Hey all,

If anybody's interested, I've posted a draft set of rules for a social anxiety game over on my blog.  If you feel like checking it out and commenting here, I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts.

It's more of a story game than I thought it would be, and it's sort of incomplete, but then again it's just a first attempt.  Feel free to skip the commentary and go straight to the rules at the bottom of the post.  Here's a link---Please don't mind the mess :)

http://www.metapunk.org/blog/2010/09/i-have-overcome/

Well, it doesn't look that much like a rpg, but as a introspective therapy with roleplaying elements I think it is really good.

Just a couple of details that came to my mind. Anxiety (in general) is very related to fear. Just fear. As I feel (I was quite shy when young, so I can understand it to a point) a person with social anxiety is completely scared of making mistakes, or being rejected, or just looking stupid. The problem is that precisely this fear causes all this to happen. So it's a circle from where it's very difficult to get out. With regard to that:

(1) The idea of dividing one character between several players is very good. But I think you're missing one important possibility: if there is several players for one character, nobody is fully responsible of what happens, and that could lead players to act much more relaxed when facing a conflict.

Imagine the same dynamic with the speaker trying to have a small talk with a girl. But the speaker doesn't choose what he says. Instead of it, head, heart and gut make some proposals and the winner (rpg techniques here) is what the speaker does or says. Not a clear responsible here: so it could help players to face difficult situations and get used to it.

(2) I think you're missing too the chance to show players that you can do your best, but that is not equivalent to success, and that happens to everybody. I imagine a dynamic where players has to get a goal in a social situation, but other players have secret cards, for example: 'say always yes', 'say always no', 'say what you think is right', 'say yes if he/she wears something red', 'say yes if he/she is from the opposite sex', 'say no if he/she is blond', 'say yes only if he/she talks about movies'. Leaving players to roleplay and showing every secret card at the end could be very funny.

Thanks for responding Moganhio--those are some really good suggestions. 

So far I have been thinking only about the task of facing the internal experience of anxiety and defining success in those terms; but I had hoped to build in mechanics for actual social performace at some point, and having the head, heart, and gut make suggestions for what to say makes perfect sense.  Maybe I could build that into a "second round" in the speaker's scene where the interaction is role-played.  In a slightly earlier set of notes (call it a "zero-th" version), I had been thinking there would be a GM of sorts, who might role-play NPC's.  I'd rather avoid a GM, and I don't want to lose the head/heart/gut dynamic, but maybe they could double up and play the external aspects of words, relations, and actions for NPC's.

I really like the idea of the secret cards, too.  It sounds like that would involve a different mode of play (or could be combined with the "second round" discussed above).  This way, there would be progressive levels to the game--at first you're dealing strictly with your anxious thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and then you move up to the actual social performance.  You have to achieve your goals, but you're limited by what the cards say... or by what the cards are telling the NPC's to say/do. 

Actually--maybe a good way to incorporate both levels is to have cards that when drawn indicate whether the speaker must focus the conflict on his/her anxiety (internal), or on performance (external).

I was also thinking some form of currency might be good, to act as a reward system and also to let the speaker have some options. 
This could represent things like self-respect, or the strength of the relationship with an NPC (i.e. how much strain you can put it under before it breaks).  Socially anxious people often believe others will react with hostility (or highly negatively) if they speak their mind or contradict the other person (i.e. fear of confrontation).  If there was some currency representing the relationship, the players would realize that they can afford to put the relationship under some stress before it breaks... (or maybe not the strength of the relationship, but the stress tolerance of the other person, is represented--and when that limit is reached, more options for dealing with a higher level of confrontation open up).

The zeroth version also had some notes about developing specific social skills, such as humour, storytelling, flirting, etc., but that might be overcomplicating the issue.  Might make it more like a traditional RPG, though...

Hmm... Lots to think about.