Okay, so one of my best players is going to start playing a new game with me. His character is a shapeshifter. I first went to Sorcerer, because I've been jonesin' to play that with someone, anyone, but he wouldn't bite on any of that dark thematization of his shapeshifting - his shapeshifting is, for him, an expression of inner freedom, and the only danger (as he sees it) is when he goes too far and hurts someone by getting too into his animal nature.

I asked him a lot of questions up front and the player is pretty straight that he wants the character's conflicts to be mostly external rather than internal. He did allow that there's a potential for hurting people if the bestial stuff he calls on in his shapechanging 'goes too far', and that's something that I plan on introducing and milking, but that by itself doesn't make for a good application of Sorcerer, since there's no humanity loss from dealing with the demon, only for what the demon does in certain extreme situations. Or so it seems to me.

I have some thoughts about a fun shapechanging mechanic but I don't want to spend my holiday trying to write a new game system. Any help out there?

Maybe the 'mostly external conflict' thing renders the possibility of heavily theme-charged (which we've talked about and are both interested in for this) play futile, but he did give me the possibility of hurting things he cares about through his power by getting out of control. That's not enough for Sorcerer, but it might be enough for something a little more ambitious than revenge against the evil empire, etc. Any thoughts on what I should be using for this?

Actually I think you could do it with Sorcerer. The neat thing about Sorcerer is that you can have all sorts of external challenges and they take on internal meaning "accidentally". Or rather, quite intentionally, but not with any work on the player's part, just by the effects of the system.

Ask the player if it would make sense for him to go totally bestial for a while if certain things went wrong for him. Like the Hulk. Have you read anything about the Sorcerer supplement Urge? There were a couple of "werewolfy" sorts of games that were going to be played using Sorcerer (but didn't pan out, unfortunately) that looked exactly like this set up.

Anyhow, I'm not saying that Sorcerer is your only choice. But, interestingly, in spending most of the above post denying that Sorcerer would work, you've only put out details that pertain to theme and such. What about detail level? What about feel? What else can you tell us about the sort of game that would satisfy the both of you.

Have you considered Werewolf:TA? It has most of the elements that I think you're looking for. If not, what would make it a bad choice?

Mike

Hey Sean,

In thinking about shapeshifters, the system that call out to me strongest is Vin Diakuw's Reverse RPG. I'd make shapeshifting one of the defined attributes. And I'd try to have only four other attributes, so I could use my funky Zocchi d7 for the game.

Paul

Hi, Mike and Paul -

Mike, my player and I had the following conversation via email. I'm the one with carrots in front of my words.

> So the transformation is a positive thing....that I hadn't
> considered. That goes against what I was thinking, where
> the transformation is something he's forced to do to achieve
> things he cares about.

Yes, I'm thinking of the shifting as a positive thing that he loves to do and which gives him power and release. It's his tool against the world. If you're looking for a conflict related to his powers, I think the control issue is a good one to work with. The LeGuin conflict of taking on the personality of the form you take might be appropriate.

> he suffers from his past, but he's not really conflicted in
> the present, at least vis a vis his abilities.

True. The present conflict is mostly: what does he do with his life? He has great power, power that could become even greater. So what responsibility comes with that power? He feels obligated to free and reinfranchise his people, but that could cause the suffering of other innocents. If he works to ease the suffering of others, which he is inclined to do, might that then cause other suffering?

> What I'm trying to figure out is: what are his goals? And:
> is his power essentially benign from his point of view -
> meaning that stories will primarily center around external
> conflict - or is it one that he has to pay a price to use,
> making for both internal and external conflict?

Goals: He has an ultimate goal of helping his people and reversing the damage done to them by the Yvgeni. This involves a more general goal of bringing down the Empire. Immediately his goal is to find a purpose for his life. He has power, but he's not sure how to use it. He has a general urge to help others, but is concerned about inflicting more suffering as he does so.

