Possessors

Basically, it's really hard for me to relate to them as characters. I always end up with either the Exorcist type, which is big into spewing stuff and hurting its host and otherwise acting like a very disturbed human; or the Pod Person type, that ... can't ... quite ... act ... right ... honey. Both of these lead to fairly standard and at-this-point-in-time boring plots. And when I try to get away from these, I gradually forget about the host and end up with, functionally, a Passing demon.

Any notions? Suggestions?

RAN:
Here's something I ran in once in DragonQuest, using the kickass-powerful demons in the game: an NPC got possessed, and actually kind of *liked* it... not unlike being addicted to a drug that had extremely pleasing effects, but a nasty come down. With a few subtle generalities on my part, the players became convinced their NPC friend *was* addicted to something (and of course my gameworld had all sorts of interesting narcotics floating about). The resulting possessed character, while not really Jekyll and Hyde, had two fairly distinct "moods," and pursued different goals at times depending on his moods. And like Sorcerer, my game at this point had demons with other agenda than the standard "corrupt humanity" type of business... over time, the two NPCs (friend and demon) started rubbing off on each other, to the discomfort of both.

This all started in my mind by imagining being possessed by a demon who made me stronger, faster, tougher, etc., but who wasn't always active inside me. Kind of appealing in its own sordid way, and with an intelligent enough demon, the difference wouldn't be vivid enough for people to start shouting for Father So-and-so to splash holy water all over everything.

Anyway, that's my take. Anyone else?

CHARLES:
This sounds way cool & like it offers a lot of RP depth.

It reminds me of a movie I saw as a teenager that made a big impression. Unfortunately I didn't see the start & so have no idea of the title (anyone???). It was the trial of a suspected Nazi deathcamp commander who was living as a Jew, & had been picked up by Mossad & brought to present-day Israel for trial. His defence attorney comes to believe in his innocence, despite the trail of dovetailing evidence such as dental records etc--to believe that the defendant is in fact Jewish, & was an inmate of the camp in question. This turned out to be the case. The defendant had falsified the evidence *himself* over the decades, & assumed the persona of a Nazi war criminal pretending to be a Jewish ex-inmate of his own camp--the inmate that was, in fact, himself. It ended with the defendant locking himself in the bulletproof witness stand from the inside giving a kind of monologue, the apex of which was along the lines of: "Who among us saw the SS striding among us like black-uniformed angels of death, and did not wish to be one of them?" It ended with him shouting a lot of orders in German. By the time the court officials got another key he'd become completely catatonic.

To me the salient point here is the weird inversions & identifications that can occur between individuals or groups locked together for a time, where there's an imbalance of power (ie prisoners & guards, hostages & captors, torturers & victims). This is separate from the 'rush'/addiction of using/ feeling such supernatural powers, which as Ran points out is probably directly analogous to certain drug addictions in many respects--although the two facets (identification & addiction) would no doubt react with & reinforce each other in strange & unwholesome ways...

This all presupposes something that the current Sorcerer rules specifically state does not happen: that the host of a possessor demon potentially retains some degree of control or violition.

I'd say the key here is, as Ran has identified, the remnant of the human personality. With it, there's a place for interaction, intense moral conflict, the pathos of ascendency &/or disintegration of human/demon: it's a relationship & as such has its own dynamic which can be roleplayed. If the human persona is completely obliterated you just have the demon. AFAICS, in game terms the character is effectively a passing demon--except for its Need for hosts, & the fact that the possesed human (or family pet :)) can potentially be returned to their loved ones if the players don't blow it away, hose it down with acid etc. While these 2 differences can certainly make for important & fun plot distinctions in their own right (& as such are surely worth having), on the player-character interaction level, the only plot impact is the fact that here's demon that can fool people into thinking its a person: ie, a passing demon.

I can't really see any way out of the RP situations you describe Ron (ie, playing possessors as either vomiting fiends or passers) without allowing the host to 'share' control of their body in some circumstances. Maybe tied to success of the initial possession, so we can still have mindless enslaved souls & diabolic canines when we need them, & the nuances of player interaction & moral tension aren't required or wanted?

You'd have to decide stuff like whether the host & demon could 'be in charge' always, sometimes or never at the same time; & what degree of conciousness/ memory the 'subdued' identity retained when not in charge (could make for some classic "Gee, you say I was *where* last night officer?")

It would certainly allow a greater distinction between passers & possessors--& parasites?

RON EDWARDS:
I've always liked Passing Demons a lot. Two of the best from the source literature are Mayland Long, from Tea with the Black Dragon (R.A. MacAvoy); and Valgard, the villain in The Broken Sword (Poul Anderson). Parasites are hard to run as a GM, but not impossible ... just have to remember to make their Needs and Desires pretty intense.

But yes, Possessors are my bane.

