[Bliss Stage] Love and violence in Peoria

[GreatWolf]

...incoming transmission ...
... Peoria Resistance Group...

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

Broadcast Archive:  previous transmission located in database

Gabrielle commented that she felt sorry for me.  I'm gaming with my wife and sister, and so I end up with these really girly stories.  She thinks that Bliss Stage is working out so well because, every so often, I can insist on a combat mission with squicky aliens and giant fighty robots.  She may be right.

All of this, to set up the first part of this Actual Play report.

That's right.  We're back at it again.  Things get heated in the Peoria Resistance Group, Jude finally proves his worth as a pilot, and Marcus continues to suffer emotional trauma.  So suit up, strap in, and prepare for launch!

Diapers and Briefs

Our opening action was less than enthralling.  Marcus had an interlude with Renee, his baby girl, which ended up involving a really nasty diaper.  I probably should have awarded Trauma for the experience.  I mean, squicky alien goo has nothing on the kind of bowel eruption that babies are capable of.  But Marcus took it all in stride, earning himself some Trust-Building with Renee.

Then we jumped to a briefing action.  Joseph broke into Jude's apartment to summon him for the briefing.  Jared wanted to send Jude out to install a sensor package further north to act as an early warning system.  However, when Jared seemed unconcerned about keeping Joseph under control, Jude stormed off, shirking the mission.  So, once again, Marcus got the duty and suited up to head out into the dreamworld.  Beth was off-duty and Leah was all ready, so she would anchor for him.

Deep Probe

I actually interlaced Marcus's missions and Jude's interludes for effect.  For this report, I will describe them separately.

Before the mission, Marcus took a quick interlude with Leah, offering to talk to Jude about her.  I don't remember what we ended up calling that.  Probably Trust-building.

...begin briefing...

Deep Probe
Evade patrols
If failed, fight enemy patrol
Scout location
Deploy sensor package
...end briefing...

To help the anchor player get into character, and to demonstrate our true weirdness, we have taken to assembling an anchor console on the table when we play, hacked together out of the electronic equipment that we have lying around.  Here's the photographic evidence:

Crystal as an anchor
Another angle on Crystal as an anchor
Gabrielle as an anchor

In particular, note the red and green dice on the black box.  Those aren't dice.  The green die is a "launch/dock" button, and the red die is the panic button.

Mock if you will, but it's actually a lot of fun to set up the equipment.

Anyways, Marcus was doing pretty well.  He was able to get the sensor package installed, but he was damaged by the alien goo that was dripping off everything.  So he hotshotted a goal:  "Gather goo sample".  He was successful in this, but Beth completely lost contact with him.

So, Marcus is alone.  Things are falling apart.  An alien patrol is looking for him.  Two suns are burning in the sky.  Now they are beginning to strobe.  The aliens are stalking nearby.  There's nowhere to run.  The power dies in the ANIMa.  Marcus curls up into the fetal position, holding himself and repeating, "They don't find me.  They don't find me.  They don't find me."

They didn't.

Leah managed to re-establish contact and hit the panic button.  Marcus burst from the tank yelling, "They don't find me!"

We called for a post-mission interlude.  Leah hurried over to help clean Marcus off.  He took one look at her and fainted.  Trauma-Relief.


Jude takes care of business

In the meantime, Jude was taking care of business.  He broke into Joseph's apartment and waited for him with a baseball bat.  When Joseph came in, Jude hit him with the bat, giving him a nasty bump on the head.  Then Jude took away Joseph's knife and told him to leave him alone.  Joseph wasn't happy, but Gloria intervened, telling Jude to leave.  He was polite to her and left without further incident.  We called this Intimacy-Building, but Joseph's Trust was broken.  Joseph wasn't harmed.  This is in part because the rules don't allow for it, but also because Jude wasn't trying to hurt Joseph.  He just wanted to make a point.

