Hello!

My first game of Sorcerer has reached the end of the first "chapter", with a sort of temporary resolution, and this is a good time to think about what worked and what didn't.

I posted some details about the setting and the characters when we started, in september. We couldn't play every week, so we got to play a total of 5-6 sessions until now. But for various reasons (first of all, the fact that I had to explain every rule every time, losing a lot of time -but it's not the only reason) really little happened in each session.

All in all, the glass is half full, the players are interested and play their characters with partecipation. But I don't think that I applied well the system and didn't get the results I wanted.

The problems I had:

1) I already cited this: I am the only one who did read the game manual, so I have to explain the rules every time. I have to list the powers available to the demons and how they work, and I have to do it during play. And this is worsened by what I see as a lack of collaboration by the players in this aspect.

It's someything that enrage me, the general deep-rooted idea (from years playing a lot of "tradition" games) that only the GM need to know the rules, or that you only have to show up at the game to be entertainted, without having to work for it. It was the principal reason I stopped GMing for a while, some time ago, before discovering The Forge. Now with this group is not so bad, but I am still very sensibilized to this issue.

It's not so bad because I see these players work for the game. One of them has drawn every player character and their demons, and is writing a sort of "chronicle" of what is happening (without me asking her to do so). Others have shown willingness to set aside time to play even when they didn't have time for more important things. But this don't extend to reading the rules. I even wrote a short synopsis of the rules (only the most used ones, divided in section, with each section on oe page: one page for demon creation, one for the rituals, one for combat, one for character creation, etc, eight pages in all, with big fonts e little text in each one). I think that nobody did read them. In the last fight of last session, they complained that I had forgot to tell them about a rule that I had written in big letters at the beginning of the combat page...)

At this time I don't think I can challenge this anymore. It's too deep-ingrained. (and, anyway, it's not 100% solvable, some of them can't read English and I can' translate all the game manuals), I have to work around it. A very difficult thing, I discovered, with Sorcerer.

The problem is compounded by the unwillingness from the players to see it as a problem.  For example: we took a lot of time to create the characters. For each one I had to read to them all the options from the game manual (that is beginning to break at the spine after all these readings...), expecially from the list of demon powers. I wanted to create all of them together but it was impossibile, too many questions and doubt at once and when I checked the sheets I discovered that everybody missed some passages or got the procedure wrong, so I had to do every character and every demon with the player before beginning to explain again the procedure to the following one.  It took two session of play.  So when one of the player (the one who play Green Snake) wanted to evoke another demon, I asked him to contact me during the week to talk about it and avoid wasting precius session time explaining to him all the options.

For different problems we had to wait three weeks until the next session, and in all that time (even if we had seen each other many times and I always reminded him) he didn't think about the demon. At the end I had almost to shout at him by phone some hours before the game to get him to give me a general idea about the kind of demon he wanted, I studied the game manual on these kind of powers, and I arrived to the game at least a little prepared. Too little, because we still passed more than half of the game session to create his demon and evoke it, while the other players waited. At the end of the game session, THAT SAME PLAYER complained that it took too much. He simply didn't see any problem or any fault in his behaviour: he had no time to read the manual and after all, I was the GM, no? [In his defence, it WAS a very busy time for him at work, with a lot of all-nighters on a project, and he had really little free time. But three weeks are still three weeks, and he found the time to talk to me about other things]

As I said, this is a problem of my gaming group, not of the game. But Sorcerer need, at least at first, A LOT of rule-checking and handling of the manual, and having to do it by myself every time mean losing a lot of time every session.

For the next problem I have to assume part of the fault myself....

2) The impression I got from reading the game manual and a lot of threads about Sorcerer here (correct me if I got that wrong) is that Sorcerer play should go like this: everybody narrate what his/her character(s) do in a rather informal and not structured way, until a clear conflict of interests between characters happen. Then everybody involved in that conflict declare the intention of his/her character, we roll dice, and the players act in the order dictated by the dice fleshing their intention into what "really happen". I got this right?

In this way, the detailed explanation of what the character REALLY DO happen AFTER the dice get rolled, do that their results can be inglobated in the narration and inform it. This is, I understand, the nature of a fortune-in-the-middle resolution.