Ran wrote:
>... The resulting possessed character, while not really Jekyll and Hyde, had two fairly distinct "moods," and pursued different goals at times

Charles wrote:
>This all presupposes something that the current Sorcerer rules specifically state does not happen: that the host of a possessor demon potentially retains some degree of control or violition.

>I can't really see any way out ... without allowing the host to 'share' control of their body in some circumstances. Maybe tied to success of the initial possession

I think that Ran and Charles are dead on. So what can be done? Da Roolz say: "If the takeover is successful, the host remains as a flickering bit of consciousness barely hanging on" ... which I guess, for us Sorc-fan insiders, could be interpreted as something like this:

The Possessed host may cancel an action of the demon's, or say something, or even control a limb (e.g. to write or grab), with a Will vs. Will roll penalized by the bonuses of the initial Possess roll. So if the Possession was tenuous, you get two jockeys on the horse ... or hey, if the demon and the host get along, they could opt to waive the resistance on the takeover/switch of control. That's where Ran's deal could get going, and the oh-so-healthy psychology that Charles described too.

If this is a little too "kicky" for some GMs, maybe the demon would have to be stressed or distracted even to permit the inner rebellion at all.

Actually, I'd messed with some of this a couple of playtests ago. I had some success, although not as much as I'd hoped, with a non-sorcerous NPC who was simultaneously Possessed and Parasitized, and each demon was Bound to a separate sorcerer. Wow, five agendas in one!

It's no surprise that Ran and Charles both approached this question from an "in-character" viewpoint -- what it might be like to BE possessed, and how it might be (gulp) kinda cool, albeit sicko. How 'bout some thoughts on the STORY aspects of Possessors? What kind of neat plots or problems might they provide that go beyond "killer hops from host to host" type thing?

RON EDWARDS:
Decades ago, we were discussing how to make Possessor demons interesting. A lot of good suggestions centered around the idea that the possessed host may be complicit, as well as with or without full knowledge of the demon/possession.

I've been reviewing the plots of novels by one of my favorite crime authors, Ross MacDonald (not to be confused with John D. MacDonald; very different). R.McD.'s books are very similar to one another, and I think he was continually refining the same idea, step by painful step, with each. When this devolved, in his later books, to rehashing rather than refining is an academic's question.

Anyway, the point: his typical plot is an incredible welter of incest, murder, hushed-up secrets, totally screwed-up on-the-surface-normal families, struggles to find fathers, confused and semi-psycho teenagers, etc, usually with two or more generations of crime and secrets to uncover. Keeping a diagram of the relationships among the characters, with links representing marriage, affairs, and parentage, is interesting, because he always twists it halfway through, sometimes more than once. My favorite is The Goodbye Look, but other good ones are The Far Side of the Dollar, The Drowning Pool, and The Underground Man. He wrote a ton, and each book is a quick dense read in the usual way of pre-1970 American novels.

These are incredible resources for role-playing. They're mostly set in the early 60s, but many can be updated, sometimes using Vietnam for WWII. I did this with an RPG called Shattered Dreams with great success, and Sorcerer works even better. MacDonald's plots always rely on self-deception, and the self-blinding complicity needed to be a, shall we say, "good host" for a Possessor is central to his stories. This is assuming, of course, that we're avoiding the helpless victim of Possession who is basically just a vessel for the Evil Thing.

RON EDWARDS:
In Chapter 7 of the master rules, I talk about the Body Doubles, ecstasist demons that switch hosts via sex. Here's my psycho-sick example and idea, to be taken in tandem with a MacDonald-derived plot setup.

Scathris is a Possessor with Hop, but only across partners during sex. Furthermore, its Desire (not its Need, which is something trivial) is True Love. Awww, right? Anyway, so here's this demon, hunting True Love, and when it thinks it has it, it jumps to the partner. So now the old host, a little hazy on the details, finds himself or herself in a relationship with a very devoted partner (this is mastery and Binding, by the way). Until the relationship goes sour and the demon starts cheating, eventually to move on to a new host. So you get a succession of naive sorcerers, partner by partner, and a succession of screwed-up romances.

This works very well in a MacDonald story, where as many as seven people can be connected through marriage and affairs, with the relationships obscured by time, secrecy, ignorance, and switched identities. Scathris may have worked its way through several people over the last fifteen years, with perhaps murder, blackmail, and theft along the way carried out by one or more of them (the real people, not Scathris). So toss the players into this years-developing mess of heartbreak, hatred, and crime, right when it culminates in a real disaster for the player-character or someone they care about.

** The Point ** see, all the human relationships (affairs, secrets, etc) are already there for Scathris to latch on to. The nastiness along the way is a collusion between the demon and the hosts, emotionally speaking.

There! (by the way, this is kind of a romantic, more complex version of the Scatch idea I had on the Freebie page in February)