labcats | Sorcerer: The Post Mortem

Campaign Preparation

Using a specific novel, or, in this case, novels, worked well. I didn't change era per se, but Dave decided we'd have a Germanic setting. The names were very different from the source material's, giving me enough distance to see our game, not Ellen Kushner's novels.

I had no problem playing with R-maps. Representing them in 2 dimensions was occasionally challenging. I used timelines and cast lists to supplement the map. This is something I learned from J. R. R. Tolkien and previous gming.

I also slotted PCs into the R-map. This isn't something the books show. I think for noir, part of the point may be that the sorcerer is an outsider. Also, slotting PCs into an R-map is extremely dependent on group dynamics. My R-map changed in response to character generation. That's all good, but it's tricky to show this in the text, especially if you don't want one example to take up pages.

I reevaluated between sessions. This was good, but it certainly didn't mean I made no mistakes.

Character Generation

We didn't have quite enough buy-in, I think. We knew that all players had to care about their own PC, but we hadn't made the leap to grokking that all of us should care about all of the PCs. Note that "Care About" means "Find Interesting", not "Will Feel Horrid If Horrid Things Happen To".

We also needed greater interconnections. Specifically, as pertains to character generation, we agreed that the University would be the uniting factor for the PCs, but, in practice, the noble families turned out to be more important. This threw things off for Niccolo, at least.

With 20-20 hindsight, I see that this was implicit in the R-map. I focused on ties of blood, creating an interesting story of noble families with a University connection. I did not focus as much on lines of mentor-student, academic colleagues and rivals, or department heads and ordinary professors. Oh, I had some of this, but not enough if I wanted the focus to be on the university.

This, incidentally, is one of the advantages of this post mortem: I had not realized how my R-map warped the original concept until I wrote the paragraph ending "Niccolo, at least".

But, to continue, the university librarian, who was bribed by everyone and gossiped to those he liked, should have been a crucial character, whether I'd planned him from the start or not. (I hadn't.) Instead, he was a comic relief bit NPC who didn't even get a name until at least halfway through the game.

And university-town connections should probably have been important as well. I had a small bit late in the game about a clerk annoyed at nobles pushing their weight around at the university. Of the two he could name, one was known to be deceased (Dieter), and the other was a foreigner (Antonio).

Josh noted that there were no real students. Sure, there were the faceless students surrounding Niccolo, Teressa, Rainer, Andreas, and Sebastian. Okay, I even gave one or two names. And, there was the Baker's Son. There was a potential R-map there, with the baker, his wife, other relatives, friends, or rivals. But, I never created that R-map, and the game was the poorer for it.

A more university-centered game is something I could have pushed more at character generation, telling everyone to create 2 or 3 university connections.

One Sheet

I think I am beginning to understand why one is supposed to agree on a set group of descriptors, demon needs, and demon desires: It makes character creation of demons and other NPCs on the fly quicker, at least in theory. I still prefer a looser set up, where we can modify the list during the game with group consensus, or even GM fiat. The last is risky, I think party because the One Sheet is designed to keep the GM from pulling a bait-and-switch.

This was an issue with demons, originally defined as animal spirits or one's inner animal. Josh tried to rewrite the definition during the game to one he thought would make better sense. As he tried to do it mostly in character, Julian was unpleasantly surprised at the drift from what we'd started with. After some discussion, we agreed on a couple of basic rules for the rest of the game: PCs could believe whatever they chose; players and GM should not create a solution to Niccolo's problem ex nihil. Actually, it was that players and GM should not create a solution to Niccolo's problem in general, but particularly not ex nihil. For future games, make explicit what you want.

Humanity

That was a problem. I thought it was not having a solid definition. Josh thought I had one, but did not stick to it. It was along the lines of "civilized behavior", which lead to questions about whether fisticuffs or rude language merited Humanity rolls.

