[Sorcerer] John Brown -- tell me if I understand the rules

[redwalker]

Now I do appreciate all of you taking the time and trouble to answer newbie questions.

But I started the original thread on a not-very-appropriate forum.

I'm hoping this forum is a little more appropriate.

The issue of this thread is: "Does Red Walker understand the rules?  Is the John Brown scenario a reasonable take on Humanity in Sorcerer?"

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:

...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.

Now, I'm assuming that John Brown and his troops have very few if any chances to regain Humanity.  I'm assuming every time they do something brutally violent and contrary to the 19th century ettiquette of war, such as the raid on Harper's Ferry, they will lose Humanity.  They will have a chance to gain Humanity if they exhibit mercy and kindness to people whom they think don't deserve it -- e.g. slave owners.  Simply showing mercy to escaped slaves doesn't really get them anything -- they're not leaving their comfort zone to do that.  They're not taking any kind of moral or emotional risk by being kind to escaped slaves.

John Brown might start out bloodthirsty, wanting to smite the unrighteous slave owners.  Or he might start out meek and mild, wanting to use Angelic power to heal the sick.  Either way, the whole party is going to get corrupted and brought down to low Humanity.  Those hitting zero Humanity will get Grace to keep them in the game until they get caught and hanged.  

High Humanity is the ability to make thoughtful decisions on moral questions.  Low Humanity is knee-jerk fanaticism, emotional neurosis clothed in the form of religion.  Zero Humanity is a walking trance state, where the character is a fanatical zombie with no conscious mind.

Grace can act as a buffer.  If a human gets Grace, he gets a conscious mind and he isn't a zombie -- but Grace comes with a high price.

What do you think?  Have I understood the rules, or am I totally missing some obvious point?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Red,

I think you've nailed it. What will be interesting, in play, are the following possibilities:

1. A character who simply spirals down to 0 Humanity and relies on Grace to keep active as a sorcerer/protagonist. This would be a very tragic character, and possibly (although not necessarily) outright villainous.

2. A character who hits the above point, but then starts grunting his way into "real" Humanity by changing his behavior and eventually succeeding in Humanity gain rolls.

The only minor quibble I have is whether the group/GM is oriented toward the idea that angels would like people to have Humanity above 0. Even the most "inhuman" ones ought to, as I see it - not because of any personal beliefs I have about angels, but because of their actual story-role in terms of fictional morality and themes. After all, if they're not oriented toward Humanity increase for someone, then it's hard to see them as angels.

That has an implication for #1 above, because in order to reach that point in the story (as it's being created), I imagine that the group as a whole would perceive the PC as being a good candidate for the angel to offer Grace to. Think of #1 as being an unexpectedly-failed version of #2.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I'm a tad confused here. Is John Brown an example PC in this game? My real question is where are the kickers coming from. A kicker has to emanate from the player of the character in question to be effective in play. So there's no waiting for the GM for a mission or something - the player has to come up with some kicker for the character.

Is that problematic with your setup?

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

The Humanity score as a sliding scale of fanaticism?

I thought Humanity level didn't represent a 'sanity'-type score?

Perhaps its a variation discussed in Sword or Soul? (Which I don't have)

Love the zombie Zero level...and a very evocative and interesting setting... lots of meat for play there.

[DannyK]

I used to live in Kansas, and it strikes me that the struggles in "Bloody Kansas" between the Abolitionist Jayhawkers and the Border Ruffians out of Missiouri would make a damn fine setting for this kind of game.  

They were fighting an undeclared guerilla war to determine whether Kansas would be a slave or free state... some historians call it "the war before the war."  

You've got some great NPC's in the form of said John Brown on the one side (who committed his first massacre not too far from where I lived, hacking five pro-slavery settlers to death with a saber).

On the other side you have William Quantrell, who's a classic psychopath and killed hundreds in his destructive raid on Lawrence, KS.  

This setting also has the practical advantage that there's a cool movie about it, Ride with the Devil .

Edit: it occurs to me that you could use Humanity to measure the character's willingness to use brutal methods... when they reach zero, they committ an atrocity which shocks the nation, like the raid on Harper's Ferry.

[Eric J-D]

I'm with Bob.  I was under the strong impression that Humanity was not a dial or a sliding scale but a switch, meaning that at Humanity 0 your character crossed the threshold and became something wholly other but that a character with Humanity 1 was just as human as a character with Humanity 10.

Am I wrong about this?  This recent statement by Ron in an Actual Play thread gives me the impression I am not, but I certainly am willing to be corrected.

