[Sorcerer] The City's Demons and the Wild's Untamed Spirits

[Judd]

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=139350#139350

The above link is the thread in which this setting was created and fleshed out.

Jeff, JJ and I have been running one shots in various systems and Jeff requested, nay demanded that I run Sorcerer.  I had a bunch of possible choices to run but decided to run the above setting because it gives the players a heavy hand in the creation and flavor of the game.

The players read a print-out of the above linked thread before the game started.  I talked about how when creating a Sorcerer setting it is best to figure out what Humanity means and what Demons are first and work all of the rest out from there, basic Sorcer's Soul stuff.

Then I asked them how they envisioned the City.  I drew a picture on the board of the city as a tremendous circle and arrows pointing to the various climate's wildlands that surround it at the four compass points.

Jeff talked about liking the feel of London in Bram Stoker's Dracula with its old fashioned movies playing.  JJ nodded, talking about the Industrial Revolution and we were off to the races.

We decided the City was divied up into Quarters, each run by its Lord Mayor.  The police were very military in their demeanor.  I quartered up the City on the blackboard and JJ corrected me, asking me to rotate the lines 80 degrees.

The four quarters are walled and one needs a visa to travel between them.  There is mistrust between the folk of each quarter and different laws.  

In the middle of the City is a walled in section.  Is it  walled in section where the rich folk live?  Is there an Over-Mayor?  No.  It is the Pit.  JJ talked about how the sewage of the City didn't flow out but ran into itself, into the middle, into the Pit.  Jeff was digging it and added more, about how the Pit is a slum without law and the police rarely go in without a well armed raiding party.  It is a wilderness of its own in the Pit.  Nice.

With the setting fleshed out in our minds.  We made characters.

I went by the 10 steps of character generation step by step with meticulous effort and wouldn't ya know it was the best chargen session I've ever had with Sorcerer.  Every time I follow the book with Sorcerer it pays off.  

This is what we came up with:

Earl used to be a worker in the City but was caught breaking the law in order to try to keep his wife in the high style that she demanded.  He was thrown into the Pit.  It was there he became King.

Jeff decided that the Pit has a king and every few years the Pit King must step down and leave the City via the sewers.  Most are never heard from again.  His character served his term as Pit King made it through and in the process, bound the Sewer as his Demon.

Front of Sheet

Name of Character:  (ex-Pit King) Earl
Name of Player:  Jeff

Humanity: 4

Appearance:

Telltale:  Trophies taken from the sewers.

Stamina 4 Sinew
Will 4 Meditative
Lore 2 Former Cog

Cover 4 Exiled Pit King
Price -1 Scarred casual interactions

Bound Demons

The Sewer
Object

Telltale: Aura of fear, unease in the tunnels

Stamina  10
Will 11  
Lore 8

Power 11

Abilities:

Boost Will (for intimidation and fear)
Cloak
Shadow
Command - rats/vermin
Link
Mark
Spawn
Perception - see throughout the tunnels

Desire: Waste
Need: Wants things in the sewer that aren't normally there.

Back of Sheet

NPC's:

Wife re-marred to a richer man
"The Bag Lady" an advisor to the Pit Kings
Manager - the man who caught Earl breaking the law
"The Dogs" a group of bodyguards loyal to the Pit King
Ratkin - Children in the pit who run errands for pay
Police Captain - the man who goes after the Pit King
The totem pole (from JJ's back of sheet.)



JJ always has more than one idea and it is a matter of figuring out which one would be a better fit.  He decided to go with a former policeman who served on the main outer gate to the outside and grew disgusted with the City and left for the wilds.

The wilds drove him mad and now he is a crazy prophet, preaching the end of the world.

Front of Sheet

Name of Character: none yet  
Name of Player:  JJ

Humanity: 3

Appearance:

Telltale:  Moon-eyed (left)

Stamina 2 Sinew
Will 3 Mad
Lore 5 Former Cog

Cover 3 Outskirts Doomspeaker
Price -1 Paranoidall actions unless in physically threatened

Bound Demons

The Skeleton Key "Goulonk"
Object

Telltale: Gives off red light when turned in a lock.

Stamina  6
Will 7
Lore 5

Power 7

Abilities:

Travel - through one door to another
Taint
Mark
Spawn
Link
(can open any lock in the city)

Desire: Corruption
Need: Wants to open locked places the more mysterious, closed and difficult the better.

