[Sorcerer]Day of Dupes

[Peter Nordstrand]

Previous threads regarding this game can be found here and here. Also, check out our wiki, to see complete player character and demon writeups as well as the current version of the R-map.

I have a few specific questions. Answers and comments from just about anybody is welcome.

Pre Play
Instead of the usual collage, I had made a DVD that we watched containing simple power-point-style animations and some period music. There were pictures of the player characters, their demons, and things that related to their kickers. I tried to make it evocative, but the players were laughing rather than gasping in awe. That's okay, though. I introduced it as a silly movie, and it was received as such.

Questions: What is your experience with collage handouts for Sorcerer? Is it good for anything but color?

Actual Play
Overall, I am happy with how the first session went. I had a few specific goals, and I think I fulfilled all of them. Most importantly, the meeting generated a lot of raw material for coming sessions. Despite all the time-consuming prep, the first session of a Sorcerer campaign is generally not that exciting. The GM has carefully constructed this beautiful skeleton, but until it is tested in actual play it is nothing but a collection of bare bones, really. It is often necessary to reconstruct the entire framework after the first sitting, to accommodate all the juicy meat added in actual play. Accordingly, I am presently rewriting and clarifying some backstory, and NPC motivations. I am building a reservoir of Bangs aimed specifically at the individual players. I am confident that things will begin to fall in place in the course of the next couple of sessions or so.

Question: Do I make any sense?

Next: Specific comments regarding actual events in play, on a character by character basis.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Louis

Summary: Kristoffer acted in a way that directly addressed the issue of Honor. He also had a sword-fight.

Kristoffer played Louis, a musketeer and the oldest son of Comte de Veillot. His kicker was that his mother, the countess, had disappeared, and his father seemed reluctant to even talk about it. Louis found his mother murdered and sexually assaulted, on public display outside the Louvre. She had a bracelet on her, that used to belong to Lefebvre, whom Louis had killed in a duel. Kristoffer grabbed onto this clue and made one of the great premise-addressing decisions that I love him for. He decided that the culprit must be LeFebvre's brother, a banker named de Racieux. He immediately challenged de Racieux to a duel. He ended up fighting half a dozen of the fat banker's goons, while de Racieux himself cowardly fled the scene. Kristoffer did a good job: He used one goon to parry the attack of another, he used his demon sword to parry gunshot and had the bullet hit one of his opponents in the back.

One of my goals was to give the Kristoffer the opportunity to revel in the fighting prowess and general ass-kicking ability of his character and demon. Check.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Peter,

Answer to your first post: Yes, yes, (gasp), yes!

About that fight scene, how'd the rules go for you guys?

Best,
Ron

[Peter Nordstrand]

The fighting scene went fine. We did one or two very minor mistakes, but nothing big. However, the sheer amount of NPCs made it a bit messy. They were Louis' servant, 6 thugs, a coachman, and de Racieux. A total of 9 NPCs is a bit much, even though the coachman and de Racieux were hardly part of the fight at all. Also, since I used the mook rules for the thugs and the coachman, some rules became redundant; nameless mooks aren't as engaging as named characters with an agenda. Next time I hope to bring out the big guns!

What I really enjoy about extended contests in Sorcerer is the "roll your dice; now let's figure out what really happens" part. First, everybody states their intent, and then something completely unexpected takes place, something that nobody could have anticipated, and it is all very entertaining.

Oh, yeah: I actually gave out more bonus dice to outrageous and unrealistic combat maneuvers. Whenever Kristoffer declared something that made me go "yeah, that's cool", I handed him more dice. Kristoffer quickly caught on to it, and kept coming up with ridiculous stunts. And I kept rewarding them. This way, the bonus dice helped us set the tone.

Is there anything in particular you are thinking about when asking how the rules went for us, Ron?

Cheers,

/Peter

[Peter Nordstrand]

Théobald

Johan played Théobald, a tobacco connoisseur and dealer.

Summary: Johan went into problem-solving mode, and managed to get a couple of Humanity gain rolls along the way.

