[Bliss Stage] Men and girls
Ron Edwards:
I’d hoped to get a chance to play this, partly because I’m working on a pretty big project regarding science fiction role-playing, and partly because Ben was available at Forge Midwest. The game include me, him, and Dave, later joined by Tim Koppang.
Before we start, I want to describe what made the game finally work for me, conceptually. First, the whole emo-bot deal from anime sources isn’t immediately accessible to me; when I first read it, I said, “The Void Captain’s Tale! Child of Fortune!”, which are books by Norman Spinrad, and, “Why did you add the big robots?” Ben went, “Huh?” Then he named some sources and I said, “Huh?” and “How can you not know Norman Spinrad, you evil person?”
So I was having trouble putting it together in my head, and then Ben explained a couple of things which happen to be a bit vague in the book or perhaps have become more specific in his mind since writing the book, I don’t know. Here they are:
1. In the real world, there are indeed giant humanoid flesh-robotic drones, stomping around the landscape destroying things and hunting you and your buddies. This isn’t subject to any customizing.
2. In the dream-world of the characters’ missions, the foes’ appearance is decided upon by the play group, but apparently is still in the zone of “stompy giant.”
3. No one knows how or why fighting in the dreamworld is effective against the actual drones stomping about in the real world. Nor is it clear how the Anchor character is perceiving genuine information about the attackers so he or she can be communicating it to the Pilot floating there in the fluid. She just is.
4. The otherworld as described by the Anchor to the Pilot is composed entirely of the Anchor’s imaginings, made relevant to the combat somehow by data he or she is somehow receiving (see #3). In other words, no one knows what the otherworld “really” looks like, or what it looks like to the aliens for whom it is the normal environment.
There’s some text in the book which is effectively superceded by the above points. Which is a good thing, because I like the above points better. We ran into this because I was trying to customize what the drones look like based on that text, and Ben kept insisting we couldn’t do that, and now it’s clearer why.
Anyway, in the spirit of setting the game where you’re playing, the home of our little resistance cell was indeed the Best Western hotel in Madison, and the womb-HQ place with the alien gunk was located in Matt Strickling’s room right next to the conference room we were playing in, specifically, in the hot tub.
Dave’s Pilot was Tess, the young soldier; I named and played her Anchor, Ann. My Pilot was Gina, built on the Carefree Hedonist template (which I think Ben handed to me more-or-less at random; I just took a card in front of me), with her Anchor Leslie, played by Dave. So, both Pilots and both Anchors turned out to be girls, and Dave and I opted to make all of them at the higher end of the permissible age spectrum of the game, 15 through 17.
The rest of the crew was composed exclusively of younger children, ten or eleven years old, and the named ones were all boys: Jeff, Bobby, and Rico, although some of the others were probably girls. The adult character, Ben’s NPC basically, was John, characterized as a very ordinary white-collar white guy who’d been passing through Madison on a long car trip associated with business, kept awake or at least out of normal REM by a sleep disorder for which he obviously no longer has medication.
Assigning the listed scores for our character templates to the NPCs led to an interesting outcome, especially since we did it without consulting one another. To sum up, the Pilots were almost entirely isolated from one another (Intimacy 1, Trust 1) and neither was intimate at all with John.
From my character sheet
Leslie, my Anchor – Intimacy 5, Trust 2 (we’re regular lovers and closest friends)
Tess, the other Pilot – Intimacy 1, Trust 1 (we barely interact, not because we dislike one another, but at all; also, we work opposite shifts)
Ann, Tess’ Anchor – Intimacy 4, Trust 1 (we had a petting fling which means hardly anything to me, just a fun time)
Rico, a little kid – Intimacy 3, Trust 1 (I ‘mother’ him but he’s just a little kid to me and I don’t consider him very responsible)
Jeff, another little kid – Intimacy 1, Trust 3 (the opposite: he takes good care of himself and I know he’s a fierce anti-dog force for the group)
Bobby, another little kid – Intimacy 3, Trust 2 (similar to Rico)
John, the adult – Intimacy 1, Trust 3 (I rely on him and have for years, but there’s little or nothing between us personally)
Dave’s Pilot sheet showed a similar pattern of choices. Tess was built on the Young Soldier template, by the way.
So our group had a very distinct hierarchy: John all by himself, especially in terms of physical contact (although he was well Trusted by the Pilots); the Pilots and Anchors (mid-to-older teenage girls, with strong physical and some sexual relations among them but not between the two Pilots); and the passle o’little ones, some of whom were turning out to be scary pint-sized post-apocalyptic scavengers and dog-fighters. Our characters’ Intimacy with the latter characters was defined mainly as making sure we knew where they were, tucking them in at night, overseeing their meals, and giving them hugs.
The first mission fell to Tess, with me playing Ann as the anchor. So I had the first crack at the Otherworld, which I and Dave had already described to one another as very Ditko’s Dr. Strange like, with an injection of glowy 80s neon, somewhat to Ben’s consternation. I love this stuff and enjoyed all the weird-ass voids and portals and primary colors. Tess’ emo-bot was kind of a shogun-type classic Japanimation construct. This mission was basically a “locate and destroy” fight, full of zipping around and mechanized martial arts weaponry; Ann was so confident in Tess that she urged her to “suck it up, soldier,” when hit, i.e., to jeopardize her own safety. She was also dismissive toward John, as she didn’t think much of his obvious advice (“there’s something out there,” duh) and it’s not like she and Tess hadn’t kicked robot butt before.
