So, Friday the 30th was the last session of the Bibliophage Sorcerer campaign. There was gunplay. There were demons. Candelabras were swung in anger. Some people even used naughty words. Details below.

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I'm going to go through this one pretty quickly since some of it can be summed up in that fashion, then talk a little bit about what worked and what didn't and what I'd do differently the next time.

Before we got started, I made a point of mentioning that pretty much anybody worthy of the name 'sorcerer' was probably one kind of bastard or another, and things might get a little heated during the big finale, and that we should all remember to keep the Bastard Character separate from the Player. :)

Anyway, when we last left our h -- um... protagonists, Sean O'Neil (Shannon's father) had just stepped out from behind a pillar in the great chamber that was somehow connected to or part of the entity known as the Bibliophage. This ended up being a bit of a shock to Shannon since, you know, Sean's her dad and he's supposed to be kind of dead-for-four-years. She hit him.

As the session started (later than we'd planned, unfortunately, but that didn't turn out to be a huge problem), I informed Shannon's player that we could handle the punch one of two ways: either it could be a color thing -- she pops him one, doesn't have to roll, and the hit has no game-mechanics effect but a nice dramatic one for 'free' -- or she could actually roll for it and face the possible downsides of blowing the roll and the possible upsides of popping Sean in the mouth.

She opted to roll and wonder of wonders the Librarian actually tagged Daddy. This ended up kind of sucking for Sean later, because he had a lasting penalty during the rest of the 'negotiations'. Ahh well.

Anyway, Sean stayed reasonbly calm in the face of his fractious offspring and invited everyone into the center of the chamber to sit down, lay aside arms, and talk over the situation.

Hmm. Long story short: everyone was pretty on-edge. Val and Ken entered the center area of the chamber and each took one of the mismatched chairs that were arranged off to the side and near the vast (virtual? metaphorical?) bookshelves that surrounded the central area. Sean sat down. Candace Lynn Voight sat down. Yvonne was pretty nervous and stayed standing. Shannon was pissed off and not only stayed standing but really didn't even come fully into the central area -- kind of lurking in the shadows of the entrance and sometimes moving back off into the pillars.

The central area was, by way of quick discription, basically a large circular area bounded by walls of bookshelves. Within this was a large magic circle (which Shannon determined was both a Contain (keep demon in) and a Ward (keep demons out). Within the circle was a moat-like body of vicous, undulating fluid (black demon blood?) that surrounded a large open book resting on a pedestal -- said book appeared to be... umm... writing itself.

So, once the people that were willing to sit were doing so, Sean gave his spiel.

Summary: "If we release this thing, it will destroy all the sorcerers in the world, other than us. Not only will is collect thier knowledge here, in this place, but it removes all others like us in the world. We will be free to do as we like without censure from our peers, choose who we like as our heirs, and direct the path of sorcerers for generations to come -- things will eventually get back to the way they are today, but by then we'll be dead, so who cares? No, you weren't originally going to be part of the plan, but your ability to even get to this place proves you're worth inclusion."

Ken was enough of a businessman and Val enough of a schmoozer that they were both able to look and sound completely interested in this offer. Shannon wasn't anything of the kind, but she wasn't really in line of site of Sean. (In fact, at this point, she walked back into the pillared shadows of the outer chamber and grabbed a big brass candlestand, not quite sure who or what it would be used on, but pretty sure it was going to get used on someone.)

The details of the ritual for releasing the Bibliophage were pretty simple -- the only real downside was that the first sorcerer (and it had to be a sorcerer) to step into the circle and begin the rite would be consumed by the Bibliophage -- it was, in fact, the role CLV and Sean O'Neil had groomed "the regrettable" Mr. Jerry Rubinek for -- technically a Sorcerer, but too ignorant and greedy to know better.

BANG
Sean suggested they use Yvonne for the 'starting position' instead.

(Note: if we seemed to get to this point very quickly, that's the retelling -- I'm skipping about an hours worth of conversation with O'Neil and between the players in OOC regarding the details of the situation.)

Right about here, most of the player's wanted to try to find out where everyone else really was, emotionally, in regards to this deal. Obviously, no one sitting down was going to be outright dismissive of the offer (after a few Lore checks, it became obvious that Sean had quite a few different telltales -- lots of demonic influence there), but folks wanted to know who was on whose side.

Since Humanity was defined as Empathy for this game, I decided on Humanity rolls to give people a sense of what was going on behind the facades presented to the group. BEFORE this, however, I had all the players openly discuss where their characters fell on this subject. Then, if Player A got a good Humanity roll on Player B, they could interpret the information that Player B had just shared regarding their character.

Now, for various personal reasons, no one was actually interested in Sean's deal (some thought it was just plain evil, some just didn't want to go into cahoots with the guy). After the Humanity rolls, this is what the character's knew:
* Val knew that neither Shannon or Ken was on Sean's side.
* Ken thought Shannon was against Sean, but Val seemed pretty much in favor the plan...
* Shannon thought Ken was against the plan, but was pretty damn sure Val was a sellout.

What this meant was that Val thought the odds were basically 4 on 2, while the other two thought of it was an even 3-3 split.

