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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Ingenious wrote: 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?

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

Ingenious wrote: 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...

Ingenious wrote: 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.

Ingenious wrote: 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.

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