics, etc.
I was re-reading "People of the Black Circle" and it's really funny to see all the pieces that would have gotten Howard sued for inciting racial violence nowadays.
"Khemsa's sorcery was based on hypnotism, as is the case with most Eastern magic. The way has been prepared for the hypnotist for untold centuries of generations who have lived and died in the firm conviction of the reality and power of hypnotism, building up, by mass thought and practice, a colossal though intangible atmosphere against which the individual, steeped in the traditions of the land, finds himself helpless.
But Conan was not a son of the East. Its traditions were meaningless to him; he was the product of an utterly alien atmosphere. Hypnotism was not even a myth in Cimmeria. The heritage that prepared a native of the East for submission to the mesmerist was not his." - R.E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, "People of the Black Circle."
I've got to wonder how much of that was originally Howard and how much of that was L. Sprague de-Militant-Atheist-If-You-Dare-To-Discuss-Occultism-I-Will-Attack-You-Camp.
In part it's the British imperialist in Afghanistan explaining to the folks back home why colonial violence is justified against the wogs; in part it's the pop-culture of occultism. Howard attempted to rebel against Christianity to some degree; Lovecraft claimed to be an atheistic materialist, but his dreams were those of a natural mystic and shaman who does not possess the strength of will to suppress or control his instinct toward mysticism.
The atmosphere of early 20th-century adventure was often inspired by colonial adventures. Howard's Cimmeria was somewhere around Scotland; the setting of the story is based on Afghanistan; the characters and conflicts were probably inspired by colonial British wars in Afghanistan. So the story is saying, "Yes, the wogs believe in hypnosis because they are inferior -- but we -- a more worldly-wise race -- can push them off their land and take whatever loot appeals to us..."
I can't believe that I'm so wordy that I actually typed all of that. I need to shut up.
Hello Red,
Are you still asking any questions about Humanity? I'd like to help, but after two readings through this thread, I really have no idea what you specific questions are.
I can work with this statement, though:
QuoteBeing a highly principled, largely self-reliant man dedicated to a life of violence for the sake of principle/honor/duty is the core of the stereotype.
Now, in the context of gritty settings, the self-reliant killer is often an outlaw, a yakuza, or some other glamorous rebel -- but I always play my outcasts as if I wanted some audience to feel, deep down, that the outcast is a good guy.
You've noticed, I'm sure, that every single character that can be referenced for this stereotype/archetype is also a Big Softy. Show him a struggling young couple, a stray animal, an old but still feisty craftsman, or anything similar, and he'll put his blood and bones on the line to help them.
Yup. Conan. Mad Max. Batman. The whole bunch of'em, all softies. You do see that, right? The inability to see that characterizes a large number of role-players who continually want to play vicious bad-asses who are
not Softies and then wonder why no one wants to play with them, or why they never quite feel like they get the character "right."
Counter-examples include William Munny in Unforgiven, who in Sorcerer terms ends up with Humanity at a thumpin' zero. Does that make sense?
Best,
Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards
You've noticed, I'm sure, that every single character that can be referenced for this stereotype/archetype is also a Big Softy. Show him a struggling young couple, a stray animal, an old but still feisty craftsman, or anything similar, and he'll put his blood and bones on the line to help them. [...] Yup. Conan. Mad Max. Batman. The whole bunch of'em, all softies. You do see that, right? The inability to see that characterizes a large number of role-players who continually want to play vicious bad-asses who are not Softies and then wonder why no one wants to play with them, or why they never quite feel like they get the character "right."
Good point. The underlying reason that "softiness" works is because it creates a space for the player of the badass to accept the other players' offers (in the sense of improv), rather than blocking them. A stone-cold badass who cares for no one and nothing is a hard character to motivate, because it seems like it's in-character for him to reject the overtures other characters make. So such characters are lumps, except when directly threatened with personal harm. (In a D&D game I was in, there was one guy who kept making characters like this, and eventually the other players just started calling his PC "Mercenary X", regardless of his nominal name or personality. It was a little cruel, but it got the point across.)
This why the canonical structure of a badass movie is a) the main character wanders into a bad situation, b) fails to do anything about it beyond primitive self-defense because he's a cold-hearted badass, c) makes friends with someone and gets humanized, d) the situation worsens and the friend is hurt, e) the badass enacts a righteous beat-down on behalf of the people he newly cares about. Critically, note that he only becomes capable of taking such positive action
after he starts accepting offers.
You can ring very interesting changes on the badass archetype by working out out novel reasons for the character to accept offers. Take the movie version of
LA Confidential, and look at Guy Pearce's Ed Exley. He was a 'clean' cop, in the sense that he obeyed the law and refused to take bribes, but he was also a cold and distant man. At this point, he's your basic code-of-honor loner. You pretty much know exactly what he's gonna do, and it's a pretty predictable and limited behavioral repertoire. But instead of empathy being the trait that leads him to start accepting offers, it's ambition. His mix of rigid integrity and overwhelming ambition works out in a really compelling way. (The movie also has Russell Crowe playing Bud White, who is a much more conventional badass.)
Man, you said it better than I would. A lot of the time in movies and novels, the story is about the one time the tough guy goes soft. Rick in Casablanca sticks his neck out for no one... until he does.
Most of the time, the tough guy leaves town after things are wrapped up; it would be too hard to stick around people who know his soft side, I guess.
I'd like to point out a couple counter-cases, though:
--In Red Harvest (filmed as Last Man Standing, Yojimbo, and many others), the protagonist sets two opposing gangs at each other's throats, for no reason stronger than his own dislike.
--In Maltese Falcon , the tough detective ultimately doesn't go soft, but sends the dame to jail.
Of course, they're both by the same author, Dashiell Hammett.
Quote from: jburneko
3) A lot of people have the impression that Sorcerer is some kind of deep psycho-drama designed to produce supernatural versions of Steel Magnolias.
That made me chuckle. Good one-liner.
