[Sorcerer] First Campaign IV of IV

[Bill C. Cook]

Session I. Session II. Session III.

I should explain: I updated the e-mail in my bcook1971 profile and am unable to log in.  I sent a number of requests to Clinton Nixon and one to Ron Edwards, but nothing came of it.  So I decided to take the path of least resistance and create a new user.

We finished! I know I'm going to forget a lot of what happened; that's why I'm trying to write a recount now.  Things went just nuts this session! There was one collision after another and a many-staged, massive battle. Nothing went the way I thought it would. And we certainly didn't wrap everything up in a nice little package.  Everything was left hanging.  Still, everyone agreed that it was a good place to stop.

We started with Vinnie Dilberto meeting his sister-in-law's therapist (Nefero) and session recording engineer (Prof. Gerard) at her apartment.  Earlier that night, he hooked up with a goth trick (Vanth; dominatrix-style passer) when he cut himself on a broken beer bottle in a drunken stupor and found her licking his hand.

Dilberto burst in and started shooting cushions off the couch.  Rebecca, Vinnie's sister-in-law, started screaming. Gerard set Dilberto on fire. Vanth subdued Glumly, one of Nefero's stable, while his master corraled Rebecca in the kitchen with his sword cane as she tried to escape. She managed to flee; Gerard torched Vanth and followed Nefero's commands to away.

Meanwhile, Mellisa ran away from the carnage at Janis' mansion, accompanied by Oni, her newly summoned, brawnier version of Allison, her dimension-hopping demon, and returned to the police station. She learned of her Aunt Rachel's untimely demise and was placed in an orphanage. After a week, she witnessed a wound-dressed janitor dropping her new friend, Emily, into the dumpster.  He witnessed her peeping.

With the Eagles broken, Agent Styles was put on a new assignment: missing children at the local orphanage.

Raphael presented himself to Helion, Patron of the Order of Force, and asked him to use the Central Stone to banish his unwelcome demon. The ritual failed. By natural motivation to rid himself of his enemy's influence, Helion offered to remove the parasite by his own power if Raphael would commission a rogue warrior slug carrier (Agent Styles) to ally against the Hive Matron, Janis Whitmire. Raphael agreed.

Meanwhile, Mellisa confronted the creepy janitor (Glumly, a passer of Nefero) who smothered her in a wave of flesh. Allison dragged them into the pocket dimension where Glumly rampaged, trying to escape. Even Oni could not subdue the genuinely panicked demon.  Worse still, he fought his way back, carrying Mellisa away.

His first day on site, Styles received a phone call from the cabby he detained last month. He spoke of impossible events and pleaded for assistance in locating his sister-in-law. Styles told him to come to the orphanage. Just then, a thirteen-year-old boy walked up to Dugan with a teddy bear. "I think this is Mellisa's.  I found it by the dumpster." Ever the thorough agent, Styles climbed inside and went for an unexpected ride.

Meanwhile, Mellisa awoke in manacles in a dungeon cell with Glumly sneering on the other side of the bars. Nefero arrived and was immediately assaulted--Mellisa apparently picked up an extra demon in the hedge around the pool at Janis' estate. She was transformed to a nasty virus and inhaled with Nefero's cigarette smoke. Mellisa tore from his lungs, took the shape of a bear, batted Glumly aside and fled. She emerged from the basement and burst through chained double doors at the back of the building.

Just then, Agent Styles hauled himself up out of the dumpster, only to find he was in the lot behind an office suite complex.  With a bear running out the back. Then the teddy bear he carried became a wiggling gremlin and ran to embrace the bear as she melted into a five-year-old girl. "Are you my friend?" she asked.

Gerard was disturbed in his studies by the snapping of chains and slamming of doors. Alarmed, he ran to the dungeon to find Glumly on his knees before Nefero, his face blood-soaked, sprawled out on the floor, his cane scattered across the floor. He clutched Gerard's arm and whispered, "Bring me the girl."

