Fight Sphere: Futuristic Gladiatorial Combat

Fight Sphere

The Role-Playing Game of Futuristic Gladiatorial Combat

The Sphere is the size of a large city. Those who walk within its layers do so with the aid of a strong artificial gravity field. From its surface can be seen an eternal night sky above and below it a flat never ending desert. No one knows where the Sphere is. No one knows who built it. No one knows why it exists. No one knows how they got there.

Every inhabitant of the sphere was plucked from their former lives and woke up here. Some survive, some die. No one leaves. On the sphere there is no government and there are no rules. A select few are different. These few wake up with a weapon beside them and a digital display device embedded in their left hand. The device constantly cycles a sequence of names and faces. The sequence ends with a simple phrase, “Kill or Be Killed…” These few are called “Gladiators.” No one is really sure what happens to the last one standing, maybe you’ll find out.

Introduction

This is a game about playing Gladiators, people plucked from their former lives and forced to kill each other for an unknown prize. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. A lot more people than the Gladiators have been snatched from their former lives and forced to live on The Sphere. These people have formed their own gangs, tribes, governments and other communities and come with all the complications of everyday human life.

One of the design goals of Fight Sphere is to focus the game on the Gladiators’ interactions with these communities. The more the characters engage with the situations and conflicts found among these people the greater their chances of surviving Gladiatorial Encounters.

The primary influences on this game are the films Series 7, Cube and Escape From New York. Episodic television series such as The Fugitive and The Hulk are also major influences. The mechanics borrow heavily from the games The Pool, Trollbabe, My Life With Master and The Farm.

Character Creation

At the start of the game each player makes up two (or more, for longer games) Gladiators. One Gladiator will be the player’s own character. The other(s) will become NPCs. Regardless they are created the exact same way and it is recommended that the player make the characters first and then pick which one they prefer to play.

Note: There are some mechanical concepts referenced here that will not be explained until later. Your patience and cross-referencing skills are appreciated.

Who Was I?

The first thing to decide is who your character was before they were brought to The Sphere. Gladiators come from all walks of life. There’s nothing more frightening that a school teacher with a machine gun. Players should write up a 50 to 100 word summary of the character’s back story.

Whenever a detail from the character’s back story is relevant to a conflict the player gains a single bonus die for that roll.

Death wish or Reason To Live

Next the player should choose either a Death wish or a Reason To Live. A Death wish is some element of the character that drives them towards death. A character may have had his whole family die in a car accident or been diagnosed with cancer before being brought to The Sphere. Conversely, a Reason to Live is something that propels the character towards life. The character may have just found out his wife was pregnant or he may be driven to find out who’s behind The Sphere.

Gladiators opposing a character with a Death wish add a number of dice equal to the number of Relationships the Death wish character has to their Conflict Pool at the start of a Gladiatorial Encounter. However, all of the character’s Relationships are rated one die higher than their actual value.

Characters with a Reason To Live add a number of dice equal to the number of

Relationships they have to their Conflict Pool at the start of a Gladiatorial Encounter. However, all the character’s Relationships are rated one die less than their actual value.

Once per game (the whole run of play), a character may trade a Death wish for a Reason to Live or vice versa. This switch should be rooted in in-game events. The switch can not happen during an Episode.

Weapon

Every character wakes up in The Sphere with a weapon nearby. The player should define what weapon the character found near them.

This has no mechanical effect whatsoever but a lot can be said about a character from the weapon chosen for them.

Conflict Pool

Each character starts out with a Conflict Pool value of 5.

Game Structure

The Sphere is constructed like an onion with many inner Layers that ultimately end up in The Core. Each character engages in one Episode (adventure, scenario, whatever) per Layer. There may be multiple simultaneous Episodes running on each

Layer depending on whether the PCs choose to be in the same Episodes or not (see below). There must always be at least two Gladiators in an episode, even if one of them is an NPC.

Each player takes turns in a round-robin fashion. On his turn a player may frame their character into a Scene or have the GM frame their character into a Scene. Within the Scene their must be a Conflict. The Scene ends when the Conflict is resolved.

An Episode ends when there is only one Gladiator left standing. Note: PCs are guaranteed to reach The Core. If they are defeated on an earlier Layer they are “left for dead” or “fall through the ground into the darkness” or otherwise exit the Episode and recover in the next Episode on the next Layer. NPC Gladiators are always considered dead when they are defeated.

The game progresses through Episodes and Layers until all NPC Gladiators are dead. The next Episode is the last Episode and takes place at The Sphere’s Core. This is just one single Episode and all the PCs must be present within it. Player character defeats are considered permanent at The Core and the game ends when there is only one player character left standing.

Episodes & Layers

At the start of each Layer (the first being the surface of the sphere) the players should decide if their characters are going to be in Episodes with each other or not. There must be at least two Gladiators in each Episode, so the GM should fill out any gaps with an NPC Gladiator. If there are no NPC Gladiators then the players need to collapse their episodes together until there are no more lone Gladiators. The GM is free to insert as many NPC Gladiators (from those available) as he likes but does not have to use all of them.

Example:

Alice, Bob, Cary, Danny, Elmer are all playing together. Alice and Cary decide their characters will share an Episode. Bob and Danny decide their characters will share an Episode. The GM picks an NPC Gladiator for Elmer’s Episode and decides to make things interesting and throws an NPC Gladiator into Alice and Carry’s Episode. Assuming this is the top of the game that leaves three unused NPC Gladiators who will not be appearing in any Episode on this Layer. The GM now needs to prep three Episodes that will be running concurrently on this Layer.

Later…

At the top of a much deeper Layer, Alice, Bob and Danny all decide to join an Episode together. Cary and Elmer each want an Episode to themselves but alas, there is only one NPC Gladiator left. Cary and Elmer can join together in their own Episode or one or both of them can join Alice, Bob and Danny in their Episode. The GM can assign the NPC Gladiator as he sees fit.

Scenes and Conflicts

Each player takes turns in a round-robin fashion. On their turn a player may frame his character into a Scene or have the GM frame his character into a Scene. Each scene should center around a Conflict. The Scene ends when the dice are rolled and the Conflict is resolved. Play then proceeds to the next player.

Conflict Resolution

Each Layer has a Threshold Value. This Threshold Value is the number of six-sided dice the GM rolls in opposition to the player. The object is to roll more ones with your die pool than the opposing side rolls. The Threshold Value starts at five at the surface and increases by one each time the characters descend to a new Layer. Each player rolls a minimum of one die.

Modifiers

. Background: If the Conflict is relevant to the character’s background before coming to The Sphere then a one die bonus is granted. “Relevant” can be anything from skill sets to emotional triggers.

. Gambling: The player may gamble (see Conflict Outcome) any number of dice from his Conflict Pool and add them to the roll.

. Relationships: By spending a die from the character’s Conflict Pool the player may bring in an NPC they have formed a Relationship with. The player must narrate how the character is involved in the conflict (even as an enemy, if necessary). The player may then add a number of dice equal to the Relationship’s value to his roll.

Conflict Outcome

Regardless of Success or Failure the Scene should be role-played to a satisfactory conclusion based on the Conflict outcome. Narrated details should clearly express the consequences of the success or failure as this is good material for setting up subsequent scenes.

Success

If the character succeeds the player may do ONE of the following:

. Add one die to the character’s Conflict Pool.

. Create a Relationship with an NPC involved in the Scene. The Relationship starts at a value of two if the character has a Death wish, or zero if the character has a Reason To Live.

. Add one to an existing Relationship. The Relationship in question must have been present in the Scene but need not have been purchased as a modifier for the Conflict roll.

Failure

If the character fails the player must do ALL of the following.

. Dice Gambled from the Conflict Pool are lost.

. All Relationships used as modifiers can not be used again for a number of Conflicts equal to the Relationship’s value. These characters may appear in Scenes they just can not be used as modifiers. Also, while role-playing the end of the Scene something bad should happen to these NPCs as part of the consequences narrated.

In addition, when a character fails the GM should narrate a short cut-scene involving one of the surviving NPC Gladiators. This NPC need not be in the current Episode or any Episode at all. When doing so the GM may do one of the following for that NPC:

. Add one die to the NPC’s Conflict Pool.

. Create a Relationship between the NPC Gladiator and a non-gladiator NPC involved in the Scene. The Relationship starts at a value of two if the NPC Gladiator has a Death Wish, or zero if the NPC Gladiator has a Reason To Live.

. Add one to an existing Relationship. The Relationship in question should be part of the short cut-scene the GM narrates.

Alternatively, instead of narrating a cut-scene, the GM may opt to resume a

Gladiatorial Encounter that was previously Disengaged between the failing character and an NPC Gladiator. This happens the next time the failing player has a turn and the NPC Gladiator is considered to have the Initiative. The GM may NOT use this option to initiate a Gladiatorial Encounter, only resume one that had been broken off by Disengagement.

