I'm starting a new game of Sorcerer and Sword tonight, called "Under the Blood Sun." It's loosely based on the Clicking Sands setting from S&S, with a few bizarre changes.

I'm going to post about it tomorrow, but I thought I'd throw up a link now to my notes and resources for it. (http://www.anvilwerks.com/docs/bloodsun). I'm planning on putting all my NPCs, creatures, maps, and other stuff there so other people can use them as resources. If your name happens to be Dan Root or James Cunningham, you may or may not want to follow the link, depending on how well you can separate player and character knowledge.

At least I can see all I'm missing :P

I'm moving out this week, sorry to hear you're not making it to GenCon, but I'll be very interested to see what comes of it.

Chris

Week 1: Alleys and Shadows

(I know the below is a little of "we did this, then we did that." I'm gushing because I had so much fun, and there's good "we learned this" stuff in there, too, I promise.)

We started our game last night, and it went off much, much better than I expected. We've decided to do some "jumping through time" in terms of the story, which I've broken into three parts:

(note - this will make more sense if you go to the above link and find out more about the PC's. I don't see the need to re-type it all.)

A. In The Beginning - the story of how Noom and Denn came to travel together and depend on each other's strengths. We actually have no idea how this is going to happen yet.

B. Secrets and Lies - Denn re-visits his past in Esarham and determines what course his life will take, and Noom finds out the truth about Doktor Gilton, the "demon" inside him.

C. Ascension - Noom tries to bring a new god to his homeland, the Northern Veldt, and Denn faces his biggest challenge yet in Darwin's Horde.

We're starting with Part B, and plan to jump back to A, then C.

The game started with the PC's in the city of Esarham. Denn had been part of a bandit group that razed the city 10 years previously, so it was a bit of a homecoming. The town had been rebuilt, but seemed to be quite anti-mutant, so both PC's had to be careful not to expose themselves.

What we noticed most about Sorcerer is how fast the story flies. We got right to the meat in no time. We started with Noom's Kicker - he saw a girl out of the corner of his eye that appeared to be made of silver - the same Telltale he has, indicating a scientist from the 43rd Century was inside her, too.

Noom and Denn quickly found out that the girl, Oralee, was the daughter of the town's High Despot, Boris Baadsgaard. The town had a moisture collector, a piece of high-technology machinery that Doktor Gilton, Noom's possessor demon/scientist, knew how to work, so Noom sought employment with the Despot in order to get a chance to speak with his daughter.

Unfortunately, Noom's very open about what he wants and he told the Despot flat out that he needed to talk about science with his daughter. The Despot didn't react well, but James, Noom's player, rolled really well, and managed to convince the Despot to let him. Denn also noticed a distinctive tattoo on the Despot's hand - he was at one time, at least, a member of the same bandit gang as Denn had been when he razed Esarham.

The next scene was in the Despot's house at dinner. Denn and Noom fixed the moisture collector to work much better than it was, so the Despot asked them to dinner and gave Noom a chance to speak to Oralee - in front of the Despot. The Despot was also brandishing a piece of ancient technology, a laser rifle.

Doktor Gilton spoke through Noom's mouth, and scared Oralee enough that her own demon/scientist, Professor Winfred Zeborski, took control. Boris, the Despot, got angry and pulled his laser rifle on Noom, which led into combat.

Combat in Sorcerer is awesome. I really wasn't sure - I'd never run a real combat scene in the game before. I'd run a few small modern-day skirmishes, but nothing with real life or death consquences. Denn, who has a Stamina of 8, is as much of a monster as any of us expected. The bonus dice for cool actions also helped - he kicked his chair back into one guard and hit another one over his shoulder when they attacked him from behind, and floored them both, with some help from Noom swinging his spear like a baseball bat.. The really cool thing, though, was that he hit the table separating him from the Despot, knocked the laser rifle from his hands, caught it, and then flipped the table back on the Despot. All in all, it was a completely rocking combat.

The big thing that happened, though, was Professor Zeborski - Oralee's scientist - escaping with Noom when he got his scientist, Gilton, to Warp a hole in the wall. Noom, Denn, and Zeborski ran through the town and ended up hiding in a tiny room. It ended up that Zeborski had very little control over her host body, and wasn't even Bound to Oralee - she was Bound to the Despot. She only had about 10 minutes to convey information, and became upset that Gilton didn't know how to separate her from the host body.

When Oralee regained control, she was rightfully scared, but Noom and Denn managed to calm her enough to tell her what was really going on. The poor girl had no idea what was inside her - she knew it was there, but didn't understand it. It had apparently been in her since birth, and thus couldn't even manifest itself normally.

