(Sorcerer)Psychic Residue - Actual Play

[sirogit]

This saturday was the character-generation session for my Psychic Residue Sorcerer game http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13099

Here's the Characters I got

Name: Carter Jenkins
Player Name: Chris H

Appearance: Handomse, naive, well cutt expensive clothes, skinny/wiry, dark hair, green eyes
Telltale: Strange things appear in his eyes' reflections

Humanity 6
Stamina 3 Clean Living
Will 6 Do-Gooder
Lore 1 Outsider
Cover 6 Lawyer
Price -1 Still in Denial

Kicker: Has arranged to meet Maximilian Price for the offer of an edge that could win a desperate case. Maximillian brought him a surreal dark force, which Carter recognized as devilish, but accepted none the less.

Demon name: The Counselor
Demon Type: Inconspicious
Telltale: Appears in the reflections of Carter's eyes.
General Appearance: Shadowy, dmeonic, surreal.
Bound to: Carter Jenkins
Binding Strength: ?

Stamina 3
Will 5
Lore 3
Power 5

Desire: Power
Need: To Win Cases

Abilities:
Perception(Confers)Percieve the events that others feel guilty about.
Travel: Can teleport through shadowy areas
Boost Cover: Provides legal resources for Carter

Name: Aaron Hyde
Player Name: Chris M

Appearance: ?
Telltale: Strange, artistic burns on hands

Humanity 6
Stamina 6 Rough Job + Hardened
Will 2 Ragefull & Vengefull
Lore 2 Apprentice
Cover 6 Welder
Price -1 Disfigurement

Kicker: An old schoolmate has stolen some of his old sculptures and is making in roads into the art wold. In the news, a dead body was found inside of the schoolmate's art exhibit.

Demon Name: The Muse
Demon Type: Object
Telltale: Acrid Odor
General Appearance: A spark of energy which infests the end of an ordinary looking blow torch
Bound to: Aaron Hyde
Binding Strength: ?

Stamina 7
Will 8
Lore 7
Power 8

Desire: Creation/Artistry
Need: Move people to extremes

Abilities:
Spawn: Infects welded sculptures with its energy
Warp: Weld objects
Taint: The art provokes emotional outburst
Special Damage: Flames for the blowtorch, various nasty weapons for the sculptures.
Hint: The sculptures contain disturbing messages.
Confuse: Blowtorch can create a distracting light
Perception(Confers)Insight into Beauty

Name: Peter Smythe
Player Name: Marc Marshall

Appearance: Thin build. Thick, straight, short black hair. HGlasses.
Telltale: Appears to be in Shadow

Humanity 4
Stamina 1 Frail
Will 4 Calculating
Lore 5 Loner
Cover 4 Electrician
Price -1 Detached

Kicker: His demon has told him that maximilian price has given sorcerous power to a young lawyer for a very bad reason.

Demon name: The Lying Informant
Demon Type: Inconspicious
Telltale: ?
General Appearance: Invisable, sinsiter voice in Peter's head.
Bound to: Peter Smythe
Binding Strength: ?

Stamina 3
Will 4
Lore 3
Power 4

Desire: Corruption
Need: Point Peter in the direction of Moral crimes

Abilities:
Perception - Hear negative thoughts

More to follow.

[sirogit]

The character creation was pretty short(one and a half hour)so I think a few minor mistakes were made, and I didn't really have enough time to go in detail with people's concepts. But none the less I think the character's turned out pretty good. Here's my concerns:

Nitpicky concerns:
I forgot to mention the +5 scores having two descriptors. I'll suggest it to Chris H as Social competence would fit for his character.

Marc wrote "Calculating" as his Will descriptor, which wasn't on the list. I'm wondering if he didn't find any descriptors he'd think would fit.

I think the Lying Informant's Lore should be equal to its abiltiies, being 1.

More serious concerns:
I'm a little anxious about how to handle Max Price, as he's a big tie-in between the characters and a big part of where they started interacting with each other creatively. I don't want him to be the bad guy that has to be stopped, so I'll have to handle him with care.

I noticed that there was a drift towards "demons" that are strongly identifiable with Demons. That seems to be a usual circumstance of the way I describe demons, and I didn't want to tell players that their demon cannot have christian-influences if it isn't against the aesthetic, it just drifted the aesthetic closer to something else. It isn't a big problem, as I think the demon aesthetic among the group is pretty tight. I'll just have to throw in some Tim Burton along with the Cronenberg and Lynch, etc.

