Hey--
I am playing around with the sorcerer rules, as I just got them. One of the things that immediately struck me is that the Humanity gauge seems primarily designed to be used as a sanity gauge and very little else. This is sad to me, because I don't particularly want to run a "descent into madness" game. I want to run a game about degeneration of morality.

"Great," Sorcerer's Soul says, "just define humanity as a moral gauge and you're good to go."

But there is a serious problem with this: The act of binding demons is, quite explicitly, the most damaging possible act to one's humanity. Rape and Murder? One humanity check (possibly one each.) Summoning a demon? Three humanity checks. No mortal deed comes close to comparing, in terms of humanity loss. Even a human sacrifice only adds one to the Humanity Check count.

This would be fine, if summoning demons compared with, say, mass genocide -- morally speaking. But it doesn't. In fact, given the description in the Sorcerer rules, summoning demons is an morally neutral act. A maddening act -- certainly. A damning act -- well, it's a demon! But immoral -- I don't see it. It might be damaging to the world as a whole (in which case it compares to, say, driving an SUV for no good reason), but it isn't tangibly bad unless you're using a human sacrifice. Or, at least, I don't see it like that.

So -- any help here? I have a couple of ideas, but they involve radical revisions to the system, and so I want to see if there isn't a more elegant approach first.

yrs--
--Ben

Hello There,

I'll let Ron and others handle the more subtle specifics but I want to point out that Humanity Checks and Gains are deliberately built to be uniform. That is, failing to visit your mother on her deathbed when she asked you to be there and gunning down 100 people in a back alley warrent the exact same roll. The mechanic doesn't change and it's always 50% (except for Sorcery). This, I believe, is a specfic design choice and feature of the system.

Of course, it's still up to the individual play group what kinds of actions warrent Checks and Gains but I know that the "intensity" of the check was deliberately left out of it. I, myself, have used Emotional Sanity as a defintion with Checks coming from something as small as a private affirmation of more love for a "fake" demon son than the character's real son to violently and brutally beating a innocent sixteen year old girl. The Checks, mechanically, were identicle. I've also used Respecting The Rule of Law as a definition for Humanity with checks ranging from simply failing to file paper work with the appropriate authorities to gunning down a man in cold blood. Again, the checks were mechanically the same.

I'm not 100% sure that this addresses your question since you seemed more focused on the degree of trangression for summoning a demon compared to something like commiting rape. I've already addressed the "degree" or "intensity" issue. For the Sorcery issue itself I'll add that "what Sorcery looks like and entails" is meant to be tied into the Humanity defintion. So if your Humanity defintion is deliberately built to address large horrendus acts like Rape and Genocide then Rape and Genocide is what you need to DO to get a Demon in the first place. The demons are meant to be direct metaphores for the trangressions you wish to examine.

Hope that was useful.

Jesse

IF humanity is a moral gauge, then demons are likely expressions or manifestations of immorality, or at least challenge morality. Contacting a demon requires, to some extent, understanding them - which would threaten one's morality. Summoning a demon is innately immoral even without the sacrifice - after all, you're conducting an act that brings a manifestly-immoral being into the world, and are intimately involved with said being. Binding is even more obvious - you are purposefully agreeing to let that immoral thing survive, and are connecting it to you.

As a moral gauge, assuming demons and humanity relate, it seems to fit. Granted, I'm a Sorcerer newbie so what I'm saying might very well be bunk.

I feel compelled to mention that in Charnel Gods, Humanity is exactly what Ben is describing: A moral guage. What's more, the act of sorcery is nothing less than mass genocide.

My take on it is this: The rule say you make three Humanity checks for Contacting, Summoning, and Binding a demon. You're going to make those rolls any...the rules say you have to. So go ahead and author in some content that you feel adds up to three Humanity checks. Whatever it takes to get you there.

- Scott

Hi Ben!

It isn't meant to be a sanity gauge in the sense of 'how sane are you'. It's purpose is, explicitly, to determine the sorcerer's risk in doing what he does. It is the marker of the significance of a decision in story terms. The game is all about how far you would go to get what you want, and humanity explicitly, mechanically, provides a real risk for the characters. Now whether that means that he's insane at 0 humanity or not depends entirely on the definition of humanity that you and your group agree upon, or develop through play, which is discussed in the main rulebook as well as Soul.

