"Good" sorcerers?

[jaw6]

So... I'm getting into Sorcerer. Reading it and getting really jazzed, wanting to run a game. I'm trying to explain to my wife just how nifty this idea is, how different it is, but she stops cold at the description. After a quick thumb-through, she's more than a bit put off.

Something like, "I dunno. I like playing the hero. This seems like you have to play bad guys. I mean, the basic assumption is that you summon demons. What if I don't wanna do that? I mean, I just wanna give food to the poor. Can I play that? Would that still be fun? Roll dice to see if you give food to the poor. Eh?"

I'm vexed. Anybody?

[Trevis Martin]

Sorcerer the system doesn't really worry about weather your guy is good, it really looks at what a desire costs you. The thing about sorcerers are they are people who want something bad enough to use dangerous means to achieve it.  Whatever it is that they want could be good. Their desire could be great and noble, but the means they use are what puts them at risk.  I mean, these are people who wanted something so badly that they violated the laws of reality to achieve it, risking themselves in the process.   If they actually do manage to achieve whatever it is, taking this terrible risk and all, doesn't that make them potentially herioc? I think so.

best

Trevis

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Your wife's reaction is very much the right reaction ... but it's not finished.

The next step is to answer that question: how can I make up a good guy, who has done (and still might do) this?

That's right - to answer it. Not to ask it rhetorically and give up.

This is the very hardest thing for gamers to understand. They are trained to look at the sheet and say "This is my guy, this is what he's like, this is what he'll do. This is my part to play."

Do that with Sorcerer and you'll be sunk. You'll be the guy who recoils from the basic taste of tequila, and goes for the rest of his life saying, "That's stuff's nasty." Or worse, the guy who says, "Oh, that's like water, I know water, I'll drink it like water," and pays the predictable price very soon.

I'm not kidding or making an idle analogy. These are the exact "wrong turns" when dealing with my game as a text, and I know why I wrote it that way, and I can give you dozens of real-world-play examples of (a) people spouting defensive rhetoric and scuttling away, or (b) people puking all over themselves and being very ashamed later.

But instead, answer the question, and remember that character creation is only the bubbling potential of that answer. It really comes through play.

How do I play a heroic sorcerer?

By playing a sorcerer heroically.

Seriously. I will arrogantly state, here, and in full violation of the general mutualism of the Forge, that Sorcerer is the finest role-playing game in existence for challenging the user in this fashion, providing absolutely full system support for him or her when they go for it ... and offering no safety net whatsoever to those who are emotionally or cognitively not up to the challenge.

And even better, even for those who are up to it, no guarantee that their characters will succeed, merely maximal support for the attempt. That is the darkness of the game. It has nothing to do with graphic violence or sex or the various imagery of demons.

Best,
Ron

[Bill Cook]

One of the players in my campaign played his character like he was an angel. His Cover was: FBI Agent. When his informant was compromised, he let slip his one chance to corner a gang leader and instead stowed the man into a car and had his partner get him out of there. When his boss had him pinned to the ground with a knife at his throat, a pawn of a parasite demon, he Banished the hideous thing. When his team got pinned down by criminals in a warehouse, he charged through the bullets and dove through the center office windows, engaging their leader. (He wouldn't have gotten far without the Armor conferred by his demon, though.) When a pedophile's horror stalked an innocent child, he threw himself into its tentacles and battled like Hercules against the Hydra. It was pretty jaw-dropping.

[angelfromanotherpin]

A few sources have shown the 'extreme altruist,' but I point at the old Squadron Supreme series, where the Justice League creates a society free of hunger, violence and crime... but it's through totalitarian means.  Means which will survive them and their (mostly) responsible use.

If you want to give humanitarianism a shot as game material, I say go for it with both barrels, the more loaded the issue the better.  Talk with your wife about specific problems she'd like to explore, research those problems for the reasons why they're not solved yet and think about the people involved.  Make the villains heinous, the martyrs passionate, and the voices of reason very reasonable.  Also think about the different ways that the victims may respond, starting with the basics (Denial, Anger, Negotiation, Depression, Acceptance).

Then set her Sorcerer loose to attack the issues and see exactly how far that character will go in order to feed the hungry, protect abuse victims, and punish corporate environmental abuse.

[jagardner]

Player: I want to feed the hungry.

GM: Make a roll.

Player: Two victories.

GM: Okay.  You feed two hungry people.  Then a voice whispers in your ear, "I can show you how to feed a hundred..."

[jaw6]

Hmmm. Thanks for the responses (especially Ron). Just to clarify a few things:

+ I think I get the distinction. The "narrativism lightbulb" has gone off for me. If anything, this maybe about recruitment more than any specific game. How do I get my wife to want to pursue a conflict?

+ I think Liz's initial repulsion came from two places: Overall look 'n feel ("eww, demons = icky!") and the game's starting conditions ("do I have to have a demon?"). The FBI Agent is a good practical example, but sounds already-in-motion. Are there issues (in the narration or system) having a character start without a demon? Is that still interesting? (I can hear my wife saying, "but then, why bother?")


