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Hey there. I'm going to try and write up some of my notes and thoughts on my first game session for a new roleplayer, Sarah. Some prep work and fishing for suggestions was done here.

Premise

We're playing a game of Sorcerer. This was our very first session of what I imagine will be a shortish campaign. The initial plan was to run through a single story arc and evaluate how things went at its conclusion. This is the second Sorcerer campaign I've run, and it's been awhile since the last game so I was a little shaky initially, but reading some of the threads here and rereading the rules helped me get back into the swing of it.

There is only one person playing at Sarah's request. She was nervous about playing with other people, and didn't want to have to worry about other players getting frustrated with her for being inexperienced even though I told her it was extremely unlikely that would happen. Sarah's my girlfriend. She's only played in one roleplaying game, and it was a horrible experience in a D&D game where the other players made her character for her because "she didn't know what she was doing," the GM told her what to do all the time, and the GM and one of the players spent the whole game arguing about rules, so I think that doesn't really count. She was pretty wary about the whole idea after that until we started seeing each other and I talked to her about why I love games - the creative aspects and the wonderful stories that can come about. I'm a hardcore Narrativist, essentially, and based on her interest in the storytelling aspects of gaming I think she is too, which is why I picked Sorcerer.

Character creation went well. The further we got into it, the more interested she became in her character and her demon. It took her awhile to figure out what I wanted out of a Kicker, and when she finally got to it I felt like it was a little on the weak side, but I didn't want to be too pushy about it. The only problem I ran into here was a problem I ran into in my previous Sorcerer campaign - when it came time for her to pick attribute descriptors she immediately reached for the book and picked all of them from the examples. I always encourage my players to come up with their own, but that never happens. This wasn't a big issue, really, but in the future I'm just going to write up the list of descriptors to pick from myself.

And then I putzed around for several weeks, drew up a tiny relationship map and posted here for help. I had completely forgotten Bangs as a part of game preparation, but that was remedied, and I went into play feeling nervous, but as ready as I could ever be.

Now, for the actual game information:

The Setting: It's 2005 in New Orleans, or rather my vague, impressionistic ideas about New Orleans. Sorcery was "created" in the 1850's after the ramblings of a madman were discovered to be the key to ripping through the fabric of reality. Demons are ancient, alien, and hungry. I'm pushing for a modern-day Lovecraftian feel to the game, with Humanity representing an individual's sanity.

The Sorcerer: Alana, a headstrong and cynical bicycle messenger who delved into sorcery after Emma, a little girl from her apartment building turned up missing.

The Demon: Salomondeus Needs blood, and Desires Mayhem. He's an Inconspicuous demon who resembles a strange necklace. He sits around her neck most of the time, slithering and whispering into her ear when he needs something, and sliding off of her, growing into a tentacled, fanged mass to fight. He confers on Alana perceptive and stealth related abilities, to help her in her search for Emma.

The Kicker: Alana's friend Carly knocks on Alana's door, in tears. She comes into Alana's apartment and tells Alana that she overheard Emma's father talking to some strange man, and heard him say that he sold his daughter.

The NPCs:

Lou - Alana's mentor and the owner of Lou's Lucky Ladies Delivery Service. He's a fat greaseball that seems to be a bit on the dumb side and a lot on the obnoxious side. He casts two shadows, and wherever he goes, flies follow.
Carly - Alana's only friend. She's wide-eyed and idealistic about the world which is something Alana appreciates even though she stands on the opposite end of the spectrum. She works as a waitress at a diner down the street.
Detective Jennings - Searching for his little boy who was kidnapped, his work on the case has led him to Emma's father. He's extremely low on Humanity and is on the edge of snapping. He's lost a lot of his sanity in the pursuit of his boy, and he's done a lot of horrible things trying to find him.

The Bang(s):
- Alana stumbles across Detective Jennings brutally interrogating Emma's father.

The Game

We started the game where the Kicker left off, with Carly crying in Alana's apartment after telling her what she heard. I started right in with the portrayal of Carly expressing complete disbelief, as she had a "how could someone do that to a little girl?" sort of reaction.

I had to steer Sarah towards speaking as her character, which wasn't unexpected, but she got into it right away.

Alana had an argument with Carly over whether the police should be called. Alana didn't want them involved, figuring that they'd just screw things up and risk Emma's life. A Will role was made with the goal of persuading Carly not to call the police. The role was failed, and Carly called them. They showed up a short while afterwards.

Here's where I ran into an interesting problem. Sarah started telling me what Carly was doing, and the conversation that the police were having with Alana's father. Basically, she was blurring the Player/GM boundary, and honestly I didn't know where I should place that boundary! I didn't want to discourage her from providing input into the story, so what I did was tell her to suggest things to me in terms of story, which I would (and did) listen to, but a part of the story would have to be obscured from her by the GM/Player curtain, and that I was cooking things up behind the scenes that she couldn't really stick her thumb into. And in the end, I'm not sure whether this was right or not.

On with the story, the police show up and talk to Emma's father. They come down the hall to talk to Alana, and she feigns complete ignorance about everything, more or less making Carly's complaint sound a little kooky. After the police leave, Carly confronts her angrily (but quietly since the father is down the hall) and storms off. At this point, Sarah(!) called for a Humanity check for her character since Alana just screwed up her relationship with her only friend in the pursuit of her goal. She failed the roll, dropping to Humanity 3.

