[Sorcerer] In Utero - Happy Families

[cthulahoops]

Hi,

Well, I said Sorcerer was the next game I was going to run and I did so today.  It was absolutely insane.

I decided to run the In Utero scenario from Sex & Sorcery.   I'm going to assume that sufficient people have read it and go from there, so this may not make any sense to some of you.  I know this is more an IC narrative than what players did during play, but I have to write this down, so it's going here.

I made sure to go through the system in a reasonable amount of detail to be sure that everyone was familiar with the system/setting and we had a discussion about the background.

The initial interactions were great fun.   Robert confirmed his commitment to Stephanie.  Then Stephanie opened the door to find Jen standing there.  I played Jen as insanely jealous and potentially violent, making life pretty difficult for poor Lucien.  ("Jen picks up a vase", "I make her put it down again", "Jen picks up a vase", etc...)
We had some fun from the moment Lucien learned about birth "What does being born mean?", "When do I get to be born?"   Robert assured Stephanie that it was she that was important to him and sent her home.  And so, they all headed down to the basement to do some research.

Jen refused to co-operate in Lucien being born without commitment from Robert to the family (Jen, Robert and Lucien), so Robert turned his attention to Jennifer.  Then Robert began to worry about whether the baby (the demon one!) would survive birth and how quickly they could get him to a hospital if there was a problem.  Then Robert made the suggestion that set the pace for much of the rest of the game.  "Could I summon a demon that would keep the baby alive?"  We drafted a little parasite demon that conferred Boost Stamina and Vitality to someone its host was touching, and they summoned it into Robert!   This more or less repeated the logic of the original sorcery, except that Robert's player justified it because the demon would be in him and he'd take the risk.

Next, they induced Jennifer to give birth and set off for the hospital, where Jennifer gave birth to a premature baby boy and Robert conferred Vitality and Stamina to (unnecessarily) ensure its survival.

Meanwhile, Jen was in a waiting room trying to convince Lucien that unless they killed Jennifer, Lucien would never have a father.  Lucien, however, had other ideas he was getting from a book he'd borrowed from the basement.  If Robert wouldn't be his father then he'd have to summon his own!  And so, he began to use crayon to mark up the floor of the waiting room for a little demon summoning!  He contacted a demon, but dropped his stamina to zero in the summoning.  This allowed Jen the freedom to attempt to smother Jennifer with a pillow.
This was a moment of strangeness for me, Jennifer was pretty out of it after giving birth - and it was absolute GM fiat that the nurses got there in time to grab Jen.  (Your twin?)  I could easily have killed Jennifer, but this would have been artibrary and annoying.

Jen was held by security while awaiting the police, and Robert went to talk to her.  She was uncooperative, and somehow Lucien managed to convince Robert to help him summon a father - this failed once again.

So, Jennifer took the baby home and Robert went back to Stephanie, agreeing to support Jennifer "for a while".  This led to a great arguement in which Jennifer threatened to never let Robert see his child again.

Shortly after this the baby decided to point out that it had needs.  "Mummy, I want some meat..."  Robert was called back.  He very much wanted to banish the baby, but Jennifer was captivated by the demons cuteness and commitments of "but I love you, Mummy" and refused - unless her real child could be found.  She lived out the rest of her days caring for a loving, eternally young, demon baby.

Jen used Travel to escape the police, and then left town.  Lucien took his time, carefully researched the father summoning, and then carried out rituals to bring about his own birth.  We call this a DIY family.

Robert went back to Stephanie, no longer feeling he was abandoning his child, because, well, it wasn't his child.  Of course, he still had the parasite demon of health.

Did I mention things got a little insane?

So, how did the game go?  Well, the implications of the various decisions were discussed at length, and there was lots of tough decisions, so I think the game was a great success.

So, what issues were raised:

The system slowed me down a bit, I think because I'm   not very familiar with it.  I was trying to play closer to the system than I normally would to see how it worked.  The first summoning in particular broke the flow of play because it required quite a bit of book reference and a huge amount of dice rolling.  It wasn't much roleplaying because sorcery wasn't well defined so there wasn't that much to do, and we mainly just wanted the demon so things could move on rather than to focus on the summoning.  (The fact of the summoning was more important to us than the how...)

