How long do Rollovers bonuses last?
Tasseomancer:
I know you are very busy what with GenCon coming up so take you time and answer at your leisure.
How long do Rollovers bonuses last? I don't think it says anywhere but all the examples I've seen have been same or next round.
The reason I'm asking this is if you were to set up a campaign as you have suggested in Sword & Sorcery that has the games run in the order say C, B, A.
I would be plausible to say play game C, where Derick the demon has pissed on the characters favourite rose bush say. The game gets to the point when the characters want to banish the demon say, his chances of winning at the flower show this year destroyed (I know I'm making this up on the spot). They turn up in a deserted warehouse where as younger players they banished another demon and see the pentagram on the floor with all the ceremony tools.
Scene Cut!
We now start playing Game B, and in this one say the younger characters are faced with a another demon who stole their maths home work say. In this game they decide to summon a demon to deal with the Maths Homework Demon. The contact and the summons go well. But the new demon escapes for what ever reason. Does the new demon look familiar. Yes it was the previous or later (depending how you look at it) Rose pissing demon. Now conceivably any victories from the summons could rollover on to the binding they choose to do in game C.
Scene Cut!
We could either jump back to Game C and play that one out with the Rollover Bonuses from Game B.
Or we could have jumped back to Game A which may have rolled on to game B before the roll was made if you get my drift.
So not only are the crossings deja vous moments when the character notices something familiar but also have exchanges of the currency.
This method could be used for characters to theoretically take on some serious opponents by building up the bonuses from previous stories against the same adversary. For a final showdown. Just an idea spinning round my head.
Mark
Tasseomancer:
Oops didn't read through my example before posting. In game C they turn up at a warehouse when as younger players they summoned another demon and see the pentagram and ceremonial tools.
Ron Edwards:
Hi,
The rule, for what it's worth, is that a rollover bonus of any kind can only be used if:
1. The new roll is based on an action directly related to the former roll's outcome. It works best if you ask, "Can this action even be possible without the result of the previous action?" If the answer is yes, then the rollover bonus doesn't apply.
2. It's really the next roll for that character.* By "next" I mean in the game, not from the character's point of view. Some folks are getting the idea that you can bank a bunch of bonuses from separate rolls into a single later roll, which is not correct, or that you can save a bonus for a while and do other things before returning to a related action, which is also not correct.
Hypothetically, if you are playing out-of-sequence actions, and if #1 and #2 still manage to apply, then sure, the rollover bonus is valid.
Best, Ron
* Advanced point: sometimes rollover bonuses are transitive, from one character to another (you'll know it when you see it). Points #1 and #2 still apply in full.
Joel P. Shempert:
Ooh, crap. I screwed up in our last Sorcerer game; when Jake's character was trying to get a name out of his new (possibly crazy) housemate--Seth's character--before he took off to get the rent money, I told them to roll Will vs. Will. Jake won with three victories, and Seth said "that's fine, I'm still leaving without telling him my name." I told them that Jake's PC would then have a +3 bonus for further interaction with Seth, representing Seth's guy seeming really shifty and flaky and failing to inspire confidence.
I can sorta see a justification in that, while both PCs are conceivably going to do other things before interacting again, the bonus could still be applied to Jake's next action toward that character. it's like if two characters were having an argument over the phone, hang up without resolving it, then one of them calls back to resume--the new actions are of a continuity with the old actions, thus belonging in the same sequence and benefiting from rollover.
Or at least so my brain thinks now. At the time, I was just completely brain-farting that principle in the rules and treating it as a lasting bonus.
Peace,
-Joel
Ron Edwards:
Hi Joel,
I recommend not treating victories as floating bonuses under any circumstances. I have learned over the years that rolls in Sorcerer are momentary. They appear like lightning and their results strike like lightning. The bonuses don't create environment for a variety of rolls; they simply make the next bolt strike harder.
Drifting the rules a little bit is tempting. You see five victories on the table in a roll concerning some verbal conflict, and a while later, it seems so logical use them against that person. The trouble with doing so is logistic, thematic, and narrative. Logistically, the GM is often dealing with six or seven NPCs at once if you count the demons, and floating bonuses are going to interfere with every roll and decision, adding not just another layer, but a whole fog onto the process of managing things. Thematically, Sorcerer is about hard choices. By establishing a whole environment of floating bonuses and relationships built on them, people are also establishing that the fiction in which the characters do their thing can be gamed. To do so, you violate the cardinal principle that no one games the universe (i.e. anything external to the character) in Sorcerer; it's always hitting back as hard as it ever did. Narratively, also such bonuses may superficially "feel" as if they establish continuity, they actually impede the perception of fictional causality in the moment. A character is forever more influenced by rolls in the past than by actions and rolls in the present.
I hope that clarifies where I'm coming from with all this. I also hope it shows how necromancy is really awful stuff, because it goes ahead and does all those dangerous things anyway. A necromancer is more than just another sorcerer, because he or she is really "tearing the very fabric of time and space!" in the classic pulp sense.
Best, Ron
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