[Sorcerer] Got My Mojo Workin'
James_Nostack:
Yay! Finally I'm sufficiently excited about the game. The trick was realizing that Tommy Joe's story had finally kicked into high gear and was just barreling along.
Fiction Update
Zachariah Cosgrove, the preacher, confronts the beautiful, black teenage Passing demon Mavis in the woods. Mavis is sketchy on this whole "you're really a demon" thing, but really into the idea of people obeying her because they esteem and love her. Zachariah and Mavis lose their virginity to each other in the act of shattering her binding to her master, "Tommy Joe Jackson" and Zachariah binds her as his spiritual wife.
During all of this fooling around, Old Saul--locked in the pantry by an irate mob--ends up banishing Zachariah's starter demon, the imp Melchidezek. Zachariah's first act as Mavis's new master is to blame her for Melchidezek's disappearance and then inflict Punishment on her when he thinks she's lying. Then, when Saul crows that he did it, Zachariah forces Mavis to say she'd attempted to seduce Saul, it all went wrong, and he should be held blameless.
(So Mavis, the new demon with a Desire for Power, has gone from being delightfully bound, to being chastised, punished, and then humiliated. I see a bad moon a-rising.)
Several hours in the future, Tommy Joe has murdered the Mojo Hand's father, a local klansman. He then sets to work trying to kill the District Attorney. (All of this is setting up his big break-out concert performance, by satisfying his own demon and Delilah the Swamp-Witch.) He leaves with his uncle an occult book he stole from Delilah.
Along the way, he finds one of his band-mates, who's been possessed by one of Delilah's demons sent to recover the book. They get into a fight inside a speeding car, and get into a hellacious accident. Fast-talking his way past on-lookers, Tommy Joe takes his friend out to Hangman's Point and is about to murder his best friend, when the demon tries to possess him instead, and fails. Tommy Joe spares his friend's life, backs his car over the now-unhosted Possessor, and heads back into town . . . where he is arrested for murder by the Sheriff (who is also Grand Dragon of the Klan).
Mechanical Stuff
It frustrates me that these guys are still merrily tromping around Humanity 6, more or less. There's been a 1-3 Humanity rolls each session, but hasn't made a big difference so far.
I'm not clear on what you roll to see how much damage you take when your '39 Ford plows into a garbage truck at 65 miles per hour but you bail out at the last minute. On the spur of the moment I was like, "Uh... 5 dice versus your Stamina? And maybe that's like getting shot with a rifle?" but I'm pretty sure this isn't the right way to handle it.
Relatedly, it is frustratingly hard to seriously fuck up major characters in this game, both PC and NPC. Most margins of victory in my experience are 1-2 dice, which means that if you want to really hammer someone important with life-threatening injury, you probably need to lay down 6-8 lasting penalties. Which basically is going to involve mowing them down with a heavy machine gun multiple times, or with a demon with Special Lethal Damage. Tommy Joe ended up walking away from the crash with 1 lasting penalty.
How do you handle PC (or NPC) trying to convince a pissed-off mob? One demagogue versus another, I can understand. But what about one guy against a whole passle of furious parents about you having your way with a young girl? (Same thing applies, I guess, to one man fighting a whole big mob of guys.)
Ron Edwards:
Hi James,
I'm lovin' that fiction. I don't have much to say about it as such ...
... but a lot to say about mechanics and about GMing. My take is that you are playing too much softball.
The Humanity checks are actually not what I'm criticizing. You're doing fine with that. 1-3 rolls per session, most of them being Checks I assume, is a fine record. Keep it going. If "the universe" in your game is so inclined that the stuff the characters do isn't going to hurt them at that level, then embrace it. Accept being at the indulgent end of the Tarantino scale. It's just "more room," actually. I'll explain what I mean by that if you want, but it's not relevant to your stated concerns so I won't go into it here.
What I'm criticizing is that you're using dice for too broad a range. Remember that this isn't a simulative mechanic. The dice only occupy the middle part of a certain spectrum whose ends are deterministic, with "Yes" at one end and "No" at the other.
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I'm not clear on what you roll to see how much damage you take when your '39 Ford plows into a garbage truck at 65 miles per hour but you bail out at the last minute. On the spur of the moment I was like, "Uh... 5 dice versus your Stamina? And maybe that's like getting shot with a rifle?" but I'm pretty sure this isn't the right way to handle it.
