Sorry- I didn't se anything discussing this in the few searches I ran here, so if it's been discussed already, a point towards relevant links would be appreciated.

So I've got another demo/intro session of my Kyuseisha (you don't need to read the background there to understand this request) Sorcerer game coming up next week, and I had a thought that I was thinking of moving on with.

OK, in this game, while the PCs start out, like any Sorcerer game, way better off than regular NPCs. However, in the course of the story, it's a given the the PCs may come up against the typical "big bads".

The big bads in this setting are like a new breed of people: People who have built their bodies and minds to a level that their potential is a lot higher than normal people: Like the protagonists in the Matrix without all the flying.

To simulate this, I was thinking of using two different die scales: Keep the attributes around the same level, but use d6s for everyone (PCs, NPCs, antagonists, etc) and use d10s for these New Types. Or d10s and d20s.

Has anyone tried anything like this? I was thinking of going this route instead of, say, doubling the dice rolled for these New Types. And again, this is like, at most, 1-3 antagonists per mini-campaign.

Anyone try anything like this before?

Thanks. I'm in that last week crunch before another demo game, and this is when the ideas (and real work towards this thing) usually start flying.

-Andy

Like the concept...the probabilities are going to screw you. As in don't bother even rolling. The odds of a d10 pool of any reasonable size not rolling a 7 is beyond slim.

The old Parker Brothers Dune game used a d6 dice pool for combat. If you had a gob jabbar or other assorted cool tricks you could add 1d8 to your d6 dice pool. That 1d8 was hefty enough to make those cool tricks vital, but not automatically domineering.

Since I assume you want superior but not automatically domineering (at which point, you wouldn't need to bother rolling). I'd suggest adding 1, 2 maybe 3 TOPS d8s (not d10s) to the normal d6 die pool.

Why are these people treated any differently than Sorcerers using Boost?

If you really want to vary die types, one option might be to use d6s as a base, but allow 2d6s from the die pool to be traded for 1d8; 3d6 traded for 1d10; 4d6 to be traded for 1d12.


Stuart

Valamir wrote: Like the concept...the probabilities are going to screw you. As in don't bother even rolling. The odds of a d10 pool of any reasonable size not rolling a 7 is beyond slim.

Valamir wrote: Since I assume you want superior but not automatically domineering (at which point, you wouldn't need to bother rolling). I'd suggest adding 1, 2 maybe 3 TOPS d8s (not d10s) to the normal d6 die pool.

Hi Andy,

I could be wrong, but this reads to me just like your sandstorm idea - you want X to happen, you want it to turn out as Y, and you want the system to set it up so you can roll it, but it turns out the way you want. Now you're casting about for ways to make the system be predictable for you as GM.

Why is there a fight scene? Because there's a conflict which the fight is expressing or providing a climax for? I don't think so! I think you want a fight scene that will make the player-characters do something you want.

You want to have the players encounter these guys. You want the guys to kick their butts with their kewlness. You want the players to get spunky about it and work to improve, or investigate the bad guys kewlness, or whatever.

Dude, you gotta let go of this whole approach! Unless one of the players gives you a Kicker that says, "My character gets his ass kicked by this kewl dude," then forget the idea of automatic butt-kicking as a means to goad them into doing whatever you want.

I swear, this is just like all the Champions GMs back in the 80s ...

Anyway, go ahead and make your kewl guys. Give them plenty of dice. Then breathe deeply and remember that Sorcerer combat is deliberately uncertain, and that the game is built to make the GM get rocked just as much as the players do in a more traditional game.

Your fun is going to be in presenting these kewl guys and having a great fight scene that's about something. How it turns out is how it turns out! The system will do wonderfully for you in this regard. Quit trying to re-tweak it so it behaves like Shadowrun.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I could be wrong...

Hmmmm...

Upon further thought, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just rephrase my question to be, "How do you create more powerful NPCs, yet still stay in that range of 'balance' where there's still a chance for success, and still a chance for defeat?".

Sure, boosting the attributes usually does the trick.

One thing I may have left out for my example:

In traditional Sorcerer games, all characters have the opportunity to bind more than one demon. Big Bads, if there are any, would probably have not only higher stats, but also more (and more tightly bound) powerful demons.

In this game, I'm assuming that all players only have one. Imagine that all players can only bind with a single Parasite demon. So, "give them another demon" wouldn't work.