Noom and Denn promised to get information back to her about how to separate her and the demon/scientist when they found out, and escaped from town using an escape route she showed them.

-----

This leaves the characters with lots of stuff to do for the next game:

* Noom and Doktor Gilton have to find out how to separate a dimension-hopping scientist's consciousness from a host body, especially considering that the two are completely linked, unlike Noom and Gilton.
* Of course, this knowledge could completely threaten their sorcerer/demon relationship in that Noom could get rid of Gilton, or Gilton could get rid of Noom.
* Denn found out that Oralee was promised to be wed to Denver Gurkin, a man he was once in the bandit gang with. In addition, the Grand Despot was apparently in the bandit gang. He told Oralee he'd convey information back to her through Denver Gurkin, but he has to (a) meet Gurkin again, (b) convince Gurkin and his men not to kill him, and (c) convince them to cooperate, which is going to be hard considering the Despot kind of hates him and Noom now.
* Denn's demon martial arts nemesis is in the area somewhere. He's bound to show up.

What we did wrong

I don't think I used Bangs as much as I should have. There were some slow points early on in the game, but once it got going, it really got going.

I also think I focused more on Noom's story this game. I hope to focus on Denn's more for next to balance it.

What we did right

We sat down and figured out Sorcerer combat. Once you get it, it's not hard.

The players really remembered to use cool descriptions to get bonus dice.

The players, especially James, had no problem getting themselves in trouble to drive the story. He actually went much further than I expected, throwing me for a loop.

I didn't railroad, which was exciting. I fully expected the game to end differently, but managed to flow with it.

Two things I forgot:

- I'm enjoying this game as much as any game I've ever played in the past.

- I now have a map of the game up at http://www.anvilwerks.com/docs/bloodsun.

- Clinton

Clinton,

Somewhat off topic, but I've noticed that you and Pete Seckler both create pretty nice maps for your games. I haven't seen Campaign Cartographer for a couple of software releases. Is this what it's capable of now? Or are you using something else?

Paul

Paul,

Actually, this was my first map I've created. I used a combination of Fractal Mapper and Paint Shop Pro (PSP only for the labels).

Peter actually does all of his in Paint Shop Pro, last time I checked with him. I think he does start by doing a lot of his freehand and then scanning them in. I, on the other hand, am a piss-poor artist, so I do them all in the software.

Clinton,

What can I say? This is stupendous. I think the game's website is brilliant and the game itself sounds better than most people even imagine role-playing sessions can be.

Over time, it would be vastly appreciated if you could post notes on what you all do, in terms of plain old play, using rules, and interactions. I'd very much like to point unhappy role-players to this page and say, "That's what we're talking about."

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Don't worry - I definitely will be posting all of this. By the end of the campaign, I'll have notes on every NPC, every week of play, and all rules problems/fixes we had/did, all archived on the game's web page.

I have to admit that I'm crazy proud of the game's web page. Try hitting "Print Preview" on any of the pages - you'll see that it formats itself for easy printing for others' use.

- Clinton

First off, Clinton, this is very cool. I just bought S&Sword, and it's great to see how someone put it into action.

On maps, have you had lots of success w/ the mapping software? I generally draw freehand with pencils, scan the paper (getting a nice texture out of the deal), the get my Photoshop schwerve on with varying success (check out the Akraia map, a setting not too far gone from Under the Blood Sun post-apoc thingy).

Clinton R Nixon wrote:

I have to admit that I'm crazy proud of the game's web page. Try hitting "Print Preview" on any of the pages - you'll see that it formats itself for easy printing for others' use.

- Clinton

Clinton R Nixon wrote: I have to admit that I'm crazy proud of the game's web page. Try hitting "Print Preview" on any of the pages - you'll see that it formats itself for easy printing for others' use.

Hi Clinton,

I don't know why everyone seems to be having such a tricky time with Bangs all of a sudden. Based on the accounts of play (you, Jesse, Jeffrey), it all seems to be going fine, but somehow everyone seems to have post-session stress syndrome about "I didn't do the Bangs right." What's up with that?

Best,
Ron

I think we all expect two things:

a) That we'll know when we're throwing out Bangs. Personally, I didn't notice throwing any out during the game.

b) That everyone will jump back and slap their face whenever we throw out a Bang.

I think we're all expecting a revelation when Bangs really mean "whenever things get boring, fix that."