Quote from: jburneko
So let me show you how Humanity works in a violent/adventurous setting by doing something that Ron really hates, mapping Humanity to a pre-existing story. But please bear in mind that I'm doing this for illustration purposes only with A LOT of assumptions.
...
They arrive late and are supprised to find a small peasent family living nearby. They decide to pay the peasents for room and board. But in addition they proceed to entertain the peasents with stories and magic tricks. (Humanity Gain checks for both characters).
Okay, you could give out Humanity Gain checks for something like that.
I haven't had a chance to run the game yet. I suspect that I would *not* give Humanity Gain checks very often. I *would* give a lot of Humanity Loss checks, and I would probably use Angels, from "The Sorcerer's Soul" to bail out the players if the dice went against them and the story needed them alive.
Quote from: jburneko
See? No deep psycho-drama. Just a simple action-adventure story about two guys going to get some jewels in a house.
Does that help?
Jesse
That does help somewhat.
What it comes down to is what I wrote above -- if I emphasize characters who have inviolable codes of conduct, who hold themselves apart from friends, lovers, etc. so that they will always be ready to commit unrestrained violence -- then those characters have to have some kind of vulnerability in their code before they can be Sorcerer characters.
For example, suppose you have two paladins. One is married with kids. Fine: he's vulnerable because he'll do anything to protect his wife and kids. But suppose the other is chaste, unsentimental, entirely dedicated to an abstract and bodiless God. He would have to be willing to protect the doctrine from heresy, the icons from sacrilege, the temples from demolition. He would have to get as sentimental about the sacred chalices of his religion as the married paladin would get about his kids.
I can easily imagine a character who isn't even sentimental about that. A character who is (e.g.) a Taoist and/or Raja-Yoga mystic. This character sits around in a jungle, forages for enough food to stay alive, and contemplates eternity, indifference, and other metaphysical abstractions. You can capture and torture him, but he's strong-willed enough to make sure that he dies under torture rather than betray his ideals. Characters like that aren't suitable for Sorcerer -- I haven't looked at TROS but they might well be unsuitable for that, too.
There are a lot of unmoveable wise men in old stories -- but they're supporting characters, not protagonists. An ancient sage isn't motivated to action by Kickers. He has renounced and transcended his personality. He makes a lousy fictional character, and a lousier Sorcerer character, because he doesn't react well to Kickers and bangs.
Sorcerer characters should be a little panicked and under a lot of stress. Truly tranquil sages never panic.
Kickers demand a strong personal reaction, and a totally tranquil Taoist-Yogi type is beyond personal reactions. Sorcerer demands the possibility of addiction, corruption, betrayal of one's ideals -- and a true sage has worked through that.
However, a related archetype that might work well is the "Pure Fool" or "Holy Innocent," as seen is Wolfram von Eschenbach's _Parsival_ or the anime "Irresponsible Captain Tylor." The "Pure Fool" is a man in a body: he is archetypically young and open to influences. His reactions are surprising, but he is still active enough to have a personal reaction to situations.
So if I ever get some players who are mature enough to handle this game, I'll tell them : "You can be innocent like Irresponsible Captain Tylor, but you can't be a totally indifferent yogi or Taoist!"
Thanks to everyone for good points:
Quote from: Ron EdwardsHello Red,
Are you still asking any questions about Humanity? I'd like to help, but after two readings through this thread, I really have no idea what you specific questions are.
....
Counter-examples include William Munny in Unforgiven, who in Sorcerer terms ends up with Humanity at a thumpin' zero. Does that make sense?
Thanks. Actually, the first few posts helped me understand that my problem wasn't just with Humanity. I need a stable, mature group of gamers before I can hammer out any decent premise for Humanity in Sorcerer. I don't have that group yet. Getting that group would solve the Humanity problem.
And then there's a separate issue. I often make William Munny type characters -- which is heartily appreciated in DeadLands, RoleMaster, etc. with the right group. But that only works when the whole group knows each other well and has the right dynamic going, and it wouldn't work with Sorcerer.
A similar character is Clint Eastwood in "Pale Rider." Great character in the right role-play context. Probably wouldn't work in Sorcerer.
*However*, as I pointed out in an earlier post, it *would* be possible to make a Sir-Galahad-type paladin who had no sentimentality about human beings, but did have sentimentality about sacred taboos -- consecrated Communion wafers, crucifixes, cathedrals, etc.
That is the kind of killer who would burn a suspected witch to death, thinking it would save her soul, but put his life and limb at risk to prevent someone from urinating on a crucifix. And while they might not hack it as PCs, they might make very good villains for Sorcerer.
If I can make good villains like that, and I can find a group of PCs who can do the emotional stuff, then I might be able to run this game after all.
Quote from: neelk
A stone-cold badass who cares for no one and nothing is a hard character to motivate, because it seems like it's in-character for him to reject the overtures other characters make. So such characters are lumps, except when directly threatened with personal harm.
Sometimes in D&D-like games, I've played stone-cold killers who *were* secretly motivated to kill. They acted controlled, but in fact they were really driven by bloodlust. So they kept the plot moving, because they were always eager to find new victims.
I think the movie "Deadwood" had a character called "Johnny Ringo." Some supporting character said of him : "He's got a hole in him, and no amount of blood or killing can fill it up." I've run a lot of characters like that.
That kind of character just can't work in Sorcerer.
Quote from: DannyK
I'd like to point out a couple counter-cases, though:
--In Red Harvest (filmed as Last Man Standing, Yojimbo, and many others), the protagonist sets two opposing gangs at each other's throats, for no reason stronger than his own dislike.
Yeah, that kind of attitude got my characters through a lot of adventures. Secretly, these characters wanted destruction, and possibly they were justified. The people they killed were not exactly admirable. But the stone-cold killers were not admirable protectors, they were only doing the right thing by accident.