Conflicts: External conflicts are good -- enemies to fight, an empire to bring down, problems to solve, people to help. Internal conflicts will probably revolve around control. When he's using his most powerful abilities (shifting into battle forms or travel forms, for example), there's always the danger of falling so completely into the personality of that form that he loses himself for a time. And who knows what kind of damage he might cause then.

Now, if you want to use a different system (like Sorceror which deals with issues of losing humanity), I can come up with a different character idea to accomodate that system.

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Okay. So you tell me: can we accomodate this loss of control issue with Sorcerer, or not? Well, of course you COULD, but it seems to me that this guy loves his 'demons'. Summoning, binding, all of it, he loves - it's an expression of his personal freedom. So that's real different from the humanity rules as written. The only problem he has is that sometimes they push him too far - that's where the potential humanity loss would be. But I don't know - is that enough?

If you tell me it is, and that Urge will help me deal with this issue in particular, then I'll go buy Urge tonight and check it out. But please be sure - I mean, I may buy Urge eventually anyway, but I'd like to do so on a correct basis when I do it.

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Paul - thanks! I don't think this player could live with a system where you have to roll to see what you use to resolve the situation. The guy's ready to branch out some, but I think he wants to identify with this character in ways such that a system like R2PG would frustrate him. For now - maybe later.

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Mike again - I admit to mindless prejudice against the whole White Wolf 'storyteller' line. I'm willing to change my stripes, but I don't own or know the Werewolf system at all. This fellow is a flexible shapeshifter - he can take on lots of different shapes and transform parts of his body. Would werewolf allow that? Or would it involve lots of hammer and tongs work to break out of a basic set of wolf shapes?

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Mike one more time - the reason I put out details pertaining to theme is that we're both sort of interested in a heavily thematic game. I was wondering if there was a good option besides Sorcerer to facilitate this. Maybe it will turn out that Sorcerer or some near-cousin to it are good for this after all.

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Anyone at all - I think if I were writing a game to handle this, I would put a 'bestiality pool' on top of a fairly simple system and allow him to boost all his different abilities by partial shapeshifting. The bestiality pool would in turn create a number (of dice or target #) that he'd have to roll against to keep his control if the situation became one that challenged his animal nature.

Hey Sean,

If you and your player are interested in diceless games, you might wish to try the new second edition of Active Exploits. Loss of one or more point of Dementia could be an appropriate trigger for the character going too deeply into his bestial persona, and he could ward off those losses by expending Discipline. Shapeshift would be an Ability of its own, the form being more a special effect than anything else. The character could spend points of Shapeshift as effort for any task in which he or she has altered his or her body to optimize for that task (claws for attack, armored scales for defense, slenderness to crawl through a narrow pipe, etc.)

Alternately, take a peek at Lost Souls, a supplement for Cthulhu Live. It revolves around playing minions of the Mythos, who struggle continually to maintain a Facade of normalcy. The mechanics work just like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu, although the rationale is reversed. A minion whose Facade crumbles will black out, only to awake hours later with no recollection of the intervening time... but invariably possessing some grisly memento hinting at what he or she may have done. And there is always HeroQuest, where a prolonged shapeshift might trigger the character's Inner Beast personality trait at narrator's or player's whim.

Calithena wrote: Okay. So you tell me: can we accomodate this loss of control issue with Sorcerer, or not? Well, of course you COULD, but it seems to me that this guy loves his 'demons'. Summoning, binding, all of it, he loves - it's an expression of his personal freedom. So that's real different from the humanity rules as written. The only problem he has is that sometimes they push him too far - that's where the potential humanity loss would be. But I don't know - is that enough?

If you tell me it is, and that Urge will help me deal with this issue in particular, then I'll go buy Urge tonight and check it out. But please be sure - I mean, I may buy Urge eventually anyway, but I'd like to do so on a correct basis when I do it.

This fellow is a flexible shapeshifter - he can take on lots of different shapes and transform parts of his body. Would werewolf allow that? Or would it involve lots of hammer and tongs work to break out of a basic set of wolf shapes?

OK. Apologies if I do this in scattershot posting - I'm running back and forth between here and the room I'm working in.