Now, at this point there was a scene change, and I encouraged Sarah to set the scene after having gotten the idea from Peter Nordstrand's A Hero's Dilemma thread. She got into this immediately and set the next scene at Lou's office, where Alana would try and see if he could help her with any information. We basically collaborated on setting it at this point, with us both providing input on some color - the presses from a porno magazine running down the hall, tapdance classes clattering upstairs, Lou sweating and having two fans (with little streamers! exclaimed Sarah) pointing at him at all times, and a half-eaten sub with flies buzzing around it sitting on an unrolled piece of wax paper on his desk.

She told Lou about what she was trying to do, and Lou told her to forget about it, and that she shouldn't bother. If she tried to save the world it'd end up crushing her under its thumb. I'd decided before game began that the sorcerer who'd purchased Emma as food for her demon was a student of Lou's mentor, and that once upon a time her and Lou had been lovers. Things ended badly, but Lou kept his distance from her and didn't involve himself in her affairs, so he would try and keep Alana from doing the same thing since he still cared about her.

There was another Will roll at this point in which Alana realized just how scary her Big Fat Obnoxious Boss really was when he tried to intimidate her out of pursuing Emma. She lost, and so she'll be down two dice the next time she does something related to finding Emma.

At this point, she seemed sort of lost as to what to do. I framed the next scene in the hallway to her apartment where she saw a strange man (Detective Jennings) having a violent confrontation with Emma's father. She waited outside for him to come out. At this point I had Salomondeus (previously forgotten!) demand his blood. Thinking him to be just a thug tied up in the whole child black market racket, she told Sal that if he helped her follow him, he could have anything he wanted.

She used Cloak to follow the Detective after he came out of the building, and even rode around in his car for a little while with him. Eventually, he found the man he was looking for - a "delivery boy" who'd gotten Emma from Emma's father. At this point, Alana found out he was a detective, and Sarah's jaw dropped, and she found herself with a dilemma on her hands. He was one of the "good guys" and yet she'd just promised her demon that he could kill him and drink his blood.

Jennings "interrogated" the man by asking him questions and slamming his head between a dumpster and the dumpster lid when he got unsatisfactory answers. After he got a name, "Blackjack" he slammed the guy's head until he died. I wanted very much to paint Jennings as a sympathetic NPC who's gone overboard. I gave him a lot of neurotic quirks (chain-smoking, constantly fiddling with lighter, a nervous tic), and I'm trying to show him as what Alana could become.

At this point Salomondeus was getting very excited. Alana pounced from being Cloaked and hamstrung Jennings. He pulled his pistol but she slashed the tendons in his wrist before he could fire. Their interaction involved Jennings promising to kill her for what she did to his boy, and Alana trying to tell him that they were on the same side, but she did so halfheartedly realizing that it's kind of hard to persuade a man you're not working against him when you've just crippled him. She dipped Sal in necklace form in some of Jennings's blood, but refused to kill him, angering Sal (he's going to be in the "Brat" stage next time she tries to use his powers).

And this is where we ended the session, which I think ran a little over two hours long. I wanted to go for four, but we were running a little late that night, and it was midnight by the time we reached that point. We'll probably play again sometime this week.

Overall, things went really good. She's really the sort of player I've been yearning for for quite some time. It's really hard getting my experienced roleplayers into setting the scenes and helping to add color and develop the setting. They tend to be a lot more passive, but she was really enthusiastic about it and I'm trying to let her run wild with his tendency.

The Wrap-up

We stood outside while I had a cigarette and talked about the game.

She loved it. She really loved it, and this makes me happy. Not just because I finally have a girlfriend who will game with me, but because I feel like I helped the hobby by giving an interested individual a proper introduction to roleplaying. Her comments were mostly on aspects of my GMing that she liked. She plans on doing a write-up of her experiences and thoughts with particular attention being paid to the rules eventually (she thought Mr. Edwards might appreciate it).

I'm in love with all the NPCs, including Carly, and I suggested that once she feels comfortable with the game, maybe she could run a story arc where I play Lou as a young sorcerer which she thought was a great idea.

We're definitely going to play more, and she's already expressed interest in doing a story arc after this one, assuming Alana remains sane/survives, that explores Lou and what he's all about. A powerful sorcerer owning a bicycle courier service? There has to be a lot more going on behind the scenes that Alana doesn't know anything about. Sarah also wants to explore Alana's relationship with Lou, why he took her on as an apprentice, etc.

I plan on still encouraging her to set scenes and provide color to the setting - it really helped to make the setting vivid and gave me a lot of interesting ideas to play off of. One thing I need to change is that I need to push Salomondeus a lot harder. His Need and Desire are pretty vile, and he needs to start pushing Alana to indulge them more. It was a short session, though, so I'm not beating myself up too badly over it. Also, if I were to do the game over again, I'd get more input from her on the setting, the nature of Sorcery, what Humanity should be and so on. Since it was her first game, though, that might have been a bit much. Still, I think she's more than capable of handling it.

