[Sorcerer] The Cold and Bloody Northland

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Raven,

This exchange just got murky for me.

You may be mixing up two distinct rules issues we've discussed in the thread. The Indiana Jones paragraph was included regarding bonus dice, not augmenting rolls. The rules for bonus dice clearly include both actions and persona bits, as well as other things.

By "zero dice being neutral," I think you mean gaining no dice for your main roll because you failed the augmenting roll, with "neutral" meaning that the victories against you in the augmenting roll do not become penalties for the main roll.

My point is that all of that is about augmenting rolls and not bonus dice, and the Indiana Jones paragraph has nothing to do with that rule. You seem to be trying to apply the Indiana Jones paragraph to the augmenting rolls rules.

That may be enough to address your post, but if not, I should also state that I don't understand anything about the "safety barrier" and "dangerous ground" you're talking about. I don't want to get mired in discussing it, though, if my above point negates your concern.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

Well, that was my post rather than Ravens. And suddenly it doesn't feel like my feet are touching the bottom anymore with bonus vs augmenting terms - if it were money, it's all money in the end, so the reason its being given/the difference is eluding me. I thought I knew what I was asking about, but eh, I didn't, so I'll just go quiet.

[greyorm]

Ron, ok, I can see that. The world itself is an inimical character. Interesting. (It's almost like Environments in eXpendable, except those are lose/neutral as a default.)

Jesse, thanks for the thought! And Callan, er, I apologize but I don't know what you mean either. Sorry.

Now, on with the gaming report:

Last night we had a snaffu with the host thinking we weren't playing that week and making plans to stay in with the wife. He offered us the gaming room, though, so we made characters for the new players, JH and WG. It didn't go smoothly.

In two-and-a-half hours, we only made it 3/4ths of the way through character creation, without finishing the starting demons or creating Kickers, in contrast to the creation session with PL and MJ, which went fast and smooth and left enough time to run through a scene each to introduce the rules.

My impression of it all was that the two new players were very much in D&D character optimization mode, and not grokking the game much. However, as I understand it, these two have only played D&D and CoC up until now and are pretty new to gaming in general.

But examples, in demon design, WG kept trying to make sure his starting demon "weak" but also wanted it to provide some fairly serious and varied elemental combat powers. I think we spent a half-hour discussing Special Damage and Range, him looking forlorn that he couldn't have a weak demon that let him do everything he was imagining. Which is sad, because the concept was a cool one but his getting caught up in the stats (trying to play the game before it even happens?) was creating un-fun.

JH made a high Lore character with a fairly average Will and "Linguist" as a Cover, wanted his character to know dozens of languages, live in the woods away from people, wasn't sure what his Descriptor "Belief System" meant, and created a combat-oriented Parasite. The concept was just -- or at least it seemed to me -- all over the place and off-kilter. I didn't have a real sense of who the character was or what they wanted, other than a sense of "I want to be prepared for everything" (of which I may be mistaken, that's just how I was feeling).

There were other things, like them being uncomfortable/disappointed with the concept of Prices or talking about them as "hosing their character" -- though WG came up with a fairly spiffy one for his concept (his martial artist teacher has a Price of Pacifist: -1 to actions initiating violence) -- and general "prepping for the dungeon crawl" type thinking. We'll see how well it goes in play, because there are some decent concepts in there, which I'm hoping to help bring out. My hope is that some "ooooh...ah-HA!" moments happen once we get things rolling.

The "follow the book" method had worked so well for PL and MJ I figured it would work fine again, but clearly not. I think from now on my solution for players new to the game will be creating a batch of characters with starting demons and let them pick through and choose one that resonates. I am also thinking perhaps the best way to make a Sorcerer character is to create a concept -- an idea of the character and what they want -- ignoring the rules until designing from the concept.

[greyorm]

Just a heads-up that the game is done for the foreseeable future: our gaming group collapsed under an inability to schedule a new night that worked for everyone. It may start back up sometime in the future or this may be it for the game.