[Sorcerer] Sorcerers in Casablanca
Eero Tuovinen:
I like this thread. Be sure to let us know how the session works.
Ron Edwards:
Hiya,
A couple threads for fun: [Sorcerer] By the Sword - First session and [Sorcerer] McCarthy Era, especially the last few posts.
Best, Ron
jburneko:
It seems I have been summoned. Although Raven's posts and Ron's links do a pretty good job of covering anything I would say. Let me see if I can hit some basics.
The HOW, HOW, HOW cry I put out years ago was really based in lack of understanding of what to do with NPCs. Back then I really couldn't conceive of uses for NPCs outside of two functions: things you fight and lock boxes of information you needed to open so you could know who to fight and how to fight them. Both of these things are actually clearly forbidden in the Sorcerer texts. You add in that the rules are very volatile and unpredictable it seemed to me that an NPC you wanted to be a BIG DEAL and kind of scary you couldn't actually do anything with because the PCs might just defeat him "too soon." It seemed like a big giant recipe for either really short games or GM turtle-ing.
Quite honestly, I am still working on thawing my rather "frozen" NPCs today. See my more recent posts here regarding my reading of Trollbabe and in Actual Play about Burning Empires and Pta.
Step one in beginning to realize what I was supposed to be doing in Sorcerer was recognizing the wider social context of the characters. Before encountering Sorcerer my strongest GMing skills were rooted in clue-chain style mystery scenarios where you have a disconnected PC and a disconnected NPC villain and then basically a string of "filler" material between them so that the PC doesn't just walk up to the villain and stab him.
Once I began looking the PCs and NPCs in terms of their wider relationships I began to see other ways to challenge the players beyond simply asking for favors, hiding information and being physical threats. I notice that if a PC has a wife and there are things she wants from the PC then it suddenly becomes exponentially harder for the PC to take certain kinds of actions. You don't need to kidnap her. You don't need to have her betray the PC. You don't need her to do anything other than be a wife with wifely needs.
Similarly, if you give an NPC who is really a bad person in your own estimation it becomes exponentially harder for the PCs just to stab that villain and be done with it. You don't even have to dial back how vile the NPC is. Hell, you don't even have to have him CARE about his wife. He could be out and out abusive to her and that's seriously enough to most players pause about "just killing" the guy.
I saw probably the most extreme result of this in a very recent Sorcerer & Sword game. This game featured a Lich who was the great-grandmother of one of the PCs. She was using her Taint ability to drive everyone the PC knew into despair, murderous rages, and suicide. She was trying to isolate the PC from her friends so that the Lich could bring the PC "back into the family" and most importantly she needed the PC to use her Sorcerous powers to complete the necromantic ritual that would complete the Lich's dead husband into full Lichdom.
Horrible, right? I mean classic Swords and Sorcery unnatural horror! The PC ended up using a Contain ritual to lock the Lich in a grave which was awesome but the player expressed a disappointment at the end of the game. She said, "there didn't seem to be enough opportunity for action. I really wanted to be a kick-ass fighter." I said, "Then why did you contain the Lich? Why didn't you just go kick her ass. You had the resources to go in there and kill her." The players response was this: "She just seemed too human." I was completely shocked because I had gone so far out of my way to make this Lich as unredeemably vile as I could muster.
I've seen this time and time again. Just having the wider social context to the characters makes even basic actions really complicated.
Lesson Learned: Fill out the back of the character sheets. Ask questions that produce characters, locations and objects of value to the character. If the PC is a doctor ask if they have a favorite patient. If the character is a rich lord ask if they have any servants they admire. If the character is in love, ask if they have a romantic rival. If the character owns something they value ask yourself who might also value that thing.
Step Two: NPCs want things and should be proactive about getting them. So back in the day we talked about a relationship map being "grabby" and how when a PC walks into one the NPCs view the PC as an opportunity. I originally interpreted this in the extremely unsophisticated manner of having NPCs walk up to PCs and say, "Do this for me" and if I was feeling particularly ballsy it would be, "Do this for me or else." Now I realize that you don't have to be that direct. Just having an NPC come to player to cry on their shoulder about something that happened to them is using the PC as an opportunity.
In fact it's better to have the NPCs take their own actions so long as those actions intrude into the wider social network of the PCs. The NPC never need ask the PCs for anything. This doesn't even have to be particularly sinister. Finding out that you best friend just landed himself in jail for drunk driving and that his girlfriend is hitting your wife up for bail money is perfectly fine bang without the need for the friend to even say, "Man, you've got to bail me out of here!"
Step Three: When avenues of pursuit get shut down, escalate everything else. This one is really hard for me. I have tendency to set unconscious behavioral limits on my NPCs. Often those limits prevent me from escalating an NPC's behavior when they face a set back. Some party thinks, "Well, the PC put him in his place. Doing anything else would be extreme and unreasonable and I don't really want my NPC to come off as psychotic." This leads to short very boring games where NPCs get pruned off your relationship map as they get "reasoned" with.
Don't be afraid to pull a gun or have an NPC do something otherwise desperate, bold or risky. If something happens to them that permanently removes them from the story remember the wider social network. Who is upset about his demise? What destruction has he left in his wake that might need answering? Escalate THOSE elements.
Finally let me say this: A Sorcerer game is about the implied situation in the character's Kickers. That's it. A game of Sorcerer is over when the players Kickers resolve. The Kicker is not a recurring element that spans many stories. The Kicker is the story. The GM's primary job is to deepen, test and escalate the situation described in the Kicker.