Hi Clinton,

That's really well put, and it helps me figure out what to say about it.

Originally, my take on Bangs was that they already existed (ie were used) in general role-playing, but (a) we didn't have a word for it and (b) a lot of people felt odd "interfering" in play by using them, and they experienced cognitive dissonance because play couldn't proceed without them.

The result of (b) was a lot of "wander about" play, which most of us here are familiar with, to which the only viable solution was usually some form of Illusionism. My own experience led me to think that admitting the existence of Bangs (with metagame intent) were OK; the heavens wouldn't open and the deluge would not rain forth if the GM admitted, prior to play, that X and Y and Z might be tossed at the players explicitly. So I gave them a name.

Now, after many moons of Sorcerer play, I am realizing that people grasp what Bangs are pretty well, but they are a bit puzzled about ... for lack of a better term ... how to feel when they are employed. In some ways, we're back to the "transparency" issue. The GM says, "Bang!" and the players go "Spoo!" and play proceeds ... yet somehow, the GM says, that's funny, it worked and it was painless - could that be right?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Now, after many moons of Sorcerer play, I am realizing that people grasp what Bangs are pretty well, but they are a bit puzzled about ... for lack of a better term ... how to feel when they are employed.

Clay wrote: Bang seems like an awkward term, since I first saw this formalized in the context of romance novels.

Best double entendre on this board ever.

Hi there,

I took the term Bang and its definition from David Gerrold's book, The Trouble with Tribbles. I quoted the relevant phrase from that book in the text of Sorcerer, including the explicit sexual analogy.

To get back to the ... errr ... meat of the thread, I think Clay stated the matter so nicely that his post ought to be framed and put up on the wall.

Best,
Ron

I'm one of the two players in this game, reporting late. This was the second time that I've played Sorcerer, the first time being the high school reunion demo that Clinton ran several Sundays before. This time I was more comfortable with the rules, both from the previous experience and from actually reading the mechanics sections of the books beforehand. I was rather excited to play, since both Dan and I seemed to have had fun creating our characters. We had started during the previous week's session but we went into much greater detail on our group's mailing list. When Dan posted his character, I became instantly afraid of his PC's demon. We still haven't seen his demon and I'm still terrified.

The evening began with a discussion of how we wanted to start: Would our characters start out knowing each other? Would our characters start out in the same location? After our Riddle of Steel game, in which we had the enjoyable but nerve-wracking experience of our characters just missing each other several times, we decided that our characters would already knew each other and would begin together, at the same place. Meeting each other would be good for a future episode, set in the past.

We started directly from my character's kicker, and since I often have problems taking action, I had to remind myself that the kicker was a call to action and that I better do something. The game evolved from there. We started with investigatory experiences that got us involved in the story, let us learn about the setting, have a chance to communicate as our characters and explore our characters' personalities a little more.

I think I was bothered at how last week's story centered so much on my character. I was concerned about hogging the spotlight and felt somewhat responsible to get Dan's character's input so that he would be more involved in the situation. I understand that it's normal for the focus of a game to shift from one character to another, but I was feeling guilty. When Clinton had to play the roles of two demons talking to each other, we all felt somewhat awkward. I'm glad that we will be moving out into Denn's tribal territories this Tuesday.

After we got ourselves into enough trouble (okay, my character got us into trouble), we had a chance to use the Sorcerer combat rules, which we all enjoyed. Denn, Dan's character, was able to use his massive stamina to cause all sorts of brutality. Noom, my character, had to be much more careful and I looked for every opportunity to use his demon's abilities.

There were some things that we found silly and had to contain our laughter about. Clinton's voice for my demon was based on his Sean Connery impression, which at first was very hilarious but we learned to accept totally by the end of the session. Just as we learned to totally accept the name of Denver Gurkin. (In fact, I may name my first child Denver Gurkin.)

So far, I'm enjoying this a whole lot. At the start of the session, I was unsure about the dice pools because the results seemed to vary so much, but during the session I was able to see the effect of added dice, so I have more faith in the rules. The demon rules make me nervous, which I believe is part of their design. We were supposed to be working on what direction we wanted to go this Tuesday, but we have done nothing on the mailing list Still, with all the preparatory work that has been done, I have faith that we will have a fine session. (Clinton, are we leaving you with too much of the work?)

Yasha "James" Cunningham

Hi James (Yasha),

One of the neat things about running Sorcerer in my experience is that pre-game prep can be quite heavy, but between-session prep is often quite light - to the point of a few minutes' "hmm hmm," and that's it. I don't know whether Clinton's experiencing the same thing, but that's how it usually goes for me.

