Sorcerer and Sword ... Conan?

[weaselheart]

Sorry if I'm being dense, but I've read Sorcerer and Sword a couple of times now and can't seem to get past one simple point, perhaps best exemplified by Conan.

In the book (and in threads on this site), Conan is a sorcerer. I.e. has a lore rating. This makes sense to me. However, as far as I can see, that's all Conan has. He might be able to banish a demon, but doesn't start with one. In the stories I've read, he never gets one.

Imagine I run a game with two characters: Conan and Bob (a sorcerer with a demon). Both are good fighters, and they fight each other. What stops Bob from kicking the crap out of Conan? And if he can, every time, hasn't that undersold the Conan concept?

I guess Conan could summon his own demon, but that doesn't seem in accordance with the fiction as I understand it. But if one player chooses to play a straight lore-only "fighter", what prevents his character being underpowered relative to others?

[jburneko]

The Conan player has to be really good at managing the three (four if you include the Sorcerer & Sword stuff) die tricks.

1) Roll over victories: Carrying the momentum of success A into action B.

2) Double Descriptors: Actions which nail more than one Desciptor (Usually Past + Something but sometimes Lore + Something) so that you can roll one descriptor first and then carry the victories over to the primary roll in a single action.

3) Bonus Dice.  There are up to 5 available and they're for pretty concrete things.  1 die for dialogue.  2 dice if the action is really going to alter the situation at hand.  2 dice for a particularly unusual version of an action.

4) Sorcerer & Sword Only: The save victories to cancel non-victories trick.  I don't have much practice with this one.

In other words the "fighter only" compensates by being very smart and very dynamic.  If Bob is a PC he can do all of these but his NPC demon can't really do 2 or 3.  If Bob is an NPC he can't do 3.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Don't forget Destiny, too. That's another source of dice.

I recommend looking over the source material too. I can think of very few instances in which a sorcerer is standing there with his pet, specifically trying to kill Conan. I'd welcome help from the forum participants, but at the moment ...

Conan vs. Thoth-Amon's baboon-dog demon - basically, it can and will kill him, and would except that he utilizes a sword that had been marked by a sage in a dream to kill it. In game terms, this can mean about a zillion different things, but effectively, he had access to Special Damage himself. As I see it, and I want to stress that I'm using reversed logic because the story is a story and was not written to accomodate the Sorcerer rules - Conan's dream was itself a Contact. Or if you want to preserve theme (which posits the sage as a pro-Humanity type), then it could even be an angel scene using the rules from The Sorcerer's Soul. The point is that that story is in no fucking way the stereotype of "muscle-y Conan vs. wizard." It makes that if it were, Conan would be slaughtered.

In fact, I think the real point is to take that very idea that Howard is all about grunting-muscle man hacking his way through smarty-pants wizards, and kill it dead. Yes, there's a certain amount of oiled-muscled he-man rhetoric in the Conan stories which to some readers may suggest gay porn. But there's a lot less of it than in the pastiche fiction, and I should stress that Conan clearly learns and uses wizardly foes' behavior against them. His second fight against Tsotha-Lanti is a good example.

Another example: Conan vs. the winged-ape demon (or sorcerer? works a bit better that way, in fact) in Queen of the Black Coast. It defeats him. He only survives because Belit's ghost saves him, and secondarily because that permits him to get free of the marble column that fell on him - in fact, that literary moment was one of the many sources I used for the Will roll to supercede the damage system (along with Salome's post-sword-stroke scene in A Witch Shall Be Born). But that's a digression; my point is that Conan defeats that demon specifically and only because of necromancy, and whether he performs it or Belit does is a matter for unresolvable debate (see their dialogue before they arrive at the island, and also her death-haunted demeanor once they get there).

Ummm ... I'll have to revisit the original The Black Stranger as written by Howard (and hideously butchered by others into The Treasure of Tranicos), and see how the silver-and-fire demon was beaten, or if that scene even existed in the original. I should point out that it was not published by Howard and I'm generally not inclined to hold him/Conan responsible for stories he did not finish or perhaps did not want to.

