[Sorcerer] Modern Gothic

[cthulahoops]

Hi,

Well, I've given sorcerer another go, and we had a great session.  I did up a handout to distribute to the players before the game, it's at

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~cthulhu/gothic_intro.pdf

In short, the setting is called Modern Gothic, it's set in Bamberg, Germany, and  is a mix of the modern world and gothic imagery and strong emotion.  A lot of it got ignored, but that's fine.

We ended up with:

Paul, an author, who summoned a demonic version of his lover when his lover left him.   The demon needs attention and desires artistic success for Paul.   "Stefan" is a moderately sized inconspicuous demon, a sort of ghostly version of his ex.  The Kicker is that the success of his new book is drawing him into the public eye.

Hans, an accountant in the packaging department of a company.  He's disatisfied with his job, his family, his whole life.  He feels that he should be living a special life, and he isn't.  It isn't that he doesn't have ability, he just couldn't be bothered, he wants everything to go his way without trying.  Recently he inherited an old house, found a cottage in the nearby woods with various sorcerous writings, and summoned a demon.   To be precise an 8 Power possessor, who possesses the forest.  Zlone needs to take over its masters body and de sires to drown people.  With this guy to do the hard work, Hans can really start living the life he deserves...  Oh yeah, and at eight power the Cover (Politician) is useful.

Anna is a goth type student, who got involved in the wikka society and then in a secret subgroup "Black Wikka", a coven of three.  Anna introduced the Coven to real sorcery and summoned "Zareth" a inconspicous monster, with claws and armour and all manner of combaty goodness.  It needs rituals in Last year, things got out of hand and a girl was killed.  The Kicker is that this year's new member has a boyfriend and wants out.

Minstral was trapped by her mothers lonelieness after her father left and her mother never wanted her to leave/growup and used her as a house-hold servant.  Minstral got a boyfriend who encouraged her and taught her sorcery.  So, she summoned a possessor demon into her mother...  recently she's begun to use her new-found super-mum in a sort of a vigilanty thing.  The Kicker is that she sees a fellow student emerging from one of her lecturer's offices after obvious unwanted advances.

Paul had the slowest of the stories - the Kicker is quite weak and there are no NPCs linked to the character. I tried to rectify this by drawing him into my relationship map, the head of his publishing company has just been replaced by her own sister, who turns out to be Vampire.  This has developed into the question "Can I keep working for a company run by someone evil...?"  which is all good.

Hans' story went fantastically.  The demon seduced a student, drowned his boss, sweet-talked his way into the bosses job.   The latter two more or less on the direct instructions of the Hans.  The thing is, as the demon does things for Hans he becomes more and more incapable of doing anything for himself.  Having found out about the student, he had to get the demon to take her out again and get her into bed before returning the body.  His complete unwillingness to plan ahead or delay to avoid a confrontation with his wife (he missed his wife's sister's birthday dinner for the student) - is bound to hit him hard soon.   Similarly, he got done for drink-driving half way through.  The thing is, this is all uncertain, he's talking about making it all up to his wife - and I really wasn't sure if he'd go through with it and sleep with the student.   Oh, and the demon went into brat mode because it wasn't getting much respect.  I called for two humanity checks, one for the murder of his boss, the second for sleeping with the student.  He passed both of them.

Anna decided to organise a social event to stall Ruth's departure from the group - hoping to get Ruth to cheat on her boyfriend and break her from this relationship thing.  Then I fluffed things, I had planned another student who'd found out about black wikka, but Anna was able to use her to replace Ruth and the problems sort of cancelled out.  In the long term I'm not too worried though, more NPCs means more complications later.
I called for one Humanity check for letting her demon toss a random student around for entertainment.

Minstral's wasn't able to play for most of the session, so we just had the initial, find out what happened and send mum to deal with the lecturer.  The phrase "bring a knife" was included in the instructions.

All in all, and think the session went really well.  I felt more comfortable calling for humanity and I think it worked well, producing the appropriate effect - yay!