Bottom line: violence-oriented games with large combat components are a great way to collectively create violent stories with William Munny-style stone-cold killers. A lot of gaming groups play these games for the imagined violence, not for deep role-play. I need to deepen my character personalities if I want to create any PCs.
If Sorceror doesn't work for you and your group-to-be...
You might find Clinton Nixon's game Paladin interesting.
There's been a few playtest reports that the 'good guys' ended up acting like folks you wouldn't really like to see riding into your town because of the Code they follow.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5259&highlight=paladin
Clinton's games are available at this website
http://www.anvilwerks.com/index.php/Anvilwerks/Anvilwerks
and there is a Anvilwerks forum in the Independant Game Forums here at the Forge.
Enjoy,
Quote from: redwalker... I suspect that I would *not* give Humanity Gain checks very often. I *would* give a lot of Humanity Loss checks, ...
One thing that is crucially important for Sorcerer to work: your group - YOUR GROUP - not just the gamemaster - must agree on and understand how they will earn Humanity checks - up or down. And in play those standards must be applied consistently. If one player gets a humanity increase check for some kind of action, another player must have a reasonable expectation to get an increase check if he takes the same sort of action.
Your players may start out constently earning Humanity decrease checks, but they might surprise you and start taking actions looking specifically for increase checks. When they do, and if those actions meet the agreed on criteria, you must allow them increase checks.
Without this kind of consistent standard, you will not experience what is special about Sorcerer.
Hi Red,
I disagree with you that Munny-type characters "wouldn't work" in Sorcerer. They work when the group appreciates and enjoys the character's downward, hellward slide for what it is: a cautionary lesson for the rest of us. Sorcerer is superb for tragedies because it actually includes a "moral loss" condition which itself may underpin a story's outcome. And that condition (Humanity 0) is not mechanically mandated; i.e., a character with Humanity 1 is not more likely to do a Humanity-decreasing act than anyone else. It's up to the player whether he keeps risking himself at the edge or changes his ways. A player who chooses to lose his character in the sense of providing a fantastic "descent into darkness" is a very valuable member of the group.
What won't work is the adolescent pseudo-character that you don't see as a primary protagonist in movies, novels, short stories, and plays: the "I'm sooo bad and sooo cold, no one messes with me" fantasy of black-clad lethality. These characters are observed only as cautionary characters, the kind which demonstrate where the protagonist will end up if he doesn't behave differently. Johnny Ringo is an excellent example.
It is a classic developmental process for a young author: making up slit-eyed assassins who care for no one, kill anyone, sneer at everyone, and punish those who dis them. It is, as I say, an adolescent fantasy (and not in the literary sense of the term), and people grow out of it - if they don't, the stories have no interest for anyone besides the author.
It fascinates me that Conan was not written in this fashion by Howard, but was retrofitted into such a mold via pastiche authors and filmmakers. But I wrote a whole supplement about that, so I'll leave it there. I should also point out, though, that Dirty Harry (first movie) and Jules (in Pulp Fiction) are not examples of the lethal-adolescent-badass fantasy either.
Danny, I disagree with you about both stories. Sam Spade chooses loyalty to his dead partner's memory over his affair with the partner's wife (who murdered her husband). That's what the whole conflict of the book is about; the stupid bird is an elaborate distraction. The hero of Red Harvest does indeed find a couple of people to care about in the town; you just have to remember to watch for it halfway through.
Best,
Ron
Redwalker,
I'm going to go ahead and say that the William Munny archetype would work fine in Sorcerer, and here's why:
I've wondered for a while just what peoples' expectations are when it comes to Humanity in Sorcerer. We know that it's the Humanity that drives the premise, and that by answering the Humanity question we are also answering the premise, and therefore creating "theme" or a "moral to the story" or what have you. But the point of Sorcerer isn't necessarily to create a "moral" that you agree with or that represents a personal worldview; it's about creating a portrayal of humanity that resonates emotionally with you and the other players on some level, and those emotions can be ones of agreement or disagreement, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, joy or revulsion.
It seems to me like you have this expectation that to play Sorcerer, you need to create a character with the capacity for real Humanity, which just isn't so. Now, Sorcerer tends to surprise people anyway, in that they find themselves making decisions in play they never would have expected to make, creating reversals that demonstrate Humanity almost unintentionally. But ignoring that, there's no reason you couldn't play a stone-cold killer who creates a compelling image of Humanity by virtue of his inhumanity. All he needs is to be interesting on some level, and the rest will take care of itself, in that the emotional resonance will fall into place.
You talk about "accidental Humanity" and seem to think it's incongruous with Sorcerer for some reason. I couldn't disagree more. There's almost nothing more emotionally provocative than seeing a hated character stay in the game though totally undeserving of it, and I wrote Charnel Gods to facilitate that.
- Scott
* whoops...cross-posted with Ron.
Just a small note, Johnny Ringo and the line about him are from "Tombstone". I love that movie. How about looking at Wyatt and Doc as Sorcerer characters? Doc seems much like a hard-hearted, sarcastic, kill-you-for-lookin'-at-him character, but has a twist that makes him one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie, while Wyatt is almost the inverse, beginning with lots of connections and relationships and codes and at the end, he basically rides all over the West killing people in cold blood.
Quote from: Ron Edwards
What won't work is the adolescent pseudo-character that you don't see as a primary protagonist in movies, novels, short stories, and plays: the "I'm sooo bad and sooo cold, no one messes with me" fantasy of black-clad lethality. These characters are observed only as cautionary characters, the kind which demonstrate where the protagonist will end up if he doesn't behave differently. Johnny Ringo is an excellent example.
It is a classic developmental process for a young author: making up slit-eyed assassins who care for no one, kill anyone, sneer at everyone, and punish those who dis them. It is, as I say, an adolescent fantasy (and not in the literary sense of the term), and people grow out of it - if they don't, the stories have no interest for anyone besides the author.
Well, those kinds of characters show up in nonfiction.