Discussion

Some questions:

- I didn't really feel as though there was a Lovecraftian vibe. Any suggestions on thematics, mood, and color to push this? Or do you think I should just go with the flow and let the game create its own vibe based on portrayal and the effect of the Humanity mechanic?
- Any ideas of how to push Humanity in this game? I'm sort of at a loss as to the sort of events that would make one's sanity increase or decrease outside of demon-summoning, and I was under the impression that Humanity should be really fluid in a Sorcerer game.
- Where is the Player/GM boundary in a game of Sorcerer? I want to encourage her to give input into the game, the NPCs, the setting, and the plot, but her involvement in the story has to end somewhere... doesn't it? I'm just sort of at a loss as to how to deal with this, and I feel uncomfortable telling her, "No, you can't do that," when she's really enthusiastic about something.
- Did I do Will rolls all right? After reading Roger Eberhart's Contest of Wills thread, it really inspired me to push Will as a way of having PCs and NPCs affect each other's actions, but I don't want to be heavy-handed about it. Basically, should NPCs be doing the whole Contest of Wills thing and affecting PC actions as Lou did to Alana?
- Alana lost a Humanity. Unfortunately, I don't yet own Sorcerer's Soul (though it should be on its way), and I imagine this would be covered in there, but how should I go about discussing portrayal of this loss with Sarah? Should I push the portrayal of this loss?
- This is a rule question. Successes from related rolls carry over. Wounds cause a decrease in dice pools.When Alana hamstrung Jennings, she got three successes on him. Does this mean that she's up three dice and he's down three dice?
- Do you think the attack on Jennings should cause a Humanity check? I wasn't sure since I didn't seem to be a particularly sanity-rending experience.

Two comments:

- Sarah commented when I was explaining sorcery rules that she thought if you had a poorly-bound demon then you shouldn't be able to Punish it as effectively. Honestly, I have no problem with the way the rules are written since a poorly-bound demon has a hundred other ways to screw you over.
- It amazes me and makes me a little sad that players like Sarah are being introduced to gaming through D&D. A lot of roleplayers make flowery descriptions of roleplaying being about story and creativity, and then players like Sarah get interested and are deluged with combat modifers and Feats and all sorts of rules that have nothing to do with telling a story. Anyhow, I feel like in this situation she was introduced to roleplaying with a game that matched her goals and, if I can be self-congratulatory, a GM with similar goals.

Anyhow, I know I wasn't as descriptive as I possibly could be about the game, but that was a lot to write! If you have any questions about the campaign, NPCs, my plans, her plans, whatever, than ask. I just didn't want to type my fingers down to nubs.

I'm not the Sorcerer guru around here, but I do have a couple of comments from what I've read in the past and my general understanding of the game.  Hopefully others will chime in and fill in the gaps.

I'm noticing that you have a number of Humanity-related questions.  I'm going to condense them into two:

1)  When should someone potentially lose Humanity?

2)  What does Humanity loss look like?

I'm going to answer the second question first.  Humanity is not like Sanity of Call of Cthulhu.  Rather, it is a binary switch.  On/off.  It may not look like it, but it is.  Zero Humanity is one state of being, while positive Humanity is a second state of being.  The amount of Humanity that a character has represents how close he is to flipping the Humanity switch.  Therefore, what does Humanity loss look like?  Nothing.  Now, if the player wants to play it that way, then that's fine.  However, there is not a necessary difference in action between a 1 Humanity character and a 4 Humanity character.

I'm also going to suggest that your definition of Humanity is somewhat lacking.  Since you're using Lovecraft as inspiration, let's take a look at what sanity means for Lovecraft.  A Lovecraft character who is "sane" believes that the world is fundamentally orderly, follows certain natural laws, and can be controlled through science.  A "sane" person believes that he has free will, that his choices matter, that there are ethical choices that he must make.  An "insane" character knows the truth.  There is no order, only the creeping chaos from beyond the night.  Therefore, ethical choices do not matter, only the power to enforce one's will by whatever means are best.  The fundamental despair of Lovecraft's worldview shows through here.  Sanity isn't a medical condition; it's a way of hiding from the harsh reality of life.  However, there is power in embracing the truth, as the many sorcerous character of Lovecraft demonstrate.  All it will cost you is your Humanity.

In other words, Humanity is whatever your character is risking to gain power.  This should connect thematically to the broad Premise being addressed in your game.

What is Alana risking by trafficking with demons?

Answer this question:  what does Humanity 0 look like?  Describe a character in your world who has hit Humanity 0.  What would Jennings look like at Humanity 0?  Answer that question, and you'll be well on your way to figuring out what Humanity really is in your game.

Once you do this, the motifs and thematics will suggest themselves much more easily.  The Humanity definition that you use will shade all the Bangs that you provide, which will produce the thematics that you desire.

Hope that you found this helpful.

Wolf,

See, I was under the impression that a loss of Humanity resulted in a change in the character. If I remember correctly, in the rules it says that a sorcerer can tell whether another sorcerer has lost Humanity or not using a Lore check or somesuch. I'm not opposed to your binary definition of Humanity, and it would actually make things simpler for Sarah, but I just had a different impression from the rules. Perhaps I was reading into them too much.

