Sorcerer: Art and Artifice

[Ben Lehman]

Could you post the basic details (maybe in a new thread)? When you say 60s art scene, I'm getting a vision of Warhol, Lou Reed, and Heroin. Am I on the right track?

BL>  Caveats:  This is in the early stages of me even thinking about it.  It may not make a lot of sense, and the end product may not resemble this in the slightest.

Inspirations:  Warhol, the Beats, Dylan, Velvet Underground, etc.

The basic idea is that you are playing up and coming artists in the early 1960s.  The ideal starting character (in my head) is a very talented young kid who has just come into the City (NYC or SF, most likely) and has gotten his first big break (ie, summoned his first demon.)  The loss condition is a downward spiral of drugs and increasingly meaningless art, culminating in suicide or irrelevance.  The win condition is navigating the dangerous art world and keeping your art personal, relevant, and (in general) high quality.

Humanity is defined as artistic skill (possibly also personal well being.)  I forsee a LOT of humanity supporting rolls as detailed in Soul.  Generally speaking, one creates art with Humanity, supported by Will or Lore.  Please note that "art" could be music, poetry, painting, sculpture, prose writing, or any mixture of those.

Lore represents a knowledge of the art scene.

Demons come in three main types: Money, Muses, and Movements.  Money demons are galleries and patrons who will keep you from starving and support your art whilst turning it to their own ends.  They largely feature Cover and such abilities, though they also might have Perception or Taint.  Muses are people and things that inspire you to create more art, generally with Boost Lore.  Movements are large, insubstantial artistic manifestos that make your art more recognizable at the expense of your own creativity.

Demon contacting is done by changing one's art to support a "more popular" mode and/or by going to parties and using tons of drugs.  Demon summoning is usually done via commission or some other single work.  Demon binding varies by the demon (sex, contracts, and initiations are common.)

Demons are much "larger" in this setting, and as such I want to design rules for multiple artists being bound to one demon, such as a philanthropist supporting more than one artist.  Demons LOVE to play their bound artists off of each other.

Note that there is nothing explicitly magical in this setting.  One could include more standard sorcerer demons with Kewl Powerz, but I don't know if it is entirely necessary.

Perhaps more later.

yrs--
--Ben

[Mike Holmes]

One could include more standard sorcerer demons with Kewl Powerz, but I don't know if it is entirely necessary.

No way, keep it like it is.

Money taints art. How's that for a potential thematic statement. Well done, sir. I like that demons also can give you knowledge of art (Muses, boost Lore), but they drain the actual art (Humanity). That's Warhol all over. And the cult that follows him is seduced by the idea that his pop art is true art. Nifty. The feeling of aimlessness that one gets from the estrangement films of the period is almost palpable here.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

'Cept you gotta have some hope too - the notion that art can indeed prevail and make a difference. I can see a variety of directions to strive for, including the Brechtian "wake-up-bourgeois," or "my God those people really exist," or even, "Hey, if nine hours of an empty room is 'just film,' then maybe two hours of canned adventure is 'just film' too!" It's all about transforming others' viewpoints. Can you do that? Humanity roll!

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

'Cept you gotta have some hope too - the notion that art can indeed prevail and make a difference. I can see a variety of directions to strive for, including the Brechtian "wake-up-bourgeois," or "my God those people really exist," or even, "Hey, if nine hours of an empty room is 'just film,' then maybe two hours of canned adventure is 'just film' too!" It's all about transforming others' viewpoints. Can you do that? Humanity roll!

(sorry for the late reply -- I didn't notice the response until just now)

BL>  This is a place where the Sorcerer system really shines, actually.  "Is that art meaningful?  Did it fulfill its purpose?  Humanity roll!"  Whether or not it was truly worthwile is randomized, which takes some of the art crit out the hands of the GM.

 I think that, for a large part, the "hope" in the game is going to stem from the participants' ideas about what art is and what it is meant to accomplish.  Hopefully, play would encourage some introspection and discussion of that sort of thing among the participants.

