[Sorcerer] Charnel Gods - The Irthan Epoch

[Bret Gillan]

Last night was the first night of my Charnel Gods campaign, and it rocked. After my previous Sorcerer campaign left me feeling a little cold, I really wanted this one to cook, and after one session and four scenes I felt like it delivered.

The game is taking place in the Charnel Gods setting, where the Old Gods forged weapons of their darkest desires to fight back a tide of oblivion that sought to destroy the world. The gods are long dead, and their weapons fell to the earth. They're now in human hands, and it promises to bring nothing but ill.

Our first campaign takes place in what I've been calling the Irthan Epoch. The game is modelled after a post-peak oil earth, where a lot of the countries have lost access to oil and the technology that accompanies it, and have slid backwards. The scope of the game takes place on an isthmus between two great land masses. To the South, the Irthan nation, a military-run nation that sits on a pool of oil. It uses its power and technology to dominate the area. To the north, in the jungle, are the Ocla, a tribal people that resist Irthan rule, instead listening to their shamans, the speakers for their spirits and gods. In between the two are the fringe towns, taxed by the Irthans and denied their resources, ignored by the Ocla, and constantly raided by wasteland bandits, their lives are the hardest of all.

My friend Bob is playing Guerro, a wasteland bandit who is bound to Xixtan, a demonic gauntlet that encases his arm up to his shoulder in metal. His Kicker is that he's returning from the Rift where he bound Xixtan and finds his bandit gang wiped out, and his daughter missing. Xixtan's Need is to caress a living thing, and its desire is Carnage.

Jeff, the other player of the game, is playing Iuuma, a shaman of one of the Ocla tribes who found Juiqix, named the god of Lightning and Thunder, in one of the ancient temples built by the Ocla of ages past. His Kicker is that his brother returns to the village one day with a truck full of canned foods and technological doodads. Juiqix's Need is to eat a small mammal, and its Desire is Power.

I have a decent amount of experience with Sorcerer, as does Bob, but this is Jeff's first game. It was a great session. I think we had a good flow of out of game chitchat. A couple things I pushed in this game:

Initiate a scene - the scene can either be framed by the player, or they can leave it to me to inflict my worst on them. I think this helped the game a LOT. Having the players guide their character's story got them more invested in what was happening, I think. There were points where my GM habits thrashed around a bit as their scene-framing trod upon a "great" idea I had, but in the end the outcome of the scenes and the directions the stories were going ended up way cooler than I could have anticipated.

Pacing was conflict dependent - I think I picked up this idea from Primetime Adventures, but I would run a scene until I we hit a conflict roll, then I would hop over to the other player. This occasionally left the game at some really tense cliff-hangers, like Guerro leaping through the air to attack a military convoy, or Iuuma preparing to face the dark god of the ruins.

Stakes setting - I had a formula. Before a roll could be made, I had to invoke the follow incantation. "Okay, so if you succeed x happens, but if you fail not only does x not happen, but y happens as well." Where x and y are favorable and unfavorable things. As I write up the actual play notes I'll be sure to write up my exact incantation.

So, the game:



Scene 1:

Guerro comes upon the ruins of his old bandit camp. There are piles of corpses and burned out trucks and bikes. His bandit warlord is slumped against a motorcycle, his face twisted into a mask of pain and rage, his body riddled with holes. Guerro hears a sound and, tossing aside corpses like dolls, he discovers one of the veterans of the bandit gang still alive though very, very wounded. Conflict: Humanity vs. Xixtan's Power

"If you succeed you manage to bandage up the bandit and get him able-bodied again. If you fail, not only do you not successfully bandage him up, but Xixtan reflexively clenches as you bandage him and crushes him to death."

He failed the roll and looked at his now bloodied, gauntleted hand in shock. After a bit, he hopped on his bike, and followed the tracks leading away from the camp.