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. [my emphasis]

So, corrections or clarifications anyone?

Eric

[redwalker]

I'm a tad confused here. Is John Brown an example PC in this game? My real question is where are the kickers coming from. A kicker has to emanate from the player of the character in question to be effective in play. So there's no waiting for the GM for a mission or something - the player has to come up with some kicker for the character.

Is that problematic with your setup?

Mike

Edit: The short answer is, "No."

I originally posted saying that I didn't have any inspirations for the system.  That led to a discussion of Humanity.  That led to me writing this scenario -- which I probably won't use -- just to work it all out in my head.

The long answer is one of my typical gab-fests, full text below.



I'm just trying to get something that resonates with me.  

Generic sorcerers who have kinky sex with demons in order to Bind them just doesn't inspire me.  I wouldn't pay $7.50 to see it, and I wouldn't take two hours out of my life to watch it for free.

So I tried to do something that had more resonance -- a socially connected, subtle ethical problem -- the Civil War.  And John Brown always struck me as an interesting figure, but primarily he addressed the problem that I had with Sorcerer in general.

I'm not good at making characters who connect emotionally with other characters.  I've never known a party that's done it well consistently.  I've known a lot of attempts that went wrong.

I also hate it when referees try to get my character to feel bad about getting sympathetic NPCs killed.  I prefer games where it's understood that innocent people get shot if they wander too close to the line of fire.  John Brown is a perfect example of that willingness to kill with utter disregard for limits.

So here's John Brown -- a character who isn't going to compromise his principles, even if it gets his beloved family members killed.

John Brown would presumably be just one player, and there would presumably be others.  The kicker could be any excuse -- this guy was fanatical even before he started Summoning and Binding.  John Brown has to have a crisis that threatens his precious ideas of morality, and any detail of history could qualify as a Kicker.  In fact, the whole political situation was a mass of Kickers.  None of them were terribly personal:  his wife and kids would be fine.  He wasn't waking up with a skinned corpse in his shower.  

I guess my choice of John Brown reflects my dislike of highly personal kickers.  I don't mind running characters with no resources, no equipment, a bounty on their heads, and  a long list of former enemies.  That's just danger.  Facing danger and surviving or not is the normal business of an RPG character.

But when the referee says, "And you dearest loved one is a hostage," I have no sympathy.  Hostage-taking happens.  Hostages get dead.  I'm going to assume the worst because there's no other way.

John Brown circumvents this.  He has kids, he just doesn't feel responsible for getting them killed in a just cause.  His abstract morality is more precious to him than the lives of his children, and the existence of the South is a sufficient kicker.  Any excuse will do for a madman.

From the main book, p. 114:

The theme of this version of Sorcerer is transgression.  Whatever rules one happens to believe in, what happens when they are broken?

I really like that, even though it was written about a specific, very different setting, and it shapes my whole view of Sorcerer.  I get a lot of mileage by just asking myself, "How does this game get to transgress the permissible boundaries and get the players far, far outside their comfort zones?

So I've rambled on.  Someone tell me to shut up.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I have two things to say in this thread.

1. Red's use of "high" vs. "low" Humanity parallels some text of mine in Sorcerer. It is best understood as shorthand for how Humanity might have come to be either low or high. You guys are getting all bent out of shape over nothing with your "am I wrong? Switch? Dial? Agghh!" posts.

2. Red, you may be missing something incredibly important about Kickers: the GM has no authority over them. He does not write them. Your character will never be hit with a starting Kicker like "Your loved one is a hostage" unless you write it.

Best,
Ron

[Nev the Deranged]

Alright, I didn't see Ron answer these specifically so I'm going to chime in (since I've been poring over the Sorcerer books for the last month).

Humanity CAN represent Sanity, but only if that's what you want it to mean in your game. Humanity is basically the mechanical embodiment of the Premise of your game, whatever that is. In the game I'm trying to put together, it actually will be Sanity (it's vaguely Lovecrafty).

Also, Humanity is not a sliding scale. As someone mentioned, A character at Humanity 10, or 5, or 1 or 23 are all capable of the full range of human choices, from sacrificing puppies to donating their kidneys to strangers. It does make a mechanical difference when using it as a score, of course, but the PC is not restricted to or from any mode of behavior by their Humanity until it hits Zero. And then, fuggeddaboudit.

And on an aesthetic note, since when can the Fallen not speak the name of Christ? After all, the Fallen aren't merely Believers- they KNOW that Jesus is the Savior and Son of God. Go ahead, ask one. They can't even lie about it.

Okay, I'm done now, carry on.