As I see it, the traditional way of making a Big Bad big and bad is to give them more demons, and higher stats.

How about other ways? And to continue that thought, how about ways involving dice tricks (different polyhedrals, etc)? :)

Edited Note: I cross posted this with your other two replies to Ron's initial reply. I don't know how relevant this is to what you're saying.

Andy,

I want to reinforce what Ron said by sharing some thinking I had, sadly, only recently. When talking about Premise and Theme Ron has often thrown in this little phrase attached to Theme. It reads, "partially constructed by the audience." That's always struck me as VERY VERY WRONG. If Theme has to be constructed by the audience then in my mind, until recently, the author has failed.

You see, I've always enjoyed (and still do) stories that feel like metaphorical persuasive essays about a character's ethics, morals and philosophies. I like stories that present a character with a clearly definied life-philosophy and then drags that character through a series of wringers that put that philosophy to the test and thus by the end the AUTHOR has clear affirmed or denied their "faith" in the validity of the initial clearly defined life-philosophy through the choices the protagonist makes and the state of their well being by the end of the story.

Therefore, story elements must be constructed to have HIGHLY specific effects upon the audience. That is, if a character is meant to be "lovable" and there is a single audience member out their who fails to feel "love" for this character then the author has failed in communicating his "point."

If you extrapolate this thinking to RPGs you will quickly see where the frustrations come in. Originally, my thinking was, okay it's the PCs job to convey whatever emotions they want their characters to evoke and it's up to the GM to convey what emotions he wants his NPCs to evoke.

The Sorcerer rule book clearly states that it's a BIG No, No to ever dictate what a PC feels. Until recently I thought I've never tried to do this simply because, I've never used the phrase, "You feel..." directlly at a player. But I had a sudden realization that all I did was hide this behavior by changing a player directed command into an NPC adjective.

I recently compared my NPC descriptions to those presented in the example scenarios provided in Sorcerer's Soul. All of Ron's NPCs are described in terms of facts. "This character is sociopathic." "This character is old." "This character speaks in a commanding voice." and so forth. MY NPC notes all contain emotional adjectives, "This character is *frighteningly* insane." "This character is *lovably* naive" and so forth.

Thus when the Players would fail to feel *a form of love* for my naive character I would get frustrated. You see, I didn't think I was dictating what the characters were feeling because I never said what, type, form, or reaction this *loveability* had to take within the character. I had deluded myself into believing that I wasn't dictating the PC's feelings because I believed that *lovability* isn't something the PCs voluntarily choose to feel but rather an intrisic property that the NPC possesses and communicates.

Thus when my Players would fail to feel *lovable* towards my "naive" NPC, I would sulk and feel bad because clearly I had failed to communicate, and properly portray the NPC. Sadly, it never occured to me that perhaps I had pefectly communicated NPCs naivete but that naivete simply doesn't invoke *lovability* in the PCs.

I think this is the trap you are falling into. You want to convey highly specific feelings about things to your players. You want your sandstorm to invoke feelings of "fear and terror." You want your "big bads" to invoke a feeling of "awe and hatred." You can't do that. You can't do that especially in Sorcerer. All you can do is make your sandstorm "large and rapid" and your big bads, "tall, proud and powerful."

Communicate facts, not feelings. What the PCs feel is up to them.

Hope I'm not off base.

Jesse

At the risk of drifting this, Jessie, I think your former understanding of theme/premise is 100% in line with Egri. His book as I read it was very much "Author must convince the audience of the truth of this premise".

What Ron did to this definition to tweak it for Narrativist RPGs is establish the idea that the entire play group is the author. Which is where the shared construction comes in. So you weren't far off the mark.

Andy Kitkowski wrote: Later, I had that NPC scheduled to be involved with the latter half of the adventure...
...Changed significant portions of what I was planning on doing...
...instead of getting killed (as planned, to end the adventure)...
Although it didn't go as planned for my adventure...

Maybe if I was going for light and heroic, like a supers game, then I'd work more with the S side of things (good always triumphs, etc)

Yet still let the dice fall where they may. If they beat the NPC, cool, the plot continues. If 2 of the PCs die horribly and the third runs away, then cool, the plot continues.

jburneko wrote: Hope I'm not off base.

