[Bliss Stage] Saved through childbearing

[GreatWolf]

Right now, right this moment, right as you read these words, humanity is devastated by an alien attack from the edges of our understanding.

Introduction

I've been really curious about Bliss Stage ever since I heard about it a couple of years ago.  I admit that it was something of a dark curiosity.  On the one hand, I have a long-time fanboy appreciation for mecha.  My first game was a mecha wargame, and my favorite bits about Games Workshop's EPIC game was its mechs.  So a game about mechs formed from relationships, piloted by angsty teens, seemed right up my alley.  Add to this the fact that Bliss Stage was written by Ben Lehman, the author of Polaris, and I was ready to buy.  On the other hand, though, I was concerned that the stories would necessarily degenerate into sexually vile territory.  The idea that combat power comes from intimacy, which is best boosted by having sex, seemed disturbing.  So I remained uncertain.

Then I heard about the mission mechanic (which I will discuss below), and I was pushed over the edge.  So, when Ben announced that there were only a few more preorder slots available, I threw down my cash and bought in.

I do not regret it.

I know that Bliss Stage has been getting a lot of love around the Net, but now, the World's Biggest Polaris Fanboy is bringing his power to bear on Bliss Stage.  So, suit up, strap in, and hold on.


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

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

We are the resistance

Last Saturday (8/25/2007), we sat down to play Bliss Stage.  Here are the players:

Seth—That's me.  As I mentioned above, I'm a big fan of Polaris, I like mechs, I like tragedy, and I like mind-bending settings.  That puts me squarely in the target market for this game.

Crystal—This is my wife.  She likes immersive games that focus on relationships.  Mechs don't really move her, although they aren't a turn-off either.  She did watch Evangelion with me, and she liked it.  And she loves me, so she was willing to give Bliss Stage a whirl.

Gabrielle—This is my sister, who lives with us.  Gabrielle has had some exposure to the mech genre, especially while she was helping me demo my own mecha game.  More importantly, she has seen all the Matrix movies, so the dream world mech concept clicked fairly easily with her.  Plus, she is also a Ben Lehman fan, so she was interested in the game.

By mutual consent, I was appointed to be the GM.  We even had a brief conversation about how long it's been since we've played a roleplaying game with a GM.  (About two years, if I recall correctly.)  I read the "Seven Years" and "The ANIMa" sections of the book to them, and then we started brainstorming.

Of late, it seems like all my roleplaying is happening in Peoria, where I live.  Dirty Secrets must be set in the players' home town, my recent game of Breaking the Ice was set in Peoria, and now Bliss Stage is in the ruins of Peoria, seven years from now.

Ah, the many sides of Peoria.

Anyways, we finally hashed out our resistance cell.  They are headquartered in downtown Peoria, where they have dug tunnels connecting the basements of the different buildings together.  Not only are they threatened by the aliens, but they must also fend off the Bigelow Boys, a real-life Peoria gang that has only become nastier in the seven years since the attack.  Also, at age 15, everyone in the group starts doing drugs in an attempt to stave off the Bliss.  So far, we don't know if it will actually work for anyone other than Jared.  Here's hoping.

Here's our Dramatis Personae:

Primary Figures

Jared—our authority figure.  Age 27, stays high to stay awake.  Once he was a white trash stoner, but now he actually has a purpose.  Sadly, if he gives up his drugs, he gives up the fight.

Marcus—Gabrielle's pilot.  Age 17.  Devoted Lover.  Marcus is a family man.  At least, as much of a family man as you can be at 17.  He is married to Beth, and they have a daughter named Renee.  They love each other but their relationship is immature.

Jude—Crystal's pilot.  Age 13.  Carefree Hedonist.  Jude is an ex-Bigelow Boy who finally split with the gang after betraying them to rescue the resistance cell.  Now he pilots the group's second ANIMa.  However, he is not integrating well into the group, as he constantly slips away into the ruins to visit Rachel, a whore that he holed up with a while back.  He respects Leah far too much to make a move on her.

Leah—Gabrielle's anchor.  Age 13.  Mousy and studious.  Very nervous.  Has a crush on Jude but is too embarrassed to admit it.