Théobald's kicker was that his latest shipment of tobacco had been quarantined. Johan wanted to have a concrete problem for his character to deal with. I immediately spiked his kicker by clarifying the problem, and introducing a set of corrupt NPCs: It turns out that the customs official responsible for placing the ship in quarantine was the father of his worst competitor, Valvert. The captain of the quarantined ship was paid to hoist the flag indicating plague aboard. Johan went into problem-solving mode, and eventually managed to sneak aboard the ship and illegally bring the tobacco ashore. In doing so, he has made a whole bunch of new enemies. He was even briefly imprisoned, but escaped.

In my opinion, Johan's inclination towards problem solving is functional play. In fact, it works very well. He does not charge the premise like Kristoffer, but he does deal with the issues at hand. As it happens, he received several Humanity gain rolls for his way of dealing with NPCs that ridiculed him and insulted his honor.

One more thing: Théobald's demon lackey, Hugo, is a big fat happy demon. Both its Need and his Desire have been fullfilled. It has been pampered beyond his wildest dreams. First Théobald indulges the demon by letting it watch while he has sex with de Racieux's wife. And when the demon has a tantrum, Théobald gives him all the attention he can ever want, and then some. Happy shiny demons.

Bizarre.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Just to clarify: One thing that Johan does very well is to position his character, setting him up for future conflicts, thus creating opportunities to address premise. There is so much trouble coming his way, and I do trust that Johan looks forward to it with anticipation.

Cheers,

/Peter

[Peter Nordstrand]

Alexandre

Jonas played Alexandre, an artist and all-round genius.

Summary: Jonas was unhappy. He expected Story Now, but instead he got a lousy "maybe there is a story somewhere behind all this smoke".

Alexandre's kicker was that his demon told him that his father had a daughter; a prostitute named Fanche. Alexandre spied on his sister and saw her receive a large pouch full of money from a well dressed man. He confronted his new-found sister about the deal, but she refused to talk, except to accidentally mention that the mysterious benefactor was a man named Moreau. Alexandre later discovered that Moreau occasionally stayed at the royal palace. So he talked to his father, who works at the palace, but his father became scared and refused to talk. Eventually Alexandre confronted Moreau, but he only threatened Alexandre, telling him to stay away from the whole affair, before litterally kicking himout of.

So, in conclusion, Alexandre discovered something mysterious, and kept searching for leads, but nobody really told him anything. I know better than that. Chris Chinn and Mike Holmes taught me the golden rule: Empower the player by informing him.

The good part is that this is easy to solve. Everyone involved now knows that Alexandre is snooping around, asking questions. Each and everyone now want something very specific from him. They want to help him, or get help from him, save him, stop him, or use him to further their own goals. I just need to give Jonas the information, enabling him to make meaningful decisions during play.

I am not going to dwell on why this happened. It did and I intend to fix it. The gates of information is about to open.

Jonas, what do you think?

All the best,

/Peter

[Jonas Ferry]

Yes, I was unhappy with my character's storyline, but it was fun watching the others. I really enjoy being an audience during sessions, but here I was looking forward to making some hard choices. The only choice during the session turned out to be "Do I continue to try and find out what the conspiracy is or do I give up?", with every NPC by words and actions trying to convince me to give up.

I think it was basically that we didn't succeed in communicating, even though we talked during the session. I was surprised more than once when I rolled successes but events turned out differently than I thought they would, in ways that wasn't what I had thought we rolled for. The first time was when Alexandre was spying on Fanche and the black-leather guy. I, as a player, thought he gave her money to have sex with her and that they split up to rendezvous somewhere else to avoid suspicion. I had Alexandre tell his inconspicuous demon imp to "keep that man away from me and Fanche while I talk to her." We rolled Will versus Power, with one success for me, and the imp interpreted it as "follow that man and find out who he is." It's no big problem, really, I mean I got something positive out of the demon "following" my order. We can make it a feature if we want to, to have him do things differently and better than my character wants, but at the moment I felt that you didn't listen to what I wanted him to do. I thought he would just keep the guy away, and if the guy wouldn't be a problem the imp would enjoy his freedom and do something else.

