The Forge Archives

It seems like such a straight-forward idea, I'd be surprised if someone didn't write it up already.

The way I'd have it:

The setting is modern, with no supernatural undertones.

Humanity is empathy for others.

Demons are extreme Selfish emotions. They lower your humanity because they put you into a selfish mindset.

Angels are extreme Selfless emotions. They seem to be there to make you not an asshole.

Sorcerers are exceptionial people made so by the powerful emotions effecting them.

Lore is understanding of how emotions work, emotionial manipulation, etc. I'm thinking of mature, expierenced but jaded street people rather than academic psychologists.  

Contacting, Summoning, Binding, is all in your head, easily enhanced by outside stimulas appropiation "rituals". Love songs, symbols of clinging to anger, etc.

Demons, which are selfish emotions, all start off as parasites, have their emotion as a Desire and a Need associated with why the Sorcerer summoned them.

The abilities they would have would be best from the following:

----

Boost Will(Highly Recomended)(Demon will only use when the host is acting strongly in tandem with it's Desire or Need.)(Empowering one's personality through the emotion.)

Perception, confers to host, Perciving the objects or causes of it's emotion with enhanced natural perceptions(Recomended)

Daze(Recomended)(Obsfucating effect of emotions)

Hop+Ranged(Passing on your emotion to others)

Fast(Recomended)('Iniative' as a result of gut descsions)

Psychic Force(Hurtfull expressions of the emotion)

Taint(Your infectious selfishness jading other individuals.)

Also, for espicpially primal emotions:

Anger/hate: Special Damage(Lethal), various ways of acting on your destructive urge

Fear/Disgust: Travel, quick footspeed, an adrenaline rush to get you the hell out of there.

----  

I'd figure that the parasite > Possesor > Passer rules would work good to demonstrate extreme cases.

Selfless emotions are altogether different and would be handled like angels. I'd go into specifics but  I don't have the book with  me right now. Typical Will/Stamina descriptions would work good, but for Lore, I'd imagaine there'd be

Experienced
Emotionial manipulator
Hard Lessons
Social Worker
Subjective Viewpoint

--------

Do you think the system would be capable of aiding serious stories? not too literal? capable of being subtle? Has this been done before?

Hello,

I think that the basic idea (remove the metaphor) works very well. The metaphor "demon" carries a huge charge, which the game uses as its hook, but since the real variable is Humanity ... why not? I've been discussing the issue of "real people role-playing" for quite a while now. I saw Don Juan DeMarco last night, for instance, and see no need to add "demons" or "powers" to make it a better story. Why doesn't role-playing try for similar approaches?

Here's my concern with your specific proposal: the selfishness-selflessness spectrum does not actually map to morality. Some people even make the mirror-mistake and try to map the reverse spectrum to morality. Both approaches are mistaken.

The good news is that both outlooks (yours or the "mirror") have been used to good effect in plenty of novels or movies.

The qualifier is that they tend to be preachy novels or movies, in which you can see the point about five minutes into it and then get the point hammered in for the rest of the story. Jesse Burneko (jburneko) raised the issue, for Sorcerer, of whether you already know the Theme when you establish a Premise, and in this case, the answer would be yes.

Even very simple stories (to pick some recent examples from my movie-watching: Snow White, Mortal Kombat, Winnie the Pooh) offer a much more problematic "moral world" in which their protagonists make decisions. And when you remove all the kewlness and consider stories with "just people," that becomes much more important.

Best,
Ron

I'm almost diametricly opoosed to preachiness myself. One of my big things against Sorcerer, it porports that certain things are wrong/right, for I sympathize with antagonistic figures in most stories, and am usually annoyed that the author porpots an understandable reaction from him makes him "unlikable" or "deserving his end".

I prefer the idea that Humanity, the most essential part of a person, is lost by his own morally neutral acts that just happened to be somehow spiritually risky. The fact that he did it did not make him a bad person, it's just sad what happened to him. This may be a somewhat flawed way to play sorcerer and I have not tried it out yet, but it's the concept that most attracts me.

'Selfish' emotions could be for intirely 'selfless' reasons, for example, your sister is killed, and you summon the emotion "Hatred of the killers of my sister." the Desire would be "Hate" and the Need would be "Punish murderers". This power helps you primarily to do one thing, to get back at the killers of your sister, something that has nothing to do with you. However, this power also has a sociopathic effect.

Humanity is the feeling that you should feel everyone's whimsical emotions and as a result, probably give up those strong, offensive emotions of your own. Your demon is the feeling that everyone should feel this terrible thing that you feel and the world should bend to satisfy it's objectives.    