Beth—Crystal's anchor.  Age 15.  Usually anchors for Marcus.  Punchy and violent at times, yet deeply in love with Marcus.

Secondary Characters

Joseph—Chief Scout for the group.  Age 13.  Owns a pack of vicious dogs and a Big Ol' Knife.  Cold and dangerous.  Now married to Gloria after rescuing her from being raped by the Bigelow Boys.  Why yes, Jude was nearby when this happened.  Why do you ask?

Gloria—no specified role yet.  Mother of Nathaniel as a result of her rape.  Married to Joseph.  (Also, proof of Ron's assertion here.)

Rachel—whore in the wastes.  Age 13.  Not part of the resistance group, but Jude's current thing.

Eve—resistance group's manager and everyone's "mother".  Age 17.  Married to Jared.  Pregnant.  She should give birth before her eighteenth birthday, so maybe she can get on the drugs so the Bliss won't get her.

The Kids

Kay—Age 7.  Was the child of Jared's neighbor.  Now Jared and Eve are taking care of her.  She cares for the two little ones of the community.

Nathaniel—Age 2.  Gloria's son.  Adopted by Joseph.  Precocious.

Renee—Age 4 months.  Daughter of Marcus and Beth.

And last, but certainly not least, our Hope:

"We hope that we can establish a stable community."


Some thoughts on creating your resistance group

So, did you follow all that?  If you did, then you're a better person than me.  We took somewhere between two and three hours to put all that together, which was somewhat surprising to me.  This isn't a bad thing, mind you.  It's just a matter of expectations.  I had hoped to run through the first mission that evening, but by the end of creating our resistance group, we were all tired and ready to call it quits for the evening.

The quantity of characters can be a little overwhelming, too.  I know that we've pretty much created all the characters that we will use for the game, but still, pulling out that stack of index cards and flipping through it can be quite the experience.

Also, I found that the pace of the game slowed down sharply when we actually created pilots.  Before then, everything was snappy.  Then, when the players were working on assigning relationships, the energy level dropped.  I think that this is because we only have one copy of the book, so only one player could work on his relationships at a time.  Also, there was a lot of referring to the character cards, trying to remember who all we had invented, and this slowed things down, too.  So, something to be aware of.  In the future, it might be good to scrawl down a character relationship worksheet for each player to use when creating a pilot.  Afterwards, the information could be transcribed onto the character cards.

Reflections on the game

At a certain point during prep, Crystal cited this Scripture verse:  "Yet she will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control."  (1 Timothy 2:15)  As we were forming our community, we realized that a major factor was the need to bear more children.  Otherwise, there wouldn't be anyone left to consolidate the gains that we made, even if our ANIMa were victorious over the aliens.  I think that this is going to be a running theme of our game.  Our ability to resolve our hope in any positive sense is going to have to include the foundation of families in a protected environment.

Also, it will be interesting to see how relationships with the children morph over time.  We also have a couple different "origins" of the children.  Renee is born to a married couple, while Nathaniel is the result of a rape.  He has been adopted, to be sure, but still, I wonder how much his parentage will be an issue in this fragile community.

Jude is also big trouble.  While he is a pilot and therefore important, he hasn't really integrated with the goals and philosophies of the group.  That will be a problem.

Next up, our first session of gameplay.

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

...end transmission...

[Ben Lehman]

Hey, Seth!

I have a hunch why character creation took you so long: you've totally maxed out the number of secondary characters. That's fine, but I understand why there was some tension when you got around to assigning relationships: the more characters there are, the more annoying that step is going to be.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your first session.

yrs--
--Ben

[GreatWolf]

Hey, Seth!

I have a hunch why character creation took you so long: you've totally maxed out the number of secondary characters. That's fine, but I understand why there was some tension when you got around to assigning relationships: the more characters there are, the more annoying that step is going to be.

My reading of the book was that you're supposed to have somewhere between 10-13 characters in the resistance group.  Can you actually do less?  What's the smallest functional amount?

And I'm not really complaining about the number of characters.  Honestly, it's not really that much more than any other RPG.  But, since you're making them up-front and, especially, since you're assigning relationships to them, you feel like they have more "weight" than in, say, Polaris.