Right. OK, first thing is to check your own shared standards as established long ago:
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The early days of rock 'n roll, deep swampy South, early 1950's, rockabilly and bluegrass, the Klan, Tennessee Williams & the tail end of Faulkner, Jim Crow, chain gangs, and holy-roller preachers. Fried chicken, cicadas, and some of the best music you'll ever hear.
I'll tell you what I don't see in there: Indiana Jones, Jerry Bruckheimer, blue-screen stunts, and escaping such physical effects as momentum by jumping.
I'm making that point to set up my main answer, which is that you don't roll. Not in this setting/environment, not in those circumstances. You kill the character or, in this case given the circumstances as I understand them, put him in the hospital in critical condition. The only exception would be if a demon's ability were involved, in which case I could talk a bit more about the mechanics but which isn't germaine to my current point. If this seems harsh, consider the clear task of the GM when a player says, "I put the .45 muzzle into my open mouth, press into all the way into the soft palate as it can go, and pull the trigger." It is to kill the character.
Now, given that you hadn't really played with those two ends of the spectrum as firmly in place as I suspect you should have been, doing such a thing out of the blue at that moment in this game would have been a breach, I think. My point is that you should have "tightened up" those ends throughout play up until that point, such that the player would either have known that such an announcement would have such a result, or upon being reminded, would have instantly recognized it. I suggest it's time to chat a little about that with everyone.
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Relatedly, it is frustratingly hard to seriously fuck up major characters in this game, both PC and NPC. Most margins of victory in my experience are 1-2 dice, which means that if you want to really hammer someone important with life-threatening injury, you probably need to lay down 6-8 lasting penalties. Which basically is going to involve mowing them down with a heavy machine gun multiple times, or with a demon with Special Lethal Damage. Tommy Joe ended up walking away from the crash with 1 lasting penalty.
I think at least some of my earlier point takes some of the edge off. For what remains, I consider it a feature. Yet again, just last week, I enjoyed the look on a player's face when his first shot incapacitated his target but didn't quite kill him, and then had to make his character go in, stand there, and empty a round into the face of his friend. No roll necessary, at that point. But if he wanted to accomplish the goal of killing that guy, he had to kill him, not buffered behind the safety of a role-playing mechanic.
Yeah, in Sorcerer, when you have the utter drop on someone utterly unable to defend themselves, they die. No dice needed. But in all other circumstances, every quirky thing that keeps bullets from making clean kills is in full operation. That's what the dice are for, actually, when it comes to Sorcerer violence. If you do manage to demolish someone into temporarily lost actions (uhhh, you are using the during-combat penalties table, aren't you?), then killing them is something you must decide to do.
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How do you handle PC (or NPC) trying to convince a pissed-off mob? One demagogue versus another, I can understand. But what about one guy against a whole passle of furious parents about you having your way with a young girl? (Same thing applies, I guess, to one man fighting a whole big mob of guys.)
This one's easy! Think in terms of what the NPCs are doing if your guy's rhetoric ain't working. And have them do that, dice and all. What you've got now, effectively, is a guy trying to solve being beat to dogshit by talking. The only way that will work is if (i) he rolls higher than every one of them and (ii) every one of them fails his or her defense roll and badly enough that you as GM don't see any point to have anyone bull through the penalties anyway.
I wouldn't even recommend that except that in this case, rhetoric and mobs do fit with the content I quoted above. If it didn't, I'd've treated the situation just as I did your first point.
My bigger point is, either way (dice or yes/no), forget about the whole paradigm that insists on running the "talky conflict" as its own thing first. The talking is the attempted counter-offense against getting beaten up or worse, period.
Best, Ron
James_Nostack:
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I'm making that point to set up my main answer, which is that you don't roll. Not in this setting/environment, not in those circumstances. You kill the character or, in this case given the circumstances as I understand them, put him in the hospital in critical condition. The only exception would be if a demon's ability were involved, in which case I could talk a bit more about the mechanics but which isn't germaine to my current point. If this seems harsh, consider the clear task of the GM when a player says, "I put the .45 muzzle into my open mouth, press into all the way into the soft palate as it can go, and pull the trigger." It is to kill the character.
Now, given that you hadn't really played with those two ends of the spectrum as firmly in place as I suspect you should have been, doing such a thing out of the blue at that moment in this game would have been a breach, I think. My point is that you should have "tightened up" those ends throughout play up until that point, such that the player would either have known that such an announcement would have such a result, or upon being reminded, would have instantly recognized it. I suggest it's time to chat a little about that with everyone.