So Mike - it could be that I'm being obtuse (I am the living proof that a character can take both insightful and obtuse), but it seems to me that this character would have a problem with Sorcerer because none of the things that normally cause Humanity checks would cause him Humanity checks. That is, 'summoning' (understood as finding a new form within himself'), 'binding' (learning to take on that shape - including taking it on for the first time) - none of it would involve loss of humanity. In fact, as the player defined it anyway, it would if anything be a humanity gain.

It's only loss of control that causes the humanity problems here.

I suppose I could play 'sorcerer lite' but that seems kind of a cheat for my first time with the system.

Or I could just rewrite where the humanity gains and losses happen. But then I worry that the whole humanity thing would recede into the background. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard though. I suppose I could just rule by fiat that humanity is only gained by using his power for 'good' and only lost by losing control and doing damage, but that sure seems like an attenuation of the core mechanic. Would that be fun then?

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Yeah, as soon as I thought of this I thought of a shapeshifting variable power pool from Hero System. But I'm never GMing Hero System or 3e or any game that requires that much backwork for GM creativity again - I'm done. I don't care about rules lite or heavy but I care passionately about being able to think 'oh, what a cool idea for a monster/NPC/situation/whatever' and being able to have the thing I thought of ready to put in play in five minutes or less without cheating the system.

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Heroquest would work and along with TFT is one of my two general fantasy defaults. But I'd have to write up all three keywords for this guy...I'll do it, but only if I've no better Narrativist option. Thanks, Michael, for the suggestions on those - I think my friend has a dice fetish but I'll look at the two games you mention anyway once I get out of class.

Sean,

Urge isn't exactly what you want, I don't think. The rules themselves could handle it well, but the tone of the text is "you live to destroy and try to eke a small amount of good out of that," which doesn't seem like what you're looking for.

Calithena wrote: I'll look at the two games you mention anyway once I get out of class.

Sean,

...but it seems to me that this character would have a problem with Sorcerer because none of the things that normally cause Humanity checks would cause him Humanity checks. That is, 'summoning' (understood as finding a new form within himself'), 'binding' (learning to take on that shape - including taking it on for the first time) - none of it would involve loss of humanity. In fact, as the player defined it anyway, it would if anything be a humanity gain.

It's only loss of control that causes the humanity problems here.

He has power, but he's not sure how to use it. He has a general urge to help others, but is concerned about inflicting more suffering as he does so.

When he's using his most powerful abilities (shifting into battle forms or travel forms, for example), there's always the danger of falling so completely into the personality of that form that he loses himself for a time. And who knows what kind of damage he might cause then.

... it seems to me that this character would have a problem with Sorcerer because none of the things that normally cause Humanity checks would cause him Humanity checks. That is, 'summoning' (understood as finding a new form within himself'), 'binding' (learning to take on that shape - including taking it on for the first time) - none of it would involve loss of humanity. In fact, as the player defined it anyway, it would if anything be a humanity gain.

It's only loss of control that causes the humanity problems here.

... Or I could just rewrite where the humanity gains and losses happen. But then I worry that the whole humanity thing would recede into the background. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard though. I suppose I could just rule by fiat that humanity is only gained by using his power for 'good' and only lost by losing control and doing damage, but that sure seems like an attenuation of the core mechanic. Would that be fun then?

Hi, Sean.

I gotta 2nd Rob about Humanity=self-control/self-empowerment. Demons are literally "the beast within."

Calithena wrote: Internal conflicts will probably revolve around control. When he's using his most powerful abilities (shifting into battle forms or travel forms, for example), there's always the danger of falling so completely into the personality of that form that he loses himself for a time. And who knows what kind of damage he might cause then.

Just thought of this as I walked away. If Humanity=Self-Control/Self-Empowerment, and the guy's a rebel leader, he'll face Humanity Checks whenever he bullies or coerces someone into doing something they don't want to do, even if it helps defeat the Evil Empire. He'd get H. Gains by leading by example and respecting others' choices.

