Ideas! Ideas!

[Ian O'Rourke]

[Ron Edwards]

Ian,

I like both the ideas and don't think either one needs a lot more work before moving to the players.

1) The town idea is near and dear to my heart, as should be clear from Chapter 7 in the book. I think it practically requires relationship-map based planning.

2) The disease idea is also good, and I agree that Humanity would definitely concern the issue of who's in control, the host or the disease (whose goal is to continue transmitting). I suggest - and this may seem odd - that you treat the demons in question as Possessors, not Parasites as one might think. The rules in Soul offer a lot of guidelines for making Possessors more interesting.

Best,
Ron

[Uncle Dark]

Riffing off what Ron just said, you might consider the parasite-possesser-passer progression, as the host loses humanity and the disease gains control.

Lon

[Ian O'Rourke]

On 2001-08-29 12:26, Uncle Dark wrote:
Riffing off what Ron just said, you might consider the parasite-possesser-passer progression, as the host loses humanity and the disease gains control.

You lost me on that one? Could you explain it a bit more?

[Ron Edwards]

Ian,

Lon's talking about some material in The Sorcerer's Soul, in which the Types presented in the main rules are treated more fluidly. I offer several ways for demons to change Type, usually in response to Humanity changes in a host.

Thus a Possessor might, over time, turn itself into a Passer by completely taking over the host body for good, after the host's Humanity goes to 0.

(If you're wondering how a Possessed host could lose Humanity, since Humanity loss strictly results from conscious actions, well, that's in "Soul" too.)

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Ian,

Oh yeah. You know about how many micro-parasites (bacteria, viruses) affect host behavior, right? In that they change the host's behavior such that the chance to transmit the parasite is increased?

If not, check out some behavioral ecology. Great stuff.

Best,
Ron

[Uncle Dark]

What Ron said.

I was thinking this:

Parasite: the disease is there, but semi-dormant.  When the player loses his/her first Humanity point to actions involving the parasite, it starts "talking" to him/her, suggesting that if s/he simply surrender control temporarily, then  more power can be applied to the problem.  Once this choice is made, the parasite upgrades to possesser.

Possesser: the disease begins struggling to take over, subtly at first, but more directly as the host loses Humanity.  Once Humanity hits 0, the host is dead(?) and the diseas takes full control of the body, making it a Passer.

This is all from a concept I'd come up with based on Croenenberg films and John Carpenter's remake of The Thing.  What if the demons were fragments of the alien from The Thing?  What if they were trying to take over the world?

Lon

[Ron Edwards]

Lon (and Ian),

My take is that the Possessor stage confers most control over the host's body to the demon, with the host only able to resist occasionally. Of course, for the demon to become a Passer, the host's Humanity must hit 0; for that to happen, the host needs to have some voluntary actions; for that to happen, the Possessor has to "share the reins" every so often.

It's at this stage, of course, that the sorcerer is tremendously powerful and feels like he "has a great friend." The demon can even kick in abilities that it can use (rather than confer), thus revealing "new powers." Cool, eh?

Check out the discussions of Parasites and Possessors in the Archive section of the Sorcerer website for some ideas ... a lot of this found its way into Soul, too.

Best,
Ron

[Ian O'Rourke]

Very interesting- I just need to figure out how the whole 'author stance' on the summoning/containing stuff applies?

[Ian O'Rourke]

Very interesting- I just need to figure out how the whole 'author stance' on the summoning/containing stuff applies?

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-08-30 11:02, Ron Edwards wrote:
Lon (and Ian),

My take is that the Possessor stage confers most control over the host's body to the demon, with the host only able to resist occasionally. Of course, for the demon to become a Passer, the host's Humanity must hit 0; for that to happen, the host needs to have some voluntary actions; for that to happen, the Possessor has to "share the reins" every so often.

It's at this stage, of course, that the sorcerer is tremendously powerful and feels like he "has a great friend." The demon can even kick in abilities that it can use (rather than confer), thus revealing "new powers." Cool, eh?

An interesting take on this would be to take on a more existential approach with the players. Is that the demon who made me do that, or did I decide to do it? Slowly the Demon and the character's personalities merge. Where does one stop and the other begin? Players would get bonuses on their rolls to resist humanity loss by explaining how they "know" that it wasn't they that did that horrible thing; it was the demon. But was it? Perhaps they are succumbing to the lure of power that the demon provides. Certainly the character's been behaving more like the demon lately, even when it's certain he's in control. Maybe it was the character who killed that uppity gas station attendant who made him feel like a nobody. Stuff like this only makes the demon's hold more tight, the melding more perfect.

Lots of room for psychodrama here.

Mike Holmes