Best,
Ron

You know, I'm finding the same thing - and it happened with Riddle of Steel, too. The first week was a heinous amount of work, but after that, it was always about 30 minutes prep time.

- Clinton

We continued our adventures last night (July 16). Here's a wrap-up.

Week 2: Broken Mirrors

Each week, I've been trying to focus another part of the Sorcerer and Sword rules in order to make sure that I'm really using them all to their full potential. Last week, I focused on Bangs. This week, I focused on failed rolls (p. 67). Characters in S&S should just fail - they should be spectacular and impressive even when not accomplishing their goals. I'll show what I did throughout the write-up.

Last week, we left Denn and Noom, our heroes, walking through some underground drainage pipes, escaping from the walled city of Esarham. They knew their way out of the tunnels into the Wastes, but upon hearing some noise down a side tunnel, decided to explore.

The noise was a group of slaves mining for fuel crystals, and two bandit guards watching over them. Denn seized the opportunity to demand to speak to their leader, but managed to confuse them more than anything else. The guards foolishly attacked him, and he wiped the floor with them, although they managed to run away and blow the tunnel, trapping Denn, Noom, and the slaves at the bottom of a mine shaft.

Noom had a great scene after this - he had his scientist/demon, Doktor Gilton, move him through the cave-in using his Travel power, but then got into an argument as Gilton started to demand that Noom pay more attention to him. Gilton felt cheated as he met one of his own (last week) and then promptly got run out of town. He tried to make Noom promise to cooperate in getting him back to town and re-establishing relations with the other scientist/demon, but Noom managed to overpower him.

In the meantime, Denn's demon finally showed up - Kunagi the Destroyer, a 10-foot hyper-rippled man-shaped martial arts master. He busted through the cave-in (while Noom was Traveling back through it, throwing him all around), laughed at Denn, and grabbed the remaining guard, beating him senseless until he found out where the bandit chief, Denver Gurkin, hid. Kunagi had been hunting all remaining initiates of his art in order to kill them all - he spared Denn only because Denn is the most proficient initiate, and Kunagi "wanted to work from the ground up."

Denn and Noom got what they needed, though - they were able to escape from the mine, they released the slaves (all tattooed with a big 'null' symbol on their head - I fully expect to use these guys again in about 5 years game time), and they found out where Gurkin hid. Of course, they weren't going to get there before Kunagi, but at least they had the information.

---

At this point, I, as GM, didn't want to jump straight into a big fight with the bandit chief. It felt rushed, and I really wanted to flesh out the story more. After pausing and talking with my players, we figured out a good course of action: provide a bit of a side-story full of weirdness, "like you'd find in a Fafrhd and Mouser story," according to one of my players, Dan Root. I took a few minutes to think, and then came up with this Canticle for Leibowitz-influenced bit.

---

As Denn and Noom followed Kunagi's trail of destruction across the Wastes, they came to a broken old stone building not far from the Cursed Lake. Upon entering the building, they discovered that it must be inhabited - there were books (books!) strewn about and dust had been cleaned off a wooden desk. They were surprised by a female voice, and spun around to see Rose, a beautiful dusky (Asian/Native American in appearance) woman, looking at them through a doorway. They talked for a moment, and then she said that she had to "wake her husband up." She stepped through the doorway and they saw that she was conjoined to a man with the same facial features and hair, his head lolling around. She woke the other head up, who introduced himself as Hong.

Rose and Hong were the last of their Order, which had been dedicated to preserving ancient knowledge. The rest of their Order, which had apparently all been conjoined couples, had died in raids or of old age. (Rose and Hong, unfortunately, could not conceive. As the GM, I really hope this turns into a whole side-plot.) Upon finding out that all their oxalo (cattle) had been stolen in raids, Denn went hunting to find them meat while Noom let Doktor Gilton talk to Hong about research. Gilton was somewhat happy with Noom for this chance to actually do some research. Most of the books here were of little use to him (most were on Dualist philosophy and Taoism), but there were some good 35th Century Mandarin texts on the nature of zero and the duality of numbers.