Here's a question for you.  Are you allowed to create secondary cast during play?  Like, instead of creating all these relationships at  the beginning of the game, the pilot gets his pool of available relationships and can assign them on the fly.  Like this:

"I'm forming a rocket launcher on my ANIMa.  That's, uh, my relationship with Jinny, the tech who maintains the creche?" 

"Who's Jinny?"

"Don't know.  Just made her up."

Is that legit?  We didn't go this route, but I'm wondering.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your first session.

Hopefully today or tomorrow.  It was a good time!

[Ben Lehman]

The minimum (jeez, this isn't in the book) is 7, which is enough for everyone but the Carefree Hedonist to have one relationship at default.

You are totally not allowed to improvise relationships in the manner that you were talking about. I imagine that doing so would lead to a mushy and unsatisfying feeling in play. What you are allowed to do, as a GM, is have New Face missions interludes that introduce new characters as a reward.

yrs--
--Ben

[GreatWolf]

You are totally not allowed to improvise relationships in the manner that you were talking about. I imagine that doing so would lead to a mushy and unsatisfying feeling in play. What you are allowed to do, as a GM, is have New Face missions interludes that introduce new characters as a reward.

I figured as much.  It makes much more sense to be risking a connection with someone that you already know, even just a little.

As far as New Face missions, do you have to have an in-game justification for why the new character's appearance is connected to the mission?  Or can it be just a bennie for achieving a certain objective?

[Ben Lehman]

As far as New Face missions, do you have to have an in-game justification for why the new character's appearance is connected to the mission?  Or can it be just a bennie for achieving a certain objective?

You need a fictional representation. It can be as simple as rescuing that person's dream-self from alien baddies, though.

Likewise, if you don't want New-Face-ness to be connected to the dream world, you can have a New Face interlude.

yrs--
--Ben

[GreatWolf]

Likewise, if you don't want New-Face-ness to be connected to the dream world, you can have a New Face interlude.

New Face interlude?  I don't remember reading about that.  What are the rules for doing that?

[Ben Lehman]

Ah, crap.  They didn't make the cut in the last rewrite.

Anyway, they work how you'd imagine: You play an action with a new character, then there's a new character in the group. I wouldn't recommend doing it until you've offed some of your present characters, though: you have a big group!

[GreatWolf]

Oh, by the way, there will be character sketches forthcoming, done by Crystal.

[GreatWolf]

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

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

On 8/27/2007, Crystal, Gabrielle, and I sat down to play our first session of Bliss Stage.  Things start off with a bang, so suit up, strap in, and hold on.

Scramble!

I don't like doing game prep, so I already like Bliss Stage.  Yes, there's the need to put together missions, which I'll discuss a bit below.  But the opening of the game is scripted.  You start with a mission briefing.  Aliens are attacking the base.  They must be stopped!  If not, one of the characters will be Harmed.

Very cool.  And very helpful. The opening mission serves as a simple tutorial on running mission actions, which require a bit of understanding to grasp, plus it immediately destabilizes the opening situation.  I love it.

Mission Brief
Scramble!
...begin briefing...

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

...end briefing...

So, two alien remotes were attacking our base in downtown Peoria.  One was coming from the north, near St. Francis Medical Center, and the other from the south, across the river.  As a bonus, here's a map of the area in question.  The pointer shows where our headquarters are located.

I decided that remotes have an overlap in the dream world and the real world.  So they can be engaged as dream entities and destroyed.  So, the pilots scrambled to their ANIMa crèches.

We agreed that, in the anime of our game, there's a standard montage of launching the ANIMas.  We also agreed that we need to have "start the mission!" music or something.  I've located a MIDI of the "Angel Attack" theme from Evangelion, but I'm open to suggestions.

We ran both missions separately. Jude went south, across the Bob Michel bridge, and was able to engage and destroy the remote at that location.  Marcus went north towards OSF and easily destroyed the remote at that location.

I made a rules error for these missions.  I missed the fact that I always narrate for the aliens.  I thought that I could only contribute narration if pilot safety was threatened as the result of a mission roll.  This led to a bit of confusion for Crystal, who was trying to get into character as an anchor, yet provide adversity at the same time.  Once we ironed this out in future actions, the process was much smoother.

