Demons as Primary Antagonist

[jburneko]

Hello,

I'm not sure if the subject of this post fully captures what I'm about to talk about so please bear with me if this wanders a bit.  I've been re-reading all four of the Sorcerer books cover-to-cover in order of publication.  I'm up to Sorcerer's Soul and I'm once again struck by how Sorcerer and Sword and Sorcerer's Soul almost seem to be talking about two completely different games.  My brain really does have a hard time reconciling the focus of Soul with the focus of Sword.  Christopher Kubasik has touched on this when he's talked about how the Demons feel amost like out of control superheroes or something like that.

And I thought about it and I noticed a trend in the relationship between Christopher's character's Demon and his character's Kicker.  Usually his Kicker brings his character into direct oposition with the Demon.  It's not merely that the Demon has an interest in the circumstance of the Kicker or the Demon maybe caused the Kicker but the Kicker clearly sets up the Demon as THE ENEMY, to put it in harsh terms.

Examples:

Christopher's character for my Gothic Fantasy game was an aging noble whose son long ago had abandoned him.  His Demon was a golden haired boy the noble doted upon.  "The perfect son," as Christopher put it.  His Kicker was that his REAL son had come home.

Christopher's new character for my asylum game is a man who's in constant persuit of his muse.  His muse being a Passer demon with Cloak and demands that he constantly draws beautiful things.  His Kicker is that a woman on the staff of the asylum has caught his emotional attention.

Another player in the asylum game is a man who dreams that he's really a woman, however, overtime he's come to believe that he is really just the dream and the woman is real.  The Demon is a possessor named Lucille that is hosted in his own body.  His Kicker is that he has just recieved a job offer letter for Lucille, here in the real world.

All three of these scenarios set up The Demon as the PRIMARY anatagonist.  You get the distinct feeling that by the end of the story either The Demon, The Sorcerer or something the Sorcerer cares about greatly will have to go.  It's almost as if all other Sorcery doesn't matter because the pure metaphore has been turned up 110%.

And frankly, I LIKE this setup the best.  It makes the game feel tight and focused and brings in all the Humanity stuff into sharp relief.  It feels like this mostly corresponds with the material presented in Soul.  But I can't reconcile this extremely powerful set up with:

1) The fact that Sorcerer (and especially Sorcerer and Sword) seems like it's inteded to be played out across many story arcs with multiple Kickers.  The kind of setup I'm talking about really does feel like this is the one and only story this character is built for.  It's a single novel, not a series of short stories.

2) Sorcerer and Sword presents characters that a) may not have demons at all and b) if they do have demons they take on the role of problematic sidekick rather than antagonist.  But when you have this kind of setup the focus on Humanity issues seems to shift AWAY from the demon's threat to it.  

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense.  My thoughts on the matter are still very fuzzy.  But I feel like I"m stuck between the Demon as truly powerful metaphore that is either beaten or sucumbed to with all other sorcery becoming virtually irrelivant or Demon as problematic/unreliable source of power with the "story weight" coming from primarily something else so that the sorcery can flow more freely.

Does this make sense to anyone?  Am I reading too much/not enough into something?  What's going on here?

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

I'm not sure if the subject of this post fully captures what I'm about to talk about so please bear with me if this wanders a bit.

Really? Say it ain't so!

I sometimes wonder whether you have ever tried to read Thing A, then Thing B, understanding each one's point fully ... and then merely stop for a few moments, or even a day, letting your mind turn each one over when you're thinking about other things. Often, I discover most of my better ideas that way. Whereas sometimes, speaking at least as an author whom you can address directly, it seems to me as you are very much about gratification-now, connection-now, get-it-now or it's-not-there.
Anyway, that's my rant. I'm done. I shall now turn to your questions and we'll have a nice talk.

And I thought about it and I noticed a trend in the relationship between Christopher's character's Demon and his character's Kicker. Usually his Kicker brings his character into direct oposition with the Demon. It's not merely that the Demon has an interest in the circumstance of the Kicker or the Demon maybe caused the Kicker but the Kicker clearly sets up the Demon as THE ENEMY, to put it in harsh terms.
...
All three of these scenarios set up The Demon as the PRIMARY anatagonist. You get the distinct feeling that by the end of the story either The Demon, The Sorcerer or something the Sorcerer cares about greatly will have to go. It's almost as if all other Sorcery doesn't matter because the pure metaphore has been turned up 110%.

