[Sorcerer] The Seas of Cimmeria

[Zak Arntson]

I'm finally getting off my ass and writing this thing up (this session happened over a month ago). I played Sorcerer! My brothers and a high-school buddy were all back in town, so for old times' sake, we decided to roleplay. Two of the players are Robert Howard fans (one at my doing), and the other is a fan of the Schwarzenegger movies (more for comedic content).

I handed them my Conan OGL (from Mongoose), showed them the full-color two-page map and pointed to the cultures chapter. I forget the Howardian names, but we had a spanish ex-pirate, a eastern european assassin, and a norseman. None were sorcerers proper, so we skipped the demonic binding (I encouraged this, since it's our first time playing and I'm not familiar enough with the rules, and nobody's a demon-binding type).

I told them their characters are all going to be on a ship making its way from one point on the map to another. Then I asked for kickers which, after I described as, "something life-changing your character must react to," went awesomely.

Chapter One

The norseman wakes up with a hangover, missing all his possessions, most importantly his grandfather's great axe (remember, they're on a ship, so his stuff has to be somewhere nearby).

The assassin, who fled his home country following some botched assassination attempt, sees through the disguise of a fellow countryman. A countryman he knows as an assassin sent to tie up loose ends.

The ex-pirate quit his trade years ago and is now a musician travelling with his wife. He enters his chamber to see his wife very visibly with another man!

So those are our kickers. Rather than roleplay all the kickers separately, we tied them all together. The assassin spies his countryman entering a chamber. The northman wakes up from his stupor (having passed out below decks beside a stair), and sees a man wearing his necklace entering a chamber! The two, at opposite ends of the hall, wait for the man to re-emerge. The ex-pirate makes his way through the hall, back early from his errand, and opens the door to his chamber. To see his wife and a stranger!

Observation: Tying the kickers together worked really well to keep everyone excited and interested. It helped that they were in such a small living space. It's also genre-appropriate, as the Conan stories tie main characters together through coincidences and common goals.

I let this play out for a bit, with the stranger fending off the norseman and the ex-pirate. Then I threw in a bang! The ship lurches to one side, sending everyone sprawling. The ex-pirate, uses his Past to determine that they've been rammed. Of course, the other two characters don't know this, but all the players do.

Observation: With a group that isn't focused on the coupling of player and character knowledge (something I personally detest), it's easy to create tension by letting the players know something their characters don't.

So the characters react as they will. The norseman abandons his necklace to save his skin and the assassin hopes his wounded countryman sinks with the ship; both run above deck. The ex-pirate, still in love with his wife, snatches her up and carries her to the open air.

The ship is under attack! A mysterious fog has rolled in and a massive pirate ship has plowed into the front of the heroes' ship. Pirates are advancing onto the crew, and fighting has already begun. This was our chance to try out Sorcerer combat, especially with character's saving successes and giving successes to each other. Tension was increased during the combat when all the heroes (who didn't know each other) and the countryman had to fight together in order to hold back the bloodthirsty pirates.

Then, after some exciting combat (it's always cooler when you're there, so I won't get into details), the ship is really sinking. The norseman spies a sinister priest wielding his axe. The norseman and his new foe are standing on a sinking ship, and the priest tosses the axe back to him, hoping to drown him with its weight. As the pirates recede into the fog, everyone scrambles to find something that floats.

Observation: Resolving the norseman's kicker like that was dumb. I'll admit it. It took no effort on the norseman's part. I dropped the ball on that, and the norseman's involvement in the story lost a lot of oomph. The only saving grace was that he still needed his necklace. And the player, in an attempt to save this one, decided that he needed to determine the identity of this mysterious priest. So, for future reference, don't resolve the kicker without effort.

Chapter Two
I believe it's good form to skip the boring parts. So rather than roleplay the ordeal of being lost at sea, we just skipped to the next day (or maybe more), when everyone washes up on the shore of some unknown island.

