[Sorcerer] Selling Lore

[Doyce]

(edited for Sudafed typos)

I'm a bad GM.

Or I just don't know Sorcerer that well.

Or I lent my book to another player (his is on order) and didn't have it to reference.

Anyway, allow me to paraphrase a conversation I had with one of my players last night.  (Player in question's character has Stamina 2, Will 4, Lore 4 (adept).  The other two PC's has Lore 2.)

Me: [says something about how the new PC also has Lore 2]
Player: Ugh. Someone else who's going to get screwed in the Binding.
Me: Actually, Willpower is what matters for the Binding, so he's fine -- Will 5.
Player: So's he's just ignorant?
Me: In a sense -- even a Lore 1 guy knows at least the theory for all of the Rituals in the game.
Player: Hmm.  So... what the heck is high Lore good for?
Me: Summoning and Contacting...
Player: So I can pull in demons I don't have enough will to control?
Me: (getting alittle desperate) Spotting telltales.
Player: Hmm.
Me: I'm... sure there's other applications.  I'll look it up when I get the book back.
Player: Mm hmm.

So, two things:
- I'd like some concrete examples of using of Lore (described by me as Rituals generally based on hermetic and arcane texts, plus reading, writing, and activities that put you "in the Zone") in game.  I'm over-tired maybe, but nothing is really leaping to mind at the moment and again, I don't have the book at hand.
- If anyone feels like riffing off some situations where Lore might be useful -- well, that's all good.  My brain is head-cold muddled and I'm just not feeling it today, but I'd like to give the player a scene in game that might reaffirm the choices she made in chargen -- it's only the second session tonight, and that would help.  Hell, her cover is Librarian -- that could easily feed in Victory dice.

If it helps, Humanity = Empathy IOC, the Premise is a bit of 'knowledge/power vs. friends & family', and her Kicker is learning that her Dad was Black Wheel.  I'm planning on her opening Bang being "The Humanity-blasted antagonist from that last espisode is on your doorstep, begging for help... any kind of help."

[joshua neff]

Actually, Binding is done with Will, Stamina, or Lore, depending on how you're trying to bind the demon. So, a high Lore can be very useful in that regard.

[Bankuei]

Hi Doyce,

Remember the rule of roll-over successes?  Lore is one of those traits that can be applied to almost anything dealing with demons.  You can use it to:

-Find out/remember weaknesses of demons(bonus to combat rolls)
-Find out demon's Needs/Desires
-Find out the best way to interact with a demon(for Binding, Banishing, intimidating, etc.) "Back in 1214, you were trapped in a horseshoe, freed only when it was shod upon a horse...we don't use horses anymore, but I still know how to trap you in there..."
-Find out what kind of sorcery someone else is doing(and how to assist/screw it up)
-Help out other folks in their sorcery
-Depending on the game, pull up facts ranging from the secrets of history and the evolution of the universe to mundane, but scary knowledge("Hello Tina, you're 23, you have a scar on your ankle, and you never liked chocolate")

If you remember the rule of rolling over successes, nothing is useless in Sorcerer.

Chris

[greyorm]

And of course, you can always declare that certain "types" of demons (however you go about defining such in your game) require Lore to be successfully Bound -- or, as above, successful Lore rolls can be used to get bonuses to the Binding, or any of the rituals, really.

[Doyce]

Josh,
Absolutely right: my bad.

Chris,
Thanks for the examples -- all things I should have thought of (probably would have, with a couple weeks time spent :)  Thanks!

[Andrew Norris]

Depending on the setting for a particular game, Lore also deals with how well the character "gets" what's going on with Sorcery. To the extent that there may be an established power structure of sorcerers that is based on that consensual understanding, a low Lore is definately a handicap. It's not the end of the world -- but it does mean the character is going to have to deal with certain kinds of situations carefully. You get this character in a room with a bunch of "pros" who've studied sorcery carefully and they probably can't help coming off as a bit clueless.

For instance, a low Lore score is probably going to single you out to other sorcerers as "fresh meat" or easy pickings. If you have high Will but low Lore, even better for them -- it means they can possibly trick you into being a useful tool.

Another example would be a skilled sorceror facing off against someone with low Lore but high Will. The former might set up a battle of wits or skill (say, convincing a demon legalistically why they should desert their master, or perhaps some complicated series of binding circles which must be navigated in a precise manner). That's Lore vs. Lore, and the former is going to probably pick up a lot of successes that they can roll into a Lore vs. Will or Will vs. Will contest to screw over the latter party.

Finally, I think it factors into the mentorship issues as well -- namely, how the character learned to deal with demons. A low Lore might mean that your mentor did indeed teach you all the rituals -- but that they left out important information or, worse, installed several 'back doors' in your known rituals that they could use against you if need be. ("Ah, John, it's a shame I never explained the importance of this particular symbol drawn on the pentagram. I should have mentioned that if it's not reinforced properly, I could just add a little extra squiggle -- here -- and the Binding now contains a paradox that's going to make it quite difficult to keep the demon happy.")

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, Lore is sorcerer coolness. He with the highest Lore can brag most.

I personally don't play with anything but medium to high lore characters. I'm particularly fond of boosting a high lore with a powerful lore boost. Fun, fun.