I am a little rushed for time but will return to the discussion. I want to repeat my point here, too, that I do not consider the widely-held notion that Conan is all about muscles being better than magic (intellect).

Best, Ron

[James_Nostack]

Well, some of this is besides the point.  The OP asked if a "straight lore-only fighter" is, or isn't, underpowered in comparison with regular sorcerers.  The short answer is that these questions of game balance, at least in a combat-only scene, aren't central to Sorcerer's design. 

You choose a lore-only guy for a very specific reason: you want to have a character who's working from a rules-mechanical disadvantage, but who isn't bogged down by having to manage a demon.  Conan isn't about confronting demons and sorcerers as an equal-in-power: pretty much every NPC he meets in these stories is like, "Yikes, Conan, this sorcerer dude will kill us all!"  Conan is about overcoming these challenges with courage, wits, and skill.  Unless he starts from a disadvantage, the accomplishment means nothing. 

As the others have mentioned, the disadvantage isn't as steep as one would suppose, since Sorcerer rewards courage, wits and skill.  (And it seems like none of the demons Conan fights have the Armor ability, which ties into one of Howard's themes that steel and willpower can match anything in the universe.)

But Conan isn't un-balanced when you look at him in a broader context than just killin' stuff.  Conan doesn't have to be looking over his shoulder all the time, wondering how his demon is going to act up.  Conan doesn't have to worry about incurring massive Humanity loss rolls for satisfying his demon's needs.  Conan can just be a cool dude to everybody he meets, and as a result he's got a whole passel of friends who come to his aid at the climax of most of the stories. 

[Eero Tuovinen]

Most significantly, Conan isn't underpowered because the concept of character power doesn't apply to a game that is not about protagonism-via-force. In principle there is nothing, except perhaps player preferences, preventing one from playing and enjoying a game where your character loses all the time because he is noble and right and natural and good, and thus does not truck with demons that give you power. The real question is not whether Conan is underpowered in Sorcerer, but whether Sorcerer promises or should deliver equal power to all character concepts. To my understanding it does neither; power happens or does not happen, but that is verified only after the fact, not bestowed upon your character as an inherent right.

[weaselheart]

Thanks for the responses. I think I'm near to getting it, but I'm not there yet. I particularly appreciated Ron's answer about what would be happening in the fiction if I was running Conan as Howard wrote it. After that answer, if I was to run a single-protagonist Conan game, I reckon it would be fine. My problem, I think, is a multiple protagonist game.

Here's one place I have difficulty:

In principle there is nothing, except perhaps player preferences, preventing one from playing and enjoying a game where your character loses all the time...

... except, Conan doesn't lose all the time. In all the stories I've read, he wins. It's a near-run thing frequently, or it wouldn't be an exciting story - and he often needs help. But he always wins.

Also, I think this may the root of one problem I have:

The real question is not whether Conan is underpowered in Sorcerer, but whether Sorcerer promises or should deliver equal power to all character concepts.

... I have read before on the forum about Sorcerer not being about game-balance, but I'm still not clear why. Perhaps it's my D&D experience, but in a game about (to some extent) heroic fantasy action, wouldn't it be important for each character to have a fair crack at being as good at that as the others?

So, for example:

In other words the "fighter only" compensates by being very smart and very dynamic.

... feels disappointing. It's like you're saying, Jesse, if you want to play Conan, you have to be a smarter player than anyone else. Fair enough, but it's a pity to need the player to make up for a mechanical disadvantage, I think.

I understand that stories are about more than mechanical force, but mechanical force is nonetheless an important aspect of fantasy stories I've read. I may not be expecting Conan, Fafhrd, or the Grey Mouser to always win, but I do expect them to be able to swashbuckle with the best of them when they need to.

I guess the crux of my question is this: if my hypothetical two protagonists link up to rob a temple, on the way they may be attacked by  brigands sent by someone on the back of their character sheets. Later, the temple may have a wall that needs scaling. Then, a huge great snake may need evading/killing. All these seem to me to need character competence to overcome, if not outright force. If I scale the bangs to meet the Conan character, what stops Bob from finding them too easy - or vice versa. Or, to put it another way, what stops Conan from effectively becoming the "sidekick" character, doomed always to find that there's nothing he can do that Bob couldn't?