I hate getting bogged down in that sort of discussion. But, without it, no one is clear on what does and does not merit a Humanity loss or gain roll. And, since one needs to let people know in advance that a given action will merit a roll, the definition must make it clear at the time, not let it slip past and then have one realize after the session that a Humanity roll is called for.

I probably could have made the original definition work if I'd stuck to it and been dictatorial. We wouldn't have had to wonder or dither. And, I think I totally dropped the ball on announcing X merited a roll.

What does sorcery look like?

That question fell in the cracks. I think it looked fairly subtle, or at least, that it could. Okay, french kissing a mouse is really weird, but not obviously sorcery. A snap shot banishment was represented by firing a gun at a demon.

Stakes

It was late in the game that we really grokked the importance of setting stakes, despite being aware of and in favor of the concept. This falls into the category of things one thinks one knows, but actually gets to know in action.

Story Now!

This is a very basic concept. It was one I thought I understood, and one I kept re-learning throughout the game.

I believe I avoid the problem I've seen with WoD, 7th Sea, and Tribe 8, among others. There, PCs are kept ineffective pawns pushed around by powerful NPCs who are the actual protagonists.

This sucks. No one had to teach me that. When reading 7th Sea, I said, "NO! I don't want to be the lowly guard who does what the princess and the general tell him to do. I want to be the princess or the general." I'm pretty good at running with that principle in mind. Not perfect, but pretty good.

But, I was also used to a more sprawly pace, where I've got a B-plot that people get involved with while slowly learning about the A-plot. This isn't ideal pacing for Sorcerer.

Okay, you don't want to cram all the information down the PCs' throats in the first hour of the first session. That's not Story Now! That's Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am.

At the same time, you want the information getting out. Find a way to make it so. I had a dickens of a time figuring out how to get a critical fact out in the open, until I realized that one of the NPCs had absolutely no reason not to tell his cousin, one of the PCs.

Also, if your players are cool with it, don't be afraid to do the opposite of "Your player knows X, but the PC doesn't." For example, a few sessions in, it was revealed that Ludwig was plague scarred. Dave said that he didn't believe Andreas wouldn't know that. I agreed, and said that there's no reason Andreas couldn't have known all along. Nothing had happened in the game where this knowledge mattered. So, Dave didn't know until I revealed it, but his PC had known all along. It would have been less clumsy if I'd said as much when the information came out, but one can't think of everything. It's a good tool for future use.

So, get the information out there, in a reasonably quick way. I'm used to the real economy of my rpgs being information. But, in Sorcerer, the question isn't "How do you find out X?", nor is it "What is X?" The question is, "What do you do about X?" Don't waste your energy or the other players' energy making them chase down leads until it sucks the life out of the game.

And, push for action. If you view a game as a movie, it's probably true that all the action doesn't happen in the first reel. But, you don't want too much in the way of talking heads. The movie is about When it Changed, When Stuff Happened. Okay, make sure that Stuff Happens. Seems obvious.

However, I did fall down on that one. Not all the time, and I did throw in a couple of good Stuff Happens scenes, but I wasn't consistently good in the pacing. Pacing is tricky.

Another obvious, but not easy to implement principle: You're not there to run scenes that amuse you and make you think "How cool!" You're there to do it for everyone, including yourself. Be clueful. Figure out whether folks are bored, frustrated, or puzzled and dissatisfied trying to make everything click. Are you doing most of the talking? Are you getting folks saying, "Um" when you try to get them to figure out where to go with the plot? Or, are they running with what you've tossed their way, bouncing it off the walls, adding their own spin, and putting the ball back into play in ways you never could have anticipated?

Aggressive Scene Framing.

I'm still learning what this is and how to do it. In the penultimate session, Josh was trying to demonstrate how it's done, I think with some success.

Bangs

Okay, both Story Now and Aggressive Scene Framing lead to pushing the player with Bangs, defined, if I understand correctly, as things to which their characters must react. If there's an obvious right or wrong way to react, it's not a bang; it's railroading. (An oversimplification, and railroading isn't always bad, but I'm focusing on what makes Sorcerer what it is.)

