Dungeons & Demons

[greyorm]

So, while pounding out the final touch-ups to theImmortal: Revelations Sorcerer-adaptation I've been working on, and hammering away at "Temple of Elfemental Evil" while giggling insanely, I was also thinking of another project that has been slush piled for a while and creeping around like a thick, slimy wad of dark pudding in my mind.

For, literally, years I've wanted to do a High Fantasy, or more accurately, D&D-type fantasy-style game with Sorcerer -- with magic and mysticism, steel and blood, elves and dwarves -- and after numerous debates that can be found here and a few bits once on the old Sorcerer board at GO, numerous interesting but ultimately abandoned ideas of how to make it work, I went back to the drawing board.

I asked myself what makes D&D-style gaming D&Dish, and how do I go about making that into a Sorcerer theme related to the use of unnatural power to achieve one's ends?

Previously, I'd tried to tie the various class archetypes to the idea of demons and sorcery (ie: a fighter's demons are his swords and armor and martial style; a wizard's spells are his demons; a priest's demon is his god; etc), but found that it wasn't cohesive enough among archetypes to work.

So I ditched that idea and declared one's class archetype would be served via Cover. Obviously, that didn't solve the demon/sorcery/humanity problem, but in thinking about D&D as D&D, I realized that demons could easily be precisely what D&D is all about: power and its gain (anyone disagree?).

I thought about throwing "and treasure" in there, but what's most of the treasure used for? Increasing power (ala magic items) or buying more power (again, magic items).

So, demons are an abstract form of Experience Points/Levels and
More Demons = More Power.

Now, consider that the "biggest complaint" among the regular gaming crowd about D&D is how shallow and unreal the game is: simply, how difficult the game is to run as anything but a dungeon-crawl, how unimportant social relationships beyond 'the party' are in the grand scheme (and even morality, which is important only in that it is bound up in some of the classes), and how little it really reflects on regular joes and josephines and their concerns.

Oh sure, monsters raiding the village are a concern of the common man, as is getting rid of them: what isn't a concern is upping one's own power-level in the process, how much (or little) XP this thing or that thing is worth, how many magic items or spells you can loot from them, how effective one's magic tallywhacker is going to be (or how much more effective a newer one would be), how much more effective/strong/powerful you will be afterwards, or so forth.

Sorcery is defined as the pursuit of power, the gain of abilities and effectiveness: it's video-game power-upping writ large.

Humanity is social relationships, realistic goals and the ability to view life as more than just power to be acquired. The true test of the Sorcerer is thus to put down all his "levels" and "magic items" and fight for something because of its importance...so, can you resist the urge to use the experience?

Honestly, this sort of game seems to me like a very dark parody of D&D. Opinions? Comments?

[DaR]

Raven,

Sounds like a very cool idea.  However, I have one observation after playing a couple of Sorcerer games.  Sorcerer combat can be horrifyingly brutal.  Doubly so if you start bringing in demons with decent power level behind their abilities and opponents that can challenge the players with those demons on relatively even terms.

The particular case that springs to mind was a session of Clinton's post-apocalyptic game Blood Sun.  Clinton was attempting to use the D&D module Sunless Citadel as the basis for the adventure, recasting the fantasy dungeon crawl as a wastelands one. Three PCs, one of which had a Stamina of 8, fought a mere half dozen or so rats, including one waist high mutant rat.  The group barely walked away from the fight due to a combination of the harsh nature of Sorcerer combat and a few less than lucky die rolls.  There were a lot of uncomfortable looks around the table as we all realized that what would have been a trivial encounter in D&D turned into a relative bloodbath in Sorcerer.  Clinton ended up recasting the adventure a lot more than planned because it was clear that there was simply no way to do the standard style of wading through hordes of lower level enemies that typifies the normal style of play for modules like that.  Even a single weak creature can end up doing a lot of damage on a single lucky exchange.

That's not to say your idea isn't practical, or that you shouldn't try.  If you do it right, it could make for a very fun game.  I'd love to play a game that really captured the parts that made D&D exciting, while retaining the parts that make Sorcerer exciting.

-DaR

[greyorm]

That's an excellent point to bring up, Dan, and I'm sorry to say I'd forgotten about it (though I now jogged, I recall reading Clinton's post on that campaign with much interest and the lethality in particular).