The first interlude was between Tess and Bobby, as Tim K joined us and stepped in here to play Bobby. It was set during a “find some food cans” foray, and I think I was the judge of the events, resulting in increased Trust for that relationship.
I’m skating a bit over the internal and emotional details of Tess’ scenes because I’d like Dave to contribute what he experienced and thinks about them.
My Pilot Gina took the second mission, which was more investigatory based on some weird crystalline stuff happening in the alien fluid. Her bot was more mantis-like, very glowy and a bit more sinister looking. To make a complicated story short, Gina probably killed her own mom, and put some bite on her Anchor relationship. Gina’s not wary of Stressing Trust as a cushion for mission success, and even broke her admittedly small relationship with Ann entirely during the mission. But she succeeded spectacularly in the mission, although she hid the fact from Leslie that she’d effectively destroyed any hope in actually contacting the characters’ parents – if indeed those were the parents, and not some alien trap.
Basically, as a player I was also working off the game-mechanics fact that Ben, who’d introduced the parent angle, was responsible for adversity, and only for adversity, on missions. So parents or no parents, if Ben did it, it was up to no good for us, and a target. In role-playing terms (and to be clear, I was definitely shifting fast back-and-forth between Actor and Author Stances during play during this mission), Gina considered herself an adult and in no need of “going back” or making it “like it was before,” in direct contrast to Leslie, who wanted nothing else but.
This was great stuff – clearly the two girls’ relationship, the only habitually sexual one of the entire group, is based on extremely different priorities! Gina was effectively happy as things were, feral dogs and alien apocalypse and all … and with Leslie, again, as things were. But Leslie may well have seen the romance as an emotional stopgap.
The mission ended with a bear hug between the two girls and John, initiated and the latter invited by Gina, ecstatic (and not to mention Blissed out of her gourd) over the success of her mission that only she understood.
The final thing we played was an Interlude between Gina and John played by Ben (Dave as judge) – increased Intimacy, defined as working together physically and cooperatively to tidy up and clean the kids’ rooms at the hotel. An important aspect of this scene is that Gina really placed herself as a fellow adult, relative both to the little kids and to Ann in particular, when she told John not to worry about Ann sniping at him, that it shouldn’t be a problem to let “a little girl” score emotional points.
(H’mmm! Ben, Dave, and Tim, am I getting the order right? Maybe we did the interlude first.)
What we’re looking at is the beginning of a significant arc for all of us. The tenuous link between the two Pilots – Gina’s fling with Ann – is gone. Stress and even deception has arisen between Gina and Leslie, and genuine if non-sexual intimacy has begun with Gina and John. Tess is accumulating Trauma. Gina is accumulating Bliss.
As a mathematical but significant detail, both of us rolled quite well during the missions. Neither of us had to place a minus, ever. I think this would have turned out to be a great setup for the nigh-inevitable crash of rolling a whole ton of them at once, sooner or later.
Overall, the characters were coming to life, and the basic text-based situation had evolved into something uniquely our own, visually and otherwise. I think our story was evolving into something genuinely powerful, full of potential that would draw upon my and Dave’s sense of being older guys who now relate to women, especially younger women, much differently from in our younger days. It’s a real shame this wasn’t a long-term game. I’m even tempted to try Skype play for once, if the other guys are interested.
Damn, one important thing, though. We never picked a Hope, which in our case would have been kind of cool because there'd be only one, given two Pilots. So that would have meant whichever of the two Blissed Out or was killed first, the other would then effectively wrap up the game upon doing either or even before.
So what Hope might work for what we had? Judging from the two Pilots' emergent and very divergent views on Hopes for Humanity's Future, we should probably pick the single unequivocal shared Hope from another category, probably Winning the War. "Win a decisive battle" seems just right to me - concrete, straight-up fight oriented without various nuances about other resistance cells or developing a super weapon, none of which seem interesting to me regarding this setup. Ben and Dave, what do you think about that?
Best, Ron
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Ron,
I only played Bliss Stage once, in a convention context, too, and never read the book (the whole Anime and giant robots thing doesn’t work for me either, I’m just more into swords and wicked winged apes I guess). When we played, we discarded the giant robot thing altogether and made up some completely unrelated virtual realities that somewhat reflected on the pilots. I think one of them was blunt hellfire and horned demons, another one, much scarier, was a surreal, flawless, deserted 1950s suburb. While I liked that, I also feel that it was taking the game quite a bit away from how it was initially intended.
I’m having a hard time remembering the mathematics but I do recall that some of the other players were kind of disappointed because they didn’t immediately understand the logic of how the numbers played out. My impression back then was that it’s absolutely a multisession game and that it would have become clear within a couple of sessions. Huh. This reminds me I really liked some of those concepts so I just might revisit the game one of these days.