Hope that helps.
Jesse
Paiku:
Eero - I surely will let y'all know how the session goes. After all this generous advice, it's how I can "give back."
Ron - thanks for the recommended reading, I'll take them with me on the bus this AM.
Jesse - many thanks for that essay! I can see there's lots of room to expand my thinking on what can be done with good NPCs. This is one post that I'll be re-reading after I GM a session or two.
Last night I put all my prior game prep in the "brainstorming" pile, and started again with:
clear statements of what each PC wantsa list of the PCs' Demons, their Desires, Needs and personalities - and space to track each Demon's mood - all on one pagea one-page list of my main NPCs, and what they wanta list of all the supporting NPCs and Demons, and key locations, some of which I still need to spec' (man, my file of chr sheets is getting thick!)
...and then created a bunch of Bangs based on the above. I'm much happier with the outcome this time round, and finally feel prepared to run this game.
I look forward to deconstructing our play for you guys on the forum. I'll start a new thread in Actual Play, and link to it from here.
Thanks all,
-Paiku
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Paiku,
Just a final thought -- knowing I fear information overload for you right now.
You wrote: "clear statements of what each PC wants"
Keep in mind that what a protagonist "wants" can change -- sometimes drastically -- during a piece fiction. This happens in movies and novels and long for TV series all the time.
At the start of Aliens, Ripley "wants" a good night's sleep. Later she wants to help the marines find out why the colony went silent. Later still, she wants to save the life of a little girl... which wasn't at all what she wanted when the movie began.
I just watched the first season of DAMAGES (a great show, and one of those -- "Oh, this could be a Sorcerer game scenarios TV shows"). It starts with a woman wanting to get hired at a law firm. It ends with the same woman struggling to save her live from six different problems. There are a long list of shifting wants in-between.
Luke wants to get off planet and have adventures. Then he wants to return a droid to its rightful owner. Then he wants to rescue a princess... and so on, until he's want to destroy the Death Star in a desperate dog fight...
In all these cases each new "want" grows out of the previous one in ways that are sometimes subtle and sometimes clear. But the key is, the "want" changes.
So, I'm going to tell you to make sure to write down the KICKER instead. The Kicker is the key. (Notice how many times Jesse mentioned it in his post.)
The Kicker is the "launch point" for the tale. It is Ripley being told, "We've lost contact with the colonists on that planet where your crew found the alien egg." It is the young would-be lawyer being warned by a warm, kind lawyer, even before she's hired at her dream law firm, "If you go work for Patty Hewes, she will destroy you." For Luke it is receiving a message asking for help from a beautiful Princess...
Both of the moments could have been written by the Player has Kickers.
Because Kickers are written by the Players, they are the Player saying to you, "I want a game about this." You won't know how it's all going to turn out. You can't. You shouldn't. But you can keep the story being about that thing.
The Kicker is the springboard of the Player's desires. It MUST matter to the Players. That's why they write it. It must actually interest them, or turn them on, or excite them or something. They should be eager to find out what will happen when the Kicker is activated in play.
Of course, like you, they should not be thinking how it would play out. That's the rule in Sorcerer: Story Now! We find the story as we go.
The Kicker should demand a choice on the part of the Player Character. It should be emotionally grabby... not just to the characters but to the Players. Because, remember, we are creators as well as audience members in an RPG. And we need to be engaged with the premise of the Kicker as much as an audience would have to be caught up in the start of a movie. The Players must be thinking "I want to see a movie/story/comic book/whatever about this -- because this is cool and I care and I want to know what happens..."
As you've noted, every character wants something. Very often, the Kicker provides an opportunity or threat to that want. "I want my happy life to stay the way it is... and my son is kidnapped." "I want a life of adventure... and I receive a distress call from a Princess." And so on...
But once this incident kicks in, there's really no telling where the story will end up or where the character's wants will land. In the two examples above, the tales might end with "I want to raise my son from the dead," and "I want to burn down the whole world with my grief." See?
When we talk about "resolving the Kicker" all we mean is that the thing that jump started the protagonist in a new direction, something emotionally grabby and interesting that demanded a choice on the part of the character when it happened, is arcing across the narrative. The influence of the Kicker, what it means to the the Players (and the Player's Character) might change over time, but the resolution will tie back to that Kicker. That's part of the GM's job -- to keep spinning variations on obstacles and opportunities to the PC's plans and wants that are still tied to the Kicker.
In my prep, and before each session of Sorcerer, I make sure to review:
* Each Character's Kicker
* Demon(s)
* Price
* Descriptors
* Telltale
* And all the items listed on "the back of the character sheet"
I cannot emphasize enough that you MUST continue to review the items on the "back of the character sheet."
In fact, I think that section of the character sheet is so important that I redesigned the sheet and put it front and center.
Remember that the list of Kicker, Demons, Price, Descriptors, Telltale and all the items on the center of the character sheet are the items the Player wanted the game to be about. This is your springboard to review and imagine details for the upcoming session -- whether it is the first or the eighth. By circling back with your imagination before each session as you prep to these items you can find the unity and variety that will both hold the fiction together and give it strength, while providing variety (the Bangs) that launch the Player Characters off into new, unexpected directions.
***
Here's a link to an article I wrote about the importance of the center of the character sheet. http://playsorcerer.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/a-sorcerer-character-sheet/
In the first paragraph you'll find a link to a PDF of the character sheet I designed.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page