Raphael tracked the agent in the photo Helion provided to the orphanage. A cab-driver and a boss, white chick pulled up, took a cell call and sped off. A familiar, black limo came to, where Raphael hid.  The window rolled down.  A severe, blond woman in shades leaned forward.  "I see you're still with child. Get in." The driver was a familiar black man in mirror shades and loop earrings. He turned onto the main road in pursuit of the cab.

Agent Styles hung up the phone and proceeded nervously down the hall.  Was it his imagination, or was it getting darker in here? Moments later, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face! Light and flame erupted from the darkness as fire poured in waves from the burning hands of a laughing, older man, dressed in robes with a brass cockroach broach. Without time to react, Mellisa grabbed Styles' hand and Allison whisked them away, leaving Oni behind. Through fortune and wile, the plucky demon managed to subdue the frightening sorcerer, hooked him up on his back and carried him off.

Vinnie pulled into the lot in time to see a queer-looking, alien thing, carrying an old, robed man on his back; it was that asshole that burned him last week! The odd creature carried the unmoving figure deeper into the complex.  Dilberto and crew moved to pursue.

Mellisa, Allison and Styles returned for Oni, but the building was empty.  Outside, they saw a cab, driving itself, combing the lanes of buildings, and followed its path.
Rufus came to and turned Oni into a smoldering ruin.  As they struggled, fires exploded out the back of a building where Oni had sought to hide.

Janis stepped out of her limo, motioning for Raphael to follow. "I know this place. An old friend lives here." Freddy slowly sank down on all fours and sniffed the ground. "Follow him," Janis commanded.

Styles charged Gerard and swung him into the brick building wall.  The old man shrieked and spewed flames, wildly. A wolf lunged at Styles. An evil, whipping tentacled beast came from the shadows and tore Vanth to shreds; Nefero had released the Ripper Bear. Glumly, now joining the fray, moved to secure the child his master so coveted. Melissa gave the creature a cross look and sent him away.

Dilberto sent his cab to ram the horror. Ripper Bear tore its engine out. Styles battered Freddy with Gerard's unresisting frame. Mellisa turned her eye to Nefero's beast, but it proved too fierce and ripped her to shreds in an instant.

Beaten and dazed, Freddy fled the scene, and Ripper turned his attention to Styles. Terrified, Vinnie dragged Vanth away from the devestating battle. As the titans fought on, Styles could hear a voice in his mind: ally yourself with me, and I will spare your life. His limbs like lead, Dugan staired at the untiring monster, plowing into him, pitiless and undaunted.

I accept.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

I'll chime in later with comments on out-of-game player aspects.  My players: please comment on your play experience.

Thx to Ron Edwards for a great game. I had a lot of fun.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

You're welcome!!

My question: tell me about Humanity rolls of all kinds, and their outcomes.

And finally, you said that it ended with "everything left hanging." I suspect that this might be translated into something like "real resolutions aren't about carrying every possible event or loose end into its final conclusion." Or somethiing based on that principle. Can you elaborate a little on why you and the others found your stopping point to be the right stopping point?

Best,
Ron

[Bill C. Cook]

My question: tell me about Humanity rolls of all kinds, and their  outcomes.

There were actually a number of Humanity rolls made. Styles banished a couple of demons.  (Gained.) So did Mellisa. (No gain.) Prof. Gerard slew or sacrificed a number of innocents. (No loss!) Vinnie also commited murder. (Can't remember.) Logan had Mellisa (a five-year-old girl) do LSD to summon a demon. That got a check for loss; can't remember the outcome. Styles evacuated his informant, losing the opportunity to ambush his quarry. (Gained.) Those are the ones I remember.

Can you elaborate a little on why you and the others found your stopping point to be the right stopping point?

Your assertion in preface is accurate. Well, let me think . . . There were a number of reasons. Foremost, we had reached the arbitrary limit of four sessions. Because of that, everyone expected that the campaign should end. A second important reason was that the massively crossed, site-spanning battle had come to some kind of resolution.  It actually had a few plateaus where different characters made their exits.