Well, this did not happen in my sessions. Maybe I talked too much about the bonus dice for cool narration. Maybe it's still the habits of years with task resolution and fortune in the end. But what I got during the game was almost often very detailed (and beautiful) descriptions of very athmospheric actions by their character from the players, that left for me only to roll to see the effect, like in a fortune-at-the-end game. For example, when Singing River talked to his little brother Yellow Frog (see Singing River's kicker), the player made a very thoughtful speech about love and responsibily, that really made almost diseapper in my mind the conflict of interests (in DitV, I would have given right then), before we even rolled dice. At that time, what was left was only to decide the effect on Yellow Frog. What would have happened if she made a really bad roll? How could we justify her good speech? Ignore it? At the end I simply gave her a lot of bonus dice, rolled hoping she won, and when she won the dice simply confirmed what had already happened.

I know that what I should have done is stop her at the beginning, say "wait a little, what you want to talk about? What Singing River is trying to do? Let's clarify this, then we roll and after we have seen the dice we decide how to play with these results". Then if she still wanted to say that speech even after losing the conflict she could have descripted the same speech but with a Yellow Frog that refused to listen to her, for example.

So why I didn't stop her? (or, in general, why I didn't stop this way of playing?). The reasons are many. One is that I tried for years to get from them this kind of dramatic playing in other "traditional" games, without getting it, and now that I finally get it it's difficult to say "no, now I don't want it anymore, I want this other way of play instead". Another is that, diplomatically at the table, I am trying to "sell" to the players a new game system, and beginning with a "no, stop doing what you are enjoing" would be a public relations disaster. I hoped to push the game to a more "fortune-in-the-middle" kind of playing slowly, using the combat rolls to show it.

What I didn't anticipate was that playing in this way the players could avoid a lot of conflicts. There were very few conflicts and only two armed fights in three months of play. And this is problem number three...

3) I made a big error really at the start of the game. I was tired after two entire sessions used to do the characters, I had already tried to explain the concept of the Kicker a lot of times but the players were tired like me and were at the end of their attention span. So after refusing the first 4-5 tries at the end I capitulated and said "ok, good enough" to the kickers listed in the old thread.

The next session showed that they were not good at all. I started confronting Root with her kicker. The player then began to plead with his brother, in the detailed manner described above, started to win conflicts to get him to talk, had his intention explained to her, and changed his mind with a good heartfelt speech. The scene was very good in a dramatic sense, but she had resolved her characters literal kicker in less that 15 minutes...

The exact same thing happened with Green Snake's kicker and Singing River's kicker. Talk, win conflics, get sincere explanation, convince, end of the kicker.

The only one that I could build on was the one of "run in the night", so I used it to "kick" the other players too. I thought about asking for other kickers but I didn't want to repeat the sequence of "not, this is not a kicker" from the last session, and the players wanted to play at last, so I tried instead to "extract" the basilar conflicts from each Kicker. From Root's Kicker I got that the player was interested in a menace to her love to Green Snake, so I created another tied to the return of Blade of Grass (Blade of Grass is on a mssion that will separate her from Green Snake). From Singing River's kicker I got that she is interested in being forced to choose between the village and her old family and her relationship with Falling Sky (the demon). To differentiate this from Root's kicker I applied a different kind of menace, but stil, tied to Blade of Grass return.  For Green Snake it was the temptation of power.

I did find thing of interest to the player to play in this manner, but without thinking I had returned to the old way: "create something that you think will interest the players", without their active and explicit partecipation. Coupled with the fortune-at-the-end problem this gave the game a very "traditional" feel, that smothered its collaborative aspects.

The blood opera did not appear at all. And believe me, I tried. Most of the bangs I used were things that put the character against each other, to see a little of blood in this opera, but nothing really worked. I had NPCs explain to Singing River how his husband's death was directly Green Snake's fault, but the players said that she did not believe it. Root discovered that Green Snake did torture women, but she believed (without rolling) his explanations. I had varius NPC tempt the characters with what they wanted if they did act against the others, but they never did.

What they did when they created the character was simply a way to making them "interesting", in the way the rivality between a Dwarf and an Elf can be fun to play in a D&D party, but with no intention whatsoever to "fight inside the group", and they didn't.  This surprised me, because in other narrative games recently they did not have these problems in fighting between themselves. And the background they choose this time is really extreme for this kind of "harmless" use! I think that the "strangeness" of the other games helped them getting out of old habits, while playing Sorcerer (and with the problem I listed above in using the system) seeemed more "usual".