Scene 2:

Iuuma is playing a game with the children when it's interrupted by the sound of engines. A couple trucks drive into the village, his brother at the steering wheel of one. The trucks contain food and useful gadgets. Iuuma and his brother get into an argument. Iuuma wants the tribe to remain true to the old ways, and not fall victim to the follies of the past. His brother believes that the food can help the tribe in hard times, and the gadgets could be traded to other tribes. Conflict: Iuuma's (Boosted) Will with his Cover (Tribal Shaman) rolled in vs. his Brother's Will with his Cover (Tribal Warrior) rolled in.

"If you succeed you convince your brother to take the trucks back to where he got them. If you fail, not only does he not take the trucks back, but the rest of the village sides with him against you."

He succeed and Iuuma's his crackled with white light, and the sky darkened. Terrified villagers scattered away from him, and his brother, shaken, gets back into the truck with the other warriors and takes them back.

Scene 3:

Guerro rides his motorcycle through the desert in pursuit of the convoy that destroyed his bandit camp, and now has his daughter and all the other female bandits that they could take alive. Conflict: Guerro's (Boosted) Stamina vs. the Soldiers' Stamina.

"If you succeed, you catch up to the convoy before they reach their fort. If you fail, not only do you not catch them but your motorcycle runs out of gas and you're stuck in the desert with no way of pursuing them."

He succeed and, roaring through the desert with lights out came up on the convoy without them seeing him.

Scene 4:

It's nightfall. Iuuma hear's the sound of engines again. Exasperate he steps into the village. His exasperation turns into confusion as he hears a scream intermingling with the sound of the engine. He sees a truck roaring towards the village at a high speed. Juiqix fails to confer the power to stop the truck, so first Iuuma promises to feed it a tiger cub after the task is done. It complies. Conflict: Juiqix's Hold Power vs. the speeding truck's difficulty.

"If you succeed you bring the truck to a halt with no one harmed. If you fail, not only do you not bring the truck to a halt but it crashes into one of the huts killing the occupants of the truck and the hut."

He succeeded, bringing the truck to a halt in front of him, and now seeing that the occupants of the truck are tribal warriors that accompanied his brother, no bloodied, some dead. The driver of the truck is terrified into a frenzy, and cannot be calmed.

Scene 5:

Guerro swung his motorcycle in front of the convoy and leapt in front of the lead jeep, attempting to flip it over with his gauntlet. Conflict: Guerro's (Boosted) Stamina vs. the difficulty we assigned stopping a speeding convoy.

"If you succeed, you bring the convoy to a halt and destroy the lead jeep. If you fail, not only do you not stop the convoy, but they shoot you as they drive past inflicting damage equal to their successes."

He succeeded, and flipped the van crushing the soldiers inside. The convoy screeched to a halt and the soldiers started emptying out of the jeeps, confused and scared.

Scene 6:

Iuuma whispered incantations of bravery and attempted to soothe the panicked warrior and find out what happened, and where his brother was. Conflict: Iuuma's Will with his Cover (Tribal Shaman) rolled in vs. the Power of the Creature that inspired this fear and panic.

I think I forgot to phrase the stakes on this one in play, but it would have been "If you succeed you calm the warrior down and find out what happened and where your brother is. If you fail, not only do you not calm him down, but he chokes on his tongue in fear and you have no lead to your brother's whereabouts."

He succeeded, and the warrior calmed down, telling him that they returned the trucks to where they found them, to this old building, and that their trespass must have angered the dark spirit of the place, because it emerged killing the warriors. Iuuma's brother told them to flee and stayed to fight it so they could get away. Iuuma wept, and told the warrior that come dawn he would go to face the god.

Scene 7:

Guerro stalked through the soldiers, crushing them with a gauntlet fist, tipping over a truck onto several of them, and killing anything that got between him and his daughter.

Conflict: I don't recall, but I believe it was his (Boosted) Stamina vs. an appropriate difficult for being outnumbered and facing a soldiers armed with machine guns.

The way I first phrased the Stakes was a bit different from what I think Bob's intentions were (to rescue the Hostages), so after some post-roll negotiation, the incantation was something like, "If you succeed, you rescue the prisoners from the soldiers. If you fail, not only do the soldiers get away with the prisoners, but you sustain damage equal to their successes."

