Should the party amass power in Sorcerer?

[redwalker]

Red was looking over the rules for Sorcerer.  He found passages in the rules that stated the typical "lone wolf, no connections, I'm interesting cause I kill well" PC really wouldn't work well using the Sorcerer rules.

[snip]

So... The point is that he's checking out a new game.  The games rules require a certain kind of PC to play really well.  He's under the impression (correct, I believe), that if he uses the Sorcerer rules without getting a handle on these kinds of PCs, he and his players won't have fun.

[snip]

So, Red is working to make sure he and his players will enjoy whatever game they choose to play -- a game chosen with eyes wide open, to provide the kind of fun they enjoy the most.

Three points:

1)
Actually, I think I could eventually learn to run this game well.  The thing is, I want someone else to run it so I can play and get a feel for how it works first.

2)
Sorcerer can be adapted to players who quite consciously throw themselves at their objective, knowing there is a 99.99999% chance that they will go to 0 Humanity.  I look forward to playing such a character and telling a good tragedy.  However, my initial posts weren't very clued in on this fact.  So I kept saying "yada yada what about this?" and Ron kept saying, "What you're talking about is tragic, and Sorcerer can do tragedy quite well."

3)
There seems to be a vast, possibly impassable chasm between my style of play and the style of anyone who could run Sorcerer as a long-term campaign where the PCs increased in power.

There are some games where I can see how the party gets more powerful.  D&D, Traveller, Mage -- sure, I can see how the party can gradually, steadily amass power.

I could not run Sorcerer like that.  I could run a campaign where the players managed to keep their Humanity high by banishing lots of demons, which allowed them to summon up lots of powerful demons to do their bidding.  But the story would absolutely suck.  It would suck so much that I would not be willing to run the campaign.

I could use Sorcerer to tell tragedies of undeterrable heroes who sacrifice their Humanity for their cause.  That could be done, but the party might not survive, and if they did they probably wouldn't be very powerful.  Even if they lived, there would always be two-bit Fausts popping up to harass them.  The short-term boost of power from unwise demon-binding would always be able to destroy any cautious party that wanted to hold onto its humanity.

I don't know if anyone runs Sorcerer for long-term campaigns where the party amasses power.  I know that I couldn't run it that way, and I am not sure that I would tell a good story in such a campaign even if I were just a player.

[Valamir]

The short-term boost of power from unwise demon-binding would always be able to destroy any cautious party that wanted to hold onto its humanity.

I don't know if anyone runs Sorcerer for long-term campaigns where the party amasses power.

One aspect you should probably consider is that "party" has no intrinsic meaning in Sorcerer.  While I suppose one could run a "party" oriented game, that is certainly not the default assumption of Sorcerer, nor IMO a very effective one.

Consider the case of a very cool game I played with Ron last year.

My character was a rather nasty Sith Lord-esque monk assassin type engaged in a plot to assassinate the queen for my master.

Another character was the queen I was supposed to be assassinating.

Another character was barbarian chief who was in love with the queen even though his people had been subjecated by her kingdom and were now squeezed between this last independent kingdom and a great empire to the north gobbling kingdoms up.

Another character was a loyal subject of the queen who was in love with me.


Not much of a "party" mentality there.

The game could have gone any of a number of ways.  There was no scripted event designed to bring us all together or to make us all kill each other.

As it happened, I decided that my master had pissed me off, and that I should be the master.  The character who was in love with me wanted to help me break free of my master (so I could be with her).  

In the end, I and the queen united to kill my master (who had killed her brother and was trying to kill her) while the barbarian and my "girlfriend" got sucked in.  The queen then attempted to betray me and kill me as well, so my girlfriend killed her.  With the last of the royal line gone, I left the barbarian to take over the kingdom in the name of his people.

Instead of leaving my order to be with my girlfriend, however, I returned to take the order over and become master myself...dragging her with me.


Bam.  End of the first novel, if you will.

At that point all of our Kickers had been resolved in some fashion and we all qualified for "leveling up"...except, of course, the queen who was dead.

We very easily could have continued to play.  There was great further story potential as my character sought to take over and solidify his control over the order of assassins.  The barbarian needed to take over and solidify control over the kingdom before the empire to the north crossed the mountains and absorbed them.  My "girlfriend" would have to choose whether she was going to continue to try to save me from myself (my character was the 'on my way to 0 humanity' type) or leave me (if I'd let her) and what she felt about the barbarians taking over her people.  

The replacement for the queen would almost certainly have had to be either 1) a noble from the kingdom looking to preserve his people, or 2) a representative/ambassador/general from the empire looking to expand across the mountains, with the GM wielding the other party (as well as resistance to my leadership) as the crisis causing NPCs.

