Gangster Sorcerer: Demons from the Hell Side of Town

[Judd]

A Sorcerer is someone who has let someone from the hell side of town get close to them.  They might be a junky brother, a lover whose a hooker with a heart of venom or a cousin just outta the joint.  You keep them out of the slums and pay the price.

Influences:  Miller's Crossing, The Soprano's and Streets of Fire

Demons are the people from the hell side of town, the burrough that you can only get to through Dante Tunnel.  They've done wrong and the stink of their murder and lies sticks to them.  They can't operate in the city, society won't have them.  They won't get served in restaurants, cabs won't stop for them and cops will lean on them hard.

Humanity is Empathy, the ability to understand another's pain and relate to other humans.  If a player's Humanity hits zero, they pack their bags and move to the hell side of town, never to be heard from by decent society every again.

Once a PC goes over, they have the option of creating a new PC who has their former PC as their primary Demon.

Perhaps I'll use the Demon redemption rules out of Sorcerer's Soul but it'd be damned hard to pull off.

Lore is streetwise.  Do you know who to call to score some smack, get someone roughed up or get someone out and out killed?  Lore is using the hell side of town to get business done on the right side of Dante Tunnel.

The hell side of town is considered a mystical otherworld as per Sorcerer & Sword.  It is a slum with children pawning razor blades on street-corners and dealers announcing their wares as loud and proud as an ice cream man would back home.  Don't try to summon or banish here.  You're in their world now.

I'm considering a version of Necromantic Tokens but dealing with abuse and neglect of those near and dear to you on the right side of town translating into some kind of power.  I'm still hazy here but there's something to it.

Rituals are phone-calls, a whisper in the right ear, or a message or a hundred dollar bill left under a loose brick on the hell side. You can get bonus dice for mentioning a big score to be taken, playing sides in an already begun blood feud, or a moment or two in high society.

Angels are the feds.  They're just as wrong as Demons and will destroy your Humanity to get evidence against a Demon, lock 'em up and throw away the key.  Summoning them is also easy, a phone call to the Bureau with the right people or crimes mentioned will bring them running.  Like Demons, once they're in your door, its hard to get them out.  And worse yet, the feds believe they're fundamentally right.

[Judd]

I know I've mentioned this kind of Sorcerer game before but I'm rereading Sorcerer's Soul and just refining the concept.  Thought it might be worth a re-think.

[BPetroff93]

This sounds very cool.  My friend Jason (6intruder) was working on a similar concept involving Yakuza as the players and demons as regular people.

(edited in) Perhaps you guys should correspond?

[Judd]

This sounds very cool.  My friend Jason (6intruder) was working on a similar concept involving Yakuza as the players and demons as regular people.

(edited in) Perhaps you guys should correspond?

The Demons are regular people and the sorcerers are the Yakuza?  I'd love to hear his philosophy behind that.

If you care to PM me his e-mail, that'd be great.  Thanks.

[Christopher Weeks]

The above referenced setting can be seen here.

Chris

[Judd]

The above referenced setting can be seen here.

Chris

Aye christopher.  It is interesting to me (as I mentioned in a PM) that we saw a similiar setting in this game but came at it from different angles.  In my take the players can still be gangsters but they haven't fallen just yet and are still on the right side of the law.

Just neat how you can attack a setting from different angles with this game.

I'm wondering what the different Demon choices (yours being civilians and mine being die-hard criminals) would mean to the gameplay.

[DannyK]

I like it.  If you read the book version of The Godfather, it has a very nice description of (in Sorcerer terms) Don Corleone Summoning, Binding, and nurturing Luca Brazzi.  

Which leads me to my thought of the day: this setup seems to lead naturally to Sorcerer-Capos dispatching their Goombah-Demons on missions of violence and vengance... so far so good.  (Or, less stereotypically, the Sorcerer-PI gets in touch with his violent buddy -- I think someone mentioned the Easy Rawlins -- Mouse dyad in this context before, in Walter Mosley's mystery novels.)  

One neat side effect of this is that the Demons, as actual human beings, could definitely fit somewhere on the R-Map, would complicate the Sorceror's social life.  (more fictional examples: Easy falls in love with Mouse's wife; Don Corleone feels compelled to invite Luca Brazzi to his daughter's wedding)  Even if the player's humanity score is reasonably high, if a local cop (with Lore of 2 or so) makes him, it's going to have repurcussions.  

Now, four possibly annoying questions:  

1) What would Telltales be in this setting?  I can only imagine gang tattoos, pinky-rings, etc.  

2) When there's a Sorcerer vs. Sorcerer conflict, it would be logical for the Sorcerer-Capos to go to ground and let their musclebound Demons do the fighting... works great in a movie, but it might be less exciting for an RPG.  Do you see that as a problem?  

3) Were you planning to have this be a completely non-supernatural game, with all the sorcery mechanics tied into criminal issues?  Interesting idea, but I wonder how well it would satisfy the players.  

4) Usually, a Demon that's Banished or that loses its Binding has to go back to where it came from.  In a game where "Hell" is the bad part of town, how would that work?  

My apologies if the questions are too much, but I'm very interested in this idea.  It dovetails remarkably well with the "Sorcerer in Vegas" idea I mentioned recently in this forum, and this approach would eliminate the need for me to develop a new school of magic for my Sorcerers, which I wasn't really looking forward to.

[Judd]

Now, four possibly annoying questions:  

1) What would Telltales be in this setting?  I can only imagine gang tattoos, pinky-rings, etc.

Not annoying at all.  Sure, you've got the ideas.  Scars, dead eyes, prison ink, etc.