Relationships

Relationships exist between Gladiators and Non-Gladiator NPCs. Gladiators can

not form relationships with each other. When a relationship is formed the GM continues to play the NPC as normal but should make an effort to include that NPC in subsequent Episodes that the Gladiator is involved in. However, when purchasing a Relationship to be used as a modifier for a Conflict the player has full control over what the NPC’s role is in the scene, although the GM role-plays the details.

Shared Relationships

It is legal for two or more Gladiators to have the same NPC as a Relationship.

The value of the Relationship is tracked separately for each Gladiator. However, during Gladiatorial Encounters (see below) it only requires one Gladiator to purchase a Relationship as a modifier for ALL the Gladiators to gain the modifiers from their Relationships with the same NPC.

Gladiatorial Encounters

Eventually, two or more Gladiators will meet in a Scene. When this happens the

Conflict must be between the Gladiators. The actual clash need not be physical but the fallout will always be devastating. Also, all Gladiators recognize each other on sight. Attempts to hide or disguise oneself simply fail (although attempts to do so might add some interesting color to the setup of a Gladiatorial Encounter).

Starting a Gladiatorial Encounter

To start a Gladiatorial Encounter a player must frame his character into a Scene with another Gladiator who is in the same Episode. Only players can do this. The GM can not frame Gladiatorial Encounters even for NPC Gladiators (see the conflict failure rules, for the one exception). For this reason players should know which NPC Gladiators (if any) are in the Episode with them at the start of the Episode.

Death wish and Reason to Live

The first time two Gladiators meet in an Episode the Death wish and Reason to

Live Conflict Pool bonuses should be given out appropriately. The opponents of a

Gladiator with a Death wish receive a Conflict Pool bonus equal to the number of

Relationships the character with the Death wish has. A character with a Reason to Live receives a Conflict Pool bonus equal to the number of Relationships that character has for each Gladiator in the encounter they have not previously met in this Episode.

Initiative

The player who framed the Scene has the Initiative. What this means is they construct their Conflict Roll first. They declare how many dice (if any) they are gambling from their Conflict Pool and purchase any Relationship modifiers.

Then, in normal turn order, the other Gladiators construct their roll with one limitation. They can not gamble more dice from their Conflict Pool than the player with the Initiative did.

Resolution

The Threshold Value is irrelevant for Gladiatorial Encounters. The winner is the Gladiator who rolled more ones than his opponent. The difference between the winner’s and loser’s number of ones is the number of Victories. The loser must do all of the following:

In addition to his Gamble the loser loses a number of dice equal to the number of Victories from his Conflict Pool. If this brings the Conflict Pool to less than zero then the losing Gladiator is dead. For NPC Gladiators this truly means deaths. For player characters this means they are out of the current Episode unless this is The Core Episode in which case they are dead.

Also, the loser must subtract from the value of the Relationships purchased as modifiers a total number of points equal to the number of Victories. This may be distributed across the Relationships used anyway the player wishes. If this brings the Relationship Value to less than zero, then that NPC dies, goes irrevocably insane or otherwise permanently removed from the game. If this NPC was shared those Gladiators lose this Relationship as well.

Example:

Alice loses to Bob who won with three victories. Alice loses three additional dice from her Conflict Pool. Alice also used two relationships as modifiers on her roll one at three and one at two. She could apply all three points to the two point Relationship and lose it or she could lose two points from the three point Relationship and one point from the two point Relationship, or any other distribution of three points across the two used Relationships.

Multiple Gladiators

Conflicts in a Gladiatorial Encounter are not targeted. All Gladiators are presumed to be working against each other. When there are more than two Gladiators in a Gladiatorial Encounter simply compare every possible pair of Gladiators and apply the above Resolution method.

Disengaging from a Gladiatorial Encounter

When a Gladiatorial Conflict is resolved the Scene ends as normal. However, the

Gladiatorial Encounter does not. Instead, the next time a player involved in a Gladiator Encounter has a turn he MUST frame a scene that continues that Gladiatorial Encounter although the time, location and any other details may be vastly different from the previous Scene. This, of course, means this player now has the Initiative for this Conflict.

However, a player may attempt to Disengage from a Gladiatorial Encounter by declaring that his Conflict is an attempt to Disengage. This happens after the player with the Initiative sets the gamble limit. If the roll succeeds (against EVERYONE if there are multiple Gladiators) then the character disengages from the Gladiatorial Encounter and play returns to normal for that player.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

It is possible for two Gladiators to declare a temporary truce. This option is

ONLY available if the Gladiators are not the only two gladiators in the Episode. Also the truce ends the moment they become the only two Gladiators in the Episode.

Two Gladiators who have a truce can share Scenes without it being a Gladiatorial

Encounter. However, the Conflict of the Scene can not be between them and they must each face their own separate Conflicts, even if one is a subset of the other. There is no way for two Gladiators to truly “team up” or “aid another” or “pool resources” or anything like that.

Also, two gladiators who have a truce do not need to compare their rolls in a Gladiatorial Encounter. However, truces are double edged swords. If a gladiator decides to betray a truce during a Gladiatorial Encounter (the player declares this after everyone is done constructing their conflict rolls) then that player gains a bonus to his Conflict Pool equal to the Threshold Value of the current Layer.

Death, Last Man Standing and the Judgment Pool

As mentioned, if a character dies in an Episode that is not The Core Episode they are simply knocked out of the Episode. They will recover in a new Episode on the next Layer. Their Conflict Pool will be equal to the Threshold Value of the new Layer.

On the other hand, the Episode also ends if the character is the Last Man Standing (the only Gladiator left in the Episode). That character proceeds to the next Episode and Layer with a Conflict Pool equal to its previous value plus the Threshold Value of the new Layer.

Players can not advance to a new Episode and Layer until ALL the players are done with their Episodes on that Layer. This means that characters can be out of the game for a while. However, this does not mean that the player is out of the game. Players whose characters can no longer participate in the game either through knock out, last man standing, or death in The Core receive a Judgment Pool of dice equal the Threshold Value of the current Layer plus the number of Relationships their character has.

Players with characters still active in Episodes can request that a player with a Judgment Pool frame a scene for them instead of the GM or themselves. Also, players with Judgment Pools may gamble dice from it in an attempt to sway any Conflict going on in the game. The consequences for this gamble are reversed from that of the normal Conflict Pool. The player only loses the dice from his Judgment Pool if the side he gambled on succeeds.

The Core

Once the last NPC Gladiator dies and everyone finishes out their current Episode the very next Episode is the final Episode and it takes place at The Sphere’s Core. This Episode plays out exactly like the previous Episodes with a few exceptions. First of all, there are no NPC Gladiators present because they are all dead by this point. Second, all the player characters must be present in the single unified Episode. Finally, player character death is permanent. The Episode (and the game) ends when there is only one surviving player character left.

What is its Purpose?

So, we’re down to the last player character, what happens? What do they win?

What was the meaning of it all? Actually, I don’t know. The player of the surviving character gets to decide. That player should narrate an epilogue that happens after the last Gladiatorial Encounter ends. This can be as short or as complex as that player likes. Whatever he decides, he should take a moment to consider the events of the game. A good epilogue is one that reflects on the contents of the game as whole.

GM Advice

The Sphere

To better visualize The Sphere think of an extremely high powered magnet that sucked together all the scrap and junk in the universe that was even remotely magnetic. Then dump a bunch of people on it who take all that scrap and start building tunnels and cities and colonies out of it. That’s the Sphere. You can also think Escape From New York meets M. C. Escher.

Who Lives There?

People wake up on The Sphere and not all of them are marked as Gladiators.

These people must survive in what ways they can. These people and their problems make up the meat of the GM’s prep work for each Episode. Here are some ideas:

Gangs

Gangs are your basic group of thugs who have banded together for mutual protection and aggressive pillaging. All kinds of gangs exist on The Sphere.

Cults

Similar to gangs but these people have banded together over a common faith or ideology.

Media Hounds

A crude broadcasting system exists on The Sphere and some people are out to find the truth (or not) and disseminate it to the masses. And who knows, if you keep broadcasting maybe someone off The Sphere will pick it up.

Micro-Nations

Slightly bigger than gangs and (usually) less aggressive some people have opted to setup a small form of local government controlled by the usual array of tyrants and bureaucrats.

Native Sphere Tech

Occasionally, entities that appear to be native to The Sphere appear. They might be Robotic sweeper teams that wipe out a Micro-Nation for no apparent reason or floating devices that appear to be taking some kind of census. These robots, traps and other unintelligible devices appear to be under the control (or at least built) by whoever constructed The Sphere in the first place. They occur with much more frequency as you get closer to The Core.

Ask Only the Essential Questions

The Sphere is not a place designed to make sense. If you want a biker gang in your Episode you might find yourself asking, “But where does the gas come from?”

Don’t. Just don’t. From the above description of The Sphere one might very well ask, “Where does the food and water come from?” Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

Alternatively, you could make these kinds of questions central to an Episode. A biker gang invading a micro-nation because they’re running out of gasoline is a pretty good basis for an Episode. Ask only the questions that interest you.