I think this is the trap you are falling into... Communicate facts, not feelings. What the PCs feel is up to them.

Hi Andy,

I think what you're really asking(and correct me if I'm wrong here...) is:

How do I make some badass antagonists that will really put shit on the line?

Obviously the antagonists in a traditional story oppose and earn some ire of the protagonists, but really they are judged in how much the audience hates them. That is, a good antagonist is hated by the audience, just as much(if not more than) the protagonists.

So, the point is to give the players a demonstration of why they should hate, dislike, or fear these antagonists. Notice that this doesn't have to be the player characters who get all this knowledge, but the players...

Consider this: Antagonists usually either have equal or greater capabilities than the protagonists, and/or are willing to go farther, sacrifice more, and play dirtier.

In the first case, which is what you are looking at trying to achieve(more dice, more stats!=More hitpoints, more orcs!), is best served by Demonstration. Demonstration means you allow the antagonists to demonstrate what they can do, preferably NOT on a player character. Some excellent examples:

-Star Trek's Red Shirts "Zzzap!" "Holy shit Spock! Did you see what it just did?!?" "Fascinating"
-The Horror Movie"What the hell could put a man's head through steel plate, yet not leave a single drop of blood?"
-The Comic Book "Yikes! If he can punch buildings in half, he'd make spider-paste out of me!"

This can happen to an NPC, an object, or evidence can be left behind about the antagonist's capability. This can serve as a Bang unto itself if the capability is sufficiently scary.

In a D&D game, I gave a villian the Midas touch, which none of the players knew about until someone summoned a hawk which he promptly rolled a critical on. 1 gold hawk later, everyone is doing their damndest to stay the hell away from the man with gold cooties. I hadn't planned on the hawk, but it certainly scared the crap out of the players enough to have its effect.

The second sort of thing is often used by suspense thriller movies, but works just as well in games. What do the players do when they come home to find their elderly mother having dinner with "one of their old college buddies" who happens to be an antagonist?

Notice that in both of these cases the antagonist doesn't have to actually harm the player character, but simply demonstrates that it is well within his or her ability to put you down.

Unlike most rpgs, where the players have an idea of what they're facing("Oh, it's only a Large Dragon, we can take that on!" or "What?!? I'm not ready to face DemoGorgon!"), Sorcerer is a variable setting, the Big Bads of the setting are not established. Like a movie, you are required to explain and show how and why something is a Big Bad, or just a badass in general.

Also, specific to Sorcerer, you can also mess with player's minds when they find out the "sorcerers" they've been chasing are really Demons with the Spawn ability, and then later get to meet the sorcerer behind them all....Yick.

Chris

greyorm wrote:
Listen to what you're saying...no wonder you're getting all twisted up on this. "What you planned on doing"..."what you had scheduled"...that is NOT NOT NOT Narrativism.

Here's the deal: YOU are the GM. YOU are not writing the story. YOU have no plan. Period. YOU have backstory. That's all you have. That's all you get. Let go and let the game play out as it will, as the players guide it.

If you don't care which way the plot goes, that is, whether or not the bad guys are trumped or not, then the odds of winning shouldn't matter, especially considering there is already enough danger inherent in the Sorcerer combat system to make any battle go to anyone.

Bankuei wrote: I think what you're really asking(and correct me if I'm wrong here...) is:

How do I make some badass antagonists that will really put shit on the line?

Hi Andy,

Through no fault of your own, and probably through some of mine, this thread has turned into a set of very good individual posts that unfortunately don't add up to a topic discussion.

At the moment, here's only general principle I want you to consider: Narrativist play (or more in focus, playing Sorcerer) does not rely on GM improvisation in the sense of InSpectres or Universalis. You are 100% right about that. People often get a little wild-eyed when they try to explain non-Sim/Sit GMing, and to swing a little too broadly, to the extent that it sounds like the GM is just a catching-sieve for all sorts of crazy improv.

Nope - you're right, Sorcerer is much more normal. GM makes NPCs, tons of back-story, plays NPCs much like (if not exactly like) PCs, and so on. All that gets left out is scene-control railroading, whether from framing, from IIEE manipulation, from fudging, or from stacking the deck against the player-characters.

That said, let's see if I can help you with the general question: we're looking at the antagonists. Adversity is the goal (not outcome, just adversity). Sooo ...?