Ask questions; don't answer them.

This is something I fell down on, a lot. I tried to supply the answer to Andreas' relationship with Ysabel in the person of Rupert, who needed a trophy wife, but didn't want to have sex with a woman. Now, this wasn't Rupert's primary function in the game, and it hadn't occurred to me for a few sessions, but it was a possibility. Having the possibility be there wasn't necessarily wrong. Pushing it might have been.

Or, it might not have been. It depends on your perspective. NPCs are supposed to want things from PCs. Rupert did not suggest the obvious solution until he learned that Andreas was sleeping with Ysabel. At that point, he wanted something from Andreas.

But, on the whole, it was an easy answer. I should have been supplying more questions. Ysabel should have been doing things that Andreas or Sebastian had to deal with. Edmond should have been more obnoxious about marrying her off. Problems, not solutions.

This was also an issue with Julian and Niccolo, as described above.

Kickers and Bangs are there to ask questions, not to provide answers. Hm. Hypothesis: This means that when you create a bang, you should ask: What question is this seeking to answer?

Now, I'm still not sure what to do if the player has the PC do nothing when confronted with a Bang. I'm working under the hypothesis that, if this is possible, it's not a Bang.

Or, maybe it is, and Doing Nothing has obvious consequences.

Five Players

I am glad that I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. But, a lot of people were surprised I was trying to run with 5 players. After all, it meant that I had to keep track of 5 demons.

Well, yes, 5 players is too many for a solid game. That's not because of the demons. More precisely, it's not only because of the demons. It's because you have 5 players' worth of Stuff.

This includes demons. It includes non-demon NPCs. I maintain that these are as important as the demons. They're the other side of the coin. They're generally the reason a sorcerer is summoning a demon to begin with.

Sorcerer works against the idea of A Party of PCs. On the whole, I think that's a good thing. But, it means that you've got several separate threads to keep track of, and you're bound to have players being a bit bored, however much people try to be active even when they don't have a PC on the scene.

Part of this could have been solved with better buy-in. Part could probably be solved by assigning each player one of the demons of another player's PC.

2-4 Hour Sessions

This, combined with 5 players, really was a strain. Josh didn't want to game on weekends, and other folks tended to have commitments then anyway. So, we were gaming during the week, generally on Tuesday, when we generally had work the next day.

Folks generally showed up on time, but "on time" meant 7 pm, and, after a few sessions, we had an alarm go off at 10:30. Figure that meant 3 hours of gaming time with 5 players. Very tight. I prefer weekends because there's more time, and I'm more fully in Gaming Mode, not worrying about work and stuff.

Run the fucking game.

Really.

Many authors get asked how one becomes a writer. One writes. One's writing may well suck for a while, but if you don't write, you can't be a writer.

If you want to be a gm, you have to run a game. As someone noted on an rpg.net column I can't find, you will run sucky sessions. You learn by doing.

One piece of advice Matt Steele, who ran CoC for me and others the year I was at UCLA gave to a fellow gamer who had just run a session of Teenagers From Outer Space and was being asked to run another one, was "Never turn down a chance to gm." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but certainly, just like getting to Carnegie Hall, you have to practice.

I've got a friend who is probably capable of being an all around better gm than I am. On those rare occasions where he's run anything, there is a consistency and solidity to the game world that I just can't duplicate. In the last seven years or so, I think he's run four sessions, the last some years ago.

I am a better gm than he is in one big way. I run my games. They're never perfect. But, they can't be anything if you don't run them.

Lingering Queries

Do NPCs need descriptors?
Do NPC sorcerers need Price, Telltale?
Does recognizing a demon's telltale constitute a sufficient "first interaction" for Andreas, whose price is Denial?
Do NPC sorcerers get Humanity loss and gain rolls?
Do NPC non-sorcerers get Humanity loss and gain rolls?
Is there actually a clear statement on when someone who isn't a demon dies? If so, give me the page number from the book.