A Dark And Quiet Room

Something that Gabrielle and I realized when reflecting about our game of Bliss Stage is that our characters did the exact thing that we often criticize in other Christians: bailing out of the city to hide in the country. I think that our playing through this game has given us a different perspective on the issue. Yes, it’s possible to be hiding in the country from the problems of the city. At the same time, it’s also possible to withdraw from the city in an attempt to regroup and to train your children to be better warriors than you are. Sometimes you just don’t have enough of a foothold to be able to fight effectively.

Still, it feels retreatist to me. But how much of that is because it’s the truth, and how much of it is my own hang-ups? I’m still trying to figure that out.

Post-Game Reflections

First, just to get this out of the way:

Ben! I played a girl! Are you happy now!!!?!?!??111eleventyone

Actually, the most awkward part of the experience was actually trying to step into a character that had been characterized by someone else for so long. Had I been doing so from the beginning, it might not have been so odd.

Gabrielle noted that, in the end, our group raised horses and grew gardens. It’s such a girly ending. She pities me.

We didn’t realize that we could end the game whenever we wanted after we were done to one remaining pilot. In some ways, the ending would have been more powerful if it had come immediately on the heels of Marcus taking over as leader. But, the last mission gave him an opportunity to demonstrate his superior leadership skills.

Now, for the biggest item of discussion: the ending.

At first, I didn’t like the ending. It felt…weak, somehow. I kept wanting there to be something else to make it satisfying to me, and it wasn’t really coming.

We ended up having a serious discussion about it. In my mind, the group had taken the cowards’ route. They ran, when they should have fought. In the end, the ground that had been fought for was lost. They should have stayed. Even if they had lost, it would have been a noble end.

Gabrielle and Crystal argued the other way. What else was the group supposed to do? They were out of pilots, and they were slowly losing. Plus, they couldn’t keep out the Bigelow Boys forever. They said that I needed to think multi-generationally about this. The group hasn’t given up the fight. But they needed to withdraw for a while, regroup, and train their children to be better warriors than they had been able to be. And what good is a noble end if the aliens win? Crystal put it most forcefully: if they had stayed, would they have been fighting for victory, or just for their pride?

Made me think, it did. And in the end, I think that Crystal and Gabrielle are right. But, at the same time, it feels a lot like behavior that I do not like in others. Rather than being willing to take on serious issues, people hide away. At the same time, sometimes what looks like hiding is really just a temporary withdrawal, until a true victory can be won.

This is a major point for me, and it’s something that I’ll be mulling over for a while.

Conclusion

Joseph says it’s time to go. I’ve already been broadcasting too long, and he’s concerned that the aliens will be able to triangulate our position. Time to bug out and work our way towards home. So, for the Peoria Resistance Group, this is Seth Ben-Ezra.

See you on the other side.
…end transmission…

Infiltrators

But it was not yet time for peace. Marcus came to see Jude the next day. They had spotted incoming aliens, and he needed Jude out in an ANIMa. So Jude launched.

Because Gabrielle was now the GM, I received ownership of Leah, her anchor. So, for the first time, I was able to anchor a mission. Yay!

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Infiltrators
Destroy alien brain probe
Must be done first
If failed, Kay blisses out
Locate other probes
If successful, destroy other probes
Repair destroyed sensor package
…end briefing…

The aliens were playing for keeps. They had sent probes to kill the children as retaliation for the raid on the alien growth pods. So Jude ran around, destroying probes. During the fight, Jude’s electro-chain was ripped off his ANIMa. (That’s his relationship with Jude.) So, to replace it, Jude manifested his relationship with Marcus as a strong arm that fired expanding balls of laser from its palm.

Again, we know our symbolism.

But then Marcus spoke into the mike. He needed Jude to go north and repair the sensor package that had been disabled in the assault. So Jude headed north and was able to repair the sensors. But alien slime climbed up his arm, melting it away. So Jude started yelling, “Eject! Eject!”

Jude had Blissed Out.

Our Happy Home

That was the end for Jude. He and Leah packed up their few belongings and headed north. They were gone for a year, but they found a place to live near Rockford. There was an old campground, fairly secure and beautiful. So then, they returned to Peoria to gather the rest of the group.

Then they left Peoria.

Jared was already gone. He had vanished one day, abandoning Eve and Hope. So now, Eve is a single mother, but the community is helping her with her daughter.

Beth gave birth to a boy. Leah has given birth to a little girl, and Jude is just ga-ga over her.

Joseph refused to let the Bigelow Boys benefit from their hard work, so he set fires in the base. Flames licked the sky as they began their exodus to the north. Looking back, one of them saw an alien remote, striding through the ruins, highlighted by the burning city.

But now they are safe. They are careful to stay off the grid so that the aliens can’t locate them. And yeah, all they are doing is growing herbs and raising horses. But they are also teaching their children how to fight.

And one day, they will finish what their parents started.

…incoming transmission …
… Peoria Resistance Group…

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

I love the design of the Ignition Stage book. It’s small, white, and friendly to hold. I’m conflicted on the lack of title on the front of the book, but I don’t really care that much. It’s an elegant object.