There was a huge amount of failed summonings. (Lucien passed out twice from Stamina loss.) Lore-Humanity is usually negative, so it seems this will always be the case.
I'd forgotten about the bonuses in chapter one which would have helped, but still - summoning fails so often.  (I couldn't throw a handful of dice without at least two tens all evening, which doesn't help.)

Just to see how something would be handled:  In one round, Jen attempted to throw a vase at the leaving Stephanie, Lucien wanted to veto this and Robert wanted to warn Stephanie.  Jen rolled Stanima to throw, Lucien rolled Will for control and Robert rolled Will purely for how quickly he shouts.  Lucien acted first, Jen rolled a single die to defend rather than aborting and the action was cancelled.  Robert shouted an irrelevant warning.

Is this the correct handling?  In particular does defending your will against a parasite cause you to abort the way most things do?  Should Lucien have been able to react that quickly in declaring an attempt to gain control versus  a sudden attack from Jen?

I didn't impose any humanity checks except for those directly from sorcery.  I didn't have a firm idea of humanity in my head.  I think Robert's decision to abandon Jennifer could certainly have led to one but it didn't feel necessary.  I suppose I also didn't feel the need to pass any moral judgement on this decision.  I wonder if I'm regularly going to react to calling for humanity checks in this way.

Anyway, crazy fun,
Adam.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Wow! Many thanks for posting this.

Issue #1 is, I think, the summoning success/fail one. Summoning is hard in Sorcerer; it's intended to be. Those bonuses from Chapter 1, especially those involving specifics of the ritual, as well as roll-over dice from successful Contacting, are crucial.

Even if you don't establish sorcerous ritual-details prior to play, you can still give out bonus dice if the player provides rituals that everyone likes. In fact, that's probably the best way to establish some of these things into the group's shared sorcery-concepts anyway.

Issue #2 is how to handle the dice and actions.

Just to see how something would be handled: In one round, Jen attempted to throw a vase at the leaving Stephanie, Lucien wanted to veto this and Robert wanted to warn Stephanie. Jen rolled Stanima to throw, Lucien rolled Will for control and Robert rolled Will purely for how quickly he shouts. Lucien acted first, Jen rolled a single die to defend rather than aborting and the action was cancelled. Robert shouted an irrelevant warning.

Is this the correct handling? In particular does defending your will against a parasite cause you to abort the way most things do? Should Lucien have been able to react that quickly in declaring an attempt to gain control versus a sudden attack from Jen?

You nailed it. That's exactly how to handle it. Complicated situations in Sorcerer often have a lot of "going after the jumping frog" outcomes, in which at least a couple of characters' actions turn out to be too late. Practice will show you how this results in great scenes, reaction moments, and one-liners, once people get used to it.

Switching to full defense of any kind entails aborting your previously announced action. It doesn't matter at all what score is being used.

Regarding Lucien's reaction, remember, no actions have "gone anywhere" during the pre-roll phase. So yes, one person can say, I do X, and another person can say, I'm stopping you from doing X, and the first one cannot say "You couldn't react in time" to shut down the second person. The dice will tell you whether he could or not.

Issue #3 is the Humanity and ethics concerns. Bluntly, this is your major role as Sorcerer GM, and you might consider completely abandoning all habits of "GM as impartial" when it comes to Humanity rolls for good/bad actions. You speak of "feeling" whether it's necessary, and that phrasing is sufficiently vague to make me suspicious. Can you elaborate on your previous role-playing and GMing experience with judgments of morality? Has it been considered all right, in your past experience, for one person to establish and even to judge what's right and wrong about various characters' actions?

Best,
Ron

[cthulahoops]

Hi,

I reread the Rules for Sorcery chaper last night after running the game.  It's one of those cases where you can read something several times but it only sinks in properly once you've used it.  The example makes the difficulty of summoning clear, and I completely missed the fact that you roll victories from the contact.   Basically I was thrown when I checked the sorcery chart and got a completely unexpected response.