Also, we were still hashing out the look-and-feel of the ANIMas.  We've finally settled on rounded, organic shapes, instead of blocky, armored shapes.  So, closer to Evangelion than Battletech.  We also discovered that Crystal didn't have nearly the level of exposure to the mech concept as Gabrielle and I did.  But, after some encouragement, she managed to come up with some cool gear for her ANIMa.  And, as a bonus, she has been tying her equipment to the relationship thematically. So, Jude's relationship with Rachel is a sensor jammer, and his relationship with Gloria is a cancer gun.  Yeah, it fires projectiles that metastasize upon hitting the target, burrowing in all directions.  Nasty!


On the Home Front

After the mission, we jumped to interlude actions.  I explained to Crystal and Gabrielle that this is the basic pattern of the game.  Actually, I think the quote went like this:  "In mission actions, we fight the aliens.  Then, in interlude actions, we whine about how nobody understands how hard it is."  We all got a good laugh out of that.

So, after the mission, Jude and Leah had a brief interlude.  Leah had been forced to use the panic button to get Jude out of the dream world, since she was beginning to lose control.  She was really upset by this and hurried over to help Jude out of the tank, clean the goo off him, and the like.  They never actually made eye contact, though, both being very embarrassed by the sudden close proximity.  Then Jude made an excuse and bolted for the door.  Off to see Rachel.  I called it an Intimacy Building scene, because of their physical contact and working together on a shared project (cleaning up Jude).

Marcus and Beth had their own interlude.  Here's the background.  Their relationship had picked up some stress during the battle, and they had had a brief debate about Beth's using the panic button to get Marcus out of the dream world.  Marcus convinced her to let him wake up naturally, which had been disappointing to Beth. 

So, as their interlude, they were having a picnic dinner on top of one of the tall buildings downtown, watching the sunset.  At this point, Marcus brings up the panic button again, asking Beth if she would please refrain from using it if it isn't necessary.  This turned into a big fight, as Beth started blaming Marcus for abandoning her with Renee at night.  Beth claimed that she was doing all the work of raising their child, especially at night, when Marcus doesn't wake up to take care of the baby.  So yeah, if she can't wake him up at night, then at least she'll get the pleasure of jolting him out of "sleep" at the end of a mission.  Beth was really fierce and emotional during this fight; she even started crying at one point.  Marcus fumbled around a bit and eventually settled on trying to placate Beth, saying that he would stay up with the baby that night.  I called this Stress Relief.


Dawn Patrol

Marcus did his best.  But, early the next day, Jared knocked on the door.  Someone needed to do a perimeter sweep, and Jude had gone missing.  Marcus tried to avoid waking up Beth, but she got up herself and insisted on anchoring for the mission.  So they left the baby with Kay and went to the ANIMa crèche to launch.

Mission Brief
Dawn Patrol
...begin briefing...

• Secure base perimeter
• Scout out local region
• If failed, prevent alien pilot from escaping

...end briefing...


This mission didn't go quite as smoothly as the first.  Maybe she was tired, but Beth wasn't doing as good a job of keeping control of the dream.  A nasty rain of steel droplets started falling from the sky, and Beth's communications with Marcus were uneven and static-filled.

After fulfilling the second mission objective, Marcus discovered a large pulsating alien hive atop the ridge line overlooking the base.  So he hotshotted a goal:  Destroy alien hive.  Thankfully, this succeeded, although I managed to squick out my players with my description of alien goo flying everywhere, including onto the ANIMa, where it started melting pieces of equipment and such, thus justifying some of the battle damage.


Tensions Relieved and Heightened

Back to interludes.  Marcus and Beth had a quick interlude immediately after mission, hugging and holding each other.  I called this Stress Relief, too.  This was good, because they were on the verge of losing a point of Trust.

Then I called for an interlude.  Jude is coming back into base from visiting Rachel, when Joseph confronts him.  I actually have ownership of Joseph, which meant that Gabrielle was Judge for the interlude.  This was cool; I had thought that I would end up being Judge all the time and was glad to have been wrong about that.

