[Sorcerer] A few mechanical questioms
Per Fischer:
Hey,
I'm sure Ron will chime in with the reason behind the design, but I don't really see a problem with this, and here's a couple of my thoughts.
Firstly, it reads like you guys (Mackie a.o.) think that Humanity is somehow a gauge for how "human" a character is. I don't know whether I read that correctly, but I'm pretty sure that all of you know that that is not the case for the rest of the game, thus not for Humanity gain rolls in connection with banish rituals either. Just an observation, but a sorcerer is not more human because he's got a high Humanity and vice versa.
Secondly, a Humanity gain roll is a Humanity gain roll, no matter what triggered it. The rule is simple - the sorcerer rolls his Humanity vs. something else, and in the Banish case (following a Banish ritual that allows a Humanity gain roll) vs. the banished demon's Power. So, yes, if the sorecer's Humanity is low and the demon's POwer is high, then it's hard (but not impossible) - calling that unfair is missing the point I think.
Lastly, it sounds a bit to me that you think it should be "easier" to gain Humanity by banishing demons. If you want your character to earn Humanity gain rolls, there is an easy option already built into the rules, namely having your character doing in-fiction actions that you have deemed as suitable for humanity gain. I'm sure that's a very deliberate design.
Sunday morning musings, I hope they make sense :)
Per
Mackie:
It makes some sense. Just not as much as the other way round, I guess.
I'm totally with you with regards to humanity, its not a measure of humanity (i tried to convey that in last post). With rtegards to your commend about being "easier" to gain humanity by banishing demons - not really; and in a sense its academic. I wasnt comparing i to other ways.
I'll throw in a comparison with say, summoning a demon. This is easier the lower your humanity. and you are more likely to loose humanity the lower your humanity score. Or to put it another way, a high humanity makes it harder to perform but less likely to loose humanity. Or yet another way. Low humanity = good chance of performing action but negative for humanity.
So, if we take banishing as the flip side, the rules seems to say that the lower your humanit the less likely you are to succeed and the less likely you are to gain a humanity. Or in other words = poor chance of performing action AND bad for humanity.
It dosen't feel internally consistent to me.
I dont wont to look at this in isolation either. Look at demon power; again, the more powerful the demon you summon the more likely you are to loose humanity. But, when you bansih, the more powerful the demon you banish the LESS likelly you are to gain humanity. Again, it just desosent feel consistent.
Maybe it dosent need to, after all demons are weird things. But, as I said, its an itch for me.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Mackie,
Thanks for that explanation. I can see where your concerns are coming from, now.
The first thing I want to clarify is that this issue has nothing to do with Creative Agenda. You aren't bringing up Simulationist or Gamist concerns, but rather in-fiction plausibility and system-currency concerns. Those are common to any good game design regardless of CA.
The second issue is the basic relationship of Power to Humanity, and "the universe" if we're speaking in thematic terms about story-creation via the Sorcerer rules. Power is best understood as the demon's successful imposition upon reality - not only the degree to which the universe is violated, but also the degree which the universe is forced to accept once the demon is here. (This is also related to the issue of Binding, meaning that the imposition is made lasting, perhaps even permanent, through the collaboration with a human will and willingness to enter into the dangerous economy of Need. But that's too distracting to get into here, for me.)
Comparing it with Summoning may be useful. It's quite hard to Summon a high-Power demon because the universe resists such a nasty violation. But it's also hard to get rid of that same demon because once it's here, the universe has been bitch-slapped and now favors the demon - at least temporarily, until Need erodes the demon's Power.
The third issue concerns the distribution of probabilities, which is actually two things. The first of them is why a sorcerer cannot gain Humanity by Banishing a demon of lower Power. The logic here is that in terms of score totals, the demon is "less here" than the sorcerer's Humanity. Although success is not guaranteed, effectively the sorcerer is operating within his or her already-established range of impact on the universe via Humanity. (In thematic terms, protagonism, but again, that's distracting me, so I'll stop there.) You are also correct to note that during playtesting, I was indeed concerned about game-mechanics and Banishing piddly demons, but I didn't answer that issue by wondering about "balance," but rather thinking in terms of sorcerers as thematic, consequential presences in a story. It seemed to me then, and does now, that Humanity gain in this context requires getting out of what might be considered a Humanity comfort zone - especially because unlike all other modes of Humanity gain, this one is not explicitly associated with doing something decent.
Let me know whether any of this makes sense, or at least clarifies my thinking. Since all of these issues saw extensive playtesting through different versions of the possible mechanics, I'm confident that the current rules work consistently, but I also agree that one should critique them to understand them well.
Best, Ron
Noclue:
Run, my assumption was that banishing piddly demons had no effect because, hey, they're piddly demons. No big deal. Banishing powerful demons might lead to humanity gain, but as the power level of the stuff you're messing with goes up, you're less and less involved in things that are human concerns. You may be doing a very very decent thing by banishing the uber demon, but you're messing with some heavy mojo in terms of universe altering forces. That's not really the stuff of which humanness is made.
Is that a fair assumption?
Ron Edwards:
Hi James,
That analysis falls more into how you want to interpret (or better, to apply) the rules, not so much into how the rules work in pure systemic and overall thematic terms. In other words, what you're saying is a fine way to apply the rules in a particular game, but you aren't describing the system as such either.
Again, my take on "Banishing big demons" is that they are a whole lot of (corrupted) reality to be revising. So it ain't easy, and doing it is ... well, it's like making the universe more like your own Humanity. So now there's more "you" to the universe (bearing mind that "the universe," in Sorcerer, is a thematic landscape rather than a physics-based simulative one).
Best, Ron
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