S&S: The Sunless Citadel & Less than Zero

[Clinton R. Nixon]

My Sorcerer and Sword campaign ("Under the Blood Sun," a post-apocalyptic crypto-psychedelic game) is still going, even though I haven't been posting about it. The last two sessions were great, even though one fell kind of flat - it was a learning experience.

We've added a new player, Matt Wilson, who is playing Cain, a cyborg from an ages-old time when cyborgs were experimental. When he awoke, he found his entire platoon was missing, and they took everything, including his gear. He's not sure how his cybernetics even work, which has lead to some fun stuff already (he's a cyborg with a Stamina of 2, which is comicly and dramatically loaded.)

For the first session, I had an interlude between Book 1 of our story, where the two characters, Noom and Denn, traveled to the City of Truth and found only lies, destroying it to prevent an ancient demon from enslaving humanity with promises of eternal happiness; and Book 2 of our story. The interlude was to introduce Matt's character, Cain, and try something new for me - a Sorcerer dungeon crawl.

You might have read my title - "The Sunless Citadel" - and gotten the reference. I ran a D&D module, "The Sunless Citadel." In this module, kobolds are fighting goblins in a buried citadel that serve a sentient evil tree that collects organic matter to get bigger and more sentient. The players get embroiled, and might fight either side or both. In my version, Noom and Denn find an underground military base where humans are fighting cyborgs that serve an intelligent computer that is collecting organic matter to make more cyborgs and rule the world and such.

We found out Sorcerer bites for pointless fights. Denn, the bad-ass of all time, almost got wiped by three cyborg rats. In the future, we've decided (a) all fights matter and (b) hordes of things are represented by one mechanical entity in the game. I had to cut down the encounters a lot and give the characters a shortcut to get to the flesh-covered computer. In the end, they found Cain, activated him, met the humans, and blew apart the computer with some trickery.

I wasn't happy with this session outside of using it for a learning experience.

Tonight, we started Book 2 with an adventure called "Less than Zero." Book 2 has a very defined Premise: "Is it more beneficial to contribute to your own strength (selfishness) or to contribute to the strength of others (altruism)?" It's not which is more morally correct, but which one works in the long run. This is also phrased in the game's context as "Which is more important, yourself or family?"

As I said in the game, "Now that that's over, back to the sex and violence."

The game started with Noom making his way with his friends to his ancestral home, which he'd left years ago. The village was completely empty, with food left on the table and fires left to burn out. A talking dog - which shocked the hell out of Denn, who was going to kill it before it talked - told the characters that "green men" had taken the entire village.

The characters also found out that the dogs - which Noom had never seen - were run out of their home by "the Hunter," a huge allosaurus-esque dinosaur. This was here for pointless violence against huge reptiles, which Dan - Denn's player - likes. Denn killed the dinosaur by riding it with his three-foot "toothpick" embedded in its skull and used as a joystick to smash the beast's head into some rocks. While this seemed like a pointless encounter, it was another learning experience. I'm sometimes bad about always narrating the effects of rolls. In this case, I told Dan after he rolled well enough to kill the dinosaur, "Ok - you describe it." While that seems simple, it led to the bad-ass death I described above.

After the reptile-violence, the characters traveled south towards where the dogs had told Noom that the villagers were taken. They found several other empty villages, and finally came across a group of people fighting off the "green men." With some stealth, Noom managed to flatten their leader in one of the most impressive rolls I've seen in Sorcerer. With him gone, the group managed to overpower the "green men."

The villagers, a group of people Denn and Noom freed from slavery working in energy crystal mines (they were tattooed with null symbols on their heads, hence their name, the Nulls) in an earlier game, saw Cain and immediately rejoiced. "The Waste Walker! We've been saved by the Waste Walker, who frees the innocent and destroys the wicked. The Waste Walker, whose heart knows no love but justice!" Denn and Noom were shocked, to say the least - they freed these people, and now got called the "Waste Walker's companions." The Nulls soon recognized them, and rejoiced for the appearance of the Waste Walker, and his companions, the Liberators.

