[Bliss Stage] Kids having kids
Ben Lehman:
Oh, hey, looking at your sheet I caught one more rules thing: Mission goals must be taken one at a time. Which goal is addressed by any given roll is kinda up to the fiction and largely in the hands of the anchor and pilot, but only one goal per roll. Your wording is kinda ambiguous.
And I just caught the last question. Yeah, the GM being able to make players' lives miserable relies on blanks in trauma (though see Alexis's advice above). Remember that for a character with zero trauma, even a blank result will mean an immediate gain in one trauma, usable at the next roll. There's actually a tie-in here with terror dropping to zero at the end of a mission: trauma both is a damage track but is also the "terror capacity" you can take without further consequence. This "light consequence" allows more traumatized characters to drop a blank into Pilot Safety from time to time. Of course, these do add up, and if something goes wrong it could be quite bad for them.
So yay. That's rules and tactics stuff (gosh why did I write such a crunchy game?)
I'm interested in the Iain / Gus relationship that Phil mentions (Hi Phil! Welcome to the Forge!). What was it rated at? How did it play out in interludes? I think it's really telling that Iain wants to protect his son absolutely but at the same time doesn't flinch about putting him at risk by using that relationship in a mission.
Are you guys going to play again? I'm really interested to see where some of these relationships go in the future (like, is Tina using Jimmy as an emotionally safe boy to experiment with or does she really have a thing for him? As the Innocent, she has to put some effort into building intimacy early in the game, so it'll be neat to see how that manifests.)
J. Tuomas Harviainen:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on October 29, 2010, 07:52:03 PM
I greatly appreciate the reminder about broken Relationships and Bliss! That's going to make a big difference.
If I remember correctly, that's the mechanic responsible for effectively all of the bliss-outs during the playtest runs we did here in Turku, Finland for the game, as well as our later games. It's also so loaded with narrative potential that I absolutely love that systems idea. It took us down in 3-6 sessions each time, in a very fine manner.
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can see that I'll have to be more precise about mission goals.
Interesting - that's the pit I fell into, too, before we re-examined the exact rules.
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My only problem with minimizing the Interludes is that I really like the Interludes ...
Same here - playing with a bunch of Finnish immersionists, we could have extended those to no end.
An interesting aside I think I mentioned to Ben after our playtests: I think the tone of some scenes changes strongly from one country to the next. Over here, the age of consent is 16, and it's not even an absolute in the case of teenagers having sex with each other. That means if there's any discomfort during sexually charged scenes, it comes almost solely from the players being uncomfortable with each other, not any issues of legal age.
Ron Edwards:
Hi everyone, and welcome, Phil!
Ben, thanks for the clarification about Terror. Since each Pilot has only been on one Mission so far, we haven't borked the system yet with that particular detail. Regarding your and Alexis' advice, that is very helpful. I really get what you're saying and I am on it for sure.
Tuomas, I appreciate that post a lot.
For conversational and comparative purposes, I'll state my perspective on age of consent in the States. The simple fact is that very many kids here, perhaps most, are already sexually active by then. Most of the discourse tends to ignore this fact or to treat it as evidence that absolutely urgent and draconian measures be taken to make it stop. Some, at least, of U.S. society doesn't find much wrong with 16 and 17 year olds having sex, but a lot of it does. The state laws make a big mess out things, giving rise to the long-familiar charge of "transporting minors across a state line for immoral purposes" (see this interesting summary and map to see how diverse it is, just like legal age of drinking and to a lesser extent, driving.
The federal law and some states' programs have twisted this confusion into absurdity. Today, parents have been designated sex offenders and are identifiable as such, including their names and addresses, on the internet via government information sites, for such "crimes" for giving permission to their kids of age 16 to have sex with a boyfriend or girlfriend. I think this latter phenomenon is pretty horrible and my views tend toward the more permissive end for this issue, but living in the shadow of this law has a chilling effect on one's value system and may even change it when one is not paying attention.
So that leads me to think more about what makes sex among the older kids in Bliss Stage problematic for me. It isn't so much the fact that they're doing it, but rather that it's happening among members of what is effectively a surrogate family. They've all banded together in the semblance of a family for purposes of survival and now, resistance. An additional factor for me is that there's probably very little attention to birth control, so the consequences of what (to my eyes) would be self-oriented experiential and experimental acts become serious business, as our group immediately seized upon as our core thematic content.
It raises the issue of what the Authority really is, for any particular play group and Bliss Stage. Parent? Well, kind of. But a parent who may well be having sex, or has done so, with one or more of the youths in his or her care. Resistance leader? Well, kind of. But perhaps only as initiator, as it's clear from the mechanics that the Authority really isn't an essential cog in the basic activities of the resistance cell, and also perhaps diminished in this role if and when some of the Pilots are veterans.