The heroes and some others get up and look around and see steps from earlier arrivers leading from the sand into the jungle. The island consists of a sand bar, a jungle, and a mountainous ridge rising up from beyond the trees. They follow the footsteps to discover a moutain-fed river. As they make their way through the jungle something big flies overhead, completely blocking out the sunlight. They shudder and are happy for the jungle cover.

They stop temporarily at an artificial pond, surrounded by stone, guarded by a pair of immense, weathered statues. The statues are of winged humanoids and they flank a stair cut into the rock. There is the sign of a bloody battle here.

While the party is investigating, there is a rustling in the bushes and a survivor screams before being pulled into the underbrush. An all out attack occurs, with strange winged apes exploding from the jungle.

More combat! Woot! Lots of carnage and the heroes handily wipe out the apes. Though they see that the apes are stealing people, rather than killing them. The ex-pirate hopes his wife is among those who still live.

The band moves up the stairs and to the mountain face. Steps are carved into the mountains, leading up to an ancient, pillared temple-front. Everyone cautiously enters to find themselves in some ancient temple. The ornate carvings along the walls show that these apes were once beautiful and human-like, with the exception of great feathered wings. They worshipped and made sacrifices to their god, who took the shape of a titanic eagle. These apes must be the vestiges of this ancient and horrible culture.

Observation: Here, I'm stealing liberally from Robert Howard's Pool of the Black One and Queen of the Black Coast, the video game Soul Reaver, and the Arabian Nights (roc imagery). Since the players are familiar with most (if not all) of these images and ideas, they are better able to instantly conjure up the scenes I present.

The ex-pirate uses his past to muster courage in the surviving followers. They become his "band", so to speak, and respond to his leadership. Everyone enters the temple and they come upon (undetected) a central area. Ringed with flying apes, they are in the process of making sacrifices to their dark god. There is already a woman on the sacrificial table.

Observation: Instead of a generic crewmember, I should have upped the ante and made the woman the ex-pirate's wife. Oh well, live and learn.

The heroes sneak up on the apes and launch an attack. Much bloody combat, and the heroes are very drained. They are already having trouble when a giant shadow cloaks the entire open sacrificial courtyard. Yikes! It's a winged horror, with feathered wings, gigantic claws, and a horrible face filled with Lovecraftian mandibles and tentacles and such.

Finally a real demon! I winged some stats for it, and through the use of combined successes, the ex-pirate managed to land the final (Banish) blow into the thing's brain. It flew off weakly before landing into the side of the mountain range.

The apes, demoralized, are defeated and the remnants of the crew are saved (along with the ex-pirates wife). All that remains to be handled are the whereabouts of the assassin's countryman and the strange priest who was so interested in the Viking's axe.

---

That's how we concluded the "story". We've decided that this "Conan pastiche story" should become a yearly event, when everyone's back in town for the holidays. I'm hoping that next Winter I can make it even better. Everyone had tons of fun, even with the gaffs I wrote about above.

My observations on Sorcerer:
. Pulp fantasy runs awesomely provided you adhere to the kickers and bangs as rules (which they are). This is something I've discovered from experience (running Donjon, especially), but having it explicit in the rules reinforces the ease of fun. Our session was the greatest combination of action and emotional involvement I've ever ran. It was great.
. There needs to be a one or two page rules summary for my reference. For all I know, there's one already out there. But all I had on me were the the Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword books. (If there's one in those books, I couldn't find it before we started)
. Next Winter I'm going to plan on more prep time so we can properly apply some demons and go into the rules of sorcery. The heroes already have things that could become demons if we wanted (norseman's axe, assassin's countryman, ex-pirate's wife). Though we had a lot of fun without bound demons -- just the bangs and kickers kept us entertained.

So, Ron, I finally played it! Thanks for such an awesome system!

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Zak, playing Sorcerer, in Hyboria. I miss Seattle desperately when I read that.

If I remember correctly, everyone playing this had role-played before. What systems did you primarily play before, and how do you think that affected this game?