My brother, Chris M, expressed some concern over how to use his demon in a way that wasn't "Superheroy". I suggested the following:

Use the demon with a compelling reason  vs using the demon for an unintereasting reason.
Treat the demon as a malevolent, external force vs treating the demon as the character's powers.
The demon complicates life and is struggled with vs the demon is obiedient and nice.

Any other suggestions on that?

Extra note: I finally started watching Twin Peaks, and I have to say I agree with the other people said the Humanity definition was right on, down to theme music for Humanity gain rolls(The opening theme) and Humanity checks.

[sirogit]

I made some nifty handouts available at the bottom for this game:

http://www.geocities.com/judasvisc/link.html

Here's a short summary of what happened in play:
Aaron(Played by Chris M.)
(Before play, changed his kicker to "Was called by Maximiliian, Price, offering to manage him as an artist." as he thought it would create a better reaction from his character, and left the other idea as a hook I could throw in later.)

Overjoyed that he would finally get his big chance, ran home and created a masterpiece devoted to his current state of mind, a sculpture of his boss's head being crushed by a girder. His torch demanded that someone understand it, so Aaron ran out and tried to pick out a random street goer, but as she proved too fast resorted to coercing an old lady in a walker. (Giving her to his demon was a Humanity check.)

As his demon was quite hungry when he showed it to her, she collapsed on the spot. She's now stuffed inside of a locked room. He was then visited by a smiling woman from Mr.Price, come to drive him over to the studio.

-------------------

Carter:(Played by Chris H)
Visited by Max price, offered sorcerous help, initially reluctant but eventually accepts the demon's help when it appears to him in a car ride over to his latest case.

There was a bit of a problem here, in that Chris H. had turned to me and said "Hmm. I don't think my character would accept that sort of help, but I think I should so the story goes on." Which made serious red lights go on in my head.

The problem is linked to the first session, in which he wanted the acceptance of his demon to be his kicker, I told him "Well, if you want that as your kicker, you have to choose to bind the demon despite the costs, in order for your character to be, y'know, a sorcerer." and he was like "Yeah, he would, he has this really important case coming along."  And I'm guessing that detail was forgotten in the two weeks between play.

The problem really didn't interrupt the session or anything, as I and Chris H. have this complete lack of friction between us and he opts that his character takes it and seems to run it off as a very credible decision. I'm not really sure if I should try to remedy the situation or how.

So he wins the case(after a Humanity Gain for consoling and staying by her), learns that his client is somewhat more emotionally unstable than her appearance would indicate, he asks for them to have dinner with friends to celebrate and she strongly agrees. Carter meets her mom, a rather unaffectionate indivdiual, and Chris is showing really big suspcions about her.

His client invites him to her room, which is strangely poorly decorated, and shows him a hidden note. Its the kidnapper's letter to her, something she wouldn't let out in the trial even though it damned her. She pulls out obscene amounts of hundred dollars if he'll help her. He tells her very squarely that he should and will help her because of her situation, not because of her money(Humanity Gain)

-------------

Peter:(Played by Marc.)

When he saw Maximillian price on the street and was told that he gave a young lawyer psychic power for "a very bad reason", he opted not to follow him(Probably something to do with how I told him that his Stamina 1 would be problematic in some situations.) and instead attempt to locate people he's talked to. after some research via his demon, finds out its carter jenkins, head's over to the trial after Carter has rushed off with his client, and than chases them to lurk outside of his client's mansion.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Ah, actual play!

My call on Chris' "well, I ought to do it for the story" comment is this: when a player says this, especially in Sorcerer, he or she will often be surprised when you say, "screw 'the story,'" respond as if the character had been directed/played by the player "in character" (i.e. not in the do-the-story mode), and move on.

Best,
Ron

[Ben Morgan]

I'm a little anxious about how to handle Max Price, as he's a big tie-in between the characters and a big part of where they started interacting with each other creatively. I don't want him to be the bad guy that has to be stopped, so I'll have to handle him with care.