Though it is hard at first to see it this way, it isn't a guage of sanity per se in the way of old personality mechanics because your sorcerer, no matter what level of humanity they are at, is capable of any act whatever. Assuming that your definition of humanity does involove sanity, a person with a humanity score of 1 is as sane as one with a score of 10. He is not more or less sane. However when one of these morally significant choices comes up, the risk to the character with 1 humanity point is much greater and thus the players decision to have the character pursue that course of action has that much more weight. It affords the player as author to make the strongest possible statement in thematic terms.

Summoning a morally neutral act? No. Whatever they may be, Demons are dangerous and should not be here. You refer to three humanity checks here for summoning a demon. In fact it is three because they are three seperate transgressive acts. The first is contacting something man was not meant to know or encounter, the very act of it is a transgression of reality and requires pushing ones self far outside the normal boundaries of conciousness into the place where these things exist or originate. This is a radically dangerous thing to do. Think about what happens to people who are in sensory deprivation tanks for extended periods of time. Imagine having no concrete understandable thing to orient yourself. In my view since we define ourself against our evironment, there is a risk that the very 'self' could dissolve. This is not merely a sanity issue. After staring into that kind of abyss, morality, however you define it, would carry less weight because of your altered frame of reference. The second is summoning, which is bringing that same thing, somthing terribly dangerous to others as well as yourself, here into this reality for your own goals. The third is agreeing to facilitate this thing's existance in reality in exchange for service in pursuit of what you want, again despite the easiily forseeable risk to everyone else.

Contacting does not mean summoning. Summoning does not mean binding (though its dangerous not to.)

All that being said, you don't have to either contact or summon to get a demon. You might encounter one that is already here. In my game one of my players conspired with his masters unhappy demon, to kill the master, break the binding, and then bind it himself (the fact is that the demon had already broken the binding and the murder was the new binding act, thus the humanity check.) But the character didn't have to contact or summon this particular demon. So, the most damaging act? No. But three acts which are unacceptable because of the nature of what they are dealing with.

summoning demons is an morally neutral act. A maddening act -- certainly. A damning act -- well, it's a demon! But immoral -- I don't see it

Thanks to all who responded. Scott -- that's an interesting idea with making the Humanity checks for summoning also reflect Dire Deeds. I like it. I will have more to say after I have read Charnel Gods.

Travis, sorry I picked you out to dicker with. I just felt the need to expound upon my frustrations.

Trevis Martin wrote: It isn't meant to be a sanity gauge in the sense of 'how sane are you'. It's purpose is, explicitly, to determine the sorcerer's risk in doing what he does.

It is the marker of the significance of a decision in story terms. The game is all about how far you would go to get what you want, and humanity explicitly, mechanically, provides a real risk for the characters. Now whether that means that he's insane at 0 humanity or not depends entirely on the definition of humanity that you and your group agree upon, or develop through play, which is discussed in the main rulebook as well as Soul.

Though it is hard at first to see it this way, it isn't a guage of sanity per se in the way of old personality mechanics because your sorcerer, no matter what level of humanity they are at, is capable of any act whatever. Assuming that your definition of humanity does involove sanity, a person with a humanity score of 1 is as sane as one with a score of 10. He is not more or less sane. However when one of these morally significant choices comes up, the risk to the character with 1 humanity point is much greater and thus the players decision to have the character pursue that course of action has that much more weight. It affords the player as author to make the strongest possible statement in thematic terms.

Summoning a morally neutral act? No. Whatever they may be, Demons are dangerous and should not be here.

You refer to three humanity checks here for summoning a demon. In fact it is three because they are three seperate transgressive acts.

Think about what happens to people who are in sensory deprivation tanks for extended periods of time. Imagine having no concrete understandable thing to orient yourself. In my view since we define ourself against our evironment, there is a risk that the very 'self' could dissolve. This is not merely a sanity issue. After staring into that kind of abyss, morality, however you define it, would carry less weight because of your altered frame of reference.

summoning demons is an morally neutral act. A maddening act -- certainly. A damning act -- well, it's a demon! But immoral -- I don't see it

You can think of a damning act that isn't immoral?

Consider harm to the sorcerer as part of the equation. Is drinking yourself to death or addiction to cocaine immoral?

The difference on the SUV thing is that an SUV has no independent will. Consider it more like creating a virulent biological weapon. It might accomplish your goals but the risk you are subjecting others to by releasing something so basically incompatable with humanity is incalculable. Demons can't really be controlled and it is only through arrogance or denial (probably both) that a sorcerer can think otherwise. They put the whole of humanity at risk for thier own personal issues. I can't think of anything less moral.