The Core

Since ultimately The Sphere’s purpose is decided by the player of the surviving character it doesn’t do much good for a GM to nail down in advance what’s at the core or what the function of The Sphere Tech is. However, the GM might want to develop some vague notions and sprinkle pieces of those notions throughout the Episodes. Remember, that a good Epilogue is one that reflects on ALL of the game content including the GM’s contributions.

The World They Came From

It is worth noting that all of the inhabitants of The Sphere come from the same place. They are not gathered from around the universe or across dimensions or anything like that. The group should discuss what the world they came from was like. Was it already a futuristic place or was it more like our modern times?

Episodes

The model here is early episodic television, like The Fugitive, or The Hulk, or even Star Trek. The idea is that there is an existing situation Out There that is rife with problematic human conflict. Then enters the main cast who quickly starts making judgment calls, taking sides and separating the wheat from the chaff. The GM’s job is to create those outstanding independent situations for each Episode and then give the Gladiators the room to start getting involved.

Something to keep in mind is that everyone who lives on The Sphere knows about the Gladiators and can recognize one on sight. People know that Gladiators bring death and destruction and some even view them them as a kind of “chosen one.” More than likely people will try and want to get the Gladiator’s involved in their problems and be that asking for special aid or trying to manipulate them to nefarious ends.

A Final Word On Engaging Situations

The initial setup leaves each Gladiator alone and without any established ties. The only apparent concern is surviving and eliminating the other Gladiators. Initially, it may be a little difficult to see why we should care about the Gladiators as characters or indeed why the Gladiators should care about anything other than their immediate survival.

The idea is to re-construct the Gladiator’s personal value system from the ground up during play. Players should decide what their Gladiator values and apply those values to the Episodic situations provided by the GM. Consider Snake from the film Escape From New York. In the beginning he only cares about getting the poison out of his system by finding the president and getting out. However, as soon as he comes into contact with the locals he starts making judgments and taking sides. Although, he ultimately succeeds in his original goal, he manages to get everyone he cares about killed in the process. Maybe you can do better.

Sorcerer Unbound: Fiction Matters

Imagine for a moment that I put a blank sheet of paper and a pencil in front of you and tell you to write. Imagine that I tell you to write a paragraph. Imagine I tell you to write a paragraph about an apple. Imagine that I tell you to write a paragraph describing an apple. Imagine that I tell you to write a paragraph describing an apple that doesn’t use the words red or green.

Now, notice that each time I add something I limit what you can write in some way. Or if you don’t see it as limiting, I’m at least giving your writing some definitive shape or direction. My main point of this post is to point out that these are as much rules as telling you to roll dice and subtract the total from your stat. If you hand me a sonnet about a girl eating red cherries in the green trees you will have broken the rules.

Sorcerer has many, many rules of this nature besides its albeit powerful and central resolution mechanic and currency system. Descriptors are perhaps the most obvious example. Two things about descriptors is that they are chosen from a fixed list (not made up on the fly) and that the list be customized to give direction to the kinds of characters that are appropriate to any given vision of the game.

Consider, for example, the Will Descriptor from the book, “Belief System.” For my Gothic Fantasy setting there is no “Belief System” on my Will Descriptor list. In the source material, the late 18th Century Gothic Novel, Catholicism is a big deal. So in my custom descriptor list there is “Faith in The Church.” Also in the source material, nature vs. the will of man is a big deal. So I also have, “Paganism” as a descriptor but it’s not a Will descriptor, it’s a LORE descriptor. I will note that “Church Heresy” is also on my Lore descriptor list.

I’m willing to discuss why one is a Will descriptor and the other is a Lore descriptor, if you’re curious, but I’d prefer to do so in another thread. But let me say that I have given it serious thought and it’s intentional on my part. It is by design. It is a rule for my Gothic Fantasy incarnation of Sorcerer.

Another example of what I’m talking about in Sorcerer is a Demon’s Desire and Need. These are not merely, “guidelines” for the Demon’s “personality.” Unlike descriptors, which are not character behavior limiting, Desire and Need are demon behavior limiting. Like the paragraph describing the apple without using red or green, Desire and Need limit what a GM can have a Demon do.

The GM should not just wave off a Demon’s Need simply because he feels it’s not appropriate right now. That’s breaking the rules. If the situation dictates the Demon goes into Need, it goes into Need period. The GM should not have the Demon act counter to its Desire just because he feels like it. There’s a reason ordering a demon to do something counter to its Desire incurs a huge die penalty.

Now, I will grant that there is no objective timer for when a Demon goes into Need (although see the rules about Ability usage and Stamina). Identifying the situational context for proper application of the Desire and Need rules is a skill that takes practice and requires cultivation. However, I would like to assert that cultivating this skill is really no different than learning how to identify a conflict and reaching for the dice when one is spotted. For what it’s worth, applying Desire and Need appropriately is probably one of my weakest skills as a Sorcerer GM.

Everything I’m describing applies in full to all of chapter four of the core book. Chapter four gives people, including myself, a weird feeling the first time you read it because it appears out of place. It comes between character/demon creation and the rest of the mechanical rules of the game. This is because those of us familiar with other RPG texts are used to the material in chapter 4 being “suggestions” or “advice” and thus at the END of the book.

Chapter four is not “advice” it’s more rules. Chapter four provides the framework that gives everything in the follow chapters meaning. Games of Sorcerer that don’t work out can often be tracked back to a failure on the groups part to do something described in chapter four.

Example Complaint: Sorcery seemed ridiculously hard and not very useful.
Likely Cause: Failure to define the Sorcery Technicality. What’s that? It’s in chapter four and basically comes down to defining the look and feel of sorcery as well as defining exactly what can be accomplished with Lore. Without a Sorcery Technicality there is no context for earning bonus dice or roll over victories for rituals. There is no direction for how demons move and behave. Lore becomes a fairly useless and meaningless score.

Sorcerer, the game, is a much much broader thing than just its resolution system. It is a very specific narrative structure and framework all of which is outlined in the core book. Ron selected these narrative components very carefully by design. They are not just color, suggestions, advice or guidelines. They are rules. The game will not work if you do not apply them correctly.

Sorcerer Unbound: Demon Abilities

So one of the topics it was requested of me to discuss is the application of demon abilities. Here is my number one tip for working with demon abilities: Do not look at the list of abilities while designing the demon. Start with imagining what the demon looks like an what you would like it to do, then go to the list of abilities and look for ways to combine them to produce the desired effect. When I GM Sorcerer I rarely have the players look at the list of abilities. I just ask them to tell me what the demon does and I write it up myself. After all, it’s my NPC anyway.

Playing the Build-a-Demon game is one of my favorite Sorcerer “exercises.” Let’s play a couple rounds right now. I’m thinking of little girl Sorcerer named Emily and her “imaginary” friend Billy. Billy is an inconspicuous demon that protects Emily from harm. Any damage done to Emily is done to Billy instead. So, how to best accomplish this?

Well the most obvious choice is Armor that confers to Emily. That will handle the damage reduction part but what about the transfer? The ability Link is a foundational start. I see two options for actually hurting Billy.

1) The Currency Way: For every victory converted to Fists damage by the Armor ability simply apply damage to Billy based on the original weapon chart.

2) The Ability Purest Way: Give Billy Special Damage (Non-Lethal). Every time Emily gets hit the GM simply has Billy attack himself the following round. That may sound kind of dumb but it’s not when you describe it correctly. Basically while Emily is standing there absorbing bullets, Billy is reeling around in pain. It’s kind of a creepy image.

Here’s one I got recently that was a bit of challenge. The player wanted her possessor demon (hosted in an animal) to be able to see past and future events. I pointed out the ability Hint but she felt that was overkill because she didn’t care about accuracy, reliability or deliberateness of it. She liked the idea of it being kind of dreamy, metaphorical and impossible to interpret. I realized that what she was doing was basically handing me a ready made Bang delivery system.

Here’s the core challenge: The animal host can’t talk and possessors can’t confer their abilities beyond their host. So how does the player character actually have access to this prophetic information? Well for obtaining the information itself I went with Perception (Short Range Time Stream). I noticed that Link includes a “general awareness” of the demon’s immediate surroundings so I figured that was sufficient to act as the “delivery system” for intentionally vague and dream-like “visions.” As a general note I wouldn’t have allowed this ability or would have insisted on using Hint if the player had wanted perfect “second sight” so to speak.

So, let’s get into the text of demon abilities a bit and discuss all those seemingly out of place complexities and details. First let me say that all the mechanical bits of demon abilities are just applications of the currency system used to adjudicate (the word “model” is inappropriate) “weird effects.” If your problem with demon abilities is that the mechanics of Armor converting victories to Fist damage seems like overkill relative to the rest of the system then I suggest that your understanding of the currency system is too simplistic. It isn’t that the demon abilities should be simplified to fit the rest of the system; it’s that the application of the system to other situations should be elevated to the complexity of the demon abilities. I suggest that adjudicating such things as suppressive automatic fire, grenades, lasting emotional distress, the narrative impact of “set pieces” or thematic objects, is much more akin to how demon abilities work than the simple victory roll-over mechanic. I suggest going over the rules with this in mind: All the “dice tricks” listed are not exceptions or special cases. They are examples of the currency applied to a few common situations but are no means “exhaustive” rules.

