Why people find it fun to be sick...

[pete_darby]

(This post has been rated 15 for language. And C-, must try harder, for content).

So, in a sleep deprived state, and somewhat pleased (though not totally satisfied) from the previous nights play, I went browsing through the resources and came up to kill puppies for satan.

I keep meaning to buy this, Vincent, but my damn kids want feeding again this week...

Reading through the actual play threads, one recurrent theme was "We were coming up with totally sick shit, but felt strangely okay with this..."

It will doubtless surprise no-one that I have a theory as to why.

The characters in kpfs are, expressly, the most pathetic losers available. Their lives have no purpose beyond random acts of violence, barely justified by a dysfunctional, possibly delusional value system. For fecksake, they worship satan because, although he despises them, he may actually pay them some attention, unlike any one else apart from the circle of losers that form the "party."

They are whiny, irritating individuals, never taking responsibility, emotionally scarred and bankrupt. They don't even have anti-heroic nobility of purpose or methods. In order to do sick shit, they kill puppies.

My point (thanks for hanging in there) is that you cannot sympathise with these characters, you can barely empathise with them. Most importantly, you cannot identify with them. Unless you're cat piss man, in which case you probably won't ever play kpfs, I'm guessing.

You know what this means? Character actions & consequences are no longer your moral responsibility. You don't have to worry about content "revealing your inner self". Dude, check the name of the game.

As I tried to put in my Chimera article, this is enormously liberating for creativity. Let's face it, worrying that you're the only sick puppy at the table and will get found out if you play your character that way can really make a guy freeze up.

But when you start with the game being called "kill puppies for satan..." well, you think you're being invited to ironically deconstruct this shit? Or put your balls on the line and show that you can protagonise a sick bastard with no hope of redemption, and you're sane enough to know it's not really you?

As Olivier said to Hoffman "It's called acting. You may want to try it, dear boy."

But equally, it's writing, it's improv, it's the pure creation of drama without worrying about what the content is "really saying about you."

It's why people find it liberating, because they are now no longer responsible for the contents of their minds (you know, all that crap that leaked in from bad movies, msnbc, talk radio, that guy in college who just wouldn't shut up... oh, hang on, that was me, man, put the golf club down...)

And when you realise that you don't have to be responsible for the contents of your mind, you can start raiding it like the biggest toy cupboard in the world.

You know what a few random comments put into my mind today? Flatulent Jazz Jedi. Now I gotta play a game of Star Wars with a GM with low standards, or write even more bad fanfic.

Over on B3ta.com, they call this "Mind Piss;" as in "I had this mind piss clogging my head up, so I had to get it out." You know what they do with it? They make photoshop art out of it. funny, and a more valid artform than the BritArt movement (DISCUSS).

kill puppies for satan: it's a role playing colostomy bag for your mindpiss. Relieve yourself today!

[Loki]

kill puppies for satan: it's a role playing colostomy bag for your mindpiss. Relieve yourself today!

If that doesn't make the ad copy on the site, life just ain't fair. :')

[Callan S.]

Probably explains Grand Theft Auto's popularity somewhat too. Ah, the joys of jacking a car simply because you can't be bothered walking a single block.

Sorry, slightly off topic.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

My review of kill puppies for satan addresses some of this issue. My call, and Vincent turns out to have been onto this all along (clever bastard), is that players must sit in judgment upon their characters ... and oddly enough, in the long run are often inclined to show them mercy, in full knowledge that it's true mercy toward someone who emphatically does not deserve it.

You mean it's a (gasp) sort of ... Christian game?

Uh-huh.

Best,
Ron

[Lance D. Allen]

Hm. That opens up a whole can of worms when you consider.. No one who does not know every aspect of you is truly qualified to judge you. In the Christian belief frame (to which I am a subscriber) that means only God. In roleplaying, however.. That means the creator of the character. In this instance, each player would take on the role of a personal God for their individual character.

Ack. I better stop now before I actually start thinking about this. ::grins::

[pete_darby]

Thing is, if you start taking responsibility for the actions of your character, in order to live with yourself you have to a) forgive them their previous actions, and b) remove them from the game.

But also note that the encouragement throughout the game is for all players to co-operate on creating the actions of the game universe towards them; ultimately, the players are the universe, or god, who has created imperfect beings in a hostile universe, who is, lets face it, laughing at how pathetic they are. Now, I can get my yucks doing that as long as the next guy, I'm a real bastard to my Sims frex, but by placing it in the social context of an RPG, you get to the point of being uncomfortable with, not what the PC's are doing, but what the game universe, created and run by the players for their own amusement, is doing to the PC's.

Hence the forgiveness... "I forgive you, my creation, for being what I made you." Gee, that's big of you...

Ron... isn't the rebelling of the creation at this kind of treatment at the heart of the Thed story you reported on in Chimera?

Also... no, it's not like GTA. The pleasures of GTA are in wallowing in cathartic simulation of amoral behaviour, not in freeing your creative side from the responsibility for it's content. It says on this cornflakes packet.