Now, as for my defining of Humanity within the game, I imagine a character with Humanity 0 becoming a babbling wreck upon knowing "things that man was not meant to know." Jennings is skirting around the edge of this in his investigation, and he's discovered some strange things in his investigations. He's close to the truth, which could possibly drive him insane. I think of one the characters at the end of At the Mountains of Madness. They saw things they shouldn't have seen, and in his last, fleeting glimpse of the arctic tundra he saw something that snapped his mind by turning what he knew of the world upside down.

By trafficking with sorcery, Alana is exposing herself to creatures that Man Should Not Know, and risking her own mind and sanity in the process.

I'll admit that outside of sorcery, I'm not really sure what sort of events would cause a Humanity check that aren't sorcery-related and as a result, coming up with Bangs that specifically target Humanity have been difficult. On the other side of that, I don't know what sort of events would cause a Humanity increase.

Admittedly, I should have given this more thought before play.

Hi Bret,

I think your questions about emphasizing Humanity and how to bring out the Lovecraftian vibe might be related. To wit: how much does Sarah know/care about Lovecraft and his work and that whole genre?

Has she read any Lovecraft? Has she liked it? Does Lovecraft and his whole "the most merciful thing in the world is the mind's inability to correlate its contents" deal interest/excite her? Because I think for questions of Humanity to really get a workout in a game, the players, or player in this case, have to really buy in to the definitions of Humanity and Sorcery and care about the questions they raise.

Not everyone digs on Lovecraft. And if Sarah just isn't excited by that whole paradigm of crumbling sanity and awful revelation, I think it doesn't really matter what you do, those aspects of the game are not easily going to come alive for her.

You might want to think about what other kinds of questions/dilemmas inherent in Alana's story do interest her - do interest both of you, I should say, since you have the right to be excited by the material you're playing too. Or, for that matter, what kinds of dilemnas really scare you / make you uncomfortable.

The game sounds great, mind you. And if it ain't broke, well, you have good reason to refrain from fixing it. Good luck; I look forward to hearing about more.

Rob

Quote from: Bret GillanThe only problem I ran into here was a problem I ran into in my previous Sorcerer campaign - when it came time for her to pick attribute descriptors she immediately reached for the book and picked all of them from the examples. I always encourage my players to come up with their own, but that never happens. This wasn't a big issue, really, but in the future I'm just going to write up the list of descriptors to pick from myself.

Descriptors are not just a way to describe Stamina, Will and Lore but they are your tool for tying the players to the setting.  I'm always open with a player contributing to the overall list, their way of letting me know I've missed something in my descriptor list that clearly works for the flavor of Sorcerer that we are playing.

However, allowing players to just make up descriptors, I have found, is a mistake.  

When you have such a great idea for a setting, I think you will find that making up descriptors will help players come up with character ideas and often help find areas in the PC's lives where they have intersected.

My girlfriend had an experience very similiar to Sarah's and has played a few session with me and a few of our trusted friends lately with fun and success abounding.

Can't wait to hear Sarah chime in.

Happy gaming, neighbor.

Just a beautiful story! Be sure to play more, this is getting interesting...

Quote from: Bret Gillan
The Demon: Salomondeus Needs blood, and Desires Mayhem. He's an Inconspicuous demon who resembles a strange necklace. He sits around her neck most of the time, slithering and whispering into her ear when he needs something, and sliding off of her, growing into a tentacled, fanged mass to fight. He confers on Alana perceptive and stealth related abilities, to help her in her search for Emma.

Tell us more about the relationship between Salomondeus and Alana, will you? Is Alana afraid of the demon? I would be, what with it's unreasonable personality. What do you think, is she ready to punish and banish if the demon gets ugly?

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Lou - Alana's mentor and the owner of Lou's Lucky Ladies Delivery Service. He's a fat greaseball that seems to be a bit on the dumb side and a lot on the obnoxious side. He casts two shadows, and wherever he goes, flies follow.

Do you know, your setting is really hardboiled and evil. I'm stricken by the amount of ugliness and horror you two have heaped upon the game.

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Here's where I ran into an interesting problem. Sarah started telling me what Carly was doing, and the conversation that the police were having with Alana's father. Basically, she was blurring the Player/GM boundary, and honestly I didn't know where I should place that boundary! I didn't want to discourage her from providing input into the story, so what I did was tell her to suggest things to me in terms of story, which I would (and did) listen to, but a part of the story would have to be obscured from her by the GM/Player curtain, and that I was cooking things up behind the scenes that she couldn't really stick her thumb into. And in the end, I'm not sure whether this was right or not.

I haven't noticed any definite stance boundary in Sorcerer (not that I've played it too much). I suggest going the Lumpley route: consider your own wants and interests over the story, and answer accordingly. Use the dice to decide when the players disagree. Don't think of the domains as the "player domain" and "GM domain", but as the spheres of interest of the two persons playing. If you have no stake in something, why not let her narrate it? If you have, find out where your two visions disagree.

In practice: adopt a negotiating tone of voice in pre-conflict narration. Consider everything said as suggestions only. Save the definite, this-is-how-it-is tone for post-conflict situations. Holds for all participants of play. Respect the domains of narration: players can tell with authority about their characters, the GM can tell with authority about the rest of the world, and where the two meet, roll the dice.