Charles Whitman: ex-Marine, shot lots of civilians from the clocktower of the University of Texas at Austin
Pol Pot: nicest guy you could ever meet, charming as heck, convinced his fellow citizens to kill 25% of the population. Shortly before his death, possibly from poison an possibly from old age, he was still convinced of his innocence and asked an interviewer, "Do you think I did these things because I was a cruel person?"
John Brown: charismatic terrorist who contributed to the American Civil War. He was so persuasive that several of his numerous children raided Harper's Ferry alongside him rather than being sent off to continue the family name.
The list goes on.
Maybe the inhuman killer makes bad literature, but he's *all* *over* the real-life stories of history. Maybe we tend to forget the facts of history because it makes bad literature.
Stories of zero-empathy killlers may have no literary value, but they are an increasingly common description of real life. I don't think zero-empathy killers see themselves as very important -- they're usually willing to die for their ideals. And they usually see themselves as very threatened.
None of these men can compromise their principles. They have already been pushed to the last wall, and their principles are all they have. They kill brutally because their principles have already taken over the black hole where their empathy ought to be. There's no point making them into Sorcerer characters because a good Sorcerer character should have various levels of transgressions that he can make, and the story should be about him deciding which transgressions are worth less than the power he will get in return.
Aside from the stone-cold killers, there's an interesting group of highly brutal killers who exhibit considerably more shame about their killings. General Nguyen Ngoc Luan wasn't happy about shooting the VC prisoner and getting photographed while doing it. He saw no other way to fight. That's the typical outlook, perhaps, that would work for a Sorcerer protagonist. They're sliding slowly toward inhumanity, but they don't have any viable way out.
Nguyen Ngoc Luan had various lines he didn't want to cross. He didn't want a war in the first place. He didn't want a dirty fight. He didn't want to shoot spies on the battlefield. He didn't want a lot of things, but he felt compelled to do them by the demands of his situation. He traded his comfort zone (humane conduct) for power (to fight for his country).
By contrast, John Brown simply couldn't cross the line of disrespecting God. Whatever he did, he was convinced it was the *only* thing he could do to please God. Sure, he got his children killled, but that was a minor detail. Sure, he helped to start a brutal and horrible war, but God wanted it, so far as John Brown could tell. Sure, he suffered physical pain, but that was nothing compared to the pain of Hell and the glory of Heaven. John Brown can't cross any lines. He can't trade his comfort zone for power. And John Brown doesn't think he's a big deal -- he thinks he's just a humble servant of the Almighty. John Brown doesn't think he's an incarnation of lethality -- he thinks he's a fluffy white lamb prancing with joy for God.
A modern-day example might help: A certain James C. Kopp, a criminally insane sniper, shot at least one physician dead because that physician provided abortions. This Kopp called himself a Lamb of God. He didn't think he was an angel of death -- he thought he was a pudgy, defenseless infant. And yet, I think most people would say he had the real-life equivalent of a zero Humanity score.
Zero empathy killers aren't primarily fictitious. They're primarily part of real life. Perhaps role-playing games shouldn't include them, but they shouldn't be mistaken for figments of adolescent imagination.
Quote from: Bob McNameeIf Sorceror doesn't work for you and your group-to-be...
You might find Clinton Nixon's game Paladin interesting.
There's been a few playtest reports that the 'good guys' ended up acting like folks you wouldn't really like to see riding into your town because of the Code they follow.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5259&highlight=paladin
Clinton's games are available at this website
http://www.anvilwerks.com/index.php/Anvilwerks/Anvilwerks
and there is a Anvilwerks forum in the Independant Game Forums here at the Forge.
Enjoy,
It looks a lot easier to run than Sorcerer. Even a beer-and-pretzels gamer can understand that if he breaks his rules, he's going to suffer the consequences.
Conversely, trying to find a group of players who could hammer out a decent law of Humanity for Sorcerer would be pretty tough for me. I can gather folks who are willing to talk about action/fantasy movies and roll dice, but I doubt we could agree about nontrivial ethical issues.
I intiially thought that it would be relatively easy -- just make Humanity equal to Christian grace. But there aren't too many urgent Christian missions of mercy that require the Demonic powers offered by Sorcerer. The average Christian would rather have miraculous healing powers, or possibly miraculous feed-the-hungry-with-loaves-and-fishes powers.
(The White Wolf game Demon, the game In Nomine, and many others have dealt with angel/demon conflicts. None of them really sang to me as much as standard Wraith, where you can IMHO do a nice Christian riff on trying to be a good Christian after you're dead but neither in hell nor heaven.)
I mean, you could decide that God was a cruel and jealous God who wanted his followers to burn down mosques, reproductive health clinics, and the like, but that's just another hack-and-slash game with flavor text by Jack Chick. Who in his right mind would want to play that?
John Brown would make a
great Sorcerer character. Are you kidding? I mean, he was an utterly demonic guy fighting on the side of the angels -- or at least that's how he seems to me. Melville thought he was uncanny too, if you read his poem
The Portent , about a picture of John Brown hanging from the gallows:
Quote
Bt the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.
Hmm. Civil War sorcerer, anyone? I'd call it "The Better Angels of Our Nature."
But I'm
really threadjacking. I'll stop now.
Quote from: redwalker
It looks a lot easier to run than Sorcerer. Even a beer-and-pretzels gamer can understand that if he breaks his rules, he's going to suffer the consequences.
Conversely, trying to find a group of players who could hammer out a decent law of Humanity for Sorcerer would be pretty tough for me. I can gather folks who are willing to talk about action/fantasy movies and roll dice, but I doubt we could agree about nontrivial ethical issues.
Sorcerer isn't as hard to run as you think. If you prep correctly it runs smooth as silk. It just goes in a little different direction is all. I find that paladin and sorcerer can feel very similar given the right humanity definition.
And regarding violating humanity vs disobeying your code...it comes down to the same thing. I mean if your players can understand one, then they can understand the other.