The second time was when Alexandre talked to his father. I rolled another success to get to know who the man in black was, but the father escaped into another room and locked the door, refusing to talk to Alexandre. You had a servant tell him that the guy had been seen near the stables, but that wasn't what I thought I rolled for. I wanted to get Alexendre's dad to talk, since there are more things related to the kicker that the dad's got to answer. But the success of the roll turned out to be "yes, you get the information you need to follow the string to the next stop" instead, which was frustrating to say the least.

One thing that worked well during the session was the scene cuts and framing. Scenes were usually cut in the middle, just after some new information or some new turn of events were revealed, which led to a great pace. But as Alexendre reached the stables, maybe you remember I said "Don't you dare cut away now!". Already then, a bit more than half-way through the session I felt that I hadn't got a chance to actually do something or to get more information than how to reach the next character that could try to avoid Alexendre. The stable boy wasn't too talkative either, instead he pointed Alexendre to another part of the setting and another guy to question.

Did you notice, by the way, that I didn't get to roll for humanity (honor) even once during the session? That could also be an indication that I didn't make any real choices, but only followed leads to places and people. The other two players rolled a couple of times each, I think.

As you say, it's easy to solve, and I have no doubts we'll manage to. We've talked about it since the session, and we both know what we have to do to make it more fun. I don't know if Alexendre is seen as enough of a threat to have stirred the NPC pot, but next session he will go to dad and ask him about his "daughter," and that could reveal something that Alexendre can use to talk to Fanche again.

Peter, what do you think about the results from the rolls I got successes in? Am I wrong when I think that it should mean that things happen in a way that I think they should, or does Sorcerer conflicts work in some other way? I think I asked for a clarification during the session, but I don't think I was totally satisfied with the answer. I know that Sorcerer isn't PTA or InSpectres, you don't roll to get narration rights. But how should the stakes of the conflict be formulated and what does successes mean in relation to the stakes? Perhaps you used the system as it's supposed to work and I'm wrong about it, I don't know.

[Lisa Padol]

Questions: What is your experience with collage handouts for Sorcerer? Is it good for anything but color?

I do paper handouts. Okay, if it's text, I'm now trying to type it in and email it in advance, but I'm hand drawing my R-maps. Haven't yet gotten the hang of Inkscape.

For our January session, I wrote on a blackboard. This helped folks remember what had happened over a month ago.
For our February session, I had a packet of handouts. I gave every player a copy of the Who's Who, the Timeline, and the R-map. In addition, I had a spreadsheet for the lore rolls to discover sorcerers and demons. This fulfilled its function -- it made those things go faster. The rest of the handouts -- Dave read them all as we were beginning, and Julian consulted them at least once to double check a name.

Overall, I am happy with how the first session went. I had a few specific goals, and I think I fulfilled all of them. Most importantly, the meeting generated a lot of raw material for coming sessions. Despite all the time-consuming prep, the first session of a Sorcerer campaign is generally not that exciting. The GM has carefully constructed this beautiful skeleton, but until it is tested in actual play it is nothing but a collection of bare bones, really. It is often necessary to reconstruct the entire framework after the first sitting, to accommodate all the juicy meat added in actual play. Accordingly, I am presently rewriting and clarifying some backstory, and NPC motivations. I am building a reservoir of Bangs aimed specifically at the individual players. I am confident that things will begin to fall in place in the course of the next couple of sessions or so.

Prep is good. It shows in what doesn't go wrong, if you see what I mean.

After every session of Sorcerer, I write down what happened and start making notes, tweaking things. E.g., "Okay, this guy's dead, so he can't do that. Do I need that to happen? Hm, nope, this other guy can do this, which is even cooler, and gives the PCs more involvement. I wanted the dead guy's wife to arrive, but how would she get there that fast? Hm, any reason she couldn't already be there? Right, that's it then. And, hm, I wanted to toss this at that player, and I need a woman in the role -- any reason not to slot the wife there, rather than some nameless charwoman? Okay, that's a go."