Against the odds, he failed, and the woman commander of the soldiers shot him in the leg with a hogleg pistol, pitching him to the sand long enough for the surviving soldiers to make it away with the prisoners. He stood up, and stalked after them through the sands, his limp gradually fading as he walked.

Scene 8:

Iuuma comes upon the ruins of an old military installation from the days when the Ocla actually had a nation and a military or perhaps it belonged to an allied First World nation. It's crumbling and in ruins. He sees the other truck, and sees blood smeared all over. He enters a ruined hangar, and he sees the bodies of tribal warriors hanging from tentacles. At the center of the tentacles is a giant sphere of bone with a large, blinking eye set in the center of it. The air fills with a screeching static, intermingled with Oclan words. Iuuma waits and gradually the static turns into sentences, and the creature speaks, the air is still filled with a staticy noise. It calls him a sorcerer. Iuuma questions it, asks why its here. The creature says it's and it's living. It apologizes for "damaging" the warriors. It tells Iuuma that there are many more out there for him, and that he will damage his fair share of them. Iuuma drags the bodies outside, and walks to the edge of the base. He then draws a circle in the dirt around the outside of the installation. He calls snakes from the jungle to attack the creature, and suddenly the air grows thick with flies. Conflict: Juiqix's Command vs. the Creature's Command

Iuuma succeeds and calls a few large snakes to his aid. Many more came, but flies and insects swarmed them, choking them, and crawling into them until they burst. With a handful of reptilian allies, Iuuma prepares to face the creature again.



For next session I'm brainstorming some crosses to maybe get the main character's stories to interconnect some, though that's not totally necessary. I also noticed as I wrote this up that I should have called for two positive Humanity rolls - when Guerro tried to help the wounded bandit (even though it went awry) and when Iuuma stopped the truck from crashing into the village. Guerro *might* have needed to make a Humanity roll for killing all the soldiers, but it might have been justified. Next game I need to bring in more Bangs.

The one thing that was cool was that all the prep I did before the game ended up being worthless. Why was it cool? Because the players were so into suggesting scenes and things that the story took a totally different turn from what I expected. Luckily I'm pretty good at playing responsively and staying on my toes that I don't think I stumbled at all. 90% of the AP I just described was improv on my part. I *love* when that happens, and when I'm surprised by the outcome of the game.

I'm not sure about my Stakes-setting, but Conflict resolution is new to me so I imagine I'll get better at it in time. Basically, when I invoke my "incantation" I try and get a read on whether the players are into it or not. There's been a couple of times where it's been renegotiated, and that's cool. If the players can't buy into the Stakes, then it's going to suck.

I am extremely pumped about running another session of this, and I'm really happy to be back in the GM's seat again.

Oh, and before anyone asks, there were no Humanity rolls but I think there *should* have been Humanity gain rolls made when Guerro helped the dying bandit (despite it going horribly wrong), and Iuuma should have made one when he stopped the truck. I'll have them make them before next game.

So how do my Stakes look? Do you see any opportunities for nailing Humanity that I missed?

[Ron Edwards]

Gahhhhh .... people, this whole "stakes" talk has confused matters badly.

Bret, stick with my discussion of conflict resolution, all by itself. In Sorcerer:

When any characters in the situation face a conflict of interest with any other characters, always roll the dice.

When no such conflict is present, never roll the dice.

Now for the part you're struggling with in addition to that ... do not pre-suppose how you want to handle the narration of the outcome before you roll.

Sput! Whoa! Freak out! What? I can practically hear that all over the map. That's because all you yahoos out there got it into your head, somehow, that you pre-narrate the possible outcomes before you roll, and that's "setting stakes."

Sure, OK, there are some games out right now in which you do that. In Capes, and to a lesser extent in Primetime Adventures, you go right ahead and do it. But that's not in and of itself "conflict resolution," and it sure as fuck has nothing to do with playing Sorcerer, or for that matter, similar games like HeroQuest.

