[Bliss Stage] Men and girls
hix:
I'm playing in the same game as Simon, and I really appreciate that list of bullet-points. Points 3 and 4 give me some interesting guidance on how to develop the way I'm playing my anchor next time. But I do have two questions about Points 1 and 2:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on March 24, 2010, 02:26:52 PM
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.”
First off, this distinction led to quite a bit of confusion in our setting-creation session. There's a question that goes "What are the aliens like?" We couldn't decide whether this referred to the aliens' dream-world appearance (likely), their real-world appearance (unlikely), or their actual 'this-is-what-we-are-when-we're-not-in-the-drones' appearance (a definite possibility, in our eyes). From what you're quoting Ben as saying, Ron, it sounds like the dream-world appearance is the only thing that's customised?
Secondly (and I hope this doesn't sound like a dickish question - I think it's important): You said there are "giant humanoid flesh-robotic drones, stomping around the landscape destroying things and hunting you .... This isn’t subject to any customizing." Do you mean their appearance isn't subject to any customising, or the fact of their existence (and that they're destroying and hunting) isn't subject to any customising? Or both?
I ask because the second thing someone said when I pointed our group to this thread was (paraphrased) "Of course you can customise the appearance of the drones," meaning that they expected any group would customise their appearance to make them work (symbolically or emotionally) for them.
+
Anyway, this sounds like an excellent start for the game. Any news yet on whether further play is likely?
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
Cedric, I forgot to mention in my previous post, although I was very fond of playing Gina (and I agree, she was instantly engaging), I was also getting a better understanding of Ann, the Anchor I played for Dave's Pilot. She was very protective of Tess regarding everyone else, but willing for Tess to put herself at considerable risk during missions. I think now that I was playing her as in a desperate, semi-military mind-set, in the position of hitting hard with her best weapon, knowing that if it fails, all will be lost.
Simon, the way we did it - and I think the book is a little bit ambiguous in this matter - is that the Anchor player describes all the dreamworld environment, and the GM "plays" the foes within it as if they were his or her characters, including being the sole contributor of their descriptions.
So Steve, this puzzled me too at the time, because in the book there's this whole thing about "what do the aliens look like" that you're talking about, but in our game, the real-world drones were fixed (and I mean absolutely fixed) as written in the book, and in the dreamworld the alien foes were totally and only described by the GM. We the players never had any creative contact with them. I suggest using this method, because content authority is nice and straightforward that way.
That does bring up some issues I had with Ben interjecting ANIMa suits with our characters' parents in them, but I will save that for another post.
Steve, you wrote (to me),
Quote
You said there are "giant humanoid flesh-robotic drones, stomping around the landscape destroying things and hunting you .... This isn’t subject to any customizing." Do you mean their appearance isn't subject to any customising, or the fact of their existence (and that they're destroying and hunting) isn't subject to any customising? Or both?
Remember, I can only speak for the game we played last weekend, not as the author of the text ('cause I'm not him) nor as an authority toward Bliss Stage play worldwide. But in that game, it was both, and not only sort-of, but 100% not subject to negotiation. When we were doing the setup, I was under the impression that the real-world enemies (the drones) were subject to any and all discussion or input based on that same section you mentioned. Ben stopped me with a two-by-four. No. The drones are as written. I went and looked at the rules later, and found that they are indeed described unequivocally in the introductory text, and again, the answer to your question would be both. So the only possible interpretation is that the section about customizing the aliens' appearance or even "nature" is referring only to the aliens in the dreamworld.
That leads back to what I talked about a couple paragraphs ago, and which we played differently from the text because there was clearly no non-GM input about the aliens in the dreamworld either in our game. My inclination at this point (toward the text) is to ignore that section entirely and go with how Ben did it this time. It is, definitely, much more straightfoward that way.
Best, Ron
Filip Luszczyk:
I find it interesting that the game worked despite the lack of common genre imagery. Personally, I wouldn't consider playing Bliss Stage with people who aren't even passingly familiar with Evangelion or RahXephon (though I wouldn't invite extreme genre fanboys to my game either).
Did using the names of your real life high school crushes contribute meaningfully to the gameplay? I only did that in my first campaign, and while the game came out surprisingly intense emotionally, I don't feel the naming convention contributed to that. However, I notice that in your game it's the players who name anchors rather than the GM. The manual does allow for both, but the way I've been reading it so far, the latter seemed like the default to me, and seemed consistent with the way it's handled in the example.
The lack of the non-GM input about the aliens is partly the feature of a two pilot game. With more players, only the current pilot and anchor don't get any input in this. Apparently, it's possible to set the stage for your own future actions that way, but I can't really think of any good examples of such strategies in our games. Though the degree of the extra player's "out of turn" input, depending on the person in question, was wildly varying in practice, it tended to focus on the immediate imagery.
