[Sorcerer] First time play

[Maitete]

Hello all,

We played our first game ever of Sorcerer this last weekend, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss in Actual Play, both in terms of what went well/not well, but also as a dialogue tool for aspects of Narrativist play that were brought up during our game.

The Sitch
Our group consisted of me as GM, Ray and Rob as PCs.  We had not planned at all for Sorcerer to be played, but I had brought it up as an alternative to our usual Warhammer RPG game.  Both players are interested in the Forge stuff I've filtered into the conversation, and were eager to try out something new.  We've been playing together for about 4 years, with a mix of other gamers thrown in most often.  This was just the three of us.

We started by just feeling around in the character generation rules.  I kept most of the details fairly dim, and worked with them on concept first.

The Characters
Ray created Ian, a Caucasian American who was really into Chinese mysticism (something he's actually not in real life, but I studied Chinese religion in college, so I helped with concepts), and decided his character had met his mentor, an old Chinese herbalist, while studying, and had been given a "drink of immortality" which had been sort of the like the drugs used for contact, and he had been walked through the process in a daze.  He selected Stamina 3, Will 6, Lore 1.  His price was "arrogant".  His demon was a parasite who provided Boost (Stamina) to simulate kung-fu ability, Taint for the Dim Mak, and Immortal (basically a ripped Past from Sorcerer and Sword).  Essentially, he was a newly formed Chinese Taoist Immortal, hopeful of high-flying kung-fu action.  His kicker involved getting caught cheating at gambling in a Chinatown bar, and the tables flipping.  Weak, but I had some ideas to "spike it" as people have called it.

Rob created Trevor, a hacker with a Demon computer.  He's a professional programmer, so he had it pretty well figured.  He selected Stamina 1 (a pale shut-in), Will 3, Lore 6.  He wanted to have delved into the internet Magick scene, and become a competent Sorcerer on his own.  His kicker was the FBI knocking on his door during a stressful hack.

The Session
I had about 5 minutes of prep time, and I wanted to have some sort of relationship mapping, so I grabbed the first thing I saw.  Turns out, the new Cliff's Notes have relationship maps already drawn up in them!  I used "Beloved", and scratched out a few names, and instantly a cool interaction came to life.  Beloved is the spirit of a dead girl who had been killed by her mother to save her from the pain of slavery just prior to the Civil War.  I converted Beloved to a powerful demon who had been tormented by a Chinese slave-ring master, and sought revenge.  The slavery angle really creeped out the players when they discovered it, and I kept the name "Beloved" when Trevor summoned a demon to deal with the slave-ring.  She was a possessor demon, and her telltale was constant weeping.  Her need was to be given affection and love, and her Desire was revenge and violence.  After meeting up through the FBI investigation of Yin's bar (with Trevor's help), the characters ripped through the Chinese bar using Beloved to kill the owner and Ian's kung-fu and dim-mak for everyone else.  They found a purchase order in the bar computer that led to a "Mr. Feng", who was apparently buying up young slaves steadily.  Prior to the encounter with the big bad, Ian decided to visit his master for advice, super-Chinese-potions or whatever.  When they arrived, Trevor recognized the address as Mr. Feng's!

Confronted, Mr. Feng told them that he used the slaves in his ritual to feed an ancient demon called Jade Dragon, and that was how he produced the elixir that Ian had drunk!

The Resolution
All in all, the session was a blast, and everyone agreed that something special had been wrought.  The characters cared about the slaves, wanted justice, but were afraid of Mr. Feng.  They experimented with ways to thwart him, and ended up shutting down every other slave-racket in town except the one child per month needed for the dastardly Mr. Feng.  It was a moral compromise that they were uncomfortable with, but couldn't figure a way out of.  The session left us itching for more, and I expect we'll continue with this story or another in the Sorcerer system.

Struggles
One trouble we had was precisely describing what Humanity "means" and what sorts of actions should test it.  I described it as "Your sense of hope and faith in humanity, against the degrading forces of modernity and corruption" or somesuch.  That didn't work so well.  I've read Sorcerer and Soul, and it helped, but more initial discussion as to the specifics of what Humanity really means would have clarified a lot of the rules flipping we did.

Kickers were also troublesome, as I think both the above kickers to be pretty one-sided.  But, Ian's kicker resulted in one of the gamblers recognizing his telltale and discovering him as a Sorcerer, and Trevor's involved joining the FBI in a dangerous investigation rather than risk jail time.  Not the best, but it turned it pretty well in play.

Actual play accounts are actually a lot harder than I though, due to the need for brevity.  Please feel free to ask any questions you feel pertinent.  I hope this provided some contribution to the knowledge of the Forge and its participants.

Thanks!
Tony

[Jason Leigh]

Tony:

I'm not an expert on Sorcerer, but I can tell a few things from my experience: Humanity is the key that links the entire game together, and coming up with what it means, how it's challenged, how it's lost, and how it's gained - and how those things relate in particular to the sorcery rituals both symbolically and in real color-detail terms is a big, big deal.  You can't spend too much time trying to nail this, and making sure that the characters, as written, are in tune with this definition.

The second issue I see, is this: both demons scream "utility" demon to me, and particularly the Hacker's demon should've been demading it's need incessatly - and with demons such as these the needs should not be clearly communicated to the characters (the players should know), but the demons should refuse to work occasionally in order to drive the characters toward the demon's desire.  Appropriately playing up the personality and need of the demons is the second big critical thing a Sorcerer GM needs to do.

