[Sorcerer & Sword] Bound Gods of Ulkhur-Zakand, Sessions

[Larry L.]

Game setup was here.

Shane has been too busy to post these, I think, so I'll get the ball rolling with what I can remember and let the others fill in the blanks.

Chargen

Xareem
eunuch bodyguard in the house of Drachan Haakir

Appearance:  Big ox, soft muscled, well groomed.
Telltale: Ornately woven hair/beard
Stamina: 6 (Big and vigorous; Trained soldier)
Will: 3 (Aristocrat)
Lore: 1 (Naïve)
Past: Slave 6, Bodyguard 6, Courtesan 3
Humanity: 5
Price: Emasculated (-1 in dealing with men in situations where masculinity
would be a factor)
Kicker: Drachan had allowed one of his concubines (Selia) to keep a minor
family heirloom (to his knowledge minor).  While X was having sex with her, the relic was stolen.  X should have been responsible for protecting it (and he shouldn't have been playing with a favored concubine of his master). (playing with, or in love with?)

Sword of Yosh
Type: Object, Terrestrial Demon
Telltale: Arcane glyphs along its blade
General appearance: two-edged short sword, like a Greek xiphos
Stamina: 6
Will: 7
Lore: 6
Power: 7
Desire: Jealousy
Need: To be polished with the sweat (or any bodily fluids) of lovers.
Abilities:   Boost Stamina, Boost Lore, Fast, Special Damage Lethal (Sword), Perception (body language)  -- Conferred to master, Vitality – Conferred to master
Born as a slave, X became a sorcerer when he underwent castration to gain a position of privilege. X was made to castrate himself with the sword that he would use in his duties as a bodyguard. Unbeknownst to his masters, the sword that he was given was the demon sword Y. X's act of castrating himself was the binding ritual. (stamina)

Iakob
Outlander cat-burglar (Magar tribesman)

Telltale: Eldritch accent
Stamina: 2 (Arcane regimen)
Will: 4 (Social Competence)
Lore: 4 (Solitary adept)
Past: Freelance Thief 4
Humanity: 4
Kicker: Iakob had been commissioned by a stranger to steal an artifact from Drachan Haakir.  Now the stranger is not to be found, and the artifact seems to be wanted by more than one group of people.

Ixchthel
Type: Inconspicuous, Astral Demon
Telltale:  Shadow of some flying creature is seen in its vicinity.
Appearance: --  (GM laughs with glee....)
Stamina: 3
Will: 5
Lore: 4
Power: 5
Desire: Knowledge
Need: Arcane Rituals
Abilities: Shadow – demon is the user, Perception (See through master's eyes) – demon is the user, Perception (See through demon's eyes) – Conferred to master, Cloak – Conferred to master

Iakob became a sorcerer when he broke into a sorcerer's house and had tokill the sorcerer (Dariel).  When confronted by the sorcerer's demon, they worked out a binding agreement.  Iakob has since studied the sorcerer's books and become an adept himself.

Kyrg
Outlander raider (Magar tribesman)

Telltale: Scar patterns from his initial ritual.
Stamina: 3 (Savage raised)
Will: 6 (Brush with unknown, Inhuman leadership of men)
Lore: 2 (Shamanic training)
Past: Barbaric Raider 6
Humanity: 3
Price: Arrogant (-1 on perception rolls)

Kicker:  Having raided a caravan, Kyrg discovers that one of the foreigners
he had butchered was a sorcerer bent on infiltrating the city and destroying the archons.  The sorcerer's demon is loose.

Osma
Type: Possessor: Terrestrial Demon in the body of a gliding reptile (beast).
Telltale: Red pupils
General Appearance: 3' long, scales, fangs, forked tongue, skin flaps for
gliding.
Stamina: 7
Will: 8
Lore: 7
Power: 8
Desire: Observe pain
Need:  Be fed human flesh
Abilities: Link, Perception (pain), Travel (pain gliding, may teleport to where pain is being experienced), Transport, Special damage, non lethal (Paralytic poison), Ranged (for special damage), Armor (scales)

Kyrg became a sorcerer under the training of the shaman Glyk.  While undergoing his final initiation ritual (in a cave high on the Bluff of Pain), he was attacked by the lizard.  In defense, he bound the demon Osma into it.