I see what you mean about establishing details for sorcery during play, I love the image of using crayons for ritual circles.

It takes a bit of getting used to the order in which things are established into the game space.  My uneasiness comes from Lucien reacting to something that he doesn't know about when the action is declared - but by the end of the round this works out fine - Jen begins to act, Lucien responds, no problem.

I was thinking about this is relation to the example at the end of the sorcery chapter, James and the demon Zogg(?) are being attacked by ninjas.

Player:  "I wait for Zogg to act"
GM:  "Zogg does nothing, the ninjas advance"
Player:  "Where's Zogg?"
GM:  "Why don't you ask him?"
Player:  "I shout to Zogg to come help me"

This seems strange because the character's realisation that Zogg isn't helping seems to happen in the null time that is declaration - but when you look at it after the action it all fits together and makes sense.

This leads me to a question though, how is surprise handled in sorcerer?  Imagine Jen had suceeded in throwing the vase, and gone on to attack a second time.  In the second round Lucien isn't surprised and should have a better chance of resisting  - but it seems that the two rounds are identical.  Is it reasonable to award penalty dice for characters who are surprised?

Enough rule rambling and on to the important part of the post: Humanity.

If I sound vague, that's precisely because that's what it was.  A vague feeling that even if a humanity check was justified, it would have slowed the game for no purpose.  I didn't make much of a deal about humanity early on,  the game was drawing to an end and my mind was thinking about dinner - I didn't think it would impact the game positively.

What experience do I have regarding authority to establish right and wrong?  Practically none.  The mechanic I was thinking of when I wrote the original post was Sanity in Cthulhu, which I've often shied away from, relying on players to consider their own sanity.   The closest is dissonance (for angels) in In Nomine, but this is more tightly defined (in most cases) and the longest running angelic In Nomine game I ran was one of the worst examples of railroading I've ever perpetrated, so there's not many good examples there.

NPCs do comment on the morality of characters actions, but these are hardly beyond dispute - the closest again being archangels in In Nomine.  (The most beyond dispute is the Computer, I guess.)

The main form of this type of judgement is when a player (or GM) comments on a characters actions - but this carries no authority.

I'm interested in seeing how Humanity works in practice, and I'll have to make more of a deal of it the next time I play.  I'm curious, if you have the time, as to what decisions in the narrative you (or anyone else) would see as being worthy of Humanity checks?

Adam.

[Michael S. Miller]

A vague feeling that even if a humanity check was justified, it would have slowed the game for no purpose.

Hi, Adam. Glad to hear you've tried out Sorcerer. I'm a little leary anytime I hear someone talk about a Sorcerer dice roll "slowing things down." I can count on one hand the games with as low a handling time as Sorcerer ... if you read the dice efficiently. I wrote the following in response to someone else starting out with the game. Maybe I should make it a rant.

"Strings of numbers"? Sheesh! I've seen this practice in a number of posts and reviews about Sorcerer/Donjon and I've had to reprimand several of my players about it as well. I think it's a leftover from WoD/Storyteller when the player doesn't know the target number. This is a very inefficient way of reading Sorcerer dice. Here's how I do it:

[Player and GM roll dice and glance at them.]

GM: What's your highest?

Player: um, 8

GM: Dagnabbit! My highest is a 6. How many do you have that beat a 6?

Player: 4. Cool.

And that's it. Everything else could be 1s and it wouldn't matter. This is amazingly quick and it kinda irks me that people intentionally slow down an elegant process by paying attention to low-rolling dice that mean nothing. [/rant off]

In the same thread, Ron suggested having multiple folks roll at the same time, even if their characters are in different scenes, as the order-of-action rules can set up a nice scene-cutting flow.

[Lxndr]

Lore-Humanity is usually negative, so it seems this will always be the case.

Minor point:  Summoning is WILL minus Humanity, not LORE minus Humanity.  Contacting uses Lore (no subtraction), summoning uses Will.

Okay, maybe not that minor of a point, but nobody else caught it.