I'm interested in whether or how much you agree with the following ideas. I think an honest appraisal of the game shows how freaking ambitious and trenchant it is. "Big robots! Evangelion!" is a means, not the goal. Bliss Stage is seriously about underage sex in a time of forced maturation and overwhelming responsibility, and the edge but real potential for sexual abuse. Some of us here have some personal history with this issue, and a few have been brave enough to bring it forward as an issue in thoughtful RPG design. See especially Silence Keeps Me a Victim for some solid work on this material: Theory from the Closet interview and Master Mines discussion.
My take on the game is that Bliss Stage is aggressive social and psychological science fiction because it raises these issues and because the various fantastic elements accentuate and productively distort the ordinary context for thinking about the issue. The Love is My Weapon Bliss Stage fan site is a great place in all other ways, but at one point, a thread which raised this question elicited a kneejerk "no it isn't, that's horrible, never think that" response which is pure ass. Overlooking the deliberately charged and very definitely possibly transgressive content is to deny the courage of the design. I am not saying Bliss Stage endorses or promotes underage sex. I am saying that Ben has placed the issue - which is real - right up front for a confrontational creative examination, in the productive distortion that (to my eyes) defines great science fiction. This is not safe stuff. This is Dangerous Visions, just as Ellison conceived his first anthology of that name in the mid-60s.
Best, Ron
Phil K.:
Ben,
The Iain/Gus relationship was rated 3/3, which seemed the most appropriate of the stats I had available. First, it is the highest trust factor of any of the relationships. That certainly seemed natural. Second, while I expect the two to be close, neither description for 4 or 5 in intimacy felt like they made much sense for the relationship. This may be because of the way that intimacy was described to us, Ron's description was rather brief and focused on the physical/sexual aspects of intimacy. (Please don't construe that comment as a slight. We only had three hours to learn the rules, make characters and play. It was necessary and certainly set the tone of the game. I'm certainly happy with it.) All I remember specifically is that intimacy 5 was "blood and sex." That's not really how I picture a father/son relationship.
The main reason Iain used Gus in battle is because so much of my concept of Iain was bound up in that relationship. Once I hit up on the idea, it really drove me toward the character concept. I don't think it's possible to have that relationship and not let it affect you. The psychological ramifications of being the father of the next (last?) generation of mankind at the age of 14 must be profound. Iain's take on all of this was to try and be the best father he can with the time he has. Remember, Iain is the veteran and 17. He is almost certain to die soon and he knows it. Gus naturally became the center of his life, even during [because of?] this horrific war. What better to drive you to fight and win the war than the life of your child? Even if you aren't consciously drawing on it, that relationship will still be there. It just never made sense to have this relationship be Iain's reason for fighting and not bring it into combat.
The other important relationship was with Amira - Gus' mother. It features intimacy 5 and trust 1. I don't know what happened between Iain and Amira but it's a relationship very well near the breaking point. My conception of it during play was that Iain would have cut ties with her already if it weren't for Gus... sort of like a bad marriage at the age of 17. If we continue play, I would like to explore opportunities to rebuild that relationship; Iain is looking to extend the olive branch. It is rather vital that he have her relationship still, he did not define a relationship with the other anchor.
Oh, and it may help to get a sense of the character to know this: at character creation, I had to burn two relationships. I forget what the first was, but the second was our authority figure, Dr. Scott Mongomery. That seems important.
J. Tuomas Harviainen:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 04, 2010, 04:31:09 PM
My take on the game is that Bliss Stage is aggressive social and psychological science fiction because it raises these issues and because the various fantastic elements accentuate and productively distort the ordinary context for thinking about the issue.
There's also (as both a strength and as a potential thing to make players uncomfortable) the inexperience factor. Teen intimacy is awkward by its nature, due to inexperience, social pressures and issues of trust. For instance, playing a heavy petting scene between adult characters might just feel out of place, because adults tend to handle sex very differently, even those not comfortable with their sexuality, as long as they have at least some experience.
Combining that awkwardness with the survivor-situation, issues of authority (possible intra-hierarchy sexual relationships included) and the stress the missions place upon everything is in my opinion the true power of this game. By way of mechanics (combat) it allows for loads of highly emotional, immersive play, which is accentuated by the characters being, in more ways than one, placed outside their "safety zones", yet craving for comfort and safety nevertheless. That's also why stretching out the interludes seems so damn attractive.
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