I need to have more Bangs prepared to keep the characters moving.   Only one character really got into the R-Map and making this link resulted in quite a slow moving story, but hopefully the character should start to spark off them next session.

One question, the demons rarely acted with their masters' present.  This is required in the case of the Zlone as he possesses Hans.  (Hans gets to be the forest.)   But the others used the demons in the same way, follow so-and-so, explore such-and-such a building, go kill so-and-so.  This is a really good use for inconsipuous demons.

Mechanics-wise, I either resolved the demons activities by Drama (which is pretty much the default for off-stage NPC activities) or threw a few dice quasi-secretly.

Thinking about it, however, I reckon the correct way to handle it is to treat the demon as a weapon against the situation.  Let the player roll one of the demons stats and roll appropriate dice for any resistance.  This is odd as it involves a player rolling for their demon which isn't the usual - but it seems right.

This is all assuming the demon's in obey-happily mode.

Timing remains the most stressful element of play in which the characters don't interact directly.  A skip forward of several days could work really well for Paul, but Hans is going to be busy for a while.  If I let them get that far out of sync, it's makes it impossible to start crossing the stories.   At the moment I'm keeping them more or less on the same day and letting them be at different times within the day.

So, more summary than questions and analysis.  Fun was had.

Adam.

[Andrew Norris]

Fascinating read; thanks for posting the summary. I particularly liked your one-sheet, which I may very well steal some ideas from it, particularly your definition of Humanity, which I think works very well in some cases and looks like it'd really reinforce your theme. The idea of a Humanity check when the one PC had her demon toss around another student ties in well with being tempted with the idea that "I'm the only real person here -- I can act without repercussions."

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

For those who might be interested in Adam's previous Sorcerer experiences, check out [In Utero] Happy families.

Adam, one thing I've noticed about playing Sorcerer long-term with new players is that the first session seems a little light to the GM. The players seem, if not hesitant, at least a little tentative, and not much seems to develop or explode right then and there. But the wheels really are turning in their heads, and the second session certainly shows it.

Timing is indeed important, especially managing in-game-world time. Since the game lends itself very well to the technique of playing separated player-characters' scenes simultaneously in terms of game mechanics, it's a bit jarring to realize that these events' relationships to one another in fictional time is ... completely open to interpretation. The logic is the same as in film: just because we're cutting back and forth between two or three scenes does not necessarily mean that the events are occurring simultaneously - although any causality between the two scenes is supposed, eventually, to make sense once we know how they both play out. Since people are evidently good at doing this (both creating and interpreting such scene-combinations), it's surprising that the technique is under-utilized in role-playing, and instead the default is simply to play as if the events were plodding along in fictional "real time."

Playing demons is also a big issue, and I've noted that they shift "roles" quite a lot. Sometimes they are wholly my NPCs, other times they are essentially powers or attributes of the player-characters, and still other times the players more-or-less adopt them as temporary player-characters. I imagine different groups will arrive at different combinations of how often these roles are employed, as they see fit. The one concept that I think should hold no matter what, though, is that the GM always has "take-over" power over the demons' actions and abilities. Control over the demons may be lent by the GM, but authority rests with him or her.

I'm interested in the character Paul - your writeup skips him a little, and he's the character you said seemed least connected. What happened with that character during play? I love his demon concept, in that the Desire and the Need could easily operate at cross-purposes.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Hey There Adam

1) You're playing around with one of my favorite driving concepts for a sorcerer game.  I usually sum up the Humanity definition as "emotional sanity."  But calling Humanity empathy with a specific reference to a Premise of "When can you allow yourself to be ruled by your emotions?" works just as well.

2) You mention in your write up that you aren't very familiar with gothic literature.  If you're interested I highly recommend: http://www.litgothic.com.

3) I think you may have done yourself a disservice by being so specific about the demon types.  I think simply stating that demons are "entities born of passion and raw emotion" would have been sufficient with perhaps your types being listed as examples.  However, I think your source of sorcery is spot on.  Diaries, stories, and letters accounting tales of sorcerous levels of passions is perfect.  I will probably borrow that idea the next time I use this concept.