I want to make note of something, however, about the perception of lethality in Sorcerer: I imagine it goes right over the heads of most that Sorcerer does not have mechanics that indicate "when you die." Your character can be beaten into a bloody pulp and rendered inoperative for a length of time, and can even have his spleen removed and his organs placed in jars, but he can never be killed.

Let me repeat that: your character cannot die.

Interestingly for this discussion, this is directly at odds with the main idea of D&D-style gaming, where survival of "my guy" is of paramount importance. In my opinion, this only helps reinforce the main idea in my dark little parody, by taking away the usual threat the main threat to the character in terms of his Humanity and loss of control of the character is highlighted instead.

But in a curtsey to regular D&D, I imagine one could optionally state that going below 2x Stamina in wounds means character death without some sort of "Saving Throw"...but with a twist: your next character takes all that character's demons upon itself (homage to the idea that a slain character is replaced with one of equal level). I'm not certain I entirely like that idea, but it's out on the table for discussion.

Another thing I should mention is that characters will likely not be going up against other sorcerers: after all, adventurers are sorcerers, and the main villians are almost never "also" adventurers. Quite honestly, the main villians would regularly be Persons of Power, while other sorcerous groups (ie: other adventuring companies) would serve as rivals and foils for the character's plots. Note that in a typical tournament scenario, these competing adventuring companies usually never directly engage in conflicts with each other, though they may attempt to mislead, trap, or tip the odds against their rivals.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

But in a curtsey to regular D&D, I imagine one could optionally state that going below 2x Stamina in wounds means character death without some sort of "Saving Throw"...but with a twist: your next character takes all that character's demons upon itself (homage to the idea that a slain character is replaced with one of equal level). I'm not certain I entirely like that idea, but it's out on the table for discussion.

Raven,

Imagine a fantasy world where each person had their own personal demons that they were born with the destiny to inherit. And then, when they do die, those demons are cast upon another, someone who until then, had not had a destiny. (Even better - destiny falls on your shoulders between 13-18 - perfect age to start adventuring.) So, when your character dies, your next character is the person who his destiny fell to, including his demons and his mission.

It's perfect for D&D and Sorcerer.

[DaR]

Let me repeat that: your character cannot die.

An interesting point.  While technically true, there comes a certain degree of problem with relying on that to deal with the brutality of Sorcerer combat.  In fact, it can make it worse.  Because more important than dying, in terms of game-play, is that your effectiveness degrades dramatically.  For the period of time until you can heal back up to your normal levels, you end up not being able to do anything heroic or impressive with any chance of successes.  You become a deprotagonized spectator trapped mostly helpless inside a ruined shell of a body, because in order to do anything you've got to make that will roll to get any dice at all.  While that make for fun roleplaying for a little while, if you end up like that after every other fight, it gets boring pretty quickly.

It's not an insurmountable problem, obviously.  You've clearly done at least some thinking about how how to make it so direct conflict is less likely.  There's also plenty of mechanical tweaks you can add, such as demon powers which allow you to ignore wound penalties, upping the rate of healing or providing demon powers which heal the user, and providing more in depth rules for things like armor.

Another thing I should mention is that characters will likely not be going up against other sorcerers: after all, adventurers are sorcerers, and the main villians are almost never "also" adventurers. Quite honestly, the main villians would regularly be Persons of Power, while other sorcerous groups (ie: other adventuring companies) would serve as rivals and foils for the character's plots. Note that in a typical tournament scenario, these competing adventuring companies usually never directly engage in conflicts with each other, though they may attempt to mislead, trap, or tip the odds against their rivals.

Just to make sure that it doesn't sound like I'm being diagreeable and saying this can't work, I'll say this definitely sounds like a very cool idea, and look forward to seeing what the final product looks like.

-DaR

[greyorm]

...the brutality of Sorcerer combat.  In fact, it can make it worse.  Because more important than dying, in terms of game-play, is that your effectiveness degrades dramatically.  For the period of time until you can heal back up to your normal levels, you end up not being able to do anything heroic or impressive with any chance of successes.

