Okay, so Humanity checks seemed straightforward enough when I first read them, but then I started thinking about how to administer them. The rules say:

GMs can also decree Humanity loss rolls if the characters perform heinous acts, such as sacrificing the newspaper boy to Summon something or going on a killing spree for some reason. In such a case, roll current Humanity against itself.

Ron Edwards wrote: However, I strongly recommend that the severity of an action not apply as a penalty for a Humanity check. In other words, NOT: if you are rude to your aunt, that's a normal check, but if you butcher and kill and rape your aunt, in that order, that's a check with a penalty. Don't do that at all.
The solution would be to have multiple Humanity checks for a mult-part nasty action, ie, one for butchering, one for killing, one for raping, etc. (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=27489#27489)

I'm interested to see what some other people think of this one.

My answer is largely mathematical and quite boring, so I'll hold off on it for now.

Best,
Ron

I had an answer last night, and my computer ate it. Here's the short version...

Apart from the fact that Sorcerer does backflips to try to avoid this line of thinking (lower Humanity makes you less human, certain actions mean more or cost more in terms of Humanity, etc.), I look at it like this: It's about player resource management. That is, the players know what Humanity is, they know their odds of making or missing a roll, and they know what's at stake. Muddling with any of it, at best, discourages the players from doing some of the mondo crazy shit that makes Sorcerer so intense (and occasionally controversial), and at worst, lessens their impact as co-authors of the story. The GM already has a great deal of power in that he alone calls for loss/gain checks; to give him even more means taking some from the players.

- Scott

Hi Colin,

I would like fisrt to point toward one rule that may be relevent to your point:

In the case of sumoning, the sorcerer can make a sacrifice to gain bonus dice on the ritual roll. He gains a number of bonus dice equal to the stamina or will of the victim, but also has a negative modifier on his humanity check equal to the humanity of the victim (that is, if the victim is a person). -- Sorcerer p.87

So, I don't know if by the rules this is an exemple of heinous act generating malus to Humanity check or if it's intented to be restricted to the case of Sumoning exclusively ?


Also, about the 50/50 change in the Humanity check, I think that's because Humanity tracks the stability of behavior, and isn't an act-by-act kind of tracker.

So yes, you could commit one atrocious act and not suffer HUmanity loss, but if you stay on this road, sooner or later you'll loose those precious point. The same being true for Humanity gain.


Fabrice

The examples will all vary by context. Car stolen from an old lady so she can't get groceries? Or car stolen to go rescue someone in need of help? And who stole it - "a character" isn't much help.

But the "criteria" that I use is in every case is "whenever I feel that it's bad." That is, it's a player-GM thing, not an in-game thing. There is no hard line. It's a way of making what's happening a statment of some sort. When we need to punctuate that statement, I call for a roll. "Look, he did something bad!" Since it's not in-game, there's no reason that the dice have to represent anything in particular - no need to match up the "badness" level.

If you're on the edge of whether something is bad or not, make em roll, and let the dice decide.

The Math answer is (I think) that even just a couple of dice rapidly slant the contest towards losing. Which means that it becomes more of a standard expenditure resource than a gambling resource. This isn't a problem in other contests where the difference becomes also about "by how many dice" you lose by. But Humanity, in order to make it not so volitile that it's meaningless, only has a loss of one at a time.

Therefore, it breaks down if you award bonus dice to one side. Players will note that certain actions will almost always cause the loss, so they'll avoid them. The idea with Sorcerer is to allow players to always risk any action no matter how heinous. We don't want characters that are skirting bad behavior, but who are indulging in it to get what they want.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: The examples will all vary by context. Car stolen from an old lady so she can't get groceries? Or car stolen to go rescue someone in need of help? And who stole it - "a character" isn't much help.

Mike Holmes wrote: Therefore, it breaks down if you award bonus dice to one side. Players will note that certain actions will almost always cause the loss, so they'll avoid them. The idea with Sorcerer is to allow players to always risk any action no matter how heinous. We don't want characters that are skirting bad behavior, but who are indulging in it to get what they want.

Hi Colin,

It may help to also recognize that some actions may have greater "emotional" meaning than others depending on the group, and the genre/setting of the game. Shooting down a hundred mooks may have no humanity consequences, but missing the birth of your son for work may have immense implications. Even the same action under different circumstances may yield a Gain roll in one case, a Check in another.

