Sorcerer: First steps

[Ragnarok]

Here's a collection of thoughts and events related to character creation and introduction to the game in, hopefully, the order in which they happened. It was a bit confusing.

So there we were sitting around the table when I pulled out the (self made) character sheets for a game I had already told them it was going to be slightly different to what they were used to, and that they were sort of curious for trying even if they knew nothing about.

The manual appeared on the table too. Most interesting comments were about its thickness (or the lack of it) and the unspoken idea of how sorcerer would be a weird silly thing they could get over with in a short while (idea that I corroborated later)

I could see their eyes going up and down, turning the sheets around, looking. I proceeded to explain that no, there were no skill lists or inventory, and my thoughts about them, particularly about coin tracking. Curiosity satisfied and with a mild sense of bewilderment, they started asking about what were the "stats" for, grasping for something they could be familiar with. An introductory "what is magic here and what are sorcerers".

This led to talking about hit points and the lack of a box for them in the sheet as well as death, and how it was slightly different in Sorcerer than what they were used to. Some questioning and testing for bounds, I think it was resolved after appealing to common sense. "The GM won't kill you by decree in almost all situations, however do you think your character would survive X? What do they think about it?" "True, true"

The most experienced player, which had started the round of questions about "stats", wanted to know how rolls were made (I imagine trying to figure out how to best stay alive). No D20? No D100? That drives us right into the land of "Lets see what other game I don't like uses this system". As I explained the system, how it was better than, say, rolling hit and damage by separate, and how a lot of ones didn't automatically convert it to a fumble, and after a couple of "This is like game X! X sucke.. no you are right, it's not exactly like that", there was peace.

Humanity took less trouble than I expected. As you may imagine the experienced player at first wasn't too happy and thought it would be the equivalent of CoC's sanity, then Stormbringer, and then the Vampire humanity (where IIRC at 5 you are a saint that can't step on an ant and at 1 you are a monster that can get away with anything). This last idea was shared by the rest of the players even if they hadn't been exposed to the game. Once things were made clear, I found it positive to tell them that in almost all cases you lose humanity by your actions, not by the actions of someone else (and that sometimes inaction is an action too, of course).

Ok, back to track and let's iterate through the sheet again, giving a description of each of the boxes. Character description, kicker and sorcerer as a group activity captured the attention of the experienced player who quite cynically asked "what, does this mean we write the adventure for you?". No, not exactly. It means you have the chance to play something you want to play, and that the GM creates a situa.. etc. Apparently appeased again.

We also stopped in the demons box to explain the different kind of demons and a brief description of the mechanics to get one.


Having felt they had an basic idea of the game concept mechanics, I laid down the next phase. Choosing a setting. I proposed four ideas so that they didn't start blind. This phase proved to get them to a lot of discussing and arguing. I let them sort it through until they reached a standstill of all vs one (the experienced player) so I threw my weight onto the majority with a proposal to try the setting for a few games and see where that takes us. I found all the discussion very interesting and entertaining.


Once we had a setting we went on to create the characters. I asked them to create a mental image of the character they wanted to play and select the scores according to that, as I wanted them to be able to write something on the sheet to address concerns about not having written anything on the sheet after all the time that we had been there. That took quite more time that what anyone expected, which much shuffling around.

Writing a description beyond "Ok, I'll be a X" proved to be troublesome too so I decided to move forward and come back to that later. They didn't seem to get that it was ok to be whatever they wanted, independent of social position, and they were concerned about how would I control that so it wasn't abused by them. Very weird, as it seemed they were struggling with the idea of having more freedom than usual and wanted to handle the freedom back to the GM.

Next stop was creating a demon. Before we could even get started one of the players (the experienced) retweaked his abilities and dropped his lore even more to 1, as he considered that "it isn't used for anything". I assume he still thinks that he won't need lore because he won't need anything than his parasite and the extra scores gives him an edge making him the most powerful.

I explained needs and desires without much trouble. One issue was that they do not have any direct relation with the power of the demon; they thought that the more powerful demon, the more insane things it'd want. At most I told them that at most having more powers would probably imply it would get used more, and therefore be more demanding to be kept happy, and the usual warning of demons with excessive power.

Trying to get them to give me an idea of a demon so we could assign abilities according to what they wanted it to do didn't go anywhere as they were blocked, so I started reading the powers. "Wow, so... can they be combined?" We made a brief pause at special damage and they finally realized how powerful they were.

