[Sorcerer] Music of the Spheres

[twilight]

Premise

This is our first foray into Sorcerer - I wanted to get away from playing D&D 3.5, Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds. I like the flavor, and I have hopes that it can be a springboard into trying other titles like Dogs in the Vineyard or Primetime Adventures. In this particular instance, I'm looking at a five session game, much like a short season for Primetime Adventures, with the first session being the season's launch.

In addition to myself as the GM, there are three players: my girlfriend, referenced as C, and another couple, A and J. We've been together as a gaming group for about 8 months; it wasn't until recently that we discovered how similar our gaming styles were: as a whole, we were getting bored of 3.5 and the like. Eventually, I simply asked, starting with A, what she wanted out of gaming. The same question posed to J, followed by chatting with my girlfriend. And the gist of it all boiled down to wanting more influence over the setting, more meaningful character interaction and less reliance on stupid dice rolls (yes, you're 12th level; yes, it's save or die; yes, you rolled a 1...). Which left me with considering various games that used dice pools, result fudging or no dice at all.

The Game

From the start of the 2.5 hour session, the players were filled with ideas. I basically just told them I was interested in a roughly 12th century setting, sorcerers studied human interactions with desires (Demons) and that there were a limited number of people that could do that. The players agreed; that was too easy. I explained Humanity and what a low Humanity score would involve, which included that the closer you got to zero, the more attuned you were with desire. The players agreed with that too. Ok, then ... "What do you want out of the setting?" I asked.

J asked probing questions: things related to Humanity, Kickers and Demons. A started tossing in ideas about organizations, people and places. C asked about Demons, desires and interactions. And I simply said "Yes," to most of what they were asking or modifying the statement to be more in tune with the setting with the assistance of the other players. Which moved us into character creation.

I explained the basics of character creation, starting with ability scores, and all three of them had a clear idea of where their characters fit into the genre; being that the agreed upon premise was that the three of them would be hunting Sorcerers that have hit zero Humanity, though each character had a completely different reason as to why that was. Each character brought something different to the group - J playing a Sorcerer who died and returned from seeing Hell itself as an Inquistor. C playing a Sorcerer whose musical career was shattered by a raving lunatic that systematically hunt everyone around her, brutally killing them but leaving her alive to tell the tale. And A, a gypsy whose Lore of 1 causes her issues as her Passing Demon is explained away as an unquiet spirit instead of a Demon.

Which, of course, leads to the Demons. Both C and J created Demons that I feel are about average. Power 7 entities with a range of interesting Abilities. A is the one that impressed me because she had a very solid concept of who her Demon was: A powerful entity disguised as a young boy. She wanted him to have a lot of Abilities but would take advantage of her lack of Lore. And, so it was: Power 14. Then A turns to me and informs me that obviously she knows what the Demon's Need is, but I have ownership of its Desire and personality. A player created Power 14 Demon consciously given over to the GM? I think I can work with that.

Pro - Bangs! Or, more to the point, getting to the point.

The scene, two linked locations, opens with ear-piercing screams in the middle of the night. J's character rushes outside of his chapel to find the source. A and C approach the second. A and C's screams were second, so J is first to discover the dessicated husk lying in the inn. A mummified corpse minus all bodily fluid; A and C find the same, only with the murderer gibbering with an obsidian dagger clenched in his fist, the blade glowing a luminous ochre.

One round of combat. I wanted to demonstrate over-Boosting Stamina. The blade swings at A's character and rolls horribly; A actually manages to not take any damage at all, but as the arm passes A, she hears the ripping of tendon and muscle. The dagger drops to the floor and the murderer screams as his bones begin to quiver and shatter of their own accord.

J is approaching the second location as A and C are tending to the shattered arm. The dagger long since Travelled away.

Con - Me!! I forgot to print the player aids, i.e. the sorcery chart.

I feel I did a moderate job of explaining how the rules, rolls and stats worked. The collaborative setting generation went fluidly. But by not having the reference sheet for the new players, they were basically playing PCs with Demon assistants. It felt unnatural having me introducing Contacts and Summons when it should be a natural extension of what the characters already know.

Compare and contrast

This was our first attempt at a collaborative setting, and I think it worked well. The added input made the characters that much more interesting because, instead of a GM trying to get a party to work together, the ties already exist. The dice pool was fun because, though failures still exist, it weights the roll a little more in favor of the more experienced characters.

Incidentally, the last remark by A at the end of the session: "This would make a great modern Call of Cthulhu style game; I can see how it could become pretty Dark pretty quick."

Wrap up

To summarize, I think the players enjoyed Sorcerer, we're at least going to play next session, though I suspect the entire series of five more sessions will be completed. I'll definitely have the player aids printed in time for the following session, though.

In the end, I only have two questions off the top of my head:

1. A wanted to know if she could play a Demon instead of a Sorcerer. I plan on purchasing the other two supplements, Sorcerer & Sword and The Sorcerer's Soul by the end of this week. I seem to remember seeing something about Demons as Humans in The Sorcerer's Soul - has anyone tried a game with one player playing a Demon?