My advice re: Max Price is to keep him in the background for the most part. Only make him accessible when it suits you. Have him help the characters out (in a fairly minor way at first), but then let them discover some things about him that make his motives suspect, only to have him help them out again, this time, in a really big, really immediate kind of way. Ta da! Player Choice: "Accept help from someone I strongly suspect is a bad guy, possibly letting him draw me (even further) into his schemes, or attempt to go it alone, and probably get really screwed in the process." Either one can be interesting. I get the feeling that Price is a guy who's not working against the characters, nor is he working for them. He has his own agenda, which occasionally coincides with that of the players, and sometimes runs counter to it.

There was a bit of a problem here, in that Chris H. had turned to me and said "Hmm. I don't think my character would accept that sort of help, but I think I should so the story goes on." Which made serious red lights go on in my head.

This sets off all kind of sirens for me as well. By definition, a Sorcerer player character is someone who is willing to go to any length to get what they want. It seem to me that the idea that any and all character concepts will make good characters is a distressingly common fallacy. If the character "wouldn't go there", they're not a Sorcerer PC (they may be a fantastic PC in another game, but not Sorcerer).

-- Ben

[sirogit]

Ron:

Sounds like a good idea. I'll definately want to put a word in for that at the beginning of next session.

Ben:

One one level you're right, and on the other hand, its a little sticky to go back now and tell him to change his character, and it he doesn't seem to have any trouble getting into quality play right now. I'll chalk it up for another thing thats important to emphasize very clearly.

I'm somewhat worried about my prep for next session: I'm coming up with a lot of intereasting material for possible occurences, but not a whole lot of Bangs, or terribly powerfull bangs. Here it is:






SPOILER ALERT FOR MY PLAYERS(MOSTLY CHRIS(S)):






Carter:
Starting the session off with him waiting for dinner guests to arrive. The tv's one, Casey wants to show him some home movies and bring him some lemonade, being the sweet hokey girl she is.

Bang: The Home movie enters a choppy part, just when it stops by little Casey packing something away. In the video there is a man dressed all in black, Its Carter, but he's older and deformed. Casey gets upset at the tv fuzz and stops the tape, getting up to get another tape. The deformed Carter doesn't stop though, and keeps walking closer to the screen, and telling the fourth wall "Its the counselor. Call for me."
(Taken from a damn-ass scary dream when I was 16.)

At dinner, Mrs.darcy is belittling the other guests, James and Bill, Thomas's limo driver and accountant, respectively, as well as Casey. Everyone seems to quietly accept it.

Bang: Mrs. Darcy tells Casey "You are not my daughter. You should be gratefull you got off of prison, where white trash belongs."  

Later on, Carter might meet Bill, James in another setting. They act a lot more relaxed and natural than in the dinner. Casey's icy and hurt from dinner. Bill's pretty sweet on Casey. James acts a lot more comfortable around her.

Bang: James tries to get Casey to take some cocaine, to even her out after what happened, she refuses weakly but seems tempted. James pushes it more.

Bang: Peter's eventual meeting with Carter.






Peter:

Bang: Meeting Carter.

Bang: If he cramps Max's style, he finds himself assaulted by a beutifull, uncommunitive young woman with sunken, pitch black and impossible strength. After the assult the young woman just dies, and her eyes look normal.

Bang: If he gets knocked out, he'll wake up into a state of having no control of his body for minutes.
(Other damn-ass scary thing when I was 16.)






Aaron:
Goes to the art studio. Max and David Arc are unavailable. should be easy to see in a newspaper:

Bang: The paper says that a corpse was found in David's art studio, he has become impossible to find and Max is held for questioning.

Possibly meet up with other artists, Beth and Jack.

Bang: Someone informs Aaron that the reason that Max was never interested in Aaron's work before despite Kerry's recomendation is that David told Max that Aaron is just ripping off HIS style. The reason Max offered to manage Aaron was because he was unsure if David would be found.

Later on, his boss is going to demand that Aaron show up to work. Angrier if Aaron tells him to piss off, which is pretty likely.

Bang: Aaron's boss tells him that he knows about the old lady that Aaron locked in his apartment. He wants to blackmail Aaron into working two shifts for worse pay.

Bang: Aaron finds out what Price's outfit is really about; finding victims for his demon's need, possession of new bodies.

