The Forge Archives

A while back in this thread, Ron wrote:

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I suggest that prior to your next game, simply do all the Humanity checks and gain rolls from the last run all at once. This works especially well when everyone is all together, before play starts, rather than doing it one-on-one. Also, don't try justify your reasoning in calling for these rolls - in many ways, acting as the steward of when and when not to roll for Humanity, and in which direction, is what a Sorcerer GM is for.

Also, get yourself personally invested in the characters' Kickers, and perform the difficult - but great once you get it - trick of realizing that those Kickers are actually more important than anything and everything you have prepped about the NPCs.

This, I am happy to report, worked.  The Humanity rolls went off well (by chance, no losses this time 'round), and tonight, ramping up on the Kickers went very well.

Because of the eternal scheduling problems and an episode of what Story Engine calls, with painful accuracy, "Dinner, the role-playing game," gaming has been infrequent.  The episode after this sage advice was rather flat for me, because, well, I wasn't really following the advice.  By gum, my players were damn well going to follow the clues and SEE THE HORROR of Lester Hale in his Howard Hughes-like squalor, a pathetic creature enslaved utterly to his super-model Demon girlfriend, and they would beat her up with the help of the plucky minority NPC (gad, this is painful to reflect on) and get some Humanity rolls.  Everyone would walk away clean and fresh like an Ivory soap ad.

Nope.  My players, they're strong-willed folks.  They didn't give a damn about Lester Hale--he was a sleazy film producer who probably used the casting couch a lot, so hey, fuck him.  OK, there was a bit of clue-hunting, just because the menfolk got restless.  They found a horribly eviscerated body, and had they poked around more, text-adventure style, they would have found clues.  Wrong.  They concluded that an earlier-spotted demon, Marcus Devereaux's chaffeur (a combat-monster Passer), must have done it.  They blew up the body, went out joyriding in a stolen car, and ditched the car in the river, playing chicken to see who would leave the plunging vehicle first.  (Lucas escaped by use of his tongue parasite demon.  It was a comic moment.)

I did stick a weak Bang at the end of having Catherine (a near-immortal, dignified, vampire-like sorcerer, with a big pile of diaries) recognize said Chauffeur demon from her records as--hey!--one who served her two centuries ago!  Cue strings, fade to black.

Oops, and I need to go out now.  Last night's episode will be summarized later today.  I promise it will also not just be more "they did this, then that"-type crap, but also have detailed commentary on why things went differently, and notes on how Sorcerer handles combat (quite well indeed).

--JB

Hey,

I'm really glad to hear that this game did not fizzle, and that - even though the session remains undisclosed - that the philosophy of play which the rules do support is kicking in.

I have noticed that Sorcerer has sometimes been played as "light sim." As such, frankly, it's a weak game, and people tend to wonder what all the hoopla is about.
- Kickers are treated as character hooks, rather than central scenario components.
- They ignore the combat (or rather, complex conflict) rules in favor of "well, just declare and roll" sequentially.
- The demons are treated much like useful powers, with Humanity remaining undefined as a limiter and balancer.
- The concepts of (a) rolling-victories into sequential rolls and (b) assigning bonuses for quips and minor tactics are not applied, leading to a high failure factor.
- Failures are treated as whiffs.
- Scenario structure conforms exactly to the description in the above post, being essentially indistinguishable from the published scenarios of Cyberpunk 2020, Call of Cthulhu, or Unknown Armies.

I strongly encourage that GMs who are trying out Sorcerer recognize that these are not the modes of play that the rules support well, and that 'porting Sorcerer into them will result in very weak, obviously-railroaded or wandering play.

Best,
Ron

I'm kind of disapointed.  After reading the name of this thread I thought your game's Premise was "What if the WAS only one woman left on Earth?"

I think that could make for a very interesting Premise.  It ties into things men and women say to each other every day and never really give a lot of rational thought to -  "Not if you were the last man on Earth!"  

,Matt G.

I'd just like to start off by saying the above post by Ron is dead-on, and my Actual Play experience bears it out.  Without wishing to be critical of the text of Sorcerer and its supplements, I think that if there is ever a second edition, expanding a good deal on Kickers would be perhaps the single most useful improvement.