The trickier part of demon abilities is all the text that seems rather limiting compared to the customizable flexibility of the game. Examples include the size limitations listed under the ability Big, the duration limitations on Shapeshift or the speed limitations on Travel. Ron has admitted that this text is some of the weakest in the book. What I intend to do here is throw out a few basic principles that will hopefully make it easier to understand this text in a functional manner.

The first principle is that nothing in Sorcerer is instant, infinite, eternal or can be diminished to zero. The idea here is that even if your demon can teleport there is always the chance that something can interfere with that. If you go gallivanting around as a werewolf all night long that has consequences. When some action is successful it has some minimal impact and can’t be totally negated. Regardless of what an ability can do there are always opportunities for outside forces to interfere or take advantage of it.

The second principle is about understanding that the text was written with certain narrative assumptions (more on this in the third principle). Mainly, modern occult stories such as Hellblazer and The Exorcist and all the Swords & Sorcery stuff listed in that supplement. As such the abilities are all written with that particular look and feel in mind. A consequence of this is that some abilities may need customizing if your game steps outside those narrative assumptions. The text simply didn’t account for demonic black holes and virtual reality subroutines. This is really no different from customizing the list of descriptors to change the nature of appropriate Sorcerer character types.

The third principle is that the verb “model” is inappropriate when discussing Sorcerer. The rules of Sorcerer do not model anything. They do not model the fictional world. They do not model the fictional world as represented by the source fiction. They do not even model the source fiction itself. What they do is adjudicate the narrative weight of consequential action relative to the here and now fictional situation.

What this means for demon abilities is that stuff like duration and speed kick-in only when that would have weight in the narrative. If Jack Bauer can make it from Santa Monica to Downtown L.A. in 15 minutes through rush hour traffic than so can your demon moving at “normal human speed” right up until all of a sudden we’re stuck in traffic and that bomb is going to go off in 15 minutes. Those eight minutes of Shapeshift on your Power 8 werewolf demon start ticking when a character is locked in the basement and says, “If we can just make it until dawn then he’ll have worn himself out.”

So, that’s my attempt to get at the underlying principles behind Demon Abilities. I hope it has been useful.

Sorcerer Unbound: Sorcery As Conflict

Some people find it odd that Sorcery is disproportionately difficult to do relative to anything else in a game called Sorcerer. Other people think the rituals in the game are task resolution complete with a whiff factor. These two misconceptions are related. Let’s take a look at the most conceptually difficult ritual: Contact. Contact is a Lore vs. Power roll which in most cases make it look almost impossible to pull off since you’re often looking at ratios like 3:8. Similarly, if a Contact fails, nothing seems to happen. It can feel like a whiff.

First of all, a Contact ritual isn’t like a fireball spell in D&D. You don’t just say, “Hey, I’m going to Contact” and reach for the dice. That isn’t going to work due to the disproportionate amount of difficulty. You need to get bonus dice and helper rolls. Remember that I said those two things are about refining the details of the situation. This is key to understanding what happens when a Contact fails. You NEED those details if failure is going to make any sense which is why the game forces you to strive for them. Remember that bonus dice are only awarded if at least one person is emotionally moved by the detail which means elements of the Contact must have meaning relative to the greater narrative.

So even after you stack on the bonus dice and helper rolls, how is a Contact ritual a conflict? I can tell you right now that you are not in conflict with the Demon. Remember, in Sorcerer, Demons do not exist. What you are in conflict with is…

Reality.

Contemplate that for a moment. Since Demons do not exist, if you are attempting to Contact one that puts you in conflict with Reality. Further, remember that Reality in Sorcerer is an emotional narrative construct. It is not a simulated imagined world. As such it can have an agenda just the way inanimate objects can appear to have an agenda. So question: Is there anything in Sorcerer that can serve as Reality’s agenda?

How about the Humanity definition?

When a Contact ritual fails, the Reality that demons do not exist and the Reality of the humanity definition come down on the Sorcerer in a crushing manner. You did not *fail* to Contact a demon who exists out there somewhere, there is no demon to Contact. Thus the consequences for failing a Contact ritual are tied up in the specifics of its attempt.

I played a Southern Gothic game of Sorcerer where the Humanity definition was about walking the line between respect for community and family traditions while retaining your own identity. One of the PCs was married to a woman who was related to a powerful sorcery driven family and she had put a lot of effort in distancing herself from that family. At one point the PC’s daughter was kidnapped by people the PC owed money.

The PC decided he was going to try to Contact a demon. He gathered all these ritual items, including elements he had used to contact this particular demon before (it was a demon he had banished earlier in the story), into his daughter’s bedroom. The Contact failed and the sad reality of the fact that there is no magical incantation that will bring your daughter back came crashing home. He was alone in a room with a bunch of junk and some superstitious poetry. His wife walked in on him and grew very angry! She worked hard to keep herself away from this stuff, to keep her daughter from that crazy side of the family, and now he’s brought it into her home. His daughter was out there somewhere and the BEST he could manage as a father was this superstitious BULLSHIT. How pathetic.

Sorcerer Unbound: System Transforms Situation

This post is going to be the hardest to write because in some sense this is where I stop telling you how to play chords and start telling you how to compose music. This is a serious look at how the mechanics of Sorcerer touch the narrative. Just what is the toolkit designed to DO? Here’s the answer as best as I can put it: The Sorcerer mechanics are designed to first establish non-obvious details of situation and then to transform that situation into an unexpected new situation.

Let’s look at the core pieces one at a time.

The bonus dice at first look like GM bennies awarded for good player behaviors. That is not the case. In practice they operate a little more like fan mail in Primetime Adventures. Basically bonus dice should be awarded for establishing details of the situation that in some way creatively stir the group. Yes, the GM is the arbiter of this but if something makes a player go “Oooooooo” or “Oh crap!” it’s worth a bonus die and if the GM fails to notice (as I personally am prone to do) then the players should say something.

Bonus dice are not about long winded narrations full of purple prose or sound and fury signifying nothing. The things that usually earn bonus are stuff that actually establishes details of the situation that add nuance to the conflict at hand that was not immediately obvious. Such nuances are often cool pieces of tactical and logistical texturing. This is why they apply to the immediate role at hand are not stored up like Fan Mail because they are about refining the details of the here and now situation. I’m not just hitting you with a crowbar, I’m holding it with both hands and thrusting it spear like into your chest.

These details are important because they make answering questions that may arise later easier to answer. The clearer picture we have of what the character is actually doing the less confusing interpreting later rule applications become. In some sense it narrows the acceptable narrative space.

Helper rolls as previously stated are about resolving larger chunks of ambiguous situation space. Do I know anything about the demon? Are there men loyal to me in the area? Is my dragon style better than your chicken style? The degree to which the answers these questions are useful are of course measured by the victories scored on the roll.

It should be noted if the answer to any of these questions are obvious from previously established fiction then no roll is needed. For example it might have been stipulated early on that the character has never been to this area in his life. Thus the question, “Are there men loyal to me in the area?” is pretty pointless. The answer is an obvious, “No.” This applies to things the players may not know. For example, it might be part of the GMs pre-play prep that the entire village is really a hallucination generated by a demon. It’s perfectly fine for the GM to just say, “No” because he knows that the village isn’t real. But if judgment call is needed to answer the question then it should be decided by the dice rather than fiat.

Now here’s the part where the creative context of the group matters. Let’s say I sequester myself for two hours reading the Necronomicon for two hours before performing a summoning ritual. Is this a bonus die situation or is this a helper roll situation? Frankly, it could be either and which it is depends on the groups’ investment in this bit of description. You kind of have to trust me when I say that in the context of play it is usually pretty obvious but I know that won’t be satisfying to everyone so here’s a guideline. If the purpose of the description is just to show the character’s process of summoning it’s probably a bonus die. If on the other hand, the purpose of the narration is to glean information that will then be applied in some manner to something else, then it’s probably a helper roll.

At this point we have the details of the pre-roll situation. From this point the mechanics are about transforming those in motion details into a new situation in a meaningful manner. Any single die roll gives us two pieces of information the direction the narrative is going and the degree to which that direction matters. In some sense Sorcerer die rolls are story vectors giving us a direction and a magnitude. At this stage any ambiguities in the situation can often be resolved by comparing dice or applying victories.

Example of Comparing Dice

Imagine a situation in which two characters are wresting on the ground a third character wishes to strike down on the tussle. The third character is clearly unconcerned with which of the two wrestlers actually gets struck. Let’s say that the striking character’s action comes up first. Which of the two wrestlers gets struck?

Here’s one solution: Since everyone rolls at once we can compare the dice pools of the wrestlers. Even though their actions have not happened yet we can see “who has the upper hand” at the time the striking blow comes in. That is the wrestler who gets struck because we can say with confidence that he is on top of the dog pile at the time of the strike.

Example of Applying Victories

Bob wants to shoot Carl. Carl wants to pull Alice in front of him to use her as a shield. We’ll leave Alice’s action out of it to keep it simple.