This is true, to an extent, and any fixes to the problem seem counter to D&D-style dungeon crawling -- however, make note that the same situation is actually true in D&D: you usually end up resting after every or every-other fight, particularly at low-levels.

Truth be told, Clinton's Sorcerer group isn't the only group I'm aware of that was nearly wiped out by the rats in Sunless Citadel: the characters in the 3E game I regularly run took heavy damage from them, and discussion of the module on Usenet revealed that some groups had parties who had been wiped out by those rats (sometimes multiple parties).

Or to spell it out, low-level characters in D&D are prone to being lain low quickly in battle, and either forced to retreat and regroup to heal for some time after even successful conflicts, or find sources of magical healing to bolster their chances of continuing survival for those forthcoming.

How does that relate to Sorcerer?
Very simply, your demons -- experience, and all the benefits that go with it -- are what provide your character increased survivability against the hostile environment and enemy hordes. The use of demon powers such as Armor, Boost and Vitality are obvious when compared to the concept of D&D hitpoints.

However, in a regular Sorcerer game, most of these sorts of nameless minion encounters -- rats included -- should really be "Second Rate Foes" as described in the main Sorcerer book, given my following commentary on what Sorcerer combat/damage is supposed to do for a narrative.

You become a deprotagonized spectator trapped mostly helpless inside a ruined shell of a body, because in order to do anything you've got to make that will roll to get any dice at all.  While that make for fun roleplaying for a little while, if you end up like that after every other fight, it gets boring pretty quickly.

This is true, but I wonder if you have forgotten about the gain of handfuls of bonus dice for role-playing, description and (most importantly) theme and meaning in the action being undertaken? This is, I think, one of the most under-utilized/under-realized aspects of the Sorcerer system in actual play.

Also, I feel that it somewhat mischaracterizes Sorcerer-style play to focus in on the brutality of the combat/damage system removing character effectiveness. Such is there for a reason -- the intense, gripping action, the do-it-or-die nature of combat makes it very important that all combats engaged in are important ones to the conflict, win or lose, they cause changes in the relationships of the characters and the status of the resolution of the Kicker.

This does not work as well for D&D-style Sorcerer, given that the exercise of combat against hordes of monsters is central to the premise of play: the gain of experience. Any combat by itself becomes the important activity of the game, forcing the players to make the central decision of the written conflict: do I use experience to up my chances to survive? And obviously if the answer is yes, then the question becomes: where do I find situations I can harvest experience from?

So one spends experience on demons, success equalling bonus dice to summoning and binding new and more powerful abilities (demons) to help the character fight (and survive) new and more powerful foes. Combat and adventuring become demon-summoning rituals in themselves.

The interesting thing about all this is that the moral decisions are taking place not on a character-level -- the character, as is true in D&D, is unaware of levels and experience points, and is actually engaged in the activity for some personal, motivating reason -- but on the level of the player. It is the player who is taking the moral authority and his or her choices and feelings about the question that are actually highlighted by play: simply, what is the cost of protecting my creative investment, and when does the cost of protecting the investment destroy the creation through that protection?

Which I find personally fascinating, because such a game ends up being about the players, and their relationships to their characters, rather than the characters and their relationships to other characters.

Which, again, is all a dark parody of D&D; and I see it as possibly being an examination of how the wrong priorities in mechanics can foul-up play by hindering through misdirection (taking away) the focus from the meaning of thematic character decision as centrally important to events and their results.

This means the effectiveness problem should not a problem, as experience results in greater ability to meet the next challenge through mechanical power, rather than story/conflict/meaning power, and rather than being reduced repeatedly to a quivering, unprotagonistic pulp.

PS -- Clinton, I really like your idea, but its very divergent from what I'm presenting here and changes the meaning of humanity and sorcery a great deal from that given. Definitely thank you for presenting it, though, it's a totally different way to go with the basic idea and I'd like to come back to it at some point.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Ummm ... Raven, you might want to check the rules.

When a character takes more than double his or her Stamina in lasting penalties, he or she dies.

This may be subverted in two ways. (1) Making a Will roll vs. 1 die of Stamina (this is not spelled out as such in the rules, but it's a logical extension of the Will rules); (2) Cutting the lasting damage in half at the end of the combat (this is explicit in the rules, but directly in reference to being killed).