Anyway, on with our story.  "Light Sim" is more or less how our game started--I had a lot of vocabulary from the Forge, but of course, no experience.  Or rather, a lot of Sim experience that colored how I made my decisions.  (Today, after looking at my recent designs, I think it may be I'm actually just slightly over the line into the Sim camp, with Exploration of Setting as my particular kink, and a penchant for traditionally-Narrativist tools like Author & Director power currency, etc.  It's an evolving understanding.)

The Kickers the players started with were weak.  I made up a weak one for Morgan, the man-hating Sorcereress--her brother had confronted her about her involvement in witchcraft.  The scene for this proto-Kicker actually played out well in the last game and I failed to mention it.  However, last night it evolved into the real kicker Kyira (Morgan's player) had been waving in my face the whole time.  As part of her concept for her Lore of 1, she had a Demon somewhat by accident; she was a sincere (if rather hardcore) Wiccan with her own little coven that did nothing functional except for the one summoning.  Part of the comedy of the game all along has been the other sorcerers' avoiding clueing Morgan in.  And that was the Kicker--the clash of an innocent, purist ideology with the brutal facts of real sorcery--that played out.

In brief, as part of a Contain spell everyone worked together on, Morgan used Pelleas' Boost Lore for the first (or perhaps second) time ever; I asked Kyira if she'd like to narrate it, and let her know I had a cool idea, if not.  She elected to hear my version, and I narrated for a few minutes about the flood of knowledge this Parasite Demon brought from all its previous hosts, and the righteous rage of generations, and of course, the knowledge of true Sorcery.  It was a fun moment.  This was Bang #1 for the evening.

The players continued to steadfastly refuse to be interested in Hale's plight, and focussed on luring the Bad Guy, "Dr. D" as they'd taken to calling him, into a trap where his bad-ass demon would get contained (in a beer bottle).  I struggled mightily with this, but figured I could make more bad-asses, and really, they were being damned clear about what they wanted.  It would have been very de-protagonizing for a whole plan to whiff without even the chance at bouncing some dice.  So I tossed out the various "clues" (read:  railroading tactics) I'd been planning and let them argue their plan for a while.

There was a very perceptible change of mode for me and the players, where we started working together, instead of at odds with each other.  For me, it was truly electric.

Bang two:  OK, of course Dr. D showed up at the bar where everything went down.  On his arm was--DUM-dum DAAAAH!--Marie, Teh's girlfriend, whom Teh thought Dr. D had deceived him (with drugs) into killing!  This did not, however, cause Teh to carry out a precipitous attack.  He got shot the last time he tried it, and seemed to have learned something from that.  (My thanks to the Necromancy rules in Sorcerer & Sword here--I would have done it anyway, but they made it quite clear how to accomplish "Bring Your Dead Girlfriend Back to Life" game-wise.)

Possible Bang #3 (not sure if it is technically a Bang, since it's something the players did):  Containing the chauffeur.  Well, I hammed it up a good deal, but he tried to drink the beer, and got sucked in, first going all insectoid.  After describing that, and his getting sucked through the neck of a beer bottle, I went, "sksksksksksksksksk!!!" and waggled my hands, suggesting a desperate cockroach.  I live for moments when I can get away with making stupid mouth-sound effects and have them actually support the tension of the moment.  Having the dice rolled only when the demon challenges the Contain is a wonderful use of displacing Fortune from its usual place at the beginning.  It added a lot more suspense for everyone at the table.

A note on the mode-change here:  I think this is where it happened most palpably.  There was some OOC argument about what kind of bottle was given to the Demon, compared against his previous brand (Scotch, as it happens, is what he drank before), and how do we get the cap back on a beer bottle, aaagh, etc.  I just broke in with, "fortunately you thought of that, and part of your spell-working was to fashion a cool-ass, heavy cap from paraffin and lead, covered in various sigils."  End of silly, sim-style argument.  (Was I just railroading here?  I think I followed their characters' group intention, which was after all to have a successful Contain--I felt as if they were trying to de-protagonize themselves and put the kibosh on it in a way that seemed to satisfy everyone.  It also gave Morgan something to do--after serving the fatal beer, grab it and cap it before Dr. D could smash it to free his Demon.)  (Another subtlety not in the text, worth working out:  What is Contain in your game?  Is it tough, defending itself against all assaults with its casting strength, or is its potency only effective against the Contained Demon, vulnerable to being smashed, rubbed out, or otherwise discombobulated?  I opted for the latter, since it was more fun, and quite traditional in the literature.)