Still a heck of alot of material to work with there.  It would have made for a fabulous sequel.   But the great part is...it wasn't necessary.  Unlike other games where the leveling up is pretty much the whole point of play, this game was complete in and of itself right where it ended.  It didn't NEED to continue.  But it could have.


My point to this is just to demonstrate that I think your fears of not being able to run an ongoing "campaign" in sorcerer, are largely unnecessary worries.  If the characters still have stories left to tell, theres always the possibility for further play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I split the above from Would you pay $7.50 to see an undeterrable protagonist?. That thread is definitely a spawning platform for new ones.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

This may increase or decrease some of the confusion about the game that Ralph is talking about. I played in that game a DemonCon with Ron and Ralph. And while reading Ralph's post, I was trying to remember which character I played. And I couldn't at first. Oh, I could remember most of the events of the game, and things that all of the characters had done. I just couldn't remember which I had authored as player of a character, and which were other people's contributions.

When I got to the part about the queen's betrayal, I remembered that I had played the queen. Because that was my favorite part, turning the tables in a somewhat unpredictable, but yet plausible manner. The thing is that I knew that it was OK if I killed Ralph's character, or if he killed mine. Because the mode of play that Sorcerer eengenders isn't about winning, it's about characters doing the dramatic thing. As it happens my character died, and I was very happy with that ending.

The overall point is that the mode of sorcerer isn't about amasssing power at all, it's not even about winning, or even surviving. In another game, my character ended up permenantly insane, and a straight-jacket wearing inmate at an asylum, presumably for the rest of his life. Uh, IIRC, playing the Lincoln High demo, my character ended up dead. I was particularly satisfied when my character in the original In utero demo ran by Scott Knipe at GenCon one year died, because he was just heinously evil.

I consider all of these to have been very successful play on my part. Maybe it seems like I just like running my characters into the ground, but with the guy who went insane, I really was trying to get him to come back from the edge - it just didn't work out that way. But it didn't matter. Because the game produced a story well worth having been a part of creating. And that's what Sorcerer is about.

Not about character success - you'll note that once you start playing that the dice mechanic makes characters fail all the time, no matter how superior they are. It's about what the characters decide to do that leads to their successes or failures. So, death even, much less power, is just not something that people worry about when playing sorcerer. Because no matter what, the game allows you to produce that good story in the process of getting to whatever end you and the other players forge.

The reason that I couldn't remember who my character was in the first game is that Sorcerer can at times be such an act of group collaboration, that you really don't so much associate with the character in question, but with the game played as a whole.

Now, I'm not everyone, and my experiences might not match other's perfectly - but can you see what sort of game might promote those sorts of attitutdes?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

RW, these threads should be interesting to you:
Character conversion
Stat scaling in Sorcerer

The key factor I want to point out is that the usual standards for "improvement" and "increasing in power" aren't the same thing as character progression and change in Sorcerer. I'm not sure why you perceive that characters would necessarily have to accumulate more and more demons ("get more powerful") throughout the course of play.

As a secondary topic, and just to make sure everyone knows who's who, "Calithena," who initiated both threads, decided after a while to change his entire approach to posting here and re-signed up under his real name, Sean. I'm sure he'd be willing to explain the difference between (a) his initial conclusions upon reading Sorcerer and (b) what he thinks now, after playing for a while.

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Red,

I missed this thread because of the split.  Since you were responding to me, let me just say:

1) I have absolute certainty you'll be able to run Sorcerer when you want to.

2)  Yes, there's are several threads about characters making the same damned decision every time -- piledriving their way to a zero humanity.  I've been down that road once in a Sorcerer game myself, but pulled up at the last second.

3)  The other guys have already spoken.  Let me just offer that Sorcerer isn't so much about the "plot" or "mission."  It's about resolving the Kicker.  Wallace in "Braveheart" resolves his Kicker on the rack when he stays true to the cause sparked in his heart when he sees his first love's corpse.  Dr. Kimbal resovles his Kicker in "The Fugtive" when he catches (and beats the snot out of) his wife's killer.  "Story" is the unit Sorcerer is measured by, not Campaign.

Christopher

[redwalker]

I'm not sure why you perceive that characters would necessarily have to accumulate more and more demons ("get more powerful") throughout the course of play.

Two factors:

One is what is called "social contract."

I.e., you gather a bunch of players who have a lot of options for their gaming time.  They want an entertaining RPG.  They're used to typical entertainment, so I tend to give them a story that they can recognize -- sadly, this means my stories are often stereotyped.

The second factor is my reading of the rules.  If I recall correctly, the main book says that the ref should *force* the characters to call up demons by putting them in desperate situations.  I recall that it says that if the players don't feel the hot breath of hell on their ass, they're worthless.