 I have my own biases, which are towards getting out of the whole "scene" scene and running out into the woods to do your own thing, but I grew up in rural CA, and a lot of my parents friends were people who had done just that.  :-)

 I've been working on this setting a bit more (writing more detailed drug rules and less detailed combat rules, for example.)  Would further posts about it be more appropriate in this forum or in Indie Game Design?

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

Keep posting here! This is a great topic.

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Keep posting here!

BL>  Righto.

Thoughts on name:  "Fifteen Minutes" sound good?  I know that name should be my least priority right now...

Thoughts on money rules:

Justification:  I think that this game needs more involved money rules, simply because if you're selling out, there really ought to be money involved somewhere.  The standard Sorcerer and Sword hand-waving is probably perfectly fine, but I present this idea anyway, because if it works it could be very cool.

Everyone has a money pool, which starts as a number of dice equal to your Past, if it is a money generating one, or 1, if it is not.

Everything significant that you want to buy (drugs, food, housing, etc.) has a cost associated with it.

Demons can provide you with income.  They can also choose not to, of course, if you haven't been fulfilling their Needs and Desires.  How MUCH income I'm not yet sure.

At the beginning of each session, you roll your present money pool, plus any income from demons, versus the living expense of the city you're in (usually two dice.)  Any successes remain in your money pool, and failures are lost.  The total in your money pool after this is important.

You can afford anything with a cost equal or less than the total in your money pool.  This can be enhanced by loans from demons (Boost Money).

How I want this system to work:  I want there to be a general continuity between money from one session to the next, but I want artists to sometimes be flush and sometimes be broke, apparently at random (artists, after all, aren't good bookkeepers.)  I want it to be nearly impossible to survive without an income-providing demon.  I want the money system to blend in with the rest of the mechanics and not take up too much time.

Some doubts:
Should the income be added before or after the first roll?  How large should Income be?
Should you roll for individual purchases?  This smacks of "I can buy a car but I can't buy a bag of weed?" problems, to me, but it makes some degree of sense.
Should there be any way for artists to support each other?  I'm leaning to no.
Should the player even be aware of how much money they have or should money, like binding strength, be secret until it becomes important?
Is this whole thing necessary?

Thoughts on Injury and Drugs:
I would like the drug and injury effects to be related, if not identical.  Essentially, there would be a measure of how "fucked up" you are, and system for the aftermath thereof.  HOW you got fucked up is completely arbitrary.

I'm thinking about seperate rules for an assortment of drugs -- particular Uppers, Downers and Hallucinogens (sp).  Possibly special mentions for pot (which basically serves as the social currency of the Scene, and is thus important in many ways) and heroin (because it is emblematic of the downward spiral humanity track.)

Since Stamina is just less important in a non-physically oriented setting such as this, I thought it would be useful to integrate it into the drugs/partying rules.  Just not sure how yet...

yrs--
--Ben

edit: clarification

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

"Fifteen Minutes" is the perfect name for this.

I also agree with you that money is a key issue, but don't be so quick about looking for new rules ... let's just get a bit granular with the existing rules, based on the notion that wealth and money are two different things.

Basically, wealth is the ability to participate reciprocally in the economy (official or unofficial). Money is physical stuff that makes it look like you have that ability. In this sense, "credit" is a form of wealth, but a "credit card" is a form of money.

So ... it strikes me that all kinds of rules-applications are possible, ranging from the radical (demon Power as money, but not wealth) to the perhaps-complex (splitting the Cover score) to the very basic (Cover score vs. Humanity rolls, perhaps).

As for drugs, yes yes! Stamina is the key. That's a hard-hitting life-style.

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

More rules braindump:  Simplifying Sorcerer Combat

My goal with the drugs and violence rules is to avoid the in-depth approach of the vanilla Sorcerer rules while still keeping things dangerous.

Drugs and Scraps: Engaging

Anytime you do something unpleasant to your body, like take drugs or get in a fight, you suffer some penalties.