Yep, these posts are mirroring how I'm thinking about it.

Humanity is not a morality meter for the character's every act. It only pertains to whatever you decide is the Humanity issue for the game in quesion. It's anything that you choose as something that defines a character's, well, humanity. Form and stability of that form seem perfect to me.

Thus, if the character does something moral or immoral, but it has nothing to do with the particular definition of Humanity, then it doesn't get a roll. If he does something good, but it doesn't affect Humanity, no roll. So a character can do something for a good reason and still lose Humanity. That's the dramatic choice they make.

I think that Humanity for this game is very simply remaining Physically able to be Human. Like people are saying, Control. When the guy summons and binds a new form, he comes closer and closer to the point where he'll completely lose control and become a beast forever because of the magic or whatever sorcery represents. That's the Humanity issue. When asking if the character should get a Humanity roll, you ask, how bestial/human was it? So, if I his character murders someone in a bestial fury, that's a Humanity check. If he clamly poisons someone for political reasons or something, that's probably not. If he helps someone get over being sad by having a wild party with them, that won't increase humanity. If they character helps the person, instead by being very human to them, then they do get a roll.

See my point? It'll work perfectly for the game you want.

In the interim between starting and finally succumbing completely to the beast, he'll be close to the edge with Taints putting him over temporarily, or feeding needs, or succumbing to the demon's manipulations to get it's desires causing him to engage in bestial behaviors. Further, this is one of those games where a recovery from Zero Humanity should probably be allowed. Check those rules out if you haven't.

Premise? How much would you risk your form as a self-controlled human to destroy the enemy? Seems perfect.

I dug up my character from the beast game we were going to play. The setting was going to be Dark Ages Austria or something. Humanity was not succumbing to the nature of the Beast.

Enzo Boross
Enzo comes from a family with a long history of defending a special patch of forest called the primal wood* from those who would sully it. To that extent, his ancestors, minor lords in the area, have always performed rutuals to take on the spirits of the animals that live in that wood in order to have the strength to defend it. In return, the Sorcerers themselves benefit from this strength. The extended family has refered to themselves as the Wood Tribe since time immemorial, and revel in their chosen path.

Of late, the pressure on the primal wood has increased. The forges of the town have been producing some of the world's best iron since Roman times, and finally the forest has almost receded to the point where men will be forced to destroy the primal wood to use as fuel for their furnaces. This has stretched the resources of Enzo's Tribe to the limit.

Kicker: recently, Enzo's brother, Bars, broke with the family. He had falled in love with a girl from the village, and when she discovered his Sorcerous nature, she killed herself. When this happened, Bars joined forces with an element of The Church called The Flame that had recently moved into the area. This group seeks to ensure that the region is kept solidly under Church sway so that it can be a source of iron for future Crusades, and other military needs. The Flame are actually Sorcerers themselves. One of their first tasks on the scene was to ensure that no Pagan forces would continue to exist that could oppose them. They base their operations out of thir monastary, and they've been investigating into the Wood Tribe trying to find a way to destroy them.

When Bars despaired after the loss of his fiancee, he decided that the arrival of The Flame in the region was a sign that he'd sinned before God. So he threw himself on the mercy of The Flame, and confessed some of the details of the Tribe. At first he thought that he would merely sell out entirely, but as he got to see the political structure of the organization, he became determined to become a part of it. So he hasn't told the members of The Flame everything, but enough that they've seen fit to give him a place in the organization with the assurance that he will help consolidate his power.

Now Bars has summoned a firey demon from one of the villages forges, and intends to take revenge on his family. The Wood Tribe are aware of his defection, and of the summoning, and have some ide of his intent. Given this, it's been placed on the shoulders of Enzo to take care of his brother - one way or another. Before he reveals their secrets further, or acts against the primal wood.

Personality - Enzo has a desire to understand and help others with their problems but, at the same time, can become too involved in their problems and, as a result, worry too much. Otherwise, he's pleasant and easy-going, yet very responsible. It's this intense sense of responsibility that gives him the drive to be a Sorcerer, the need to protect the primal woods.

