Buffy and the Mirror Universe

[John Kim]

OK,

So I thought I'd talk about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG campaign that I've been running/playing in for a while.  So I originally was a player in "Season One" of this, which ran for 15 sessions.  For "Season Two", I agreed to switch off GMing with the original GM, Bill.  We are alternately GMing in sets of three episodes (I did 2.01 to 2.03; he did 2.04 to 2.06; then I did 2.07 to 2.09).  In addition, each of us presents the other with a set of 2-3 sentence episode ideas.  On our turn to GM, we use the episode ideas suggested by the *other*.  So I GM Bill's episode ideas, and Bill GMs mine.  You can read about my advice to Bill from an earlier thread,
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13588">Buffy and the Perils of Scene Framing

We just did episode 2.09, which was pretty powerful and interesting, I thought.  Bill's idea for this was a "mirror universe" episode where Main Cast characters would go into an alternate universe with different, perhaps evil versions of themselves.  He jokingly suggested that everyone should have goatees (a Star Trek reference) which would go for being campy, but I decided to take it in a more serious direction.  So about a week before the game, I sent the following email to four of the eight players.  

I was thinking of a rather special event for Episode 2.09.  My thought was that some of the characters were going to go into an alternate, dark timeline -- and meet counterparts there.  This will be the result of something gone awry in an encounter with Discrete and it's time-manipulating software, naturally.  

So my thought was that for this one, the heavy-hitters (i.e. Max, Ifurita, Dot, Kat, and Doug) would all be their alternate gangland selves.  So it's up to the less-powered folk (i.e. Roberta, Chip, Carlos, and Tad) to struggle through and figure out what's going on and find a way back.  Thus, I'm writing to only you guys -- and it should be a secret from the other players.  

In the gangland timeline, Vampster was never incorporated, and Dot never had a kid.  Instead Dot and company are organized as a gang, the Stakes.  Dot is in charge, and has been leading a street war against the vampires and other creatures of the night.  Xavier's plan from last season partially worked, and there have been a bunch of vampires who can withstand sunlight and staking.  The Stakes have been fighting hard, though, and now they are finally starting to win.  In the process, though, they've become jaded and tough and in many ways what the real selves would hate.  

I'm wide open to suggestions on what your gangland selves would be like.  Dot is operationally het (thoroughly closeting any other impulses), and is in many ways an exaggeration of her usual violent self.  She retains a bit of her man-hating, though, which she takes out on vampires and others.  I don't know who her current bf is yet -- possibly alternate Tad?  

[*] Iffy:  The Stakes didn't really investigate, but instead just took out and smashed up Dr. Ben-David's operation.  As a result, Iffy has no clue who she is.  I thought maybe she'd join the Stakes and take up being a true demon-goddess.  
[*] Max:  I was thinking maybe Max had been hurt somehow by vampires, or a loved one killed.  Given her power, she would be Dot's second-in-command.  
[*] Kat:  She is allowed and indeed encouraged to express much more of her wolf self, but is probably not trusted much by others.  Maybe she could involved with Max?  Up to you guys.  
[*] Doug:  I expect Doug here sees himself as much more in line with his family roots, what with the regular demon-slaying and all.  [/list:u]
So that's my half-formed plan.  Thoughts?  

I got brief responses from Max's player Heather and Iffy's player Bill.  However, we didn't actually discuss much before the game itself.  In the game, one player was missing (Tad's player Jim).  You can read the preliminary episode summary at
http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/buffy/siliconvalley/season2.html#s2_e09

However, that's an attempt at a transcript of in-character events, not a description of the game itself.  Still, it may provide some context.  So I ran for about a half hour or so.  For context, in my last two sessions I started by asking each player around the room "What are you doing?" and following up for a while on what they were doing (i.e. personal subplots and group issues).  

For this episode, I pushed a bit harder.  So I asked if anyone had anything that was particularly important, but after resolving two of these quickly, I moved on to the scene of a meeting at the PCs' offices.  This was a demonstration which went awry, and resulted in a magical catastrophe that dropped the three more mortal PCs into the alternate universe.  

So as soon as that happened, I walked with the other four players into the kitchen for a secret conference.  Basically, I wanted everyone to have their backgrounds straight before going back into play.  They had the general idea, but I wanted to fill in some specific details and deal with unanswered questions.  It took maybe 5 or 10 minutes -- not long.  Then we went back.  We rearranged seating to have the three intruders sit together.  The others were slightly separated with me (playing Dot as an NPC) and Tyler (playing Doug) on one side, with the other three on the other.  However, the rest of the game was played openly -- i.e. the alternate universe PCs would talk to each other in-character even when the other PCs wouldn't know about that.  

I would say the key driving this was the change of relationship dynamics.  Everyone got a shifted in-character view of how the others worked.  After the fact, I am tentatively titling the episode "A Practical World" -- because the premise I was trying for was that in the alternate universe, the characters have generally dropped ideals in favor of practicality.  An awful lot happened in terms of plot and action (cf. the episode summary), but I think the driving interest was in the portrayals of the alternate Dot, Max, Kat, Ifurita, and Doug.  They weren't evil.  And they were doing a lot of things which were arguably right.  They were concentrating more on the fight, and they had victories to show it.  