I kept nudging them to get bigger, nastier demons but they all seemed to relent. "Why do you keep grinning? I think I'm going to change the power again". All in all, they seemed to get the idea of demons pretty well.

As we closed for the day without the characters finished yet, a couple of observations from the players were :
- Hell, that small manual and that apparently almost blank sheet took faaaar more than what they had expected at the beginning
- One mentioned that "yes, and we haven't played today" to which another answered "not really", which I thought it was great as, yes, I considered a pretty good session even if they hadn't used their characters.
- The game is very loose, and basically says do whatever you want. (I know, I know)

Except for maybe one player, the rest are very excited about the game and want to finish the sheets and play. It was great to see them growing from mild curiosity to this state.


The character sheets I used worked exactly as I intended. They were very dry, with almost no setting related artwork to avoid constraining their discussion on the setting. I did use some so the sheet was a bit attractive to the eye, but outright stated it was there because I had to put one and it was one of the starting ideas, and would get substituted without much problem.

The arrangement of the different groups led them through the appropriate route. Scores, description and kicker, demons. The size, complemented by the arrangement also helped. As I kept my mouth shut it was great to hear them talking and saying "this must be pretty important, look at all that space" "yes, and its at the top, next with this one".


What's left to do is the descriptions and kickers, and iterate again over the sheets to polish things up. I will post the characters when we have them.

[Karl]

Wow, sounds very cool.

I have a few questions rather than any comments just yet. I like the fact that you focused on the interactions amongst the players. I can probably ask questions all day, and maybe it is a bit overwhelming, I have no expectation that you'll answer the questions just because I ask. Answer them if the answer is interesting to you

• I'd like to know just a little more about the players. How did the group come together? What sort of backgrounds/relationships do you have together?
• What setting did you decide on? What was the competing vision? Did the discussion and/or debate bring out any of 'the experienced player's' assumptions etc about play?
• What definition of Humanity did you decide on? You didn't really mention whether there was any discussion about that. Obviously there was some about how to 'use' the stat, but did you come to agreement on what sort of actions would provoke rolls for gain or checks? Did you do much towards fitting the definition of demons and the elaboration of the rituals, either with reference to the definition of Humanity or not?
• What were the character and demon ideas? Did the players bounce ideas off each other much? Do they provoke any ideas for bangs from you just yet? Do you feel the demons are grabby enough? (To use a term from DitV)
• And lastly, you didn't mention the backs of the character sheets. Hopefully that's not because you didn't fill them in. Very Important!

Whew. So many questions. It's because I'm very interested in the game. I love Sorcerer. And in your game in particular. You don't know me from Adam, but I'd love to hear more about how this plays out.

Cheers
Karl

[James_Nostack]

Ragnar, how long did this take?  And what is the group's definition of "Humanity"?  And--just because I'm curious--you mentioned a more "experienced" player: experienced in what, exactly?  And how big is the difference in experience?

[Ragnarok]

• I'd like to know just a little more about the players. How did the group come together? What sort of backgrounds/relationships do you have together?

Friends for quite a number of years.

• What setting did you decide on? What was the competing vision? Did the discussion and/or debate bring out any of 'the experienced player's' assumptions etc about play?

We ended up choosing France XVII century. A modern day world got wiped pretty quickly out of the table and I didn't even bother to suggest anything futuristic. We had a Roman Empire setting (I didn't see this one coming.. ended up being rejected because they couldn't think of anything interesting to play besides "being roman"), a Stormbringer based one (rejected because a player didn't feel comfortable playing in a setting which all of us knew except him; rejected also due to bad experiences with the original game and if-you-are-not-melnibonean-your-char-sucks), a Conan-ish one too (I proposed to start with a sort of empty slate and build the world from there but it didn't seem particularly engaging to anyone, so rejected). We contemplated other parts of the middle age, but were mostly rejected because we are already playing a game that wouldn't differ much and wouldn't bring enough variety to the table.

The biggest issues with the EP was that did carry with him the "melnibonean baggage" I mentioned earlier and couldn't manage to really convince him that playing in a Stormbringer setting does not mean playing like the old game, etc. Amusingly enough, he didn't want to have them removed or just not present either. He, I think, is struggling with the fact that he doesn't have a list of professions quite more than the rest of the players. (along with accompanying "all the characters are the same, the sheet is just full of blank space, etc"). The idea that there could be, say, fireballs in that setting doesn't fit him either (but if the setting would be in a different country 100 years before, there would be no problem). What settings he liked? He sort of was willing to try the Stormbringer one. But really, if he wasn't going to be satisfied either (as it looked like), and another player just didn't want to do that one, I chose France with a "lets play a few times and see how it goes".