---

Denn's hunt was the first time I really remembered as a GM to let failed rolls mean something besides failure, which would be anti-climatic when a big Stamina 8 guy is hunting. Denn was hunting yotes - wild dogs - on the edge of the Cursed Lake and rolled a failure to sneak up on them and jump on one successfully. Instead of just failing, I had him jump at one, only to have 8 foot jaws attached to a 30-foot crocodile-thing come out of the lake, snatching up a yote and sending the rest scattering, with Denn stopped just short of the snarling thing's jaws. Amazingly, Denn jumped on the thing, which led to the coolest Sorcerer fight ever. He held the 'odile's jaws shut, and it tried to roll over (I watch a lot of Crocodile Hunter - this was totally appropriate) in order to get him off or hurt him. Denn used its mass and motion against it to get the animal on its back, then slit its soft underbelly, ripping out the heart with one hand and eating it. (Most badass move EVER.)

---

After earning Rose and Hong's eternal gratitude for hauling home three tons of lizard meat (and providing Hong with a bit of purpose - Noom/Gilton had been the first person in years he'd been able to share knowledge with), Denn and Noom went on their way to find Denver Gurkin and the bandits.

Making their way further across the Wastes, they found dead bandits strewn around. Kunagi had definitely been this way. They found the bandits' hideout only because it was on fire - it was well hidden. Entering the bandits' makeshift village, they found Kunagi and Gurkin fighting.

Denver Gurkin was an enormous man, and was marked with the same martial arts tattoos as Boris Baadsgaard and Denn. While Kunagi should have wiped the floor with him, a surviving bandit opened up on Kunagi's back with a makeshift flamethrower, and Gurkin used the distraction to slam a black rod - a piece of ancient technology called a neural disruptor - across Kunagi's shoulders.

Noom and Denn leaped into action, with Denn distracting the flamethrower guy and Noom firing arrows at him.

---

Again, I tried to use failed rolls to good effect here. Noom kept missing with arrows, but I had the first miss hit the guy's flamethrower tank, causing it to leak fuel. The second time he missed, I narrated it as, "You draw back your bow, about to fire an arrow into the bandit's heart, but see a blur over his shoulder - another bandit with a saber about to leap on Denn. You fire upwards, and drop the bandit with one hit." He missed his stated goal, but it still looked cool.

---

During the intense fight, Gurkin rolled 4 10's with his four dice, knocking Kunagi to the ground in muscle spasms from the neural disruptor. Denn helped Kunagi by attacking Gurkin, and Kunagi was able make a nerve strike on Gurkin (Hold), immoblizing him. Kunagi went in for the kill, but Denn stopped him, saying he needed to ask Gurkin some questions.

Kunagi laughed, and made a deal - he and Denn would fight, and if he lost, he wouldn't slay Gurkin. (This was an explicit Pacting, even though he was already bound to Denn. Denn had +2 on the Binding roll, so got to use those dice in the attack.) Amazingly, after a blistering fight, Denn and Kunagi both dropped to 0 Stamina at the same time. Denn, though, made his Will roll and stood up over Kunagi, realizing he had just beat his own master.

Unresolved issues for next week

- How will Gurkin cooperate? What are they even going to ask him?
- Given that Denn and Noon are responsible for the bandit gang being broken up, how will the town of Esarham survive? (They got their water from a moisture collector that ran on fuel crystals - crystals the slaves provided.)
- What will happen to the knowledge Rose and Hong have kept when they pass away? They are infertile.
- Will Doktor Gilton continue to cooperate with Noom? He's been more and more testy.

[Edit: fixing grammar.]

Clinton R Nixon wrote:
At this point, I, as GM, didn't want to jump straight into a big fight with the bandit chief. It felt rushed, and I really wanted to flesh out the story more. After pausing and talking with my players, we figured out a good course of action:

Golly.

Here are some impressions, just off-the-cuff.

1) I like the idea of a "failed" roll being more of a "ooh! distracted by sudden distraction! must deal!" I've never done that; it's more improv/Director than I usually play Sorcerer. But it works.

2) Boy, that Will roll, made once your penalties outweigh your Stamina, really matters, doesn't it? Really makes that Kunagi fight mean something.

3) Related to the above, I see the Denn/Kunagi relationship being inherently unstable. I could be wrong ... after all, it would be totally on-genre to have Kunagi be a somewhat muted and dependable minion for a long time after the fight ... but I think more meat might come from, basically, pushing the negative side of the demon hard, and culminating in the Final Battle sooner rather than later.

4) I really, really liked the literary reference being used as a touchpoint for constructive dialogue during play.

5) Gurkin is way too neat! Definitely an NPC to love and cherish.

Best,
Ron

Zak,

It didn't upset things at all - it did cause about a 5 minute pause while I thought of something suitably weird, though. My players and I actually do this pretty often: I'll stop after a scene and ask them, "So, what do you want to happen next?" They tell me, and then we do it.