A raucous combat followed, which proved Sorcerer's system with flying colors.  It was very easy to track who went when with just the one die roll for everyone (well, one real roll for Dr. D, followed by several one-die defenses).  The Bad Guy had one good chance to get away, but basically was shot to death.  Even with his Stamina Boosted to 10 by his defensive demon (an unpleasant surprise for the PCs), and several amazing rolls, he was reduced to hamburger, failed his Will roll, and dutifully expired thoroughly.  In future I will move toward conflict resolution, though, as it was somewhat lengthy, and shorter "rounds" are part of what I think leads to less Color in describing intent.  (There were several bonus points for style given to Brian, who plays Lucas' Demon with real flair.)

Somewhat incredibly, no bystanders were hurt.  A smoke bomb set off early on helped give the demons free rein to run around.

By using only two or three solid Bangs, I was able to pretty well hand managing play over to the players and was occupied mostly with handling what they threw at me.  It wasn't perfect by any means (the game's original setup by me has some cracks in the foundation, alas), and one complaint was the decisive role played by firearms, but this episode had the maximum intensity from each player and much more colorful descriptions on my part.

Well, I could go on, but that will probably raise enough issues to be worth discussing already, if people want to pick at it, and yes, commentary is of course welcome.

--JB

Edit:  the game is named, as I think I mentioned a thread or two ago, after a song by the same name.  The idea being that the mysterious disappearance of Lester Hale is due to his obsessive girlfriend Demon who in fact has convinced him that she is the Last Girl on Earth.  Dr. Devereaux was in town to "harvest" Hale for some nasty Necromantic purpose.  This was something Dr. D had done before and would do again, preferably with the PC Sorcerer Teh.  Well, so much for that.  Now they'll have Dr. D's Necromantic Token, an undead young woman, and no idea what to do with them.  But I'm sure they will think of something.

Good name, good name. I saw the thread title and thought "Hey! another person who names things after songs!," rapidly followed by "Hey, another Supreme Beings of Leisure fan!"

Hi JB,

Sorcerer was written from the point of view that a gun is actually a rather significant item, in terms of humans and what they can and can't do to one another. It strikes me that a lot of the "here and now" feel that standard/non-tweaked Sorcerer conveys is based on the fact that guns may well kill characters, and that sorcerers who don't want to get shot have to consider their favored mode of defense pretty carefully.

The role of death and protagonism is very, veeery tricky in Sorcerer, and I wish I knew then what I do now ... To reconstruct my mind-set at the time of writing: ideally, if the character is well-constructed including the Kicker, and if play "works" from the get-go, then being killed even early in the second session would still be a good story.

However, realistically, that's probably over-idealized.

[Side note: you did use the half-the-penalties-vanish rule post-combat, didn't you? That alleviates some of the problem ...]

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Your remarks on guns are well-taken.  Any other set of players (well, American players anyway) would have made damn certain they had some firearms.  But then, my old players (and I) had a standard mantra for the modern setting:  "Buy Stealth.  Buy a gun skill.  Make sure you have a medic."  And two of the four PCs are somewhat naive as part of their character concept.  They are definitely growing up in a hurry.  (Lucas' concept is as an ex-assassin, so he brought enough guns for everybody!)  Practically everyone wants to summon new demons, and of course they could bind that Power 8 badass they have stuck in an eldritch beer bottle.  Muahahahaha.

It really worked quite well in that, after sending in a demon to "soften up" a target, the hapless Teh got shot right in the first episode, thankfully not badly, but the seriousness of getting shot was made abundantly clear.  And I did forget the "half-off sale" rule at first but everyone knows it now.  I think a little note right on the character sheet next to the damage track would be quite a dandy thing, actually.  Maybe the Amazing Ben could do a design?

--JB