[Sorcerer] Players as demons?

[chris_moore]

My gaming group has six players.  I think it would be neat to have three players be sorcerers, and the other three be the demons bound to those sorcerers.  Has anyone tried this?  How did it go?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Welcome! We used to discuss this a lot more often. See the (very) old Demon PCs discussion from the mailing list days, and the (almost as old) Players playing demons.

Check those out and tell us more about what you have in mind!

Best,
Ron

[chris_moore]

Thanks, Ron, for the links.  I'm not sure exactly what I have in mind; I just think it would be an interesting player group dynamic.  The sorcerer PCs would be addressing the premise, the demon PCs would be...creating complications/moral dilemnas/interesting interaction?  The difference in status between the sorcerers and the demons sounds like an interesting game to me.  
thinking out loud, chris

[Ron Edwards]

Ha! Found it. Bill Masek's a long-time Sorcerer guy, and one day he whipped this into shape ...

Sin

Best,
Ron

[Picador]

I'm susprised that no one has mentioned the Shadowguide mechanic from WW's Wraith: the Oblivion. I was recently thinking about how to handle the demons' personalities and demands in a Sorcerer game, and the Shadowguide rules occurred to me naturally.

The way it works is that each player gets to play his or her own character and also plays the "shadow" of another player. Shadows in Wraith are more or less demons, except that everyone gets exactly one. But they have needs, they can grant powers to their host/master, and they usually don't have his or her best interests in mind.

I'm not really clear about just what Ron's objections are to players portraying demons: yes, demons are supposed to be inscrutable aliens, but why is the GM any better at portraying inscrutable aliens than the players? Sorcerer incorporates lots of Nar stuff and P-P conflict, so I don't see this upsetting the flow of the game, and it takes a lot of pressure off of the GM to portray a major NPC for every PC in addition to everything else in the game.

- Matt

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Hi Matt - well, those are pretty old discussions. My current perspective focuses on the primary power that folks have in playing sorcerer characters: to grapple with and ultimately decide about (for purposes of this particular story) crucial moral conflicts.

The GM, in Sorcerer, gets to exert his judgment upon things via Humanity checks and Humanity gain rolls, but he or she makes no decisions from a protagonist perspective. Playing the demons is fun, but it doesn't afford this unique and inspiring privilege.

So it seems to me (now) that "hey, you can play the demons" is a kind of letdown by comparison, although at first it might seem fun. Demons are cartoons, not characters, and without the GM ability to decree Humanity-issue rolls, the person playing the cartoon is effectively a second-class citizen at the table compared to the GM and to the protagonist players.

I do like the Wraith idea; it's the single strongest game design element ever to come from White Wolf. I have also played Sin, linked above, and I think it's nifty. Oh yes, and the Demon Codex supplement for Obsidian, essentially Dav Harnish's swan song at the Apophis Consortium, has great demon character rules.

So I'm not writin' off the idea ... but I think it ought to be developed by someone who really knows the interrelationships among the Sorcerer rules through first-hand, extensive experience. Otherwise, the other games listed here will probably do a much better job.

Best,
Ron