Ron Edwards wrote:
1) I like the idea of a "failed" roll being more of a "ooh! distracted by sudden distraction! must deal!" I've never done that; it's more improv/Director than I usually play Sorcerer. But it works.

Hi Zak,

Lots of metagame dialogue is a big thing in my games, as I've talked about before. I have never observed it to be jarring, except to people who have been brainwashed that it's somehow evil or antithetical to role-playing.

I'd change my phrasing about it, in comparison to Clinton's, that I'll ask what we'd all like to address next, rather than do next, in order to emphasize that actual resolution is a matter of play rather than setup. (I'm pretty sure that Clinton does that too, but I can see how people might mis-read it.)

Best,
Ron

Clinton,

I just wanted to say that I am loving this journal of your game. This is some primo roleplaying. Personally, I get a lot of milage (ideas-wise) from the "loose ends" questions, like you present at the end of the post. They almost always give me ideas for later stories.

One question, though: The bit where Noom failed his roll with the arrow shot, and you ruled that he took an attack of opportunity (basically) against a different target instead of shooting Gurkin. This seems to skate on the edge of making character-action choices for the player, or at least I can easily see one of my regular players shouting "But my guy wouldn't to that! He'd trust Denn to handle it on his own, and still shoot Gurkin."

The question is, did you detract from the player's protagonism in making that judgement? Would it have been better (from a player-makes-all-decisions stance) to have made it just a miss? Or maybe something like, "Your arrow shoots straight at Gurkin's heart, but his hand moves faster than you can follow, snatching your shaft out of the air?" The latter doesn't make a choice for the character, doesn't make him miss, and gives a chance to show what a badass a major NPC is.

I'm not meaning to second-guess here. Your players seem to be having fun, so you must be doing something right. I guess what I'm getting at is, does a player briefly lose protagonism on a blown roll, and get stuck with the GM's judgement?

Lon

Here's more stuff about last night:

Things I really liked

I liked the continual reinforcement of a theme last night. I really wanted to focus on partnerships, and did, even with the side-story. We had a couple of dual partnerships that got explored:
- Noom and Gilton: dependent, but somewhat at odds
- Rose and Hong: in love, but somewhat irritable with each other, like most married couples. This was actually great comic relief - Hong called Rose lazy once, which about sent me into hysterics. Also - ultimately doomed, as they are the last of their kind.
- Denn and Kunagi: powerful forces deriving from the same source, but possibly with different endings
- Noom and Denn: the only real touchstones of humanity for each other at this point. They're both in such weird partnerships, that their own is the only "normal" one they have.

I loved the failed rolls - they worked for the story as well as anything else.

I also loved our out-of-game talk: I was able to serve up what the players wanted well.

Thing I didn't like

We haven't had a Humanity check yet. In fact, I should have given them Humanity last night: they saved the slaves at personal cost, helped out Rose and Hong, and didn't kill Gurkin. Argh.

These guys are too nice. I've got to figure out a way to start driving down their Humanity.

Wow, posts are arriving way too fast for me to keep track of them.

Clinton, regarding #1, I'm saying you did it, and that I think it was neat.

Lon, if I were to use such a tactic, it would handled just as I do scene framing, as a GM suggestion followed by consent or rejection by the player, with an allowed suggestion by the player instead.

That's how I handled all resolution in Hero Wars; Fortune-in-the-middle necessitates developing an excellent Social Contract about "what happens" dialogue. At this point, after a year and a half of HW, it's almost inconceivable to me that a conflict between player and GM, such as you describe, can happen. Although I remember it well from the old days.

In practice, the players give immediate consent nearly 100% of the time, in one group, and about 75% of the time, in the other group. I think this is because my stated actions "for the character" are never built to make the character look stupid or incompetent (although they may include bad luck).

Best,
Ron

Uncle Dark wrote: I'm not meaning to second-guess here. Your players seem to be having fun, so you must be doing something right. I guess what I'm getting at is, does a player briefly lose protagonism on a blown roll, and get stuck with the GM's judgement?

I'll say I had a ton of fun last night. Being able to wrestle a 30 foot croc and eat its heart was just the sort of mythical-heroic stuff I love. Ditto the epic brawl ending in a double KO.

The one thing I'll note is that I spent a lot of the game not thinking ahead at all. When I play I usually tend to weigh and consider options, try to find some long term goal, and then work steadily towards it. Last night I pretty much cut loose and didn't think ahead at all. Sounds? Go investigate. Guards and slaves? Walk in and intimidate them. Not a lot of forethought. But it was tremendously fun despite that. Or perhaps because of it.

