eighteen: a sorcerer one-sheet (draft)

[Doyce]

Here's a better way to ask the question - what is sorcery? Basically, can you give an example of a contact, a summoning, a binding, etc? Or is the game too small in scope for any of that to matter?

Fair question.  I think I could answer either "the scope is such that the rituals aren't necessarily relevant" or "you won't believe how cool the representation of rituals will be and how nicely they'll tie into the setting".

Seriously, I think I could do two totally different takes on this, one as a full-blown, all-demon-types, all rituals, type of Sorcerer game; the other as an Urge-like "you-are-your-own-demon, who will never go away" riff (with Angels thrown in for Grace, a la Ty from Caddyshack and Bagger from Bagger Vance).

Basically, what's important, IMO, is that the powers be a package deal with whatever need and desire the demon has. Such that you have to deal with the demon to use the powers.

Now, I think (think) that the dynamic of "Feed Need for Power" is there in either incarnation -- in the second version, it's a need the Sorcerer himself has, in the original, it's there through the extant demons.

I'm going to stop talking about version 1 versus version 2, though, and just say that yes, that Need is going to be there (as you say, MUST be there), regardless of the setup -- it's the thing that will pull the character away from their Humanity... has to be.

Again, sans that dynamic, you can just use Hero System.

I just want to say, for the record, that your "Why would I use this instead of Hero/Gurps?" as a litmus test for new games or designs is probably my favorite basic rule of thumb ever since I first read it.[/i]

[Mike Holmes]

Fair question.  I think I could answer either "the scope is such that the rituals aren't necessarily relevant" or "you won't believe how cool the representation of rituals will be and how nicely they'll tie into the setting".

Seriously, I think I could do two totally different takes on this, one as a full-blown, all-demon-types, all rituals, type of Sorcerer game; the other as an Urge-like "you-are-your-own-demon, who will never go away" riff (with Angels thrown in for Grace, a la Ty from Caddyshack and Bagger from Bagger Vance).

Hmmm. Yep. I can see both. That said, I think you can't dodge the demons question. That is...

Now, I think (think) that the dynamic of "Feed Need for Power" is there in either incarnation -- in the second version, it's a need the Sorcerer himself has, in the original, it's there through the extant demons.

I'm going to stop talking about version 1 versus version 2, though, and just say that yes, that Need is going to be there (as you say, MUST be there), regardless of the setup -- it's the thing that will pull the character away from their Humanity... has to be.

See...no. I'll reiterate. The character has already made the choice that his character pays for the need, there's no more dramatic ground there. For instance, let's say that the need is to sit on lawnchairs once a day. Obviously you agree that there's no real tension there, right? Consider that this is a valid Need in theory however. There's nothing about needs that say that they automatically have to be something that calls for a humanity check, or even have dramatic results. Just something that the player can say yes or no to.

Now, you could require the need to be something that causes the character to have to make a humanity check. But then the character has to be making humanity checks constantly to avoid losing the demon. Possibly a hundred in a golf season. So that's not really viable.

Now, you can have a need that's interesting, but doesn't call for a humanity check. But then when will the player have any incentive to do anything that costs humanity? The idea is that the demon should be able in ciertain circumstances to get the PC to do something that requires humanity checks. The thing that motivates it to do this is it's desire, not it's need. This is the use of desire. It makes the demon an NPC with a goal that causes it to potentially, when dramatically appropriate, come into conflict with the sorcerer.

Without a dysfunctional relationship between the demon and the sorcerer, the game doesn't work, IMO.

What it sounds like to me is that you want every sorcerer to have a demon representing the urge to win golf at any cost. That would work, but, again it's pretty narrow.

And, again, you can have this be internal if you want. In addition to the drinking demon's need to, well, drink alcohol, it has a desire for mischief or somesuch. Meaning that, when drunk, there's this little voice inside the head of the golfer saying, "Go ahead, use the old shoewood to improve your lie." If the golfer ignores it, it might just stop providing it's associated powers, meaning that the golfer's game suffers.

This has to be the purview of the GM. It's the GM playing the demon as adversary that ensures that problems will have to happen at some point. Again, it can all appear to be inside the head of the single character if you really want. But if you allow the player to control his demon without a will roll, then you're saying that the player can always control his character's destiny. Meaning that the dramatic tension of the system falls out.

Mike

[Doyce]

Without a dysfunctional relationship between the demon and the sorcerer, the game doesn't work, IMO.

What it sounds like to me is that you want every sorcerer to have a demon representing the urge to win golf at any cost. That would work, but, again it's pretty narrow.

Mmm.  No, that's not what I'm seeing, but at the same time I totally see why it looks that way -- I've been lazy in laying out where the tension could theoretically come from.

Which is silly, because just in talking about it over the last couple days and using only movie references we've come up with nearly a dozen viable conflicts between humanity and Whatever.   Revision coming next 24 or so, I hope.

(This was so not supposed to be my project for this week. :)

[hix]

Steve, I think this is the format of about every sports movie ever written.

[snip]

There's always that moment where the person to whom the hero has a relationship, who has been up to this point absent, shows up mid-game, turning the hero's performance around.

[snip]

In fact, it's so standard it's rather sickening, now that I think about it.

Mike, your comments have unleashed an idea dump in me...

You see, I wasn't talking about outcomes (you're quite right ... most sports movies have a happy resolution).* What I was wondering is, "How do you present the game to the players?" It seems like we have 2 & 1/2 methods at the moment**:

1) The bulk of the story is the player's normal life leading up to a final game, with incidental moments of golfing/sport. The final game occupies Act 3 or a final montage towards the end.

2) The Kicker is presented before the game starts. Then the game is played out in full, with the Crisis/Kicker acting as sub-text and providing pressure to cheat.

2a) Or you play out the game in full, with flashbacks to the Kicker's story. In this case, the Kicker isn't sub-textual; it's dramatised. Presumably Humanity Gains and Losses in the flashbacks then have an impact on the game being played in the present day.

But now I've figured out how to articulate what my initial concern with 18 was: if the session structure is (2): Present Kicker, Play Game with temptations to cheat, Resolve Kicker ... then every player's story would have a 'same-y' vibe to it; the Bangs they'd be presented with would feel similar.

However, if you take that Raging Bull approach: multiple demons, different (probably conflicting) Needs and Desires and bounce the Demons off your competitors, any team-mates you might have (e.g. Ryder Cup or Pro-Am tournaments), the Crowd, the Media and each and every personal relationship you bring into the game, then ... yeah, I'm starting to see how there'd be enough meat here to create a lot of different dilemmas for the characters.

* In addition to "up-beat" or "down-beat" endings, a staple of the genre is the Maturation plot. Quite often that's expressed as "Play or give up the game," but other examples include: Learning you're not young anymore,  deciding whether to play for your own glory or play for the team, and "Will the brash youth learn wisdom?"

**Another structure is to just play off the real world schedule of a golfing tournament: Opening Round, Night 1, Making the Cut, Night 2, Jockeying for Position, Night 3, Final Round, Play-Off.