Humans with Desires and Needs

[Lisa Padol]

Judd recently asked me what we talk about after a Sorcerer session. Last night, we were really jazzed after the session, so there was a lot of talk about the game -- Pamela talking about how Sophia didn't want to kill Niccolo, 'cuz he's a pretty boy, but if he tries to banish Teresa without proving he can get the Real Teresa back, she'd going to have to; Dave confirming that yes, he liked the bang of Ysabel asking Andreas to elope with her; Julian saying that it didn't matter what the truth of the universe was, Niccolo was hosed enough to make him (Julian) happy and Teresa was pulling all the emotional strings she could; Beth explaining Ingrid's plans about how to kill every other sorcerer in town if she needed to; and Josh getting an interesting idea.

Beth and I were talking about Ingrid's fiance, Edmond von Black, aka the brother of Josh's PC, Sebastian. I noted that Edmond would probably have no objection to his wife arguing with him, so long as it wasn't in public.

Josh said that it would be interesting to try a game where humans had Needs and Desires and got bonus dice if someone tried to get them to act against either. For example, he said, let's take a noble who does not want to lose face. Not sure if that's a Need or a Desire, but never mind right now.

So, someone trying to convince him to change his mind would normally result in the usual rolls. But, if this is being done in public, where he might lose face, suddenly, he gets several bonus dice. He's a lot harder to convince.

It's no coincidence that this occured to Josh this session, where Sebastian failed to manipulate Edmond into doing what he wanted Edmond to do in a public social situation.

Humans with Needs and Desires. We're not sure it'd be Sorcerer, but it would be interesting.

-Lisa Padol

[Ron Edwards]

Seems to me it'd be a game called "Demon" if you really went all the way using the Sorcerer concepts.

But if you're talking basically about desires and needs in the typical, real-world, non-Sorcerer-metaphor way ... then The Riddle of Steel rules, specifically Spiritual Attributes, are exactly what you're talking about. I mean, down to the letter and the point at the bottom of the exclamation mark. Check'em out if you haven't.

Best, Ron

[Lisa Padol]

Riddle of Steel is one of those games I wanted to like, but got scared off by the crunch. Jake is a great guy, and has the art of demo-ing down -- I mean, he was all, "So, you want the 5 minute quick intro, a 10 minute demo, a 20 minute demo, a 2 hour adventure, what? We can do character gen, combat -- whatever you like." Fun demo, but didn't seem my cup of tea.

I'll see if anyone local has a copy I can browse. I know people who have used it who've assured me it's as much crunchy mechanics as I think it is.

-Lisa Padol

[Ron Edwards]

Well, you know, it is.

But those Spiritual Attributes, yowza, if you follow exactly those rules the way they're written, you're talking serious dice action on stuff you've decided to care about. And most people don't seem to understand the rules for changing them on the fly, which are about as hard-core "behavior/reward effectiveness"mechanics as I've ever seen in an RPG.

So if you just read the basics for resolving everything else without getting hung up on it, and check out the SA rules carefully, I think you'll find something very much like what Josh is talking about.

Best, Ron