Second, morality in Sorcerer is not a solid, fixed thing. You could succeed every Humanity Check and get away with heinous acts. You could miss the only 3 Checks you get and get damned. Just like the real world, karma isn't 100% predictable and reliable. All you know is that when you do certain types of actions(pissing people off), its only a matter of time and probability before some form of reaction occurs(getting your rear kicked).

Chris

Hiya,

For me, it's a matter of intensity per instance vs. frequency of instances.

It turns out that frequency of instances, even with 50/50 individual outcomes, sets a consistent context for changing or evaluating behavior, across those instances.

That's different from what most of us were taught about learning and changing, that it's consistency of feedback (in this case, the worse you do, the worse you get) that sets that context. Consistency of that sort might help, somtimes, but it's not the key, and often it's actually obstructive.

Or, to put it differently, risk-per-instance is one variable, and number-of-instances is another. I think letting both dials spin at once is inelegant design, which also means confusing in play.

Either you run a single Humanity check (and a single Humanity gain roll) at the end of each session, modified for severity based on how heinous or how great you were, or you run it the way it's written, with a check or gain per action, always at the same risk.

Trying to do both at once - roll per action, but adjust for risk, results in an inconsistent context for evaluating and reflecting on behavior. All of the above responses so far represent various expressions of this principle from different angles.

Note that the above concept only applies for ethical aspects of the Humanity system, not for the demonic ones - those are built to be a function of demon Power and current Humanity, working off a very different mathematical model, brinkmanship.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Either you run a single Humanity check (and a single Humanity gain roll) at the end of each session, modified for severity based on how heinous or how great you were, or you run it the way it's written, with a check or gain per action, always at the same risk.

Hi Michael,

This issue was previously discussed in the same thread that zmook is quoting me from: Rules question: bonuses to Humanity check/gain. Check it out and let me know if it answers your questions.

Best,
Ron

Rollover has to have some sort of reasonable in-game linkage between the success of the one roll, and the new attempt being made. As such, I can't think of much that would apply. That is, I think that I agree in theory to allow rollover, but I'm not sure I ever would allow it.

Can you think of a compelling example, Michael (or Ron)?

Mike

Thanks for the link, Ron. That clears things up nicely. As does Mike's "In theory, sure. In practice, when?"

Thanks, guys.

Michael S. Miller wrote: "In theory, sure. In practice, when?"

Valamir wrote: Humanity is defined as empathy for the needs of your fellow human beings.
A demon is being summoned using a sexual act with a partner as part of the ritual.
Being sure to completely satisfy your partner before continuing with the ritual...Humanity Gain roll.
What?

Hi Colin,

Regarding Ralph's (Valamir's) example, you're thinking perhaps a bit simplistically. The rituals would indeed including non-empathic or even empathy-damaging actions ... but if loopholes exist which permit actions that get you Humanity increase rolls as well, that's fine.

This is a very interesting and important factor in playing Sorcerer; in some games, a set of actions might result in a whole array of Humanity checks and Humanity gain rolls, even though from the character's point of view, they did relatively few things and in a fairly linear-sensible sequence.

Also, it seems to me that the bar for Humanity checks and gains has to be set fairly high. Because normal people have Humanity, and they have sex and do good turns for their neighbours and take advantage of their girlfriends every day, but I don't think their Humanity varies very much because of it.

Ron Edwards wrote: If you try to imagine "the whole game-world" all humming along operating by the rules of the game, and using "how the world would work if" as your standard for utilizing the rules ... well, that's a fast track to missing some of the real strengths of the game.

Hi Colin,

Well, you can rationailize it with arguably-in-game-world logic if you want to - only sorcerers, who have taken steps to really put their Humanity in jeopardy, have to be monitored in this way - normal folks (i.e., not sorcerers and also not Hitler, a serial killer, or etc.) will never hit 0, and until you hit 0, Humanity means nothing in-game-world.

But the general point is (I think) - Sorcerer isn't trying to model a world, it's trying to model a story (a particular kind of story approached in a particular way, to be more precise). Characters in a story never really play by the same rules as everyone else in the world - they play by the rules of the story. Why should a game have to be any different?

Gordon

Hi Colin,

Heh - that's what Jesse (jburneko) likes to call "Simulationist-by-habit" thinking.

Humanity doesn't refer to what everyone in the game-world has; it refers to the ones we the audience are concerned with.