With drugs, roll your stamina vs. the stamina of the drug.  If the drug wins, you take a general penalty to all rolls equal to its margin of success, in addition to any effects that the drug might have.

With fights, each involved player rolls Stamina.  Loser takes a penalty equal to the winner's victories, and the winner takes a 1 dice penalty.  In addition, the loser is generally incapicated.

If you ever take injuries equal to your will or stamina scores (effectively reducing them below one) you fall unconscious.

If you ever take injuries equal to twice your stamina, you are at risk of death.

The Morning After: Recovery
 The general mechanism for recovery is to roll (full, normal, unpenalized) Stamina versus the penalty, with margins of success reducing the penalty.
 Times when you can do this vary greatly according to the GM's discretion.  It is suggested that rolls should be allowed at least once a day, starting with "the morning after."  Allowing a roll after the "scene" where the drugs were taken is not a bad idea either.

Guns and Knives:
 Are serious, serious stuff.  You can't recover from them without hospital care and, in general, they do double victories in damage.

Thoughts?

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Peter,

Unfortunately, I don't really quite grasp your goal as stated:

My goal with the drugs and violence rules is to avoid the in-depth approach of the vanilla Sorcerer rules while still keeping things dangerous.

... 'cause it seems to me that the rules aren't all that in-depth. But maybe that's all just noise and we'll do best to go to the examples. Maybe we're agreeing without me realizing it. So here goes.

Anytime you do something unpleasant to your body, like take drugs or get in a fight, you suffer some penalties.

Agreed!

The drugs make sense. A plain old chance to get some penalties. By the way, just because I'm a pedant, technically the drug wouldn't have Stamina but rather Power. Oh, and it might be interesting to delay the effect of the drug until the morning after ...

I suggest trying the Sorcerer combat rules a few times before going quite as coarse as you're suggesting. If I'm not mistaken, you'll end up with very dead characters your way.

I do like the recovery rules for your Morning After purposes. I also think that if you remove the "recover half penalties after each fight" rule, that that will give you that extra Ouch you're looking for.

As currently written, if you're shot with a low-caliber gun or cut with a knife or sword, you take Victories in both temporary and lasting damage. So, hit for three victories, you're facing six penalty dice for the next action. That's pretty brutal already.

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Weeks]

Hi folks, hopefully newbie comments are welcome.  Ron sold me all the Sorcerer books at GenCon and I'm just getting around to checking this forum out.  This sorcery-as-art topic is a neat way for me to start thinking about alternative applications of the Sorcerer ideas.

Feel free to tell me if and why any of my ideas don't work.  It is possible that I really don't get it and much of what I'm thinking is misguided.  If that's the case, knowing it would be helpful.  Some of this is commentary, some suggestion, and some just reworking what has been written above:

Humanity in this setting seems like it needs to be artistic integrity.  It could include fitness (mental/physical) but what does that complication buy you?  Ron wrote "It's all about transforming others' viewpoints."  So, is that the central mechanism for raising your humanity?  Does banishing demons make sense in this setting?

Lore represents immersion in the art scene.

Drugs:

There is a lot of emphasis in the above notes on drug use, but I think that the role of drugs is possibly misplaced.  I'm thinking that drug use -- in addition to being a social situation, should be one type of demon (of the Muse type as Ben has defined them) that can open doors for the artist -- and their only need is to harm your body...relatively painless to give them, right?  

Also, it seems like you can assume that casual recreational drug use is recovered from the next day.  But if you're using drug use as a demon, the power of the demon should be the number of Will or Stamina points temporarily lost.  The stat v. loss recovery mechanism meshes nicely with the system but seems fast.  How is just one of either per morning, or two with medical attention?

I think that seperate rules for the types of drugs kind of misses the point.  I guess if you and your group are very into recreational drug use and you think it would be a cool element in a game, then go for it, but the role of the drugs in what I'm imagining this setting to be is more just a dimension of how much you're willing to hurt yourself in order to get something.  If you make drugs available as demons, then the abilities of the demon to help you could be defining what drugs you were taking and might end up being a nice thing to role play without requiring more rules.  (I tend to think avoiding rules is a good thing when possible.)