That would seem to make sense.  If you allowed characters to start out with low-power, well-bound demons and threw lots of banish-fodder at them, they would rapidly get very high Humanity scores.  And a Sorcerer character with a very high Humanity score breaks the intended dynamics of play.  (Not to mention the fact that when they resolved Kickers, they would boost their other stats, right?)  So we can't allow characters to build up a comfy cushion of Humanity points.  Therefore we have to push the players to burn up accumulated Humanity points on more demon-summoning, binding, etc.

If you had a story where the kickers could be resolved without calling up more demons or losing copious amounts of Humanity, there would be little point to using the Sorcerer system.  The kickers have to force the characters to *transgress*, and demon-summoning is the primary transgression.  And once they're involved with demons, even if they don't summon any more, the rules allow the demons themselves to seduce the characters into transgressing the boundaries of what is moral/humane/ethical/whatever.

[redwalker]

Let me just offer that Sorcerer isn't so much about the "plot" or "mission."  It's about resolving the Kicker.  Wallace in "Braveheart" resolves his Kicker on the rack when he stays true to the cause sparked in his heart when he sees his first love's corpse.  Dr. Kimbal resovles his Kicker in "The Fugtive" when he catches (and beats the snot out of) his wife's killer.  "Story" is the unit Sorcerer is measured by, not Campaign.

Maybe some folks can get together a group of players who are good at writing Kickers, and then those real-life players can cooperate to make fictional characters who have fictional conflict.

Everyone here has probably seen groups of players who express real-life boredom and dissatisfaction by having their fictional characters attack each other in the game.

My experience with players who are willing to fight within the party is that they are generally good at getting everyone in the party killed before the monsters can even show up.

I would like to be able to take beer-and-pretzel gamers, to whom "conflict within the party" means "forget the monsters, we're going to kill each other," and alchemically transform them into dramatic role-players who can tell a good story by having conflict within the party.

I'm not an alchemist.  If I let my current play group act less cooperatively than a party, they will all be dead within five minutes.

It's great if your players are good at writing Kickers.  So far,  in my current circle of acquaintances, I'm the one with the biggest interest and I have little skill at writing good Kickers.  The best I've done so far is the "undeterrable protagonist" which we've beaten to death.

All this is actuallly probably too much talk anyway.  I should get the group together and dragoon them into playing Sorcerer, whether I'm running it or not, and if it fails to entertain I can try to learn from the mistakes.

[Trevis Martin]

Just a point that might help you there Red,

Play is the best thing to do.  It helps you figure things out like nothing else.  

Secondly, no demon binding is ever safe.  Remember you are playing the demons as your own characters and if they are displeased by what their 'masters' are doing they might well rebel.  (Which includes leaving the PC's high and dry in various crises.)  Also, after the initial demon make up, the players never see that sheet again.  Binding strength changes at the discretion of the GM based on the relationship between the sorcerer and the demon.  Demons aren't good little familiars who kowtow to their masters at all times.  They are Things That Shouldn't Be Here, that have an agenda of their own.  Perhaps an incompreshensible agenda by human standards, but an agenda none the less.  And you players are the sorcerers who have the arrogance to think they can control such a thing when the truth is it usuallly doesn't work out all that well.

Last thing to mention.  There is no such thing as 'Banish Fodder'.  To get a Humanity raising roll for Banishment a Sorcerer has to banish a Demon (that they did NOT summon here in the first place) whos Power is higher than the sorcerer's Humanity.  Since a demons will is always at least one higher than its power, you're not talking about an easy task.  Also, banishing other demons tends to piss off your demons.  After all if you're capable of doing it to others...  All sorts of ramifications.

Trevis

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

RW, I typically don't quote this extensively, but in this case, you've really nailed something that needs discussing, for some readers. You wrote,

If I recall correctly, the main book says that the ref should *force* the characters to call up demons by putting them in desperate situations. I recall that it says that if the players don't feel the hot breath of hell on their ass, they're worthless.

That would seem to make sense. If you allowed characters to start out with low-power, well-bound demons and threw lots of banish-fodder at them, they would rapidly get very high Humanity scores. And a Sorcerer character with a very high Humanity score breaks the intended dynamics of play. (Not to mention the fact that when they resolved Kickers, they would boost their other stats, right?) So we can't allow characters to build up a comfy cushion of Humanity points. Therefore we have to push the players to burn up accumulated Humanity points on more demon-summoning, binding, etc.

If you had a story where the kickers could be resolved without calling up more demons or losing copious amounts of Humanity, there would be little point to using the Sorcerer system.

All of the above is 100% congruent with my thinking about the game in about 1994. Most of the core-book Sorcerer text represents a transition from this way of thinking to another, which was (in my opinion) made pretty thoroughly for the 2000 book publication, but it is not, for lack of a better word, well-defended against readers/readings that come from that first perspective.