Nev the Deranged:
This was a pretty awesome game. I would have been perfectly happy to play all day, but the conversation that took place before the game went something like,
Ron: "Ben, I am not playing Bliss Stage for four hours."
Me: "Aww."
Ron & Ben were sharing a ride back to Chicago, and Ron, at least, had prior commitments to see to, but I felt like we got in a solid first couple of sorties, some telling relationship drama, and the first major twist in what would have been a pretty epic plot.
Having Ben there was really huge, because it meant we didn't have to look things up, and could just trust him to handle the heavy lifting, mechanicswise. I normally like to have as tight a grasp as possible on the mechanics of any game I'm playing, but I can definitely see the appeal of just being the "I show up, I roll dice when the GM tells me to, I have fun" member of a group. We also ran into the "meatspace drones are canonically static" 2x4, which after a bit of back & forth, made sense to me. As I understand it, the "remotes" are basically the opposite of ANIMa constructs. As we have to create a "suit" to interact with the dream world, the aliens have to create a "suit" to interact with the waking/material world. Those suits are the drones. Maybe that's not quite right, but that's how it makes sense to me. At some point during or shortly after this (or more likely this topic came up as a result of the question) Ben asked me what the aliens (in the dreamtime, not the physical world) were like. "Just come up with something you had a nightmare about." he said, possibly remembering that when he'd run a demo for me at GenCon a couple years back, I'd drawn on my nightmares to suggest huge locust-like monstrosities with faceted eyes, the facets of which could disengage and float around to act as independent lenses for viewing or redirecting energy. Or maybe that's just standard procedure for the game (which it probably is, now that I think about it, just makes sense). This time, I remembered another nightmare and described towering, vaguely humanoid figures that looked like they were formed from translucent blue glass, each with a single light floating around inside.
Anyway. As I recall, Ron & I just picked the first names that popped into our heads, which both happened to be female ones. I had slept about 3 hours the night before, so I was not running at full steam, but fortunately I wasn't completely fogheaded either. I must be getting old, because when Ben reminded us about picking Anchor names from our HS crushes, I actually had to struggle to remember any names. Finally the name of one of the first girls I ever had actual sexual feelings for floated to the surface, which was Leslie.
My sheet:
Tess, 13, Eager Young Soldier, my main character and pilot
Bobby, 11, the warrior, Intimacy 4, Trust 1 (Ron's notes say Jeff was the dog-slayer, but I remember it being Bobby. I started to describe him carrying a slingshot and Ben was like "fuck that, he carries a gun!" I don't actually have a Jeff listed on my sheet, but I vaguely remember the name.)
Anne, 14, my anchor, Intimacy 4, Trust 2
Leslie, 15, Gina's anchor (and my other PC), Intimacy 3, Trust 3
John, the Authority Figure, Intimacy 2, Trust 2
(I ended up having a blank 2,2 line because we didn't really need more characters for a one-shot. Or maybe I forgot to add Jeff.)
Rico, 9, the tech whiz, Intimacy 1, Trust 4 (Rico was the one who maintained the AMIMa creche, being the youngest, he had grown up with the alien technology. I also said he was a bit Aspergery, with a facility for technology, but probably not much in the way of verbal communication. I envisioned him as something of a savant, and also the baby of the group. Hence the huge Trust)
Gina, 16, the other pilot. Intimacy 1, Trust 1. (As Ron said, we were on opposite schedules, so didn't actually interact much).
To be perfectly clear about how Bliss Stage works, both mechanically and fictionally, teenage sexual tension is POWER in the dreamscape at the same time as it's a source of angst in the material world. That's the core conceit of the game, at least to my mind. Ron & I both nudged our characters and their potential hookups toward the high end of the age spectrum, there was definitely a squick factor toward youthful liaisons, which I think is built into the game.
We started the first scene with the klaxons going off, and Gina stirring in her sleeping bag with Leslie, starting to get up, but Leslie pulls her back in. "s'not your shift" she mumbles. "come back to me." I didn't think much of it at the time, but this offhand portrayal would tie in nicely to later events.