Session 1

This was a while back, so my memory of what everyone did is pretty fuzzy, and is thus biased to focus on "my guy."

Xareem was tasked by his master to track down the black dagger which was just stolen by Iakob. The master also suspects someone has been sneaking into the harem and consorting with the concubines, so he tells Xareem to be on the lookout for this fiend. (*ahem*)

Iakob goes around town trying to unload this dagger he just stole. Along the way, he meets the idiot son of one of the sultans, who wants Iakob to arrange for him to rendezvous with another sultan's concubine Selia, whom the lad loves.

Kyrg consults with demons in the desert, and terrible details of the cosmic secret of the city are revealed to him. His party of raiders reaches the city and he spends a bunch of the booty to throw a party in the name of the barbarians.

The sultan's man Darrech (sp?) leads Xareem to a tavern where the thief has been sighted. Xareem arranges to make a buy. He meets with Iakob, (X fails to identify Iakob as a sorcere) and Xareem bluffs out a bargain, but then pulls out his sword (which Iakob recognizes as sorcerous) and says Iakob will be coming back to the palace. They get outside, and Ixchthel Cloaks Iakob. Xareem's Perception is not quick enough to stop Iakob from slipping off into the crowd.

Kryg finds arcane lore.

Xareem catches the sultan's wife sneaking out of the palace incognito. He follows her to another sultan's palace, which he confronts her. He bodily hauls her back to the palace and threatens to tell the sultan of her unfaithfulness. She pleads that she'll do anything, anything, to keep this a secret, and Xareem takes her. She afterwards confides something to him.

Kryg starts doing unpleasant things to the locals. I think he and Iakob interact at some point too.

Xareem catches Darrech sneaking out of the harem with a wily grin on his face. Xareem apprehends him and brings him before the sultan, saying he has caught the scoundrel who has been sleeping with the concubines. The sultan orders his death. Xareem drags him off to behead him. Darrech pleads that he's do anything, anything, to not be killed. (Much-needed humour.) Xareem ignores his request, and hangs the man's head by the entryway to the harem.

Kryg has a really long (mechanically) battle with a demon. I go for a smoke and it's still happening when I come back.

Okay, I'll stop here and let the others fill in the blanks for Session 1 SIS before I go on to Session 2 and postmortem opinions.

[Grover]

It looks pretty accurate - I changed Iakob's name to Istvan, but that's about it.  In the first session, it was mostly Istvan trying to locate Asbeg (who hired him to steal the dagger, and then didn't show). As Kicker's go, it was good at generating action, but it wasn't that engaging.

When I created the character, my goal was to make someone who was pretty confident, and would gradually get himself into trouble by summoning demons.  This hasn't really worked out.  One problem is that I moved too slowly - if I wanted to have a character that was gradually losing control, I should've started summoning demons from day 1.  The other problem was that I designed my character poorly.  I picked a high lore, under the impression that this would help me summon demons- I would've been better off with a high will, and a lower lore.  Also, I didn't take advantage of the free Contact/Summon you get for a starting demon, which resulted in my character being significantly less effective than I had expected.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

Problem: I'm not seeing the people in play from reading those posts. Can you tell a little more about what happened in terms of the actual people?

Best,
Ron

[Larry L.]

Hey Ron, I'm getting to that.

I think it's revealing that the above focuses on my character to the near exclusion of the others. I found myself more stuck in "my guy" mode and had a harder time getting into author stance than I would have liked. My attention on the narratives of the others was focused on filtering for stuff I could use to thread our narratives together. There was cool backstory exposition regarding the Archons and immenent doom and all that, but I think I've forgotten it since I couldn't get it to tie into my creative agenda.