So, I have kind of a network of possibilities, and until a scene is played, I don't necessarily know which, if any, will come to pass.

-Lisa

[Lisa Padol]

The fighting scene went fine. We did one or two very minor mistakes, but nothing big. However, the sheer amount of NPCs made it a bit messy. They were Louis' servant, 6 thugs, a coachman, and de Racieux. A total of 9 NPCs is a bit much, even though the coachman and de Racieux were hardly part of the fight at all. Also, since I used the mook rules for the thugs and the coachman, some rules became redundant; nameless mooks aren't as engaging as named characters with an agenda.

How did it all go? I'm having trouble with Sorcerer combat, and I could use examples to study.

What I really enjoy about extended contests in Sorcerer is the "roll your dice; now let's figure out what really happens" part. First, everybody states their intent, and then something completely unexpected takes place, something that nobody could have anticipated, and it is all very entertaining.

Hm, that hasn't happened yet. In the most recent session, we had a 2 round combat, and Josh pointed out to me that round 2, the one where I actually, y'know, used the rules as they were written, went more smoothly and was more satisfying than round 1.

It was a fairly simple combat -- nothing unexpected, but that's okay. I'm having a devil of a time figuring rollover bonuses. That is, okay, Sophia has Stamina and Cover: Swordswoman, so one should roll successes into the other, which I think means rolling one vs the other for those successes. Except that it felt so dang'ed fiddly and pulled us right out of Story Now and cinematic combat.

I think there should also have been a rollover of her successes in combat to the next round, but I'm not sure on that one.

Oh, yeah: I actually gave out more bonus dice to outrageous and unrealistic combat maneuvers. Whenever Kristoffer declared something that made me go "yeah, that's cool", I handed him more dice. Kristoffer quickly caught on to it, and kept coming up with ridiculous stunts. And I kept rewarding them. This way, the bonus dice helped us set the tone.

I think that's spot on. I've been doing that for cool stuff outside of combat, too.

-Lisa

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Lisa,

Thank you for replying. It is most appreciated. I will get back to your points in a later post. However, I want to deal with one thing immedialtely, before anybody else gets involved:

Let's not talk about your issues with Sorcerer combat in this thread. Give me a day or two and I promise to start a new thread for this. I do have things to say. PM me in a couple of days if I forget.

Cheers,

/Peter Nordstrand

[Lisa Padol]

So, in conclusion, Alexandre discovered something mysterious, and kept searching for leads, but nobody really told him anything. I know better than that. Chris Chinn and Mike Holmes taught me the golden rule: Empower the player by informing him.

Yes, this is something I'm grappling with. Grappling because it's not that simple. Close, but not quite.

Okay, Sorcerer by and large should not be a mystery per se. (Ron, anyone else, correct me if I'm wrong.) It isn't "Who did what to whom?" but "So, what are you going to do about it?"

At the same time, I want the story to make sense. And a story does unfold -- you don't have everything in the first five minutes. So, think movie pacing, not epic trilogy pacing, but think pacing.

There are several secrets and mysteries in the game I'm running, most of which have come out over the course of the 5 sessions I've run. After the first couple of sessions, I've made notes to the effect of "Get Y piece of information out there."

It's not "Get only Y out there and nothing else." It's "Make friggin' sure Y gets out there so the players have more to play with." And, this is a bit harder than I'd anticipated, though most of that is curable with simple practice.

"Get out this woman's parentage and this guy's nocturnal activities." Two, maybe three, sessions I had that note before I finally figured out how to do it. (Do I set things up so that one of the airborne demons hears the two people who know it discussing the woman's parentage? I'd meant to, and kept forgetting. Finally, one of the two flat out said it to the PC who was his cousin. I decided he'd assumed the PC had known it all along. Real simple -- once I figured out how simple it was.)

The second session brought out one side of a Big Secret to one PC. The fourth brought out the other side to a different PC. No research needed -- this was the point where it made sense for an NPC to reveal the info. There's another secret that I've clearly been too subtle about getting out there. (All it would've taken was someone saying, "What do you mean?" But, if the question isn't asked, the comment was either too cryptic or too apparently unimportant.) So, next time, I make sure it gets out.