Back of the sheet

Hagar the Crow's Mistress
owl's head totem pole, meditative place
spirit of the howling caverns
Gargantuar
Toden Rout, the Fungi Spore Lord

Zealot who follows him, "Nameless"
City guard that likes to beat him when he is preaching

police captain from Jeff's sheet

We talked about the NPC's listed on the sheet.  JJ mentioned that he probably had family in the City from his Policeman days but that they were dead to him.  We discussed Kickers and JJ came up with several but we went with the one that is red.  They sat down and wrote their Kickers down.  It was an interesting and silent time at the table.

They discussed blending their Kickers together and I told them not to worry about each other too damned much.  I talked about Sorcerer's demand for players to be active spectators at times and how their characters might never meet face to face directly but if they wanted them to...they should discuss how to make it happen and make it so.

I told them that this lack of party unity in the traditional D&D sense is probably the part of Sorcerer that makes people most uncomfortable.  Whiel making demons, JJ mentioned the possibility of them both having the same demon, an idea I rejected out of hand.

I told 'em their Kickers had to be something that their characters would surely react to.

Jeff's Kicker for Earl

The Bag Lady, half dead, comes to find me in the wilderness and tells me that the current Pit King is making a deal with the Lord Mayors to "revitalize" the Pit.

JJ's Kickers for his Doomspeaker

All harken to me and heed my wisdom.  On this night the mighty Toden Rout shall claim this City as his own.  Give in now and you shall be weclomed into the morrow.  NOT A KICKER...its a speech

Goulonk, my demon, wants the police captain to be corrupted.  NOT A KICKER

Goulonk is pick-pocketed after I get beaten by the guard and wake up.  A kicker but what fun is that?  Why have this cool Demon if you don't get to use it and have to chase it all game?
The guard who usually beats him while he preaches hellfire and brimstone beats Nameless instead.

The goal for this game is to run it and then have JJ and Jeff each run a Sorcerer game of their own devising with one session for character creation and another for the actual game.  Should be a fun month or so of gaming.

They both wanted me to run this because they had a real blast at the Forge booth at Gen Con and were intrigued by what they read in Sorcerer but couldn't quite wrap their heads around it.  So these next few weeks of gaming will be a Gentleman's Sorcerer Primer.

Next up, BANGS

[Judd]

I am finding what I'm writing to be too simplistic and lame but here they are, warts and all, a few opening ideas:

General Bangs

A municipal nailed to city hall administrative building is up concerning the meditative totem pole with an owl at its top, mentioned on both of their character sheets and talked about during chargen, being bulldozed as a site for a zeppelin refueling tower.

A circus that has come to this quarter of the city has a parade through town and one of its main attractions is a gigantic forest spirit, a giant animal of some kind, that is horrendously mistreated.  A successful Lore roll indicates the animal trainer is a Sorcerer.

A debate between a Mayor Lord and a Mayoral Candidate is taking place and just as the PC walks up the issue of "How to best use the Wildlands for the City's benefit" begins to heat up.

An anarchist is planting a bomb beneath a train just as they approach.  He sees the PC and asks, "Are you for the liberty of the common man or should I run?"


Jeff's Ex-Pit King, Earl

The Mayor sends a lackey to get Earl for a lunch atop the city's highest building.  The Mayor is a Demon (but whose?) and offers the tidbit that he was once a Pit King himself.

JJ's Outskirters Doomspeaker

Poor folk who live in the shanty towns that lean up against the city's outer walls come to him to bless their baby just as steam 'dozers come to knock their homes down.  Something they say happens once every few years, usually around election time.

[Judd]

Jeff's Ex-Pit King, Earl

* Earl's wife, upon hearing about her husband's return to the City hires a hitman to take care of him.  The hitman, a former ratkin, feels bad about whacking a former Pit King, tells him who hired him before attempting the murder.

* The current Pit King challenges him to combat within the sewers, having pacted a giant alligator to aid him.

* The sewer begins to seep into subway tunnels and drown passengers in sewer water in an effort to sate its hunger.

JJ's Outskirters Doomspeaker

*His nameless zealot follower tells him that she is pregnant and that the child will be an untamed spirit of the wilds.  She has had dreams about the birth and knows them to be prophetic dreams.

* Poor folk who follow the doomspeaker's gospel are rounded up and put into camps outside the City for a spirit to devour.

* One of the doomspeaker's children, a city bureaucrat now, confronts his estranged father and asks him to seek help and come home to the family.

[Judd]

The day we were set to play this game we were victims of our schedules and it didn't work out.  With my new work schedule our usual Tuesday nights are shot.

Now weeks, very possible months, will go by before we play this game.  I am interested if the level of player involvment in creating the setting and writing kickers will make it easier to sit down and play this game despite the long lapse.

Time will tell and when we play I will post how it went.