Meanwhile, Tess is jogging from the lunchroom where she was playing checkers with one of the other kids, the pawns a haphazard assortment of bottle caps, coins, and tokens from various other games. She enters the creche as John is spazzing out. "What is it?" "Something's coming!" "What?" "We don't know!" "Where is it?" "Close!" Brief semi-in-character discussion between Me/Tess and Ron/Anne about how the perimeter alarms are so nonspecific as to be nearly useless. Rico should really do something with that. Tess sinks into the hot-tub full of phlebotinum as Anne hooks up all the telemetry leads to her skin. (At some point later I mentioned that of course pilots are naked in the goo, and Ron was like "duh"). Ron suggests Ditkoesque imagery for the dreamtime, and I'm cool with that. (Later when Tim joined us he was a bit "buh?" at some of the color, and Ron was like "shut up, we're old, this is science fiction to us!")
As Ben started explaining how missions work, authority/responsibility-distribution-wise, I said "so the Anchor player is kinda GMing for the Pilot?" and Ben's reply was along the lines of "The Anchor player IS GMing for the Pilot, period." As Ron/Anne started describing things, I voiced my realization that since the dreamscape is generated by the Anchor (both in-game and at the meta-level), the environment is a product of the Anchor's feelings toward the Pilot. Simultaneously, the Pilot's ANIMa chassis is a product of the Pilot's feelings toward the Anchor. So the mission interactions, to a large degree, are a gestalt of both in-character and out-of-game relationships. Which is, if I'm not mistaken, exactly what Ben was aiming for. (And if not, it's a fantastically happy accident).
Tess opens her eyes at the center of a giant blue sphere. As she nears the edge, at Anne's urging, she pushes out of the membrane, and as she does so it coats her skin, forming a shell around her that takes the form of her ANIMa, which I describe a huge suit of black-laquered, gold filigree-trimmed, highly stylized Shogun armor, complete with helm featuring grim-aspected mask and kabuto-style antenna/antler/horn protrusions (http://home.catv-yokohama.ne.jp/hh/dosanko/Kabuto.jpg). I think Tess had seen something like it in a book and Anne's fierce bravery reminded her of it. I don't know if that was part of my thought process at the time, more likely I added it retroactively. Games live in my head long after I walk away from the table.
The landscape Tess finds herself over is a liquidlike blue plane extending forever, with other spheres bubbling up from it like some cheesy early-90s computer animation demo. There were also vortices leading down into the surface, and streaks of lightning played along it between them. Ready for action, Tess summons her primary weapon. Drawing on her respect for Bobby as the group's protector in meatspace, she puts her armored fists together and slowly draws them apart Voltron style (seriously, was anything that came out of the 80s more awesome than "Form Blazing Sword!"? I think not) to reveal a 30' military fork with a long red tassel (http://www.wushudirect.co.uk/acatalog/kfs075%20heavy%20tiger%20fork%20-500.jpg), which she spun overhead before slamming the pommel down on the floating disc that appeared beneath her feet, as if it existed just for that purpose (which of course it did). The floating disc began sliding forward over the bizarre dreamscape. At this point Ben broke in, it being the Authority Figure player's responsibility to introduce the enemy forces, and he described some of the bubbles popping up from the landscape to resolve themselves into the barely-formed blown-glass figures I'd suggested earlier. As Anne warns "You know they'll try to ambush you- stay alert!", Tess abruptly bends over backwards and thrusts her tri-pointed spear into the alien coming up behind her.
As Ron mentioned, we both rolled really well in all our mission conflicts, never having to assign any negatives. The upshot of this was a crapton of Bliss (unassigned negatives transform into additional Bliss). As Tess, I never put pluses in Pilot Safety (which in the Ignition Stage hardcopy of the book is still called "Nightmare", which works just as well, really), so I started earning Terror/Trauma pretty much right off the bat. That was ok. Tess' job was to protect everyone else- if it was her destiny to go down fighting, so be it. Anne alternated between coaxing Tess to accept further danger (which Tess was perfectly willing to do) and doing her best to manipulate the environment to Tess' advantage. The meta-level line between IC/OOC narrational authority is so blurry it's never fully clear whether the Anchor character knows they can manipulate the dreamtime, or whether the Anchor character believes they are simply describing it while the Anchor PLAYER manipulates it... which may confuse some people, but I find really encourages "the I word", immersion; and in this game at least, I think that's a huge plus and a design feature.
I think at this point (I may be a little shaky on order of events, but I think I'll get the gist of it across. Ben, Ron, Tim, feel free to tweak) Tess and the aliens started being drawn into one of the vortices, the floating disc tumbling away and Tess going ass over teakettle, while the blue androforms naturally stayed upright in a controlled descent. They surrounded her in three dimensions as I hastily looked over my relationships to see whom would make a good Green attachment (er... sorry, Mechaton has forever colored the giant robot part of my brain), Tess clearly needed some mobility here if she was to survive. She called on Leslie, Gina's Anchor (Intimacy 3) to unfold a pair of beetlelike wings (I debated over various wing types before deciding to stick to the kabuto theme) from under an armored shell that appeared on her back. I imagine the shell-halves popping open acting like an airbrake, stabilizing her fall, then the blur as the membranous wings kicked in, giving her a hover-dart-hover style of mobility capable of swift vector changes as well as helicopter-like stability.