[cthulahoops]

Hi, Adam. Glad to hear you've tried out Sorcerer. I'm a little leary anytime I hear someone talk about a Sorcerer dice roll "slowing things down." I can count on one hand the games with as low a handling time as Sorcerer ... if you read the dice efficiently. I wrote the following in response to someone else starting out with the game. Maybe I should make it a rant.

Hi,

I didn't intend to imply that the mechanics of Sorcerer are slow, and of course you can read the dice by just reading the higher numbers.  I really like this way of using dice, actually.

I did say that that the game slowed me down a bit, but this was mainly due to unfamiliarity.  The other element is that summonings are slow and this is admitted in the rules.  On the other hand, I don't think the handling time was lower than average for games that interest me.

In the paragraph you quoted I was worried about slowing down the game in the sense that any call for dice slows the game down and breaks the flow somewhat.  Not, that the mechanic in question would have been slow - which it wouldn't.

Regarding Lore-Humanity, that was a mistake in the post.  I was using Will-Humanity during play.  Oops.

Adam.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Adam,

The reading-playing-re-reading-learning process you're talking about seems to be a common thing with Sorcerer, and I've finally concluded that it's just plain necessary for people who are ... well, not my target audience when I wrote it. Jesse Burneko (jburneko) has a lot to say about this, especially the "Simulationist-by-habit" phenomenon as he calls it, and I suggest checking out any of his threads and posts in the Adept Press forum.

I also suggest looking up all threads begun by the authors "Marcus" and "zmook" in that forum as well. They reveal some very good insights and internally-linked threads for nuts-and-bolts running the game.

This leads me to a question though, how is surprise handled in sorcerer? Imagine Jen had suceeded in throwing the vase, and gone on to attack a second time. In the second round Lucien isn't surprised and should have a better chance of resisting - but it seems that the two rounds are identical. Is it reasonable to award penalty dice for characters who are surprised?

There are two ways to handle surprise. The first way accounts for nearly all such circumstances in role-playing, which is best understood as "sudden event vs. your own reflexes," or being startled. Just handle this as normal. Use the surprise factor as a post-roll explanation rather than as a pre-condition. Oh, Bob rolled low, going last? OK, that means Bob must have been surprised (among a myriad of other possible explanations, surprise fit Bob's player's taste most at the moment).

The second way is when the ambush or whatever circumstances seem applicable as a pre-combat conflict of their own. This is best when someone (NPC or PC) has really set up a deliberate "I'm gonna surprise that guy" act. In this case, no problem: roll the appropriate ability of the surpriser (usually Cover/Past, but conceivably any of the scores) against the relevant perceptual score of the target (any score, depends on the circumstances) as a basic one-on-one conflict. Then, when the combat round starts up, use the victories for whoever won to add to their score for whatever they're doing in the combat round. Easy peasy, and actually very fun.

I'm interested in seeing how Humanity works in practice, and I'll have to make more of a deal of it the next time I play. I'm curious, if you have the time, as to what decisions in the narrative you (or anyone else) would see as being worthy of Humanity checks?

Robert committing to Stephanie: Humanity gain roll
Lucien establishing contact with his father: Humanity gain roll
Robert taking on the responsibility of the Parasite demon: Humanity gain roll (nicely off-setting the potential loss incurred by the rituals)
Jennifer choosing to remain committed to the demon baby: Humanity check
Robert abandoning Lucien (he did, regardless of justification): Humanity check

One notable rules-thing: when Jen considered smothering Jennifer with the pillow, there is no way, by the rules, to kill the player-character arbitrarily. A sorcerer can always use a Will roll to generate dice for action, whenever penalties would otherwise bring their relevant score to zero. I think that Jennifer's drugged state would count for that condition. So all you needed was a well-role-played bonus or two, and a successful roll, and the demon would have been confronting a rather dangerous foe instead of a sedated target.

Also, you might consider that Jen the demon might be smart enough to know that murdering Jennifer would not necessarily get what it wants. But that's your choice regarding playing Jen ... as I wrote in the chapter you're using, this scenario is a remarkable Rorschach test. Interesting, he said, stroking his chin, why do you think you played Jen as a vicious, violent bitch? H'mmn?

