Sorcerers and Sellswords Impressions + Actual Play

I'll put the actual play at the end because I know almost no-one reads those.

This week, as part of my continuing efforts to clear out my backlog of independent RPGs that I haven't played, I ran a one-shot of the ultra-rules light Sorcerers & Sellswords by Ray Otus, a hack of the famous Lasers & Feelings game. L&F is a wide open game that makes intriguing use of a single stat related to the titular dichotomy, but it also has the word 'feelings' in the title which of course sends me - being an uptight British man - scurrying to the nearest dark corner. 

Sorcerers & Sellswords on the other hand, has piquant pulp flavour all over it, much more my style! 

I've long been a fan of Ray's open-minded and inquisitive thoughts on gaming via his inspiring Plundergrounds podcast and so I decided to soak this pamphlet sized game in several puddles of delicious porter in a Hackney boozer and run it for a group of four.

You're looking at the entire game

Rules and Characters

The short version of the game (shorter, to be precise - we're talking about a ruleset covering one side of an A4 sheet here) is that characters have just one stat, a Skill number ranging from 2 to 5 that is chosen at character creation. If this is low, you're more likely to succeed at Sorcery tasks (roll over your Skill number), and if it's high, you're more likely to succeed at Swords tasks (roll under your Skill number). The two categories are not as literal as they seem - more on that later.

Players choose keywords for their characters relating to style and calling, with the latter being the closest the game gets to a class (Necromancer, Barbarian etc.). They then select a personal goal from a list, and the party decides on two advantages that will affect them as a whole, and a single problem. None of these are anything but evocative keywords to spur on action and improvisation.

If a player can claim that they are trained by reference to their style and/or calling or prepared by previously stated actions, they get an extra die in each of those cases when making a skill check, and the number of successful rolls determines whether you failed, achieved your goal with a caveat (1 success), did well (2 successes) or did critically well with a bonus effect (3 or more successes).

The simplicity of having a single stat appeals to me, as does using keywords free of mechanics when creating your character or the party. It's not geared towards anything but being able to sink a few beers and make believe. This does shift quite a lot of emphasis onto having engaged players as they are made to create on the fly from some very minimal prompts rather than relying on mechanics.  

Insight

Should you roll equal to your Skill number in any type of skill check, you gain an Insight, and can ask the referee - well, basically anything. Once the answer is received, players are then granted the option to retcon their characters initial action if they wish, and/or re-roll. 

This seems like a very important mechanic, though I'm a little unsure on how exactly it is intended to be used. The rules give examples which clearly point to this being a very powerful device used by the player - not the character - in shaping the fiction. The fact that it can be used to metagame by asking about plot structure, NPC motivation and other hidden information was not as terrifying to GM as it might first appear, and often was actually something that threw me a bone since I could use a player question as a prompt when I was feeling lost. Players directly asking me questions allowed me to hang my ideas on something rather than flailing wildly.

Make no mistake though, I found answering Insight pretty difficult at points. I think to get the best out of this game, a really skilled GM would be able to provide answers that raise yet more questions. If you're not careful, it's easy to just shut down promising opportunities with them. 

For example, at one point in our session I had imposed the condition 'Hungry' on all the players. On the way deep underground to the food source of a fungus forest (yeah I know...) a player used an insight to ask if they would encounter danger should they go there. I just flat out said yes, having already planned for them to be ambushed by some bloodsucking Morlock types down there. In response, the Barbarian character simply asked if they could roll Swords to find some traces of edibles such as lichen in the upper caves - I said yes and they obviously succeeded (Swords of 5). So what happened in the fiction? Some adventurers were on their way to Location X, when for no apparent reason decided not to continue and to forage instead. In retrospect, it was up to me or the players to fill in the blanks - 'Xorcsa is suddenly filled with dread foreboding at the passage which looms before her, and hears odd scurryings in the darkness'. 

If this isn't supplied, all that happens is the GM has warned off the players and the thread they have prepared is abandoned. It's a fine distinction but one which could perhaps be spelled out a bit more in the rules.

Swords vs Sorcery

The rules state that Swords tests are used for mundane tools and weapons, logic, diplomacy and calm precise action while Sorcery tests are used for weird powers, ancient/alien artifacts, intuition, persuasion and passionate action. 

There's some slight fuzziness here, especially with the calm precise vs passionate action stuff, which I think there might even be an arguable case made for swapping! My initial reaction to the two categories would be it's a magical vs mundane split but that clearly isn't the case. It kept tripping me up a little. Often I'd just ask the players to convince me why something should be a Swords roll or Sorcery roll and that felt in keeping with the spirit of the game.

