[Bliss Stage] Final Act - Actual Play impressions

[TomTitTot]

Last evening my friends and I played in a game of Bliss Stage, using the default Final Act scenario included with the ignition Stage book. We were very lucky to have Per, a new friend, GM this game - he was very patient at explaining it to everyone, although we were also advantaged in that I have the book as well, so was able to chip in occasionally.

It was fun, but very brief. The game never even got past the first mission, in fact, and although I had to Anchor the first two Pilots, I never got to play my Pilot except in his resolution action after blissing out. I were somewhat confused about how to run a mission with more than one Pilot, and Per suggested that only one Pilot at a time was in the Dream world, which really seemed easiest from an organizational point of view. Eventually, the player actiong as Sarah Smith foolishly allocated a - to her relationship with my Pilot, Keenan. That broke the relationship, and the resulting Bliss caused Sarah to bliss out, becoming lost in the dream world as her ANIMa's wings (her relationship with Keenan) burned and she fell eternally. This killed our hope of understanding the aliens. Dark. The Bliss from this broken relationship also caused Keenan to bliss out - as his final action, I had him take Anna's Lieutenant (Laura was it?) and Son and leave, as he was sick of watching children die for this fruitless cause. Now, who knows if we can raise the next generation? There goes that hope. The resultant bliss caused Anna to also Bliss out, her missing son and friends driving her to down a bottle of pills, killing herself. Our last hope was gone, as how can we defeat the invading forces if we can't even stick together? Only Josh and Jim were left at this point, and Josh was even more disillusioned with his dad than before. He took his dad's drugs and ran, headed for a new and brief life on the streets. Depressing, eh?

Everyone really enjoyed this game, and considering that Fraggle, Liz, and Louise had never tried a indie RPG before, I think that's high praise. Liz, in fact, only ever played in one RPG ever, and it wasn't her speed - but she liked Bliss Stage.

Louise, Liz, and I discussed at length the relationship between Bliss Stage and Evangelion, and how well the game manages to emulate that genre of Anime.

Everyone agreed that characterization was lacking, but that it was likely caused by the brevity of the session.

Liz pointed out that the relationship value orders are different on the playcards than they are in the book - she found that frustrating, and I said that I'd suggest they match up when the Accelleration Stage is released. So here I am, suggesting it.

We also had a bit of trouble framing scenes, but that amy have been a combination of lateness and trying to puzzle out a new game system. I suppose it doesn't matter, as we had fun and told a cool story together!

Anyway, there are Audio AP files linked to my Blog if anyone is interested.

Thanks for the game, Ben!

[TomTitTot]

(Just realized... should this go in the AP forum? *gulp* Sorry if this was a foolish mistake. )

[Ben Lehman]

Either way. I can get Ron or Vincent to move it to the AP forum if you'd like!

Thanks for posting this! I'm glad you liked the game. I'm sorry it was so abbreviated ... how were you counting Bliss?

Man! That is depressing, too.

Are you planning more play or was this just a one time thing?

I'll tweak the playcards.

yrs--
--Ben

[TomTitTot]

Don't really mind which forum this was in, just realized after posting that it may have been misplaced. It's fine here if nobody minds.

We counted Bliss as per normal. I think maybe Sarah's player was overcautious, using too many relationships too soon, because she had accrued quite a lot of Bliss on her turn, and then she broke her relationship with Keenan, which earned her 12 Bliss, putting her over the edge. Still, she fell very quickly - I'd listen to the AP file to find out exactly how it happened, but my toddler is watching the Lion King right now and she doesn't want to be interrupted.

However, in many ways, it was a well-timed ending and we feel more confident with the system now.

Depressing? Oh yeah.

Well, wether we play more also has to do with what everyone else wants to play - Per has a massive number of indie games he wants to try. If he wants to play something else, however, I might decide to get another game of Bliss Stage together on a different day. I'm keen to play a longer campaign with our own characters so I can get that drama and characterization kick I don't get as much from pregen characters, y'know?

Cool! You'll let us know when the playcards have been tweake'd, yes?

-Pooka

[Per Fischer]

Excellent game, Ben, it really delivers. I think I might like to try out a longer game from the ground up, set here in Edinburgh. That would be very intersting, and giove us time to also get more under the skin of the characters than we could in this fast intro scenario.

Ben, regarding the playsheets: we had a bit of difficulty keeping them up-to-date, because actions are short and fast and relationship values need to be updated on more than one shet at a time. That's kind of hard because the in-game action just keeps on going.

But if I understand correctly, there's a sheet for each Pilot (a Pilot sheet obviously), and a character sheet for every other character, right? There's no space on the Pilot sheet to record relationships values, I take it that's on purpose because these are also noted on each character sheet. There's a lot keeping track off, even in this short scenario.

We didn't use the Mission sheet, as we only got to play though the mandatory first mission action for each Pilot.

Per

[TomTitTot]

I think I might like to try out a longer game from the ground up, set here in Edinburgh.

Excited.

This is going to be very, very fun.