[lumpley]

You mean it's a (gasp) sort of ... Christian game?

Uh-huh.

Ha!  I'm found out.

I ran a lot of puppies demos this past GenCon.  (Some of you may've heard this story before.)  Here's how a puppies demo works: somebody does something atrocious, everybody laughs, somebody does something a bit more atrocious, everybody laughs, somebody tops it, everybody goes oog then laughs, somebody tops that, everybody laughs...  I never escalate, I just say "eew, that's so wrong" and set the stage for the next player.  It's the GM's job to respond well, not push.  Anyhow we're all unspokenly aware that somewhere out there is The Line, we're rushing toward it, but it's actually quite far away.  As Pete says, nobody feels responsible for what they're doing, they're just barfing vileness and better to have it out than in.  Then the demo ends and everybody's laughing and recalling the sickest bits and they buy copies and act mock-ashamed and it's all good fun.

One of the demos I ran, though, we reached The Line.  I was running for these two guys who were friends.  We were all going oog and laughing and somebody did the next atrocious thing, and it got ... really interesting.

Neither of them wanted to be the first to admit that we'd crossed the line, so they kept escalating.  We were going oog more and more, and laughing less and less, and then way past the line, like I mean WAY past the line - they stopped talking.  They just sat there not looking at each other.

It was stupendously educational.  I saw those two guys right then more clearly than you usually see anybody.  And maybe you're right, Pete, maybe what they needed - and I hope they got it, somehow, because it sure wasn't there for them in a little puppies demo at the Forge booth at GenCon - but maybe what they needed was to reach down and forgive their characters and then take them out of play.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

That's why I think 'puppies is necessarily best played across multiple sessions. It has nothing to do with ease or depth (ha!) of prep, or of the effort and time it takes to resolve scenes. It has everything to do with permitting some reflection about play,

It also has to do with people actually investing a substantial portion of their time into the play-experience. In other words, an hour is only an hour, but two sessions in two weeks is two weeks.

Best,
Ron

[Loki]

One of the demos I ran, though, we reached The Line. I was running for these two guys who were friends. We were all going oog and laughing and somebody did the next atrocious thing, and it got ... really interesting.

What was The Line? Do I dare ask? If it's gonna prompt sanity checks, feel free to IM me. :)

[Matt Wilson]

My call, and Vincent turns out to have been onto this all along (clever bastard), is that players must sit in judgment upon their characters.

Except characters don't really exist, so you're actually forgiving yourself for creating them and thinking such vile things.

And damn if everybody who ever existed didn't need a little more self forgiveness.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Matt,

I touch my nose to you.

In dogs, the message would depend on what body part of yours my nose is touching.

In humans, fortunately, it means I touch my own nose and thereby indicate that you are completely and fully correct, as I see it.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

My call, and Vincent turns out to have been onto this all along (clever bastard), is that players must sit in judgment upon their characters ... and oddly enough, in the long run are often inclined to show them mercy, in full knowledge that it's true mercy toward someone who emphatically does not deserve it.

You mean it's a (gasp) sort of ... Christian game?

I had the pleasure of chatting with Vincent about Puppies at UNYcon, and this aspect of it came to the fore.

I'm inclined to agree that it is one of the more Christian game concepts out there.

Oh, for what it's worth, I've got an A.A. and an A.B. in Biblical Studies, taught New Testament at a small Bible college, and am currently chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild, so I do have a pretty good idea of what might make a game "Christian".

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

*snip*
Also... no, it's not like GTA. The pleasures of GTA are in wallowing in cathartic simulation of amoral behaviour, not in freeing your creative side from the responsibility for it's content. It says on this cornflakes packet.

Being given a big play pen (a city) and zero responsibility to it...if that doesn't free up creative urges, what does? I think you can have a problem with it being a more limmited medium than RPG's, but its still an blank canvas free of the choke chain of being nice.

[pete_darby]

But if it only rewards "immoral" choices, where's the incentive to act nice? Virtue as it's own reward?

kpfs creates a system & colour where the players are actively involved in creating "damaged people", rewarding the group for having them behave immorally, then further reward them for punishing the characters. That it pushes players to the point of self awareness where they fell compelled to break the abusive cycle the game creates is a testament to the strength of the design.

But this is off topic: GTA isn't an RPG, it's a (very well designed, revolutionary in it's own way) video game, with few of the qualities that make RPG's especially interesting to me for purposese of freeing creativity, and, I still think, it's more about catharsis than premise.

[Brennan Taylor]

You mean it's a (gasp) sort of ... Christian game?

Uh-huh.

Best,
Ron

This is Vincent's dirty little secret, I think. I met him at UNYCon as well, and I have been looking over his other projects and Christian themes abound. An interesting focus for a self-proclaimed atheist. I don't mean that to be the least bit facetious, either. He comes up with some really good game concepts.

I have to admit, I have been a bit hesitant about trying kpfs, because the game focus does disturb me even before I begin to play. Maybe my line is very close.