- Frank
CedricP:
Hi, nice to have Bliss Stage AP, I am alway curious about those.
Is there something to say about the two pilots and both anchors being girls (like how the choice was make)? Did you talk about this at the table, something like "we have a all-girls cast, is it ok with all of you?"
On the Bliss Stage presentation page, the presence of sex within the game is mentioned two times, but I have never read a Actual Play mentioning the issue or reflecting about it. For your game did you talk about lines and veils? (maybe it was simply implicit since you seem to know well each others?)
I dig the psychadelic Doctor Strange landscapes! The neon touch is great! Make me think also about the work of french comic book artists of the 70-80 like Philippe Druillet.
Gina seem like a interesting character, I like her energy, I don't know exactly why, but just the sound of her name in a anime context kind of create a character by itself. Well I am a big fan of Shinichir? Watanabe's Michiko to Hatchin, a anime situated in Brasil, I think Gina evoqe for me some colors of this anime. :)
C
Ron Edwards:
Hi Frank and Cedric,
I am now enthusiastic about the canonical setting than I was at first reading. At the time, it seemed as if the giant robots were completely arbitrary, but now, especially since I know a great deal of that imagery is being made up by the Anchor and Pilot characters themselves, it works much better in my mind. It's also useful to know exactly where the black-box is, i.e., exactly how the Anchor knows what to say which makes the Pilot's actions effective toward the aliens.
The numbers are quite lucid, but their interactions are actually a subroutine of the larger pace-setting effects of Hopes. The number of Hopes is one less than the number of Pilots, so in our case there was only one (or would have been if we'd done it, which we definitely should have). Hopes get resolved only by Pilots Blissing Out (which has many possible in-game meanings) or dying. So, basically, the group uses up its Pilots one by one, until all the Hopes are taken care of and there's one Pilot left. Play after that point is essentially conclusive for the whole story.
So if you look at the numbers, it's all about whether a particular Pilot is racking up Bliss to 108 faster than racking up Trauma to 6, because it's going to be one or the other that gets that Pilot in the end. Missions make the Pilot's Stress (on relationships) and Trauma go up, as well as Bliss. Interludes can reduce Trauma or Stress, and increase Intimacy or Trust. But a given Interlude can only change one score, so what Interludes do is permit you to slow down one of those two tracks to your Pilot's ending.
Dave and I came up with female Pilots independently of one another. I barely considered the issue at all, and I now think I chose a female player-character because I'd been playing unequivocally male characters in S/Lay w/Me all weekend and wanted a bit of a change. Since you name the anchor character based on your own real-life high school crushes, and since Ben told us non-sexual "cool guy" crushes were not enough, they had to be about wanting to have sex with the person, I came up with Ann and Dave came up with Leslie. I guess he and I were sort of boring in our feverish high-school imagining days. So the net effect was to have two female Pilots and two female Anchors, all due to entirely unplanned influences on this particular game.
Sex and all its emotional implications (or perhaps it's the other way around) are central to Bliss Stage, in my opinion. Ben has mentioned that designing it was his personal response to my book Sex & Sorcery, and I think that's apparent throughout the game. It's important to note that exactly what happens is up to the group, because every level of Intimacy up through 4 includes non-sexual components as well. But it's always there to include if you want, and given the immature-soldier characters, the apocalyptic setting, and rather hot-house-like living circumstances, sooner or later it seems to me that honest character play would go that route. The gutsy part of the design is including the adult character, and the game text makes it pretty clear that sex with one or more of the youngsters is a monstrous source of tension for that character. I find myself reluctant to GM the game on that basis, not for some sort of moral reason so much as not wanting to get into that degree of anxiety.
Ben and I have discussed these matters for many years, and Dave has been a close member of the Sorcerer play and discussion community, as well as being probably the single most enthusiastic fan of my game It Was a Mutual Decision. So although I don't think they know one another that well, they both know me, and all of us are pretty good with speaking up about anything that does or doesn't seem to work with our personal Lines and Veils. In our game, Dave stated he was uncomfortable gaining Intimacy between Tess and Bobby until he learned that only level 5 requires actual sexual content, for instance.
I loved our otherworld too. Another influence was Andréas' "Rork," whose work is best described as M.C. Escher in motion.
Best, Ron
Simon C:
We're two sessions (plus one setup session) into a seven-player long form Bliss Stage game. It's really intense! I don't think I can sensibly talk about the themes and issues arising from play at the moment, partly because they're still all unsresolved and unformed, and partly becasue the game taps into the kind of childhood fear and passion and hope and power that's really hard to talk about but also incredibly powerful. Suffice it to say that there are moments of incredible tenderness, awful pain, awkwardness, love, betrayal, and hope. It's lovely.
What I'm more interested about in the game is how play feels, especially the anchor-pilot robot fighting. For me there's a lot of kind of flailing in this part of the game, like punching air. It's not entirely unwelcome, because it fits very well with the feeling of navigating an unpredictable dream world. I'd be interested to watch other players do this part of play, to see how they negotiate it. The anchor acts as a kind of GM, but I feel like they don't quite have the neccesary content authority to make this work?
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