And, it's okay it getting out at that point. Knowledge functions as Bangs. Yes, that's it -- that's why, even in Sorcerer, it's okay for there to be mysteries. It's just not an Investigate Mysteries thing. It's more of an unfolding / discovery - psychomachia process. For example, you're about to choke the life out of your worst enemy when your mother bursts in and says, "Stop! That's your long lost brother!"

Those who know Noir better than I do -- is this pattern of not solving a mystery so much as dealing with it as it unfolds a film / book noir thing?

-Lisa

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Lisa,

I think you're nailin' it. I also think this is all relevant to Peter's game because of the incredibly-useful stumble with Jonas' character (useful because they're fixing it).

Here's how I look at the noir thing, which is actually more general and powerful than a genre-detail. In fact, I think that MacDonald's noir is usually rated a bit higher on the lit-scale (for whatever that's worth) because it's more like a reg'lar novel and less like a series of genre requirements.

Whoops, that was a tangent. I was going to say how I look at it.

It's not the story that unfolds, it's knowledge. But the knowledge isn't just about who shot whom, and where the gun was hidden, and what happened to the money ... it's knowledge of the characters' interaction, and how they're dealing with the innate tensions of the situation now.

Since the protagonist of such a story (usually an outsider) has injected a whole bucketload of new tension into the situation, all the characters involved in the backstory are suddenly going to go into conniptions. Some will see a ray of hope. Some, currently cornered, will see an opportunity to take advantage. Some, currently in a position of advantage, will see a threat.

So "unfold" isn't really a good way to look at it so much as an experimental chemical reaction, or perhaps what happens to some ecosystems when a given species is added or removed - everything changes.

The first session of a Sorcerer game that's proceeding on 'Soul lines is usually mild in terms of back-story and perhaps Humanity, because the "solution" or "ecosystem" is only experiencing the protagonists for the first time. To toss in another metaphor, you have to let the blood diffuse through the water for a little while.

The easy part is that this is why it's not a canned step-through-clues mystery, like one of those Host a Mystery things, or like applying a written-up Call of Cthulhu scenario. I figure all of you get that without a problem, and can relate it to the point that Sorcerer protagonists in particular can exert phenomenal judgment upon the situation, choosing whom they like, whom they don't, etc. (Dogs uses this model as well; Vincent's explanations about it are often useful.)

The slightly-harder part, from a certain viewpoint anyway, is that's also why just opening up your notes and saying, "Here everyone, this guy killed that guy, and this girl is really this guy's daughter, but the stepmom doesn't know it," and so on, isn't going to work either. And all of you are recognizing that, but to role-players of a certain background, it's hard to see why that's not the same as the old-school block-the-cues, open-door-at-GM's-signal kind of play.

And the best way to put it is, the pacing of how information becomes explicit is simply, clearly set by the players' direct interactions with the NPCs and perhaps with one another. That means that both players and GM are effectively equivalents. When one of the player-characters approaches an NPC, wham, interactions and often revelations, because of that "chemical reaction" thing above. Or, when one of the NPCs approaches a player-character ... same thing! For the same reason!

What no one really knows at the outset is which PCs will go for which NPCs, and why, or vice versa. And of course, that will affect the order and details of which information is brought to light, and which emotional connections (positive and negative) will compose the "new chemical solution" or "new ecosystem." And those things are what eventually, although remorselessly, determine climactic confrontations, whose content are therefore utterly unpredictable at the outset of play.

When you factor Humanity checks and gains into this mix, and also take into account the highly volatile presence of the player-characters' demons, well ... it's kind of hard to describe. People tend to get quiet, rather than histrionic, at the table, but there's a focus on play which I've rarely seen in any other game.

I hope all that helps.

Best,
Ron

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Jonas,

Thank you for getting involved.This is a good chat, I think.

Story When?

