How long do Rollovers bonuses last?

[Tasseomancer]

I know you are very busy what with GenCon coming up so take you time and answer at your leisure.

How long do Rollovers bonuses last? I don't think it says anywhere but all the examples I've seen have been same or next round.

The reason I'm asking this is if you were to set up a campaign as you have suggested in Sword & Sorcery that has the games run in the order say C, B, A.

I would be plausible to say play game C, where Derick the demon has pissed on the characters favourite rose bush say. The game gets to the point when the characters want to banish the demon say, his chances of winning at the flower show this year destroyed (I know I'm making this up on the spot). They turn up in a deserted warehouse where as younger players they banished another demon and see the pentagram on the floor with all the ceremony tools.


Scene Cut!

We now start playing Game B, and in this one say the younger characters are faced with a another demon who stole their maths home work say. In this game they decide to summon a demon to deal with the Maths Homework Demon. The contact and the summons go well. But the new demon escapes for what ever reason. Does the new demon look familiar. Yes it was the previous or later (depending how you look at it) Rose pissing demon. Now conceivably any victories from the summons could rollover on to the binding they choose to do in game C.

Scene Cut!

We could either jump back to Game C and play that one out with the Rollover Bonuses from Game B.


Or we could have jumped back to Game A which may have rolled on to game B before the roll was made if you get my drift.


So not only are the crossings deja vous moments when the character notices something familiar but also have exchanges of the currency.


This method could be used for characters to theoretically take on some serious opponents by building up the bonuses from previous stories against the same adversary. For a final showdown. Just an idea spinning round my head.


Mark

[Tasseomancer]

Oops didn't read through my example before posting. In game C they turn up at a warehouse when as younger players they summoned another demon and see the pentagram and ceremonial tools.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

The rule, for what it's worth, is that a rollover bonus of any kind can only be used if:

1. The new roll is based on an action directly related to the former roll's outcome. It works best if you ask, "Can this action even be possible without the result of the previous action?" If the answer is yes, then the rollover bonus doesn't apply.

2. It's really the next roll for that character.* By "next" I mean in the game, not from the character's point of view. Some folks are getting the idea that you can bank a bunch of bonuses from separate rolls into a single later roll, which is not correct, or that you can save a bonus for a while and do other things before returning to a related action, which is also not correct.

Hypothetically, if you are playing out-of-sequence actions, and if #1 and #2 still manage to apply, then sure, the rollover bonus is valid.

Best, Ron

* Advanced point: sometimes rollover bonuses are transitive, from one character to another (you'll know it when you see it). Points #1 and #2 still apply in full.

[Joel P. Shempert]

Ooh, crap. I screwed up in our last Sorcerer game; when Jake's character was trying to get a name out of his new (possibly crazy) housemate--Seth's character--before he took off to get the rent money, I told them to roll Will vs. Will. Jake won with three victories, and Seth said "that's fine, I'm still leaving without telling him my name." I told them that Jake's PC would then have a +3 bonus for further interaction with Seth, representing Seth's guy seeming really shifty and flaky and failing to inspire confidence.

I can sorta see a justification in that, while both PCs are conceivably going to do other things before interacting again, the bonus could still be applied to Jake's next action toward that character. it's like if two characters were having an argument over the phone, hang up without resolving it, then one of them calls back to resume--the new actions are of a continuity with the old actions, thus belonging in the same sequence and benefiting from rollover.

Or at least so my brain thinks now. At the time, I was just completely brain-farting that principle in the rules and treating it as a lasting bonus.

Peace,
-Joel

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Joel,

I recommend not treating victories as floating bonuses under any circumstances. I have learned over the years that rolls in Sorcerer are momentary. They appear like lightning and their results strike like lightning. The bonuses don't create environment for a variety of rolls; they simply make the next bolt strike harder.

Drifting the rules a little bit is tempting. You see five victories on the table in a roll concerning some verbal conflict, and a while later, it seems so logical use them against that person. The trouble with doing so is logistic, thematic, and narrative. Logistically, the GM is often dealing with six or seven NPCs at once if you count the demons, and floating bonuses are going to interfere with every roll and decision, adding not just another layer, but a whole fog onto the process of managing things. Thematically, Sorcerer is about hard choices. By establishing a whole environment of floating bonuses and relationships built on them, people are also establishing that the fiction in which the characters do their thing can be gamed. To do so, you violate the cardinal principle that no one games the universe (i.e. anything external to the character) in Sorcerer; it's always hitting back as hard as it ever did. Narratively, also such bonuses may superficially "feel" as if they establish continuity, they actually impede the perception of fictional causality in the moment. A character is forever more influenced by rolls in the past than by actions and rolls in the present.

I hope that clarifies where I'm coming from with all this. I also hope it shows how necromancy is really awful stuff, because it goes ahead and does all those dangerous things anyway. A necromancer is more than just another sorcerer, because he or she is really "tearing the very fabric of time and space!" in the classic pulp sense.

Best, Ron

[Joel P. Shempert]

Well, that all makes good sense. Do you mind helping me dissect a bit how we could have gotten what we were aiming for in that little interaction without mangling the text?