So in the above situation I don't see a problem with Sarah narrating, as long as it's with the understanding that the buck stops with you when her character is not involved in the situation. Likewise you can narrate for her character, as long as it's understood that she can correct anything you say. This is the negotiating tone of voice. Only when the dice have been rolled you might choose to have either side adopt all the narration for a while.

That's my take on the GM/player spheres of control, anyway. There's many ways to do it, so just find the way you're comfortable with.

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At this point, Sarah(!) called for a Humanity check for her character since Alana just screwed up her relationship with her only friend in the pursuit of her goal. She failed the roll, dropping to Humanity 3.

Interesting. Friendship is part of the Humanity definition?

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There was another Will roll at this point in which Alana realized just how scary her Big Fat Obnoxious Boss really was when he tried to intimidate her out of pursuing Emma. She lost, and so she'll be down two dice the next time she does something related to finding Emma.

A good idea to use that mechanic! I like it, too. An elegant solution for full-blown use of social conflicts.

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At this point, Alana found out he was a detective, and Sarah's jaw dropped, and she found herself with a dilemma on her hands. He was one of the "good guys" and yet she'd just promised her demon that he could kill him and drink his blood.

A nice bang!

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Jennings "interrogated" the man by asking him questions and slamming his head between a dumpster and the dumpster lid when he got unsatisfactory answers. After he got a name, "Blackjack" he slammed the guy's head until he died. I wanted very much to paint Jennings as a sympathetic NPC who's gone overboard. I gave him a lot of neurotic quirks (chain-smoking, constantly fiddling with lighter, a nervous tic), and I'm trying to show him as what Alana could become.

Man, that's one dark and nasty world. A symphatetic NPC? Killing another with a dumpster lid? Seems to me that Jennings is already half-gone.

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- I didn't really feel as though there was a Lovecraftian vibe. Any suggestions on thematics, mood, and color to push this? Or do you think I should just go with the flow and let the game create its own vibe based on portrayal and the effect of the Humanity mechanic?

Definitely don't sweat it. The Humanity will of course do it's work, but for that you have to have a firm idea of how it works and what situations cause rolls. But it seems to me that you're both creating color profusely without any plan, so why not just watch and see what happens?

Generally lovecraftian mood can be generated by emphasizing the dichtonomy of natural and supernatural. Have NPCs be genuinely afraid of the supernatural, regardless of facts. Give all the demons the Taint ability, so that they can cause madness by mere presence.

I'm not so sure if Lovecraft is what your game is going to be, though. It seems more like a triple hardboiled detective story with a smattering of brutal horror. Like the whole of Sorcerer's Soul, actually.

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- Any ideas of how to push Humanity in this game? I'm sort of at a loss as to the sort of events that would make one's sanity increase or decrease outside of demon-summoning, and I was under the impression that Humanity should be really fluid in a Sorcerer game.

Dig deeper. What is sanity based off? The Lovecraftian take is that sanity is a veil, and anything that would break the veil causes insanity. The veil consists of comfortable lies about the cosmos and human nature. Thus you get humanity gains like:
- Spending time with your parents.
- Joining a Bird Watcher's Club or other hobby.
- Digging out your own eyes with a fork.
... and in general any superficial relationships and other lies that help to keep the veil in place. On the other hand, humanity loss comes from:
- Separating yourself from humanity through dwelving into arts, sciences or esoterica.
- Falling deeply in love, investing yourself in the Other.
- Concentrating too deeply in the past, a world that does not exist.

But that's just the lovecraftian take. Other possibilities include sanity as sociality, sanity as conformity, sanity as imagination, sanity as lack of imagination, sanity as scepticism, sanity as intelligence, sanity as faith, sanity as anything you dare to name... It's a too wide concept to answer simply. You could almost say that humanity as sanity is just changing the special effects, while leaving the unambiguousity untouched. Neither term is particularly clear in all the width of human thought.

My suggestion is that you should just consider some possibilities, and then during the game develop the concept as necessary. If you both agree that something is worth a humanity gain or loss (like that blowing off of a friend; if that's about sanity, then sanity is clearly tied to human relationships), then it's clearly a part of sanity/insanity.

Some memes that potentially touch on sanity:
- A tragic personal event.
Does she opt to dwell on it or deal with it? Take therapy?
- Socially unbelievable actions from other people.
I'd have considered a humanity roll for attacking a carbage-lid wielding detective... easy to lose your faith in the police!
- Drugs.
When what you see isn't definitely real...
- Loneliness
A classical meme: if nobody keeps you in check, how do you know if what you're doing is sane?
- Social pressure
Is it easier to become crazy than do what the job or relatives demand?

And remember, the humanity rolls should not come about from passive events; humanity is not a CoC sanity mechanic, even if it's about sanity. So it's not enough to witness horror, the character has to act in a way that demonstrates the horror's effects. Or something. Rolls come from choices, not from events.

Finally: it's entirely possible that a given definition of Humanity concerns itself with liminal things. One view of sanity would have it be the status quo, with insanity happening only as a hereditary illness. Then there really wouldn't be any insanity-inducing events apart from the supernatural horror of demons. That doesn't necessarily weaken the game.