Remember also that telling a story about the degeneration of morality doesn't mean that the characters have to degenerate. If the choose to reject the degeration (by giving up sorcerous ways, making amends) that is as valid a story choice and as much a comment on the given theme as degenration is. Especially if the characters are put in bad/worse situations. All you have to do is decide what humanity is exactly, and there are lots of good examples in the forums and in the mini-supplements as well as in Soul and the other supplements.

That you guys as a group have to decide what, for your story and your game, the concepts of Demon, Humanity, and Sorcery mean, is explicitly stated from the get-go in the main book. The concepts are deeply connected. Demons and sorcery, by definition, will run counter to humanity, which gives you good clues as to what kind of things the sorcerous acts requre that woudl risk humanity. That part of your game must be tweaked, that is how the system works.

Hi Ben,

I get where you're coming from.

Let me run this idea by you.

When one does sorcerous rituals, one must *do* actual rituals. What these rituals are exactly are defined by the group's definition of humanity.

So: your group's definition of Humanity is Not Harming Other People. (If I'm getting this wrong, I apologize. Your definition in your last post was sort of a negative defintion: "A guage of how much you're willing to harm people." But I'm looking for the pure, distilled positive form of Humanity your group wants to play with. The defintion I've provided offers the best distillation I could figure out from your post.)

Now then, using this as the definition of Humanity, we define what Sorcerous rituals involve. And this will be the *opposite* of what Humanity is. So, anyone doing Sorcerous rituals will be harming people. That's it. If I'm going to summon a demon, I'm going to cut a kid, or kill an old man, or push a woman off the subway platform. Cause the rituals are not dice rolls. They are the results of actions of behavior designed to tap the powers of acting opposite of humanity.

One must do the actions opposite of Humanity to tap Sorcerous rituals. This is what makes the sorcerous rituals worthy of Humanity checks.

(This use of Humanity to establish sorcerous rituals is touched on in Sorceror, but firmly established in the Sorceror's Soul. (Yes, I know, that does you no good. But I'm being up front about it. Let's stay focused on the issue at hand.))

So, my first question is, "If the opposite action for Humanity was required to conduct Sorcerous rituals, would that satisify you?"

There are other issues at hand, but let's deal with this one first.

Look forward to your reply.

Christopher

Hey there Ben,

No problem at all man, dickering is the point and I'll be happy to find the holes in my own arguement. If it helps me refine my thinking then cool.

moment of sensitivity: My name is Trevis not Travis /moment of sensitivity born of people long misspelling and mispronouncing my name.

Morality is, essentially, the degree to which you decide, of your own free will, to hurt other people (or other living beings, depending on your world-view.)

There is a definitive system in the game which defines demon summoning as the Worst Possible Thing, in terms of Humanity.

What is bad is that demon summoning -- as written in the base rules -- is remarkably tame. You might take some hits of drugs, but essentially you're just going on a vision trip. It might be disorienting. It might drive you insane. But there is nothing about contacting, summoning, or binding a demon that hurts other people. You could add it to the setting, if you wanted, but it isn't there and that possibility isn't mentioned.

I am asking for humanity as a gauge to track moral decisions. I have run and played much Vampire, which handles things more or less similarly to Sorcerer, and gives me some similar issues.

I don't know what you mean by "old personality mechanics." Perhaps Call of Cthulu?

Perhaps this is just my physicist's bias showing, but making a nuclear bomb is not the same thing as dropping it. They are both transgressive, certainly, but the second is FAR worse than the first.

For a murder, you need to plot the murder (bad), point the gun (itself bad), pull the trigger (bad), and cover it up (bad. see Blood Simple for details.) Is that 4 checks

That's fine, but it is ultimately still a sanity-based definition. I am not looking for the internal moral state of the character. I am looking for a gauge of actual immoral action taken by the character.
There are people out there who are perfectly capable of murdering in cold blood, but manage to live totally unremarkable lives. They are not 0 humanity -- they just have to watch themselves more closely.
Summoning a demon is a terrifying thing, and it makes the moral slide easier. But why the act itself, and not the aftermath?

Yes, actually, for certain religious views. One of the characters in a fantasy world of mine (one that I am twiddling with in Sorcerer terms, actually) sold her soul to the devil in order to protect her family from being destroyed as part of God's divine plan. Is that damning? By definition. Is it immoral?

any definition of humanity that doesn't give demon summoning as the Worst Possible Thing is wildly unsupported by the system.
I see demons as power. Crazy, wild, uncontrollable power with it's own ideas, sure. But power is only as bad as what you do with it.
I see humanity as morality.
are power Aand morality fundamentally opposed? That's the dynamic question of the game.
But, sadly, the system seems to want all the characters to drop to 0 humanity just getting the theme going.

