Yudhishthira’s Dice

So I made the following character for Sorcerer, by way of experimenting with creation of situation and front-loaded conflict at character generation. He’s a very good character in many ways, save for one: He isn’t a Sorcerer character. Read on, and then I shall explain.

Tommy Ridinelli

Appearance: Sid Vicious as a white-trash American urban youth, heroin chick without the glam. Rough and wild and every inch a smoker, a thug, and a street-child.

Telltale: Fingers twitch like he’s playing the guitar all the time.

• Stamina: 4 (Street Punk: Tommy grew up hard as old wire and mean as desperation)
• Will: 5 (Rage and Desperation: Day after day, I get angry and I will say that the day is in my sight, when I take a bow and say good night.)
• Lore: 1 (Naïve: Tommy doesn’t know he’s a sorcerer, though he knows his guitar is something terrible.)
• Cover: 5 (Musician: Tommy is a hot young underground guitarist in the retro-punk scene of the angry white club.)
• Price: Obsessive (-1 to any roll to resist anything he’s had a taste of.)

Bound Demon: Vimarendi is an Object Demon in the form of a classic acoustic guitar. Its telltale is that its strings sound softly whenever its need is being met.

• Stamina 4, Lore 4, Will 5, Power 5
• Abilities: Boost Cover (musician), Boost Will, Hint, Protection.
• Need: Exposure to anger and regret
• Desire: Mayhem (personal breakdowns and collapse of social structures)

Kicker: Chicago is a tough town, especially when you’re a cracker. In order to survive Tommy Rindinelli and his best friend James Ginovi joined the Peace Stones when they were 12. Blood in, blood out – and the boys take care of their own. It was really Tommy and James that took care of each other though, more brothers than even blood could tell.

James dad was a shadow that hung over his mother, a figure that terrified them both so bad that even Tommy never heard anything about him but the fear in their voices. Tommy figured that was why Sheryl took up with Vito, because not even the shadows of the past would fuck with a Made Man.

When they were 16 James got a gun from a friend, Tommy got a guitar from his estranged father. James got a nickel upstate, Tommy got gigs downtown. James got letters from his mom every day, Tommy fucked James mom while he was looking after her. No one planned it, Tommy and Sheryl knew it was a bad idea, but it happened anyway and Tommy can’t let it go.

James got out two weeks ago. He’s been drunk the whole time, and getting angrier by the day. He knows Tommy is fucking his mom, and he hates it so bad it burns white hot in the back of his brain. But worse he knows his dad is coming back.

Sheryl knows her son is pissed, she knows Vito is getting suspicious, and she knows Tommy wants her cunt but not the rest. She doesn’t want any of it, but knows she can’t get away. She’s gone from a line now and then to a needle in the arm, and is on a slow burn more profound than her hysterical son could imagine.

Tommy wants out. He wants out of the gang, out of the hood, out of the obsessive, consuming lust he feels for his best friend’s mom, and out of the raging sense of futility that’s trying to suck him down the drain. At the clubs he gives performances so frenetic with desperation that even the most jaded feel terror and awe as they watch him die a little more on their nightly stage.

Twenty minutes ago James found Tommy in bed with his mom. He’d come to tell mom that dad was coming back, that he’d be in town today. He’d come drunk, and he’d come with a gun. Fear and shame and rage collided as Sheryl tried to scream the boys down. She got a hand on the gun. The phone rang. James screamed, Tommy lunged.

What next?

Theme Song: “Add It Up” by the Violent Femmes

——–

Do you see the problem? The way that the occult, the demons, and all the genre Sorcerer elements are lacking, appended, and weak? How the guitar is so obviously added on because it was the only place I could think to fit a demon, and even then lacks a lot of the useful abilities that normally make demons worth taking? This type of character is even warned against in the rulebook — the lone adept without connections to other magical types, ignorent about demons and the real nature of things.

So I went to change it, to increase the level of magic and the centralized position of the occult and the hidden world and all that. It felt wrong, at a gut level. I didn’t want more demons, I didn’t want more stuff. I wanted less. I wanted violent, obsessive, bloody mob and murder punk action. Chainsaws sure, but no “unkillable pyscho who is lame but for some reason won’t die” action to go with them.

Then, because I’m a web geek, I came upon the following discussions:

http://www.lumpley.com/anycomment.php?entry=213
http://www.chimera.info/blog/2005/04/lasersharking-my-ass.html
http://www.20by20room.com/2005/05/running_regular.html

I am now starting to think that the flaws in the character are (mostly) because I’m playing him in the wrong game. Perhaps it really is time to ditch the spandex and start playing around in the foul rag and bone shop of the human heart.

(Well, I’ll keep the spandex for special times. Really, women just look good in it.)