I love my new Sorcerer players...

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tom,

I'm seeing three issues in your post, a little bit mixed up together, it seems to me.

1. Humanity as behavior-changer

It's fundamental to playing Sorcerer that values of Humanity, high or low, have no in-game effect on character behavior whatsoever.

At Humanity 1, your character could be a saint. At Humanity 10, he could be a raving vicious psychopath. It's very common across games I've been in or heard about that a player will see a character drop sharply in Humanity, then change the character's behavior drastically, precipitating a rise upwards.

On a related note, the chance for Humanity to drop (for non-sorcerous acts) is not increased at lower Humanity levels. It's always 50%. Again, Carl, are you playing this differently in some way?

2. What happens at Humanity 0

I'm not aware of any mode or subset of Sorcerer play for which going to Humanity 0 has no specific consequences of some kind. To my thinking, that would constitute extremely radical Drift of some kind.

3. Humanity definition

Neither of the above two points is changed whatsoever, no matter how Humanity is defined. Aura, Soul, Honor, Love, whatever ...

So my question to Carl is strictly a matter of #1. Carl, I'm seeing, I think, a pretty strong assumption in your group that having lower Humanity means the character is psychologically or spiritually more prone to doing "lower-my-Humanity" type things. That's what a downward spiral is. My claim is that the Sorcerer rules say (and do) no such thing. Is my perception of your group's assumption accurate?

Best,
Ron

[Spooky Fanboy]

the fact that successes to Summoning and Binding a demon were applied as penalties to Humanity rolls from Summoning and Binding.

Can you explain what you mean?

p. 87: "One method for improving the chances to Summon is a sacrifice... The victim's Stamina or Will, whichever is higher, is used as a one-time bonus to the roll...(F)urthermore, performing a sacrifice entails making another Humanity check. If this is a human sacrifice, this check has a penalty equal to the victim's Humanity instead of the usual single-die penalty."

Since the victims that Taylor has used for his Summonings have Humanity equal to his Sacrifice bonus, we kind of adopted the idea of symmetry. As I said, I later apologized for not explicitly stating that he didn't have to sacrifice people for his Summonings to work.

Also, regarding Humanity as a downward spiral, the chance to lose a Humanity point based on non-sorcerous actions is always 50%, no matter what the current score is. Have you been playing this way?

Hmm. So, even if they sacrifice somebody, the victim's Humanity shouldn't be added on to the opposing side for a Humanity roll? Should it simply be rolled Humanity vs. Humanity, and if the player loses, his Humanity score goes down an amount equal to the victim's Humanity score? Because I've been playing the former way, not the latter. Oops.

And finally, are your players fully aware that low Humanity has no effect whatsoever on the character's actual moral/behavioral profile?

Yes. That was made abundantly clear to them in the beginning. Still, they seem to play the characters that way regardless.

[Spooky Fanboy]

The game has ground to a halt. It appears it will be halted for quite awhile.

Simply put, Joe has been pushed beyond his comfort zone, and would prefer to try more relaxed, escapist fantasy games for awhile. Jen wants to play more, but doesn't want to push Joe in order to play. I can't say I blame her.

Too bad, because the game was only starting to get interesting. But this raises a valuable point: the Social Contract is a wonderful invention. Know how much your players can take. Know how much you can take. Try not to include Alien-esque scenes of creatures erupting from human chests if one of your players is pregnant, etc.

Also, in situations where there's a relationship between two or more party members, it's almost axiomatic that when one bows out, the other will as well.

Ah, well. It got accomplished one of the main things I wanted to accomplish: it gave me some familiarity with the system, so that I could properly begin writing a supplement for the game. Without that, I shudder to think what I might have ended up producing...

[Mike Holmes]

Hmm. So, even if they sacrifice somebody, the victim's Humanity shouldn't be added on to the opposing side for a Humanity roll? Should it simply be rolled Humanity vs. Humanity, and if the player loses, his Humanity score goes down an amount equal to the victim's Humanity score? Because I've been playing the former way, not the latter. Oops.

I don't even know the Humanity scores of any of the characters that mine have sacrificed. It's simply not in the mechanics at all, AFAIK. If you fail to roll your own Humanity vs your own Humanity, you lose one point of humanity no matter the number of successes. You can never lose more than one. Unless I've been playing wrong...

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Unless I made some horrible typo in the rules, Humanity is never dropped by more than one point at any time during play.

Best,
Ron

[Spooky Fanboy]

I meant to say that the total of the victim's Humanity was put, in dice, to the "opposing side" for the Humanity roll. If the other side wins, you lose a Humanity point. I swear it says that on p. 78.  

(I did ask him to lose two Humanity points when he rolled a Total Loss onm his score. This was *after* he poisoned a homeless man and pulled out his eyes, mind you. It seemed appropriate.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Carl,

I meant to say that the total of the victim's Humanity was put, in dice, to the "opposing side" for the Humanity roll. If the other side wins, you lose a Humanity point. I swear it says that on p. 78.

Right. I'm not disputing that. I'm talking about the amount of Humanity lost per Humanity check. One at a time, is the rule. (And your choice to drop him two is basically a group/Social Contract thing, which is up to you, of course).

I'm still interested, overall, in the group's determination to be so cruel and gross in playing Sorcerer. There's nothing in the game text or rules to encourage it (sacrifices, for instance, are not cost-effective compared to role-playing bonuses). There's nothing about the basic Premise/concept to suggest it as a necessary concept.

Which is not to say that doing so is bad ... after all, the whole idea is to examine one's "demons," right? In the sense that an author writing a good novel or a director working on a good movie is doing so.