So, say a character with Stamina 2 takes 5 lasting penalties, which is actually quite likely in a combat-heavy game. He or she is provisionally dead.

1. Can the character make the Will roll? (I ignore this arrow through my neck, because I'm a fucking sorcerer.) Pretty likely, but they might not.

2. Are we at the end of the combat? (Guess it wasn't as bad as I thought.) If so, cut the damage down to 2 lasting penalties (rounding in the character's favor), so he or she can conceivably recover eventually.

If neither applies, you're looking at a dead character, killed by the system.

The big consequences in play, as I conceived the game and as I've observed it in play, are that player-characters begin (a) picking and choosing their fights carefully, if possible; (b) thinking seriously in terms of demons with Armor and Vitality, which is fun because a demon who confers either of these abilities but lacks it relative to its own self might have strong reactions to being put in the line of fire; and (c) considering tactical and cooperative role-playing in combat, especially in terms of making announcements that can roll bonuses to one another no matter which one gets in first.

Best,
Ron

Best,
Ron

[Rob MacDougall]

I can't speak to the lethality of Sorcerer combat since I haven't (grrr) gotten a chance to play it yet. But if you really want to make this game a dark parody of, and a comment on, D&D-style fantasy (which I think is a really neat idea), maybe you don't want to eliminate the "wading through hordes of lower level enemies" that characterizes so many D&D games.

Given your definitions of Sorcery and Humanity, what better illustration is there of the loss of humanity than the classic adventurer party, drenched in kobold viscera, methodically moving from room to room, slaughtering whole communities of humanoids?

You probably want a system that allows you to abstract all this combat, but I think if you remove it, you'll lose a lot of what makes D&D D&D. From a Sorcerer point of view, hacking and slashing should be the easy option available to the characters. The real threat to the adventurers in razing rooms 1 through 65 of the Temple of Irredeemable Badness should not be the 2-12 ogres in room 43, but the loss of humanity this kind of slaughter entails.

I guess this game could end up raising the same kinds of issues as Power Kill (John Tynes' "metagame" bundled with Puppetland), but maybe not so heavy-handedly.

Sounds like a fun and interesting idea, anyway.

Rob

[Rob MacDougall]

The interesting thing about all this is that the moral decisions are taking place not on a character-level -- the character, as is true in D&D, is unaware of levels and experience points, and is actually engaged in the activity for some personal, motivating reason -- but on the level of the player. It is the player who is taking the moral authority and his or her choices and feelings about the question that are actually highlighted by play: simply, what is the cost of protecting my creative investment, and when does the cost of protecting the investment destroy the creation through that protection?

Ah. I missed this passage before making my last post. So Humanity is really about the players' relationship to their characters and not about the characters' relationship to the world around them. My ideas about the indiscriminate slaughter of orcs and kobolds are sort of off the mark then.

This player-focused morality is a really interesting twist on the Sorcerer dynamic. I wonder if it might come across in play as kind of didactic, though: Are you basically setting it up so you lose Humanity for making Gamist decisions, and preserve Humanity by making Narrativist ones? If the game became a kind of sermon for players on the "right way" to roleplay I think the fun could go out of it rather quickly. I'm certainly not saying that's your intention, but I think the way you're describing things it could creep in.

Rob

[greyorm]

Ummm ... Raven, you might want to check the rules.

Ron,

Seriously, I did! I read the entire section on damage before I made the post in order to double check my facts. Nowhwere do I see anything about character death occuring at 2x Stamina...completely hosed, yes; dead...no.

Demons, I noted, go away at 2x Stamina -- oozing away, exploding pussily, etc -- but there is no similar text for Sorcerers that I can find. Can you provide a page number for reference?

[DaR]

Raven,

Well, it definitely sounds like you've thought out most of the issues involved.  Your premise continues to hold my attention, thus far.

One mechanic you may wish to consider inventing is a way to power up an existing demon without going through an entire banish/contact/bind cycle.  To the best of my memory, there's no such mechanic in the three Sorcerer core books or any of the mini-supplements, though I might be mistaken.  This would provide for a very high-fantasy-esque feel, as the character improves as his powers literally grow in strength.  A low level warrior might start out with a "sword" demon whose power is only 2 or 3, but after fighting the orc hordes, it begins to glow and hum and "levels up" to gain a power of 4 or 5.