So, the way I felt about Selfish-Selfless emotions is basicly, some emotions act strongly as an "exhibitor"(sp?), granting such abilities and having such behavior as I outlined for the demons as emotions, while others(a rather short list, sadness, grief, guilt) act as "inhibitors".  They would seem to be somehow misrepresented by the Demon side of things, But an Angel with similar abilities, whose basic role was "Force-feed human with emotion until they kill themselves and/or realize that other people have feelings".*

I wouldn't plan for players to take up the viewpoint of "This game is about putting away your anger, lust and hate, and either have few strong felings or keep those to feelings of grief."  I had the intentions of keeping the original premise, as I found it most fitting. 'seflish' Emotions have the ability to empower you to reach your dreams, but they could just screw you over.

I guess it would be quite possible that I could change selfles emotions to the same rules as selfish emotions and remove the disntiction, so that sadness gives you the power to express your emotion and to act when it motivates you to do so, and losing humanity is abit of being obssessed with your own sorrows that you can't consider anyone else's feelings. hey, that sounds pretty good.

Could you give me a more detailed anaylsis of these preachy movies and how the parameters I have set for the game would contribuite to making a preachy game?

Hi there,

QuoteI prefer the idea that Humanity, the most essential part of a person, is lost by his own morally neutral acts that just happened to be somehow spiritually risky. The fact that he did it did not make him a bad person, it's just sad what happened to him. This may be a somewhat flawed way to play sorcerer and I have not tried it out yet, but it's the concept that most attracts me.

That's exactly how the game actually plays. One of the reasons is that Humanity loss and gain are based on rolls, i.e., aren't rock-solid predictable. Another is that I think the principle you describe is aesthetically more attractive at a very fundamental human level, and that people gravitate toward it.

QuoteI guess it would be quite possible that I could change selfles emotions to the same rules as selfish emotions and remove the disntiction, so that sadness gives you the power to express your emotion and to act when it motivates you to do so, and losing humanity is abit of being obssessed with your own sorrows that you can't consider anyone else's feelings. hey, that sounds pretty good.

Not only does it sound pretty good, it sounds perfect for your purposes. It's also the default definition of Humanity in the core rules, as well as corresponding with most of the references provided in The Sorcerer's Soul.

I'll provide some more story-talk analysis later, but in some ways, it's redundant. Your suggestion already solved any issues that I'd be trying to illuminate.

Best,
Ron

Yeah, reading through the angel rules I see they really wouldn't suit the purpose I was thinking of. What would be intereasting to me would be an eraserhead-like setting where a bunch of angels push responsibilties on you until it ruins your life.

I'd still be intereasted in your analysis of preachy stories. sounds  insightful.

Hello,

Now I'm confused twice.

1. Were we talking about angels? You mentioned them in your first post, and it seemed to me to be a secondary topic. I thought we were discussing the Humanity issue.

2. And if we are talking about angels, you wrote,

QuoteWhat would be intereasting to me would be an eraserhead-like setting where a bunch of angels push responsibilties on you until it ruins your life.

... which has very little to do with your original post, or at least, wasn't apparent at all to me in that post. So it's like the discussion just shifted under my feet.

Also, your Eraserhead model is actually supported by the rules in Chapter 3 of The Sorcerer's Soul, very well supported in fact.

So now, Let's see. I need to know:

1. whether you've chosen to adopt the Humanity definition we discussed, as opposed to the original idea you posted

2. how the angels factor into your setting: as strictly positive Humanity-helpers (positive in in-game terms), or as the Eraserhead type angels

3. why you think the angel rules are or are not helpful for implementing your answer to #2

Best,
Ron

Prelude: Originally, I said the emotions would be divided into selfish and selfless. Selfish being demons and selfless being angels. However, in your second post you convinced me that that distinction wasn't productive, and therefore 'selfess' emotions are Demons, so there is no selfish/selfless distinction or angels in the setting.

1 As I saw my original idea, and the idea we discussed:
Original idea: Selfish Emotions make you obsessed with yourself, and unable to function with society.
Idea we discussed: Emotions make you obsessed with that emotion, and therefore unable to function with society at humanity 0.
In my Original idea, Humanity would be defined as "Empathy"
In the idea we discussed, Humanity would be defined possibly as "Having a life outside of your emotions" or "Rational"
I've chosen the idea that we discussed(If I interpreted it correctly.)  

2. Answered in Prelude

3. My third post was something of a response to the Angel rules, not really on-topic. As the angels rules were written, they wouldn't seem to fit representing emotions. The Eraserhead-like Angels I was thinking of using for a different setting intirely.