Sorcerer: Bonus Dice for Action Descriptions

[xenopulse]

Ron,

I have a question regarding bonus dice awarded for describing one's actions in Sorcerer. This is specifically in regards to combat (p. 106). Now, I was under the impression that Sorcerer is a Narrativist oriented game. But awarding bonus dice for tactics and "niftiness" of descriptions does not seem to fit that mold.

What the player is doing in that regard is using some player knowledge of combat, whether real or cinematic (or just making things up), to improve chances of success. If tactics are valuable in this way, it seems like a Simulationist and/or Gamist thing to utilize them. I don't really see a Narrativist approach to this mechanic unless the player somehow molds the Character's personality or the Premise into the attack. It's not like Spiritual Attributes in that the Character is expressed.

This all leads me to the idea that maybe you designed it this way because you believe that role-playing in this way will lead to more consideration of the character and thereby support Story, i.e., people envision the scene more, get more involved in the details, etc., instead of staying in bland pawn stance all the time. Am I going in the right direction here?

I'm sorry if there's already a thread about this, I've searched for it, but could not find anything.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

That's a pretty dogmatic take on the different Creative Agendas. I think you might be falling into the trap that I wrote this paragraph to prevent:

... in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism. The primary and not to be compromised goal is what it is for a given instance of play.

If you substitute "strategy" for competition, then you'll see that strategizing per se does not mean "Gamist! Gamist!" Similarly, the attention to Color which characterizes many bonus-dice moments in Sorcerer are not themselves Simulationist. In each case, what's happening is that the player is getting more into it, which what the bonus dice are about.

Doesn't matter what the momentary contribution is, if it's an indicator that someone (preferably everyone) is into it, then it gets a bonus die or two. The key to understanding this is to recognize that we are talking about momentary contributions - reinforcers, helpers, secondary support. That means there has to be a Bigger Thing or Goal which is reinforced, helped, or supported.

That Bigger Thing is the Narrativist content of the conflict itself, for which this bonus die is merely a little helper.

Does that help, or make sense?

Best,
Ron

[Matt Wilson]

Another way of looking at it is that if there's conflict going on in your Sorcerer game, it's not a random roll that generated a band of goblins. It's ideally a meaningful conflict to begin with, so anything players do to dress it up is cool. I mean, this is the evil dude who killed my character's mom. This is big stuff, and if I describe it cool, everyone else will get more out of it.

[xenopulse]

Morning,

That's a pretty dogmatic take on the different Creative Agendas.

Well, I'm still learning all this stuff :) I'm just trying to figure out how the design process works when taking the CA into account.

So, I guess I was thinking in the right direction of the player getting more into it. Thanks for putting it in better words than I could.

And thanks, Matt, that makes a lot of sense.

[sirogit]

While I think Ron's words were dripping with wisdom, I think that you could go farther to say that, per the themes of your game, the use of strategy and adding reward to tacticaly sound options could be a strong way to support story.

If the game that you run emphasizes survival against the odds, than a certain attention to in-game strategic detail and how one herds the neccesary resources or how those resources get shifted around can be very beneficial to narrativist play. In this sort of play it makes a lot of sense to emphasize tactical bonus dice.

On the other hand, if the game you're running doesn't really have much sense, and is all about colorfull expression and atompshere, than it makes perfect sense to forgo rewarding bonus dice for how tactically effiecent an option is, and instead emphasize how expressive an action is, wherin the scarier looking weapon always gets the bonus.

[Ron Edwards]

What sirogit said.

Better look out, man, or you and Doyce will have to do a throwdown over who gets to wear the "why this game makes sense" tiara.

Best,
Ron

[xenopulse]

Alright.

I can see that the idea of bonus dice for role-playing can support Narrativist themes. But it can also support Gamist or Simulationist agenda. It just seems to me that celebration of Color, if you want, is a value in itself. Let me elaborate.

