Sorcerer and Sword - Under the Blood Sun

[DaR]

I'll say I had a ton of fun last night.  Being able to wrestle a 30 foot croc and eat its heart was just the sort of mythical-heroic stuff I love.  Ditto the epic brawl ending in a double KO.

The one thing I'll note is that I spent a lot of the game not thinking ahead at all.  When I play I usually tend to weigh and consider options, try to find some long term goal, and then work steadily towards it.  Last night I pretty much cut loose and didn't think ahead at all.  Sounds?  Go investigate.  Guards and slaves?  Walk in and intimidate them.  Not a lot of forethought.  But it was tremendously fun despite that.  Or perhaps because of it.

Here's more stuff about last night:

Thing I didn't like

We haven't had a Humanity check yet. In fact, I should have given them Humanity last night: they saved the slaves at personal cost, helped out Rose and Hong, and didn't kill Gurkin. Argh.

These guys are too nice. I've got to figure out a way to start driving down their Humanity.

On the flip side of this, Denn rather casually tortured the guard attempting to get the information before Kunagi arrived and Denn and Noom both didn't exactly go out of their way to help the slaves beyond saying "go that way, and look here for water" once they had the information they needed.  Those could have rated Humanity checks.

-DaR

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Well, that was a fucking explosion of posts. Here's a wrap-up of things I missed:

I'd change my phrasing about it, in comparison to Clinton's, that I'll ask what we'd all like to address next, rather than do next, in order to emphasize that actual resolution is a matter of play rather than setup. (I'm pretty sure that Clinton does that too, but I can see how people might mis-read it.)

Ron's right here, although I actually do ask, "What do you want to do next?" The answer's aren't things like "kill Gurkin," though. It's more like, "Go in search of Gurkin's camp," or "have a bizarre mini-adventure."

3) Related to the above, I see the Denn/Kunagi relationship being inherently unstable. I could be wrong ... after all, it would be totally on-genre to have Kunagi be a somewhat muted and dependable minion for a long time after the fight ... but I think more meat might come from, basically, pushing the negative side of the demon hard, and culminating in the Final Battle sooner rather than later.

Actually, I'm really torn on what to do here. Kunagi's death will mean the death of Denn's demon. I'm not certain Denn wants that to happen.

Kunagi will definitely not be a muted and dependable minion. He's just Pacted to not kill Gurkin, which I think is kind of a funny Pact. ("Hey, demon, don't do this.")

I do know pretty much where the two will come to major odds, though. Kunagi's set on destroying the past and ruling the future. Denn may have to save the past in order to save the future. (Yep, that's vague. I don't even know what will happen.)

[Uncle Dark]

Thanks, guys.

Clinton, vague is good.  I like where you're going.

There's two types of GMing fun I'm used to.  There's the "I can't wait to see the looks on thier faces when they realize what I've done!" kind, and the "Once I throw this out there, I wonder where it will go..." kind.  Vague lends itself to the second kind, providing a seed which will (one hopes) bloom later.

Lon

[Clinton R. Nixon]

We finally continued with this campaign. I'm a few days late in posting this, but here's the new adventures of Denn and Noom:

Week 3: Strange Vistas (Sept. 5, 2002)

"Every post-apocalyptic world needs a communist utopia."
- one of my players, soon after their character entered the City of Truth

This was our first week playing in nearly two months. The summer heat in Seattle nearly killed our ability to play in my apartment after work, and vacations and apathy got the best of us. Getting back into play was hard work - it seemed a bit foreign and stilted.

The lesson I learned this week is do not even attempt to railroad these players. It just isn't going to work.

--

When we left Denn and Noon, Denn had beaten Kunagi, preventing him from killing Denver Gurkin. The rest of the bandit camp near Esarham had been ravaged in the fight between the protagonists, Kunagi, and the bandits. Gurkin whined a bit, attempting to appeal to Denn and Noon by trying to make them feel guilty for the fall of Esarham. Without his slaves, he reasoned, the town would run out of fuel crystals quickly and fall into ruin. Denn summed it up nicely with, "Have 'em dig their own crystals."

With little care for the outcome of Gurkin or Esarham, they loaded an oxalo with food and water and headed west into the Wastes during the night, searching for the City of Truth. In a day, they had made it to a tall mountain range, with Kunagi following behind.

--

Here's where I screwed it up, to be honest. It being our first week back, I had planned a lot of adventure, which involved traveling beneath the mountains, similar to both the Moria scenes from Lord of the Rings (which I watched the previous weekend) and even more like a scene from Stephen King's Gunslinger series, which I can't remember, but have good impressions from. However, this was kind of a ridiculous idea: who goes under a mountain on purpose? Anyway, I could have made the trip through the wastes a lot more interesting, but sped them on to the mountains, where the following happened, and wasn't as good as I expected.

--

The group camped for the day in the shadow of a cave entrance, protecting themselves from the heat. In the late afternoon, Denn was awakened by footsteps, and leapt awake to find Denver Gurkin, who had rigged some sort of device to blow up the cave and bury the characters. (Here's my big railroading attempt, which derailed.)

Denn leapt at Gurkin and fought with him as the cave entrance blew, trapping Noom and Kunagi inside, and killing the oxalo as debris crushed his skull. Denn and Gurkin fought, with Denn finally throwing Gurkin down the side of the mountain, head over heels. He lived, but ran in fear as Kunagi literally punched his way through the fallen cave entrance.