It sounds like these guys picked up Sorcerer incredibly easily. Besides the one kicker going a little wild, were there any problems in play? Anything you wish you'd done differently?

[Keith Senkowski]

Very cool.  Question, what was Humanity defined as for the game and did it crop up at all?

Keith

[Zak Arntson]

If I remember correctly, everyone playing this had role-played before. What systems did you primarily play before, and how do you think that affected this game?

It sounds like these guys picked up Sorcerer incredibly easily. Besides the one kicker going a little wild, were there any problems in play? Anything you wish you'd done differently?

Hell, Clinton, I miss you being up here. That's the fourth time I've roleplayed since you've left!

Let's see ... one has experience with Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, Donjon and my Donjon-derivative Fighter-D Alpha. Another has CoC, Rifts, TMNT, Donjon, Fighter-D Alpha, D&D Planescape, let's see ... possibly others. Both of these (my brothers) are used to a pretty loose, semi-serious roleplaying style. The last one I haven't gamed with since the early 90's. As far as I know, he's played Rifts, Rolemaster, D&D, um, I don't know what else. He quickly picked up on the vibe my brothers and I have and ran with it.

The previous experiences of my brothers lent really well towards a quick and dirty Sorcerer & Sword game. They're used to improvisation, lots of action, and a clear division between player (as audience) and character (as protagonist).

The buddy had these tendencies (if I'm remembering) from back in the day, but they were never supported by the game. He started out expecting a more "traditional" game of skills, equipment, and D&D challenges. But when I layed down the character creation and then kickers he immediately picked up on the style of game I ran.

The fact that all four of us are of a like mind when it comes to fun semi-serious roleplaying really helped. There was no pussyfooting to save a character's skin, or pushing for the limelight, or any of that. That was only slightly from my own GMing experience and much more due to our social interaction out of game. It really felt like a band of friends recounting some old pulp fantasy story with unchecked enthusiasm.

Lemme think about problems other than my earlier observations.
. I should have been more familiar with the rules (I've become a lazy GM: I've always want a one or two page rules summary).
. I'm still kicking myself on  giving back the Norseman's axe.
. I should have included the countryman's assassin a little better. Perhaps I could have tied him in with that priest. Or maybe he should have appeared during the climactic fight.
. I would have liked to include more choices which had big implications. If the ex-pirate's wife was about to be sacrificed, but at the same time, the ex-pirate needed to save his band from death, which would he choose? That sort of thing.

---

Bob, I defined humanity as any unkind actions towards a companion. The heroes banded together quite readily, and the ex-pirate's player really wanted to save his wife (for later forgiveness or something). So we really didn't have any humanity issues.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Lore? Demons? Rituals?

Best,
Ron

[Zak Arntson]

Man, Ron, I've been trying to remember what we did in that regard for days now. Since nothing stands out in my head, I'm guessing we hardly used Lore.  The apes and the big flying thing were demons, but I wasn't using the full demon rules (I know, shitty of me). If I remember right, I just gave them Power/Stamina/Will/Lore scores (either made up or pulled from the Sorcerer & Sword examples). Now that I'm comfortable with the basic rules, I'm looking forward to pulling in demon stuff next time.

The only ritual we used was the Banish of the winged demon. And for that, the ritual was basically fighting the thing. The assassin made his Banish roll, augmented by successes from the other players who were busy in combat with the beast as well.

Also, I found two of the three character sheets! So here are the character sheets. I don't have the Sorcerer & Sword book on me, so I can't double check to see if we wrote things down properly:

Loki (Aesir)
Humanity: 5
Stamina: 5 (Big & Vigorous, Trained Soldier)
Will: 3 (Aristocrat)
Lore: 2 (Naive)
Past: 5 - Norseman (Barbaric past; Shaman's berserker son)
Telltale: Extreme tattoos

Valeshka the Zamorian Assassin
Humanity: 6
Telltale: Smooth, steady, confident motions. Scars.
Stamina: 3 (Trained Soldier)
Will: 6 (Angry, Vow)
Lore: 1 (Naive)
Past: 6 - Civilized Social Rank (Royal Zamorian Assassin) to Outlaw (Assassin on Run)
Flaw: Known & Hunted by Zamorian government
Kicker: Has overheard about plot to frame him. On boat, notices another assassin after him.