Demons:

I like the idea of allowing multiple artists to be bound to the same demon.  But, can Arnold and Betsy help Carl bind a demon and then have Carl in turn help them bind the same demon?  Sounds like a problematic loophole, but I'm not sure there's an easy rational fix.  Why wouldn't Arnold, Betsy, and Carl all bond with the same "Movement?"  Maybe the three of them collude to bind the demon at the same time, the bonuses rack up and they all get the bond at the same time and there's no problem.  Maybe the demon gets a +1 per member of the group bond, so there's something of a risk?  Maybe I'm getting carried away and there's no need for all of this...

Have you considered making demons (or maybe only some?) one-shot kinds of things for this setting?  You'd hate to have a very few bound demons (and thus relatively little Humanity risk) solve all the artist's money problems forever.  If the binding of a demon lasted for a very limited time (however "one use" is defined) then artists would have to more carefully balance their needs against the costs.

I think that paragraph defining what contacting, summoning, and binding consist of is overly specific.  Each demon (or at least each type) would be courted in different ways.

I think that categorizing "demons" (in this setting and the way Ron does it in the basic game) is a bit problematic.  Maybe it's occasionally nice to be able to generalize, but what do you really gain?  Why not have demons be individuals defined by their abilities and personalities (demonalities?)?  I started to redefine Ben's Money, Muses, and Movements as Commercialization, Contextualization, and Inspiration but then I ended up envisioning subcategories and crossovers.  Is it neccessary for some reason that I'm not getting (maybe because I haven't played)?

Demons can provide a number of things to the artist/sorcerer and have a variety of costs/needs/desires/etc.  Why isn't that good enough?  If you assume that winning_a_Grammy is a Commercialization/Money demon, then it increases your spending power, fame, etc but is more likely to cost Humanity and may well have unappealing needs.

Wealth and money:

Wealth describes cashflow -- how much money enters your hands each e.g. month.  Money describes how much cash you happen to have at any given time.  How detailed does it need to be?  I'd think that keeping track of money is a bore -- and cashflow more accurately describes your general spending power, but on the other hand, I wouldn't want demons to affect wealth, but rather just money.

Maybe Spending Power and Wealth are the two monetary stats where W is monthly income and SP = W + and demonic grants.  If you keep these in the normal terms of number of dice, then expenses can appear in the same way and while you might not be able to squeeze enough cash out of the budget to get a new tire this month, you might next time around -- even on the same SP.

Ben asks if artists can help each other monetarily.  Why or why not?  How and how not?  Couldn't three artists share a loft?  Couldn't three artists work together to bind a cash-cow?  Couldn't they rob a bank?  Couldn't they just collaborate on their work?  What are the game ramifications that you were thinking about when you were leaning away from cross-support?

Thanks for reading,

Chris

[Ben Lehman]

Hi folks, hopefully newbie comments are welcome.  Ron sold me all the Sorcerer books at GenCon and I'm just getting around to checking this forum out.  This sorcery-as-art topic is a neat way for me to start thinking about alternative applications of the Sorcerer ideas.

BL>  Totally welcome.  Welcome to the Forge!  (Wow... my first time saying that.  Trippy.)

Humanity in this setting seems like it needs to be artistic integrity.  It could include fitness (mental/physical) but what does that complication buy you?  Ron wrote "It's all about transforming others' viewpoints."  So, is that the central mechanism for raising your humanity?  Does banishing demons make sense in this setting?

BL>  As far as humanity goes, I think it would really have to be played out on a group by group basis -- each participant needs to think about "what is art, what is it there for?" and then base Humanity off of that.

Banishing demons is, essentially, discrediting them to the point where they can no longer exist in the Scene.  It makes sense that you need a high humanity to do it (more artistic integrity = more cred) but I don't think you should gain humanity for it.

The central mechanic for raising your humanity is creating powerful art.  Again, what this entails (public exposure?  novelty?  political content?) is largely decided by the participants.