Let’s say Carl comes up first and Alice fails to defend so she gets dragged in front of Carl. The obvious application here is to take the victory dice from Carl’s action against Alice and roll them over to his defense roll against Bob’s shot. Let’s assume that Carl’s defense roll is successful against Bob’s shot. But here’s a perfectly obvious question with maybe a not so obvious solution: Does Alice get shot instead? Do we have anything at out disposal that could answer this question for us so that we don’t have to rely on fiat?

Yes, we do. We have the victories from Carl’s defense roll against Bob’s shot of which Alice’s role as human shield was a part of. We can take those victories and immediately apply them as mid-round attack on Alice. Notice that how Alice narrates her defense against getting shot herself could have a rather significant impact on the situation. If Alice says something like, “I throw myself to the ground dragging Carl with me if I have to” and she succeeds in defending against the bullet it might very well be the case that Carl is now prone on the ground, a situational transformation that wasn’t even part of the apparent possible outcomes at the top of the situation.

Some of you might be asking where in the rule book this miraculous application of mechanics is listed: A secondary mid-round attack? Where is THAT listed? It isn’t. It isn’t because this isn’t a separate rule. Nor is it something I just made up. It’s an example of the application of currency. And that is the artistry of playing Sorcerer: learning to use the currency to resolve ambiguities in the situation without falling back on fiat. That is what takes practice.

Even more so there may be more than one way to legally resolve that ambiguity and which of the options is more appropriate depends entirely on the greater creative context of the narrative. I alluded to such a situation in my post about conflicts with inanimate objects. Consider the gun lying on the ground that a player wants to pick up. When that action comes up does he just pick it up unhindered his with roll effectively only establishing when the action happens relative to the rest of the situation OR does the gun in some way oppose his attempt? The question relies entirely on the greater creative context of the narrative. Again, I can only say that it’s usually fairly obvious in play but I’ll offer up another guideline? Where is the groups’ investment in the gun? Is what’s at stake in the greater narrative just whose hands the gun ends up in? Or is it more like the opening scene of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom where we’re interested in watching the gun run around a bit like the diamond?

Now let me touch on one more aspect of the system that hasn’t been touched on: Total Victory we’re back to adding depth and detail to the situation. By design Total Victory has no mechanical effect instead it allows a player to add another level of situational detail to the outcome of a conflict. If the character was swinging a crowbar at the enemy’s head and score total victory did he break his jaw or gouge his eye out? Again, it’s about narrowing down that narrative space with more detail that will seriously inform follow up narration and rules applications.

I have no idea if I’d made things clearer or more confusing but this is my best shot at explaining how the rules and the narrative interact.

Sorcerer Unbound: Conflicts With Inanimate Objects

In my thread on conflict subtleties I talked about the case where a man is chasing a woman and there’s a fence between. I noted that the fence was not a character in conflict with the man but rather a modifier on his conflict with the woman. There are, however, some cases where a character can be in conflict with an inanimate object.

The key to identifying when this is appropriate is to determine if it’s possible to view the object as if it were willfully acting on some kind of agenda. Consider the scene in a lot of movies where a character is trapped in a malfunctioning elevator. Ever notice how the elevator behaves as if it were intelligent and doing everything to proactively thwart the character’s attempts at escape? That’s how you do conflict with an inanimate object.

In Sorcerer the GM just assigns the object some dice. There’s a chart in the book guiding how many dice should be assigned but Ron has admitted to defaulting to three. Then you just run the conflict as normal with the GM announcing “actions” for the object. These can even be physical attacks like, “The cable snaps and whips violently at you.”

Much simpler situations can sometimes warrant such things. Consider the example of a gun sliding around on the roof a train. The player could just roll Stamina for the purposes of ordering his attempt to grab the gun relative to the other action in the scene and when he’s turn comes up he just grabs the gun. But man, doesn’t it seem sometimes like that gun is *purposefully* crawling away out of reach? Hmmm…. Grab some dice.

If a player is attempting to do something to an inanimate object and the object can be treated as if it had an agenda that opposes the player then it’s a conflict and you should roll like any other conflict.

Sorcerer Unbound: Social Conflict

Physical conflicts in Sorcerer are fairly straightforward because their consequences are rather obvious from the declared action. If I’m trying to shoot you and I succeed you have a bullet ripping through you. However, social conflicts require a bit of special attention because Sorcerer preserves player (GM included) autonomy over his or her character (NPCs included). No one can force another character into action even through social conflict. The exception is when a Sorcerer orders a Demon to do something.

So how does social conflict work in Sorcerer? Again the lack of stakes helps. Let’s say a man is trying to pick up a woman in a bar. It should be noted that it is perfectly fine and dandy for the player of the man to say, “I really want her to go home with me and have sex.” In fact that helps clarify the nature of the situation at hand but it isn’t Stakes in the Dogs in the Vineyard or Primetime Adventures sense of the word. If the man wins the roll that doesn’t necessarily guarantee the woman will go home with him and have sex with him.

Now let’s add the fact the woman is an NPC and the GM knows that the woman has an abusive boyfriend but the player of the man doesn’t know that. It gets to the point where the man is being chatty and flirty with the woman and the woman is acting all nervous trying to get away. We have a conflict of interest and so a Will vs. Will role is made. Let’s say the man wins.

At this point the GM is shifting in his seat uncomfortably (a LOT of Sorcerer rules are based on this sense of unease that other games can sometimes back you into) because as a creative participant in the game with autonomy over his character, the woman, he’s thinking, “There’s just no way she’d go with this guy. She’s TERRIFIED of her boyfriend.” But the roll has gone in the favor of the man.

Here’s the key point: The GM is free to narrate ANY follow up action on the part of the woman he wants. What the dice do at this point is give the man roll over victories against that action. Here are some viable options for the GM.

The GM could have the woman blurt out something about being scared of her boyfriend. This complies with man’s win because the woman is now giving up something useful to the man. The player of the man might then choose to take the victories from his roll and roll them over to a new roll about trying to get the woman to explain why she’s afraid of her boyfriend.

OR

The GM could have the woman try to run away. Notice this goes totally AGAINST the outcome of the first die roll in terms of the woman’s behavior but that’s perfectly fine because the player of the man can roll over his victories into a new roll, say to snag her arm and stop her from fleeing. “Hey, doll, what’s the rush?”

The idea is that rolls force the situation to CHANGE and victories describe the DIRECTION OF CHANGE. The GM can’t have the woman just sit there stubbornly resisting, he has to have her do something else but it’s perfectly fine to continue to follow his own agenda for the character, the player of the man just has the momentum of the situation going in his favor.

Here’s another point: conflicts always resolve the immediate situation at hand and only for the short term (in story time). It might very well be that the GM just says, “Fuck it, she goes home with you.” And then starts the very next scene the next morning with the woman incredibly hostile, maybe even violently so, screaming, “You bastard! Why did I listen to you! Oh my god, he’s going to KILL ME!”

OR

Maybe he decides that the woman sees a way out in the man, goes home with him and the next morning she’s all cuddled up to him and says to him, “Honey, uh, there’s something I didn’t tell you…”

All of these are valid creative riffs off that initial die roll. This principle applies regardless of whether it’s NPC vs. NPC, PC vs. NPC or even, yes, PC. vs. PC.

In particular notice how this rather simply solves the problem of two players endlessly bickering in character about something without resorting to bullying one of the two players either socially or systematically. As soon as the two characters (in the fiction) are in an argument go to Will vs. Will. We now instantly know who has the upper hand in the argument. The loser can either go, “I lost the argument, fair enough” and comply with appropriate behavior OR if he’s STILL committed to “his way” he has to switch tactics to something other than arguing (or at minimum a new course of argument) and the winner has victory dice to oppose that new tactic if he so chooses.

Sorcerer Unbound: The Nature of Conflict

I’ve encountered some people who seem to be under the impression that Sorcerer uses task resolution rather than conflict resolution. Sometimes this is because of the lack of techniques like stakes and sometimes this is because of the scale of resolution such as resolving a single whack with a crowbar. Stakes and scale do not conflict resolution make. Sorcerer does not use the term conflict resolution because The Forge theory had not yet settled on that phrase to describe the technique.

Conflict resolution means that the system operates at the level of resolving conflicting interests between characters. We only need to identify that the interests of two or more characters are in conflict and have the resolution in some way sort those interests to have conflict resolution. We don’t even need to articulate what the interests are and the interests in question can be of any level of granularity.

Example of Unarticulated Interests

A character in a bar starts getting flirty with a girl who clearly seems to be nervous about the man’s attentions.

That’s all we need to call for a Will vs. Will role in Sorcerer. We don’t know what the man wants from the woman exactly. It could be sex, information, just generally endearment. We don’t know why the woman is so nervous, maybe she’s gay or has an abusive boyfriend. We don’t know yet. All we know is that the man seems to want something and the woman seems unwilling to give it. We can establish more detail after the role decides who gets his or her way. No stakes. No goals.