Because of the Trust-breaking, we got a follow-up action to demonstrate the effect of the breaking.  So Crystal said that Jude went into one of the tunnels where no one else goes and cried.  No one likes him, and he is so very alone.


Matchmaking in the world of Bliss Stage

Jude ends up at the apartment where Marcus and Beth live.  He is sitting in there, talking with Beth, when Jared and Leah haul Marcus in.  Jared's eyes meet Jude's across the room, and Jared shakes his head in disgust.   The message is clear.  "If you had gone, this wouldn't have happened."  The result of this interlude was Stress Relief.

We then had several interludes in short succession.  First, we had an absolutely delightful conversation between Jude and Leah.  Both of them were very awkward, and so we had one of those fitful "start-and-stop" conversations that happens between two people who really like each other but are too embarrassed to admit it.  It was painful and wonderful all that the same time.

In the other room, Beth informed Marcus that she was pregnant.   He was very happy to hear this, although Gabrielle reported later that his initial response was actually panic.  More on this later.

Then Marcus and Jude had a little chat about women.  Marcus is only 17, but, compared to Jude, he's an older, wiser guy.  So Marcus was explaining how to treat Leah, and Jude was hinting around his relationship with Rachel.

Then the alarms went off.  Alien attack!


Scramble!

There were getting to be far too many happy interludes.  Something needed to be done!  When in doubt, the aliens attack.  So I went with that.

I reused the mission layout from the original Scramble! which worked out pretty well.

Mission Brief
...begin briefing...

Scramble!
Prevent alien from reaching base
Defeat enemy pilot
If either is failed, one non-pilot character is harmed (GM's choice)
...end briefing...

Jude stormed out into the dreamworld, determined to prove himself to everyone.  He easily dispatched one of the alien remotes and then destroyed the alien goo that poured out of the downed remote.  Then he hotshotted a goal to take out Marcus's target, too.  He succeeded, but not before his jamming gear was blown off his ANIMa.  In other words, his relationship with Rachel was broken.  Then Leah punched him out before things got worse.

Marcus was running cleanup.  The alien goo was pouring into the base, and he needed to stop it.  So he reached out with his power fist and grabbed a building to drop onto it.

I don't remember exactly what the roll was, but it was terrible.  So terrible, in fact, that Gabrielle opted for Flashback.  If both Pilot Safety and Mission Success receive a (-) result, then the pilot may immediately call for an interlude involving a relationship not already part of his ANIMa.  If this flashback results in Intimacy-building, then the pilot may set Mission Success to (0), but he must incorporate the relationship into his ANIMa.

So Gabrielle flashed back to a time soon after Marcus married Beth.  Things weren't going well, so he went to talk to Eve.  She fed him cookies and made him laugh.  Before going, she patted him on the arm and said, "It'll be okay.  Don't worry."

There was a ridiculous amount of positioning going on in this interlude.  The touching.  The "eating together".  Crystal and Gabrielle both desperately wanted the Intimacy Building result.  Which I gave them.

Eve was the "wind beneath his wings" to Marcus.  So she manifests as jump jets.  Firing them, he burns up the alien goo.

As an interlude, immediately after the mission, Marcus strips off his pilot suit and stalks off naked.  He is tired and stressed and fed up.  Trauma-Relief.

Then we called the game for the night.

Reflections on the game

We discovered that we don't share the same opinion about the characters.  For example, Crystal find Jude to be quite sympathetic, while Gabrielle and I aren't really sure about him.  But perhaps the most profound difference has to do with Joseph.

Crystal really doesn't like Joseph.  Gabrielle understands him.  I really connect with Joseph.  Indeed, aside from the authority figure, all my characters are the children.  Except Joseph.  I have ownership of him, too.

As we discussed the differences of opinions, Gabrielle connected it to our opinion of cops.  Crystal's experiences of police officers are almost universally bad.  They are power-hungry, rude, and belligerent.  Whereas, for Gabrielle and myself, growing up in a small suburb, the police were polite and embraced as a positive part of the community.  We had a good conversation about some of this.  Perhaps Gabrielle or Crystal will fill in some of those details.

