[Sorcerer] Escape from New York

Using the setting from the Escape from New York movie, I ran a short Sorcerer adventure for new gamer friends KW, BW and BB last night at Games and Gizmos, a local game shop in Redmond. Following advice I requested from a recent RPG.net thread on Sorcerer, I made up the PCs and demons for the most part - I let each of the players spell out their telltales and kickers, as well as their demon's names and telltales.

KW played Scry, an ex-commando, BW played Von Neumann, an inventor, and BB played Bill Forks, a NY Cabbie. All had been incarcerated in the Manhattan Maximum Security Prison for various reasons. While there, they learned Sorcery and managed to summon and bind their own personal demons.

Scry's demon was Ingvar, a Parasite demon that replaced her eye. Von Neumann had a demonic Parasitic arm named Alfred and Bill had a demonic car named The King in Yellow Cab, known most often as King. The binding rolls went good for some, and bad for others.

The Kicker part of character generation went OK, and I helped out and we eventually came up with some good kickers. Von Neumann had a power cell stolen and the thief escaped in a cab. Bill picked up a fare, dropped him off and saw him get murdered and the murderers were after him. Scry's group was wiped out before an escape attempt. All pretty cool kickers.

The game started on a Tuesday Night, at 8PM, with Von Neumann getting robbed of his power cell by Alex Chow, during the sale of a thermite bomb. He didn't notice it until Alex had escaped, after paying for the bomb, and jumped into a cab. He chased the cab on his motorcycle but lost him in the city and his motorcycle broke down. So he pushed the bike to the Night Market.

Scry went to the meet-up place and found her crew all dead. Except Alex Chow was missing. He'd been sent to get a bomb but hadn't returned. She figured she'd catch up with him at the Night Market and find out what happened.

Bill picked up a fare and dropped him off, watching as he was attacked and killed. He figured it was prudent to leave. But King started acting up, demanding cassette tapes (his Need) and wanting Polka music! Bill only had rap, and managed to convince King to accept two rap tapes. Later, after listening to the really, really bad rap and then eating the tapes, King demanded Polka! A contest of Wills resulted, with King winning and Bill forced to walk dangerous 5 blocks to the nearby Night Market to look for cassette tapes.

At the Night Market, Scry ran afoul of a couple of gang members, from the Baseball Furies. Combat ensued and she kicked on in the head, killing him, all the while her demon, Ingvar, was egging her on - "Kill him! Yes! Now kill his friends!" (his Desire: Mayhem). Von Neumann noticed this and figured she was a Sorcerer (he noticed her Telltale). Bill also noticed the tussle but didn't involve himself.

Bill ran into Von Neumann (they knew each other) and Von Neumann described Alex to Bill - he was the fare that got killed! They reached a deal, with Von Neumann getting Bill two Polka tapes for King and they took off to the spot where Alex died. Scry knew that Alex had used Bill's taxi and saw him leaving with someone (Von Neumann) and gave chase.

A local thief tried to sell Von Neumann's bike to Scry but she did a jump-scissor kick to take off his head and land on the bike, racing off after the King in Yellow Cab. Von Neumann's demon Alfred witnessed the bloodletting (his Need) and wanted some of the blood but was satiated with some of his master's blood instead.

Bill figured out quickly that someone was following them, and King gave Scry the slip, using his Cover: Race Car Driver ability to escape from Ingvar's Perception: City-sense ability (the first Demon ability vs. Demon ability in the game).

Scry hit up some gang members about the whereabouts of the taxi and got into another fight, losing the first exchange of blows (going completely defensive), then managing to win in the end, and getting the directions she required.

Bill and Von Neumann made it to the sight of Alex's death, finding his body hanging from a light pole. Von Neumann stepped out to get the body and a monster Ford Truck came out of the darkness at them. I told BW and BB that the truck was aimed right at King and King took that as a personal affront (his Desire: Competition) and Bill screamed as the two vehicles came together in a crash as Von Neumann used his demon arm to chop down the light pole onto the truck. The rolls were excellent, with BB getting a complete victory over the Ford Truck Bandits and King rammed through the Ford Truck, killing them all and totalling the truck as the light pole fell on the ruined mess of the truck.

Scry arrived on the scene to see the final battle and as King screeched to a stop, a glowing power cell rolled out from under his seat. Alfred drank the blood of the Ford Truck Bandits and Von Neumann recovered his power cell. With the PCs all together, the sesison came to a close.

All in all, I probably didn't run Sorcerer to the fullest and I resolved two Kickers pretty quickly (Bill's and Von Neumann's) but I played each of the demons pretty well, I think, trying to develop personalities and pushing the PCs to doing things that the might not have wanted to do. There were no Humanity checks but then there wasn't much time to summon and bind another demon and no-one did anything particularly un-Humanizing.

The after-game discussion was good, since none of us had played or, in my case, ran Sorcerer before, so we talked about the resolution system and demons. Everyone had a good time trying out this new system. Maybe I'll run it again for them. We'll see.

Don't worry, I'll post the PCs and Demons later.