I'm with you; I see this trend too, for some players. Some other trends include "my buddy sidekick," "my girlfriend/boyfriend I'm obsessed with but cannot stand," and lemme see, oh yes, "my id-like alter ego."

... But I can't reconcile this extremely powerful set up with:

1) The fact that Sorcerer (and especially Sorcerer and Sword) seems like it's inteded to be played out across many story arcs with multiple Kickers. The kind of setup I'm talking about really does feel like this is the one and only story this character is built for. It's a single novel, not a series of short stories.

2) Sorcerer and Sword presents characters that a) may not have demons at all and b) if they do have demons they take on the role of problematic sidekick rather than antagonist. But when you have this kind of setup the focus on Humanity issues seems to shift AWAY from the demon's threat to it.

Why so extreme? It seems to me that #1 is easily handled by having demons be relatively in-and-out kinds of characters. Maybe Pact plays a larger role than Binding. Maybe demons are encountered, rather than travelling with characters. That sort of thing. Each one of these little encounters/bits can have the enemy role that you're talking about ... it's just, you know, finish this one and start a new one.

... I feel like I"m stuck between the Demon as truly powerful metaphore that is either beaten or sucumbed to with all other sorcery becoming virtually irrelivant or Demon as problematic/unreliable source of power with the "story weight" coming from primarily something else so that the sorcery can flow more freely.

Is it at all possible that this issue can merely be permitted to start wherever the players start, and develop and resolve through play at whatever pace it takes? It seems to me as you're talking about exactly the sort of thing for which the players tell the GM what to do, (a) through character creation and (b) through play. The GM plays the demons as they're defined and as they strike him, and whatever end of your perceived spectrum seems to make the most sense (or as I see it, little divergence anyway), as play goes on, well, that's the way it will be.

This is all reading to me like, "But what if she wants to go down on me instead? I mean, copulation and fellatio aren't the same things! What the hell can I do?" As a pretty experienced Sorcerer GM, my advice is to enjoy whichever way it seems to work out, that particular time.

Best,
Ron

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey, dude, makes total sense to me. Dunno if that helps, tho. :-)

Re: "I LIKE the setup here."
Think of it like electricity or magnetism: Just as your game has the Protagonist and Antagonist so close together, that's the perfect condition for "watching the sparks fly".  The friction between player and demon will be elevated if they're so close together yet constantly conflicting (even more so than normal Sorcerer games).


Re: Item 1: "It's a single novel, not a series of short stories".
This thing reeks of what Stormbringer was all about.  Elric goes from place to place, saving (then bedding) damsels or fighting demons, but the core of the story was all about him both hating his Demon yet utterly incapable of letting him go.  The rest was all backdrops and screens to that central play. However, Moorecock set fit to write a bunch of short novels about him, plus follow-up novels (which actually explored other relationships other than the above Elric-Stormbringer relationship, while featuring them both).  Pretty much all he did was add a chapter, some "background", and let the play continue on, same as always.  

The only question here is "Will this bore you or not?"  If not, go for it, and have the GM just add on more background to the campaign (a new kingdom invades, change in the realm, a dimensional door opens to another realm, etc).  If you start to get bored with it, simply choose a way to resolve the relationship and move towards the path of that conclusion.

Re: Item 2. Not EXACTLY sure what you mean here. Can you explain how Humanity shifts away from the demon's threat to it in greater detail?

Re: Your conclusion: "But I feel like I"m stuck between the Demon as truly powerful metaphore that is either beaten or sucumbed to with all other sorcery becoming virtually irrelivant"

Not necessary.  Again, pointing to the Elric saga.  Did Elric overcome Stormbringer?  I don't think I'm spoiling anyone here by answering "No". But it didn't make the tragedy unexciting, boring, etc.  You don't have to have your player win against the demon to play out a good story. :-)

Re: "Demon as problematic/unreliable source of power with the "story weight" coming from primarily something else so that the sorcery can flow more freely"

Stormbringer is a little of this. Not a bad thing, mind you.  Think of it this way: If Player VS Demon was the ONLY dialectic worth roleplaying out in a game of Sorcerer... well, then people wouldn't have come up with the mini-supplements with the cool backgrounds, story elements, etc.  By focusing on stories that recognize and pull the strengths of the characters, setting, and background,  you don't necisserily go the direction of the Demon taking the back seat to the story.