Gabrielle also has been gaining a painful amount of insight into the male psyche.  As I mentioned earlier, when Marcus found out that Beth was pregnant, her initial reaction was panic.  "Another responsibility!  I can't handle this!"  She asked me about this later, and I told her that it was indeed a completely realistic emotional response.

We are also enjoying the interplay between the relationships in the real world and the ANIMa usage in the dreamworld.  When Rachel's relationships was shot off Jude's ANIMa, Crystal was thrilled.  It seemed to fit that point of the story, especially as Jude's relationship with Leah is developing.  And, in general, it just seemed to make sense.

Finally, it occurred to me that, once again, I'm engaged with media that's all about a lost cause.  I have a soft spot in my heart for desperate last stands and lost causes.  Just check out the video that I linked above.  That kind of thing moves me deeply.  What does that say about me?  Does that mean anything for my future?  I don't know.


Rules question

I do have some rules questions as a result of this session.  First, is it true that, by default, mission goals can be accomplished in any order?  If so, then what about missions like Deep Probe, where you could just skip to the "important" goal, bypassing the others?  Then your anchor just punches you out without penalty.  Are we missing something?

Also, how are conflicts of narration adjudicated in an interlude?  For example, what if I narrate my character saying, "I tackle him" and then you say, "No you don't."  Now what?  We played that the Judge had authority to decide these matters, but I couldn't find it in the rules anywhere.

We've already played another session since these events, so I'm already behind on my reports.  You will hear more from us soon.

But for now, this is Seth Ben-Ezra, of the Peoria Resistance Group, signing off.

...end transmission...

[Ben Lehman]

Yay! Rules questions.

If you reach a "I did too!" "I did not!" thing in the interlude, the first thing to do is just act it out. If that fails, the GM adjudicates, but is instructed to give "victory" (whatever that is) to the character with the highest Bliss, noting that non-pilots don't have Bliss scores. (page 116, Maria) Also, note that for pilots with high trauma values, violence in interlude scenes can result in harm or death, and pilots with low trauma values have trouble with that. (page 124, causing harm and death during interludes).

As for missions, the anchor can take the mission goals in any realistic order: this is a question of providing the proper narrative guidance. If you're worried about that sort of thing, you can hard-wire the goal order during mission creation. But that's not how I'd do it.

Remember that all mission goals that are not accomplished are failed so, in your example case, the location hasn't been scouted (the probe is probably in a poor location) and the alien patrols have spotted it. So if the anchor moved directly to placing the probe, the aliens know it's there and it's in a poor location anymore: I'd be immediately segueing (no interludes except the privileged one) into a difficult "defend the probe!" mission, making it clear as the authority figure that this is all the anchor's fault for being too hasty.  Maybe something like:

Locate enemy scouts x2 (they're hiding throughout the area)
If completed, destroy enemy scouts
If failed, defend the probe
Scout new location for probe
Relocate probe

Something like that.

Actual comment in a bit.

yrs--
--Ben

[Gabrielle]

For some reason I don't like to look too closely at I used to prefer to role play male characters. I've mostly gotten over this, but looking back at my characters I don't think any of them actually had male problems. Or it was more like they had guy problems a woman would think they should. It's like reading a book with a male main character when the book is written by a woman. Sometimes the guys don't always act like they would, but rather as women think they would.

This isn't true with Marcus. His problems took me by surprise (even though I came up with them) because they aren't the problems I would have. The problems I would have if I were a character in our Bliss Stage run would be, well, horrifying, but also tailored to me which means they would be woman problems, it would be a woman's story. Marcus's problems are not my problems, are not a woman's problems. He's struggling on what it means to be a husband and a father which is very different from struggling with what it means to be a wife and mother. And it has been bizarre and strangely enlightening to watch a man struggle with these issues from inside his head.