Cain didn't know who this Waste Walker fellow was, but after a good description of him from "legends told by our elders," he figured out that it must be one of the other cyborgs that disappeared. He found out that there's a written legend of the Waste Walker (a comic book, although he doesn't know that) in Esarham, a city to the west. Still, he took the mantle, and was fed goat on a spit, and offered the village's most beautiful woman, Veruca.

Apparently, all those years working in crystal mines left all the Null males sterile, so Noom had volunteered to help "bring life to the Nulls." In a hilarious twist, of course, he and Denn were asked to share their stories with the leader of the Nulls, Bronson, while the Waste Walker, their savior, got the girl. (This savior-complex was the source of too much humor. Cain's not a bad-ass at all - yet - but is treated like royalty, after Noom and Denn saved the world and freed these people in the meantime.)

No "mining for crystals" occured, though: Veruca's not only beautiful, but dead set on being a warrior and fighting the "green men," who turned out to be powerfully built cannibals with camouflage skin that steal villagers, use the best for breeding, and eat the rest. She and Cain bickered a bit before she told him to "get it over with, and I won't complain too much." As the adventure went on, they spent each night together, but kept up the bickering, and sexual tension, which I plan to explode messily, especially since Cain keeps mentioning "I haven't got laid in 400 years."

Noom and Denn helped the village prepare defenses, and Noom found out that the green men call themselves "the Army" and have his people trapped in a camp north of "the Spine," a mountain chain that no one has ever been known to cross. In addition, Cain Contacted a demon - he did research on his cybernetic implants, and figured out one might enhance his combat abilities if he can learn to use it (i.e. Summoning and Binding it.) The adventure ended here, with the beginnings of a plan to scout out the Army's encampment and free the captives.

This adventure, I learned to let go of the reins a bit. We also learned that humor is our best tool, honestly. The "Waste Walker" scenes had us all in stitches, and Veruca is already beloved as an NPC. (In one scene, she called Denn (who has a literally swollen head bound with metal bands so it won't explode) "big freaky guy" and offered him roots for his headaches that the Null women chew for PMS. It was incredibly funny at the time.)

Next adventure, we plan on more violence, to be sure. We also plan on figuring out what the hell is up with these camouflaged cannibal assholes, and riding the fuck out of the Cain-Veruca relationship as she tries to tag along to prove herself in battle.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

We found out Sorcerer bites for pointless fights.

Yup. Or as the game text puts it, the resolution system is built specifically for resolving conflicts. Which is to say, if a fight or anything else doesn't actually represent a conflict, then the resolution system won't deliver anything useful or entertaining about it.

If anyone is squinting at this previous paragraph, I'll clarify: a conflict is defined as an incompatible difference between someone and someone/something which carries emotional weight for the audience. "My wife washes the dishes." No conflict. "My wife and I kiss." No conflict. "My wife and I argue about the placement of the soap dish." No conflict. "My wife and I argue about whether I bang my secretary." Conflict. In Sorcerer, only the very last situation calls for a roll.

Has anyone ever run a demonstration scenario and found that some of the players "just want to fight"? I don't think their approach is necessarily some kind of arbitrary combativeness. It think it's because, to them, the game will not reveal its qualities except during a combat scene, and they're interested in whatever qualities might be there. Sorcerer is a different kind of game, though, and I've found that these same people can be inspired and impressed by it, once they figure out when and how the conflict-concept applies.

[Oh, and by the way, when a fight is a conflict, the Sorcerer system is exceptionally effective and fun ... again, it takes getting used to.]

I love the Bloody Sun game. The Nulls, those conjoined-twin people, the dogs, the utterly grotesque weirdness, and all the soap opera ... it's Heavy Metal in role-playing, exactly what I wanted from the Clicking Sands material in Sorcerer & Sword. Clinton, this is great stuff.

Best,
Ron

[b_bankhead]

My Sorcerer and Sword campaign ("Under the Blood Sun," a post-apocalyptic crypto-psychedelic game) is still going, even though I haven't been posting about it. The last two sessions were great, even though one fell kind of flat - it was a learning experience.

.

 You should try to find something of the old comic series 'Deathlok the Demolisher' its a post holocaust series about a cyborg with a 'Sorcerer' type relationship with his built in computer