I have spent a lot of time role-playing in freeform environments, where every player has total control over his or her characters. In that environment, there were people and groups who celebrated Color as the distinction of good role-playing or the deciding mechanism in Gamist challenges. In the first case, people who provided a lot of Color were considered better at playing their characters (with which I disagree). In the latter case, in the absence of an official resolution mechanism, many players began judging the Color of actions to determine whether or not they would take damage from it (depending on whether the attack is coherently described, based on physics or an established system, powerfully narrated, etc.). So no matter what agenda people had, they valued Color. It seems to me, then, that rewarding people for Color is independent of the CA. It can support a CA, if the Color rewarded is restricted to tactical, coherent, or thematic color (as sirogit is suggesting), but that's not necessarily a given.

I guess my point, if I have one, would be that there might be a celebration of Color going on that enriches a game no matter what the CA.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Your point is well-taken, and it's been acknowledged for a long time. The way I usually put it is,

No single Technique or piece of Ephemera dictates Creative Agenda.

Creative Agendas are only interpretable when you see an entire instance of play, and these days I'm finally defining "instance":

At least one full cycle of the Reward System of play.

If you observe and/or participate in play, through a full cycle of the Reward System, you will see tons of stuff: many resolutions, many applications of Currency, many Stances, all sorts of Color, and (apropos of this thread) many different Techniques.

Point #1: Those particular things combined in that particular way comprise System in action.

Point #2: System in action (remember: a unique combination of all that stuff) is totally relevant to Creative Agenda - whether the group combines more than one of them, whether it manages to achieve one at all, etc.

Point #3: But no single Technique or detail of play actually defines Creative Agenda. In fact, if you pull one out of its context of all those other bits of play combined, then it's like looking at a nasty little wedge of tissue that you just yanked out of an organism, with its strings dangling.

In your latest post, what you're saying is consistent with this picture, in that Color (e.g.) can play a supportive role for any CA. I agree with that. But in your initial post, what you said was actually more stringent - that bonus dice seemed incompatible with Narrativist play. And that I disagreed with.

Best,
Ron

[xenopulse]

You're right. I had an initial thought, and then I learned something through this thread, which was then expressed in my latest post as the culmination of my thoughts on the matter. :)

I guess my initial post was looking at the fact that some of the specific examples of bonus dice were "tactical," which seemed like an instance of technique that didn't necessarily support Narrativism. But I can see more of the overall picture now, so it makes sense.

[Ron Edwards]

Cool! Thanks for starting the thread. Tequila all around!

Best,
Ron

[angelfromanotherpin]

Has anyone else tried using specific action bonuses and penalties to encourage certain behaviors?  I added 'Courageous and/or Death-Defying: +2 dice; Cautious and/or Cowardly: -2 dice.'  Defense actions became a lot more interesting, since even a retreat had to become 'death-defying' or usually be judged cautious/cowardly.  Also, since it seriously encouraged defense actions that set up counterattacks, the players discovered how effective such maneuvers are in general.  

I also, in a nod to Exalted's stunt system, added 'Involves the environment: +1 die.'  That helped to bring the scenes to life.  Best example was using a geisha's hair to trap a spear, leather-cord style.

I'd like to hear if anyone has had much success with this sort of thing.  Also, while I think it's useful, I'd like to know if Ron thinks it interacts with the system in any adverse ways.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Angel, my thinking is that any such specifications ought to be qualified.

Ultimately the bonus dice rules rely on one single principle: does the player's input enhance our shared enjoyment of what's going on? For instance, I'd noticed that during play, some people might gesture emphatically, or time the way they spoke their sentence, in such a way that it really demonstrated to the rest of us how much they were enjoying themselves. Hey, I thought, why not reward it?

This has a lot less to do with genre conventions than it does with group dynamics. Sometimes genre conventions (e.g. stunts) can play into the group dynamics, sometimes they don't.

So I think you have it a little backwards - if people are using and enjoying descriptions which accord with (e.g.) death-defying retreats, then they get bonus dice. That's different than starting with the death-defying retreats, dictating a priori that such things must be most enjoyable, and then awarding bonus dice according to that pronouncement.

Best,
Ron