Damn, but this is so hard to explain with all of your ears cocked, and each lhead holding a different set of experiences and personal interpretations of terms-in-disarray. Here goes.

1. Yes, in Sorcerer and HeroQuest, especially in their simpler conflict methods (i.e. one-roll), the conflict at hand gets resolved by that roll, period. If the guy knew about your Aunt Nellie, and you say "Cough it up about my Aunt Nellie, pus-bag!" and you win the roll, he does. OK. No problem.

But that's nothing more nor less than simply understanding the conflict of interest at the time of the roll. There was NO NEED, not a bit, to pre-narrate and lock down the actual expression of the possible outcomes. I think people do that partly because it is a feature of some games, and fits for those games in isolation, and also because they are so badly scarred by previous play in which the GM narrated whatever the fuck he wanted regardless of the roll's outcome in order to make the scene turn out like he wanted (either planned or improvised, doesn't matter).

So there's a conundrum here for explaining it to you. I want you successfully to get into identifying and "feeling" conflict in action, and everyone going into the roll with great glee because they know it's going to resolve that conflict, or start to (in the more extended conflict resolution mechanics). But I don't want you to fall into the current, widespread, and in my view destructive trap of playing, effectively, two-forked pre-narrated conflicts in which the dice are practically an afterthought. Since Sorcerer is not a one-roll-per-scene game like Primetime Adventures, and since it doesn't have an uber-currency that affects every aspect of play (like whose turn is next, yes, that "uber") like Capes, that's what would happen if you pre-narrate "stakes" to the extent that seems to be associated, wrongly, with the phrase "conflict resolution" these days.

2. Let's take a look at that phrase "conflict of interest." This is so easy to everyone but gamers that it makes me cry ... all right, work with me - your Sorcerer character steps up to a wooden post with his wood-chopping axe. He swings!

Do you roll? How many "difficulty" dice are rolled to oppose? How many victories splits that wood totally in half?

The answer is, all of those questions are premature. The question is whether there's a conflict of interest present. If status among the forest-people stands to rise or fall ... if the demonic monster in the woods is lurking and waiting for a chance to strike ... if the wood itself holds the soul of the sorcerer which has been plaguing the tribe ...

In all of those cases, roll. Roll hard. Roll with fervor and with verve. Why? Because the results resolve things and set up more things. Every imaginable outcome of the dice (player succeeds/fails, victories are low/high) makes every person's job at the table totally easy - to say what happens next, what an NPC does next, whether we stick with this scene or know it's all done, to state a new priority, to express one's personal reaction to the other people at the table, and so on.

Status? Then roll vs. the Will of the guy who's questioned that status prior to the wood-chopping.
Demonic lurker? Then roll vs. the Stamina of the thing to express its bursting from the trees to attack.
Soul-wood? Then roll vs. the Lore of the sorcerer.

But don't roll at all unless any such situation is the case. Wham. Split the wood or not, as anyone who sees fit to narrate says, and as anyone else at the table cares to comment on. Easiest thing in the world.

3. How about the narration, then? Well, let's stick with the roll-situation. You are looking at dice on the table. You can see which side of the conflict of interest is privileged over the other. You can even see how much in case you want to express that effect in the next moments of play. You are totally locked and loaded for the content of those next moments, and for the dice-based ammunition for those next moments.

The beauty is that you (meaning you as GM in many cases, but also as player!) don't have to start from the ground up for the next action. You don't have to use fiat in order to make the next bit interesting. You don't have to review, secretly and at mega-speed, how the scene is supposed to turn out and how you can shoehorn the previous result into making that happen after all.

And you weren't locked into merely repeating one of the previously-stated binary outcomes, either, in terms of details or scope. The previous conflict of interest is decisively resolved, yes. That's a constraint. Don't backpeddle out of it by just having the dissed tribe-member challenge the PC again, for instance. But narrating what happened? That's new. That's post-roll. That's got all kinds of opportunity built-in, especially if the group is involved rather than just you as sole talker, for massive fun.