With my attempt to drive them further into the cave aborted, they climbed the mountain throughout the night. It was difficult, but the three waste-worn companions made it relatively easily. The dawn greeted them atop the mountain on a large plateau that looked down on the fabled City of Truth. The City's spires gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the sun, and some sort of odd purple-bluish haze domed the City. Denn and Noom slept and Kunagi wondered off. When they awoke, they saw him in the distance on the plateau, standing in another cave entrance. (My luck as the GM with the cave entrances was bad.) Kunagi finally returned with the skeleton of a ten-foot-tall man, very similar to his own, and cautioned Denn about taking this trip any further. "You go to a place where they kill someone like me," he warned, but Denn and Noom would have none of it, and took off down the mountain towards the City.

When they reached the City's edge, they found themselves confronted with this blue-purple haze dome. After throwing some rocks through it, Noom entered easily. Denn then tried, but found it a bit harder, his nerve endings on fire as he struggled through the barrier. Kunagi could not enter at all, as hard as he tried.

He seemed - strangely - almost distraught at the separation from Denn. "The only reason I have let you live this far is because you have become like a retarded, malformed brother. You have entered a place where they kill ones like me, and ones like you are becoming." Still, Denn and Noom went to the city, leaving Kunagi to his fortunes outside the barrier. They met a farmer who guided them towards the City proper, and they entered its iridescent gates after guards took away their weapons.

The interior of the City was nothing like the outside world. Citizens walked up and down the concentric streets in identical cloth pants and shirts, the only difference being the color of the fabric. The signs posted on the street were in the language of the Veldt when Noom looked at them, and in pictographs when the illiterate Denn looked at them. They found an information booth.

The information vendor asked, "You appear to be travelers. What answers do you seek?"

Denn and Noom tried to explain to him about Doktor Gilton being trapped inside Noom, but he didn't quite get it. Still, he directed them towards medical care. He, and other citizens, kept mentioning that the PCs' "questions would be answered," which Denn and Noom both tired of pretty quickly, as they didn't have any questions, just a need to get Gilton out of Noom. The City was explained to them, though, by medical technicians, who told them that "each petitioner is afforded the Answer to his Question. Then he is given the uniform of the City, where all men are equals, and would work for the benefit of all his brethren."

When Noom explained his situation, the technician didn't have an immediate solution, however. "Your Question is very hard. This will take research," he said. "This may even require the knowledge of the First, who has all answers."

Noom and Denn were curious about this "First." Denn said, "I thought everyone was equal here."

"Oh, yes," said the technician. "And the First is just that, first among equals."

"Who is this First?" asked Noom.

About that time, a screen in the room crackled to life, and a man's face appeared on the screen. "Greetings, citizens," it began.

--

We ended the adventure there, because I wanted a good speech for the First, and didn't plan on getting this far. I think it was a good ending for the session, though.

Stuff to do next time

[*]What does the First say? Who - or what - is the First, and what will he mean to the PCs?
[*]Can the citizens remove Gilton from Noom? Will Gilton get to go back to his time and place, and how will Noom deal with that? If everything works, will Noom work as an equal in the City?
[*]Does Denn have a Question? What is a man without a Question in the City of Truth?
[*]What did Kunagi mean by "ones like you are becoming"? Is Denn becoming a thing like Kunagi? Will Denn and Kunagi be reunited, or does Denn even want that?
[*]Why was a Kunagi-like being killed near the City?
[*]Lastly, Denver Gurkin has sworn revenge on Denn? When and where will he attempt to extract it?
[/list:u]

What we did right

Actually, I was really proud of the way we moved past my aborted-railroad scheme. I didn't have anything else planned, but it turned out great. I formulated the ideas that made up the City as they came to it, but I like it more than my original conception of it, a sterile, dead place full of whirring computers and one living man.

What we did wrong

I already mentioned the railroading thing a few times.

Also, still no Humanity checks. I really expect these next game, though, as Denn and Noom are thick in the middle of life-changing forces now.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Clinton,

I'll be posting about my own Sorcerer & Sword game soon, which will be interesting to compare with yours - we too have had a very difficult summer in terms of finding gaming time, and we too have just picked up the game again.

Sessions #3 and #4 in Sorcerer, with a new group, always have a "whoa!" quality as the players get the bit between their teeth and the GM realizes that he's the reacter, not them. In a lot of cases, the result is to drive to Endgame immediately and everyone kind of sits there while the dust settles, saying, "That was cool, but it was over so fast." It's as if in traditional play, the players desperately want to end/climax and the GM is always holding off, so when that barrier is removed, no one knows how to progress in tandem, as it were.

H'm. The sexual metaphor there is too overwhelming to develop further.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to say was, More Denver Gurkin! What a great character - and those four 10's on that one roll, previously, may be thought of as four "floating victories" to be used as bonuses on something major he's doing now, off-screen.

Have fun with the First. Try not to blow up the City of Truth too, too fast. Has anyone noticed that the Clicking Sands setting in the supplement (which Clinton is using as his basis for the Bloody Sun game) is just way, way too influenced by Beneath the Planet of the Apes?

Best,
Ron