We also drew up a chart and left it on the table for everyone to see, so we could all work to tie in the PCs and NPCs. So far it consists of Jake (PC), Jake's wife, Valeshka (PC), Leonhard (the assassin & adulterer), Loki (PC), Axe-thief, Pirate Captain. With appropriate lines tying them together.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Zak,

This is all good, and I like a hefty fight scene as well as the next guy ... but what I'm not quite seeing is that gorgeous, weird, otherworldly feel that Sorc & Sword does so well. A lot of that comes from the demons and how the protagonists usually connect with them in some way, not just fight them as monsters.

I was just looking over the text the other day, and I think I had emphasized the niftiness of explicit sorcerer characters (Kyrik, Elric) and how sorcerous Conan, for example, really is ... but somehow the whole "fighter vs. magic-user" meme seems to have sunk its talons into gamer culture too deeply to dislodge.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

"The ex-pirate, still in love with his wife, snatches her up and carries her to the open air."

I would have given a Humanity gain roll here, if I'm reading you right.

[Judd]

Aye Zak, glad to see your post.

Don't think of demons as summoned monsters nor sorcery as magic use.  I have had players say that they've got a concept that isn't a caster.  

I like to think of the demons as something the character has a dysfunctional relationship to and go from there.

The viking, does he have an ancestor's shade that haunts him?

The assassin, does he have a knife that he took from his guild and ran?

The pirate...dude...HIS WIFE.

There were demons to be had in that scenario while staying true to the fabric of the player's concepts.  I bet if you run a second game with demons roaring, you running 'em in 5th gear and pushing bangs to and fro the game is going to take off in amazing directions.

When the pirate goes out whoring to get back at his wife...suggestion that its a Contact.

When the viking says that his uncle was stronger than his grandfather ever was, suggestion that he summon him to show.

When the assassin wants to find a deadly poison...suddenly, that can be an act of sorcery.

Get them away from the idea that sorcery has to do with circles in chalk, pentagrams and robed folk chanting.

And when they want something, dare 'em to summon help.

Hope this helps.

[Judd]

Humanity is: Being true to one's culture in foreign lands.

Humanity gain: Risking one's life to show the superiority of one's culture.

Risking one's life to live up to a cultural ideal.

Humanity loss:  Showing your people as weak.

Going against a cultural more.

Demons are: relics of one's culture or someone who allows a person to display a part of that culture.

I dunno, does that fit your game?

[Zak Arntson]

Ron, it wasn't a fighter vs. magic user issue (at least, I hope not, as that's not something I see); it was my lack of pushing any sorcery mechanics. I presented the game as rules for fighting with kickers, and this sorcery thing we're not getting into yet. Which means now that we've figured out the feel of the dice rolling and combat, I'm going to try and dive into sorcery and demons next Winter.

Paka, the true to one's culture would be a cool thing to emphasize, especially in a Conan-style game. Everyone's very conscious of where they are from (and everyone else is from), from physical makeup to cultural reactions. I'll adopt that for next time we play.

Next time, I'll have more prep time, and I'll write up a one-sheet quick rules summary with all the sorcery stuff right in front of me. That should help with the off-the-cuff suggestions of different rituals.

[Ben Morgan]

Zak,

Regarding the axe, maybe the priest did something to it before giving it back. Something nasty that's going to show itself later on. Maybe there's a particularly unruly demon bound in it now. Remember, if something seems just a little too easy, it's probably a trap.

-- Ben

[Zak Arntson]

Ben, you rule. This whole thread will be my guide for this coming Winter.