Clinton R Nixon wrote: Here's more stuff about last night:

Thing I didn't like

We haven't had a Humanity check yet. In fact, I should have given them Humanity last night: they saved the slaves at personal cost, helped out Rose and Hong, and didn't kill Gurkin. Argh.

These guys are too nice. I've got to figure out a way to start driving down their Humanity.

Well, that was a fucking explosion of posts. Here's a wrap-up of things I missed:

Ron wrote:
I'd change my phrasing about it, in comparison to Clinton's, that I'll ask what we'd all like to address next, rather than do next, in order to emphasize that actual resolution is a matter of play rather than setup. (I'm pretty sure that Clinton does that too, but I can see how people might mis-read it.)

Ron wrote:
3) Related to the above, I see the Denn/Kunagi relationship being inherently unstable. I could be wrong ... after all, it would be totally on-genre to have Kunagi be a somewhat muted and dependable minion for a long time after the fight ... but I think more meat might come from, basically, pushing the negative side of the demon hard, and culminating in the Final Battle sooner rather than later.

Thanks, guys.

Clinton, vague is good. I like where you're going.

There's two types of GMing fun I'm used to. There's the "I can't wait to see the looks on thier faces when they realize what I've done!" kind, and the "Once I throw this out there, I wonder where it will go..." kind. Vague lends itself to the second kind, providing a seed which will (one hopes) bloom later.

Lon

We finally continued with this campaign. I'm a few days late in posting this, but here's the new adventures of Denn and Noom:

Week 3: Strange Vistas (Sept. 5, 2002)

"Every post-apocalyptic world needs a communist utopia."
- one of my players, soon after their character entered the City of Truth

This was our first week playing in nearly two months. The summer heat in Seattle nearly killed our ability to play in my apartment after work, and vacations and apathy got the best of us. Getting back into play was hard work - it seemed a bit foreign and stilted.

The lesson I learned this week is do not even attempt to railroad these players. It just isn't going to work.

--

When we left Denn and Noon, Denn had beaten Kunagi, preventing him from killing Denver Gurkin. The rest of the bandit camp near Esarham had been ravaged in the fight between the protagonists, Kunagi, and the bandits. Gurkin whined a bit, attempting to appeal to Denn and Noon by trying to make them feel guilty for the fall of Esarham. Without his slaves, he reasoned, the town would run out of fuel crystals quickly and fall into ruin. Denn summed it up nicely with, "Have 'em dig their own crystals."

With little care for the outcome of Gurkin or Esarham, they loaded an oxalo with food and water and headed west into the Wastes during the night, searching for the City of Truth. In a day, they had made it to a tall mountain range, with Kunagi following behind.

--

Here's where I screwed it up, to be honest. It being our first week back, I had planned a lot of adventure, which involved traveling beneath the mountains, similar to both the Moria scenes from Lord of the Rings (which I watched the previous weekend) and even more like a scene from Stephen King's Gunslinger series, which I can't remember, but have good impressions from. However, this was kind of a ridiculous idea: who goes under a mountain on purpose? Anyway, I could have made the trip through the wastes a lot more interesting, but sped them on to the mountains, where the following happened, and wasn't as good as I expected.

--

The group camped for the day in the shadow of a cave entrance, protecting themselves from the heat. In the late afternoon, Denn was awakened by footsteps, and leapt awake to find Denver Gurkin, who had rigged some sort of device to blow up the cave and bury the characters. (Here's my big railroading attempt, which derailed.)

Denn leapt at Gurkin and fought with him as the cave entrance blew, trapping Noom and Kunagi inside, and killing the oxalo as debris crushed his skull. Denn and Gurkin fought, with Denn finally throwing Gurkin down the side of the mountain, head over heels. He lived, but ran in fear as Kunagi literally punched his way through the fallen cave entrance.

With my attempt to drive them further into the cave aborted, they climbed the mountain throughout the night. It was difficult, but the three waste-worn companions made it relatively easily. The dawn greeted them atop the mountain on a large plateau that looked down on the fabled City of Truth. The City's spires gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the sun, and some sort of odd purple-bluish haze domed the City. Denn and Noom slept and Kunagi wondered off. When they awoke, they saw him in the distance on the plateau, standing in another cave entrance. (My luck as the GM with the cave entrances was bad.) Kunagi finally returned with the skeleton of a ten-foot-tall man, very similar to his own, and cautioned Denn about taking this trip any further. "You go to a place where they kill someone like me," he warned, but Denn and Noom would have none of it, and took off down the mountain towards the City.