I don't have much to add regarding the lack of meaningful decisions for you. That's because I don't see any disagreement. We agree what happened. And we agree what should be done. A couple of days ago, you mentioned Chris Chinn's blogs about Flag Framing and The Conflict Web. This is very (very!) similar to the kind of prep I have been doing for our game. I just forgot to tell you what was going on. Which is why you stumbled around in the dark and nothing interesting happened. Which is why you didn't get any humanity rolls (you bet I noticed!).

I am very annoyed with myself for what happened. Despite this, I am not really worried, because I now have a lot going for you in the next session:

1. Your kicker is still there. It is a gigantic Flag.

2. I have the NPCs to do the job. In his blog, Chris writes: "

The NPCs exist SOLELY to produce scenes and conflicts that hit what the players have asked for via Flags." Now check out what I wrote earlier in this thread: "Everyone involved now knows that Alexandre is snooping around, asking questions. Each and everyone now want something very specific from him. They want to help him, or get help from him, save him, stop him, or use him to further their own goals." It is the same thing.

3. I will give you the information you need to make meaningful decisions. [/list]

In conclusion, I am sorry for messing it up. But I am still quite happy with the session, because in the long run I am confident things will work out fine. So your character only had a screen presence of 1 this episod, talking in PTA terms. Next time he will have 2 or 3.

Conflict Stakes

Oh. Now I get why you asked about setting the stakes. Actually, the only problem I see here is a miscommunication about what the stakes were. Compare your version of what happened to mine:

Alexandre and Imp

Jonas' version: Alexandre tells Imp to keep that man away from him and Fanche while he talks to her.

Peter's version: Alexandre tells Imp to follow that man while he talks to Fanche.

Alexandre and his father

Jonas' version: Alexandre wants his dad to talk.

Peter's version: Alexandre wants to find out where black-leather guy is.[/list]

Let's not argue about what "really" happened. Suffice to say our versions are fairly different. However, if you interpret the conflict resolution on basis of my version of events the result makes a lot more sense, don't you agree? I guess we both have to be a bit clearer about what's at stake, that's all. To sum up, I think you understand perfectly how conflicts in Sorcerer are supposed to work. We agree, but miscommunicated.

Has this post been helpful to you, Jonas?

Lisa, does this address some of your concerns as well?



All the best,

/Peter Nordstrand

[Lisa Padol]

The slightly-harder part, from a certain viewpoint anyway, is that's also why just opening up your notes and saying, "Here everyone, this guy killed that guy, and this girl is really this guy's daughter, but the stepmom doesn't know it," and so on, isn't going to work either. And all of you are recognizing that, but to role-players of a certain background, it's hard to see why that's not the same as the old-school block-the-cues, open-door-at-GM's-signal kind of play.

Yes! Exactly.

And the best way to put it is, the pacing of how information becomes explicit is simply, clearly set by the players' direct interactions with the NPCs and perhaps with one another. That means that both players and GM are effectively equivalents. When one of the player-characters approaches an NPC, wham, interactions and often revelations, because of that "chemical reaction" thing above. Or, when one of the NPCs approaches a player-character ... same thing! For the same reason!

What no one really knows at the outset is which PCs will go for which NPCs, and why, or vice versa. And of course, that will affect the order and details of which information is brought to light, and which emotional connections (positive and negative) will compose the "new chemical solution" or "new ecosystem." And those things are what eventually, although remorselessly, determine climactic confrontations, whose content are therefore utterly unpredictable at the outset of play.

Yes, again, exactly. Oh, you can tweak and nudge -- there are two NPCs that I was hoping people would like, and they did -- but things spin and shift as PCs -- and players -- react to events and characters.

In the session I just posted the write up for, I had no idea what Andreas' reaction to seeing a Possessed Axel would be. Cold murder seen as necessary surgery wasn't something I expected -- but it made perfect sense, and it meant going over everything between sessions as things spun in reaction to that. The most recent session, things spun in reaction to the spin, so we calculate for the next session, whenever that is -- and, simultaneously, I plan and prep a lot, and all bets are off. Both parts of this equation are necessary.

-Lisa