A distinction is also made of True Sorcery, the sorts of supernatural/superhuman stuff that genre protagonists mess with and then wish they hadn't. I don't know if I ever made it clear to players that this was really an option. There was a pivotal moment of magic/super science when they were contacted by the alien emissary's home planet after slaying it and touching its alien brain crystal, but maybe I should have made that more of a 'crossing a line' moment and brought True Sorcery into play.

TOTAL IMPROVISATORY BRUTALITY

I'm not certain but it feels implied that the game is intended to be run from absolute zero prep, since there are four scene setting d6 tables included to be used at commencement of play. I mildly panicked and actually ended up simply making use of the first prompt (starting location) in conjunction with the party's problem (Exiled) and riffed on that with a weird wilderness survival theme. I simply couldn't get my head around combining all four prompts together, particularly not the inclusion of a twist!  

I think this is my own inexperience with this sort of play rearing its head. I've only run totally improv games for one or two players a handful of times in the past, never for a full group. Each time my emotions during the game run a similar course, starting at elation in the new found freedom, followed soon after by an insistent worry that I'm bogging down the pace by focussing on the wrong details. I find it quite tough to consider the big picture without this being sketched out before hand (obviously your hexmap or dungeon map does the job here in a traditional game). As I described on Discord after running the game: someone asks me what an ancient structure looks like and I pointlessly improv "Verdigris, with significant eldritch fluting".

I had brought my copy of Out of The Pit along with me to riff on, as well as asking players to bring a single image to help conjure up their preferred flavour of swords and sorcery, and both of these things did help somewhat. I think in future I'll bring a few more such things to help me.

 

My chosen image (Tsathoggua by Mark E Rogers)

 

I'm a visual maps and notes kind of guy. Doing game prep is often as much fun to me as running games is, and I think my improvisatory skills can sometimes suffer as a result. Dropping all that bedrock and playing this game is probably great training for that, but man is it tough. Both refreshing and exhausting I'd say!

BUT the other factor here is the players, of course. If they don't realise just how much input they have, they won't feel it's part of their role to swing the narrative one way or the other.

Death?

Oh yeah - the part of the rules that marked out just how different of a game we were playing for my long suffering OD&D players is that characters only die when it feels right to the player! That's right, your character can technically be invincible if you so choose. This is something Ray has added to the original L&F mechanics, and I can see why he did so - it feels very genre appropriate as sword and sorcery heroes often go through many painful or humiliating trials, reversals and tribulations, while just managing to escape their doom.

Instead, the GM is encouraged to inflict conditions that have effects in the fiction (the example given is Bleeding, making you easier to track). If I recall correctly I think I handed out Weary, Hungry, Wounded, Scarred and Withered. I really like these conditions, but it's important and difficult to keep track of them across the whole party and make sure they matter, so it might be wise to use them somewhat sparingly.

Conclusions

This is a really fun little game that I'd definitely like to have another crack at in the future! It certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone. I think it supports more playstyles than might first be apparent, but it does need full buy-in and input from the players and the GM. Ray's selected themes (the reverse of the rules contains a S&S Lexicon with clarifying information about the Callings and Styles) are evocative as fuck, especially given the limited space. If I run it again I think I'll pay greater attention to the role of Insight, bring more improvisatory aids and perhaps pay finer attention to the distinctions between Swords/Sorcery. It's free so you should go and check it out!

Sorcerers & Sellswords Actual Play 15/06/22

• Gildrath the feral Pit Fighter (Establish Your Reputation)

• Xorcsa the sexy Alien (Delve Dark Secrets)

• Thrungär the flashy Barbarian (Just Keep Being Awesome)

• Crumb the dauntless Beastmaster (Delve Dark Secrets)

Party Advantages: Bad-Ass Reputation, Connected
Party Problem: Exiled

Exiled from the metropolis Expin-Bashar due to their disgraceful conduct at a diplomatic event, the party were thrown in weights and chains and made to march north to the border under the watchful eyes of the constabulary, flying above them on their leathery winged beasts.

At the border the constabulary wheeled back to the city and the party was abandoned to the wasteland of ice and rock known as Anirozoltar. Their manacles weighed heavy on their limbs and they had became Weary. Crumb used a Beastmaster technique to emit a keening whistle, causing a confused constable's beast to fly back toward the party. Gildrath hurled a sharp rock at the constable's head as his steed flew overhead, knocking him from the saddle and killing him instantly.