I'd like to mention that I didn't speak most of the time. I presented the initial alternatives, general guidelines for selecting one, and then closed the deal at the end, and that was pretty much it. Perhaps I could have made a stronger case for the generic setting (which I thought it was the best idea), but it was very interesting to see them discuss among themselves.

Oh, I forgot about Price. The experienced player liked far less than the others the idea of the Price. He knew, and attempted to, get one as it was supposed to be but had issues with it ("it's all bad!"). In the end he sort of copied one from the other player in a way that fit his character.

• What definition of Humanity did you decide on? You didn't really mention whether there was any discussion about that. Obviously there was some about how to 'use' the stat, but did you come to agreement on what sort of actions would provoke rolls for gain or checks? Did you do much towards fitting the definition of demons and the elaboration of the rituals, either with reference to the definition of Humanity or not?

There was some initial discussion about humanity but they were too lost. I proposed the basic "humanity as empathy" and later "+ honor" and they seemed to accept it prefectly (minus Sanity and related observations as I mentioned) without any further discussion.

As far as demons, after explaining I proposed a couple of alternatives (including they being manifestations of the sorcerers emotions and similar) but they didn't seem to be very interested. They chose the typical judeo christian hierarchy for demons but that went too quickly too. Also, from the comments, it seemed that they were getting a bit too bogged down by all the "free for the group to decide", so I decided to keep things fresh and moving.

This means rituals got a very brief look, along with my comments that "see, it reduces humanity, so you'll be having to do something that reduces humanity there". I expect to address the topic after the first game, once they are more comfortable with the game.  If someone tries to summon we'll see how that goes. Maybe its a bad idea but, again, all this is very overwhelming. Even more when you expect, as a player, to be everything handed to you.

• What were the character and demon ideas? Did the players bounce ideas off each other much? Do they provoke any ideas for bangs from you just yet? Do you feel the demons are grabby enough? (To use a term from DitV)

The characters are mostly unfinished beyond "I want to be an X". So far I think we have an captain, an engineer, a doctor and an actor. Apparently they all want to be Royal and be working for the King...   Their demons are parasites (I imagine they are seen as a "safer" bet) and an object. I'll post them as they are completed. There was some bouncing of ideas at the start due to the lack of a hardcoded occupation sheet... they almost all seemed to want to leave the description and background for later and think it through (suuuure:), so given they knew what their Cover was I moved on with demonic abilities. I always thought the list was rather short, but they looked quite overwhelmed again. There was no discussion at all about demons because they were too focused in trying to figure out their own thing, I imagine. It was late too, so we mostly closed the session.

There are two tasty demons. And I'll stop there for now   I hope that next session will have characters finished.

• And lastly, you didn't mention the backs of the character sheets. Hopefully that's not because you didn't fill them in. Very Important!

No, they are not filled yet Mostly because the proper description hasn't been finished. But I assure you they will be.

[Ragnarok]

Ragnar, how long did this take?  And what is the group's definition of "Humanity"?  And--just because I'm curious--you mentioned a more "experienced" player: experienced in what, exactly?  And how big is the difference in experience?

It took a bit more than five hours I think. Experience would be in mainly D100/D20 games, and the difference is very large.
As far as Humanity, please look above.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm receiving a very clear picture of your play-group and creative situation, Ragnar. These are great posts. I'm looking forward to more reports as the game progresses.

Best, Ron

[James_Nostack]

A few words of advice:

1.  I'd come up with a descriptor list fast.  It sounds like these guys would appreciate a little bit more structure at this stage of the game.  As you noted, too much freedom can paralyze some players just as much as too little.

2.  Don't bother reading the Demon Abiliities list to them.  Ask each player to describe why his character risked his very soul to summon a demon and then, what sorts of things can this demon do for them?  And then, suggest the appropriate abilities.

3.  To me, it sounds like that "experienced player" will force himself to have a bad time.  With this player in particular, the sorcerer has to meet three criteria: (1) be incredibly kick-ass and dangerous, (2) be worthy of the audience's sympathy, and (3) be neck-deep in a situation full of dramatic tension.  If his concept doesn't meet all three of these criteria, reject it until it does (and preferably, try to get the other players to help with brainstorming).  In the very first session, hit this player with the craziest, most demented bang you can think of, spiking the kicker hard if necessary.  After that, it'll be easy to GM for him, but right now it sounds like he is reluctant to make the initial investment you need for best results.