Lore represents immersion in the art scene.

BL> I'm glad we all agree on this one.

Drugs:

There is a lot of emphasis in the above notes on drug use, but I think that the role of drugs is possibly misplaced.  I'm thinking that drug use -- in addition to being a social situation, should be one type of demon (of the Muse type as Ben has defined them) that can open doors for the artist -- and their only need is to harm your body...relatively painless to give them, right?  

BL>  I've been thinking more about this -- Ron's comment about drugs having Power set it off -- I think that drugs are essentially Imminent demons, and that drug addiction is Binding the imminent to you.  Thus, I'm going to be reworking the rules a bit.

Also remember that the rules are just sort of falling out of my head at this point -- really all I'm doing in this thread is brainstorming.  So the fact that I have talk a lot about drugs and money has more to do with my mood than the focus of the game.

Also, it seems like you can assume that casual recreational drug use is recovered from the next day.  But if you're using drug use as a demon, the power of the demon should be the number of Will or Stamina points temporarily lost.  The stat v. loss recovery mechanism meshes nicely with the system but seems fast.  How is just one of either per morning, or two with medical attention?

I think that seperate rules for the types of drugs kind of misses the point.  I guess if you and your group are very into recreational drug use and you think it would be a cool element in a game, then go for it, but the role of the drugs in what I'm imagining this setting to be is more just a dimension of how much you're willing to hurt yourself in order to get something.  If you make drugs available as demons, then the abilities of the demon to help you could be defining what drugs you were taking and might end up being a nice thing to role play without requiring more rules.  (I tend to think avoiding rules is a good thing when possible.)

BL>  Given that heavy drug use was a major part of the 1960s scene (see Velvet Underground, Wm. Burroughs, etc.), I feel that representing it in game is very important.  Plus, I need to have a more in-depth role for stamina in the game (otherwise it is just not as good as Will or Lore...)

I am very strongly opposed to having penalties "just go away" in the morning.  First of all, the morning after is always awful :-)  Second of all, and more seriously, I want there to be some sense of consequences.

I thought that my opposed healing was slow... dude... 1 or 2 points a day is harsh...

I like the idea of allowing multiple artists to be bound to the same demon.  But, can Arnold and Betsy help Carl bind a demon and then have Carl in turn help them bind the same demon?  Sounds like a problematic loophole, but I'm not sure there's an easy rational fix.  Why wouldn't Arnold, Betsy, and Carl all bond with the same "Movement?"  Maybe the three of them collude to bind the demon at the same time, the bonuses rack up and they all get the bond at the same time and there's no problem.  Maybe the demon gets a +1 per member of the group bond, so there's something of a risk?  Maybe I'm getting carried away and there's no need for all of this...

BL>  I hadn't noticed this loophole, but I like it.  Easier to start movements in groups, right?

Have you considered making demons (or maybe only some?) one-shot kinds of things for this setting?  You'd hate to have a very few bound demons (and thus relatively little Humanity risk) solve all the artist's money problems forever.  If the binding of a demon lasted for a very limited time (however "one use" is defined) then artists would have to more carefully balance their needs against the costs.

BL>  I want the major Humanity pressure of the game to be the cheapening of art, rather than the binding of demons.  Plus, it would seem wierd that a gallery would just run out of money.

I think that paragraph defining what contacting, summoning, and binding consist of is overly specific.  Each demon (or at least each type) would be courted in different ways.

I think that categorizing "demons" (in this setting and the way Ron does it in the basic game) is a bit problematic.  Maybe it's occasionally nice to be able to generalize, but what do you really gain?  Why not have demons be individuals defined by their abilities and personalities (demonalities?)?  I started to redefine Ben's Money, Muses, and Movements as Commercialization, Contextualization, and Inspiration but then I ended up envisioning subcategories and crossovers.  Is it neccessary for some reason that I'm not getting (maybe because I haven't played)?

