[Sorcerer] More Evil Is More Morally Taxing?

[Noclue]

Yes. You're playing Sorcerer with Dogs in the Vineyard Players.

Ha Ha Ha.  Perhaps.  But then you run into the naive assumption that Religion = Oppression.

Jesse

Well,  yes. But the thing is demons in Dogs and Demons in Sorcerer are not analogous. The best Dogs analog to a demon is the guns that the Dogs themselves are carrying around. Demons tend to crystallize moral choices because suddenly there's something arguably more scary and wrong than the Dogs themselves. In Sorcerer, demons can be evil to be opposed on moral grounds, or they might be tools to getting what you want, or they might be adversaries intent on getting what you want before you do. I think that may be why amping up demonic activity in your Sorcerer game had a paralyzing effect on your players. They didn't really know what they wanted and demons force you to choose.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Well,  yes. But the thing is demons in Dogs and Demons in Sorcerer are not analogous. The best Dogs analog to a demon is the guns that the Dogs themselves are carrying around. Demons tend to crystallize moral choices because suddenly there's something arguably more scary and wrong than the Dogs themselves. In Sorcerer, demons can be evil to be opposed on moral grounds, or they might be tools to getting what you want, or they might be adversaries intent on getting what you want before you do. I think that may be why amping up demonic activity in your Sorcerer game had a paralyzing effect on your players. They didn't really know what they wanted and demons force you to choose.
[/quote]

First, James, I want to just chime in and say this is one of the best summations of the functions of Demons I've ever seen for Sorcerer.  Awesome.

Second, I'm in New Hampshire, on vacation with spotty internet access.  I keep typing up responses offline, but then, by the time I get online, everyone else has already made my point.  But since we're circling a certain issue, I'm going to post part of a response I typed up...

These days I'm very suspicious of a Kicker that had anything to do with a Demon or Lore.  If I allow such a Kicker, it has to also be tied to something much, much more human and mundane. 

As Ron writes in the Sorcerer rules, the Demons and Lore and stuff are "just fantasy."  The point where a Player connects the fiction to real, human connections that any person might care about is the point where a story can kick off.  Which echoes what Ron says in this thread about Dogs, "the mechanics and moral issues of play should remain exactly the same, whether your particular group's particular story includes glowy eyes and floaty people, or not."

My view on Kickers might sound strange, even stringent, given that the game is about<her whole crew dead<(to me) I shoot him in the eye with an arrow!)

[jburneko]

CK,

That's an interesting point about Demons and Kickers.  Also the point about "opportunities" is well taken.  I still see that as creating a problem as there is implicitly something between the player and the opportunity we just don't know what it is yet.  But I concur that's a fundamentally different than baking the crisis directly into the Kicker.

What this thread has taught me is that I'm too soft on Kickers.  Though in the case of the Zenov Kicker as I was just glad to get something that had a wiff some of something about to happen AT ALL.  Here are a couple of that player's previous attempts at Kickers:

"I've just run out of leads on the cult I'm researching." (The other player actually said, "That's not a Kicker, that's a stopper.")
"I'm in a tomb and I've just killed the demon that lived there."

A lot of her attempts at Kickers are in fact endings.  I don't know if that's telling or not.

Jesse

[Noclue]

BEN: Alex! If we kill him, we might not get the map!
ALEXANDRA: Ben! He killed my mother! (to me) I shoot him in the eye with an arrow!)

That's awesome!

"I'm in a tomb and I've just killed found the demon that lived there."

Fixed!