Questions From My First Sorcerer Game

[nyhteg]

Happiness.
After far too long, I've managed to get a game of Sorcerer going - one-on-one with a friend who was (briefly) a D&D player in his youth, but who hasn't roleplayed in getting on for 30 years.

In summary, it's been a blast for both of us. It's a futuristic setting where subtle technological aumentation is the social norm. The PC's a high-ranked testing engineer for a market leader in augmentation tech - ironic in that at his core he's believes augmentation diminishes humans rather than improves them and woudl like to strive to bring the whole thing crashing down if he can...
 
Demons, naturally enough, are impossible manifestations of technology - typically in the form of augments of some kind.
The PC's a lone adept who's conducted some pretty scary personal research projects and created a demon as a result.
Until now, he assumed he was unique in that.

Humanity is all about choice and free will.
Loss for givng in to a no-win situation; loss for bullying, manipulating, or otherwise removing choice from other people.
Gain for giving someone a genuine choice over a crucial matter; gain for freeing soemone else from a no-win situation.
At zero Humanity you become a cynical, dead-eyed cog in the big business machine.

Main points on the humanity definition is a) augmentation has nothing to do with it; and b) you lose it by doing things for yourself and gain it for doing things for others.

I like the idea that his goal of 'freeing the people from the shackles of technology' is probably a case for Humanity *loss*. Not sure if the player's twigged that yet...

So, questions and thoughts from our first one-and-a-half sessions...

First obervation is that Humanity hasn't really exlpoded yet.
It has started to function as a grace note, though - the choice to avoid the risk of Humanity loss has already cropped up (a tricky ultimatum from the PC's boss) and the player's decision to strive to 'get out from under' was nicely illuminating.
I don't think I've given the player enough rope yet, but the walls are already starting to close in. :)
Several NPCs in the R-map are involved in blackmail and other desperate actvity, and I think the real thrill will be when we arrive at something the player will realise he wants to risk his Humanity for...

How does that compare to other folks' experiences of Humanity? I suppose it depends on the definition, but does it have a slow burn quality?

Also, I'm loving the dice mechanics. We've had three scenes of full-on combat action already and I have to say the situation just blows up in your face when the dice hit the table. Fantastic!
The player's been hurling snap-shots around, Commanding, throwing furniture, diving behind kitchen counters to avoid gunfire, the works. Almost grabbed a meat cleaver and went toe-to-toe with a Company enforcer, but took a bullet before he managed it, which was a shame.

Two things from that, though:

1. I got the Sorcerous Will check mechanic slightly wrong, although the situation was a little complex.
The PC sucked up a hit to try to get off a Punish, failed the one-die defence horribly and would have been out cold, but subsequently succeeded in a Will roll to do the ritual anyway.
Very cool moment, but I wasn't sure what to do with the dice he'd already rolled for his Punish.

As it happens, it's covered uncannily well in Ron's answer in this thread here:http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18690.msg196704#msg196704 - bin them and re-roll with the newly acquired dice from the Will roll, basically.
In the game, I (wrongly) just used the existing roll and it all worked out fine, although I had no idea what would have happened if he'd gone for fewer than his full dice on the Will roll, of course...

Question - if that original roll had picked up some bonus dice from a previous action, would you include them in the new (post Will check) roll?

2. Punish ritual. Does an in-combat Punish function as a snap-shot (ie 1 die basic + bonuses)?
I gave the player full dice for the attempt, but in retrospect I suspect that was probably wrong because, well, why would it be a special case?

All the best

Gethyn

[Ron Edwards]

Hello!

Easy answers, because you pretty much figured them out already. You didn't quite get to the right places with them, but almost.

1. For the Will recovery roll, the character does not retain the old dice, but rolls the "gained" dice all by themselves. This is often not a whole lot of dice, so bonus dice from the situational intensity are very important. (In fact, this mechanic is one of the key short-term reward features of the game.)

I appreciate your kind words about my comments in the previous thread, but I don't think they apply here. The Will recovery roll is a real slate-wiping de novo roll; it's not a modifier to an existing roll nor a re-roll of a previous action.

To be clear - when a character makes a Will recovery roll, what he or she does with the new action and the new dice is completely up to the player at that very moment.

Oh yeah - regarding the bonus dice from the previous action, they already would have been used in the roll which failed, so they'd be gone. It's not impossible for bonus dice from previous rolls to increase the post-Will recovery roll, but they have to come from successful rolls, not failed ones.

2. You are right about the Punish, which follows the snap-shot rules just like any other ritual.

Best,
Ron