[Valamir]

This is all reading to me like, "But what if she wants to go down on me instead? I mean, copulation and fellatio aren't the same things! What the hell can I do?" As a pretty experienced Sorcerer GM, my advice is to enjoy whichever way it seems to work out, that particular time.

Uh-oh...Ron's in his interesting place again ;-)

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi.

I'll state now that I hadn't realized I built my Sorcerer-Demon relationships this way until I read Jesse's post.  Or rather, it didn't strike me as anything but the "normal" way to do it.

And this is because of the "four outcomes" listed in the texts ('Comsmic outlaw...' and so on.)

Since, I see these four outcomes as resting on the relationship between Sorcerer and Demon, I just lunge for that.  As everyone has noted, nothing wrong with that, but there it is.

And, beause of this, I tend to see these as one arc stories.

There are also other reasons for this: my brain is wired these days to sniff out the most unique element of a story and make that the story.  A guy with a demon: that's the story.  A guy with a story who *happens* to have a demon.  I guess I could go that way, but it's not my first impulse.  (That said, I 'm now really eager to try that just to find out what that would be like.)  So the resolution with the demon seems to be where things would end.  Above all, this has been my non-thinking thinking on this matter: there's a guy with a demon; clearly the story is about that.

And here's something I just realized, Jesse: your Sorcerer games are somewhat setting constrained.  The environs of the Gothic Fantasy game, if I'm not mistaken, were "misted-off" from the rest of the world, and certainly in poor contact with those beyond our little land's borders.  Then the space station.  And now a mental hosptital.  These one-location settings don't strke me as encouraging opened ended multi-story arcs.  Since you as GM are essentially saying, "Do leave here, there's plenty to do, but don't leave," I'm sort of obliging by saying, "Okay, I promise to have it all wrapped up here and not get carried away and be so open in my PC's set god knows where I'll end up.  They seem structured to be shot in one location, and then wrap it up and end it.  We've yet have the powerful image of a dot placed in a big empty piece of paper and know that in time we're going to fill it all out.  That, right there, encourages pacing that leads to many rises, falls and multiple stories.

Jesse, here's a suggestion to avoid the rest of sorcerry becoming irrelevent.  Use bangs and relationship map issues that give my guy "encouragement" (but always a choice) in using the demon to get something done outside of the new Kicker-interest.  If you introduce a threat to my guy or someone I care about that can *most easily* be solved with the help of a demon, then sorcery is back in play.  After all, this does feed into my kicker, but it doesn't mean everything is tied between the demon and the new woman.

Christopher

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Jesse, I'm still wrapping my head around perceiving your observations as a problem. Perhaps it's a matter of getting used to resolving conflicts yet not calling that "OK, game over."

Say Christopher's character resolves his Kicker and has a final this-way or that-way ending regarding that demon. Why stop? Use the system; roll Humanity against the scores as described in the rules, and see what happens to them, and write new score descriptions as the player sees fit.

Presto - new story. If the character isn't completely wrung dry of all interest, you're all set for it. Again, the "problem" aspect of the perception is a little beyond me.

As for reconciling The Sorcerer's Soul with Sorcerer & Sword, perhaps it's a matter of understanding the source material a little more deeply. The Tomoe Gozen trilogy seems to me to rely on principles from all three supplements, and the better Conan stories (The People of the Black Circle, e.g.) as well.

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Ron,

Okay.  So say my guy gets rid of the demon, sticks with the woman he's fallen for from the Kicker (however that turns out).

He's still a Sorcerer, he still knows there are demons out there.  All I need is a new Kicker right?

Thus, much like a PC out of S&Sword, I'm a guy without a demon in a world rich in socrery.  Right.  I might even calling up a demon if things get back enough and I need the help. Or not.  But the choice is there.

This is what you're laying out, right?

