Social Contract: Editing Player's Demon?

[James_Nostack]

A few days ago I ran a Sorcerer & Sword game.  The player's starting demon is a no-fooling pagan god-- Ogoun, the King of Swords.  In Ogoun's case, my player came up with the basic idea, but because he doesn't own the rules I had to stat the demon up myself, and I probably went a little overboard.  Would it violate the implied social contract of Sorcerer to say, "Hey, mind if we tighten up this demon a little?"

Essentially I like the fact that the demon has a high Power level, which makes him imperious, hard to bargain with, but very useful when he's on your side, which is how pagan gods oughtta be.  But I'd like to trim down the demon's abilities.

(Proposed New Version, for what it's worth)
* Cover: Power Politics
* Fast
* Protection
* Special Lethal Damage + Range
* Daze

[Ron Edwards]

Well, problem. You've already "broken the rules" by not having the player make up the demon. From my perspective, that means any patches to solve problems caused by that will only increase the snowball's size as it rolls down the hill.

Basically, you need to start over - have the player make up the demon, period. Just erase the current writeup entirely and the players should do the whole thing by the numbers (literally, the list in the beginning of Chapter 3).

If that seems to be impossible because the player doesn't have the book and doesn't want to get the book, there's not much I can do. At present, if you make up the demon, play the demon, and (in this case) it's a Possessor, well, basically your GMing during play will be so much talking to yourself.

Best,
Ron

[James_Nostack]

Gotcha.  If we end up continuing the scenario, I'll take that under advisement.  (In a way, it's a good thing that this demon Pacts rather than Binds--if it doesn't show up again, that's okay.)