Bang: David Arc finds Aaron, tells him that he's scared shitless and that people are trying to kill him.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Too many "if's." A whole lot of your Bangs depend on "when so-and-so meets so-and-so," and similar GM-must-shoehorn assumptions.

Come up with three Bangs, one for each character. Have each Bang be something that can happen to that character right now, possibly directly related to their Kickers.

To do that, re-read each Kicker and come up with some additional idea or detail or character who's just as involved in it as the player-character.

You might already have those ideas/details/characters in the form of existing NPCs or demons.

Look at each demon. Have it do something, anything, as long as it has everything to do with its Desire. (this is in addition to demon involvement in the Bangs, if anything)

So much for your prepared Bangs. Now, in addition, during play, play the NPCs. And I mean really play them, not just depict their accents and facial tics - I mean, have them do stuff, have stuff happen to them.

Re-read the section in Sorcerer & Sword: the anatomy of authored role-playing.

Re-read the section in Sex & Sorcery about Crosses, Weaves, Openings, and Bobs.

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Too many "if's." A whole lot of your Bangs depend on "when so-and-so meets so-and-so," and similar GM-must-shoehorn assumptions.

Come up with three Bangs, one for each character. Have each Bang be something that can happen to that character right now, possibly directly related to their Kickers.

To do that, re-read each Kicker and come up with some additional idea or detail or character who's just as involved in it as the player-character.

You might already have those ideas/details/characters in the form of existing NPCs or demons.

Look at each demon. Have it do something, anything, as long as it has everything to do with its Desire. (this is in addition to demon involvement in the Bangs, if anything)

So much for your prepared Bangs. Now, in addition, during play, play the NPCs. And I mean really play them, not just depict their accents and facial tics - I mean, have them do stuff, have stuff happen to them.

Re-read the section in Sorcerer & Sword: the anatomy of authored role-playing.

Re-read the section in Sex & Sorcery about Crosses, Weaves, Openings, and Bobs.

Best,
Ron

[sirogit]

Hiya,

Too many "if's." A whole lot of your Bangs depend on "when so-and-so meets so-and-so," and similar GM-must-shoehorn assumptions.

Come up with three Bangs, one for each character. Have each Bang be something that can happen to that character right now, possibly directly related to their Kickers.

To do that, re-read each Kicker and come up with some additional idea or detail or character who's just as involved in it as the player-character.

You might already have those ideas/details/characters in the form of existing NPCs or demons.

Look at each demon. Have it do something, anything, as long as it has everything to do with its Desire. (this is in addition to demon involvement in the Bangs, if anything)

This is what I got so far:

Carter: Has arranged to meet Maximilian Price for the offer of an edge that could win a desperate case. Maximillian brought him a surreal dark force, which Carter recognized as devilish, but accepted none the less.
(His current client, Casey, still wants to know where her dad is.)
(In getting Casey free he wrecked the life of a young man testifying against her.)
(Is going to be given an abominable client.)

Peter: His demon has told him that maximilian price has given sorcerous power to a young lawyer for a very bad reason.
(The demon arranged for Peter to find this out for its own reason.)
(Max Price has been prepping Carter to release a terrible murderer.)

Aaron: Mr.Price has asked him to be managed by him as an artist.
(Because David was out of action due to the whole corpse thing.)
(Price wants Aaron to make work that will draw in more people for the whole possession bit.)
(His boss really needs him at the construction site, he's understaffed and a hole developed in an important damn.)

I'm considering the following bangs:

Carter:

* Stumbles across a package for the Darcys. It has square writing on it just like the kidnappers note, is large and smells terrible.(Might want to reject this one for being too grisly, not sure.)

* Mrs. Darcy is killed, and Casey's fingerprints are all over her neck.

* He comes across the 17 year old that he outed as a drug pusher, apparently homeless now and scouraging through trash cans for food.

Aaron:

* His boss calls and tells him that he needs him back to work, or a flood could wipe out a whole section of town.

* There's a stray girl around the Art place, she has sunken eyes with pits of pitch black and she mutters inarticulately about being persecuted here. The regulars herd her to a guest room.

* David Arc finds Aaron, tells him that people are trying to kill him and that he's scared shitless.

So much for your prepared Bangs. Now, in addition, during play, play the NPCs. And I mean really play them, not just depict their accents and facial tics - I mean, have them do stuff, have stuff happen to them.