Example of Small Scale

The man wants to sweep kick the legs of the woman who is about to shoot him. Clearly this is just a single moment in a much larger evolving situation. But it’s still a conflict and not a task because we have the incompatible interests of two characters. Note that we also have four possible outcomes. The man sweep kicks the woman whose shot goes wild as she falls. The woman shoots the man preventing him from kicking her. The man sweep kicks the woman but her shot lands against him as she goes down. The woman side steps the man’s kick which causes her shot to go wild. Again, notice that we have no idea what the larger scale situation is.

Contrasted with Task Resolution

A man needs to jump over a fence while chasing a woman. The fence is not a character in this situation. The man is not in conflict with the fence, he’s in conflict with the woman. To resolve the jump over the fence does not resolve the interests at hand. The fence is a complication on the conflict of the man trying to catch the woman and the woman trying to get away.

Now because there are no stakes and because conflicts can be of very small scale the result is that situation and character agenda can turn on a dime without much thought or articulation. Let me slightly reward the previous example. A woman wants to shoot a man and he wants to take the gun away from her.

After a SINGLE die roll:

The man could be bleeding from a wound as the woman menacingly advances cocking back the hammer for a second shot.

The man could be bleeding while holding a gun on an unarmed woman.

The man could be uninjured holding a gun on an unarmed woman.

The man could be prone after having just dodged a bullet.

All four of these situations are RADICALLY different from one another. I don’t know of another system that results in such RAPID changes in logistics after a single application of the mechanics. Notice that character agenda could shift immensely from the beginning of this conflict to the top of the next.

Consider that at the top of the conflict the woman could have been all about exacting revenge and by the end she might be all about begging for mercy. At the top of the conflict the man could have been trying to be sympathetic and open but by the end might decide that negotiations aren’t an option and she needs to be taken out.

Now keep in mind that the Humanity definition looms over all of this and you’ll see that the system is CONSTANTLY creating shifting opportunities for Humanity gain or loss – even mid-“combat” as unit of situation morphs into unit of situation.

Another point of confusion is the role of “helper” rolls. These can also feel like task resolution because they don’t really resolve anything at all. An example of the helper roll is the book where the character with Martial Artist Cover rolls that and then rolls over any victories to his primary Stamina roll. Another example might be rolling Lore against the Power of a demon to discover a weakness.

The reason these aren’t task resolution is because they only make sense in the context of an actual conflict. A character can only ask if his Martial Artist Cover is relevant if something else is at hand to be relevant about. Same goes for looking for the demon weakness. These rolls are a STEP in the conflict resolution procedures. They are not the resolution themselves.

I think people have difficulty figuring out when to use helper rolls. The purpose of these helper rolls is to eliminate GM Fiat when the answer to obviously relevant questions would VASTLY alter the nature of the situation. Think back to your GMing history and remember all the times a player would ask something that would require a judgment call on the part of the GM. I know these situations always made me uncomfortable because I knew my answer would greatly sway the momentum of the situation. I think some people who have been GMing for a long time have learned to shoot past that unease and make a snap judgment. I never did and now the Sorcerer rules mean I don’t have to.

Consider the situation where the player asks, “Hey, given all my knowledge of Sorcery do I know anything USEFUL about this demon?” That’s a damn good question and even if I made a judgment call we still wouldn’t know just how useful it is. The rules give us both. Roll Lore vs. Power. Roll the victories over to an action relevant to whatever it is it turns out you know. This is the idea behind the Past rules in Sorcerer & Sword. “Hey, I used to be the captain of the guard can I round up a few guys to go storm the castle?” Again, that’s a damn good question, make that Past roll. No fiat required.

Sorcerer Unbound: Introduction

The whole idea of games that take practice has been floating around my head for a few days now. When push comes to shove the game I always want to play and the game I always want to get better at is Sorcerer. So, this is a first in a series (of how many I don’t know) of posts about how to play Sorcerer better. This post is primarily about why I think Sorcerer is worth practicing.

Sorcerer’s appeal is very much rooted in my play history. I started with Red Box D&D when I was about 8 years old. As I got older I blossomed into a very story minded pre-teen and teen. My exposure to fantasy fiction was very minimal and something I struggled with in D&D was how monsters made stories. Clash of the Titans was a favorite of mine and yet the rules for a Medusa didn’t quite fit the scene in that movie. The rules for Vampires didn’t really seem to have anything to do with Dracula. I got very caught up in the confusion that the primary purpose of D&D was to create quality fantasy fiction.

Eventually, I discovered other games, most notably Chill. Ah! Now here was a game that suddenly made sense to me. In particular it had monsters that conformed to some kind of human agenda. The Mean Old Neighbor Lady being a classic. And the Ghosts! Oh God, did I love the ghosts: the spurned lover, the wrongfully executed criminal, all behaviors and motivations that made sense to me. A friend of mine once commented, “They’re villains, not obstacles.” This was the beginning of my understanding of Situation.

In my history we’re up to post-college but pre-Forge. I was running Chill on a regular basis and here’s what I learned: I must be a horrible GM. I learned this because I could not get the players to follow the plot. My clues were not clear enough and the players didn’t know what to do next or they would wander off in wholly unpredictable ways or worse jump to conclusions too soon. I could not keep the players on my clue based scene chain to properly pace the narrative from mystery to “revelation.”

Then one day I wrote a Chill scenario called The Art Gecko. Going all the way back to my D&D roots I never understood why the Chill books contained classic monsters like a Basilisk. I just had no clue how to make such a monster jive with the more human like ghosts, vampires and witches. So I set before myself a challenge. Pick one of these classic monsters and make it work. And so I chose the Basilisk.

I imagined a woman who so desperately wanted to be a great sculptor but had no talent. One day she came across an “exotic” animal shop and was sold by the mysterious proprietor a reptile he claimed to be a genuine Basilisk. Low and behold the woman was shocked to discover that the creature was indeed genuine. So she hatched an idea. First she gauged out her own eyes to protect her from the creature’s gaze and then started luring people into her home where she exposed them to the creature. Soon, she found fame and fortune as the “blind sculptress” who could, by feel alone, craft the most lifelike statues you have ever seen.

Around her I created an artist’s community rife with other problems and secrets. There was even a plain old murder over blackmail involved. I had a web of artists and the desperate things they were willing to do for success. Little did I know, I’d created a Sorcerer scenario before I’d even heard of the game. However, I was still attached to the notion that I had to pre-plot play. I threaded a very careful clue-chain through the situation I had created in order to build up suspense and work the players through the secrets of the community from least heinous all the way up to the Basilisk reveal.

It worked overall better than any of the previous Chill games I had run. But I discovered something rather amazing when I took the scenario to a con. I was concerned about the time crunch in the con environment so on a whim I abandoned the linear plot structure in favor of just handing out information and clues in any order when the players did anything remotely worthy of them. And a miracle happened.

As I had feared the players figured out the basilisk trick rather early on, about an hour into play. However, the other events in the town proved grabby enough that they ended up seeking them all out on their own anyway. They didn’t rush to take out the sculptor and call it a night just cause they knew where the Big Bad was. They wanted to know what the hell was up with all this other stuff in the community FIRST.

And that was my first real taste of the power of Situation, Premise and Relationship-Maps, and Human-Monster relationships. However, I never really put it together until much later.

Somewhere in the middle of all that Chill playing I encountered Sorcerer, Ron Edwards and The Forge. At first I dismissed Sorcerer as White-Wolf-Lite (Note: Unlike many I have NO play experience with these games). But I was extremely fascinated by Ron and his claims. Here was a man who very clearly wanted out of gaming what I wanted out of gaming but his suggestion that Theme (as the Big Model defines it) could be a function of play itself rather than preset and front-loaded seemed impossible to me. At the time I was very hung up on the idea of the Auteur and that Theme was something communicated on high from a singular vision down to an enthralled audience. In RPGs that was the GM.

So I hunkered down determined to make heads or tails of this game and its author’s radical claims. And thus I began my long in depth study of Sorcerer and the literature behind it. In that time the game and Ron have:

a) Radically redefined my experience of stories.

b) Radically redefined my worldview on the human experience.

c) Introduced me to fantasy fiction that doesn’t read like a made-up high school history text.

d) Taught me to enjoy hardboiled detective fiction as something other than an unfair puzzle.

And that doesn’t even touch on the entire “How to do Story Now” stuff. What I enjoy most about Sorcerer is that every time I play it, I learn something about myself and I learn something about those I play it with.

There are a lot game play features of Sorcerer I enjoy that I don’t see in a lot of other designs. Elaborating on these is the primary goal of these essays.

Conflict resolution with out goals or stakes.

Conflict granularity that preserves the back-n-forth fun of a struggle.

Social conflict resolution that preserves player-character sovereignty.

Resolution with massively situation altering impact in a single pass through of the dice.

A currency process that eliminates fiat by establishing narrative constraints.

Extreme uncertainty relative to adversity.

The opportunity for rapid mid-resolution change in character priorities.

And more I’m probably not thinking of.

I hope I’ve at least captured your interest.