And, as a follow-up, if the answer is that for all his power, Bob will be much more conflicted and aggrieved by having his demon, wouldn't that make the focus of the story even more about Bob?

Here's an extreme version of what I'm concerned might happen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F17rPg_pYOs

[weaselheart]

Also, sorry to double-post, but there doesn't seem to be an edit button and I reread this and thought it a key point:

You choose a lore-only guy for a very specific reason: you want to have a character who's working from a rules-mechanical disadvantage, but who isn't bogged down by having to manage a demon.

... I don't think so. When people read Conan, some appreciate Conan, some (me for example) Pelias. Whatever game my group plays, some people play fighters every time while others are always wizards.

I think they'd pick a lore-only guy because they want to play a sword-swinging badass, not a disadvantaged character.

[Lance D. Allen]

Another thought: Demon doesn't *have* to be defined within the fiction... at all.

A demon can simply be played as a stack of abilities, a need and a desire. Sometimes those abilities will fail if the need and desire aren't met. The need and desire shouldn't be too easy to meet.

Sure, it's more *fun* to play a demon as a personality, but it's not required. Conan could have a "demon" whose abilities are shown as extraordinary feats of heroism, and whose need and desire are the character's own vices and addictions.

At least, that's the way I remember it.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I'm going to nitpick one phrasing here because it might be illuminating: you do not "scale Bangs" to characters, because Bangs are not about challenges, but choices. The only way character strength is involved in Bangs is in that the character's positioning in the fiction determines the choices he can make, and therefore a lowly slave can't effectively make the same choices the king can (and vice versa) - the choice of killing or not killing a begging brigand is one Conan can make only if he can first disarm the man, for example. So Conan's strength will only matter for Bangs when the Bang concerns a situation Conan can't get into because he's too weak.

As for heroic fantasy, Ron actually writes about this rather well in &Sword; he discusses the importance of creating heroism and competence for the characters not by making them win conflicts, but by describing their circumstances and struggle in admirable ways. Thus you might not even roll dice for scaling walls and beating snakes if these activities did not carry interest beyond the prospect of victory; if there is no meaningful way of playing the defeat, then do not roll the dice, but instead just describe how heroic the character is. On the other hand, most of the time you do have many meaningful ways of having the character lose while preserving his heroic mien: instead of the character being too weak or clumsy or stupid, how about the opponent is too fierce, the conditions conspire against him, his virtues trip him up or simple ill fate takes him down? There is no reason for defeat to equal deprotagonization.

To elaborate on that in a multi-character context, Sorcerer is not a team-based game. This means that you never need to compare character achievements against each other in any measurable way. Furthermore, what makes characters cool in this sort of game is not their strength, but their humanity and the difficult choices the character makes when confronted with difficulties. The weaker character can quite easily be just as cool or cooler than the other guy because we do not measure coolness by whose character can pawn the others in a cage match. Conan can be cool for being able to beat the sorcerer without stooping to the same depths of depravity, he can even be cool for trying and failing - I see no contradiction.

Furthermore, a point about the relationship a roleplaying game like Sorcerer has to fiction: we can't read a Howard short story directly into Sorcerer and demand that our characters succeed in the same string of struggles Conan does because one of those things is a roleplaying game while the other is a story. Specifically, Sorcerer belongs in a category of roleplaying games that presume that your character's particular brand of heroism and its consequences - his very protagonism - is up in the air to some degree when we begin play. You can make Conan as a character in the game, but you can't expect to be entitled to flawless success beforehand; the game's methodology when correctly applied will ensure that the story outcome of play will be interesting and meaningful, but it won't ensure that Conan will succeed in the same places he succeeds in a given story. This time around Conan might fail heroically in his fight against an evil sorcerer, which might then lead the story into even greater heights, or perhaps a grim closure. The story will be good (insofar as the methodology of the game is correctly designed and applied), but we won't know in advance what it will be like, or even whether Conan will be the flawless hero we might wish him to be.