You'll also probably want to consider re-emphasizing some of the various rules already in the Sorcerer combat section.  For example, I'd completely forgotten about the "second rate foes" rule until you reminded me of it.

-DaR

[Valamir]

Out of curiousity, I pulled out the book, and Raven, I'm seeing the same thing you are.

Greater than 2xStamina loss is described as "Shocked, stunned into helplessnes, no dignity".

Greater than 2x in lasting penalties is described as "Bones exposed, hemmoraging, guts hanging out, need intensive care".

That part about needing intensive care sounds to me like the Sorcerer is dieing but with proper treatment will not be dead.  I did not find any reference to how much Stamina loss was required to kill a Sorcerer outright dead with no chance of treatment.

Demons, on the next page, are indeed described as dead at 2x Stamina.

[greyorm]

I wonder if it might come across in play as kind of didactic, though: Are you basically setting it up so you lose Humanity for making Gamist decisions, and preserve Humanity by making Narrativist ones?

That's an interesting way to put it, but no, I just don't see it: I don't believe it does that in any fashion. The narrative is still focused on a question of substance -- there's importance in the choice of how to play the character.

If you are focused solely on power, you eventually lose your ability to interact with the story, you become super-powerful and completely out-of-touch: the story means nothing to you as long as you're getting experience and that cool +5 sword.

For others, the question might be: will you let the mechanics control you, or will you use the mechanics to control the situation? And which is which? How much is too much?

You still build characters Sorcerer-style, complete with Kickers and relationship map entanglements. The issue is "Knowing something you must do something about is happening, how do you go about dealing with it?" What if you know the only way to get through the situation is to power-up? In such a case, how can that issue have any actual meaning to the character (since the character is focused upon powering-up instead of the issue at hand)?

Yes, this IS an examination of the issue of traditional D&D-style play and its assumptions interfering with non-traditional play: levelling up, power increases, monster bashing and looting (which are done to power up), and so forth pushing all the story-stuff into the background as...well, background.

I WANT to highlight the difference, I WANT it to show that if you choose story-orientation, you'll probably get creamed...at least without understanding how to use the story theme itself to get the same bonuses you'd get from levelling.

Ultimately, I guess the "sermon" isn't an issue I'm going to concern myself with or fret over. If someone wants to take it the wrong way, I can't and won't stop them, but I won't change the design simply to pander to that individual, either. The funny thing is that no matter what decisions you make here, because of the premise, they're Narrativist decisions: there really is no Gamism vs. Narrativism going on.

Really, it's doing exactly what all early RPGs do: telling the player the goal is to "create a story" and providing all the wrong tools to do it with. In this case, however, it's doing it in a context that works by casting the problems between the tools and the story as the story.

In fact, I've been envisioning it as a nice stepping-stone for a group, to highlight the concepts of the differences in play-style that get thrown around here all the time in a more concrete way.

But like I also said, it's a dark parody, and hence it might bother some people.

[Mike Holmes]

And, hey, what's not narrativist about power as an issue? In point of fact Sorcerer is pretty much only about that issue.

Mike

[Rob MacDougall]

OK, maybe you can't apply the GNS terms as precisely as I tried to do. Still, it sounds like the premise here is that Humanity is affected largely by play style - that is, it is raised and lowered by the decisions of the players, and in particular by their relationship to their characters and their metagame goals.

The interesting thing about all this is that the moral decisions are taking place not on a character-level -- the character, as is true in D&D, is unaware of levels and experience points, and is actually engaged in the activity for some personal, motivating reason -- but on the level of the player.
...
Which I find personally fascinating, because such a game ends up being about the players, and their relationships to their characters, rather than the characters and their relationships to other characters.

So, yes, you have a narrativist premise, but the narrative the game seems set up to construct is a narrative about gamers and the way they use their characters, rather than a narrative about characters in the game world. I think it's a great idea, I'm just trying to point out this distinction. And I do think such a game will have a didactic element (in terms of implied "lessons" for the players) that a game which ties Humanity only to "in-game" choices wouldn't have.