When they reached the City's edge, they found themselves confronted with this blue-purple haze dome. After throwing some rocks through it, Noom entered easily. Denn then tried, but found it a bit harder, his nerve endings on fire as he struggled through the barrier. Kunagi could not enter at all, as hard as he tried.

He seemed - strangely - almost distraught at the separation from Denn. "The only reason I have let you live this far is because you have become like a retarded, malformed brother. You have entered a place where they kill ones like me, and ones like you are becoming." Still, Denn and Noom went to the city, leaving Kunagi to his fortunes outside the barrier. They met a farmer who guided them towards the City proper, and they entered its iridescent gates after guards took away their weapons.

The interior of the City was nothing like the outside world. Citizens walked up and down the concentric streets in identical cloth pants and shirts, the only difference being the color of the fabric. The signs posted on the street were in the language of the Veldt when Noom looked at them, and in pictographs when the illiterate Denn looked at them. They found an information booth.

The information vendor asked, "You appear to be travelers. What answers do you seek?"

Denn and Noom tried to explain to him about Doktor Gilton being trapped inside Noom, but he didn't quite get it. Still, he directed them towards medical care. He, and other citizens, kept mentioning that the PCs' "questions would be answered," which Denn and Noom both tired of pretty quickly, as they didn't have any questions, just a need to get Gilton out of Noom. The City was explained to them, though, by medical technicians, who told them that "each petitioner is afforded the Answer to his Question. Then he is given the uniform of the City, where all men are equals, and would work for the benefit of all his brethren."

When Noom explained his situation, the technician didn't have an immediate solution, however. "Your Question is very hard. This will take research," he said. "This may even require the knowledge of the First, who has all answers."

Noom and Denn were curious about this "First." Denn said, "I thought everyone was equal here."

"Oh, yes," said the technician. "And the First is just that, first among equals."

"Who is this First?" asked Noom.

About that time, a screen in the room crackled to life, and a man's face appeared on the screen. "Greetings, citizens," it began.

--

We ended the adventure there, because I wanted a good speech for the First, and didn't plan on getting this far. I think it was a good ending for the session, though.

Stuff to do next time



• What does the First say? Who - or what - is the First, and what will he mean to the PCs?
• Can the citizens remove Gilton from Noom? Will Gilton get to go back to his time and place, and how will Noom deal with that? If everything works, will Noom work as an equal in the City?
• Does Denn have a Question? What is a man without a Question in the City of Truth?
• What did Kunagi mean by "ones like you are becoming"? Is Denn becoming a thing like Kunagi? Will Denn and Kunagi be reunited, or does Denn even want that?
• Why was a Kunagi-like being killed near the City?
• Lastly, Denver Gurkin has sworn revenge on Denn? When and where will he attempt to extract it?



What we did right

Actually, I was really proud of the way we moved past my aborted-railroad scheme. I didn't have anything else planned, but it turned out great. I formulated the ideas that made up the City as they came to it, but I like it more than my original conception of it, a sterile, dead place full of whirring computers and one living man.

What we did wrong

I already mentioned the railroading thing a few times.

Also, still no Humanity checks. I really expect these next game, though, as Denn and Noom are thick in the middle of life-changing forces now.

Hi Clinton,

I'll be posting about my own Sorcerer & Sword game soon, which will be interesting to compare with yours - we too have had a very difficult summer in terms of finding gaming time, and we too have just picked up the game again.

Sessions #3 and #4 in Sorcerer, with a new group, always have a "whoa!" quality as the players get the bit between their teeth and the GM realizes that he's the reacter, not them. In a lot of cases, the result is to drive to Endgame immediately and everyone kind of sits there while the dust settles, saying, "That was cool, but it was over so fast." It's as if in traditional play, the players desperately want to end/climax and the GM is always holding off, so when that barrier is removed, no one knows how to progress in tandem, as it were.

H'm. The sexual metaphor there is too overwhelming to develop further.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to say was, More Denver Gurkin! What a great character - and those four 10's on that one roll, previously, may be thought of as four "floating victories" to be used as bonuses on something major he's doing now, off-screen.

Have fun with the First. Try not to blow up the City of Truth too, too fast. Has anyone noticed that the Clicking Sands setting in the supplement (which Clinton is using as his basis for the Bloody Sun game) is just way, way too influenced by Beneath the Planet of the Apes?

Best,
Ron