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you but all the references I've read from you that talk about how hard it would be to come up with a humanity definition everyone agrees on leads me to suspect that you are seeing humanity as something that the characters must try to conform to during the game. This isn't the case.
Humanity is what the characters
react to, interact with, and comment on (with their actions) during the game. It is not a limiter of behavior. The same is actually true of Paladin. Your character can always break the laws of his code (and sometimes its unavoidable) but, simply put, there are serious consequences for doing so.
Secondly, humanity and other options in playing sorcerer are rarely hashed out of nothing. It works best if someone presents a vision for the group to work with and then alterations are made to taste and by consensus rather than a whole group trying to make the thing out of whole cloth.
QuoteI intiially thought that it would be relatively easy -- just make Humanity equal to Christian grace. But there aren't too many urgent Christian missions of mercy that require the Demonic powers offered by Sorcerer. The average Christian would rather have miraculous healing powers, or possibly miraculous feed-the-hungry-with-loaves-and-fishes powers.
If you've read Sorcerer's soul I think you've seen the first option for running angels is to run them just like demons. I mean angels are beings so alien that interacting with them by its nature is destabilizing.
Healing powers? No prob, perception (health) and vitality, conferred on the sorcerer.
check out this link
Sorcerer: A Catholic Roleplaying Game (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4598)
regards,
Trevis
Quote from: DannyKJohn Brown would make a great Sorcerer character. Are you kidding? I mean, he was an utterly demonic guy fighting on the side of the angels -- or at least that's how he seems to me. Melville thought he was uncanny too, if you read his poem The Portent , about a picture of John Brown hanging from the gallows:
Quote
Bt the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.
Hmm. Civil War sorcerer, anyone? I'd call it "The Better Angels of Our Nature."
But I'm really threadjacking. I'll stop now.
No, actually, you're not threadjacking.
How about this:
John Brown starts off as a normal Christian who happens to know how to enlist the aid of angels. These angels have Needs -- to see wrath poured out on the Philistines.
John Brown gets a Kicker: he finds out from a freed ex-slave that he could damage the Philistines if he is willing to kill a few slave-traders. Well ... nothing un-Biblical about that: he knows enough Hebrew to know that the commandment is "Thou shalt not murder," not "Thou shalt not kill."
Angel One is Bound to John Brown. John Brown can Punish that Angel.
So John Brown feeds his Angel's need for Mayhem.
John Brown gets his Humanity down to 0, not from getting extra Angels, but from brutally killing his fellow humans.
Just as he's about to go from PC to NPC, John Brown gets visited by another Angel. This Angel binds John and can Punish John at will, but he does provide Grace so John is not an NPC any more. At this point, John is taking orders from the second Angel and giving orders to the first Angel.
(Whereas normal Demons in rebellion can refuse to work for a Sorcerer, John Brown can refuse to carry out missions for the second Angel. Of course, the second Angel will simply put John Brown into excruciating pain for a while until John Brown has changed his mind. Unlike Sorcerers, who have to be cautious about Punishing, the second Angel cannot be inconvenienced or threatened.)
In gamer terms,the second Angel is a Patron -- he gives out Missions. The Missions may contain various Kickers, but John doesn't have a real choice -- he can obey the second Angel or else get Punished. So he obeys (and he has no reason to believe that Angels can give bad orders, since they can mention Jesus' name without writhing in pain -- they're not Fallen) and perhaps in the course of his raids his has choices.
This may be twisting the rules, but that's sort of encouraged, I think. I'm trying to combine the two separate rules options of "angels binding humans" and "angels loaning grace" from pp.48-56 of Sorcerer's Soul.
To quote:
Quote
...what's happened is that a very horrible person is now free to wreak all sorts of havoc without being taken out of the picture due to 0 Humanity.
And to make matters worse, along with John Brown's original stupid self-righteousness we have the second Angel's utterly inhumane self-righteousness. The first Angel, who would probably hate all this inhumane stuff, would then set up John Brown for the fall by lying to him, telling him that he will be supported when he takes risks, and then flipping the circuit breakers when the chips are down, causing John Brown to be arrested, tried, and hanged.
The whole story is pretty repugnant, but possibly some gaming groups might like it.
Quote from: hardcoremooseBut the point of Sorcerer isn't necessarily to create a "moral" that you agree with or that represents a personal worldview; it's about creating a portrayal of humanity that resonates emotionally with you and the other players on some level, and those emotions can be ones of agreement or disagreement, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, joy or revulsion.
... There's almost nothing more emotionally provocative than seeing a hated character stay in the game though totally undeserving of it, and I wrote Charnel Gods to facilitate that.
Looking at
Charnel Gods , I suspect that it would work wonderfully with a Pol Pot-style protagonist. Pol Pot provokes a lot of emotions in me because he got away with everything and led a long and happy life, dying peacefully in his sleep -- although no one really knows whether it was old age or poison that finished him. He of all people did not deserve comfort, domestic bliss, the consolations of serene old age, etc.
Trevis' link to the Catholicism thread is also greatly appreciated. Ron Edwards' definition of "Direct contact with the thematic point of existence" and the references to the Holy Office give me a lot to think about. These issues resonate with me and call up interesting, active thoughts, whereas the "Psyche Junkies" and "Black Wheel" diabolists remind me of why I never played "Over the Edge" -- it just didn't resonate.
Every stone-cold killer you described in your post would make a highly workable Sorcerer character. The Humanity issues practically scream their existance from what you wrote. Didn't want to...saw no other way...etc.
Seem like Sorcerer characters to me.
As to SCK's in real-life and in games, I believe Ron is referring to them in games along the lines of the characters you've described for games: bad-asses with no ties to anyone or anything, no real desires, expectations, hatreds or anything else, shallow, one-dimensional constructs who exist solely "to be bad" and "to show how bad they are."
Those sorts of people don't exist in real life, even among SCKs.
In fact, I think you're still confusing Humanity with "having to be nice." Nope. Sorry. Code of conduct. Code of honor. Etc. (now pay attention) Even one not followed by a character.