1. A few dice superiority can be significant. Not a guarantee, but significant. Most people with a couple of Sorcerer games behind them know that the main advantage comes from going first, not from hitting harder.

2. Superior numbers are extremely significant. Even 5:4 or 4:3 odds are potentially devastating.

3. Tactics - and everyone's willingness to abide by them - are hugely important. In Sorcerer, this is expressed by having allies in a fight announce actions that are complementary (i.e. receive bonus dice from one to the other) in either order. That way, whoever turns out to go first is helping the other.

Another important part of #3 is the demon abilities and their astounding combinatorial power. This is all Champions-thinking; when I wrote these abilities, everyone I knew played or at least understood Champions. After White Wolf, though, it seems as though that shared understanding went "poof" across most of gamer culture. So I suggest really sitting down with the main book and working up a ton of great demon abilities, not initially from the book, but using the book once you have the image in your mind.

4. Personality/theme issues are hugely important. Just hitting is one thing - this is much like any typical RPG in which you "go" on "your turn" and everyone just goes duuuhhhhh until it's their turn. But Sorcerer bonus dice are another thing entirely: rivalries, love, sudden onsets of parental feeling (especially toward a younger person who'd not your child), anything that has to do with Humanity in that particular game ... all of them net role-playing dice and that vague bonus about "the story" too.

Hey, does all of that sound like The Riddle of Steel combat? The answer is yes. The two games use very different IIEE and to-hit methods, but their underlying principles of the decisions made through play, and their consequences for the characters, are identical.

A GM who relies on #1 alone is kind of boring and isn't really providing much adversity. #2 is OK, but sorta boring too. But a GM who starts making use of #3 for the NPCs is cooking with gas, and this will teach players to start considering where their characters "dive out of the way" to, and rolling to their feet simultaneously with the knife-throw, and all that stuff. And when the players kick in with #4, now we have role-playing.

Best,
Ron

Andy Kitkowski wrote: So I am to come up with no events, NPCs, storyline/timetable of background events (that the PCs may or may not even use), nor am I supposed to introduce any elements into the game that relate to the kickers, but rather have the PCs come up with all of these themselves?

That's the thing, though: How come there are stats for the Nameless Ones in Charnel Gods, rather than a blurb saying "any interaction with them will utterly destroy you"...How can I accept "the odds of winning shouldn't matter", when I see how the odds are pitched in the mini-supplements that list sample NPCs

Andy Kitkowski wrote: How can I accept "the odds of winning shouldn't matter", when I see how the odds are pitched in the mini-supplements that list sample NPCs (like Schism's gang members and Charnel Gods' Critters, Ancients and Nameless Ones), seeing clearly that they would have an impact on the characters' kickers, actions, thoughts and deeds?

Good points, all- Even though we got off my original question a lot, I really appreciated the Narrativism tips/clarifications.

Jared: Oops, sorry to misrepresent you there: I couldn't sworn I added a few attributes on some character or other and came up with more than 10, signifying a background/NPC character. Looking back on the Sorcerer mini supplements I have, I see that only CG has "bigger" or "more powerful" NPCs written into the guide. Maybe looking to hard at CG was one of my problems.

I was rereading parts of Sorcerer & Sword the last few days, and what I guess I'm aiming at is some sort of new mechanic to handle these New Types, like CG's boosted attributes, or Ron's "Necromancy Token" system.

Thing is, I needed to be a lot more descriptive and exacting of what I was aiming for, with specific examples. Tell y'all what: Give me a few weeks to do some more playtesting and thinking. If I haven't come up with my own solution then, or need a little help with one, I'll post here with Actual Play examples, background, etc that will help explain what I'm trying to do much better than I've been doing in this thread. In any case, I'll just drop an update in this thread on the solution if it's still on the first page or so, or create a new thread if this one is dead for longer.

Sorry to lead everyone around on a wild goose chase of a thread, only to close it with a "More Later. Maybe.", but it'll be a lot more practical that way.

I think I have an idea of the concept you are trying to get across... something like the characters from Black Mask, right? Who's normal, everyday physical abilities are far beyond what any unaltered human could achieve, regardless of training or effort. Thus they are routinely capable of effects (IE rolls) that normal characters cannot achieve even at the utmost of their abilities. Is that pretty much it or have I missed the mark?