Still and all, it sounds like with very little prep, you ended up with a pretty good session of play (reading between the lines), so it probably nets out to more of a positive than I make it sound.  Just makes you think, if you prep the R-Map a little more, nail Humanity and how it relates to Sorcery, and really drive home the demons, you ought to have a heck of a good time...

Cheers,


Jason

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Good advice, Jason - with the qualifier, as I see it, that all of these things are well under way.

Yes, as time goes by, Humanity needs to be central. But for this group, you may do best simply to let the term remain fairly un-verbalized, and yet permit your own judgment to strike down like a hammer as often as possible, both for checks and for gain rolls. I bet the group of you will be able to verbalize what rules the hammer within another session or so - without any need for encounter-group type discussions to force that verbalization to occur.

I am amazed and impressed that you were able to harness the crucial elements of Sorcerer prep in such a tiny amount of time. Incredibly well done.

I also want to second Jason's suggestion about the demons. Now that the pack of you are familiar with the situation in play, and familiar with the dice in action, your most important job right now is to play the NPC and the demons as hard and enjoyably as possible. The more you like doing that, the more everything in the game catches fire.

Oh yeah! One task that's absolutely key right now: if you-all haven't yet filled out the diagrams on the character sheets, now's the time.

Best,
Ron

[Maitete]

The second issue I see, is this: both demons scream "utility" demon to me, and particularly the Hacker's demon should've been demanding it's need incessantly - and with demons such as these the needs should not be clearly communicated to the characters (the players should know), but the demons should refuse to work occasionally in order to drive the characters toward the demon's desire.  Appropriately playing up the personality and need of the demons is the second big critical thing a Sorcerer GM needs to do.

Thanks for your feedback, Jason.  I agree that the demons were fairly utilitarian, and that playing them strongly (when I did) was a great balancing factor.  I think as we become more familiar with the abilities and rules, the demons will become more of a personality in their own right.  Beloved, the demon, was wonderfully creepy and forceful, and I think that opened the door.

But for this group, you may do best simply to let the term remain fairly un-verbalized, and yet permit your own judgment to strike down like a hammer as often as possible, both for checks and for gain rolls. I bet the group of you will be able to verbalize what rules the hammer within another session or so - without any need for encounter-group type discussions to force that verbalization to occur.

I actually didn't consider leaving Humanity un-verbalized as being a good solution, it was basically only due to such limited prep time.  Now that you mention it, that may be a good option for the future as well.  I'm going to feel out the verbal/non-verbal distinctions and see how they do in further play.

I did have one rules question that came up.  The Demon Laptop had the Hint ability, and we struggled to understand how that should "look".  Our reading of the rules had the demon rolling its Power vs. the "target" who we figured was the user of the ability.  If that roll "failed" (i.e. the Will of the Sorcerer was stronger), there were hallucinations.  If that roll succeeded, then a further roll of the Sorcerer's Humanity was rolled against the victories received in the first roll.  If that failed, terrible convulsions ensued.

This was extremely confusing.  Did it mean that the Demon attempts to overcome the Sorcerer's will to give him visions of the hint?  But the Sorcerer had to "win" that roll to get to the next roll.  If he did win, he hoped to just barely win, because he'd then have to roll his Humanity against his own victories in order to avoid convulsions and get his hint.

Another interpretation was, the first roll had to "be successful", but perhaps success was determined from the target's point of view.  The wording here though seemed to indicate that the demon was actively rolling, so success would usually assume the demon succeeding.

That was really the only confusion we had, and we muddled through pretty successfully, but I would like to be clearer the next time we play.

Oh yeah! One task that's absolutely key right now: if you-all haven't yet filled out the diagrams on the character sheets, now's the time.

We didn't do much with those diagrams, and my next project is to really dig in to how to use those effectively.  We're definitely hooked!

Thanks again,
Tony

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Ah, Hint. The one rule where the in-game material sort of rears up and becomes out-of-game material. I wanted it to be almost as if the character realized, for a moment, that he was fictional. Or conversely, that the players have to realize, for a moment, that they are "nothing but" a group of people sitting around talking. Pretty experimental game design for its time and perhaps a little clunky for that purpose.

Our reading of the rules had the demon rolling its Power vs. the "target" who we figured was the user of the ability.  If that roll "failed" (i.e. the Will of the Sorcerer was stronger), there were hallucinations.  If that roll succeeded, then a further roll of the Sorcerer's Humanity was rolled against the victories received in the first roll.  If that failed, terrible convulsions ensued.

This was extremely confusing.  Did it mean that the Demon attempts to overcome the Sorcerer's will to give him visions of the hint?  But the Sorcerer had to "win" that roll to get to the next roll.  If he did win, he hoped to just barely win, because he'd then have to roll his Humanity against his own victories in order to avoid convulsions and get his hint.

You read the rules correctly. There are a couple of points during Sorcerer play in which the character is hoping to win one roll "just barely" for optimizing the second roll. They work quite well in play, once you get used to them, but old-school game design has trained people to get confused about it. Part of the point in this case is to eliminate any conceivable way to optimize character design for such a disturbing, "wrong" action such as Hint.

In retrospect, I sort of wish that I'd said that the character does get the hint if the first roll is successful, no matter what, and then have the Humanity roll just be for avoiding the convulsions. Feel free to tweak it in that direction if you'd like.

Best,
Ron