2) When there's a Sorcerer vs. Sorcerer conflict, it would be logical for the Sorcerer-Capos to go to ground and let their musclebound Demons do the fighting... works great in a movie, but it might be less exciting for an RPG.  Do you see that as a problem?  

How is sending off a Demon to do the dirty work any different than any other Sorcerer game?

Remember, these are rat bastards, murderers and just setting them loose with no supervision is begging for a slaughter and possibly bad press.  I'm sure a creative GM could navigate it.

But it is a good point and something I'd watch out for.

3) Were you planning to have this be a completely non-supernatural game, with all the sorcery mechanics tied into criminal issues?  Interesting idea, but I wonder how well it would satisfy the players.  

Yeah, I was thinking it'd be without supernatural trappings.

I would definitely have to sell it as a crime game first and a Sorcerer spin-off second, so that the supernatural stuff, other than flavor and description, doesn't get mixed up in it too much.

4) Usually, a Demon that's Banished or that loses its Binding has to go back to where it came from.  In a game where "Hell" is the bad part of town, how would that work?  

I would think they'd go back to the hell part of town...or jail.  This is something I'd really have to think about.  Good questions.

My apologies if the questions are too much, but I'm very interested in this idea.  

Your questions were great and are going a long way towards making me think about how to use Sorcerer for this with alot more depth.  I'm going to have to re-read Banishment and think that one through.

Thanks for the response.

Let me know how Vegas worked out for ya.

[6inTruder]

How is sending off a Demon to do the dirty work any different than any other Sorcerer game?

Remember, these are rat bastards, murderers and just setting them loose with no supervision is begging for a slaughter and possibly bad press.  I'm sure a creative GM could navigate it.

But it is a good point and something I'd watch out for.

So are you shooting for the PCs being more like Louie in Ghost Dog, or like Don Vito Corleone?

I would think they'd go back to the hell part of town...or jail.  This is something I'd really have to think about.  Good questions.

Banishing could be like, giving them up to the police then. Doing your good part in helping to keep the streets "clean."

jason

[Judd]

So are you shooting for the PCs being more like Louie in Ghost Dog, or like Don Vito Corleone?

I think I'd follow the PC's lead.  

They could probably be either one or just an average joe  or jane who has someone bound to him or her who never learned that violence isn't the best way to solve problems.

Do you use this person's "moral flexibility" to your advantage or do you let the cruel world crush you?

[6inTruder]

I think I'd follow the PC's lead.

Okay. Cool. I think the issue DannyK was having (and I REALLY don't mean to put words in his mouth, so if I'm not getting what you were meaning say something) is that if your players are Don Corleone types that they'll just send their stable of demons out to deal with everything while they stay safe at home. You know?

But it sounds like you've got a good grasp on what you're trying for here.

jason

[DannyK]

Thinking about this, I'm not sure you need the "hell part of town", although it is a cool idea.  I think you could say that the hellish and the normal town are superimposed, but most people see only one layer: the squarejohn at the nightclub watches the show and has some drinks, the Demonic hustler sees a bunch of marks and a few Made Men holding court in the corner.  

This puts the Sorcerer types in the interesting position of seeing both -- this would reinforce the traditional tension between staying in the life or going straight, with the cliche plot of having to do "one more job" to raise the needed funds.

Paka, I'll probably be running this a little later this year, and I'll post to "Actual Play" when I see how it turns out.  I'd love to do it FTF, but it's more likely to happen online.

[DannyK]

Okay. Cool. I think the issue DannyK was having (and I REALLY don't mean to put words in his mouth, so if I'm not getting what you were meaning say something) is that if your players are Don Corleone types that they'll just send their stable of demons out to deal with everything while they stay safe at home. You know?

Exactly.  Which can be problematic, since it means letting go of the leash on a bunch of mad dogs who may end up getting you into more trouble than it's worth.  It all fits the mechanics, and the genre, really really well.  

This is more of a metagame consideration: you've got a situation where the PC tells his Demon thug to kill Don Scarpetta and call him back, while he chops up garlic and onions in his secret apartment.  Hmm... maybe not a problem, given the agressive scene-framing that's standard for Sorcerer -- the GM can just snap back, "It's 1 AM, the Veal Marsala was great, and Luka still hasn't called back."  

Oh, another interesting point that occurred to me: if everybody is a Sorcerer in this sense, then people might be turning into Demons through Humanity loss on a regular basis.  This seems like an excellent source of drama -- you can't trust anyone but your kid brother on this job, but if he does too many more evil deeds, you're afraid he'll go "blood simple" and end up in Helltown.

blood-simple (Amer. slang, first used by Dashiell Hammett) 1. State of fear and confusion that follows the comission of murder; "He's gone blood simple."

That would make a good name for this rule variant, actually.

[Judd]

blood-simple (Amer. slang, first used by Dashiell Hammett) 1. State of fear and confusion that follows the comission of murder; "He's gone blood simple."

That would make a good name for this rule variant, actually.

Wow, that is fantastic.

Thanks, folks, good feedback.

[Judd]

Another couple of inspirations for this setting are Grosse Point Blank (yes, Martin's the Demon trying to get a Humanity score) and 100 Bullets (picture Graves as a brutal Sorcerer coralling and creating many, many Demons with his brutal offer).

What happens to a Sorcere's Demons when they go to Humanity 0 and move over to the other side of town.

I need to re-read the main rulebook and play this thing before I really write anymore about it, I think.  I am at that point where it is an idea that needs to be taken for a spin.

Thanks for the feedback.