Finally, for what it's worth, it seems to me that Conan would win his various struggles in the Sorcerer rules by the virtue of his high Stamina, Will and Past values, at least in part. I find the trade-off in playing Conan entirely reasonable from a strict character efficiency viewpoint: you might give Conan less Lore because he "doesn't need it" for what you have in mind, allowing you to give him more Stamina and Will. Conan can also bind a demon for himself later if he feels like it, and he will in fact pay the exact same price for it that the other guy did in character generation - except that Conan gets to hunt for bonus dice when he does it in-game, and he gets to pick the demon to suit the occasion. If anything, I'd say that playing Conan is slightly more attractive than playing a demonologist, that much the prospect of being a hardcore no-demon protagonist in Sorcerer entices me (and that's how much trouble the demons are, really).

In practice sorcerer Bob and Conan can well adventure together for a while, provided that they both have solid, discrete motivations for what they're doing, moment to moment. Conan won't be reduced into a sidekick not because of comparative strength, but because he has motivations and goals worthy of a hero in his own right, regardless of Bob. (Note how the chargen procedure ensures that this is so; you never play Sorcerer with a character who's just along for the ride out of simple greed.) The choices he faces will be ones Bob cannot make for him for all of Bob's power: Conan needs to decide whether he'll go help his girlfriend from a deathly peril, not Bob - Conan needs to decide whether to skim the reward money, not Bob - Conan needs to decide whether to spare the pretty enemy spy, not Bob - Conan needs to decide whether to turn against Bob when he goes crazy, not Bob - the job of the GM in the game is to cater to each character's specific concerns whether they're together or not, and thus each character will have their own story regardless of who might or might not be more powerful when the dice go down.

One more viewpoint - this thing goes to the roots of the game's philosophy, that's why there are so many points to this. The last point is that sorcerers always pay in Humanity for their demonic ways. It is not power without cost. If all we cared about was the power, then Bob could grow even more powerful by summoning even more demons, uncaring of the consequences. This is an absurd logic, surely, for ultimately Bob would come to his end as a Humanity zero wreck - powerful in his way, perhaps, but no longer a hero or protagonist of a story. You might view the Conan choice of starting without even one demon as an extreme form of prudence in a world filled with inhuman wretchedness. You're giving up some power, yes (I for one wouldn't claim that there is some objective advantage in immediate strength in not having demons at your call), but you're also hoping that what power you have is enough for facing what is ahead regardless. If it's not, then you need to decide whether you'd rather fail or dip a toe in sorcery - and that's what the game is about. Bob and Conan are on the same path, just at different points of it. You don't play "just a fighter" in this game, you just play a sorcerer with above-average standards for debasing himself.

(For what it's worth, I'm not satisfied with the "play better" answer to game balance here, either. I'd rather question whether losing more is really that terrible a fate - we have the methodology for playing weaker and stronger characters, and for having characters win or lose, and making play meaningful nonetheless. Enjoyment of the game does not need to hang on how well your own character does in the game in comparison to other characters or some abstract prior expectation.)

[greyorm]

Summarizing what Eero is saying, I think, I see you going into this with a very D&D-based mindset: everything must be balanced, it's all about the mission, fight-the-monster, team-based play.

To put a different spin on it: you're thinking about D&D when you're being offered Tolkien, and you're confusing them because of this.

Consider: the Fellowship in LotR isn't all well-matched in terms of power, are they? Not at all! Heck, it is the two weakest characters in the entire group, in a D&D-kind of measure, who are the ones who destroy the One Ring and defeat Sauron. It is not the destined uber-warrior heir, the godling wizard, or the supernatural elven archer...all of whom had abilities and powers and skills far beyond a couple of run-of-the-mill midget farmers.

And that is what Sorcerer is like.

(And why "he has a demon and I don't" is a red herring when thinking about play.)

[Ron Edwards]

This thread has fallen into two minor traps, or actually three.

1. The dogpile. Let the guy talk before jumpin' on. As you all know, despite the fact that we are all different people participating in a discussion equally ... it doesn't seem that way to a new poster, it can seem more as if one is being confronted by a united phalanx.