4) I agree with Ron.  I think Paul is the most interesting character and if you ask me I think he's the only one who got the Premise correct out of the gate.  I think what I find most interesting is that the ex-lover is still alive and so the demon isn't strictly a ghost but rather a manifestation of Paul's haunted memory of him.  Chillingly perfect and begs the question: What if the real lover re-enters the picture?

Jesse

[cthulahoops]

Andrew,

Thanks for the comments, I'm glad you liked the handout.  I'm not sure how different my definition of humanity is from the default humanity as empathy...

Ron,

I'm pretty much working on the basis that any pacing or lack of material problems will change as we all get into the game, so that's not worrying me at all.

I'm interested in the character Paul - your writeup skips him a little, and he's the character you said seemed least connected. What happened with that character during play? I love his demon concept, in that the Desire and the Need could easily operate at cross-purposes.

I tend to try and summarise down as much as possible to avoid people having to wade through to much transcript, and then you can pull out further details as desired.

So, Paul started off at a party to celebrate the booming sales of his book.  Their he learnt, that the head of the company (Chriselda) had been replaced, that in fact she had been fired, that she had been replaced by her sister (Rebekka), and that the company is owned by the father (Count Lorenz Von Rubenstein).  He also learned that his editor (Franz) was disatisfied with Chriselda's departure.

The next day he learnt (from Franz) that Chriselda had also been left by her fiance shortly after losing her job.  Paul sent Stefan to check out the Count's house, and Stefan returned having checked out the place, and become to scared by a presence in the library to enter.  Rebekka phoned Paul and asked to meet for a drink.  She asked him about his book plans and suggested that he write a banker into his next book as the antagonist.  She reveals that her sister's (not Chriselda) husband is a banker.  She suddenly got up and went outside and Stefan followed, seeing Rebekka drinking the blood of a man who'd been in the bar earlier.  Paul phones the police and reports an attack.  Rebekka returns, and orders another bottle of wine.  The police turn up and collect the body from the alley.

Paul talks to Stefan and considers leaving the company to avoid working for a Vampire.  Stefan doesn't seem too concerned, it's a good company and the priority is Paul's work.

Paul gets in contact with Chriselda and arranges to meet for a drink (at noon).   I ended the session at this point to get a chance to properly work out what Chriselda wants at this point.

So, as I said, I responded to the character by letting him explore my relationship map for a bit.  There was at moments of "lets explore because otherwise I'll be doing nothing"... but I think the player likes exploring.  (I still need to chat to him (and he'll read this.))

I think the session suceeded in building the character enough contacts for the pace to step up with some real Bangs next session.

The conflict between need and desire isn't that clear.  The desire is more artistic/creativity than fame, and Paul discusses all his plots/ideas with Stefan.  There's potential for strain here if Paul starts to get too famous though and Stefan gets pushed out.  (And the real Stefan is still out there.)  The more important conflict  (to me) is between Stefan's single-minded desire, and Paul's sense of morality.

Thanks as always for your input,
Adam.

[cthulahoops]

Jesse,

1)  Yes, I've looked at some of your Gothic Fantasy stuff and I considered using your definition for humanity, but decided I preferred my original idea.

2)  Thanks, I'll have a look.

3)  The demon types I gave were listed as examples, and from the characters I got the players took them as such, so I think it was okay.  Certainly, that was how I intended it.  I have some of those demon types in my R-map, so by providing clear examples I've let the players know what to expect in terms of NPC sorcery.

4)  Yes, Paul is the closest to what I've written, and the only one to use an example demon type.  Anna introduces strong elements of new-age occult into her character, and Hans some cthulhu-esque images (occult grimoires), neither of which were what I was aiming for.  This is what I was referring to when I said that some of the handout was ignored and I'm okay with it - it was supposed to inspire not dictate.