"This is right (Humanity definition). But my character, he doesn't care nothin' about that."
Great! Go!
Humanity does not have to be something the character is concerned about or worried about, or attempting to emulate or follow. Yeah, it's a quick trip to the dark end of the tunnel, but so what?
The play's the thing; getting there is the story, and that's the point.
Hello,
Red, I think you might consider the difference between two things:
a) a protagonist in a story, which I know you understand because you referred to wanting an audience, even a hypothetical one, to identify with your characters as good guys
b) real actual people of whatever qualities
The two things are so different, in every possible way (existence comes to mind as a variable), that referring to (b) when talking about (a) isn't even vaguely relevant. Check out my post again: it's only about (a).
Raven's (greyorm) recent post is key to the entire issue you've brought up in this thread. The question now is whether you want to process and understand his point. I'm happy to work with you on this, and I know that Sorcerer pays off tremendously well in play. Is that a goal you want to pursue?
Best,
Ron
Edit note:
This whole post gets pretty arcane, and a lot of it comes down to what's valid in my culture versus what's valid in someone else's. So it is not very high-priority, because with many viewpoints I would just agree to disagree.
Much higher priority is the thread I put on the "Adept Press" forum which proposes a "John Brown as Sorcerer" campaign to try to see if I am understanding Humanity yet.
If, on the other hand, you're really interested in my hair-splitting over "undeterrable," "Miltonian Satanic," etc. the meandering below will interest you.
---
Quote from: greyorm
Every stone-cold killer you described in your post would make a highly workable Sorcerer character. The Humanity issues practically scream their existance from what you wrote. Didn't want to...saw no other way...etc.
Seem like Sorcerer characters to me.
Nope, that's not what I'm getting at. Lots of undeterrable killers are neutral toward or attracted to the prospect of killing. Guys like Nguyen Ngoc Luan and even William Munny are deterrable and feel some discomfort from killing.
Sir Galahad, John Brown, Pol Pot, the sniper from "Day of the Jackal," the Assassins of the Medieval Middle East and quite a few other folks are undeterrable.
Sir Galahad might have no mercy, no compassion, but every kill he makes is a kill for Jesus. He's a fanatical zealot. Zero human connections, total faith in an inhumane, cruel-and-jealous God. People might actually admire Sir Galahad because he fits their ideal of Christianity. John Brown is the 19th century Sir Galahad. The Assassins are a parallel case with sectarian Islam instead of medieval Christianity. Pol Pot is a similar case with Communism, but he's very charismatic as well. These all have at least one motivation -- to serve their ideal. They may also have a secondary motivation -- to indulge their bloodlust.
The sniper from "Day of the Jackal" is very, very professional. He took the job. He is dedicated to his work, and he's probably a sadist. He is going to go for the pure professional challenge even though he is exceeding the minimum requirements of the contract. He has both motivations, but he's not going to be widely admired.
William Munny has a few human connections to his kids. He can put those aside and kill for money. Then he will take his money and his kids and go to a small town and prosper in dry goods. He's giving his kids the money that will let them survive. People might admire William Munny when they see him selling them dry goods, but if they knew about his past they would hang him. William Munny isn't a sadist. He kills because it's a practical way to better his life, but after the shooting is done he takes a slug of whiskey and reflects that he would much rather have a life where he didn't shoot people. He's made a Faustian bargain, and he wins because he gets to prosper in dry goods.
Nguyen Ngoc Luan was a family man. All he wanted was to live with his family. He regarded killing as a distasteful duty. And after his killing was photographed and he moved to America, Americans vandalized his restaurant and called him a war criminal. He made a Faustian bargain and lost, and lost, and kept on losing.
Quote from: greyorm
As to SCK's in real-life and in games, I believe Ron is referring to them in games along the lines of the characters you've described for games: bad-asses with no ties to anyone or anything, no real desires, expectations, hatreds or anything else, shallow, one-dimensional constructs who exist solely "to be bad" and "to show how bad they are."
Those sorts of people don't exist in real life, even among SCKs.
To the contrary. Johnny Ringo is an interesting character because he does have active hatreds: he hates hypocrisy, bad scholarship, stupid people, uneducated people, etc. He is attracted to killing, but has no positive ideal. He is a Satanic figure (in a Miltonian sense) who hates God for creating an unjust world.
Sir Galahad acts with equal inhumanity, but he has a positive ideal. For Sir Galahad, he might hate sexually active women, but he can rationalize that because his God hates them too. So his cruelty lacks the Miltonian-Satanic rebellion factor of Johnny Ringo. And if he's in the right culture, he's considered to be a hero, not a villain, by the community.
Quote from: greyorm
In fact, I think you're still confusing Humanity with "having to be nice." Nope. Sorry. Code of conduct. Code of honor. Etc. (now pay attention) Even one not followed by a character.
"This is right (Humanity definition). But my character, he doesn't care nothin' about that."
Great! Go!
Well, if you could take a look at my proposal for John Brown as a Sorcerer character and assume that Humanity is lost by brutal, inhumane violence, that's one take on it.
Quote from: greyorm
Humanity does not have to be something the character is concerned about or worried about, or attempting to emulate or follow. Yeah, it's a quick trip to the dark end of the tunnel, but so what?
The play's the thing; getting there is the story, and that's the point.
If that's the case, it looks like my John Brown scenario with two "Angels" is the way to go. Perhaps I can pitch that to prospective players.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsHello,
Red, I think you might consider the difference between two things:
a) a protagonist in a story, which I know you understand because you referred to wanting an audience, even a hypothetical one, to identify with your characters as good guys
b) real actual people of whatever qualities
The two things are so different, in every possible way (existence comes to mind as a variable), that referring to (b) when talking about (a) isn't even vaguely relevant. Check out my post again: it's only about (a).