Also, there was a feeling that everyone had really given it Hell. And feeling spent in the effort was satisfying beyond the need for finality. I even offered everyone an opportunity to narrate their final scene, but attempts just fell flat. It seemed more aesthetically pleasing to the group to leave the loose ends untied.

** ** **

In typing this, I remembered a few details worth mentioning.

[*]After Mellisa fell, Styles commanded Allison to Transport him to the pocket dimension, ostensibly, to escape the battle. His Will roll succeeded. Once inside, he bound Allison before returning for Oni. In the meantime, Cory (Gerard) figured out how to master for score dice and got back in the fight. When Styles appeared with Allison by the hand, Gerard turned into a wolf and broke her neck in his jaws. Jason (Styles), who'd announced to tag Oni, succeeded in collecting the masterless demon but lost his escape route.
[*]Gerard, the sorcerer that got his fire power from a demon named Winston (that Mellisa banished, as I recall) had a Stamina of one. At one point, he had every player at the table dog-piling on him. Styles used him as a flail against Freddy the Freak! Not only did he not die, he came back with play impact in the same battle. I still don't understand how.
[*]After Styles accepted Janis offer for aid, the only characters left on the scene that weren't incapacitated by lasting penalties were non-player characters and their demons.  Yet the battle continued! So I was literally sitting at the table for like, 15+ minutes, announcing actions and rolling for three or so characters. Some watched, some didn't, but it certainly was novel. And as I recall, it was ironic how one cool white chick and a werewolf used tactics and rituals to ass kick the same demon that had just been mopping the floor with every player at the table. Freddy absorbed attacks while Janis punished until they wore the thing down.
[/list:u]

[Ingenious]

Now then, for those of you that have forgotten.. I am Cory, aka Professor Gerard. And sorry for the length of this post. I havent been on the Forge for months so I think I'm due for a lengthy rant.

Things I liked about Sorceror: the demon stuff, summoning them.. binding them.. etc. The humanity checks, the play-style was much more fast and loose and shoot from the hip than TROS or D&D.

Things I did not like about Sorceror: not reading the book enough/failure of the text to be clear enough that I could comprehend it given the circumstances of A. Not really wanting to switch to another RPG system B. My recent habit of being buzzed and/or drunk during gameplay.. and C. The book is hard to extrapolate information from. Given that on the last session that neither A nor B existed that day.. C still remained. Also, the whole thing about 'no advancement'. How is a character supposed to advance in this system except in terms of 'power' i.e. strength of demons and/or number in their 'stable', and advancement in plot? Lastly, the whole thing about 'armor' and 'big' seems quite a bit wishy-washy to me.
Those two, especially in combinations of one another.. seem to make someone like my 1 stamina sorceror into a God. Granted, he was immortal at some point in the story.. due to being granted immunity from death via old age/disease.

What I liked about Mr. Cook's campaign in particular: My loss of a whole ONE humanity point during the course of the events. The way I could just go about burning stuff to the ground and carrying on like a crazed old pyromaniac with a god-complex. The weaving of the story at the tail-end of things was very very interesting.

What I disliked about Mr. Cook's campaign: Not too much, just a bit of nitpicking and so forth in terms of his GMing style.. which I will let slide given the fact that this was our first time playing sorceror. And I think it was his first time GMing in awhile too. But the major point of note was that I dont think the conflicts between the demons and their sorceror characters were played out enough. Did everyone's character satisfy their demon(s) needs and desires to the point that we could just dominate them? Or did we forget that? Isn't there supposed to be Will rolls and so forth somewhere in there? *shrug* Lord knows I satisfied the demons I had, given the death.. destruction and chaos I caused. I figured that the old geezer would have it in for the world given his family situation.. out-living them all and such.. and wanting to give some of that feeling back to the world.

The latter part is how I see the 'armor' and 'big' combinations controlled. Hell, any demon power or combination of powers in general means nothing if the demon is not satisfied enough to confer that ability on the sorceror to use in any given situation.