From reading around a bit, it sounds like I should investigate & Soul, as I'm intrigued by the angelic option, but that's long term...

[Andrew Norris]

On the demon bit, it's important to remember that a demon is just a dysfunctional relationship. There's no restriction that they have to be eldritch creatures from beyond -- any relationship that has reasons for you to stay, when you really shouldn't, fits the bill. (And sometimes "is it or isn't it?" works as well. My fiancee's character in our Sorcerer campaign had recurring visions of her dead daughters. She did some bad things to get the voices in her head to be at rest. Whether they were actually spirits, demons, or just a symptom of her breakdown wasn't nailed down until several sessions in.)

My advice for getting a non-gamer interested in conflict is to ease off of looking at it from a game perspective. Look at the types of fiction she's interested in; it'll be easy to pick out any number of meaty conflicts. She's not interested in blowing thigns up with cool powers, sure, but I'm sure she can relate to hard compromises for the "greater good". (And frankly, I'm finding the latter make much more interesting gaming.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I have a bit of painful advice for you.

You cannot make, lead, influence, or expect your wife (or anyone else) to be interested in playing Sorcerer.

You can present information that counteracts a false impression. You can offer options.

But none of those mean anything, and will not accomplish anything, if you are conforming to the geek-fallacy that because you like it and think it's cool, someone else will also like it, and like it in your way, if you just show them, again.

You have to start with some indication on her part that she's interested in playing. So far, from what you've presented, she hasn't given any such indication, period. Is this one of those situations, when she's showing 10% interest to be polite, i.e., stop talking about this honey, and you're perceiving 10% reluctance, i.e., almost there? Very common with gamers and their wives.

Anyway, unless she is actually indicating, really and positively, that's she's interested in playing, then your goals in this conversation, on-line, cannot be met. You wrote,

How do I get my wife to want to pursue a conflict?

You can't, any more than you "got" her to marry you. She wanted to marry you, and here you are.

Same with playing Sorcerer.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

Hi Ron,

You gave me a hard time in this thread

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16403.0

but I think what you're saying here actually confirms what I was after. That is, you're right to inveigh against the things you're inveighing against in that thread, but I think what I was stumbling towards was what you're saying here. Your character needs to be acting on values the player cares about; the player needs to be able to at least imaginarily identify with the humanity-definition in the game, or it becomes a bloodless exercise. I was mistaking the particular for the general there, but this is what I was looking for.

This is related to stuff that gets talked about here about 'roleplaying on purpose'. Also to one of only two negative feelings I've had playing Dogs. I kept thinking "This would be better if what the Dogs cared about was something I cared about. People can drink and screw all they want as far as I care." Then I imagined a near-future game where the characters were judge, jury, and executioner in one of the remaining environmental utopias, trying to keep the ecosystem intact, and thought: "that's where these conflicts would really get me."

I want to be got that way. And I think I finally see how Sorcerer could do it.

[Lisa Padol]

On the demon bit, it's important to remember that a demon is just a dysfunctional relationship. There's no restriction that they have to be eldritch creatures from beyond -- any relationship that has reasons for you to stay, when you really shouldn't, fits the bill. (And sometimes "is it or isn't it?" works as well. My fiancee's character in our Sorcerer campaign had recurring visions of her dead daughters.

Possibly out of left field -- this sounds like the relationship between the protagonist and his dead wife in Gaiman's American Gods. Thinking of her as a demon just sheds a whole new light on that book.

-Lisa

[faerieloch]

As for having "good" players, it's as Trevis said: you have a demon to get something you want, not necessarily because you're an evil person.  A character in a game I played in ran a youth centre in Queens (game was set in NYC; I may have the burrough wrong -- terrible head for details) and taught basketball and helped kids get out of the bad neighbourhood.  He had a demon to give him the strength to keep doing this.  Another character finished the game by going to his parole officer and explaining why he had to break parole and take these two kids to their grandmother (kids were siblings of another PC who died).  These, by my definition, would be good people but they have demons who lend them extra strength and push them to their limits.

Another thing to think about is that a character may start out good and end up bad as they're put through ringer again and again, even though they didn't want to do things like that.  It's amazing what people will do to survive....

[Nev the Deranged]

Recently Marvel published a short run (6 issues I think) called Toxin. The main character is a cop who gets infected with the symbiote offspring of Carnage, which is itself an offspring of Venom. For those unfamiliar with the Marvel universe, these creatures are basically parasite demons with a wide variety of powers and a Need/Desire for mayhem. Venom and Carnage were both bonded to psychopathic criminals who embraced their "gifts" with no quandary whatsoever, but this guy has a chance to do something positive.

The whole miniseries is about the human being coming to terms with the creature that now shares his body, a creature with incredible power and no morals whatsoever. He uses Toxin's power to act heroically, but it's a constant struggle- and the most important struggle isn't against Toxin itself, but against himself- given the power to do whatever he will, how long can he resist the urge to give in to his darker desires?

It's a pretty decent series, and fitting Sorcerer matierial.