"Stakes" as currently articulated by too many people at too many websites destroys that fun, for games like Sorcerer, Dogs, HeroQuest, Shadow of Yesterday, Conspiracy of Shadows, Burning Wheel, and others. Avoid that trap. Use such Stakes in their designated fashion for the games they work well in, based on many other design factors - but don't think you're dealing with anything more applicable than that.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Double gahh. I suspect I butchered Capes rules in referencing them that way. Strike that mentally if necessary. All points remain unchanged.

Best, Ron

[Judd]

I think, due to my experiences with PTA and Burning Wheel, I've been a binary stakes resolver for some time.  Though BW has, especially in its Duel of Wits, concessions that make it less binary.

And I think Bret has probably learned this binary bad habit from me at our TSoY-hack 1st Quest games and others.

My bad.

I am going to re-read the conflict resolution in both Sorcerer and TSoY and come back with some AP's once I drop the binary outlook on it and try it this way.

Hm.

[Eric J-D]

Hi Bret,

I think what Ron has said here spells out the argument against using the binary pre-narrated stake-setting that occurs in some games (i.e. "If I win then X happens but if I lose Y happens" where X is a favorable outcome to the player and Y an unfavorable one) in Sorcerer pretty clearly.

However, he has some more to say about it here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19136.msg200777#msg200777 in case you are interested.

Cheers,

Eric

[Bret Gillan]

Ron,

Thanks for taking the time to clear things up for me.

1. As Judd says, it's his fault. Him and all these wacky progressive indie games have left me "brain damaged" if you will. Seriously, though, I've been playing so many different games that I'm just mixing up mechanics, and considering I reread the Sorcerer books the night before game I'm not sure why I thought that pre-narrated outcomes was a part of Sorcerer rules. Next time I'll knock off these heretical practices.

And I just want to mention that I wasn't actually reducing "scenes" to a single roll, it was more a way of pacing cuts between the two players. Roll, cut. Roll, cut. I inaccurately described the cuts as different scenes.

2. Okay, so just to make sure I get what you're saying with this point, does "Conflict of Interest" specifically refer to a conflict of interests between two characters? To use my game as an example, when Guerro was battling the horde of mook-soldiers, instead of coming up with a difficulty level I should have rolled, say, the Commander's Will vs. Guerro's stamina, or in the example of Iuuma vs. the truck, Iuuma's Hold Power vs. the Power of the creature that had driven the truck's driver into a crazed panic? Essentially - a roll only happens when two characters are in some way working in opposition?

3. Got it. I'm used to going with the flow, and it has been a long, long time since I came into any game with a pre-determined outcome in mind. Like I said before, I just got confused. I'm not going to jump into the fray about outcomes before the roll vs. outcomes after the roll, but I do want to play Sorcerer as it was meant to be run.

Thanks again.

[Eric J-D]

Bret,

I know Ron will jump in and correct this if I'm wrong but I would say the answer to your #2 is this:

You roll when there is a meaningful conflict of interest.  "Meaningful" here refers to the people around the table and to the sense that you (as GM) have that this conflict of interest stands to reveal something important about the characters and to contribute to the story in a meaningful way.

Look at all those examples Ron gave you.  Something important is presumably at issue in each of them---I'm zeroing in on the first example here, Status, but it is true of all of them---and so we roll the dice.

But when there is a meaningless conflict going on where nothing really important stands to be revealed about the characters or contributed to the story-in-creation, then someone can just narrate.

So to take an example of my own creation:  say there is a horde of weird insectoid creatures that my guy wants to fight with.  Now, ordinarily we would probably think of this as a conflict, but in Sorcerer there is absolutely no need to roll dice here unless there is something crucial that is at issue character/story-wise that would call forth the dice.  If not--if it's just a scene that serves no purpose other than gratifying my desire for such a gruesome scene--someone can just narrate it out.  It's pure color in that situation.  Now, if the scene existed in order to respond in some way to an NPC's challenge to my guy's leadership of our clan and the issue of my guy's leadership is important to me as a player--in other words if my guy was trying to mop up the mutant bugs as a way of establishing his dominance within the clan--then it becomes a meaningful status issue and we roll.