Spirit of the 18th Century: A Gothic Romance Hack For SotC

Spirit of the 18th Century

Introduction

This is rules hack for Spirit of the Century (for completeness the OGL is included at the end of this page) to facilitate the creation of stories like those found in the Gothic romances of the late 18th Century. If you are unfamiliar with the genre I suggest reading The Castle of Otronto, The Monk, The Romance of the Forest, Frankenstein and Melmoth the Wanderer. For a great look at the post-18th Century Gothic tradition, I can not recommend The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales highly enough. Also, this is pretty extreme rules hack. You have been warned.

Character Creation

In the gothic romance the villain is always a major figure. Sometimes the villain is central to the point of being really a tragic protagonist (Manfred in Castle of Otronto or Alphonso in The Monk). In this game the villain walks that borderland by basically being the GM’s PC. Although controlled by the GM the villain is still sketched out collaboratively by the group and is the first formal process of play.

Begin by sketching out a general idea for the villain. In the source material the villain is usually a male noble of foreign (to England) birth. That’s not required here. All that is required is that the villain be a driven individual with the means to pursue his drives almost to the exclusion of all other concerns.

Mechanically the villain starts out as two Aspects and one Trait (Sot18thC’s replacement for Skills). The two Aspects must represent what the villain covets. The love of a lady? Recognition? Money? His rivals lands? An heir? What is the villain after?

The villain also gets one Trait rated at Great (+4). Traits are Sot18thC’s replacement for Skills in SotC. Traits can be anything of thematic importance to the character. In that regard they are much more similar to Aspects. Indeed anything that makes a good Aspect probably makes a good Trait. The real difference is that Aspects are fixed and don’t change and Traits will have the opportunity to be replaced and shuffled around (more on that later). Also Aspects trace the progress of the character’s story arc while Traits represent the immediate story priorities of the character.

Once you have this sketch of the villain it’s time for the players to create their heroes and heroines. Like the villain, mechanically heroes and heroines start out with two Aspects and one Trait rated at Great (+4). Unlike the villain, however, the two Aspects must represent the Hero or Heroine’s Virtues (i.e. what makes them good and honorable people). Like villains, the Trait represents anything of immediate thematic importance to the character.

In addition to the two Aspects and the Trait the players must answer one of the following questions. How does your character stand in the way of what the villain covets? OR In what unwanted way can your character be used by the villain to obtain what he covets? If you’re feeling particularly sadistic towards your character you can answer both questions.

Finally, each player starts the game with two Fate points (one for each Aspect).

Fleshing Out, Redefining and Shuffling Traits

The heroes, heroines and the villain have space for nine more traits; two at Good (+3), three at Fair (+2) and four at Average (+1). At any point a player may simply fill in a blank Trait for his or her character. The GM gets to fill in the villain’s Traits. This is called Fleshing Out the character’s Traits.

However a player may also Redefine his character’s Traits by spending Fate points. To redefine a Trait simply pay a number of Fate points equal to it’s rating. In other words it costs four fate points to redefine your Great Trait, three Fate points to redefine your Good Traits and so on.

Finally a player may Shuffle his character’s Traits. Shuffling a Trait means swapping the ratings of two already existing Traits. To Shuffle two traits pay the difference between their ratings in Fate points. For example it costs three Fate points to swap the character’s Great Trait with an Average Trait. This merely rearranges their placement in the pyramid. You always have ten Traits in the Great, Good, Good, Fair, Fair, Fair, Average, Average, Average, Average pattern.

Just remember that Traits represent the character’s immediate thematic priorities.

The villain follows slightly different rules for Shuffling and Redefining Traits. Since the villain need not track Fate points separately (he has an infinite supply) The GM may only Shuffle and Redefine the villain’s traits just before rolling dice in a conflict. The GM then pays the Fate point cost to the player engaged in the conflict. If there is more than one player involved in the conflict the Fate points are divided as evenly possible with any odd counters going to the player with the least Fate points.

Aspects & Story Arcs

In Spirit of the 18th Century Aspects track your character’s story arc. Like Traits players are free to add to their Aspect list whenever they like. However, the aspect list must follow a very specific progression.

After the starting two Virtues the next two Aspects must reflect what tempts the character away from his Virtues. The two Aspects after those must reveal what exhausts the character and pushes him towards giving up his pursuits or falling to his temptations. The next two Aspects represent the character’s fall to corruption and must express his darkest elements. The final two Aspects represent the character’s redemption from the previous corruption. That’s it. The player maxes out at ten Aspects.

Once an Aspect has been defined it can be Invoked, Tagged and Compelled as usual. Also the player earns a Fate point as soon as the Aspect is defined. As stated the player may fill these in at any time but must define them in the exact order described. However, there are a few good reasons why the player won’t want to fill them in all at once.

The first reason is that unlike core SotC the Stress track does not refresh between scenes. Defining a new Aspect empties the Stress track. The second reason is that once a character has a single Corruption Aspect or beyond if he is ever Taken Out in a conflict he is permanently removed from the game. Finally, once a character defines a Redemption aspect he can no longer Invoke his Temptation, Exhaustion or Corruption Aspects. However, they can still be Tagged or Compelled but the player earns no Fate when they are. Yeah, Redemption is hard.

The villain follows a different Aspect progression track. After the first two covet Aspects his next two Aspects must define what powers him. The two after that must define his master plan. The next two reveal his fatal flaws. The last two reveal his darkest secrets. Unlike players all ten of the villains Aspects must be defined before he can be permanently Taken Out of the story.

Spending Fate Points

Fate points in Spirit of the 18th Century can accomplish seven things.

Earn a straight up +1 on a die roll.

Invoke your own Aspect or Tag an Aspect that belongs to something else either to re-roll or the dice or add a +2 to the roll.

Compel an Aspect to restrict a character’s behavior (yes, players can compel each other’s and the villain’s Aspects).

Resist a Compel.

Shuffle or Redefine Traits on the point buy system described earlier.

Annul a conflict by deepening The Mystery (this is explained later).

Create a Temporary Aspect that lasts until it is Invoked by you. It can be Tagged or Compelled freely until then and you don’t earn the Fate point for it.

Earning Fate Points

You earn a Fate point:

When your Aspect is Compelled OR Tagged (This is not true for Temporary or Lasting Aspects).

When the villain Redefines or Shuffles his Traits.

When you define a new Aspect progressing your Story Arc.

Scenes & Conflict

A distinction must be made between Requesting a Scene and Framing a Scene. Any player may Request a scene but the GM always Frames the scene. When Requesting a scene the player states what elements he’d like in the scene, characters, time, place, general goings on, etc. The GM then Frames the scene by establishing those elements and adding any others. The GM is also allowed to deny a player’s request and Frame a scene of his own preference. This is a rare occurrence, however.

It should be noted that all elements in a scene that ever take pro-active action are always acting in either a hero/heroine’s interests or the villain’s interests. Characters who are acting in the interests of the hero or heroine are narrated by that player. Characters who are acting in the interest of the villain are narrated by the GM. The GM is allowed to co-opt a player controlled NPC if suddenly their agenda starts serving the villain. That power doesn’t flow the other way.

This makes it possible to have scenes that do not directly involve the heroes, heroines or villains. It is perfectly legit to frame a scene that’s about the hero’s daughter confronting the villain’s vile henchman. They key here is that if a conflict arises these character’s actions are represented by the Traits, Aspects and Dice of the players whose interest they serve. More on this later.

Once a scene is established go ahead and role-play the scene out with as much narrative or thespian detail as you would like. If a conflict of interest arises among the characters within the scene use the following rules to resolve the conflict. This need not end the scene. The scene ends according to the aesthetic standards of those participating in the scene.

Resolving Conflict

It should be noted that the following replaces the ENTIRETY of the base SotC system. There are no Maneuvers or Stunts or Supplementary Actions or Minions or Groups. There is only what is provided here.

First decide which type of conflict is at hand: Oppositional or Orthogonal. Oppositional Conflicts are when a character is trying to achieve something and another character is merely trying to stop them. There are only two outcomes in an Oppositional Conflict. Either the acting character gets what he wants or he doesn’t. While this may seem bland remember that a conflict can not simply be repeated so failure at an oppositional conflict cuts the acting player off from a course of action.

Orthogonal Conflicts are what happens when two or more characters are taking actions which may interfere with one another. In a two person Orthogonal Conflict there four possible outcomes. Either character gets what he wants, neither character gets what he wants or both gets what he wants.

A subtle point: It is sometimes beneficial to treat an Oppositional Conflict as an Orthogonal one if there is likely to be an immediate follow up conflict. For example imagine that Alice is shooting Bob and Bob simply wants to duck for cover. This may seem like an Oppositional Conflict. Alice wants to shoot Bob and Bob simply wants to not be shot. However, since it is unlikely that Alice will stop trying to hurt Bob if she misses it may be useful to know whether Bob makes it to cover or not regardless of whether or not he gets shot. In these cases treat the situation like an Orthogonal Conflict.