2. Demonic Power levels. I'm inclined to think a Power 14 Demon is rare. C and J both have Power 7. Would one guesstimate that Power 7 is about average? Or is even that too powerful for starting characters? Does it matter?

[Chris Peterson]

Thanks for the AP, Twilight! I'm reading up on Sorcerer now, trying to plan a game. Your write-up was very helpful (and inspiring).

Sorcerer's Soul does have rules for playing Demon characters.

Besides the missing player aids, what challenges did your players have learning Sorcerer? Did they have any trouble creating their Kickers? Did you have a relationship map?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there!

You did a great job of setting up play. Since a lot of post-GenCon discussion is under way, I'm a little strapped for time in posting, so I'll focus on the dodgy parts. Please, understand that if I don't address some aspect of setup and play that you described, then you can take it as given that it was beautiful, and to consider yourself to be congratulated.

I'm looking at a five session game, much like a short season for Primetime Adventures, with the first session being the season's launch.

Don't lock yourself down into session numbers. It will influence you to railroad and rely on pre-conceived pacing rather than responding to in-game play during play itself. Say "a few" instead of five, and see where that goes.

I explained Humanity and what a low Humanity score would involve, which included that the closer you got to zero, the more attuned you were with desire.

H'mmm ... this sets off a bit of an alarm. Do you and your players understand that the actual value of the Humanity score, as long as it is not 0, does not affect character behavior in the slightest?

A character with Humanity 1 has exactly the full range of behavioral options as another with Humanity 7 or whatever. The player does not have to change the way the character acts to accord with a given value. This is precisely where Sorcerer departs from the game that inspired the mechanic, Cyberpunk; and precisely where it differs most from another game that was inspired by Cyberpunk, Vampire.

The dagger long since Travelled away.

Ewww ... I must say, this was an instance of some bad habits of Gming, or at least bad for Sorcerer play. "Big monster shows up, does something wicked, gives them a hard time for a minute, then disappears. Oohhh, now my players are motivated!"

What your players are is (a) cued to do whatever you direct them to next, and (b) possibly annoyed. At the very least, they have been robbed of learning what their characters can actually do. And you, Mr. GM, should remember that if you introduce a demon like that into a conflict, you should be prepared for whatever happens – "prepared" in the sense of being ready to accept it, rather than "prepared" in the sense of having a pre-packaged response ready.

As I see it, you wimped out on actually playing what could be a great scene. Maybe it injures a player-character terribly. Maybe it gets Bound by a player-character. Maybe they destroy it. Maybe anything as long as it's a substantive result. I recommend trying to think a bit more in those terms, not so much in how scene A sets up your planned scene B.

1. A wanted to know if she could play a Demon instead of a Sorcerer. I plan on purchasing the other two supplements, Sorcerer & Sword and The Sorcerer's Soul by the end of this week. I seem to remember seeing something about Demons as Humans in The Sorcerer's Soul - has anyone tried a game with one player playing a Demon?

I suggest not working with this issue at all until standard Sorcerer has been played and understood. The best answer is, "Not really." A demon cannot be played as a character because, in many ways, demons are not characters ... How can I explain this?

Perhaps this will work: to paraphrase Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction, who may well have been speaking of his own fictional self, "Just because a demon is a character, doesn't mean it has character." If that makes any sense.

There are ways, as described in The Sorcerer's Soul and also through the necromancy rules in Sorcerer & Sword, to get to demon/human and human/demon play. But it's an outcome, nested deeply in actual play, and not a starting-out option like a character class.

Again, I suggest that the answer for your group at this time be a flat "no," and to investigate the issue later through the rules when the group is fully up to speed with the game.

2. Demonic Power levels. I'm inclined to think a Power 14 Demon is rare. C and J both have Power 7. Would one guesstimate that Power 7 is about average? Or is even that too powerful for starting characters? Does it matter?

I think the best answer is to refer you to Very very very powerful demons and how to keep them, which includes useful links to earlier threads as well.

Overall - again, great going. I'm looking forward to the next episodes and all I can say is, let those player-characters do their thing, and play all of the demons really hard.

Best, Ron

[twilight]

Chris Peterson:

Besides the missing player aids, what challenges did your players have learning Sorcerer? Did they have any trouble creating their Kickers? Did you have a relationship map?

Learning the mechanics behind Sorcerer seemed to work well enough, the biggest stumbling block was overcome during the collaboration to create the setting. As we worked out what Humanity represented, what Demons were and the setting, each player began to get that glimmer of ideas brewing in the back of their heads. Which is exactly why I'm beginning to enjoy games like Sorcerer, Mortal Coil and Primetime Adventures - it seems to be conducive to creativity. The issues that still remain, not to get too zen about it, is myself, which I'll explain below.

Creating Kickers only appeared challenging - they were basically given free rein to create whatever they wanted and seemed to become paralyzed by that. So I offered the question, "Why do your characters care? The premise, exterminating "fallen" Sorcerers, could be interesting, but anyone can become a psychopath; the question is: Why would your character even bother instead of staying home and doing his or her own thing?" That caused a little more brainstorming since they had a little more focus on their character. J's, for example, started off like this:

J: I'd figured my character was one of the depraved Sorcerers with a low Humanity score then died and saw a vision of Hell. So he came back as an Inquisitor.
Me: Were you part of a group?
J: Yep.
Me: So how'd they feel about that?
J: About what?
Me: About you coming back with visions of Hell, and now you're preaching at them?