I hope that's clear and correct.

Cheers,

Eric

[Eric J-D]

Drat.  As often happens, while walking the dog I thought of a better example that I think will make the point more clearly.

Situation 1: We're playing a game of Sorcerer and in the scene my character, a married cop, gets into an argument with his wife over whether to send their oldest son to an expensive private college or to a less-expensive state university.  My character is pushing for the state university and his wife is pushing for the private college.  There is a "conflict of interest" here, clearly.  But say both I and the GM know that there is nothing really big at issue in this scene. Neither of us has any real interest in developing something heavy between the cop and his wife.  In other words, that's not where our interests lie.  So, we've got a "conflict of interest" between the characters but no real interest by the participants in making it a potential character-revealing/story-making issue.  Do we roll? Answer: NO.

Situation 2: Same game of Sorcerer, same character and wife but in this situation both of us have an interest in the story of the wife and the husband/cop.  Add to this the fact that we've set Humanity in the game as "preserving ties with loved ones."  Let's say the argument is over something seemingly more trivial.  The husband/cop gets a call telling him that there's an incident at the station that could use his help but the wife wants him to stay home and eat a meal with the family he hardly sees. Again, there's a conflict of interest, but now that argument is starting to look like it might be freighted with a lot more meaning than it was earlier when our interest in the conflict between the characters was low and there wasn't the potential for Humanity to be at issue.  Do we roll? Answer: Hell, yes (and now Humanity is probably at stake).

Again, I think this is all correct, but we'll need Ron to confirm.

[Bret Gillan]

I guess I should clarify. Are "Conflicts of Interest" at the character level, or at the player/GM level?

[Eric J-D]

Bret,

I'll give this one a shot again and then shut up.

The "conflicts of interest" in both Ron's examples and mine are at the character level or between things in the shared imagined space (SIS) of the game.

But that isn't the main issue.  The main issue is whether or not those "conflicts of interest" are meaningful to the people around the table.

When there is a conflict of interest within the SIS but no interest/meaningfulness to the people around the table, don't roll.  When both are present, you roll.

Hope that helps.

Eric

[Bret Gillan]

Eric,

That's not the main issue at all. I'm not sure why you think it is.

My main issue at this point, and feel free to weigh in on this is the following:

In Ron's examples, there is always some character with a relevant attribute to oppose the PC in a roll. There is never any "difficulty level" or Opposition Dice like those mentioned on page 100 of Sorcerer. So I'm asking for some elaboration on what precisely is meant by "conflict of interest," and when it would be appropriate to use opposition dice assuming the player group has decided it's worth rolling over.

Thanks.

[Eric J-D]

Bret,

Gotcha.

From my reading of your #2 though, it wasn't clear that you were grasping Ron's point that we only roll when what is at issue in a conflict is important to the people at the table.

Okay, so as long as we're on the same page about that then here, I think, is the answer to your question:

As GM, you need to think about what is at issue in the given conflict.  Let's take Ron's example of the wood-chopping guy.  If the thing that is at issue is this guy's Status among the forest-people, then the roll is against the Will of the guy who is challenging Guy 1's status.  You do not, in other words, assign a pool of dice that represents the wooden stake's resistance to being chopped in half.  That isn't the issue in this conflict of interest.  The conflict is about status, it is a conflict between two people who each want something--wood-chopping guy wants to succeed and affirm his status within the society of the forest-people while the other guy wants him to fail and show that he's the better guy.

Okay, so is there ever a time when there is a conflict of interest that involves use of something other than another character's relevant Score?  Here's the thing: according to at least one thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10118.0 in such a situation, the other thing functions as a character.  In such a case (where no other character's Score would be appropriate to use as an opposing dice pool for the conflict) I suppose you would assign opposition dice to the thing and oppose those to the PC's relevant score.

But I can't think of too many situations where it would be the case that you would need to do this.  In most cases, I think it would be pretty easy to find a relevant Score to use from a character.