I think I might like playing in this style of seperated plot lines, which *is* a total 180 from what I had been used to previously. It is a hell of alot more fun, and when the characters are all finally woven together there is a sense of 'Ahhhhhhh HA!!' and some possible irony etc etc.

We had talked after the session and while you were writing the recap for the 4th session that most of us thought that Sorceror would be a one-time use system since we all knew at that point how to make the biggest baddest demon with the best possible combination of abilities.

Armor + big don't mean shit if the demon isnt satisfied enough to let the sorceror use it right? It'd rather be happy serving another master that will 'feed the need'.... correct?

-Ingenious
P.S. My character *should* have died after Winston had been banished because Winston was the one that conferred 'fast' on my character, thereby boosting his stamina to 6... but it wasn't like I could *see* which demon had which ability. I wasnt keeping track and I wasnt the one with the demon's character sheets now was I? Either that or I am remembering it incorrectly. But I think it was Winston that had fast instead of boost.. because you had straightened out the fast vs boost thing in the first session...
*shrug* Oh well, always next time.

As always, pardon the noncoherence contained above as it is 330am and I am severely buzzed.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Cory,

I gotta ask you, man - can you please re-post when sober? I'd like to respond to some of your points, but frankly, I don't really want to deal with a drunk person. If you could re-phrase or list out the things that you would really like responses about, that would help a lot.

Best,
Ron

[Ingenious]

Well then.

Are there not supposed to be checks whether or not our characters are satisfying their demon's needs enough for them to grant the use of their abilities?
This could have played a greater part in the story if a demon refused to comply with a character's wishes say, during a fight for example.

I just don't remember much of that happening.  And so far it's one of two ways to bring down a sorceror's power a few notches. The other way is banishment, which I think is far too easy to accomplish.

My demons had a need for chaos, death, etc etc. The standard evil stuff. And I think that I roleplayed that to the hilt with the way my character's life was going, and feel that there wasnt really a need for those checks to happen in my case. I never really paid attention to the other characters, and how they were roleplaying their characters. At one point, hearing that the 5 year old Melissa was doing some LCD or whatnot.. I thought to myself 'hmmmm, a 5 year old on crack. THAT'S logical....' But at the same time I realize that Melissa and her original demon were severely underpowered.. and she needed *some* way of summoning and binding a new one.. and as it turns out there was one of those demon slugs in there from the Hive.

Another thing I didn't understand at some point was who I needed to associate myself with. I started out becoming a sorceror and being discovered by the order of Force... and they sent me to see Nefero to help me find some limited means of living forever. At that point I thought that Nefero was more associated with the order of force than the fact that he was his own neutral entity. Plus I thought that I should roleplay my thankfullness to the dude for helping me.

Had I not followed that fork in the road of the plot, and stuck with the order of force for more of the story.. I might have been there when they hit that building.. thus tying my character in sooner to the other PC's.. and so on.

Ahhh crap, I'm late for my appointment. I'll check for a response or two later at school while on a break.
-Ingenious

[Bill C. Cook]

B. My recent habit of being buzzed and/or drunk during gameplay..

You were drunk? (Laughs to self.)

Did everyone's character satisfy their demon(s) needs and desires to the point that we could just dominate them? Or did we forget that? Isn't there supposed to be Will rolls and so forth somewhere in there?

This was something I struggled with. Stlyes' demon, Beelzebubba, had a need for mayhem. Well, it seemed like every time he got on stage, things were exploding and there was a big shootout. Vinnie's cab demon wanted to eat vagrants. I used that to write him into the gangland dealer slaying turned gang-banger run-'em-over. Mellisa's demon, Allison, had a need to pilfer finery. Hmmm, I probably did neglect that one a bit. Winston (Gerard's main demon) also needed mayhem. I think you had every reason to call him your bitch;)

Raphael's demon's need was neglected entirely, I'll grant that.