As a side note, this sort of engagement-through-color is crucial to my enjoyment of play. I know Ron gets off on table-interactions, and I like that level of engagement too; but getting little frissons as you come up with just the right bit of color to add to the SIS is a huge part of why I do this rather than play Monopoly or Bingo or even WoW. When you play WoW, all the creative stuff has been done for you by somebody else. It's ok, and I can immerse myself in a well-told story (all CRPGs to the present have been, by necessity, Participationist), but online gaming has a long way to go before it can provide this sort of interaction. It'll get there, I'm confident, but not soon. Also, this probably ties in a lot with Vincent's recent discussions about SIS over at Knife Fight (although I haven't been following them and was not 100% clear on the parts I did read), the part where the SIS becomes its own source of Authority/Credibility seems to apply here. Unless I read that somewhere else. Or just made it up now. There's really too much stuff in my brain.
Tess gets grabbed from behind by one of the entities, which began clawing at the front of her armor, the plates creaking. One of its fingers grew sharp and punched, spearlike, into the front of the ANIMa. Tess could actually *SEE* it, with her own eyes, piercing through the shell and thrusting toward her. I added "And in the material world, Anne can see the goo in the tub deforming as if something huge and sharp were pushing into it towards Tess". I considered summoning another weapon. There was brief discussion (again blurring IC/OOC) about where discarded weapons/gear went if you swapped them out for another. Ben made it clear that, mechanically, once a relationship was at risk, it stayed at risk even if you weren't actively using it in the fiction. Ron/Anne narrated a door appearing nearby, leading to a sort of pocket dimension where Tess could store the fork, but I decided that if Bobby was going to remain at risk, I may as well just keep using him. So Tess twisted the handle at the center and pulled the halves apart to reveal a chain, which she swung back over her shoulders to loop around the shapeless head of the figure clutching her from behind. Pulling it tight, she flung the monster over her into the abyss. There were still several aliens to contend with, though, and Anne advised her to pull out. Tess willed herself toward the doorway, which sort of expanded relative to her without getting closer, so that the red-suffused nothingness behind it grew to encompass the alien figures as well. As the redness hit them, the lights within the blue glasslike bodies fled from it, punching out the backs and leaving the anthroforms to dissolve. The redness filled Tess' vision until it became the light shining through her eyelids, and Anne was pulling her from the tank for a victory hug.
Ok, my ass is sore from sitting here for so long, so I'ma do some laundry and post some more later. Comments and questions welcome, don't feel like you have to wait up.
Ben Lehman:
Hey, Ron:
Thanks for posting this. I liked our little group as well. As it turned out, there were two sexual explosives waiting to go off: one being the increasingly ambiguous mom-dad relationship between Gina and John, the other being the oncoming puberty of "the boys," as represented in our play by Tim's Rico. In long term play, I would definitely stretch out time-between-missions more than a little in order to try to raise some of those issues.
Your 3) and 4) are accurate, but I want to make clear that -- depending on the group's color decisions -- the dream world *can* correspond to the real world, sometimes on a nearly 1-1 basis, and that the anchor *might* be reading off of instrumentation during missions, but that neither of these decisions changes two points.
The structure of play was as follows: Dave's mission, two interludes, your mission, so you are, in fact, mixing up the order.
--
It's interesting that you see Lesley's goals with the war ("to get things back the way they were") as also including her relationship with you as an emotional stopgap. I got a very different read from it ("I want things to be back to normal so we can be safe together), and I'd be interested to hear Dave's opinion on the topic.
--
I really cocked it up on the Hope business. The only thing I can do is blame that it was Sunday morning and some anxiety about running time.
Here's my thoughts: Given the particular issues we were confronting, I see no way that our group could have any hope but "I hope we can raise another generation." It's worth pointing out (and there's text in the next version to this regard) that hopes are by no means points of consensus within the group. Rather, they are the directions which the group is pointing towards in the missions, regardless of individual characters' opinions on the topic. So it would be quite possible to have a character pointing towards "no" on a hope without any sort of game breakdown.
If Tim were to continue to play with us, he would likely make a pilot character, probably taking a pre-existing character (Ann?) and having them undergo pilot training, which would bring in a second hope. That would be an interesting convo as well.
Of course, all of this is in retrospect, whereas we really should have talked about it during prep.
yrs--
--Ben
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