Raven's (greyorm) recent post is key to the entire issue you've brought up in this thread. The question now is whether you want to process and understand his point. I'm happy to work with you on this, and I know that Sorcerer pays off tremendously well in play. Is that a goal you want to pursue?
Best,
Ron
I appreciate you (and everyone else) taking the time and effort to read my rambles, rants, and reprehensibilities.
And honestly, Ron, I'm flattered that a prominent creative artist like yourself is taking the trouble to answer my low-level questions. I sincerely think your time is important and I don't want to take too much of it.
Tell you what, I've posted a "John Brown as Sorcerer" scenario and let's sit back and let everyone tell me if it sucks, and if so, where. I don't mind if it sucks and is totally inappropriate, just tell me why.
If I can get consensus that the "John Brown as Sorcerer" scenario works, then I guess I'll have processed greyorm's point. At which point I will take a bow and feel that I've contributed something worthwhile to the online community.
*If* I can take that bow, *if* people think I get it, then I'll argue about some other things you've said. But that can wait. For the moment I'm not convinced that I've even understood the rules -- and until I take the time to understand and prove my understanding, I sincerely think you have better things to do then read my meanderings.
QuoteHe has both motivations, but he's not going to be widely admired.
Right, he won't be. But, well, I don't see how any of your examples are NOT Sorcerer characters. All of them look very juicy and useable as game characters confronting Humanity issues.
Right now, you seem to have "Humanity" tied it up with "humanity" at large, rather, a Christian-centric "moral viewpoint" or "something everyone thinks is good and right" or even "empathy."
Humanity isn't necessarily "good and right" -- Humanity can be concepts like "obeying societal laws." So, freeing slaves in the Old South pre-Civil War might call for Humanity
loss checks.
In an oriental society, Humanity might be based around obeying the dictates of one's lord, and maintaining the boundaries of social caste. So, a Samurai cutting down peasants in cold blood for looking at him funny would not call for a Humanity loss check, because it isn't a Humanity endangering situation.
Have you looked into the multiple definitions of Humanity? Where the dynamism is that they may conflict? For example "Duty to Family" and "Love" -- now take Romeo & Juliet as the situation. It's all about what you're going to do, run off with your love and abandon your family? Remain loyal to your family and suffer the pangs of lost love? Humanity starts conflicting: one action might cause both a check for a gain
and for a loss. The point is finding out where it takes you regarding the questions raised by Humanity.
Is family more important than love? What will following my heart ultimately lead to? And so on.
So, like I said, "This is right (Humanity definition). But my character, he don't care nothin' about that."
For example, a Samurai story with the Humanity defintion of "obeying one's lord" or "following the code of the Samurai," where your character doesn't care about Humanity would be all about disobeying the dictates of your lord, the seperation of the castes, or the code required of you as a Samurai, all for some other purpose.
You actively work against your lord's commands, you teach the peasants how to defend themselves, a peasant spits at your feet and you refuse to kill him. Lose Humanity, lose Humanity, lose Humanity.
Even if he's doing it all for humanitarian reasons: the lord is evil and corrupt, the peasants are about to be attacked by the well-armed force of another warlord, you know the spitting man's family and would feel sorry for them if you killed him. "WHAT?! Lose Humanity?!" you ask...but he's a great guy!
Yep. He is. You still have to check to see if you lose Humanity. Humanity, in Sorcerer, has nothing to do with being a humanitarian.
Like I said above, it's all about the story.
The samurai disobeys his lord because he wants something, something more important than the code he swore to uphold. How far will he go to get that something, and even if he achieves success, will he end up a disgraced and honorless dog because of it?
If you don't care about the code (Humanity), then your answer is "Hell, yes." And then you find out through play how he gets to that point.
You save the peasants from the attacking force by training them to use arms, and are then hunted down and beheaded by a dozen other samurai for your indiscretion and failure -- because you're at 0 Humanity for saving the peasants. Like I said, it's about how far you'll go to get what you want, and what you'll do to get there.
Heck, he isn't even necessarily dead. Rewrite the character now, and suddenly the game is now about the fallen Samurai trying to protect the village from the lord's own forces bent on slaying his own peasant laborers, infidels who dared to touch weapons!
You might look at it like this: Humanity is the "problem" in the game -- it's what's between where you are and what you want. So, to use some of your examples and the definition of Humanity as "morality," some people are going to say, "Morality? I won't let that stop me." And there's your story: how far does the character go?
And Humanity's definition sets the tone for the sort of story you want to tell -- the literary struggle, what it's all about.
EDIT: BTW, sorry for not dealing with your example utilizing the angels. I find that the angels, as you've used them, are fundamentally unnecessary to the whole thing. That what you've described could be run with straight Sorcerer rules, and none of the funky "other stuff" found in the various books.
Take your bunch of players who are all playing Type A Badass. They don't care nothin' about what nobody else thinks. They are cold eyed, clear eyed killers.
What they risk, their "Humanity" is, maybe "Freedom from Incarceration"
Treat it like an inverse of the "Wanted" levels in the GTA videogames :)
Unless it shows up in a Kicker, none of them are actively hunted by Law Enforcement at the beginning of game. But they need to eat; to stay alive. To get food, you need money. To get money: you will...
and here's where the "Freedom from Incarceration" works. They could go and shoot everyone in the mini-mart, and take as many Mountain Dew bottles as they need. Or, they could rob a bank, and spend the cash. How long they are free, and able to act on their own is the central Premise of the game.
Maybe by framing someone else, they can increase their "Freedom" level, and go back to the quiet, brooding life they started at. Or, in the "Last Man Standing" case, they kill off every last person in town who might oppose them (in which case, Freedom goes up, despite that being a terribly inhumane act)
Rather than being a Cosmic Outlaw, they could be just be Terrorist Outlaws.
Humanity as not being in jail?
That's really cool. That reminds me of the Demon Cops supplement, where Humanity is defined as the ability to go on being a Demon Cop.