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- Alana lost a Humanity. Unfortunately, I don't yet own Sorcerer's Soul (though it should be on its way), and I imagine this would be covered in there, but how should I go about discussing portrayal of this loss with Sarah? Should I push the portrayal of this loss?

Seth is right about this one. It's indeed explained in some detail in Sorcerer's Soul, but the short of it is that you should leave it to the player to interpret or not interpret the movements of humanity. The point is that Humanity does not constrain player action, and you shouldn't put on any vague believability pressure about starting to bark at the moon. That's what it boils down to: if you have defined expectations, that's the same as telling the player to act in a certain way.

As the player knows the definition, she can incorporate it in her actions. But such incorporation should be foreshadowing the eventual end, not acting out some current requirements. Consider: one character drops to Humanity 1, the player gets worried and starts to actively seek opportunities to get back up. The character turns a new leaf and starts to act humanely. Another player in the same situation decides that it's time to go for the big one and lets his character act like he were already half-way there. Both are reasonable interpretations, neither touches on the psychology of the character, and both would be represented completely differently in a movie.

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- This is a rule question. Successes from related rolls carry over. Wounds cause a decrease in dice pools.When Alana hamstrung Jennings, she got three successes on him. Does this mean that she's up three dice and he's down three dice?

I was going to answer positively, but then got to thinking... I don't actually run it that way for some reason, wonder why that is? If other scores are used in support, that works, and if something happens before the battle proper, that works too, but during the battle I haven't given these roll-over bonuses. No idea why not, though.

Perhaps it's a currency matter? 1 penalty=one die=one success, which means that the same success cannot be both a die and a penalty. Can't remember the rules saying so, though.

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- Do you think the attack on Jennings should cause a Humanity check? I wasn't sure since I didn't seem to be a particularly sanity-rending experience.

Not the experience necessarily, but the decision. Was the decision to attack him proof of weakening sanity, or would the act cause weakening sanity?

It's your call, entirely. I might well have had the roll, but it depends on the kind of person Alana is, the way you depicted the scene and the way the world is, not to speak of how you view sanity. The game world seems so extremely dark that I don't know if that kind of situation isn't everyday to the people there.

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- Sarah commented when I was explaining sorcery rules that she thought if you had a poorly-bound demon then you shouldn't be able to Punish it as effectively. Honestly, I have no problem with the way the rules are written since a poorly-bound demon has a hundred other ways to screw you over.

Punishment doesn't require a binding at all, so it's perhaps better to view it as the general "mystic attack" ritual than something you do with the power of the binding. If you think of it as something to do when the bound demon gets fractitious, it's indeed natural to expect that the binding strength would affect the thing. And why not? I could see it happening, and both ways to boot: a positive strength helps the sorcerer, a negative one the demon. I wouldn't expect it to mix things up too much.

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Anyhow, I know I wasn't as descriptive as I possibly could be about the game, but that was a lot to write! If you have any questions about the campaign, NPCs, my plans, her plans, whatever, than ask. I just didn't want to type my fingers down to nubs.

Yeah, we want to hear more! Especially about play, so be sure to continue the story. I'm convinced that this story can't end well, it's so dark already.

Quote from: Bret GillanSee, I was under the impression that a loss of Humanity resulted in a change in the character. If I remember correctly, in the rules it says that a sorcerer can tell whether another sorcerer has lost Humanity or not using a Lore check or somesuch. I'm not opposed to your binary definition of Humanity, and it would actually make things simpler for Sarah, but I just had a different impression from the rules. Perhaps I was reading into them too much.

Hi Bret,

A sorcerer can tell if another sorcerer has lost humanity and still keep the idea of humanity a binary switch.  The ideas don't really contradict.  All you're saying is that the other sorcerer is closer to flipping out.  Call it corruption if you like.  The important thing is that characters are not limited by their humanity state like you would be with a "personality hit points" type of mechanic.  A Sorcerer character is, at any time, capable of any act on the ethical spectrum (or sanity spectrum.)

Humanity has an interesting dual role in Sorcerer.  It's main purpose is really a marker for the Player and the group in general to tell them how significant a humanity risking action really is for that player.  Doing something when you have a comfortable cushion of humanity, sure that's something.  Nobody likes to skate closer to the edge.  But making a potentially humanity damaging choice when you only have ONE left.  Now that's when people pay attention!  That's when it is within the players power to author a significant statement about who that character really is.

I won't say its entirely a metagame device, there are uses for humanity as a stat within sorcerer, using it similar to will and stamina.  The fact that it can be used both ways seems to bother a few who seem to demand a stat be one or the other.  I've found it to work just fine in its odd dual state.

best

Trevis.

Quote from: Bret GillanThe only problem I ran into here was a problem I ran into in my previous Sorcerer campaign - when it came time for her to pick attribute descriptors she immediately reached for the book and picked all of them from the examples.

I may be misremembering, but doesn't the Sorcerer rulebook actually say "these are not examples; you should pick one of these" or words to that effect?

Quote from: James Holloway

Quote from: Bret GillanThe only problem I ran into here was a problem I ran into in my previous Sorcerer campaign - when it came time for her to pick attribute descriptors she immediately reached for the book and picked all of them from the examples.