So, apart from the failed tries to get them to fight between themselvees, I tried the following bangs during the game:

Backstory:
- "Blade of Grass" now is called "Nisha", she was kidnapped as a child in the forest by a group of mercenaries that were searching for the infant Green Snake. She tricked them saving her tribe (and Green Snake) from death, risking the wrath of the mercenaries, but their boss, a Sorcerer, liked the child's courage and took her as a slave/apprentice.
- Green Snake is the child of the old imperator, his family was killed to the last children (apart from him) when his uncle seized the power. A nurse left the small child to the river in a basked to save him, the Sorcerer was in the service to the new emperor and was given the task of finding the child and assure the new rules of his death. Now, after all these years, his allegiances are changed. The Sorcerer now serve someome (still unnamed) who could be very interested in a heir to the old dinasty (even more it it's a mallable boy-savage) to use against the emperor. Nisha saw the occasion, revealed at last to his master that she triked him all these years ago, and offer an exchange: her liberty against the old emperor's heir. She wil return to her old village and get him. She is now a very powerful sorceress (with a total of seven demons about her, counting even the ones pacted)

some bangs:
- Well, when Nisha say to Green Snake that he is, in fact, the heir of the biggest empire in the world...
- To Run in the Night Nisha offer her sincere friendship, she want to help her old village to "become powerful" teaching sorcery to others in the tribe. All she need to make it so is Run in the Night's help in convincing Green Snake to go with her. Without her wife: an Emperor can't have a tribeswoman as a wife.
- His adopted mother say to green snake that she is not talking to him anymore because she recognized his new telltale: her old husband had one exactly like it, and she has to kill him to avoid hi tortures...
- The other tribe has got help from someone, and will attack the village in the future. Green Snake is the cause of the war. Nisha says that without her help, the village has no chance.
- Fast Arrow see Singing River with Falling Sky, is terrified, and ask his sister (Run in the night) to "save" Singing River from that demon.
- Falling Sky noticed Fast Arrow spying on them, and want to kill him. Only Singing River's directs order are stopping him now. Fast Arrow is, remember, Run in the Night's brother.

There were many others more "local" but these are the long-lasting ones. As you see, they are meant to drive wedges between the characters forcing them to choose and maybe fight between themselves. But at the end nobody did, they always staied together against Nisha.

At the same time, they were very, very afraid of Nisha (that had a lot of "special effect" to intimidate them with her demons), and they always avoided conflicts with her.

With the players avoiding any conflict between themselves, and avoiding conflicts with Nisha, I think you can see why whe had the problem of too few conflicts.

4) This is instead a problem I have discovered I have with two aspect of the game, and not little ones the bonus dice and the humanity rolls.

I mean: I have no problem with them as concepts. But I have seen that during the game I have a lot of difficulty in giving bonus dice and asking for humanity rolls.

With humanity, is a combination of having chosen the definition myself (without the players input) with them always stretching my definition to suit their purposes, and the way (that I already described) they act in character without specifying often their intention. So the problem is often WHEN to ask for a humanity check. Why now and not ten minutes ago? When the purposes are discovered little by little, it's difficult to find a motivation for asking a roll right there right now. So I asked for very few humanity rolls (not more that 2-3 I think, apart from the ones mandatory in the summonings)

-----------

So, in conclusion: it's not that I didn't like the game. It's that its not "sorcerer" enough, with all the concession to "traditional" habits that I left.

In the last session, the players character finally confronted Nisha (a confrontation forced by her, by the way) and did beat her (by banishing almost all of her demons with Root's humanity), so now I think they will be less afraid of confrontations. Nisha fleed, Singing River and Falling Sky are pursuing her to stop her telling her master where is Green Snake. Run in the Night want to evoke another demon and after that want to "save" Nisha from what she has become. It's the end of a chapter and I want to use it to change things.

I am going to push the PC much more physically (with physical confrontations) and less about morality, and pushing them to (at last) humanity rolls. More "apocalypto" and less "dogs in the jungle", and start really using the system

What do you think about this?

Hey Moreno,

A couple of assumptions first: from your post it sounds like you've played through a first run of Sorcerer in this setting, Kickers have been resolved, and you're ready to start up round 2.  You're looking for ways to improve this next phase.  Right?

Okay, so once Kickers get resolved have the players write new ones.  This could be a great opportunity for them to give you some direct feedback on where they want the game to go and also spice up their interest in what's happening (by giving them authorial power).  And this next time around you have the chance to make their Kickers 'stickier' than they were the first time.  When a Player writes a Kicker that seems relatively simple on the surface that's when you get busy tying it into the backstory, ensuring that no matter what happens trying to resolve it will create serious ripples.