There's a fair, but not huge, amount of kibbitzing going on between players while the spotlight is on them.

After the game, I shared with Shane my thoughts that pacing could stand to be tweaked a bit. My understanding of bangs is, "BANG... and cut to next scene!" This happened sometimes, and when it did I was left with time to plot an outcome. Other times, it was "BANG... and let's play this scene until all the loose ends are worked out." Which kinda sapped the momentum, like an old-school "city crawl."

The last bit with Christopher sort of wore my patience. He was first fighting a demon, then trying to bind it, then trying to banish it... Which was cool, but all of this was handled in one contiguous scene. I'm thinking the MLwM way of one roll per scene might have been a good idea here.

Shane revealed when we ended that he had just expended his bandolier of bangs, so it was an opportune time to stop anyway.

I told Shane when I created my character that I wanted all sorts of intrigue to get mixed up in. I think he did a fantastic job with the relationship map for the game. All the NPCs were mixed up with each other in plausible and nefarious ways. I came away with a "tip of the iceberg" feeling, that there was something much greater going on here. I had a hard time figuring out how to notate all the principals on my character sheet.

e.g. I find out that the sultan's wife is having an affair with another sultan. Then Chris finds out that my sultan's son is not an eligible sacrifice for the Archon ritual... which creates a suggestion that the sultan's heir may be illegitmate. Lots of cool stuff like this for the players to piece together, but the characters still stumbling around waiting to put it all  together.

At this point, we were all kinda getting our legs for the system. Overall though, I'd say it was easily the coolest "city" fantasy game I've played.

Now mind you, Shane never got around to posting this. I'm a tad worried that he feels "responsible" for this tale of wickedness. :-)

Things get more intense as they come together in Session 2, but I figure I'll let anyone get a word in edgewise about stuff so far before I continue. I'm curious how everyone else sees things as happening.

[Shane Street]

Thanks, Larry for starting this.  And thanks for that nice euphemism for lazy (yes, I'm too busy, thats it...).

    Yes, one of the reasons I am reluctant to post actual play here is that, while I could probably tell the story of what happened in play, talking about the people (and all the other things that make an actual play post interesting) is more difficult.

    I was really dissatisfied with the way that I did the opening scenes with each character.  With Larry's character, I grievously railroaded when his master came into the harem to tell Xareem about the missing dagger.  Larry wanted Xareem to run, thinking that his master was coming for him.   I really should have just explained out of character that the master would have had no reason to be suspicious of Xareem at that point.
    With Chris's character, Kyrg, I was not trying to railroad, but it might have sounded like I was when the demon of the sorerer that he just killed was pleading with him to be brought into the city to see the high priest Irgan.  
    Steve's character Istvan did not go so badly, but I really did want to show something about the dagger that he had stolen, but it did not come out.  Then, or ever.

    Setve's assessment of his character is right though.  He was on the run the whole time since there were at least three groups of people looking for the dagger.  Even a somewhat throwaway encounter with a couple of thugs generated some good story.
    Chris had a tendency to interrogate every character he met, deeply.  Larry mentioned earlier tome that my scene framing could be better, and I think that those scenes were some of those that I could have cut up better.  Most of the NPCs spilled their guts right away, and I could have just gone to the next scene a lot sooner.

    I think that I spent too much time in the first session just working through the relationship map, getting all the characters introduced to what is going on.  I don't know if my map is too big (~ 12 NPCs or so), or if some more up front introduction would have been better.  We started with things fairly well progressed, but maybe not enough.  I think it was Zelazny (correct me if I am wrong) that said that his best short stories were the last chapters of the novels that he didn't write.

[Larry L.]

Session 2

In this session, my top priority is authoring my character into the path of the other characters, who are getting to do all the fun cosmic conspiracy stuff.