There is one very important point that I don't see has been made strongly enough.

Humanity is NOT a sanity guage or a moral guage. In the core rules it doesn't gauge anything.

What's tripping you up (and I'm pretty sure about this because it tripped me up too) is seeing Humanity as a spectrum because there are high values and low values. Humanity is not a spectrum. Humanity is a binary condition. You are either human or inhuman. The number does not represent a "degree of humanness", it represents the strength of the connection. It is, if you will, a Binding Strength to your own humanity.

Humanity is challenged by doing things that are inhuman. By the definition of Sorcerer, demons are NOT natural creatures who just happen to live in another plane of existance. They are by definition "things that should not exist". Since this drifts a little bit towards Mythos, its easy to fall victim to the "sanity" angle...but that's not it.

Humanity checks for Sorcery is nothing more than "if you play with fire, you're going to get burned". The fire in this case is the inhumanity of demons. The burning is the weakening of your own grip on humanity.


Once you get to this point it becomes much easier to sit down and start defining Humanity. The key is that the demons ALSO have to be defined in the same terms as you've defined humanity.

The definition for humanity should always be the answer to the question "what makes us human". And it really should be a complete sentence if not a paragraph. I don't think 1 word humanity definitions are very effective. If humanity then is "the ability to employ logic and rational thought to overcome our base animal instincts", than your demons have to be defined in terms that challenge this definition. Sorcerous rituals MUST in this case involve catering to those base animal instincts.

The humanity score then DOES NOT determine how rational vs how bestial your character is. IF your character is human, he is rational -- by the very definition established. IF your character has a Humanity score of at least 1 he is Human...therefor he is rationale. No more no less rational than someone who has a score of 7. If he slips to a Humanity of 0, he is no longer human.

Its a binary switch. The number does nothing more than determine how close you are to flipping that switch. As an analogy it is a toggle on the wall. Your hand is moving towards that toggle to switch it off. The score is not "how on" or "how off" the toggle is. It is "how far away your hand is".

Boink! I suddenly am much more interested in Sorcerer. Thanks, Ralph.

I normally don't do this sort of thing... But well done Ralph.

I think it's important to reinforce this point:

Humanity in Vampire bears little or no relation to Humanity in Sorcerer. Don't let the fact they have the same name confuse you. Everything after this point is my interpretation.

VHumanity is this thing that lets people see how good you are. It's a thing with levels, where each level is a set of behaviour that you're allowed, and where there are things you can and can't do if you don't want to lose Humanity, and there are things that you have to do if you want to get Humanity, and they're all written down at the start and they work in one way, and that's it.

SHumanity [that looks more odd than I'd intended] is fear, and story, and a whole bunch of other good things in one number that you raise and lower according to your group's definition of Humanity for that particular game. It is not a moral compass. It isn't really a measure of anything. It's sort of a probability - I am this close to becoming inhuman, but I don't need to worry about it just yet. It doesn't affect your behaviour, nor should it, at least when I'm playing. What's to fear from inhumanity? You're a goddamn Sorcerer, and you don't care about the threat of losing Humanity, because you know, know, know in your heart of hearts that you're going to make it. You'll be okay. That's the fundamental nature of at least some of your egotism. You're going to be the one who's okay. It's all those other losers who'll succumb.

[edit: Why do I only ever notice that Ralph is completely right after I've posted?]

I was thinking about this thread this morning, because this issue was something that I've been trying to wrap my head around for some time. It finally hit me at the bus stop on the way to work.

In Vampire, Humanity is the slippery slope that you try your damndest to crawl back up, but the Beast in you keeps dragging you back down. The rating shows you how far down the slope you are. The nature of the curve states that the further down you get, the less steep is becomes (ie: to go from Humanity 4 to 3, you have to do more depraved and sadistic things than if you were to go from 7 to 6). Conversely, you have to work that much harder to go back up from 7 to 8 than you would to go from 4 to 5.

It's nifty in theory, but in practice it doesn't quite work right. There were a couple of times in a previous Vampire game when a player did something nasty and I called for a humanity roll, and they tried to justify their actions, and I tried to explain that attempting to justify the nasty stuff is an indication of losing the point, to keep it you have to feel bad about what you've done. It's kind of counter-intuitive.

In Sorcerer, Humanity is a sheer cliff with a 1000 foot drop and a flat highway on top. The rating shows you nothing more than how close to the edge you're driving. Whether you're Humanity 5 or Humanity 1, you're still driving on a flat surface, but the Humanity 1 character is closer to falling off. And once you fall off, you're fucked. Ralph is quite right about the whole binary condition thingy.