What I wonder is, is that what you and your group were doing? Because if so, then the satisfaction levels should be higher, much like our group's play of Le Mon Mouri was very high despite the appalling depths to which character actions descended on occasion.

Or was it a matter of a side-track, conforming to what they thought the game calls for, and being dissatisfied by that?

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Or, rather, was it a case of one player going in for such play, and the other player being nauseated by it? Another possible scenario.

Mike

[Spooky Fanboy]

Ron-- I think they were playing what they thought the game was prompting them to play. Joe recoiled, Jen loved it. Hence, my apologies to them for not stressing the Color (the Watchers wrote down which sacrifices went with which demons, because they saw the sorcerers use them successfully) vs. player knowledge (players should know that it's a quick bonus that isn't cost-effective versus roleplaying.)

However, I also maintain it isn't my fault entirely. Jen's character Summoned/Bound a demon by first successfully Contacting it (and roleplaying the fact that she was zonked on strong LSD in the process) and then sealed the deal (Binding) by ripping out her left toenail. Her bonuses to rolls through previous successes made her much stronger than Joe's sacrifing people.  Joe was there while we roleplayed this, but still stuck to sacrificing people to summon the demons he felt were necessary to take on the producer. He kept in character, even though he was slowly getting repulsed by the game. He simply didn't see the character as redeemable, even though there was a perfect opportunity to set his character on that course by helping a struggling ingenue (Jen's character) out of a bad situation! And I explained Kicker resolution to him! I think the game just tread to far on the dark side for him, and he didn't want to play anymore.

Add to this the fact that he prefers games with crunchy rules and fairly in-depth worlds that come pre-packaged with minimal assembly required (Deadlands, pre-d20 for an example), and you could see the train wreck before it left the station. I should have known it was going to end badly when I saw how badly he reacted to octaNe. (Although maybe that's not the best example, either...)

Mike-- See above, and add to that the fact of Jen (his girlfriend, who he wants to marry) crowing about the gaming experience she was having with Sorcerer, gleefully creating a character she wanted to see get destroyed spiritually and probably physically as well. She was having the time of her life. I think that creeped him out completely.

So why did we play in the first place? One, I brought the game over for them so they could see what I was writing my little supplement for. Then Jen read it in a half-hour, and begged me to run a game. Joe read it in a day, thought it might be fun to try, and said he'd give it a go. I wanted to get more familiar with the game, so I agreed to run it. Based on the strength of Jen's character concept, Joe was able to define his character (who came off as a rather dry port of a Watcher from BtVS, honestly), and I got the setting and major plot movers for my campaign. It started off nicely.

[Mike Holmes]

Well, I gotta say that at least this is the first time I've heard of the girlfriend squicking the boyfriend and not the other way 'round. I'm not sure wether to applaud or boo her. :-)

Mike

[Valamir]

I don't even know the Humanity scores of any of the characters that mine have sacrificed. It's simply not in the mechanics at all, AFAIK. If you fail to roll your own Humanity vs your own Humanity, you lose one point of humanity no matter the number of successes. You can never lose more than one. Unless I've been playing wrong...

Mike

Well, I think you've been playing it wrong then.

From page 87 on Summoning

performing a sacrifice entails making another Humanity check.  If it is a human sacrifice, this check as a penalty equal to the victim's Humanity instead of the usual single-die penalty

What makes this section particularly...difficult is the following.

1) there is no explaination of how to apply this penalty.  You have to go back to page 19 to learn that penalties are dice subtracted from the penalized party's dice.  However, given that sorcerer's generally have pretty low humanity, this will result in a negative pool much of the time.  I can't find anywhere where is says how to handle a negative die pool.
a) automatic failure?
b) reduced to one with the excess added to the other side (this doesn't make sense as it makes Complete Failure harder the more negative you go).
c) don't reduce the roller but add the entire penalty to the opposition.  Sensible, but never stated anywhere than I can find.

2) Further, what is the "usual single die penalty"?  Its never mentioned anywhere.  Near as I can figure from context is that the intention was that all sacrifice involves a 1 die penalty.  If its a human sacrifice its the victims Humanity instead.  But that's just a guess as the part about regular sacrifices doesn't mention a penalty of any kind.

4) Compounding this is the section on Humanity back on page 43 where it discusses the GM calling for humanity checks for heinous acts.  It describes the roll as being humanity vs humanity here (rather than humanity vs power for sorcery).  However, while it lists sacrificing the paper boy as one of the heinous acts calling for a roll...it makes no mention of a penalty of any kind in this section.

Definitely could use some clearing up.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

"Negative" dice pools in Sorcerer are always handled the same way.

Let's say I start with three dice and the other guy has, say, four. For whatever reason, I get hit with an eight-dice penalty.

What happens? How can I roll negative-five dice against his four?

Easy, actually. Take my dice pool down to one die (that's two dice of penalty). Then give the other six to his side for a bonus.

So I roll one die and he rolls ten.

I swear to God that I thought that this was incredibly obvious given the Rule of Currency, at the time of writing. It doesn't help that the combat example offered an opportunity to showcase it, but I didn't do so (see the Jonathan Tweet discussion for my lambasting about that).

Best,
Ron

[Spooky Fanboy]

This is why things have to be stated and shown in examples for me, Ron. Laying it out all math-like and obvious in text is nice, but I'm an English-major type of person. ;-)

I'd have never thought of the above without an example to wrap my head around. I just added the negative as a positive to the opposition and was done with it. Oh, well... now I know, and knowing is--Put down the gun, I'll stop.