Sorcerer Diceless

[jburneko]

I was reading the new Marvel game and I kept getting this weird idea.  I kept thinking, "This is similar to what would happen if you tried to play Sorcerer with d1s."

So, I thought about it and I came up with this for a "Diceless" variation on Sorcerer.

1) The sum of Stamina, Will and Lore represent your available resource pool.  This will obviously be 10 for fresh new characters.

2) The individual scores represent the "limit" each score can contribute to a given conflict.  Thus, although you have 10 stones in your pool if your Stamina is only three, you may only spend up to three stones in a Stamina based conflict.

3) All the normal modifiers for strategy, tactics, cool descriptions, quippy dialogue, etc add free stones to your conflict pool.

4) After any conflict you regenerate a number of stones equal to your Humanity for Sorcerers, and Power for Demons.

5) Initiative is based on those who have accumulated the most stones in their conflict pool.  In the event of a tie, the highest base score goes first.  If there is tie there, then it's rock paper scissor time.

5) All penalties (including those for damage) are taken off your cumulated conflict pool rather than limiting the base score.  Thus if you have a stamina of four and lasting penalties of two from damage you may still spend up to four stones from your resource pool for stamina but then two of those stones are subtracted for the penalties.

6) When it comes to choosing between "aborting to defend or still taking your action."  Instead all defence must come from the pool you've accumulated for your initial action, although cool descriptions and so forth for the actual defence can net you more freebie stones for that particular defense.  The idea here is that you don't have to TOTALLY abort your action but you do have to spend down it's effectiveness into defense.

7) Humanity checks for Sorcery work like this: the GM spends up to the Demon's Power from the Demon's resource pool and the Player spends up to the Player's Humanity from the Player's resource pool.  These allocations are done secretly and then compared.  If the demon wins a point is lost, otherwise no point is lost.

8) Humanity Checks and Gains.  I'm torn here.  Sticking with Ron's original 50% vision tells me the GM should just pick Red or Green secretly and if the player can guess then a point is gained/lost appropriately.  But that doesn't fit with the rest of the system changes so I thought of this:  Since Humanity Loss/Gain is always in relationship to another human being I suggest this then the GM, spends up to the Humanity score of the person who is being harmed/benifited by the Sorcerer's actions from that character's resource pool.  The player spends up to his Humanity from his resource pool.  Then the pools are compared.  If the Player wins he gains or doesn't lose a point of Humanity.  I suspect this would have some wacky thematic effects but hey this is Sorcerer Diceless.

It needs more work but for a skeleton idea I don't think it's half bad.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Wow!

Yet another mini-supplement worthy concept, Jesse. Present that as part of your "Sorcerer Unbound."

... which you are, even now, outlining and preparing as a submission, right? Right?

Best,
Ron

[Lxndr]

This looks REALLY, REALLY neat!  I've been mulling over running a sorcerer pbem, and have been stopped short in part by my (irrational) dislike of dice over email (I'm also waiting for the three sorcerer supplements that are actually in print).

Questions based on the initial draft:

(a)  Is there a "stone" cap?  Or can you effectively regenerate endlessly, if you're somehow inclined to fail most of your actions by spending as little as possible.  Say I'm a strange individual who only spends one stone on any conflict.  As long as my Humanity is at least two, will my potential stones rise endlessly, until such time as I choose to spend them?  Yes, I realize this is a normally foolhardy course of action, but it serves to illustrate my question.

(b)  Are you planning on allowing individuals to "roll successes over" from one action to another, as current Sorcerer allows?  If how do you plan on handling that?  Extra stones added separately to the action after stones are withdrawn from the pool?  Or some other method?  I'm not quite following.

(c)  Humanity loss checks worry me, but maybe I'll feel better about them after seeing this in play (and I am SOOOO tempted to playtest or just PLAY this, for a number of reasons).  Right now, I'm imagining a Sorcerer putting as much Humanity as possible into the test, and a Demon putting all the Power he as into the test.  Afterwards, the Demon would gain all the stones he just committed (since he regenerates Power) and the Sorcerer would gain all the stones he just committed (since he regenerates Humanity).  It feels like a zero-sum equation, to me.

(d)  In fact, considering my example above as well as other reasons, I'm not sure if Humanity/Power is the best way to handle regeneration of a conflict pool, but I can't think of anything better (Cover?  Nah).  How do you handle Humanity 0 humans (as NPCs, depending on the campaign's definition of Humanity, they can still be pretty useful/dangerous.  Yet in your setup, they would never regenerate anything?  And demons, isn't their Power generally higher than any of their statistics, so they'd constantly be gaining dice since they can never spend more than their limits?

(e)  Humanity gain checks look /wrong/ to me but I can't iterate why.  I'll mull it over and see if I can get my perceptions/feelings into something approaching language.

[jburneko]

Hello,

Those are good questions.

