Sword characters

[Balbinus]

Hi all,

As a spin off from Paganini's thread I would be quite interested to see some ideas for Sword characters who are not adepts, that is to say characters who would not view themselves as sorcerors (regardless of how the game might view them).

Firstly, because I may use them myself.  Secondly, it would be good to see how this was done in practice by other people so that I can see how flexible the game can be in creating character concepts.

How about it?  Anyone willing to post some Sword character concepts?

[Bailywolf]

I put together a sort of anti-elric.

Big, beefy, black hair, who enjoys being a bastard.  Never winges on about morality, never gets morose.  Descended from an ancient line of demon-kings, He likes nothing better than raising hell and destroying his relitives.  

His demon is a chaste-white holy sword, seven fold blessed, and hungry for good deeds.  After an especialy terrible rampage, a kindly old sorcerer bound him to the angelic weapon hoping it's influence would teach him some good lessons.  The sword regrets it horribly.

He never cleans the blood off the blade, and enjoys it's pathetic whails as he hews down men and demons alike.  He's found that against 'evil' oponents, the blade is especialy effective, so through nothing but bloody-mindedness, he's set off laying some waste with it.

He loves tormenting the sword, forcing it to kill holy wariors and villians alike.

A Grade A Bastard.

[Paganini]

As a spin off from Paganini's thread...

I resent that characterization! That thread belongs to Raven and Gareth! ;)

I would be quite interested to see some ideas for Sword characters who are not adepts, that is to say characters who would not view themselves as sorcerors (regardless of how the game might view them).

Yeah, that's a great idea! I'm a big Conan fan, and I would definately like to see how S&S can handle such characters.

[Bankuei]

How about a traditional Mongol warrior, with two demons, his bow and his horse?  Although neither appear to fly with with magical powers, each has served the warrior since his coming of age.  To each at night he says, goodnight, and each morning prays with them by his side.  Although they are seen to have spirits, so does everything else, it just happens to be that these two things are his most important possessions.

And if the horse occassionally feels the need to stomp a living being into the ground...well it was trained for war right?  And if the bow occassionally lets fly a bit strange, but still hits the target, it must be the spirit at work, right?

Of course, he has not questioned that the bow can shoot ghosts and things that are not physical.  Or why if he is wounded to unconciousness he awakes upon the horse hundreds of miles away.  

And so the three go about their grim business, ravaging the soft lap dogs of the West, pouring forth with the troops as red ants to consume a sloth, burning temple and god to the earth alike, ending families and sowing grief, taking wife, daughter or mother all...

Truly a  demon's paradise :)

Chris

[Blake Hutchins]

Angaris of Monterral, a lusty knight wandering the misty forests of Aquitaine seeking his lost love.

His "demon" is the personified dream of his lover, which goads him to deeds of valor and desires that he behave as a paragon of romantic chivalry.  Since Angaris is an earthy personality with all the violence and sexual appetites of the average Morte d'Arthur knight, this brings him into frequent conflict with the demon.  I'd picture her as an inconspicuous "demon" who appears as a ghostly figure in his peripheral vision.  She never speaks to him, however, but communicates with tears, rose petals, stigmata, etc.

Alternatively, the "demon" might be the ghost of a lady Angaris murdered, with Angaris traveling the mists in penance.  In this case, their relationship would be quite a bit more antagonistic.

Appropriate abilities might include Boost (Stamina or Will), Travel (follow the white hart through the mist), Special Damage (Slumber), Vitality, Taint (extreme chivalric behavior in others).

How's that?

Best,

Blake

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

The answers so far have actually not addressed the question as I see it, especially as it applies to characters like Conan.

You see, characters in Sword, if the player chooses, may not even start with a demon at all. So we're not talking about "demon as metaphor" or "demon as unknown entity." We are really talking about no friggin' demon.

Let's see: here's someone for the Xar setting.

Aquim Muuhad
Stamina 4 (big), Will 5 (zest for life, leader of men), Lore 1 (naive/non-sorcerer), Cover 5 (pirate captain, formerly merchant), Humanity starts at 5.

Destiny: social position, specifically the caliph of the Star City, later in life.
Kicker: took a captive during the last ship-raid, who's a doe-eyed noblewoman (girl really) who's knocked him for a loop

OK! There you go. A roisterous, fun, loudly-swearing fellow who was once legit, is now an out-and-out pirate, and will somehow become head of a city. Is this babe the key to the change? Who knows?

No demon. No demon. Put demons into it, and this guy is well-suited for kickin' their butts in the physical terms, or matching wills with them as well as sorcerers. He's got some Lore if it comes down to it, and he has access to each and every ritual on the list if he so chooses ("This is something that Spider Priestess taught me"). But no Binding to start with, no angst, no nothing. Play up the Destiny modifiers, play up the combat rules, and enjoy.

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andy,

Based on your post and on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1243">this nearby thread, I think a certain misconception is becoming very widespread.

With any luck this will help: Sorcerer characters do not have to start with a demon, and they might not even Bind one, ever. Granted, in the main rules, that is not the case. In Sorcerer & Sword, it is explicitly the case.

In that thread I just referenced, I provide an example of a character who simply isn't a sorcerer in in-world terms. The only difference from a "fighter" in a traditional fantasy game is that he has a Lore score, and that score might be very useful or important in his adventures. He can use the rituals, but if you consider that Banish, Punish, and spotting Telltales are just as dramatic in the short-term as Binding, you can see that he retains his "not a sorcerer in-game" status even if he uses them.