Xareem continues to be a short-tempered lothario. During a tryst with Selia, she tries to murder him, bereaved at the death of her lover Darrech. He easily disarms her and finishes his business. He has the other sultan's idiot son arrested for looking "suspicious," and is surprised when the master congratulates him on the good work. He hunts down a lead on the dagger, but the stray bird demon (I think Chris had dealt with this one earlier, but I don't recall how) intervenes. He loses the contact but destroys the demon. He then follows information to the temple.

I am struck by what a villain Xareem is turning out to be. I had had a more romanticized version of him at creation, but the choices I've made for him in the face of bangs have defined his true character under pressure. I was cracking jokes from the kitchen about how all of this surely wouldn't come back and be his downfall.

Kryg continues doing unpleasant things to the locals. Having wrangled information about the impending ritual, he's at the temple with a bound captive who figures into this somehow.

Istvan finally manages to unload the dagger. He ends up with Kryg at the temple.

Xareem bursts into the room with Kryg and Istvan, who have a ritual circle on the floor and a bound captive and such. They recognize him and Kryg asks Xareem to join their conspiracy. Xareem takes this as a threat, and desperately attacks.

Here I vacillated a bit about starting a PvP conflict. Solving the problem with violence seemed "in character," but we hadn't addressed the matter of PvP combat in social contract. I probably should have taken it up for discussion, but went ahead anyway, maybe to preserve the tension. No one protested.

The ensuing conflict really gave our understanding of the system a workout. Due to the stakes, GM fiat seemed less acceptable. At one point I argued a bit about an outcome I was on the losing end of. (Because, well, I was on the losing end of it, of course!) We broke down the turn sequence, rules for defence and such, until it had been proved to my satisfaction that I was getting hosed fairly.

There was an interesting outcome that when Xareem fled from combat, Kryg mocked him and made a very successful Will roll. I think it was decided that Kryg had a 13-die edge over Xareem that he could roll over into some future situation of face.

Also, we realized that we hadn't been using bonuses for role-playing and what not, so those came into this fight as well.

In the end Xareem lay dying (greater than 2X Stamina) on the floor, disarmed. Kryg goes back to summon a possessor demon to plant in his captive, and Chris is reminded that the whole summon-bind sequence is hell on one's Humanity.

We end the game. I start OOC discussion on how I can plausibly keep my character in the game. Basically, I want Xareem to agree to their plan now that he's been defeated. Why do they spare Xareem's life? Why does he have a change of colors? How do they know they'll be able to trust him once they let him alone? We worked out something where they swapped secrets to piece together what was really going on, and they'd hang onto the Sword of Yosh until Xareem got them access to the secret areas of the palace.

Okay, is there sufficient "peopleness" there for you, Ron?

Here's my take of the narratives each player has been telling, in hindsight:

[*]Chris is telling the story of the "noble savage" forced to weigh the fate of civilization. Kyrg views the decadence of the city as an outsider.
[*]Me, I'm happy to have some validation of the idea, "Sure, it sounds sexy to use power for sex in the workplace, but you don't wanna be that guy." Xareem sees the city's decadence as an insider.
[*]Steve? Istvan is the everyman (as much as a sorcerer can be an everyman) who got in way over his head. His story brings the other two together.
[/list:u]
Now that these have ran into each other head-on, it wil be interesting to see where it goes.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Yes, that's certainly the sort of thing which helps me enjoy and gain insights (I hope) from actual play posting.

However, I'm not especially interested in playing approval-games with you, or dealing with phrases that may indicate defiance of some kind, so I'll step down and let others take over.

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Weeks]

I'm hoping that this thread doesn't get totally neglected -- though I'm the most guilty party so far.  We finished the game today.

I played Kyrg.  From Kyrg's perspective, there were thirteen scenes and an epilogue.