Demons can provide a number of things to the artist/sorcerer and have a variety of costs/needs/desires/etc.  Why isn't that good enough?  If you assume that winning_a_Grammy is a Commercialization/Money demon, then it increases your spending power, fame, etc but is more likely to cost Humanity and may well have unappealing needs.

BL>  This is exactly right.  I offered up the demon categories as examples, not as specific boxes.  For instance, you could bind a wealthy heiress that could serve both in Money and Muse roles.

Wealth and money:

Wealth describes cashflow -- how much money enters your hands each e.g. month.  Money describes how much cash you happen to have at any given time.  How detailed does it need to be?  I'd think that keeping track of money is a bore -- and cashflow more accurately describes your general spending power, but on the other hand, I wouldn't want demons to affect wealth, but rather just money.

BL>  I agree that penny counting is totally against the spirit of the game.  I'm currently reprocessing the wealth rules in my head.  I think it's all about Lore...

Ben asks if artists can help each other monetarily.  Why or why not?  How and how not?  Couldn't three artists share a loft?  Couldn't three artists work together to bind a cash-cow?  Couldn't they rob a bank?  Couldn't they just collaborate on their work?  What are the game ramifications that you were thinking about when you were leaning away from cross-support?

BL>  I want artists without proper demonic support to suffer and starve, not just have the other PCs give them a leg up.  I'm not yet certain how to handle it, though.  Again, currently reprocessing.

Thanks a lot for your interest and comments.  Hope to hear more from you soon.

yrs--
--Ben

[Christopher Weeks]

Have you considered making demons (or maybe only some?) one-shot kinds of things for this setting?  You'd hate to have a very few bound demons (and thus relatively little Humanity risk) solve all the artist's money problems forever.  If the binding of a demon lasted for a very limited time (however "one use" is defined) then artists would have to more carefully balance their needs against the costs.

BL>  I want the major Humanity pressure of the game to be the cheapening of art, rather than the binding of demons.  Plus, it would seem wierd that a gallery would just run out of money.

I had actually taken "the cheapening of art" to be essentially the same thing as "the binding of demons."  I thought from your early definitions that binding a Money demon (gallery) necessitated making your art more palatable to the public, or at least to the market niche that that gallery served.  Or that you were likely to suffer a typecast by binding a Movement (slapstick).

And to address the realism point of gallery based income, exhibition in many galleries is initiated with a show that includes many individual pieces and may trail into a relationship wherein the gallery keeps a small number of pieces for sale.  The real cash spike comes from the initial sales from the show.  After a few of these relationships, you're hopefully generating enough ongoing sales to sustain a lifestyle.  The gallery doesn't run out of money, they just move on to the next show.  At least that's my experience as a relatively amateur ceramic artist.

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

This is a fascinating thread; Christopher, your presence is greatly appreciated.

Ben, I'm beginning to lose an important piece of the picture ... are you abstracting to pure metaphor for the demons, or are there going to "be demons" in the game setting?

In other words, are you using Sorcerer mechanics for what's essentially a slice-of-life setting, or are you incorporating demonic stuff as a "spicer" and highlighter of that setting?

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Hi there,

This is a fascinating thread; Christopher, your presence is greatly appreciated.

BL>  I second that.

Ben, I'm beginning to lose an important piece of the picture ... are you abstracting to pure metaphor for the demons, or are there going to "be demons" in the game setting?

BL>  Hmm...

Okay, I am using sorcerer mechanics for what is essentially a "realistic" setting -- these demons are not Horrible Things From Beyond Space and Time, they are people and things that exploit artists and degenerate art.  The setting is the 1960s art scene -- no more, no less.  When I run a game of this, it will be set in a generic city, but that is simply because I don't have strong knowledge of NY or SF geography.

But, for all intents and purposes, the demons are demons.  They are here, they are not Supposed To Be Here, they are baneful, and they provide power to their Sorcerers.

Does that answer the question?

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  I guess one could see this as stripping off a layer of metaphor from Sorcerer -- rather than having the demon-sorcerer relationships be metaphors for dysfunctional human relationships, they ARE dysfunctional human relationships.