To me, this confirms several of my thoughts from my http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/immersivestory.html">Immersive Story essay, in particular the focusing on the inter-PC relations.  It was GM-dominated in a way since I was playing the leader (Dot) of the alternate-universe PCs, and everyone was following my lead on the alternate-universe concept.  On the other hand, the dialogue and action had an awful lot of PC-to-PC stuff rather than PC-to-NPC, so the players were highly involved.  I'm not sure what I would call it in Forge terms.  

I could go on a bit more, but I guess I'll check if anyone is interested and if anyone has questions.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

That took a little bit of processing to grasp!

You did a nice job of explaining the among-group interactions that made the "secret" work, especially the distinction between (1) incomplete sharing of player-knowledge and (2) players reinforcing incomplete character-knowledge.

How much do you think #1 was really necessary? What kind of in-the-moment, actual feedback did you get that really supported its value?

How did the session compare, do you think, to similar attempts by you or by GMs when you were a player, in the past? Nearly everyone I know has a horror story about how badly such an attempt goes, and I've experienced at least a couple.

Also, in terms of themes, it seems to me that you guys ended up recapitulating the inspirational Star Trek episode (Mirror Mirror, for those who aren't as imprinted as me & John), at least as Spock is concerned. Am I right about that? Or are there some nuances that I'm missing, not knowing the various players and characters well in your game?

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

You did a nice job of explaining the among-group interactions that made the "secret" work, especially the distinction between (1) incomplete sharing of player-knowledge and (2) players reinforcing incomplete character-knowledge.

How much do you think #1 was really necessary? What kind of in-the-moment, actual feedback did you get that really supported its value?

I think #1 -- that is, the non-super PC players being in the dark --  was really key.  The in-the-moment feedback that I got was that all four of the alternate-universe players were energized and interested when we went to conference in the kitchen, and they had a team feeling.  And the three non-super PC players gave fairly immediate signs of liking it, too.  I think the purpose was really in character identification and interesting shift of the social dynamics.  

I can maybe drag Madeline and/or Liz (who have both posted here a bit) to comment, if there is call.  All of the players said at the end-of-session that the game was really great.  

How did the session compare, do you think, to similar attempts by you or by GMs when you were a player, in the past? Nearly everyone I know has a horror story about how badly such an attempt goes, and I've experienced at least a couple.

The past two times I've GMed such a thing, they both went really well.  Both were essentially one player who came in with an "evil" PC.  The last was in a Champions game, when a new player (Liz) came in to play a character with dark omens around her.  But she played innocent and they bought it for a while, until after she had gotten loose and Joe suddenly said "Wait a minute!!  This isn't a new PC at all!  It's a horrible, horrible monster."  Everyone cracked up and enjoyed it.  

The time before was in a Star Trek game (using modified CORPS rules) when Joe played his somewhat politically-correct captain who was possessed by an evil energy being.  That had a similar sort of rousing success as the other PCs pulled together after noticing the odd behavior on the part of their captain.  

I can't recall any horror stories for a while.  I guess there was the Vampire LARP, Chicago Requiem (in '96), where I as a player basically had no idea about the many high-level conspiracies going on.  It was a little annoying, but there were a fair number of lower-level folk who were fun to interact with.  Before that, I guess there was the Amber game I was in (in '92) which was something of a horror story of competitive player-against-player without being able to see anything.  But these are long-term secrets rather than one-off devices.  

Also, in terms of themes, it seems to me that you guys ended up recapitulating the inspirational Star Trek episode (Mirror Mirror, for those who aren't as imprinted as me & John), at least as Spock is concerned. Am I right about that? Or are there some nuances that I'm missing, not knowing the various players and characters well in your game?

No, I see it as hugely different from "Mirror, Mirror".  In that episode, the alternate universe characters were over-the-top, campy evil.  Here the real thrust of the game was that the alternates were believable and even reasonable.  It was an alternate timeline.  The three travellers came back disturbed and pondering what they saw, while making little impact on the timeline they visited.  Liz praised the subtlety of it, which I am proud of.  Really, there were a lot of subtle touches which everyone brought to their characters.

Edited to add: While several people referred to Star Trek, this was more directly inspired by the Buffy Season Three episode, "The Wish".

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Guys,

As someone who's following this thread and interested without having a lot of useful input yet I wanted to say this:

No, I see it as hugely different from "Mirror, Mirror".  In that episode, the alternate universe characters were over-the-top, campy evil.  Here the real thrust of the game was that the alternates were believable and even reasonable.  It was an alternate timeline.  The three travellers came back disturbed and pondering what they saw, while making little impact on the timeline they visited.  Liz praised the subtlety of it, which I am proud of.  Really, there were a lot of subtle touches which everyone brought to their characters.

I think this is actually what Ron meant when he singles out Spock. Not to represent my own imprinting too much, but Spock in the mirror mirror episode isn't much different than Spock in the regular world and it's a fact that's acknowledged. So I think you guys are talking about the same thing here.

-Tim