Sorcerer, part 1

So, with the Consortium out of town for the second weekend in a row, I found myself starting to suffering from gaming DTs. (You can’t just cold-turkey from three-to-zero per weekend, nor do I want to).
Anyway, by Saturday afternoon I was quite ready to do something. Randy has, as a result of my raving, already picked up a copy of Sorcerer and was interested in playing, and Jackie and I had gone through most of character creation, excepting naming the character, her demon, and coming up with a kicker.
Here’s the characters they came up with:

Jackie played Shannon O’Neil:
Stamina: 2 (Clean Living)
Will: 4 (Rageful/Vengeful)
Lore: 4 (Solitary Adept)
Cover: 4 (Librarian)
Humanity: 4
Price: Scarred (?1 to all casual social encounters)
Telltale: Eyes change color constantly but subtly (frex: girl in The Ninth Gate)
Shannon’s background is that she inherited most of the personal effects of her Professor father when he died (her mother wanted none of it). Dad was apparently a sorcerer of some skill and everything she learned was from his own notes and books he’d collected. (I’d decided that Dad was Black Wheel, but as her character is ignorant of Sorcerous factions et al., that hasn’t come out yet.) She is trying to learn more about her father-whom-she-never knew, and to that end is working as a senior librarian at Yale, where he used to teach.
Her demon is Bister, an inconspicuous who usually expressed himself as various shades of color tint on his master’s person.
Stamina: 6, Will: 7, Lore: 6, Power: 7 with Armor conferred to master, Special NL Damage (NL selected to keep Shannon from making Humanity checks for Bister killing people :), Vitality (demon), Shadow (demon), Perception (darkvision), Confuse (confer to master).
His Desire is knowledge and his Need is Internet access — he’s a net junkie who reads and comments on upwards of forty-five news sites and pundit-blogs a day as “Auburn”.
His telltale is that Shannon’s hair changes color fairly regularly and shifts unnaturally in breezes that aren’t really there. I believe the word ‘undulates’ was bandied about.

Whew… lots of stuff.

Randy played Sebastian Ryan
Stamina: 3 (Naturally fit)
Will: 5 (Socially Adept)
Lore: 2 (Apprentice)
Cover: 5 (Rich-prick Ivy League post-grad)
Price: Arrogant (from the book) ?1
Telltale: Always perfectly groomed.
His demon is Shade, an inconspicuous who usually expressed himself as Sebastian’s shadow. He has kind of a lame name because he was bound to Sebastian as an ‘invisible friend’ years and years ago — Sebastian’s uncaring high-society lifestyle did not lead to a happy childhood.
Stamina: 5, Will: 7, Lore: 6, Power: 7 with Armor conferred to master, Travel (demon teleports from shadow to shadow), Big (demon), Perception (demon — seeing where he’s going with Travel), Warp (demon), and Link.
His Desire is ‘poetic justice’ (yeah, still processing that myself) and his Need is Voyeurism — preferably someone he knows, but in the end he can get by with anyone. This need has become more carnally-oriented as Sebastian got older, and as a result Sebastian’s sexual encounters (which come easily to him — think of the male lead in Cruel Intentions, because the player was) have become… work; mechanical situations in which he has to concern himself far too much with the angles of hidden cameras and the like — all the joy has gone out of it for him.
His telltale is the fact that Sebastian’s shadow is often distorted or (when Shade is off doing something for him) simply gone.

Since Sebastian’s an apprentice, we defined his Mentor/Master (player said the former, I said the latter 🙂 as an Anthropology professor on Campus by the name of Candace Lynn Voight (she never uses her first name, only the initial). I detailed Candace’s stats privately, but basically she’s built on approximately the same points as the players with a bit higher Lore and a somewhat reduced Humanity. Her only demon that Sebastian knows about is a parasite living in the body of a cat… a “Renfrew demon” (bug-eater) that neither Shade nor Sebastian have much real respect for (I used Sipe from Sorcerer’s Soul, stuck in the body of a cat). Voight uses the cat as a means of getting dirt on the mundane university staff to maintain her precious tenure.

Humanity
At this point, Humanity is defined either as Empathy (the ability to imagine things from the perspective of another and thus showing concern for the well-being of others) or Mastery (having control over yourself, your life, and your abilities).
For Mastery, some actions that will trigger Humanity rolls:
* “Losing it” and acting out of high emotion or irrationally.
* Allowing your actions (especially questionable ones) to be dictated by someone with power over you.
* Contacting, Summoning, or Binding a demon
For Mastery, Humanity Gains come from:
* Successfully reasserting your control against great odds or when that control costs you.
* Banishing a demon that you didn?t summon whose Power is greater than your Will.
Mastery-based Humanity can also be rolled to determine the a way to influence another human being or to assert control over a situation. A character who hits Zero Humanity is incapable of mastery ? they’re meat for the beasts.
For Empathy, some actions that will trigger Humanity rolls:
* Causing pain to another living being
* Ignoring pleas for help
* Contacting, Summoning, or Binding a demon
For Empathy, Humanity Gains:
* Acting in the best interests of another at one?s own expense
* Banishing a demon that you didn?t summon whose Power is greater than your
Empathic Humanity can also be rolled to determine the needs of another human being, or to appeal to another?s empathy. A character who hits Zero Humanity is incapable of empathy?a sociopath.
Demons
Demons in this game seek to undermine humans? capacity for empathy or mastery.
Whew! Okay, with the next post I’m going to actually talk about what happened in the session.