It suggests an endgame like in the end of most gangster movies, where the protagonist flees to Bermuda, turns state's evidence, or gets whacked.
Quote from: DannyKHumanity as not being in jail?
That's really cool. That reminds me of the Demon Cops supplement, where Humanity is defined as the ability to go on being a Demon Cop. It suggests an endgame like in the end of most gangster movies, where the protagonist flees to Bermuda, turns state's evidence, or gets whacked.
Yeah, that's a really sweet idea. I have nothing to add, but praise for Fred Garber. :)
Quote from: FredGarberTake your bunch of players who are all playing Type A Badass. They don't care nothin' about what nobody else thinks. They are cold eyed, clear eyed killers.
What they risk, their "Humanity" is, maybe "Freedom from Incarceration"
Treat it like an inverse of the "Wanted" levels in the GTA videogames :)
Unless it shows up in a Kicker, none of them are actively hunted by Law Enforcement at the beginning of game. But they need to eat; to stay alive. To get food, you need money. To get money: you will...
and here's where the "Freedom from Incarceration" works. They could go and shoot everyone in the mini-mart, and take as many Mountain Dew bottles as they need. Or, they could rob a bank, and spend the cash. How long they are free, and able to act on their own is the central Premise of the game.
Maybe by framing someone else, they can increase their "Freedom" level, and go back to the quiet, brooding life they started at. Or, in the "Last Man Standing" case, they kill off every last person in town who might oppose them (in which case, Freedom goes up, despite that being a terribly inhumane act)
Rather than being a Cosmic Outlaw, they could be just be Terrorist Outlaws.
Actually, that's too easy unless there are Sorcerers working for the cops.
If they go to Humanity 0, sure, I take away control and say that they've screwed up badly and somehow they can't use their demons while the cops drag them away in cuffs.
But what if they get incarcerated while they still have their demons? Maybe they decide to turn themselves in for some reason. (One motivation would be to get close to a demon posing as a prisoner or to assassinate a prisoner.)
I thought a lot about trying to get players for a party of outlaws.
I decided against it when I made the following numbers as a sample starting character:
2 Stamina, 7 Will, 1 Lore.
Demon: Boost Lore, Cloak (conferred), Travel (conferred) (Teleport), Perception (conferred) (weird senses necessary for teleport), Vitality(conferred).
A minor criminal who can teleport and cloak is virtually unstoppable, unless he runs afoul of someone else with demons.
I initially wanted to run a game with a gang of criminals, but I didn't want cops to have demons. I gave up because it would have been too easy for the players to teleport from Muncie to Chicago, steal some money out of a locked room, teleport to Tampa and buy some groceries, teleport back to Muncie and have a snack while thinking about how to satisfy their demons' needs -- all while invisible. Even if the cops could mark the money, they would have to believe that a nationwide crime syndicate was at work.
If the cops had demons on their side, they would simply fight to kill the players.
So I think Humanity as "Freedom from Incarceration," while valid for you, doesn't fit my vision of how things would operate.
If you like, I'd be interested to hear how you would handle such a campaign.
QuoteI initially wanted to run a game with a gang of criminals, but I didn't want cops to have demons. I gave up because it would have been too easy for the players to teleport from Muncie to Chicago, steal some money out of a locked room, teleport to Tampa and buy some groceries, teleport back to Muncie and have a snack while thinking about how to satisfy their demons' needs -- all while invisible. Even if the cops could mark the money, they would have to believe that a nationwide crime syndicate was at work.
I'm going to put my not-having-played-Sorcerer-yet opinion on the block and say that the above is not a problem. Great, your PC's have rent money and munchies. How does that help PC A with his kid sister who's hanging out with all the wrong guys? What about when PC B sees a rival heading into the same shop where he bought the book that gave him his Lore 1?
In pretty much almost every game in my experience, character survival, followed closely by defeating the GM's big villain are the sum total of the goals of the game. As long as you walk away, you win and if you beat up the bad guy, bonus for you.
Sorcerer ain't like that.
Sorcerer forces you to say to yourself 'My character will not be safe. I will willingly throw them into bad situations. I will make trouble for my PC. I will cause no end of fear for my PC and I will revel in the experience.'
I guess I look on a propsed story where a couple minor hoodlums learn to summon demons, do so, then use the incredible powers they now have to knock over an OTB out of state for beer money every other week but otherwise lay low like I would see a story about barry Allen discovering he has super-speed only to become an independant auto mechanic so he can do a day's work in 5 minutes and spend the rest of the day watching sports on the couch. Is it something a real person might do? Sure. Could it be considered a reasonable thing to do? Absolutely. Does it make for a fun, exciting story?
Hell no.
Umm, I seem to be rambling a bit. To close, let me tell you about the latest issue of Hawkeye, Marvel's ancient archer. After a recap of Clint Barton's story to date (put on costume, got into trouble a lot) "And after all that, one thing hasn't changed for Clint Barton. He has an insatiable need to
get involved - to right wrongs - and to help others. Maybe it's because every time he looks in the mirror, he thinks he doesn't measure up? Or maybe it's just because, like a cop or a fireman, you are what you are. And Clint barton is a hero."
Your PC is a protagonist. They must get out there. They must get involved. They cannot be safe.
Jaik is right on the money here.
Sorcerer isn't about "winning" by staying safe. It's set up to actively discourage that kind of play, in fact. If you think this will be a significant issue for you or your players, then it's not the right game for the situation.
You seem to keep trying to break the game by coming up with minmaxed characters, as well, but it's just not an issue in actual play. There's great advice in the character creation section about this kind of thing. Having demons that give you all these great abilities just changes the focus of the game to "is what I do with this power worth the cost?" That their power lets them do any number of mundane things with little effort just means that those mundane things drop out of the story almost entirely.
Hiya,
The discussion has moved on to more specific threads in the Adept Press forum, and I really should have stopped it here long ago, as it doesn't concern actual play.
So let's close it now and continue on the other threads.
Best,
Ron