Christopher

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Christopher,

More or less, yeah. I think that the following issues are getting confounded slightly.

a) Does or doesn't have a currently-Bound demon

b) Has or has not recently resolved his Kicker

c) Is or is not currently interesting (i.e. Premise-rich) to play

All that matters, in terms of enjoying oneself, is a positive answer for (c). The options within the others are all perfectly reasonable situations for a Sorcerer character to be in.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, I tend to have demons as my character's main problem, but then I go through them like water. For me the fun is seeing how long the character can go up and down in Humanity looking for new demons to fix the problems of the old demons. If demon A is a problem, well then, certainly demon B is the solution, no? With my characters reasoning like that, the story may end with one demon or ten. Hard to say from the start.

I have the most fun trying to figure out how to get the character's humanity back up after I've slammed it down to one yet again. So, while the demons are often the problem, the solution to the kickers is often trying to raise Humanity, not getting rid of the demons. Quite often this leads to a "Character is fooling himself" sort of theme, but that's s viable option. Moreover I think that the many demons idea has to end that way.

Mike

[jburneko]

Hello Again,

Okay, I thought about this issue some more.  I don't think I really saw it as a "problem" per se from the begining but rather my (very strong) sense of (prefered) narrative structure was tripping me up.  I think there's an assumption I've been making that may be wrong.  The way I see it:

1 scenario + 1 kicker = 1 resolution = 1 story

For example, when reading the scenarios in Sorcerer's Soul I really do marvel at how much they resemble classic "hunt the wumpas" scenarios.  I understand how they're different but I wasn't expecting that much similarity.

Take for example the first one about the book.  I KNOW there are other issues in the scenario, like the sociopathic daughter, that demand attention but the fact that everyone is after this book demands attention too.  I also know that the scenarios aren't "out of the box" scenarios and require orienting with the player provided Kickers BUT...

I worry (needlessly, yes, I KNOW) about timing the resolution of all the PCs' Kickers not only with each other but also with the issues the scenario brings to the table.  I've had at least one instance where the problem posed by the Kicker got resolved WAY before anything else.  The PC was engaged with other elements of the scenario (NPCs, other PCs, etc) but the initial OOMPH of the original Kicker was clearly done with.  What then?  Do they create a new Kicker right then and there with character rewrite an all?  Or do we wait until ALL issues open the table are resolved and all write new Kickers together?

So, all this is to say that the problem is a whollely creative one on my part in that I feel like the Character + Highly Metaphoric Demon + Kicker putting Demon and Character in DIRECT conflict is a COMPLETELY different kind from story and game from Character + Less Metaphoric Sidekicky Demon + Kicker presenting more detached problem.  I would GM these two kinds of setups differently.  They put different kinds of aesthetic demands on the group as a whole.  My prep work would be totally different for each.  So the thought of MIXING them because of different player tastes is sort of a GM panic moment for me.

So is it a problem?  Yes, for me but only because of a pacing issue I have trouble letting go of.

Jesse

[Mike Holmes]

Relax?

Mike

[jburneko]

Mike,

Yeah, that's pretty much it.  I go through cycles of laid back GMing, no problem, here, hey this is cool whatever.  Then, something catches my eye, then I start thinking about that thing, then I go through intellectual loops contriving what I imagine to be the worst horrible set of circumstances ever.  Then someone tells me to relax and I'm cool again.

Jesse

[joshua neff]

Mike,

Yeah, that's pretty much it.  I go through cycles of laid back GMing, no problem, here, hey this is cool whatever.  Then, something catches my eye, then I start thinking about that thing, then I go through intellectual loops contriving what I imagine to be the worst horrible set of circumstances ever.  Then someone tells me to relax and I'm cool again.

Jesse

Boy, I bet Mike's glad he never has to play with anyone who gets uptight & worries about how he GMs, right Mike? *cough cough*

[Mike Holmes]

:-)

Look everyone worries about GMing. Well, I do at least. But the point is not to reach a point of, as my friend Dave likes to say, "Analysis Paralysis". At some point you just have to stop thinking and just do. RPGs are very Zen that way. We all have the skills needed to GM. The only thing we really have to do is to let it happen, to stop letting the worry get in the way.

Now, sans a good system, you can't just let go, because you have to fret about how the system is messing things up. But if you're playing a game that's proven itself to you before, then there's nothing to worry about there, right? Sorcerer works great if you just let it.

So, relaxed GM playing conscientously plus good system equals garunteed good time.

Now Jesse will tell me that he's worried about being worried next game....

;-)

Mike