In other words, what you've written is "me" (and nascent Sorcerer) ten years ago. But it's not Sorcerer now, or as of its book publication, four years ago.

Here's what that passage really means: GM applies pressure. That's all. That pressure (in-game) should be physical, ethical, social, artistic, sexual ... whatever. If player-characters have high Humanity scores, then whoopee, time for more pressure, or rather, even more pressure.

However, and I did not realize this until playing the game 1994-1996 (the first published version became available in the second half of 1996), there is absolutely no "sweet spot" of Humanity levels for playing the game.

It works just as well if player-characters are (a) hovering at 1 or 2, (b) middling along with Humanity somewhere about their other score levels (usually 4-5), or comfortably at 6 or higher.

The point for the GM is the pressure: each individual character's raison d'etre is under severe challenge. What he or she chooses to do about it (or "chooses," as characters are fictional) is the player's business, and Humanity tends to fluctuate from there. There means the player, not the GM.

I could not have conceived of this idea very well in 1994; the notion of "yeah yeah, but the story needs someone (me) at the helm" was too strong, even though I had seen my attitude literally blight our otherwise-excellent Champions games for many years. I was staring at this idea in action throughout my early Sorcerer play, with great shock: everything I'd prepped to "make sure" story happened was rendered irrelevant during play, and a story happened! They did it, and as long as I applied pressure, they did it more!

Yeah, at the time, a balancing act of Humanity/demons/ethics seemed like it would be central to play, and also that the GM was the Guiding Hand thereof. Pile it on, slack it off, pile it on, slack it off - create the illusion for the player that the character is "uh oh, better behave," and so on.

But the GM is not such a Guiding Hand. The system operates instead on a player-driven sense of drama, commitment, identification, and communication among everyone at the table. The GM is best off recognizing this, and applying that pressure ... and remembering that the outcome and specific "inflection point" for that pressure will only emerge through play itself, and is totally out of his or her hands.

So the accurate reading of that text is, The GM applies pressure, hard and without reserve. A Sorcerer player-character is meaningless except in the absence of that pressure. Let's look at that text more closely, in fact.

1. (minor point) Chaos, not Hell. I bring this up not to introduce any Moorcock babble, but simply that "chaos" means the sudden instability of the character's life and power which is represented by the Kicker.

The sorcerer: I am in charge of my life.
The Kicker: Your life is now changed forever - who are you now?

2. (Major point) The text says nothing about a desireable outcome in terms of actual Humanity scores' values. Sure, they've felt the "breath of Chaos" - does that mean they have to end up with Humanity scores of 1 or 2? Nope. Good rolls and perhaps the choices they've made might end up them up at high scores. Good - they felt the breath, that's all.

The text means that high Humanity scores = open throttle for GM pressure. Enjoy.

My conclusion (and again, drawn from staring at my own game in shock until I got used to it) is that your final paragraph above is inaccurate. The system flies wonderfully under any combination of Humanity/demons/ethics as long as they are connected, aesthetically speaking.

Best,
Ron

[Nev the Deranged]

semi-off-topic

Ron, you bring up something here which has been niggling at the back of my brain for a while but that seems really important.

Sorcerer was written a good long time ago, from a good long time ago's perspective and with a good long time ago's goals in mind.

And while those perspectives and goals are still valid, they have grown and become fine tuned since then. Once I start considering each of the supplements as not just additional material, but as "gradually more mature" material in the sense of rpg-creator-savvy-and-experience, it really changes the view of the game as a whole work (which includes all the supplements).

That's pretty much it... I'm not really sure how to further articulate why this is meaningful to my understanding of the system and philosophies behind it, perhaps someone else is clever enough to do so if they wish, but I wanted to mention it.

... *mumble* weekend brain *mumble*...

[redwalker]

quoting RW

If you had a story where the kickers could be resolved without calling up more demons or losing copious amounts of Humanity, there would be little point to using the Sorcerer system.

2. (Major point) The text says nothing about a desireable outcome in terms of actual Humanity scores' values. Sure, they've felt the "breath of Chaos" - does that mean they have to end up with Humanity scores of 1 or 2? Nope. Good rolls and perhaps the choices they've made might end up them up at high scores. Good - they felt the breath, that's all.

The text means that high Humanity scores = open throttle for GM pressure. Enjoy.

My conclusion (and again, drawn from staring at my own game in shock until I got used to it) is that your final paragraph above is inaccurate. The system flies wonderfully under any combination of Humanity/demons/ethics as long as they are connected, aesthetically speaking.

I see your point.  Let me retract the old paragraph and modify my claim.  It's easy for me to imagine sorcerers with low humanities and make stories about them, but I can see how someone with a good feel for story-telling could use the Sorcerer system to tell good stories about Sorcerers with High   Humanity.

[Ron Edwards]

Cool! High five on this thread.

Best,
Ron