I don't think that's a problem.

Re-read the section in Sorcerer & Sword: the anatomy of authored role-playing.

Re-read the section in Sex & Sorcery about Crosses, Weaves, Openings, and Bobs.

Did so, and the later part of Sorcerer & Sword reminded me that urgency of story is a very vital thing, and that it'd probably be good if I encouraged more discussion during play, as well as a note about what sort of expectations may be confining for players. Didn't quite pick up anything obviously relevant from Sex, though I can now think of several places now where Bobing would be usefull.

Best,
Ron

[sirogit]

The game went excellent. I'll give a more in-depth summary later, right now I'll focus on the high points.

* We were playing in Chris H's house so he could be close to his sick girlfriend. This lead to me being quieter and less psychotic than I usually am. I think my slower and quieter tone led to the game having a much more relaxed pace, which I think helped the introspectivenes I was going for. Probably not something I want for every session but for this one it worked.

* Had a little bit of a discussion with Chris H about doing it for the story, what I figure from this session is that he isn't running into a problem with his character choices conflicting with his concieved notions of a "story" as much as the fact that he is having trouble playing a character who's an outsider to the whole sorcery buisness since its against his type. Planning for an opportunity to change that next session, which should be nifty.

* As per Ron's request, I did strive to have as few NPC-reaction dependant Bangs and as much NPC-responsiveness as possible, and either it worked, or the players just got into the groove of the game more, because I found the players giving me a lot more player-created bangs, which are totally nifty. I can wholeheartedly say that the players are responsible for the best bits created in the session.

* As always, I'm having a bit of a trouble getting criticism, since people are extremely compliementive about it. The only criticism I could get thus far were two scenes going on a little two long and Chris H wanting to interact more with Chris M's character as well as find a way to not be such an outsider, and I had to wrench those out.

[sirogit]

Finished the 3rd session. Here's some of the things that came up:

* Chris H and Chris M are definately in disagreement about PC-cooperativeness. Chris H openly expresses liking a traditional, PC's-work-with-each-other mode, wheras Chris M is sort've giving us that "My guy wouldn't" thing whenever the question comes up, which I'm pretty sure is just him not wanting a party-strcuture and not wanting to out and out say it.

They both seem pretty cheery on not expecting cooperativeness from Chris M's character, so I don't see it as a problem.

* I was dead-center on Chris H's desire for his character to be more in the know about sorcery, we're arriving there very surely now that he's come in to contact with Aaron, Chris M's character. Next Up: A vital, singed document and a white man's Vision Quest.

* Speaking of which, I was rather impressed by the way Aaron and Carter meet each other. After some risky buisness Chris says that Aaron needs some legal help, so he has him go through some of Max's records, finds his lawyer(Carter), goes to leave a message at his job.

As Carter's not home, they say they'll get in contact, later: Carter finds out about Aaron soon enough to call him just when a private investigator hired by Aaron's boss broke into his home, Aaron comes in to find: Private investigator pointing a gun at him, on the phone with his perspective lawyer, all the while the old woman he locked up is crying for help. Aaron tricks the guy into letting Aaron pull out his blow torch, due to an obscenely good roll(Total victory with 8 dice against 2 1's.) I say the guy's permanantly blinded, and Aaron finally picks up the phone on which Carter has been waiting

Aaron: Hey, are you a lwayer?
Carter: Yes I am.
Aaron: Are you good?
Carter: ... Yes...
Aaron: *Click*

I think the group is starting to work together better now that really choice, set-piece-y scenes are manifesting out of player decisions.

* There was abit more detail, abit less actually done this session. Also comparitively few Humanity rolls, I can only immediately rememeber Gain from Carter for stopping Casey from making a rash decision with a lil' speech and Gain for Aaron for finally letting the lady out of his closet.

----

Here's the big issue:

Chris H is going on vacation this weekend. However, I figure the game needs atleast two more sessions to have a nice finish. We worked out to have a game on thursday as well as saturday to amend this. Problem: I'm starting to want more prep time as well as some time to meditate over some my techniques, paticularly scene-cutting. However, I dislike postponing till after break since I assume that it will be awkward to resume where we left off after a month.

Is that concern not typically represented in reality? How wise is it to go into a game with less than satisfactory prep work?