[Ben Lehman]

Gabrielle: That's awesome. It's totaly in line with my design goals for the game, which was like "I've always had this awkward time playing female characters... wonder why that is?" So the game is set up that you've almost got to play cross-gender (although, hey, is Seth playing all male characters? Hmm... *rubs chin thoughtfully*) and the issues of the game are the issues where gender and sexuality comes to the forefront: sex, love, childbearing, and community building. Yay! It's awesome to see it working, and I'm really glad that it's useful to you.

It's really interesting to me, although not totally surprising, how different your game is from the last time I played the game on-going (the somerville resistance cell). Our group was two long-term-but-unmarried couples and one single guy, all of us in our mid-twenties to early thirties. So you can imagine that we have pretty different issues on the table.

Here's a thing: In a game that specifically incentives bisexuality and polyamoury, that's not an issue for you guys at all, and it was a huge issue for us. But likewise, in a game that specifically incentives pregnancy, that didn't come up at all in our game, and it's all over your game. All of us played pilots of the same gender, and the pilots' issues were love and loyalty issues.  You guys are all opposite genders, and your pilots issues are all children and responsibility issues. Not surprising, but really cool to see it in action.

I wonder what our game would have been like with cross-gender pilots, and what your game would be like with same-gender pilots...

Oh, and on a geeky note, I totally love the anchoring set-up that you guys have.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S. Oh, and hey. Is Nathaniel Jude's son? As in: does that relationship have the extra point of intimacy or not?

[Gabrielle]

So the game is set up that you've almost got to play cross-gender (although, hey, is Seth playing all male characters? Hmm... *rubs chin thoughtfully*)

Seth is only sorta playing all male characters. He somehow got stuck with  the babies and toddlers of the group. The toddle is a boy, the four-month-old is a girl and the unborn is unknown. Personally, I think he's a boy, but we haven't decided yet. So that's one girl Seth is playing, but she doesn't really do much.

Oh, and on a geeky note, I totally love the anchoring set-up that you guys have.

Me too. There's nothing quite like props to help you get in character. Also, we keep adding to it. Last time we added a webcamera and our home phone just died so next time we can add that to the mix.

P.S. Oh, and hey. Is Nathaniel Jude's son? As in: does that relationship have the extra point of intimacy or not?

No, Jude was not part of the rape of Gloria, though he witnessed it and did nothing which, in my mind, is just as bad.

[Ben Lehman]

Hmm...

I have to resist the urge to try to GM the game from a distance, but I'm totally fascinated by the Jude / Nathaniel / Gloria / Joseph relationship set. Has Nathaniel showed up in any scenes yet?

yrs--
--Ben

[Gabrielle]

Hmm...

I have to resist the urge to try to GM the game from a distance, but I'm totally fascinated by the Jude / Nathaniel / Gloria / Joseph relationship set. Has Nathaniel showed up in any scenes yet?

yrs--
--Ben

That relationship set was created with a whole lot of potential and only some of it has come into play so far. In our last session the Jude/ Gloria relationship was broken, but I'll let Seth tell you about that when he gets around to writing it up.

Nathaniel has only been in one scene to date and the only thing he did was kick Jude in the shins. We've been focusing more on Jude's relationship with Joseph. Joseph as protector wants to keep the community safe from everything out there which includes, or at least included, Jude. Jude doesn't like Joseph because he's just a power hungry kid with a big ole knife who keeps getting in Jude's face. They came to a really fine place in their relationship last session, but again I will let Seth detail that in his next AP report.

[GreatWolf]

So the game is set up that you've almost got to play cross-gender (although, hey, is Seth playing all male characters? Hmm... *rubs chin thoughtfully*)

Hey, I'm playing the aliens!  That's not just cross-gender, that's cross-species.

And I'm working up my next AP report.  Should be up in the next day or two.