Ask your players this - what are the other two good for? The game is about demons and such. The other two stats are for "all that other stuff." :-)

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

From Art-Deco Melodrama (p. 2):

Tor Erickson wrote,

I think I'm missing something, because as far as I can tell, Lore is a markably inferior attribute. The only two acts of sorcery that it affects are contact and contain (which are potentially two unimportant acts) and possibly Bind. But Will is good for Summon, punish, banish and potentially bind, and even stamina could be useful for bind. And Stamina and Will are both highly useful in non-sorcerous contexts. What am I missing? How is lore useful?

And I replied,

Lore, not useful? Oh, Tor.

Lore spots Telltales. It provides information about demons and sorcerers and rituals. It, more than anything, orients the character among all the funky evidence and leftovers. All that stuff in Chapter 4 about customizing demons and sorcery? Lore is the character's key to that material.

It's perfect for pre-action rolls - roll Lore vs. the demon's Power to get bonus dice for practically anything regarding that demon, including fighting it.

Best,
Ron

[sirogit]

Personally, I think the biggest strength of Lore is in the mundane application of it(Using sorcerous knowledge in a conflict). How to do so varies with the type of focus the game has at the moment.

Mystery: This is obviously the big one. In any sort of occult investigating, Lore is going to be far and above the most usefull trait.

Action: This is abit more situational, but if you're fighting demons and have ANY avenue to apply tactics, it would be very logical that this would allow you to apply tactics against those demons for a dice bonus, or know important details like their MO.

Horror: In most every horror story I've ever heard of, the real determing factor for ability is usually knowing what the fuck you're dealing with.(note this is excluding some horror movies where the plucky newcomer is the one that gets all the great insight into the situation. In Sorcerer, consider Lore subsituite pluckiness.)

Overall, I'd say it the overall usefullness of Lore depends on if the GM details sorcerous activities to the point where something possibly usefull can come out of them, or if the GM let's the player improvise. It requires some amount of trust between GM and player/

If Demons exist, sorcerers control them, and there isn't anything else to sorcery observable by man, than the only  use of Lore is Containing, Contacting, and knowing who's a demon/sorcerer, which nonetheless, could be very practical knowledge.

Also, I'd instruct you to not downplay Contacting. If you look at contact-Summoning as both part of the measure in order to bring up your demon, Contacting has a number of points to make it more important:

1) It's bonus can carry over to summoning, so a crappy Will can be made up with Lore, but not vice-versa.

2) If you contact poorly, than the demon will not be quite what you expected, if you contact well, than the demon will be more powerfull but just as managable as you wished. Wheras for Summoning it's a yes or no affair.

[Mike Holmes]

I like just contacting for contacting's sake. In Josh's game, I contacted "the man in the mirror" once, which was fun. Interesting dialog between me as my character, and Josh as my character's image of what he thought he should be like.

Can't do stuff like that with will. Sorcerer is about the supernatural. Lore is the character's conduit into that. It's how quickly he can get himself into and out of the most important sorts of trouble.

Mike

[Ben Lehman]

(note this is excluding some horror movies where the plucky newcomer is the one that gets all the great insight into the situation. In Sorcerer, consider Lore subsituite pluckiness.)

BL>  Hello, new lore descriptor.

Which brings up a point.  Lore doesn't have to be musty old tomes.  You can be the plucky, young, cute hero who gets the chicks and still have a Lore through the roof.  Lore is "dealing with demons" in any context, in any manner.

yrs--
--Ben

[tetsujin28]

(edited for Sudafed typos)

I'm a bad GM.

Yeah, that's how I feel almost all the time.

[Doyce]

One thing I'm really happy about after Session Two (over here) is that the other of the two original characters (who started with a Will of 5 and got it to 6 at the end of the Test Run -- probably a raise I shouldn't have done, but oh well) commented that he wished now that he's chosen to try to raise Lore first.

Not that I think this implied that he was unhappy with his character -- he's pleased that (with Will and Humanity both currently at 6) he's got quite a good starting point for Banishments and the like, but he definitely saw the advantage of synergy-rolls from Lore.

Which I thought was kind of Gamist (no bad there -- just an odd style of observations from him), but his other comment: "Then again, beating the Demon house just fed his ego... it didn't really teach him anything, so I guess I makes the most sense this way."

Aside from wanting to get more Humanity-relevant scenes in, I'm pleased as hell about how the game has gone so far.

[Mike Holmes]

Which I thought was kind of Gamist (no bad there -- just an odd style of observations from him), but his other comment: "Then again, beating the Demon house just fed his ego... it didn't really teach him anything, so I guess I makes the most sense this way."

This has been said a lot. If the result of player challenge is to create theme instead of player self-esteem due to "winning" or the like, then the play is Narrativist. Very similar methods can be used to produce both. The question is, what is rewarded? In Sorcerer the mechanics are too simple to really be about "winning." What's rewarded is using things like lore to get your character into situations where he's exposed and theme is created.

So, what may at first seem to be Gamism on the surface is just Sorcerer doing what it does to make for Narrativism. Consider the power that demons give, too. That would promote Gamism if there weren't alway equal downsides to the power.

Mike