Should players know about Humanity risks?

[Jeffrey Straszheim]

Do you let a player know before hand what actions might risk Humanity loss for her character?  In our current game we have a character who started out with just one Humanity point, and I'd really hate to totally hose her in these first sessions.  So, I've been warning her about what actions will risk her Humanity.  How do you guys do it?

[Danny_K]

Absolutely.  The player needs to know, even if the character doesn't.  That just ties into the whole thing about the absolute importance of defining Humanity -- if you can't figure out what would be grounds for a humanity loss or gain, you probably haven't defined it clearly enough.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think it basically makes Sorceror completely uninteresting if you don't know exactly when you're risking humanity.

[TonyLB]

I could even see an argument for letting the player decide when they're risking their Humanity.  It is, after all, not a punishment for doing nasty things, but rather a statement about the character and their choices.

[sirogit]

I see a lot of possibility in what Tony said.

I would say that warning someone of their actions meriting Humanity checks is the first thing you should say in Sorcerer, and takes precedence over the following:

"You'll die if you do that."

"She's 14!! 14!!"

[Ron Edwards]

Basic answer = yes, everyone should know when Humanity is or isn't at stake, for gain or for loss (remember, these are totally distinct rolls).

More subtle answer = be absolutely certain that you are not using the threat of "Look out, if you do that I'll force a Humanity check on you" to manipulate people's choices about what they have their characters do.

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

More subtle answer = be absolutely certain that you are not using the threat of "Look out, if you do that I'll force a Humanity check on you" to manipulate people's choices about what they have their characters do.

That's definitely a danger, especially if the players and/or the GM are used to the GM putting a certain amount of pressure on the players to push their actions one way or another.

I would think the ideal would be something like this:

GM: "Sounds like your actions would warrant a Humanity roll." *looks at all the players* "What do you guys think?"

Players: "I think so." "Definitely!" "Yeah!"

GM: "Okay, cool. Let's go."

[Jeffrey Straszheim]

Thanks for the replies folks.  It seems I was basically doing right.  The thing is, the characters seemed to always find a middle ground between Humanity gains and Humanity checks.  This was the first session in the game, however, so I'll see how things go from here.