So Nobody, played by Seth, is darting out the door and Sugarbaker, played by Jake, is trying to ask him his name. they roll, and SB wins with 3 successes. Now, my understanding is that nothing at this point forces Nobody to divulge his name--SB merely succeeded in asking before he got out the door. But what he actually wants is an answer. . .how did winning that roll help him with that? Nobody's still off and running. Or does it only help if he pursues it? Like, "oh no, you don't--I'm grabbing your arm before the door closes and force you to deal with me!" and then he'd have the +3 to grab 'im. But if he just stands there and let's him go, then he loses the initiative (not "initiative" in the D&D-sense, but in the real-world sense) and gives up his objective.

If that's the deal, then it's a lot like a "soft' version of Dogs in the Vineyard: sure, you can get what you want if you press hard enough, but how far are you willing to go? Are you going to wrestle the shifty street kid down on your front porch just to extract a name from him (which is just a confounding street nick anyway)? Interesting. My players are all Dogs fans, maybe I should play up that aspect of the rules to them.

Peace,
-Joel

PS I'm wondering if I should move this over to my new Sorcerer AP. . .but then again the issue seems wrapped up pretty well.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Joel,

I apologize for forgetting about this discussion. "I can answer that," I thought, and was promptly distracted by more difficult stuff.

Anyway, to review, here's what you wrote:

Jake's character was trying to get a name out of his new (possibly crazy) housemate--Seth's character--before he took off to get the rent money, I told them to roll Will vs. Will. Jake won with three victories, and Seth said "that's fine, I'm still leaving without telling him my name." I told them that Jake's PC would then have a +3 bonus for further interaction with Seth, representing Seth's guy seeming really shifty and flaky and failing to inspire confidence.

I can sorta see a justification in that, while both PCs are conceivably going to do other things before interacting again, the bonus could still be applied to Jake's next action toward that character. it's like if two characters were having an argument over the phone, hang up without resolving it, then one of them calls back to resume--the new actions are of a continuity with the old actions, thus belonging in the same sequence and benefiting from rollover.

It all depends on Seth's character's next conflict and hence roll. If you wanted Jake's character's victories to matter, then it's up to you as GM to hit Seth's character with a relevant Bang. I can't tell from your post who was going to get the rent money, but let's say it was Seth's character. Perhaps a relevant Bang would then be some money-type confrontation in which someone asks about his roommate (i.e. Jake's character). Then Seth's character would be down three dice, having just been rattled by the interaction.

In the absence of such conflict and moving on to some other situation for Seth's character, the victories dissipate and are mechanically no longer meaningful. That is how it should be, leaving it completely up to Jake, now, in playing his character, to decide whether and how he will treat and deal with the other character.

It is tempting to see the Sorcerer system as a wind-up toy which generates multiple criss-crossing dice-sets of influences across any number of potential interactions in later play. It doesn't do that, and I suggest avoiding that trap, tempting though it may seem, and treating the system as what it's meant to do - a breaking, striking, wave-front that leaves a story behind.

Best, Ron

[Joel P. Shempert]

Cool, thanks for getting back to it. Yes, it was Seth's character going for the money, and yes, all this you've written is quite clear. Cool.

If you wanted Jake's character's victories to matter, then it's up to you as GM to hit Seth's character with a relevant Bang.

Very apt tip, thanks. In this case I was honestly just trying more than anything else to demonstrate the rollover rules in action more than anything else, and get everyone the idea of "see, here's where you reach for the dice, and here's how it can help you." I flubbed it, but hey, I'm back on track now.

a breaking, striking, wave-front that leaves a story behind.

That is so cool.

Peace,
-Joel

[Tasseomancer]

Thanks Ron,

Sorry for the late reply. I hope GenCon was a success!

Those two rules really help me define rollover bonuses in my head.

I can definitely see how floating bonuses could easily get out of hand, and make the game confusing and a management night mare, slowing the game.

...rolls in Sorcerer are momentary. They appear like lightning and their results strike like lightning. The bonuses don't create environment for a variety of rolls; they simply make the next bolt strike harder.

I guess I should always think in terms of the Paul Czege quote you gave in my Cover Bonus on Stamina Rolls question.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26516.0

grabbing a live wire.

There's definitely a lot of electrical metaphors in the game! When there aren't playing in a band metaphors.

Mark

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mark,

Good deal. You've asked a lot of questions which have helped a lot of people.

And hey, it's an amped (i.e. electric) band. And you forgot the sexy/crude references. So that means, let's see, an amped, raunchy band. Who could that be, I wonder?

And she's playin' all night, and the music's all right / Mama's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night

The lady, then she covered me in roses / She blew my nose and then she blew my mind

Squeeze my lemon 'til the juice runs down my leg

Ah. Works for me.

Best, Ron

[Tasseomancer]

The Who, The Stones and Zeppelin.
Great references!

But, are you trying to suggest that British Rock is raunchy and has sexy/crude references

We have a fondness for a nice cup of tea (I guess you got the Tasseomancer reference); look genuinely surprised when the train arrives on time and have a reputation for prudishness when it comes to, shall we say, close nocturnal encounters of the, er, reproductive kind. *cough*

Mark