Joseph doesn't like the Bigelow Boys, so he doesn't trust Jude.  Now, with Jude coming back from who-knows-where, Joseph tries to put the fear into him.  Nothing quite like a big ol' knife to scare someone.  Joseph even used it to scratch Jude on the arm, right where his Bigelow Boys' tattoo is.

Gabrielle called it Intimacy Building.  Funny, but true.


Some thoughts on missions

The Bliss Stage mission system is really cool.  There's immersion in spades, if you like that kind of thing, but there's also an appropriate amount of strategy, too.  Bliss Stage makes mechanized combat narrative without losing actual tactical concerns.

For those who don't know, essentially the anchor and pilot talk to each other in character for the entire mission.  It's a combination of the Operator from The Matrix and the radio chatter between an armored vehicle and base.  It was a little tricky at first, but we're getting the hang of it.  Give us another session, and it will probably be second nature.

We started doing other things to help us get into the moment.  First, we laid out the various character cards in the shape of a mech, putting the pilot at the head, the anchor as the body, and the other characters in the appropriate locations for their equipment.  So, Crystal's head-mounted cancer gun went above her pilot.  Gabrielle's Really Big Gun was mounted on her mech's left hand, so the card went on the left.

Also, while Crystal was anchoring, she actually picked up an old keyboard and set it on the table in front of her.  Then, as she ran control work, she could type on the keyboard and gesture at various imaginary displays in front of her.

From a tactical perspective, I appreciated how you want to power up your mech by getting the right amount of dice.  Unused dice mostly turn into Bliss, so you don't want too many of them around.  However, you do want enough positive dice to put into your various mission categories.  But then, each piece you add to your mech becomes another piece that you have to defend.  And, of course, "0" results on unused dice don't turn into Bliss, so maybe it's better to put the "-" dice into battle damage to your mech instead of Bliss for your pilot....

And then there's trauma.  As your pilot becomes more injured, the GM gets to pick mission categories to threaten, making them harder to win.  The player has to assign two dice to a category, and then take the lower result.  This just makes a bad situation worse.  There are other nasty things that you can do with trauma, but I haven't had the chance to try them out...yet.

So, a big thumbs up on the mission rules, Ben!


Some thoughts on being the GM

Over here, there was some discussion of what it means to be the GM in Bliss Stage.  I was planning on writing a little about that, so here's my take on being GM.

On the one hand, being a GM in this game isn't really much different from being a player.  I even get my own special character.  The players get pilots; I get an authority figure.  (As an aside, I loved the rule about a player being able to assume the GM role by having his pilot become the new authority figure.)  So, in some ways, I don't do much different from the other players.

Except one thing.

I think that, in Bliss Stage, it's my job to be the War.

Here's what I mean.  Interludes are all about the various characters dealing with their issues.  However, they are all part of this war, and that means that they have to do things that they don't like doing or don't want to do.  I think that it's my job to increase that stress.

This shows up in two ways.  First, I'm laying out missions with no real care for what the future holds for our characters.  I figure that we will simply do them in the order that I prep them.  That's the force of Necessity.  These things Must Be Done.  If you can't deal with it, well, then that's really just too bad.

However, if I can take advantage of the characters' situation somehow and use a mission to exacerbate it, well, so much the better.  That's what I did with Dawn Patrol.  Originally, I went with that title because it seemed evocative.  However, after Marcus and Beth had their fight, I had to force that mission on Marcus.

I figure that playing the authority figure is similar.  He needs to be the advocate of what is Necessary and demand it of the characters.  How they react is up to them.

And, after all, isn't accepting the Necessary part of growing up?


Reflections on the game

I talked a lot about mission actions, but Gabrielle had a moment of realization in an interlude that I wanted to share.

Marcus is Gabrielle's pilot, so she got to play his side of the Marcus/Beth argument.  Crystal didn't go easy, either, as she fully played up the emotional, irrational woman role.  (She fully acknowledges that she has played this role in real life from time to time.)  Marcus wasn't just floundering; Gabrielle was floundering.

We ended up talking about this a little after the game, with Gabrielle having a little more sympathy for men.  But also, she said that the incident made her realize that she doesn't know how to deal with emotional people at all.  It was a moment of self-awareness prompted by the game, so I thought that I'd share.