You wrote,

What experience do I have regarding authority to establish right and wrong? Practically none. The mechanic I was thinking of when I wrote the original post was Sanity in Cthulhu, which I've often shied away from, relying on players to consider their own sanity. The closest is dissonance (for angels) in In Nomine, but this is more tightly defined (in most cases) and the longest running angelic In Nomine game I ran was one of the worst examples of railroading I've ever perpetrated, so there's not many good examples there.

Humanity in Sorcerer is literally nothing like Sanity in Cthulhu, which is a "death spiral" mechanic, just like Humanity in Vampire and Cyberpunk. Such scores, when they drop, entail role-playing the character in ways that lead to further chance to drop. In Sorcerer, by contrast, behavior is never constrained nor defined by current Humanity score. So in Sorcerer, when you as GM dictate a Humanity check, you are not actually influencing how the character is to be role-played in the future. This is key. The thread Harsh Humanity should be useful for you.

I hope you don't mind my frankness when I say that "slowing down the game to no purpose" has a defensive whiff, to my nose. The purposes of Humanity rolls in the game are so central that it strikes me that you're still working out issues of authorship during play ... perfectly reasonably, too ... and so the issue probably concerns moving into that judgmental role, as GM. Again, since in this game doing so does not entail what the player "now has to do" (unlike alignment, unlike Sanity), I'm looking forward to your insights and experiences about it in further Sorcerer play.

Best,
Ron

[cthulahoops]

Wow.  Thanks for all the great responses on this.  Truly the best after sales service ever.  I've done some more background reading using your suggestions.

I like the handling of surprise, it's just currency all over again.

Thanks for the suggested Humanity checks/gains.  I think that's exactly what I needed to see, thanks.

Yes, I forgot the Will rules to avoid badness when Jennifer was attacked.  I did run a brief combat, but Jen had a significant advantage.  Jennifer's first action was to hit the panic button though, so the question of "how long do the nurses take?" remains a question, so long as Jen has a good possibility of victory.

I was so fascinated by your next question that I missed the end of your post until now.  I took the word "feral" from the telltale and imagined her as an animal, mimicking human form but not quite getting it.   So, she was driven primarily by instinct and emotion and less by careful thought.  Then I took the word "competition" from her desire and imagined her as relishing the competition over the victory, she wanted Jennifer and Stephanie to hate her so that they'd fight harder and make things more thrilling.

On to the bit of your post that I nearly missed.

I know that Sanity and Humanity are different in the way that you described, I mentioned Sanity as it's one of my past experiences with personality mechanics and to stress how different Humanity is from my past experiences.  Thinking about it, I wonder if dissonance is closer.  A dissonant angel isn't limited in action, though certain abilities don't work as well (but then you can roll against Humanity too).  On the other hand, dissonance tends to convert to discord at which point the downward spiral effect may start to kick in.  Not the same, but better than Sanity.

Hey, I know it was defensive.  I've never seen Humanity in play properly so who am I to judge whether checks have a purpose.  I'm just trying to explain my reaction during play based on years of GM instincts, rather than my reaction while reading Sorcerer's Soul and thinking wouldn't it be cool if Humanity was...

I think your reading of the situation is correct.  I need to see this mechanic in use in future play in order to understand what it brings to the game.

Thanks again for all the feedback.
Adam.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Adam,

Good discussion! Let's see ...

Jennifer's first action was to hit the panic button though, so the question of "how long do the nurses take?" remains a question, so long as Jen has a good possibility of victory.

I'd resolve that question simply through the roll itself - Jennifer's roll did not resolve whether she hit the button at all, but whether she hit the button fast enough that the nurses came in time. I spend a little text on this issue in Sorcerer & Sword, that dice rolls resolve conflicts rather than actions. If the conflict is, "Jen hits me if the nurses don't come in time," then that's what the roll is all about.

Granted, it's a little abstract - the nurses are considered, for game-mechanics purposes, more or less a weapon that Jennifer is using against Jen. Exactly the same as a gun or knife.

How's that sound?

Best,
Ron

[cthulahoops]

Yes, that makes sense, even if it is a bit weird.

Thanks,
Adam.