I may be misremembering, but doesn't the Sorcerer rulebook actually say "these are not examples; you should pick one of these" or words to that effect?

That is my understanding as well.  I remember Ron specifically mentioning that at one point.  The rulebook descriptors are, technically speaking, the only available descriptors.  Now, Sorcerer and Sword (and certain minisupps, IIRC) change the list of available descriptors, but the list is always finite.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen

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At this point, Sarah(!) called for a Humanity check for her character since Alana just screwed up her relationship with her only friend in the pursuit of her goal. She failed the roll, dropping to Humanity 3.

Interesting. Friendship is part of the Humanity definition?

Duh.  I can't believe that I overlooked this.

Apparently your player already has some ideas about what Humanity is.  That's good.  However, it doesn't appear that your ideas sync up.  You're trying to play "Humanity as sanity" and it seems like Sarah's idea is "Humanity as empathy".  Now this isn't the end of the world, since the two ideas can be congruent, but it will help for you to figure that one out.

Personally, I think that switching to "Humanity as empathy" is probably a better idea.  I agree with Eero that your game world seems more like a James Ellroy novel than a Lovecraft story, and, as a result, the ability to treat other people with compassion instead of treating them as objects to be used seems like a good focal point for Humanity.  Take that definition and apply it to the attack on Jennings.  Had Alana been trying to rescue the interrogation victim, then it might actually trigger a Humanity gain.  However, this was not the case.  She saw this person as a means towards achieving an end (fulfilling her demon's Need).  Ergo, a Humanity check.

Lest I sound like I'm being negative, the important part of this post was when you noted that both you and Sarah enjoyed yourselves.  That's great!  And I agree with Eero that you should keep playing.  I offer these thoughts to try to help you do even better, not because I somehow think that you screwed everything up.  Because you didn't.

Happy gaming!

Quote from: Rob MacDougallTo wit: how much does Sarah know/care about Lovecraft and his work and that whole genre?

Rob, your question made me feel really, really stupid when I realized that I'd never even asked her if she'd read any Lovecraft, and had been working under the assumption that she was familiar with his work. I talked to her about it and found out that she didn't have any knowledge of his work whatsoever. However, I explained the thematics of Lovecraftian horror to her (something I should have done at the game's beginning), and she said she was interested in continuing with the way we've planned things.

She also said, when I told her about Lovecraft and his philosophy, that somebody needed to make him some soup. :p

Side note: I'm not sure if I'm supposed to respond to replies in seperate replies of my own, or in one big reply. At the moment, I'm going to do one reply at a time because I don't have a lot of free time and I'm pretty overwhelmed by the response this thread has received. Thanks everybody!

Quote from: Eero TuovinenTell us more about the relationship between Salomondeus and Alana, will you? Is Alana afraid of the demon? I would be, what with it's unreasonable personality. What do you think, is she ready to punish and banish if the demon gets ugly?

Sarah would be the better one to answer these questions, since all I know is what I pick up from her play and her talking about her character, but I think she tries to mentally distance herself from Salomondeus as much as possible, and most likely will not punish or banish him unless he gets really out of control since she "needs" him to find Emma.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenDo you know, your setting is really hardboiled and evil. I'm stricken by the amount of ugliness and horror you two have heaped upon the game.

Thanks!

Quote from: Eero TuovinenI haven't noticed any definite stance boundary in Sorcerer (not that I've played it too much). I suggest going the Lumpley route: consider your own wants and interests over the story, and answer accordingly. Use the dice to decide when the players disagree. Don't think of the domains as the "player domain" and "GM domain", but as the spheres of interest of the two persons playing. If you have no stake in something, why not let her narrate it? If you have, find out where your two visions disagree.

The way you've described it is pretty much how I've been running it. I've just noticed that in a lot of games, new players will come in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to have their enthusiasm curbed when they try to make up NPCs on the spot or describe the scenes ("No! You can't do that! Only the GM can!"). However, as much as I'd enjoy a Storytime with Sarah, there has to be a middle ground, but the middle ground is not very well-defined. Anyhow, I've been following your ideas on how to handle this and will continue to do so ("if nobody has a stake in it, let it slide")

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen

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At this point, Sarah(!) called for a Humanity check for her character since Alana just screwed up her relationship with her only friend in the pursuit of her goal. She failed the roll, dropping to Humanity 3.

Interesting. Friendship is part of the Humanity definition?

I should have gone into this more in-depth since there seems to be some confusion on the motivating factors behind the call. She called for the Humanity check because Alana was sacrificing an interpersonal relationship in order to pursue her obsession (finding Emma). While I can see this as an Empathy-Humanity check, it stands as a Lovecraftian Sanity-Humanity check due to the willful destruction of her only friendship, which drives her further into isolation.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen

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At this point, Alana found out he was a detective, and Sarah's jaw dropped, and she found herself with a dilemma on her hands. He was one of the "good guys" and yet she'd just promised her demon that he could kill him and drink his blood.

A nice bang!