GM: "It amuses me that you'd rather kill your Dad right now, rather than let loose something that's just going to kill a bunch of bastard sorcerers you've never met."

Jackie: "I don't know that any of those sorcerers are really bad people, but I'm pretty damn sure my dad is."

Hi Doyce,

I love big blowout scenes in Sorcerer. They tend to end so ... non-RPG-like, and yet very satisfyingly in terms of events, damage, and themes.

I particularly liked that smack in the kisser that Sean received first thing. Of course it gave him a lasting penalty for the rest of the scene. And of course that penalty played a big roll in some of his failed defensive rolls (most significantly the shotgun blast) from that point on. Arguably, Yvonne's action was the single defining moment of the whole session - do you think some of the other player-characters would have said "yeah, sacrifice her," if she hadn't shown some spine? I do.

Sometimes people can be shocked at how badly temporary penalties can hose a character in the middle of a fight scene in Sorcerer, especially people who are used to walking through tons of damage. The only solution at that point is composed of tactics, role-playing bonuses, full defense, and cunning Will manipulations. But hey, even if the big bad guy goes down, gets hit again, and stays down ... then good! Think of how satisfying that is in story-terms rather than gamer-terms (which presuppose there ... must ... be ... a long ... fight!).

I'm glad you like the game, Doyce. I'll be very interested in what you come up with next.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Agreement all around on the final fight. On the one hand, the players were thinking they should have walked away bleeding from the thing, and they pretty much came off undamaged.

Then one of them pointed out that they had brought guns, more than a 1:1 ratio of demons, and frankly outnumbered the enemy. That's how those things go. *I* pointed out that the Big Fight had been back with the Moth Demons -- sometimes the hero gets to the Evil Mastermind and just kills him -- the real conflict is in his head.

Then someone pointed out Ken's gored lip, Humanity of 1, and Shannon pointedly not watching her friends dump her dying father into a pool of demon blood, or Val watching his Demon do the same with his mentor.

Undamaged? Whatever gets you through the night.

It was a pretty 'traditional' game. Vanilla setting, vanilla descriptors, et cetera. What I really enjoyed about it was that this 'vanilla' game still got down into the guts of the characters and stirred around with a sharp stick. We might never go back to this particular group, but I doubt the players will forget them.

One really interesting exchange during a game break came when I mentioned that killing someone would mean a Humanity Check.

Player: But you could kill someone by accident... just roll too well and get a Humanity check.

Me: Very unlikely. Hugely unlikely, really. With Sorcerers -- they basically need to have x4 Stamina in penalties AFTER the lasting penalties are halved when the fight ends.

Player: You have to hit them that hard? Doesn't seem realistic.

Me: It's not, absolutely. You can put a guy down easily enough [nods and groans all around], but when it's an important character, it's cinema, not reality -- you have to get up in that guy's face and put a bullet in it. It's not about reality at that point -- it's about you as the *player* deciding that your character really wants this guy dead, and that he's willing to risk his humanity on it -- it's a very conscious choice. Humanity checks don't ever happen by accident.

I think I saw a light come on right then. Took eight sessions, but I think something really clicked.

So... was that really Shannon's father, or Shannon's father twisted and evil after years of being Eeeeeeevil and therefore not the same person, or something else entirely pretending ot be Shannon's father?

I know, it's sort of academic and maybe the counter of having an ambiguous narrative ending. Call me an Actual Play junkie.

Other than that, I'm envious. Really envious. Still haven't corralled a real honest-to-God game into action. But I'm working on it. Are you going to do Sorcerer right away again?

Ron: this next question is for you, and it may be a new thread in a new forum. Is the technique of shared story authorship a technique uniquely wihtin the Nar box? Is it a required, if nor sufficient, condition for Nar play?

It was really Shannon's father. Probably something that I've not illustrated very well in my actual play posts that came out in the game was the fact the Shannon never really knew her Dad at all. He and her mom divorced fairly early -- Mom moved to California with the kids, and Shannon developed something of a fixation on Dad -- compounded by several facts:

a) Her older sister seemed to know him better and didn't ever feel inclined to share.
b) Mom wouldn't talk about him at all.
c) Dad never put much effort into getting to know her -- a couple birthday cards and gifts.

When Sean 'died' Shannon leapt at the chance to get to know her dad by going through his belongings -- in the process, she found out he was a Sorcerer and decided to carry on in his footsteps (got a job at the University, studied the dark arts, et cetera) as a way of meeting him -- idolizing his existence, really. Any thread of information that lead her to more information on Dad was pursued, because she was so hungry for any of it.

The fact of the matter is, Sean didn't become evil or bad or whatever -- he was always a pragmatic, cold-blooded, egocentric bastard. Shannon just didn't know that, or chose to ignore information that indicated such things. The father in her head is a far better man than Sean O'Neil.

(Of course, that's if you ask me. If you ask the player, she'll simply tell you "That wasn't him.")

Doyce, ok that computes.

Also, I was wondering about just how cold-blooded you'd have to be to kill off all other Sorcerers, including your own daughter. But that setup makes sense.