2. No connection to actual play in the points being made. The concern here will not be addressed by abstractions or psychology, but by example.

3. Failure to distinguish between two levels of an issue. We have to concern ourselves with whether (a) there is a legitimate issue which Sorcerer contains a solution for, or (b) there is actually no legitimate issue and therefore the "lack" of a solution is not a problem.

I'll be back to it when I can.

[weaselheart]

No problem. Let's see ...

1. The dogpile. Let the guy talk before jumpin' on. As you all know, despite the fact that we are all different people participating in a discussion equally ... it doesn't seem that way to a new poster, it can seem more as if one is being confronted by a united phalanx.

... Thank you for the consideration. At the moment I'm ok with the responses given. I appreciate people putting the time into some very in-depth answers and don't feel overwhelmed. I came here thinking that it was my understanding that was off, rather than Sorcerer. I'm hoping some phrase or point of view will help me to get it -- by which I mean feel comfortable about my ability to run a Sorcerer and Sword game.

2. No connection to actual play in the points being made. The concern here will not be addressed by abstractions or psychology, but by example.

I have no experience running Sorcerer and Sword. This may be the problem; I might have to find out what to do empirically. My concern is that if I run with the wrong mindset, I'll be setting myself and my players up for frustration.

I do have some small experience with Sorcerer which may be relevant. I ran a game last year that I felt went well, although I missed a number of the subtleties and hit people with a more external plot than I would do now. I got that issue cleared up by another thread a couple of months ago, where I learned to look at the back of the character sheet.

So what do I think may be the problem next time? Simply that Sorcerer and Sword is a different game. Mechanically, the biggest difference seems to come from the idea of demonless characters. I guess you could do that with Sorcerer, but it feels invited in the Sword system.

Here's my interpretation of one small element of the game we last played: before the game, a number of us had come off another game (white-wolf), in which sorcery was highly punished. As a result, one of the players chose a very weak demon so he'd be more in control. He also usually plays non-wizards in other games. During the game, I noticed he seemed to feel underpowered at a couple of times relative to the others. By noticed, I mean he commented on it. Now, we were Sorcerer novices, so although he could summon one, he may not have known this -- or not have fancied it in any case due to a desire for control. This was noticable with only a few points difference in demon strength (hence 3 or so less powers), and a demon that wasn't really cut out for fighting. It wasn't that I placed a non-combat character into a combat scenario, though. The character was a good fighter and had a decent combat background, just his demon was weak.

Of course, I may have exacerbated the situation by being a plot-heavy gm. In times when I wasn't sure what to do, I did the Raymond Chandler move of having two guys with guns burst in, for example. Naturally, they could be dispatched easier by characters with more combat options. Also, the characters tended to stick together as a squad -- something I again encouraged after the first few weeks by giving them a clear enemy they wanted to go for. Partly I did this because I wanted to make sure everyone was involved, and I didn't want players to spend ages sitting around waiting for their turn. I do understand this may be the root of my problem, and will do it differently next time, but even if I run a more disparate game, sometimes the players may like to get their characters together, I think.

3. Failure to distinguish between two levels of an issue. We have to concern ourselves with whether (a) there is a legitimate issue which Sorcerer contains a solution for, or (b) there is actually no legitimate issue and therefore the "lack" of a solution is not a problem.

This is an interesting and enlightening question for me. I honestly have no idea if I just ran it a bit too traditionally, or if we had a mechanical problem due to someone's desire to be demon-light. However, I am concerned that if they go demonless it will be even more obvious.

So, at the moment, my thinking is:

a) I think this will be a legitimate issue in my future game, but I don't know if it's
b) because I'm running the game wrong.

However, if I could add a

c) A lot of the posters appear to think it's a non-issue. But I don't need it to be -- I don't feel like I currently have a zero-fun game. The last one was a blast, with some great intense moments. So although I'm open to the idea of thinking differently about playing Sorcerer, I don't currently see why I can't play the way I intend to but with a bit of better gm'ing. I.e. if it came to this being a legitimate issue which Sorcerer has a fix for, I'd be perfectly happy. In fact, learning that was my intention when starting the thread.