Observations:

Sorcerer is hard to run.  Shane had lots of prep with a big R-map lots of bangs - some of which were compelling and some of which were not, etc.  But I think he was kind of tentative about handling the system.  There were times, at least in the climactic battle, but probably others when he forgot to do stuff because he was just keeping track of too much.  I think, aside from setting the game up, the thing he was best at was letting us have whatever kind of situation we wanted.  After mutilating a significant noble, Kyrg was able to walk upright through town to deliver the old bastard to the door of his palace.  Enemies?  Fuck 'em!  I think that I was the first of us to really catch on that we could just tell Shane, "OK, here's where I am, here's what I'm doing, now play."  Shane might interrupt with an appropriate Bang or weave it into what we set up, but otherwise, it was ours.

It really is cool to see if and when the stories of the characters overlap.  It was fun and cool when we were playing our linked -- but not very, storylines.  It was fun and cool when they started merging.  We had kind of a stall when Larry revealed to us that he wanted Xareem's story to work into ours more.  I would have just written a junction into the game, in his place, but it seemd like he was already frustrated at having tried to look for ways and have them hit blank walls.  Shane said in our review of the game that he thought we were playing our cards close and not revealing where we were going with some of our characters' actions.  He could have helped us engineer things if he'd known our goals more often.  Oops.  But I bet that's common.

Sorcery sucks!  :-)  I started the game with four Humanity and ended with one.  Damn, those three rolls are dangerous.  The time that I played before, with Michael S. Miller, I lost my character to Humanity loss in similar circumstances, so I was glad to survive the game this time.

Humanity definition is really important and kind of hard.  We had a dual definition including social duty as one and empathy as another.  It was hard to come up with plausible Humanity gain causes.

Has anyone ever mentioned that combat is really dangerous?  (Yes, I know that everyone knows this about Sorcerer.)  It is.  My demon was a combat monster with only a ranged special nonlethal attack.  Until he got whacked once.  It's amazing what a permanent seven-die penalty will do to tame a combat monster.  Even a low-power demon with only Boost Stamina, special lethal damage, and armor for the boss is pretty damn valuable.  Larry's demon was a sword with special lethal damage and boost sta (among other things) and it was neat in one round when he was waiting for the boost, but had to go before it came.  He probably did more damage because of the lack of boost and the demon's full power going into the damage.  It was kind of a win-win.

The dual perceptions that we came up with for Steve's demon is a beautiful thing.  It's a vastly improved link that takes two power slots.

There's something about theme and premise, that even after hanging out here for a couple years, I'm not grokking.  I'm not sure that a real theme was expressed during our play.  I wish I knew how to tell you what I'm missing.

We underused cool role playing and descriptive bonuses.  If I had it to do again, I think I'd push for us to all be on the look-out for opportunities during everyones' play and suggest them.

Rules Questions:

We mostly worked out solutions that were good for us, but these are some of the things that came up.

What counts as an action for application of temporary penalty dice?  Does a defense roll count?  Always?

When a boost is granted, is it the next action, the next action using the boosted stat, or the next action only in the current and/or next round that get's boosted?

How does commanding demons and others work?  I only realized toward the end of our final battle that I think I'd pushed for a wrong interpretation that I took wild advantage of through the game.  I feel like an ass about it now, but there's nothing to be done.  Does the result merely take dice off the demon's effectiveness or does the demon obey as long as there is a single success?

I'm forgetting as much as I'm remembering so hopefully my compatriots will post some similar stuff and trigger my memories.

[Larry L.]

Theme: The final battle, while fun in a "we whupped major butt" way, seemed anticlimactic afterwards. All of a sudden it occurred to me there still these thematic loose ends that hadn't been addressed, but the train had already left the station. Whoops. Maybe we were looking to system to cue thematic development?

Stance: As Chris describes above. I think Shane and I were communicating in a traditional GM-player fashion, and needed to be more explicit in cueing, "I'm throwing you a cool opportunity to riff on, go for it!"

I've realized lately that when I start learning a new system I am spending a fair amount of mental time trying to get a grasp on points-of-contact before my imagination cuts loose. I haven't decided if this is a normal and necessary part of understanding the system and I'm just slow at it, or if this an unnecessary habit I should jettison.