Taming the beast (after debating whether or not to Tauntaun it due to the intense cold), Crumb mounted it and carried Xorcsa to the West in its claws, where some plumes of smoke and steam had been sighted. This was soon revealed to be a vast field of cracked lava at the edge of the snow fields, fringed by some ancient structures built into the Northern mountain ranges and with some rather frightening occupants. Innumerable ten foot tall charred skeletons strode to and fro at lonely intervals across the lava, wielding enormous weaponry. 

Crumb flew the beast back to fetch Thrungär and Gildrath. Xorcsa stretched languidly out by the lava fields to ease her weary limbs, which drew the attention of one of the titanic skeletons. Using her pheromone emitting gills, she caused this horror to kneel before her in complete obedience. It was granted the name Jethro Skull.

Up in the sky, Crumb was able to see that the Northern mountain range also had an ancient looking tower embedded in it, made hazy by distance. When he landed to pick up 'the beef' (as the combination of Thrungär and Gildrath had been dubbed), he found the manacled warriors were racing each other across the snow fields, and viewed being given an aerial lift as a sign of weakness. Rolling his eyes, Gildrath relented and was carried aloft, leaving the stubborn Thrungär to continue on foot. 

During his solitary journey, a sinkhole opened up in the snow and he found himself wrapped in the tentacles of an enormous bristly blue pyramidal shaped creature. Slaying the creature with a cutlass purloined from the constable's corpse, he was badly Wounded as its death throes consisted of it shooting out a mass of barbed quills before sinking below the snow. Eventually he rejoined the others by the lava fields.

Xorcsa commanded Jethro Skull to burst the links of the party's manacles using his gigantic mace, and the party made a weary camp, their empty stomachs grumbling. Crumb lost control of the winged beast which wheeled into the sky, and it was decided that the following day's mission was to enter the buildings on the edge of the mountain range in search of food and possibly some of those Dark Secrets.

During the night, Jethro Skull made good, as an attempt by another skeletal warrior to ambush the party was prevented when the loyal servitor reduced his opposing likeness to a pile of bone fragments.

Exploring the bronze buildings clustered at the edge of the lava fields the next day, the party decided to delve within, if only to find some food. The tunnels stretched deep into the darkness, and they navigated by the light of smouldering rags wrapped around bone shards. Some edible lichens were found by Thrungär which took the edge off of their hunger, and yet still they delved deeper.

Eventually they discovered a holy chamber, apparently desecrated, judging by the smashed statue of a holy giantess that lay across their path. At the rear of the chamber squatted a gigantic demon idol, apparently composed of a single piece of ice. Xorcsa investigated the bas-reliefs covering the chamber and everywhere saw the symbol of the holy giantess X'd out and replaced with a crude scrawl depicting some kind of multi-tentacled deity with a faceted head.

Gildrath saw invertebrate squirmings within the ice demon idol moments before it animated and grabbed the unfortunate Crumb by the head, but luckily the Pit Fighter and Thrungär boldly fought the construct before it eventually shattered and fell. Unfortunately for Thrungär his sword stroke punctured something inside the idol, spraying his face with corrosive blood and Scarring him.

Inside the idol lurked the corpse of a bizarre creature, composed of blue filaments with a topaz coloured crystal in its centre, which Xorcsa swiftly removed. Touching it, she was enveloped in a blaze of gleaming light and found herself in contact with this creature's home planet. The chastisement she received from an alien voice gave her reason to believe these beings mistook her for the creature her compatriots had just slain! Berating her for taking so long in sending back a report to home base, they asked if further assistance was needed in conquering this world. Replying in the affirmative, an utterly alien steed was manifested in front of them, before communications ceased in another blaze of light that reduced Jethro Skull to dust.

The gift from another world was a levitating disc-shaped animal with masses of squirming cilia around the edges, multiple eyes, and several loathsome nozzles that spat purple fire. Crumb was able to use his beastmastery despite its horrid alien nature, and the party climbed on top of the world's strangest flying carpet and flew out of the tunnels to investigate the tower in the mountains.   

After Thrungär strained his mighty thews in forcing open the double doors to the structure, they found an ancient warrior's grave site of giant proportions, overhung by a glowing tree bearing gold fruits. Thrungär and Gildrath both plucked some of the fruit and tucked in, but were dismayed to see that it caused them to age preternaturally, their mighty forms becoming bow-backed and bent. Xorcsa approached the grave and was able to commune with the spirit of Olgfar, the sole member of the giants below that had dissented against their ancient society to ally themselves with the Thing From The Stars as a replacement for their goddess, in exchange for dominance in the region. The striding skeletons on the lava fields were all the remained of the ancient noble society, mockeries of once proud warriors.

When told that the party had slain the thing that had enslaved his race, Olgfar agreed to grant the party aid. Would they use it to exact revenge on those that exiled them? Another tale for another time...