* Which brought me to taking up an opposing point of view *

Me: Are you a traitor?
J: A traitor? Why?
Me: So, you're part of a group. Human sacrifices, summoning Demons. Fairly bloody stuff. And you come back and tell the group they're wrong... And you secretly want to hunt each of them down. Do you think anyone would take offense at that?

And that's how J's Kicker evolved from, "I died and saw a vision of Hell," to where it is now - the Hunter's become the Hunted. But for the first session, I had a mental relationship map since there were very few topics covered - by the end of the first session, my map is now a convoluted mess covering a sheet of paper that my OCD wants me to reorganize and beautify.

Ron Edwards:

Do you and your players understand that the actual value of the Humanity score, as long as it is not 0, does not affect character behavior in the slightest?

Yes and no - mechanically and logically, we understand that. My issue is strictly with previous games, i.e. Cyberpunk and Vampire as you mentioned, keeps creeping the old definition to mind. So each time Humanity comes up, I have to whack it with a rolled up newspaper. Mechanically, there is no difference between Humanity scores of 1 or 7 - the sliding scale crept back into my post, unfortunately. Humanity, and Demons, are tied to desires - a 0 Humanity is someone who lives strictly for desire with no thought of repercussion. Losing and gaining Humanity involves mastering yourself or feeding temptation - so I suppose my previous statement should be that Sorcerers lose Humanity by becoming attuned to those desires.

Ewww ... I must say, this was an instance of some bad habits of Gming, or at least bad for Sorcerer play. "Big monster shows up, does something wicked, gives them a hard time for a minute, then disappears. Oohhh, now my players are motivated!"

Kind of, yes, point taken. Another one of my issues - I learn by doing instead of just reading. With a new game system, I like having a foil, something that the players can interact with for testing purposes: my own or a character. So this Demon is present to play with Contact, Summons and breaking Bindings.

Thank you all for the comments. The next session is on Tuesday, so we'll see how that turns out.

[twilight]

The session as it happened:

A brief synopsis of what occurred during last session:

For the session, I ended up using Dogs in the Vineyard to generate the town that the players were exploring. Using the town creation rules, I ended up with a fairly large relationship map: who was interested in the PCs, who was interested in the NPCs and who would rather be left alone. The map ended up being a fairly large sprawl where one NPC, for example, would rather have nothing to do with the PCs but attempt to corrupt the NPCs around him; I thought that worked in a fairly interesting fashion.

What was most helpful, especially after considering what Ron Edwards had to say, was the "How to GM" section of Dogs in the Vineyard. Basically, it became a gentle reminder that I should be playing the town not the story. Good to remember, especially since the players ended up surprising me: the players decided, and working with the theory of Bangs, to simply assault the Chapel with the Sorcerers located within. I had expected a more D&D approach: investigation, asking questions, etc., but the players got right to the point. Evil Sorcerers == bad. Stop evil sorcerers == good. Done.

And that was simply fun ... the players jumped straight to the point, assaulted and confronted the Sorcerers and made pests of themselves. The cabal was a total of five Sorcerers, and I played them according to how they were constructed: the NPC with the desire to be knowledgeable ended up doing next to nothing except fleeing. The one that wanted to be the "leader" of the cabal strode in with an air of authority and attempted to stop the PCs. The others fell in a range between the two. Ultimately, I played the NPCs, the players played their characters and the story evolved, what I felt, organically.

In summary, the character with 7 Humanity and the Power 14 Demon? She ended up with a Humanity of 4 by the end of the session: Gabriel (her Demon) "sacrificed" himself by leaping in to prevent an NPC from ripping the character to shreds. But the character went ballistic at the loss of her "charge" and pummeled the Sorcerer to death. And didn't stop there. Death wasn't enough, absolute desecration ended up being her goal. The femur of St. Jerome (an artifact found in the Chapel) became an instrument of death, gladly giving the character an 8 Power boost to her rolls. J's character shadowed the two that fled the scene and committed a standard murder of two Sorcerers that chose to leave instead of face an up and up fight ... the dedication demonstrated that he would rather murder them in their sleep than confront them in person. The third character? Unfortunately, the third character was subject to several Hold powers assaulting simultanteously.

The only issue was that the player that ended up being Held was upset for being Held. But I explained: the character has a Will of 2. The Demons were Will 6. But her Demon was Power 7 and the other Sorcerers were Will 3. As such, they were as helpless as she was to them.

I suppose that's the largest issue that needed to be explained: each character has a Demon. Those Demons can be powerful. But NPCs are just as likely to have similar Demons. Even a Power 3 Demon vs. a Will 2 Sorcerer can have a decent chance of stopping a Sorcerer in his or her tracks. But they require 3 successful Holds to completely immobilize the character.