[bliss stage] different functions, different burdens

[cydmab]

I persuaded a couple friends to try a game of bliss stage, and it did not go over very well. We played using the Final act scenario in the back of the book.

The first major problem is one player, M, found the premise of the game "Teenagers fight aliens in dreams using giant robots made out of relationships" completely ridiculous. It negatively colored the rest of the game for him.

The next problem is I made at least on rules error, and one dubious at best rules interpretation. The error was that the GM should control aliens in dreams even if the Anchor still has "control over the dream" - iirc another group had the same problem in an AP play. The second error/dubious ruling was I said the Anchor had control over sensory input that the Pilor experienced. I said the pilot was essentially blind. The anchor describes what the pilot sees, the pilot then describes what he has the robot does.

These two errors/decisions resulted in very sharp divisions of function and activity during action scenes. The anchors both reported that they had to do a tremendous amount of creative work. As far as me as the GM, I did almost absolutely nothing during action scenes. I sat back and listened to the interesting story told by the anchor and pilot. Part of this was having the anchor describe demons; part of this is I interpreted the GM function as stepping in to facilitate consensus or if the other players became completely stuck. The latter never happened however - the other players, both very experienced in general RPGs, never got completely stuck, and never had any player-level conflict. (As far as the former, the Anchor only described aliens in the last 30 seconds of each scene, so I'm not sure how much the rule would of changed things. OTOH the anchor might have been able to use the rule as a safety-valve: if he started to get stressed-out trying to be creative, he could have punted the function by narrating in an alien and letting the GM take over)

We did one mission with two objectives with one pilot and anchor, and then switched roles and characters for another mission with a pair of objectives. (We also did one interlude scene between missions, and there was one flashback scene during the first mission). M, the player that hated the setting and premise, was pilot first and then anchor. He expressed a strong dislike of playing the Pilot, and a strong dislike of the conflict system. He described it as "Too abstract" and "pointless" - after discussion, we both thought that part of the reason he thought this is he just could not swallow the premise, and so could not imagine relationships being endangered in the dream-fights, and so it all felt profoundly unreal and silly to him. I suggested that anyone playing the game should be required to have watched at least 4 hours of giant robot anime in the past 6 months before playing, and that they should only play if they had enjoyed it. We laughed and agreed that was probably a good idea.

After we switched functions, things went a bit better. M described anchor function as more enjoyable than pilot function; G, the other player, described being a pilot as more enjoyable than anchor, because it was less stressful. He also found the resolution mini-game more intuitive and enjoyable than M, probably because he was better able to grok and accept the setting and premise. G also made a point of trying to contribute more to the story as the pilot in order to lower pressure on the anchor. We all agreed to stop playing after the second pair of objectives and to go back to playing Polaris instead.

The thing that struck me the most about the experience were the different functions the game required, and the different tastes we all had to carrying them out. One of us disliked being a pilot; another disliked being an anchor; I was entertained as GM, but felt the GM role was almost entirely superfluous. Again part of this is because of a rules error, part of it because of the scenario, and part because there was no need to "referee," but my instinct is I would not really enjoy GMing this game again - because there was so little to do. but I could easily imagine someone else with a different temperament and tastes enjoying the function. In particular, I would be interested in trying the two player option some day.

-William