Okay, that's really interesting. I'm familiar with the core text on this point: without even looking, I know it's the "jump over an elephant" example, which, you know, the minute a player says he wants to vault an elephant, I'm all set to pounce and say, "Hey stupid, no fucking way." Exactly where this principle shades into more-or-less standard action hero stuff like leaping out of a car is a little murky. It makes sense that genre would influence that determination: Conan could probably do this, just as Lew Archer probably couldn't. Might be worth expanding on this a little if the annotations for that chapter haven't been finalized.
Saying, "Hey no I don't think so" strikes me as an under-emphasized but crucial aspect of Sorcerer GM'ing, especially because you've got these PC's who are world-shattering bad-asses whether they realize it or not. My interpretation has always been to give them a shot in "borderline impossible" situations.
The use of drama resolution here is interesting, since in my limited experience, the dice rarely settle things decisively unless a conflict lasts a very long time. I like the dice mechanic a lot, it's just that my usual play style in other games is to throw dice for up to 10 minutes and then be like, "Eat it! I win!" whereas in Sorcerer it's more like: "Um, I now have my thumb on the scale. Wanna back down? (rolls some more) Okay, I now have my thumb and two fingers on the scale. Want some more?"
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[Regarding the "guy talking his way out of a lynching] Think in terms of what the NPCs are doing if your guy's rhetoric ain't working. And have them do that, dice and all. What you've got now, effectively, is a guy trying to solve being beat to dogshit by talking. The only way that will work is if (i) he rolls higher than every one of them and (ii) every one of them fails his or her defense roll and badly enough that you as GM don't see any point to have anyone bull through the penalties anyway.
I wouldn't even recommend that except that in this case, rhetoric and mobs do fit with the content I quoted above. If it didn't, I'd've treated the situation just as I did your first point.
Hmm, we're on the same page on every point here. My point was actually much more limited, though: is there an official way to take the individuals in a mob scene and gather them into a singe blob of dice (or as, say, a weapon wielded by the burliest, pushiest guy), so that I'm not tracking 4-5 no-name NPC's acting with somewhere between 2-4 dice each?
The fictional circumstances were:
Zachariah Cosgrove and his sorcerous mentor, Old Saul Phelps, were about to banish Mavis in a very questionable rite. Mavis's adoptive mom walks in, rescues Mavis (big conflict scene) and rushes out, shrieking her head off. The revival camp begins to stir, and eventually Zachariah is confronting a bunch of furious men who want to kill Saul and maim any fool who gets in their way. Conflict!
Mob, particularly Mavis's adopted father: kill Old Saul
Zachariah: standing in their path, preaching at them about Christian mercy and non-judgmentalness (hoping to interfere with mob's roll, +1 for good dialogue)
Mavis: urging the crowd onward so they won't listen to Zachariah (hoping to interfere with Zach's roll)
Old Saul: ranting about demons and succubi, in a crazed attempt to discredit Mavis (hoping to interfere with Mavis's roll, -2 dice due to dumb approach)
Melchidezek: try to taint Zachariah so bad he just stands aside and lets the mob tear Saul apart
All of this is pretty typical Sorcerer resolution, except for the mob. In practice, I just said, "Fuck it, I don't feel like rolling for 20 dudes, and only a few could rush forward as an immediate threat anyway. None of these guys have names, and they've all got piddly dice, so I'm just going to use the biggest, most outraged guy as a stand-in for the whole bunch." If they had managed to succeed, I probably would have treated the mob as a "rifle" for damage purposes.
In execution, Zachariah just stomped over everyone repeatedly, leading to many aborted actions as the mob hemmed and hawed and tried to work up a fury. This went on for a rather long time, until we realized we had reached an impasse. At which point the player proposed a private meeting with Mavis to work this out and we closed out the scene.
But I appreciate the advice. I'm looking forward to finishing this one up, which my gut tells me is coming soon.
James_Nostack:
Well................ Play emerges from "emergent play." What a crazy session.
Prep
Over the last couple sessions, the players stomped all over the major NPC's, often without knowing what they were doing.
Delilah Phelps, the swamp witch, lost both of her demons. Zachariah the preacher helped Mavis break her binding. Tommy Joe the rocker managed to trap Prince John the possessor demon in between hosts, and then ran over it. (Due to circumstances, Delilah likely blames Tommy Joe for both events.) I decided that Delilah's the type to strike back via sorcery, but only after reloading, so she spends the night summoning and binding the Sweeping Broom. The dice tell me she hits 0 Humanity in the process.
Mavis, the passer demon, was happily bound to Zachariah--who's first action was to punish her for something she didn't do, then repeatedly humiliated her in front of her followers (her Desire is Power). That girl is out to cause trouble, and ruin Zachariah as much as hard as she can. Just biding her time...