The supplement provides rules for Destiny and various elements of combat, as well as a general take on the protagonists of the source literature, that mean such a character is just as interesting or full of story-potential, perhaps even more so, than the guy in the robe summoning demons.

Now, none of this necessarily addresses Gareth's concerns with the supplement, and it is not intended to. I'm replying specifically to Andy and also in tandem with my post on the other thread.

Best,
Ron

[Balbinus]

Thanks for the replies, particularly the cool Mongol warrior.

Ron has the right of it of course (although in fairness he probably knows the system best).  I saw someone on the other thread wondering if you could do a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser style game using Sword.  That is precisely what I hope to do if I ever get two suitable players, it seems to me better adapted to that style of gaming than any other product I know (lots of other stuff it can do too, of course, but that's what I want to do with it).

Any more characters out there to share?

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Chick
Stamina: 4 (healthy)
Will: 5 (angry, vow)
Lore: 1 (naive/non-sorcerer)
Past: 5 (Outlaw; roadside scavenger, formerly waitress)
Humanity: 5

Flaw: Bad repuation ("...the wild woman of the wastelands...")

Destiny: Crux of the conflict; Chick dies to protect her son, a boy who will grow up to be a leader of men.
Kicker: was draining fuel, scavenging parts from a wreck and heard a mewling cry from within. A child, hungry but  miraculously unharmed...

[AndyGuest]

Ron,

With any luck this will help: Sorcerer characters do not have to start with a demon, and they might not even Bind one, ever. Granted, in the main rules, that is not the case. In Sorcerer & Sword, it is explicitly the case.

Hmm, not having seen S&S yet I didn't know that. It does open up the opportunities/usefulness a lot. A niggling doubt in my mind makes me worry that a mixed 'party' with a sorcerer with demons might be sidelined by the sorcerer (given the rules from Sorcerer) but until I get the book I won't know if that's really a problem to me. Heh, of course, if I'm worried about 'game balance' then it's probably not the game I should be using ;-)

Andy..

[Uncle Dark]

Andy,

"The Party" is a concept that may never occur in a Sorcerer (or S&S) game.  PCs may cross paths, or temporarily join forces, but they may just as well never meet.  The idea is that player involvement in the game is not limited to character involvement in a particular story.

Yeah, a demon-commanding character can do more than a non-demon-commanding character.  But having a demon is also, quite often, a pain in the ass, so it balances out.  Also, there's so much in the game (IMHO) to promote PC protagonism that the non-demonic characters still have plenty they can do.

Frex, lets look at a fantasy pairing between a warrior sans demon and a sorcerer type.  Sure, the sorcerer has a neat demon that he can send off to do stuff, or who can back him up in a fight.  But the sorcerer still can't do everything at once, and is not likely going to be as good at non-sorcery stuff as the warrior-type.  Mind you, this ain't D&D, the sorcerer is still likely to be a respectable fighter with useful non-sorcery skills.  But the differences of specialization will still make this an equal pairing.

Say, Conan and Elric were to team up.  Both kick butt in combat, for different reasons (Conan: Stamina 5 Barbarian Upbringing & Military Training; Elric: Stamina 1 Congenital Weakness + Stormbringer's demon abilities), but Conan is going to be the one to handle the climbing and diving and physical action parts of the story while Elric is going to be more effective at the sorcery & weirdness aspects (Conan: Will 4 Stubborn Determination, Lore 1 Naive; Elric: Will 6 Regal Upbringing + Detatchment, Lore 3 Meldibonean Royalty), but Conan need not worry about being completely overwhelmed by such stuff either.

Granted, these are extremely different characters, but it illustrates my point: the differeces in characters, and in their capabilities, lie much more in the concepts of the characters than in their numbers or mechanical description.  This matters more than who has a demon or who doesn't.  A warrior-type with the same numbers I gave Conan could just as easily fall into the background during a game if the player did not present an adequately engaging character to go with the numbers.  A sorcerer with Elric's numbers (and even with Stormbringer) would be useless without a player with a solid concept of who the character is and what they're about.  In fact, such a mechanically solid but weakly concieved character would be the GM's chew toy, at the mercy of his demon's perversity.

Lon

[efindel]

Two things that struck me reading this thread:

First, one thing that might make S&S be a bit better for groups of characters none of whom are sorcerers could be to expand the "Past" a bit.  When I was first reading the book and came across the mention at one point that later on there would be material on how to work with multiple Pasts, I was thinking in terms of having different Pasts with different ratings.  Adding something like that would basically give a variable set of descriptors to each character.

Second, reading the ideas about interesting ways to have a character's demon be, I got a strange one -- what if two characters are each others demons?  Take Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, for example -- Leiber called them two halves of a greater soul.  Imagine them being considered to be Bound to each other, each responsible for helping the other fulfill his Need...  Not necessarily workable, but still an interesting idea, I think.

--Travis

[Uncle Dark]

Perhaps the "two halves of one soul" thing would work better as a destiny?  Sort of like a Fixed Star?

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Just saw Mad Max 2 again recently.

My thoughts on it, as they pertain to Sorcerer:

It's totally in the vein of Sorcerer & Sword. It takes place in the future, tho' not far future (like in the Clicking Sands). It contains many of the classic features of S&S.

But here's my thought: the real story of Mad Max 2 is that of the Feral Kid's. He tells the story, and though at the beginning he's just the wild boy, at the end he says (through voiceover) that he eventually became the tribe's leader. So I'm thinking that Max is his demon, summoned from the wastes, with a desire for vengeance and a need for fuel.

Just an observation...