A few other thing: All conflicts are resolved via opposed die rolls. There are no Difficulties or Target Numbers. Shifts are the difference between the two rolls. There is only one Stress track and it is ten boxes instead of five. Stress rolls up as usual if it hits the same box more than once. Consequences follow the same mild, moderate and severe pattern. After the the third Consequence the player is Taken Out (more on this later). As stated earlier Stress does not go away at the end of the scene.

Resolving Oppositional Conflict

Both sides roll 4dF as a base. The defender gains an automatic +2. A player may apply ONE and only ONE of his Traits if it’s appropriate. However it should be noted that if a player applies one of his Traits or Invokes one of his Aspects (but not if he Tags something else’s Aspect) then he becomes vulnerable to Stress even if he is rolling for an NPC (which as stated earlier is just acting in his interests).

The dice are rolled. The character represented by player who rolls the highest total gets his way.

Next calculate Shifts by subtracting the loser’s roll from the winner’s roll. There are three things you can do with Shifts and you can divide your Shifts between them.

By spending two shifts you can create a Lasting Situation Aspect that persists until the end of the scene. This is a double edged sword as it can be Tagged by anyone (and you don’t earn the Fate point for that).

Shifts can be turned into Bumps on a one to one basis. Bumps let you raise a die that came up minus or zero by one value on an immediate follow up conflict. You can use two bumps to raise a minus to a plus. If there is no immediate follow up conflict Bumps are lost.

Finally Shifts can be converted directly into Stress. However, the defender in an oppositional conflict can not inflict Stress but can use either of the two previous options.

Resolving Orthogonal Conflict

Everyone states what action they are taking, freely and openly in any order. People can change their action based on what others say. However, once the dice are rolled everyone is committed to their course of action and can not change or abort it.

Again everyone involved rolls a base 4dF. Anyone taking a purely defensive action gains an automatic +2. Again you can apply ONE and only ONE Trait to the roll. And Again if you apply a Trait or Invoke your own Aspect you become vulnerable to Stress.

However, actions are resolved from highest total roll to lowest total roll. Ties being broken by who rolled the most pluses, then the most zeros then the most minuses, and finally by the highest Trait used. If that is all tied then it goes to a Fate point bidding war.

Anyone who is affected by the current action gets to roll defense. However, if their own action has not happened yet they only get to roll paired canceling dice and dice showing zero from their original action roll. For example if the player rolled, -, +, 0, + then he would roll three dice for his defense. If the player has already had his action he rolls all four of his dice for his defense. If the player used a Trait in his original roll then this defense roll is added to that original Trait. If no Trait was used for the action, no Trait can be applied now. However, Invoking and Tagging Aspects is just fine.

As each action occurs determine the outcome. The higher roll succeeds in each case. Also calculate Shifts which again can accomplish three things and can be distributed across any combination of these three things.

By spending two shifts you can create a Lasting Situation Aspect that persists until the end of the scene. This is a double edged sword as it can be Tagged by anyone (and you don’t earn the Fate point for that).

Shifts can be turned into Bumps on a one to one basis. Bumps let you raise a die that came up minus or zero by one value on an immediate follow up conflict. You can use two bumps to move a die from a minus to a plus. If there is no immediate follow up conflict Bumps are lost.

Finally Shifts can be converted directly into Stress. However, anyone taking a purely defensive action can not inflict Stress but can use either of the two previous options.

Multiple Characters Acting In Someone’s Interest

Earlier it was stated that it was possible to have scenes that do not feature the heroes, heroines or the villain but that any character taking pro-active action in these scenes were to be considered acting in the interest of the heroes, heroines or the villain. When one of these characters is acting in the interests of a given player’s (including the GM’s) character then that player rolls dice, uses their Traits and Aspects and takes the Stress for the outcome.

If there are MULTIPLE such characters then roll separate dice for each. The only caveat is that you can not apply the same Trait to two characters rolling simultaneously. If only one Trait is applicable to the situation then you have to choose which character ’s dice the Trait is helping. Similarly when you Invoke an Aspect you have to decide which roll you are affecting, you can’t affect both and you can’t Invoke the same aspect multiple times in the round of die rolls.

Being Taken Out

When a player is Taken Out (by taking a Consequence beyond severe) he has a choice. He can either have his character exit the story permanently or have the GM frame his next set of circumstances. He might very well end up in the villain’s dungeon but the GM might also kill his girlfriend. His Stress track also empties when he is Taken Out. Thus it is possible to play the unwavering hero who never compromises his Virtues but the character is likely to suffer for it… A LOT.

The exception to this is if the character’s Aspects have progressed into Corruption. If the character has his first or Corruption Aspect or beyond he MUST exit the story permanently if he is taken out. The player shouldn’t worry about this because even if his character is taken out he continues to play in a special manner (described in a moment).

The villain is only ever Taken Out permanently if all ten of his Aspects have been defined. Until then he is only Set Back. However, when he is Set Back he MUST define his next Aspect and his Stress track refreshes.

The Mystery

So while this power struggle between hero and villain is going on something else is going on as well. That something else is called The Mystery. This mystery may or may not have anything to do with heroes, heroines or the villain. For the ultimate in disconnected mystery I suggest reading The Mysteries of Uldopho. In any event here’s how The Mystery works.

By spending a Fate point a player can immediately annul a conflict at any point no matter how complex or at what point in the resolution system. In the fiction this annulment is represented by an event that reveals part of The Mystery and interrupts the scene. Maybe ghosts show up, or someone falls through a secret door or all of a sudden the lights go out and a shadowy figure is seen running along the balcony.

Based on whatever interrupts the conflict at hand a new Aspect is added to The Mystery. This Aspect can be Tagged like any other Aspect thus reinforcing previous elements of The Mystery. Like heroes, heroines and the villain The Mystery is limited to ten Aspects. However, there is no obligatory order to these aspects with one exception. The tenth Mystery Aspect is called “The Horrible Truth.” The player who defines it must make sense of all the previous Aspects and explain how they add up to the tenth one. The tenth Aspect is the shocking reveal behind The Mystery.

In addition to stopping the conflict and ending the scene, adding to The Mystery does a few other extremely powerful things. It empties the Stress track of anyone who was involved in the annulled conflict and removes any and all Consequences they had accumulated. Pretty powerful stuff, right? So what’s the catch?

Doom

Remember when I said that if a player’s character is permanently taken out of the story they don’t stop playing? That’s because they now play Doom. Doom is not a character. It’s a concept. Here’s how Doom works.

Doom has all the Aspects of all the character’s who have been permanently removed from the story. Here’s where Traits being the same as Aspects pays off.

Doom’s Traits are the Aspects attached to The Mystery. Starting with “The Horrible Truth” and going backwards up the list assign the standard pyramid of ranks. “The Horrible Truth” is Great (+4) the Trait above it is Good (+3) and so on.

Doom may not Flesh Out, Reassign or Shuffle his Traits. If there are Doom players before The Mystery is fully fleshed out it continues to be fleshed out using the annulment method described above.

Players may continue to Tag Doom’s Traits as Aspects and the Fate point goes to the Doom player with the least Fate points.

Doom’s Traits may also be Compelled as Aspects to make any scene element representing Doom’s interests do something. Any Doom player may buy off the compel. If the compel is not bought off the Fate point again goes to the Doom player with the lowest Fate points.

Doom does have a Stress track and can be Taken Out but this only represents holding Doom at bay. The forces of Doom are removed from the scene in some manner and Doom’s Stress track is reset.

Doom doesn’t care about the interests of anyone but Doom. Give ‘em all hell.

How To Play Doom

The easiest way to play Doom is to have elements of The Mystery show up and start causing problems in the character’s lives. However, ANYTHING can be an agent of Doom. Have the building suddenly collapse, or a fire break out or an agent of the law suddenly get on the villain’s trail. Whatever makes things worse for all the characters still standing.  Declare actions for these things as if they were pro-active thinking characters and roll dice for them.

It should be noted that the GM still retains scene framing rights. Doom players however may insert any element they wish into a scene and that element is presumed to be serving the interests of Doom. That element is also narrated and controlled by the Doom player who introduced it. That Doom player also rolls on its behalf in conflicts.

How To End The Game

The game ends when the villain is permanently Taken Out of the story. Notice that this can happen under two rather different circumstances. The first is when there is one or more heroes or heroines left standing. Yay for them! Narrate epilogues for those characters.

The second happens when the villain manages to sustain himself past ALL the heroes and villains and then eventually succumbs to Doom. Congratulations this villain is one of those unique villains-as-protagonists I mentioned at the start of the game, enjoy his demise.

Rules for the Novella

As written this game will likely last several sessions and produce a pretty hefty gothic novel. If you’d like to try for a novella simply reduce all Aspect lists from ten to five and similarly reduce the Stress tracks from ten to five.  Similarly reduce the Trait pyramids down to five and start the top at Good (+3).

13   OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a

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15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Open Game License v 1.0 © 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Fudge System 1995 version © 1992-1995 by Steffan O’Sullivan, © 2005 by Grey Ghost Press, Inc.; Author Steffan O’Sullivan.

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