Now, am I saying that NPCs don't have Humanity scores? Or that they wouldn't make Humanity checks if it were germaine to the conflicts in the game? Or that they have rules for going up and down that are different from the player-characters?

No. I'm not saying any of those things. I'm saying that characters whose Humanity isn't relevant to the action of what you're creating are simply irrelevant in terms of game processes. That means that if an NPC is relevant to you, if you do care about how Humanity is going for him or her, and if the NPC is tied to a player-character of some kind ... then sure, go by those processes, big-time.

The player-characters already meet all these criteria, which is why they have to follow those rules too. But remember: these rules are for you and the people playing the game with you, not "about the characters" in some kind of representational-model way.

Best,
Ron

Hiya,

Follow-up point: perhaps an easier way to look at the issue is that changes in Humanity are only relevant for a few characters, including the player-characters and a number of NPCs.

What I'm really trying to get at is to abandon consideration of entirely irrelevant NPCs - which is to say, the imaginary world which is not dealt with in actual play at all. Say you're watching, oh, The Seven Samurai. Does it matter at all what's happening with the English and French colonists of North America, contemporary with the events of the film? Must we give any attention, notice, or worries about consistency in the course of making and/or enjoying The Seven Samurai?

It's not a matter of whether those colonists have Humanity scores, or whether they're using "different rules," or anything like that. Such a question is meaningless for story creation.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Heh - that's what Jesse (jburneko) likes to call "Simulationist-by-habit" thinking.

Ron Edwards wrote: What I'm really trying to get at is to abandon consideration of entirely irrelevant NPCs - which is to say, the imaginary world which is not dealt with in actual play at all. Say you're watching, oh, The Seven Samurai. Does it matter at all what's happening with the English and French colonists of North America, contemporary with the events of the film?

Hi Colin,

You wrote,

And then I need to feel confident that whatever standard I adopt for "how big a dick does a character have to be before he has to make a Humanity check" doesn't imply that every third frat boy will have Humanity 0.

Fabrice G. wrote:
In the case of sumoning, the sorcerer can make a sacrifice to gain bonus dice on the ritual roll. He gains a number of bonus dice equal to the stamina or will of the victim, but also has a negative modifier on his humanity check equal to the humanity of the victim (that is, if the victim is a person). -- Sorcerer p.87

zmook wrote: Let's take a specific example. Suppose the setting is modern and Humanity is something like Empathy or The Ability to Form Relationships with Others. In such a case, all the kinds of miscellaneous assholery we all do every day to/with our family and lovers -- it's all relevant to Humanity checks. And then I need to feel confident that whatever standard I adopt for "how big a dick does a character have to be before he has to make a Humanity check" doesn't imply that every third frat boy will have Humanity 0. Because the frat boys are in the game -- they could end up on screen at any time.

Michael's got it. Theoretically, any & all NPCs have a Humanity of zero. The only really relevant Humanity belongs to the PCs. When a PC's Humanity drops to zero, does it mean the character is now an irredeemable bastard? No, it just means they've lost touch with that essential grasp on regular, not-corrupted-by-demons spark.

So, Humanity is, say, "empathy for others." A PC's Humanity drops to zero. This doesn't mean the PC (now an NPC) walks around killing people right & left, tripping old ladies trying to cross the street, taking candy from little kiddies--the character doesn't suddenly become a character in kpfs. It just means that the character has lost that empathy. They may still do good things, but not for empathetic reasons.

At any rate, you can assume that many people have zero Humanity. Or a high Humanity rating. As Ron's said, unless the NPC comes into play, their Humanity rating is irrelevant to the point of being non-existent. Humanity doesn't exist within the game world, it exists outside, defining the game world & defining the PCs & their actions.

Ah, jeez, Michael, you nailed it 100 times better than I did.

Note to self: "the rules are good, they are better than your ability to explain them, always go back and look at the rules."

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: With respect, this discussion has a certain timid-virgin ring to it.

Ron Edwards wrote: ... OK, that's enough of that metaphor.

joshua neff wrote: Michael's got it. Theoretically, any & all NPCs have a Humanity of zero. The only really relevant Humanity belongs to the PCs. When a PC's Humanity drops to zero, does it mean the character is now an irredeemable bastard? No, it just means they've lost touch with that essential grasp on regular, not-corrupted-by-demons spark.