I do think there are elements of the premise in each of the characters, the development of Minstral lead to the conclusion that she is a sort of Cinderella.  She was oppressed by her evil step-mother, rescued by a handsome prince and eventually called upon her fairy godmother.  Ie.  she's living in a fairy tale, and not dealing with the more complex reality:  a lonely mother, a sorcerous boyfriend with his own problems and a demon.

Hans is trying to avoid real life.   He is full of ambition, yet completely unable to put in the work to achieve it.  The more the demon makes his life better the less he is able to appreciate it.  Ie.  He can't deal with the real world, only a simplified version in which everything is easy.

I'm not so sure how to interpret Anna in these terms.

One core difference is that Paul is a likable character, Hans and Anna are not - and I think this immediately sets  up a different type of story.

Thanks,
Adam.

[Andrew Norris]

I'm not sure how different my definition of humanity is from the default humanity as empathy...

I take the issue as being lack of empathy vs. solipsism -- a lack of empathy means you don't care what happens to other people, whereas solipsism means it doesn't matter at all, because they're not real. I could see solipsism, or even some form of autopsy,  as a possible result of being able to warp reality at whim.

This may have just been something that I was mulling over in my head and something in your one-sheet sparked it.

[cthulahoops]

I take the issue as being lack of empathy vs. solipsism -- a lack of empathy means you don't care what happens to other people, whereas solipsism means it doesn't matter at all, because they're not real. I could see solipsism, or even some form of autopsy,  as a possible result of being able to warp reality at whim.

Solipsism leads to lack of empathy - so the underlying cause is living in ones own world, but the effect is lack of empathy for others.

I like defining humanity in terms of solipsism, but I'm not sure how practically different from lack of empathy it will be in play.  I find it hard to picture cases where one definition would lead to a humanity check and the other would not.

Adam.

[Andrew Norris]

I won't debate you on this. :) All I'm really saying is that for me personally, solipsism and lack of empathy push different GMing buttons, focusing on one or the other makes me look at a situation differently. I agree that they're closely related and that one could lead to the other.

So as not to focus too much on that one issue, I'll ask this: How did you handle the party being split up? You talked about ensuring that players' actions took place within the same day to make it easier to keep things synched up, but I'm curious how often you cut from player to player (say, at the end of a scene versus at a cliffhanger) and how you framed the scene transitions. (I ask because in my campaign I've yet to have the players stay together for more than a half hour at a time, so I'm really giving my framing muscles a workout to keep things engaging for everyone.)

[cthulahoops]

So as not to focus too much on that one issue, I'll ask this: How did you handle the party being split up? You talked about ensuring that players' actions took place within the same day to make it easier to keep things synched up, but I'm curious how often you cut from player to player (say, at the end of a scene versus at a cliffhanger) and how you framed the scene transitions. (I ask because in my campaign I've yet to have the players stay together for more than a half hour at a time, so I'm really giving my framing muscles a workout to keep things engaging for everyone.)

Hi,

Sorry about the delay in answering this one.  On one I've been happy with letting the group split and playing everything into the centre for some time, but having this as the default mode takes a bit of getting used to it.

My first worry, which I mentioned already, is that of keeping everyone in line in time.  Actually, this is one of the things that stems from the players as much as from me, so it doesn't require much effort on my part.  What tends to happen is that I turn to a player to offer a scene,  and the player redirects me to someone else who's character is currently behind timewise.

I'm somewhat worried that my fear of leaving a player on the sideline for too long results in me trying to rush things.

My tendancy is still to cut at the conclusion of a scene.  I've managed to get away from rp-ing the goodbyes, which is a great conclusion, but I'm definitely going to have to try cutting at cliff-hangers a bit more.

Scenes are normally framed with a player stating an intent at which point I describe the location of the scene and some framing events.   Nothing fancy, but I'm skipping travel and entry more than I have done.

So, not much useful to say, other than that it seems to be working but I'm still trying things out.

Adam.