Take another version of the example of the guy trying to get into the safe.  Why is he trying to get into the safe?  Because there is something contained in that safe that another character wants kept hidden.  So the safe doesn't need stats of its own (i.e. opposition dice).  The safe is just a metaphor in a way, an expression of the other character's desire to keep something hidden.  So just use the other guy's Will and be done with it.

Finally, the examples of Fenster using his Cover on pg. 100-101 give a couple of examples (#1 and #2) where opposition dice are clearly being used rather than another character's Score.

Does that help or am I still missing your point?

Eric

[Ron Edwards]

Eric, stop posting now. You are thinking and writing at the same time, and you're also gumming up a crucial interaction that will help Bret.

Bret, I am drafting an extensive reply. One moment, please.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Bret, please take these step by step.

Are "Conflicts of Interest" at the character level, or at the player/GM level?

The former. The absolutely most accurate way to up it is that we are talking about fictional conflict of interest. Put all notions of "people roll to resolve disagreements about how they want things to go" completely aside.

So, when we're talking about conflicts here, think the fiction, the fiction. The imagined events. The SIS. The "story," whatever you want to call it.

As I type, I am fearing that people think by "fiction" I am talking about Lit 101. I'm not. I'm talking about any stuff that we are making up. The imagined stuff.

just to make sure I get what you're saying with this point, does "Conflict of Interest" specifically refer to a conflict of interests between two characters? To use my game as an example, when Guerro was battling the horde of mook-soldiers, instead of coming up with a difficulty level I should have rolled, say, the Commander's Will vs. Guerro's stamina, or in the example of Iuuma vs. the truck, Iuuma's Hold Power vs. the Power of the creature that had driven the truck's driver into a crazed panic? Essentially - a roll only happens when two characters are in some way working in opposition?

Now you're still on the road, but teetering along the edge with a wheel spraying dirt over the cliffs to the side. The basic answer is "yes." But there are two problems I can see looming. You say "two characters" in a very iconic way, and I'm going to fix that. And you are suddenly contrasting all these points with the issue of "difficulty level." OK, your car just lurched.

Stay with me. First of all, yes, you are on the right track that rolls only occur in Sorcerer when fictional conflicts of interest are on the line. And that for those rolls, the scores of the interested parties are utilized.

About 80-90% of the time, all of your examples would be totally correct. Look for the other character. Find the score of interest. Roll.

What about that other percent? It's when a thing that in reality is not a living thing and cannot make decisions, operates in the fiction as if it does. The ledge strikes out at your shins, or seems to. The catwalk looms high up, higher than you're sure you can leap (think of camera-work that establishes this). The videocassette retreats further from your grasp, and then, maliciously, tumbles down behind the dresser.

These things suddenly need scores of their own. Back in 1996, I was completely unable to articulate these points well, and found myself reduced to describing them as "difficulty." In the table of suggested opposed dice values, I was striving to express difficulty as "inconvenience level" rather than a model-reality kind of probabilistic difficulty. Neither my mind nor the reader's mind of the time was able to midwife the thing struggling to be born on those pages; it's taken 10 years and a multitude of minds and game designs to do it.

Bret - are you with me? Use that character-on-character logic at all times, just as you describe ... and then take the extra step and realize that in many cases you'll have to assign scores for "characters," i.e. things that are not people or other entities in reality but here, in this fiction, at the moment, they are.

Let me know how this is going. My concern is that just as you grasped the fundamental issue of fictional conflict, two things happened as your gamer-neurons tried to interfere. First, the wild spectre of real, actual-person disagreement loomed up. Kill it; that's not what we're talking about. Second, the whole notion of "difficulty" as a non-conflict entity in role-playing, the whole "how do I roll to jump the fence, how do I roll to tie my shoes" mind-set, tried to shoulder its way into your mind. Kill that too ... but don't think all of a sudden that therefore the intrusions of environmental factors like cliff ledges are to be ignored - when they act as characters, then keep them and treat them accordingly.

Best, Ron

[Eric J-D]

Ron,

My apologies to you and especially to Bret.  I should have just waited and let you handle it.   

My bad.

Cheers,

Eric