I'm unsure about when to make a command check, honestly. During play, there was so much to juggle, and introducing material relevant to the kicker and keeping the demon abilities straight pretty much filled my plate.

Also, I was hesitant to appear adverserial in a petty way. (Although, I'm sure you can bear witness that I can be tough on other issues. e.g. One action per turn, be consistent with demon ability implementation.) Emotionally, there's a quality of ownership to demons; it can be pointlessly divisive to sabotage a player's efforts, or worse, meeting needs can devolve into repetitive and trivial maintenance play.

. . and when the characters are all finally woven together there is a sense of 'Ahhhhhhh HA!!' and some possible irony etc etc.

It really did come together. You reminded me: it certainly was ironic when Oni was trying to bring Gerard to Mellisa while running from Dilberto who was trying to find Styles who was trying to protect Mellisa who was trying to find Oni.  Everyone was on the same side except Gerard! Yet there they were, chasing tails.

And when Raphael arrived with Freddy, who attacked Styles on sight, he literally started shooting him in the back! All because Helion had tasked Raphael to proposition Styles in exchange to have his demon banished.

My character *should* have died after Winston had been banished because Winston was the one that conferred 'fast' on my character, thereby boosting his stamina to 6...

Oops.

Another thing I didn't understand at some point was who I needed to associate myself with. I started out becoming a sorceror and being discovered by the order of Force... and they sent me to see Nefero to help me find some limited means of living forever. At that point I thought that Nefero was more associated with the order of force than the fact that he was his own neutral entity. Plus I thought that I should roleplay my thankfullness to the dude for helping me.

Well, even though they arose out of confusion, those were interesting choices. Truth to tell, I crossed you with Nefero so that he could require that you sacrifice Rupert to bind Vorx. That was your character's great cost: to sever your last, best hope to anything resembling a family.

More generally, I was on the fence about how to reveal the back-story, i.e. toss the R-map out on the table and just explain it or introduce characters, scene-by-scene, without more than apparent information. Jason (Styles), in particular, played his entire thread, mostly in the dark about the connection between the Eagles and the Hive, though clearly, its influence was severe: Janis infected his captain and the Spider Butler killed his best friend.

Had I not followed that fork in the road of the plot, and stuck with the order of force for more of the story.. I might have been there when they hit that building.. thus tying my character in sooner to the other PC's.. and so on.

This sounds like something Logan said earlier about wanting to change direction to get to where the story was. But the story's wherever you are.

Another thing to understand is that the raid on Janis' estate was merely a contrivance (from an out-of-game perspective) to exercise Raphael's role as body guard to Mellisa. The same can be said of the attack on the fire station. There had to be some consequence to Gerard being given the proper reference to further his quest for immortality; i.e. the slaughter of innocents.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey guys,

I suggest that both of the issues that we're discussing can be understood as new skills that will only develop over time. It's pretty typical for demons to get overlooked during the first session of play, especially when a GM realizes "Oh shit! Stuff is happening!" So cut him some slack, and get ready for payback to show up in the following session.

Bill, you wrote:

I was on the fence about how to reveal the back-story, i.e. toss the R-map out on the table and just explain it or introduce characters, scene-by-scene, without more than apparent information

This is the classic question of the ex-illusionist GM. Try breaking your self-imposed dichotomy this way:

1. Do reveal the back-story but
2. Via NPC dialogue and action

In other words, I do not suggest taking a sort of Universalis or Legends of Alyria approach, and showing the map as a graphic or discussing it among the group out of character.

I do suggest, however, that NPCs become arrant blabbermouths about their connections on the map, and about the stuff that they are so desperate to reveal or conceal. Check out movies, novels, etc - it's amazing how self-revealing most of the characters are, compared how closemouthed and locked-up-paranoid most NPCs are in role-playing.

Consider this: the player-characters are exactly who the NPCs want to enlist on their sides, or to eliminate from the picture, either due to understandings or misunderstandings. The NPCs will barrel into interacting with the player-characters and spill their guts as they do so, on purpose or inadvertently.

Best,
Ron