Old Saul Phelps, Delilah's father and Zachariah's lieutenant/mentor, managed to banish Melchidezek the Imp, but now Mavis (his incestuous half-demon daughter) is married to Zachariah, his spiritual son. Now that's a judgment. Saul's out to find Tommy Joe (who he thinks was Mavis's master) and get his help to banish her. Failing that: go out in a blaze of shame and glory.
Sheriff Clem Clyburne, (non-sorcerous) head of the KKK, has arrested Tommy Joe for murdering one of his klansmen--but the kid is a friend of the family and can't easily get killed in police custody. Meanwhile the NAACP organizer has humiliated him several times, and there's a rumor that there's going to be mass demonstration tomorrow.
And Then Play Started
We had a quick talk about some things being impossible regardless of what the dice say.
Zachariah and the NAACP organizer had an interfaith meeting, mainly to give some screen time to the same hysterical NPC who had picketed Tommy Joe's stage performance. Zachariah insulted her, the meeting broke up, and he tested out Mavis's power of Hint on the people remaining.
Tommy Joe, now in the bullpen at the station house, mouthed off to Clyburne who swatted the kid around pretty good.
Zachariah, believing Tommy Joe had been Mavis's former master, was driving to the kid's arraignment, hoping to somehow confer, when he heard that the rock-n-roll DJ was having a breakdown after having been jilted by Zachariah's cousin.
Zach changed plans. He drove to the station. Comforted the DJ. Persuaded him to go home and get some rest. And put Mavis behind the mic. And told her to give the town of Methehatchee the Word of God. When she was reluctant to use her powers in public, Zachariah "ate her sweet potato pie" in the booth.
Mavis unleashed Hint on the air.
We tried to do the math on this, and figured that if Wild Bill's Rock 'n Riot had a listenership of, say, 1% of a county with a population of about 100,000 people, then one thousand people knew the honest answer to the one question they'd ask God if they could. Of that group, about 800 were stunned into a daze by the beauty and rapture of Mavis's words. And of that group, somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 people (give or take) suffered epileptic seizures, conniptions, and somewhere around 8-9 lasting penalties of "special lethal damage."
I briefly paged through my list of NPC's, and for the people we thought were likely to be listening, we diced it out.
Gruesome.
Hilariously, even at a -5 die penalty, Zachariah did not lose any Humanity for decimating Methehatchee, Tennessee in the name of the rapture.
Hold on a sec, let me just throw my prep notes in the toilet
There were a couple other events that night: Tommy Joe met Saul in prison, they compared notes, and then summoned a demon to bust them out of jail, the police being otherwise distracted.
Mavis, taking a break from prophecy, caught Zachariah by surprise. Her plan was to soften him up with some Psychic Force and then drop a Hint on him, but Zach was stunned into unconsciousness first. She stands over him and whispers, as he loses consciousness, "I want a divorce."
Amid a city gone berserk, Saul and Tommy Joe track down the scrapbook of Mavis's childhood and try to banish her. They fail (due to the strength of Zach's binding as an anchor) but it disrupts Mavis long enough that her attention shifts away from murdering Zachariah right this moment.
Assorted Observations
When Zach's plan became apparent at the station, I had the DJ push back too much, and Mavis push back too little. (I'm rationalizing this post-hoc because Zachariah was satisfying her Need and her Desire.)
I find the Summoning ritual kind of a drag--you're very likely to fizzle out, and in the middle of a session I'm sometimes too frazzled to improvise a good solution. So I house-rule by saying a failed Summoning means something came through, just not what you wanted (as per the rules on Page 91). So Tommy Joe didn't gain superhuman strength, but rather can make shadow-puppets and then Shapeshift into these forms.
The whole backstory with Delilah, Mavis, and Saul has become a bit of an "off-screen super villain soap opera" type of thing, but it's never been anything more than a sub-plot running in the background between two NPC sorcerers. If Tommy Joe decides to he's had enough, and runs out of town, that's a totally fine resolution to his kicker. The NPC's are going to pursue their own agendas, but I'm fine if the players want to disregard all of that.
We've probably got 30 more minutes of play in this. I was inclined to push through but the others had to break.
Tor Erickson:
Hey James,
I'm curious about the 'rapture over the radio' event. How long did this scene take to resolve, both the mechanics and the real life talking including narration? I'm thinking from the point where Zach manages to convince Mavis to go ahead, to the point where you manage to resolve how all of the various parties in the town are affected.
Best,
Tor
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