Funny that you say that since you thought of it. ;)

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen

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Jennings "interrogated" the man by asking him questions and slamming his head between a dumpster and the dumpster lid when he got unsatisfactory answers. After he got a name, "Blackjack" he slammed the guy's head until he died. I wanted very much to paint Jennings as a sympathetic NPC who's gone overboard. I gave him a lot of neurotic quirks (chain-smoking, constantly fiddling with lighter, a nervous tic), and I'm trying to show him as what Alana could become.

Man, that's one dark and nasty world. A symphatetic NPC? Killing another with a dumpster lid? Seems to me that Jennings is already half-gone.

Did I mention that his only son is missing and is tied up in the whole plot? Sorry if I missed that. His motivations are sympathetic (a father's search for his son) even if his actions are not. And yes, he is already half-gone. His intended role in the game is (was) to be a low-Humanity contrast to Alana. But then he got more or less crippled, so he's going to be bowing out.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen

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- Alana lost a Humanity. Unfortunately, I don't yet own Sorcerer's Soul (though it should be on its way), and I imagine this would be covered in there, but how should I go about discussing portrayal of this loss with Sarah? Should I push the portrayal of this loss?

Seth is right about this one. It's indeed explained in some detail in Sorcerer's Soul, but the short of it is that you should leave it to the player to interpret or not interpret the movements of humanity. The point is that Humanity does not constrain player action, and you shouldn't put on any vague believability pressure about starting to bark at the moon. That's what it boils down to: if you have defined expectations, that's the same as telling the player to act in a certain way.

As the player knows the definition, she can incorporate it in her actions. But such incorporation should be foreshadowing the eventual end, not acting out some current requirements. Consider: one character drops to Humanity 1, the player gets worried and starts to actively seek opportunities to get back up. The character turns a new leaf and starts to act humanely. Another player in the same situation decides that it's time to go for the big one and lets his character act like he were already half-way there. Both are reasonable interpretations, neither touches on the psychology of the character, and both would be represented completely differently in a movie.

Okay, I get it. So, basically, Humanity is an out of character mechanic, not an in character one? But it *can* be an in character one depending on how the player wants to interpret it?

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen

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- This is a rule question. Successes from related rolls carry over. Wounds cause a decrease in dice pools.When Alana hamstrung Jennings, she got three successes on him. Does this mean that she's up three dice and he's down three dice?

I was going to answer positively, but then got to thinking... I don't actually run it that way for some reason, wonder why that is? If other scores are used in support, that works, and if something happens before the battle proper, that works too, but during the battle I haven't given these roll-over bonuses. No idea why not, though.

Perhaps it's a currency matter? 1 penalty=one die=one success, which means that the same success cannot be both a die and a penalty. Can't remember the rules saying so, though.

Okay, yes! This make a lot of sense. I seem to remember seeing this exact formula in the book, though a glance through it didn't turn it up so I can't point to a page. Thanks.

Also, thanks so much for your write-up on Lovecraftian sanity and how it would be used in terms of Humanity increases or decreases. It really got my gears turning and helped a lot.

Quote from: Bret Gillan
Did I mention that his only son is missing and is tied up in the whole plot? Sorry if I missed that. His motivations are sympathetic (a father's search for his son) even if his actions are not. And yes, he is already half-gone. His intended role in the game is (was) to be a low-Humanity contrast to Alana. But then he got more or less crippled, so he's going to be bowing out.

Out of interest, did you just decide on the crippling based on narration, or were the rolls that good? The rules do regulate the player rights to cripple NPCs, you know. Players shouldn't be able to bypass the damage rules by stating special actions against critical spots.

And I would think that a crippled, lost-his-son detective would be even more interesting! A visit to the hospital, where the guy rests after the ordeal. His foggied brain has come back from the brink, thanks to being forced to just lay and think. Is he angry at the woman who interfered with his crusade, or is he desperate for help in finding his son? Does he spill his information on the case, or does he demand a wheelchair to go out and about, perhaps using the woman's guilt to make her his helper? Constructive thinking, man...

And tendons can be fixed, of course. He'll be up and about in a couple of weeks. So don't throw him out just because of some unfortunate combat encounter (which is what the above reads as).

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Okay, I get it. So, basically, Humanity is an out of character mechanic, not an in character one? But it *can* be an in character one depending on how the player wants to interpret it?

Yeah, that's how I play it. I don't picture it as out of character, though, but just as something the characters aren't aware of. Like in RL, there are things you don't realize. Who can see the hearts of men? Basically, I don't care preplay. Let the play tell us what it's about.

Since no one's mentioned it, I'll add a note about boundaries between players and the GM: the players run their own characters, while the GM runs the NPCs.

If a player starts moving the NPCs around like puppets, that's a potential problem...just as it's a problem if the GM does the same thing to PCs.  I can imagine a new player getting so caught up in the action that she begins to assume the NPCs will follow a story line that's unfolding in her mind; but the GM should step in (gently) and say, "Well let's play that out and see what really happens."

Quote from: Eero TuovinenOut of interest, did you just decide on the crippling based on narration, or were the rolls that good? The rules do regulate the player rights to cripple NPCs, you know. Players shouldn't be able to bypass the damage rules by stating special actions against critical spots.

Actually, rereading the rules, you're absolutely right. I forgot about the halving penalties after combat rule. So maybe he'll be making an appearance next session, which should be tonight. :) Thanks all for the answers and advice.