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

...end transmission...

[Gabrielle]

Ben, I understand how fewer characters might be easier, but I just can't pick a secondary character I would want to do without. I am also a raving Polaris fan, but I haven't had as many opportunities as Seth to be vocal about it. Thanks for making these games. I am having a blast. A very stressful blast, but a blast nonetheless.

[hix]

Welcome to the Forge, Gabrielle!

In what ways are you finding the game stressful?
What are you finding a blast about it?

[Gabrielle]

Welcome to the Forge, Gabrielle!

In what ways are you finding the game stressful?
What are you finding a blast about it?

Thanks for the welcome, Steve.

The first reason I am having a blast with Bliss Stage is on a purely geek-out level. Giant robots blowing stuff up! That's cool. On a more serious level there is a story that I am getting emotionally involved in and within the story are a group of characters I care strongly about. Those are exactly yhe kind of stories I love to read and tell. Plus I get my pilot to totally immerse in. Which leads to the stressful part.

We picked up some ruins, crafted something cozy, and comfortable and sweet out of them, and then pitched it into the fire. Seth had to do a little fast talking to get me to play Bliss Stage (the fast talking mostly consisted of "Giant robots blowing stuff up!") because I knew we were going to be putting children through hell and that we weren't going to pull any punches. I've reached a good place of caring without caring too much, but it's still going to be a hard story to tell. But, strangely, I don't think I would enjoy the game half as much if it wasn't so hard.

[GreatWolf]

Welcome to the Forge, Gabrielle!

(I had to do it.)

We picked up some ruins, crafted something cozy, and comfortable and sweet out of them, and then pitched it into the fire. Seth had to do a little fast talking to get me to play Bliss Stage (the fast talking mostly consisted of "Giant robots blowing stuff up!") because I knew we were going to be putting children through hell and that we weren't going to pull any punches.

And this is the weird thing, perhaps.  I didn't see a comfortable sweet community at the beginning.  I saw a desperate group, holding on by a thread, doing...questionable...things to get by.  Just as an example, consider that, even though we have little family units, they aren't really stable family units.  These children may be survivors, but they aren't really mature yet.  That's part of what went into Beth's explosion at Marcus.  She hasn't really grown up yet.

That's why our Hope makes sense to me.  It's not that they are a cozy, sweet group.  But maybe they could become that.

Also, for those outside our gaming group, I want to note that Bliss Stage was number 2 on my Buy list.  Number 1 was Grey Ranks.  Teenagers in war is the common theme here.  I'm still working through what I should learn about myself as a result of this.

I've reached a good place of caring without caring too much, but it's still going to be a hard story to tell. But, strangely, I don't think I would enjoy the game half as much if it wasn't so hard.

I agree.  And I don't think that it's just that we're masochistic gamers (or sadistic gamers, for that matter).  But, out of loss comes beauty.  Out of death comes rebirth.

From these ashes, something amazing will arise.  If it doesn't die in the birthing of it.

I'm looking forward to see what happens next.

[Ben Lehman]

Ben, I understand how fewer characters might be easier, but I just can't pick a secondary character I would want to do without. I am also a raving Polaris fan, but I haven't had as many opportunities as Seth to be vocal about it. Thanks for making these games. I am having a blast. A very stressful blast, but a blast nonetheless.

You're welcome.

Thank you for playing.

We picked up some ruins, crafted something cozy, and comfortable and sweet out of them, and then pitched it into the fire. Seth had to do a little fast talking to get me to play Bliss Stage (the fast talking mostly consisted of "Giant robots blowing stuff up!") because I knew we were going to be putting children through hell and that we weren't going to pull any punches

So here's a thing. If you want someone to blame for the beginning ideas of Bliss Stage, you can blame Andy. But you could also blame Meg Baker. I met her shortly before I started writing the game, and we were talking about some damn gaming thing, lines and veils or whatnot, and she said "my hard line is at children getting hurt."

And I, like the asshole I am, start thinking "children getting hurt ... huh ... is there a game there?" and about a week later I totally had the rules down. It wasn't a "I want to make a game you can't play hahah" just a starting the wheels spinning.

yrs--
--Ben