Here's where I think the difference between a) and b) is most pronounced:

To put a different spin on it: you're thinking about D&D when you're being offered Tolkien, and you're confusing them because of this.

Consider: the Fellowship in LotR isn't all well-matched in terms of power, are they? Not at all! Heck, it is the two weakest characters in the entire group, in a D&D-kind of measure, who are the ones who destroy the One Ring and defeat Sauron. It is not the destined uber-warrior heir, the godling wizard, or the supernatural elven archer...all of whom had abilities and powers and skills far beyond a couple of run-of-the-mill midget farmers.

... I remain to be convinced of this, for two reasons:

a) That may be partially true of LotR. But is it true of Conan? I may be misinterpreting, but I don't think so.

b) I'm not even sure it's true of LotR. Perhaps this is my fault in misunderstanding how fantasy works, and narrative roleplay in general, but it seems to me that stories are about characters struggling to overcome conflict, and in that pressure revealing who they are. So we have Sam and Frodo wandering into Mordor in order to destroy the ring. I agree that the story works despite them being underpowered relative to Gandalf. But, and this cuts to the heart of what I said earlier about feeling comfortable now playing a Sorcerer and Sword one on one, is it true when they group up? I don't remember the hobbits being much use on weathertop, for example, or Moria. They didn't kill a cave troll, for example, or stop the balrog.

Imagine the story wasn't Frodo and Sam, but Gandalf and Sam trekking into Mordor. If Gandalf had fallen, could Sam have stopped him? Could they have had any trouble with Faramir, or Shelob? In my reading of the book, Lord of the Rings shows me that even the smallest can be important - providing the story takes care to separate them from the biggest and gives them their own isolated subplot. Take the video I linked above. I'm not convinced bmx bandit can really pal around with Angel Summoner for any length of time in a story revolving around international terrorism. A story about bike-racing, perhaps, but that's not analagous to the story I get drawn to fantasy by.

At the moment, from the threads above, I'm thinking there may be a number of possible solutions to my (admittedly hypothetical) concerns:

a) There isn't really a problem. If I play it, I'll find it just works out in any case. I'm not convinced, but I'm willing to give it a go on this assumption.

b) Keep the characters apart, and hence pitch their stories at the level they are competent to deal with. Conan fights snakes, Bob fights Gods.

c) Give the non-demon character a few more points to put into stamina/will/lore, for the length of time he has no demon.

d) Give Conan a "demon", just don't call it a demon. Call it Crom, or Tribal pride, or fury. I'm leaning towards this option, but it seems to me that if this is the solution, then the answer to the question "can you play a demon-less character with a highly-demon-powered one?" is: no = and that doesn't seem to be the concensus above.

e) Learn to think differently as to how to run the game and what it's about. I'm happy to try, although I am, as a couple of people have noticed, mentally stuck with the idea of "game balance" at the moment, probably due to my history with other games.

[jburneko]

From the description you gave of how you've been playing the game it sounds like you may be having a more general issue with the structure of a Sorcerer game.  May I suggest you take a look at this post by Christopher Kubasik that does an excellent job of breaking down the flow of a Sorcerer game, very very well.

http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=11710&page=1#Comment_261789

Maybe if we clear up some of the larger conceptual issues, it will shed light on this issue.

Jesse

[Noclue]

Yeah, I find myself thinking that the Balrog wasn't Frodo's bang. It was Gandalf who had the kicker about leading the fellowship through Moria and wakening the sleeper within.

Frodo's kicker is about not killing Gollum because of the bond they share and taking him with him into Mordor.

[greyorm]

Woah, guys, slow down. What whose Kickers were if they were Sorcerer characters is not at all helpful (especially if it is going to sow further confusion by confusing plot arcs with Kickers, and gods know what else). I'm sorry to have brought it up since it is causing this kind of confusion: the idea was solely to showcase how characters with vastly disparate power levels are not an issue because Sorcerer is not D&D and the ways in which it is not. It was apparently poorly thought out on my part, and it should be removed from the discussion table: no more talk about it, please.