Some are easy and others are harder.

a) This is easy.  I had imagined the Stamina + Will + Lore to be the Stone Cap.  So you can't regenerate more stones than the sum of those three scores.

b) Roll over success still count.  It works like this:

So after spending resource stones and earning freebie stones for the usual modifiers Character X has nine stones in his conflict pool.  Character Y ends up having only five stones in his conflict pool.  That means that if Character X's next action flows from this action per the usual rules he will have FOUR extra stones that count as freebie stones and don't have to come from his resource pool.  See?  Just subtract the two pools to get the number of victories.

c)  That's a very good point, but remember that I said you regenerate stones after a conflict, not after every expendature of stone resources.  So, in combat stones wouldn't regenerate until all attacks and defenses were done for that "round."  Similarly, I'd almost be tempted to say that the whole Contact-Summon-Bind sequence counted as a single conflict, but that doesn't feel quite right to me.  At the very least a sorcerous ritual + the attendant humanity check count as a single conflict.

So, even if you did do what you suggest you'd net lose whatever stones you put into say the Contact.  This would weaken what you had to spend on Summoning.  If you did it a second time, that in turn would weaken what you have to spend on Binding.  So, I think there would be SOME incentive not to put your all into the Humanity check if for no other reason than to make sure you had the stones to try for advantage on the Binding ritual.

d1) Zero Humanity characters.  That's a good question.  I'd be tempted to somehow create guidelines for tying zero humanity regeneration into the humanity definition.  For a quicky solution I'd say they just regenerate 1 stone.

d2) I wouldn't worry too much about the Demon Power thing because there are lots of things that can affect a demon's power.  It's power drops to 1 while using the Boost ability.  Punishing a demon can lower it's power.  Also, I think I've already rethought the damage rule.  I think I want it to effect how much you have to spend to use a your full score.

So, if I have four stamina and two lasting wounds I can still spend four stones of stamina but I have to spend two extra stones to account for the damage.  So a damaged demon would have to start spending more to take action and use it's powers and so it's large regeneration factor would become less and less significant.

e) The reason the humanity thing bothers you is probably the same reason it bothers me.  In normal Sorcerer Humanity is 100% metagame.  What I'm proposing here ties Humanity directly to character effectiveness.  So yes, it significantly impacts the game and I'm not 100% convinced that impact is a good thing.

Jesse

[Lxndr]

I hope you don't mind my rapid-fire querying and pontificating.  Let me know if I'm coming down too fast, too hard, or otherwise in some sort of extreme.

I'm still... well, worried... about the differences in power levels between demons and sorcerers, due to the disparity in the regeneration values.  Demonic Power at least is a relative constant; Humanity on the other hand fluctuates, and in general (it seems from testimonials I've read here) more often dives than rises.

In addition, I'm also not sure how thematic it is to say "well, the less humanity you have, the quicker you get tired out" which is one of the results of your current system (unless I'm missing something).  It just seems wrong that a Stamina 6 Sorcerer with humanity 1 would tire out quicker in a fistfight, for instance, than a Staimina 6 Bar Bouncer with humanity 6.

I have more foetal concerns, but I want to go home, take a break, watch tv, and flip through the Sorcerer book a bit while letting those concerns gestate.  Your idea is sound, and I'm loving the neat parts.  :)  I'm just pointing out the concerns I am noticing.

[jburneko]

Here's one for you.  How about if players regenerate stones based on victories of a conflict REGARDLESS of the conflict outcome.

So back to Character X with nine stones and Character Y with five stones.  After resolution BOTH characters would regenerate four stones.

Just a thought.

Jesse

[Lxndr]

That feels much, much cleaner to me.  I'm not sure if it's the best mechanic for the job (I'm still very much an amateur in game design) but my gut feels like it's at least getting closer to the right track.  I love some of the implications ("close conflicts are much more tiring than ones where the disparity of power is much greater").

New questions:

Cover.  You didn't explicitly state it, but I assume it works as a "limit" like attributes, right?  I'm figuring as much, but better safe than sorry.  What happens if you have a Cover (either your own, through improvement, or as the user of a demon power) that winds up being larger than your total pool?

Character improvement/advancement is also handled through dice rolls (character's Humanity vs. Score).  How do you plan on handling that?  I'm still wary of your Humanity vs. itself solution, also, and these seem like they belong in the same category (rolls vs. self).  [Also, you gain Humanity back for "doing something that confirms you as a better human being" - not all definitions of Humanity will involve the Humanity of others as a result]

Boost <X>.  Does it increase the # of stones, the limit, or both?  How does the reduction of the demon's Power interfere with its Stone Pool, assuming the pool is at maximum?

Fast.  How does this demonic ability interact with initiative under your new system?

There, I think that's it for now.  :)

[Trevis Martin]

Here's an idea for the humanity issue based both on the fortune telling methods of the I ching and geomancy.   If you are using stones just have the player grab a small handfull of stones and place them in a seperate pile.  Count them off by twos.  If you end up with an odd stone you gain that stone.  If you end up even, you loose a stone.

I've thought of using cards for sorcerer also.  Would be easy enough to do.  Just draw as many cards as your score for the conflict.  Gain extra cards for RP.  Compare the same as dice.  Of course this is still a fortune method.

regards

Trevis

[Lxndr]

Hmmm.

Not that I'm the head designer of this little experiment, but I think I'd want the Self vs. Self checks to all be handled the same way.

Humanity vs. Humanity is a plain 50/50 chance (by definition), but the stuff in character advancement, Humanity vs. Cover, Humanity vs. Lore, and all such things, aren't.

I hate to suggest character advancement should become point-based, but I'm not sure how to handle advancement via stones.  Perhaps Jesse will have another brilliant idea.  :)