In this respect (among others), Sorcerer has more balls than Vampire can ever aspire to.

-- Ben

Hello,

Wow, this thread really boomed during my day off the Forge. Ben, you are stating some points that were first presented by a fellow named Craig in the old Sorcerer mailing list in some detail; see the archives at the website and look for posts by "Angel."

One of the things that immediately struck me is that the Humanity gauge seems primarily designed to be used as a sanity gauge and very little else.

Hi, Ben.

Just two things to add. If Humanity measures anything, in my mind, it's Audience Sympathy. The "once-over" section of character creation (pp.33-34) states that a character must be a suitable protagonist--someone an audience would be willing to root for. That's not just the same, old "don't be a jerk" rule that most RPGs have. Since you're playing a protagonist in a story, the story only need continue so long as the audience is still on your side. The more stuff you do that contradicts the Humanity definition--which is to say, stuff that defies the moral code of the story--the more likely the audience is finally going to give up on you and not see you as a protagonist anymore.

Of course, even this is not entirely accurate. After all, the audience is still on Othello's side in Act V, even as he murders Desdemona. Perhaps it's better to say that Humanity 0 is the greatest extent possible of audience sympathy, and that the character is ruled a non-protagonist only after that last scene is played. Jared does that his his Sorcerer supplement Schism. That's up to the local Humanity definition, of course.

Ben Lehman wrote: One of the characters in a fantasy world of mine (one that I am twiddling with in Sorcerer terms, actually) sold her soul to the devil in order to protect her family from being destroyed as part of God's divine plan. Is that damning? By definition. Is it immoral?

You can have a Humanity score of "1" and still be an ideal Saint.

greyorm wrote: You can have a Humanity score of "1" and still be an ideal Saint.

greyorm wrote: You can have a Humanity score of "1" and still be an ideal Saint.

Hello,

Jake, I think Raven's point stands if you change the word "be" to "become." I think he's using "be" to indicate "what the player does with the character next," rather than as a static description of the character.

Best,
Ron

Ron, etc-

Yeah, that's what I was confirming.

The funny thing about this thread is that I just figured out this aspect of Humanity myself (I've been reading "soul." Again.) and I wanted to bring it up...then lo and behold, someone else did. Cool. Anyway this one issue is the most important part of sorcerer play for me, and it bodes well that we'll be playing sorcerer as soon as I can find players that can handle it.

Jake

Darn, thought it was imminently graspable. I'll expound:

What I meant with the quip was to explain that I could start Mother Teresa off as a character with a Humanity of 1. Point being: it doesn't matter what her Humanity score is...she's still Mother Teresa.

However, I must add the caveat: until and unless her score hits 0 or she commits some vile action calling for a Humanity check. The reason I include the latter is because one cannot be an ideal Saint (ie: Immaculate) if one has sinned.

Hence the point of saying that Mother Teresa starts as a Saint, yet has "only" a Humanity of 1.

Note: I'm not trying to make a new point or reveal some vastly interesting new take or concept, only provide an example of what has already been explained by others.

Ah, okay, I see it. Cool.

Jake

This thread is the ultimate "Humanity for beginners" thread. This "binary switch" explonation is really good.

Akos

Akos Szederjei wrote: This thread is the ultimate "Humanity for beginners" thread. This "binary switch" explonation is really good.

*coughs*
Except, umm...
I really hate to do this, again.
It isn't a binary. It's a scale.

Valamir wrote: You're missing the key. *snip very nice example*

Hi Ben,

Yup. I agree. Reconciling the metagame and in-game roles of Humanity is the deliberate creative constraint buried in the Sorcerer rules.

As for explanations, this thread prompted me to review the first chapter of The Sorcerer's Soul. As far as I can tell, all the issues raised here are addressed there.

Best,
Ron

Right.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
I am talking about the effects of humanity within the game system. Within the game system, as you approach 0 humanity, it becomes easier to summon demons, and harder to roll Humanity as a bonus stat (as described in Sorcerer's Soul.)
This is a qualitative scalar effect of humanity on Sorcerer play.
Thus, in Sorcerer as written, humanity is not entirely a binary. Clear?

Your behavior as a player might change depeding on your perception of how close to falling the character is. Performing certain Sorcerous acts becomes much harder to do.

There is no scale. There are two seperate measurements going on. The binary on and off, and the distance to off. They are seperate measures, not a scale.

(Working now in Sorcerer version of the 1960s art scene...)