Enzo is not effete, but just sees himself as a deep thinker, and eschews manual labor. His appearance is usually neat and clean, though not when he's been participating in rituals, of course.

Stamina 2 (Supernatural Vigor)
Will 3 (Passion for Life)
Lore 5 (Adept)

Humanity 3
Cover: Manorhouse Lord 3
Telltale: Hairy
Price: Animalistic (-1 die to avoid indulging in animal pleasures)

*I assume that the Primal Wood would be one of those Otherwhere sorts of places. One can go in, and come out in any other part of the world that would be linked to the Primal Wood. Any deep dark fairytale-esque forest.

Demon
Spirit of a Wolf bound in winter
This parasite demon uses it's host Enzo to ensure that it's home, the primal wood, is kept free from human destruction.

Need: To run in the primal wood.
Desire: Wild Behavoir
Stamina: 2
Will: 9
Lore: 8

Telltale: It makes Enzo hairy

Powers - note, all powers are soley under the power of the demon to activate, and all affect Enzo, of course. Enzo can "request" that the demon turn them on (or force it to with a will roll) by sort of psyching himself up, but he can't voluntarily turn them on. Thus he's a bit like the Hulk in that he's not always sure when he'll change. It often happens at moments where it looks like he'll be acting in a wild and/or dangerous manner, as this is what the wolf wants to see from Enzo.
*Boost (Stamina) - wolfen strength
*Vitality - regeneration, doesn't work against damage caused by fire or silver
*Armor - unnatural ability to soak up damage, doesn't work against fire or silver
*Special Damage - Claws
*Shapeshift - werewolf form
*Perception - canine capacity for detecting scents
*Mark - Special scars from claw marks. detectable by anyone with a Lore stat, but let's other "weres" to know that the terget has some relationship, good or bad, to the Primal Wood.
*Travel - Run with wolf speed

Does that seem right? I soooo wanted to play this game. :-)

Mike

Thanks, guys. This is great.

One thing we've done here is figured out a kind of setup for Sorcerer. I had thought along the same lines as Michael S. Miller, with a 'core demon' as a Parasite allowing certain kinds of limited shifting, and with actual alternate forms being Possessor demons.

But Rob is right - the player doesn't want to worry about Humanity with this character, though he doesn't mind having a cost to using his powers too strong.

So, I think I wrote a new RPG this morning, based mechanically on Sorcerer but with some bits added in from The Pool and Donjon, among other sources. A character-specific RPG. Very loosely, the character has some stats (Strength, Quickness, Will, and Past, plus some Flaws), and then a Shifting Pool. You spend points from the pool to get changes to your body lasting for one scene; 1 point per die, or 1 point to get a non-die based effect (e.g. growing bear claws to fight as if armed when not). Longer changes cost more. All the points you've spent in a scene create an opposed die pool you have to roll Will against to keep control of yourself. You replenish the pool by resting and by successful use of your powers in contests (so if you shred people with those bear claws you grew, you get points back, or if you do fancy aerobatics with eagle wings, ditto, but no replenishing just for turning into a mouse and sneaking around - it's using the shapeshifting for positive effect in a contest that replenishes it.)

I'll post the rough outline in Indie RPG design to get some feedback later in the day, but right now I have some work to do.

Thanks for all your recommendations and suggestions! This has been really interesting - not only did I learn about some cool new games, but I got an idea for a Sorcerer set up, and I may have even written a game (admittedly derivative of others, but) out of the deal. Awesome!

I can think of some good ways to quickly make Savage Worlds suitable just by creating a new arcane background and extra edges

you can get the test drive rules in the downloads section at www.peginc.com

If you take a look at it and decide its worth pursuing. I'd be happy to create a quick test character and a prototype arcane background for ya'll to play around with. I've allready thought up the basics but don't want to spam this post if your not interested.

I posted my ideas for a quick system centered around this character at this thread, if anyone wants to inspect them:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9047