As for Bangs and Players avoiding conflict, one technique that I've found helpful is creating Bangs where the PCs have multiple things they WANT to do but probably don't have the resources to accomplish them all because everything is happening RIGHT NOW!  Like, you want to stop the mercenaries from running off with the child you're supposed to be protecting but as you go to chase them, a rebellious demon starts to tear into the village.  I like these kind of Bangs because they call for difficult decision making (or clever conflict resolution as the Player tries to save everything) but your options are to choose between action and action.  It seems to work with the kind of proactive protagonists you find in Sword and Sorcery literature.

All righty, and now for something that might risk a flogging from Ron.  Maybe you should try changing your definition of Humanity at this point.  I read your definition in your first post and it sounded like an idea ripe for the 'dual-humanity' concept in Sex and Sorcerer.  One definition of humanity is loyalty to the tribe (and whatever that means in your setting) and the other is compassion for individuals.  It sounds like you have both these concepts mixed up in your current definition of Humanity and it might create a more dynamic game situation if you pitted the two ideas against each other.

Any of that help or spur any further ideas?

Tor

Moreno, I have to study for exams this week so I won't be very helpful.

But here is one way to make demon creation go easier.  Instead of reading all the demon descriptions to the players, just ask them:
* Tell me: what is your demon like?
* What are the kinds of things it can do?
* Why did you summon it?
* How did you bind it?

And let them answer based on their imagination, not the rules.  Then you can "translate" their answers into the rules of the game. 

Regarding the rules for conflicts; they take a little while to get used to, particularly if the players haven't read the rules.  I'd begin with a bunch of simple conflicts--maybe more than are necessary--just to help the players learn to read the dice, and learn about bonus dice for narration and roll-overs.  Then, gradually move into some simple combat against "easy" opponents (one hit and they go down) to teach players about the option of defending.  Rather than explaining all the rules, start small, and have the players learn by doing.

From personal experience I found that once we created demons the way James describes (think of the powers you want the demon to have, then go to powers list) my perception of that list opened up dramatically.  I went from seeing it as a fairly rigid number of powers to a pretty damn flexible and versatile system.  Every NPC demon I've created since has been cooler and more thematically complete.

Two things, though: It's probably a good idea to communicate with the Players about demon power levels as they list off the things they would like their demon to do.  It's pretty easy if you're not thinking about Power and Lore to make a monstrously strong demon without really meaning to.  And second, while discussing the demon with the Player it may become clear that certain abilities don't really have any in-game effect and can just be described as Color (or even a Telltale....).

In regards to the conflict and bonus dice issue I was running into similar problems so I did a little write-up to present to the players detailing how to get bonus dice in a Sword and Sorcerer campaign.  Let me know and I can private message you a copy.

Tor

Hi Tor!

Tor wrote:
Hey Moreno,

A couple of assumptions first: from your post it sounds like you've played through a first run of Sorcerer in this setting, Kickers have been resolved, and you're ready to start up round 2.  You're looking for ways to improve this next phase.  Right?

When a Player writes a Kicker that seems relatively simple on the surface that's when you get busy tying it into the backstory, ensuring that no matter what happens trying to resolve it will create serious ripples.

All righty, and now for something that might risk a flogging from Ron.  Maybe you should try changing your definition of Humanity at this point.  I read your definition in your first post and it sounded like an idea ripe for the 'dual-humanity' concept in Sex and Sorcerer.  One definition of humanity is loyalty to the tribe (and whatever that means in your setting) and the other is compassion for individuals.  It sounds like you have both these concepts mixed up in your current definition of Humanity and it might create a more dynamic game situation if you pitted the two ideas against each other.

James_Nostack wrote:
Moreno, I have to study for exams this week so I won't be very helpful.

But here is one way to make demon creation go easier.  Instead of reading all the demon descriptions to the players, just ask them:
* Tell me: what is your demon like?
* What are the kinds of things it can do?
* Why did you summon it?
* How did you bind it?

And let them answer based on their imagination, not the rules.  Then you can "translate" their answers into the rules of the game. 

Regarding the rules for conflicts; they take a little while to get used to, particularly if the players haven't read the rules.  I'd begin with a bunch of simple conflicts--maybe more than are necessary--just to help the players learn to read the dice, and learn about bonus dice for narration and roll-overs.  Then, gradually move into some simple combat against "easy" opponents (one hit and they go down) to teach players about the option of defending.  Rather than explaining all the rules, start small, and have the players learn by doing.

Tor wrote:
In regards to the conflict and bonus dice issue I was running into similar problems so I did a little write-up to present to the players detailing how to get bonus dice in a Sword and Sorcerer campaign.  Let me know and I can private message you a copy.