So, imagine my distress when I discovered that a drop of coffee had somehow worked its way through the top of my satchel and left a brown spot right in the middle of the front of the book. Argh!I guess that I’ll just call it battle damage. So now, my Bliss Stage book has one point of Trauma. I wonder how a book gets Trauma relief?

Last night, we finished our Bliss Stage campaign. It was good and bad and difficult and thought-provoking, and everyone got what they wanted, except maybe me, but that’s probably a good thing, and anyways I learned about myself because I didn’t get what I wanted, so that’s good, too.

So suit up, strap in, and prepare for launch!

Pods of Darkness

I wanted to keep the pressure on, so I started us with a briefing action. Jared summons Marcus and tells him to go track down those alien growth pods and destroy them. Jared is really not doing well at this point. He is tired and strung out, and he is slowly losing control of everything. But Marcus goes anyways.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Pods of Darkness
Locate alien growth pods (must be done first)
If failed, remaining goals fail
Establish psychic shield
This is a secret goal
Destroy alien growth pods
If succeeded and no psychic shield, one character is harmed.
Destroy alien growth pods
If succeeded and no psychic shield, one character is harmed.
Evade alien patrol
If failed, wild card goal. Pilot must improvise something.
This is a secret goal
…end briefing…

The mission was largely uneventful, except for the moment where Marcus was lost to anchor contact while trying to hack together a psychic shield out of his power mace. I did invoke Panic during his attempt to evade the alien patrol, which finally worked out for me. In the past, when I’ve invoked Panic, the player has rolled minimal neutral results, which means that Panic has actually helped out the player. This time, not so much. But still, Marcus burst from hiding and flattened the alien attacker.

By the end of the mission, Marcus was only a couple points away from Blissing out.

A Change at the Top

After the mission, Marcus went looking for Jared to express some concerns with how things were being run. He’s feeling like the group is taking too many risks. Instead, Jared completely comes apart on him, sobbing that it’s all too hard. Marcus tries to encourage him, but Jared just walks off. Marcus sighs and slumps into Jared’s chair. Trauma Relief.

Yeah, we’re not always subtle with our symbolism.

So, when Jude came in to find Jared, he found Marcus instead. Jude and Marcus talk about the future. Jude and Leah want to leave. They don’t think that the city is a good place to try to raise a family. Instead, they want to find a safer place to be. Maybe raise horses. At first, Marcus isn’t really sure if it’s a good idea, but eventually he tells Jude that it’s his decision. “It’s your family, not mine.” Jude leaves, but Jared overheard it all. Trust Breaking with Jared, but Trust Building with Jude.

That broke Marcus’s relationship with Jared, forcing him to Bliss Out.

So, Gabrielle narrated the resolution action with Marcus. Jared comes storming back into the room and accuses Marcus of usurping his position and stuff like that. Marcus finally confronts Jared about how he is being a bad leader. Instead of listening, Jared cusses out Marcus and dashes from the room.

Marcus became the new authority figure. So Gabrielle became the new GM, and she was able to resolve our Hope.

Yes, we can establish a stable community…somewhere else.

So Marcus grabbed Jude and said, “Let’s have a group meeting to discuss leaving. Round up everyone.”

And Jude said, “Yes, sir” and did it.

…signal restored…

Reflections on the game

So, where do I start?

The hospital mission was heavy. I mean, really heavy. We talked about it a bit afterwards, wondering why. Yes, we know that the subject material was heavy, but the rest of it has been heavy, too. Also, I’m specifically talking about the mission itself. Here’s what we came up with.

Part of it was that it was so gritty. Missions in the dreamworld aren’t quite “real”, since you can always eject if necessary. This…this had no easy escape hatch.

Also, the aliens are “just” nightmares and enemies. Humans gone feral are worse somehow. The aliens are opposed to us, but they aren’t bent in the same way that the Bigelow Boys were. Gabrielle said that Marcus was quite aware of this the whole time. If they were surrounded and unable to escape, he was going to kill Kay before he let her fall into their hands.

Finally, the city itself had gone feral. Launching assaults into the dreamworld is still done from the safety of our base. This involved physically leaving the base and venturing into the dark.

Um, yeah. Let’s move onto other things.

I keep forgetting to use Trauma in mission actions. I probably forget half the time. I forgot for the entirety of the hospital mission. I’m not sure how to make sure that I remember.

The general consensus of my players is that Jared is a loser and a poor leader. Gabrielle has decided that Marcus will take over once his Bliss hits 108. Which, given her generally poor die rolls, could be as soon as next engagement.

Both Crystal and Gabrielle have commented that they have a hard time being anchor. They say that they feel weird stating the obvious to the pilot. There’s this sense that talking through every little thing is dumb, but then they don’t know how much to say. They are also trying to stay in character as the anchor, which adds some more confusion. So, got any advice or helpful pointers?

We noticed that we use a lot of body language when roleplaying. Some of this is just jumpy gestures. Some of it is specific miming. For example, during “On the Offensive”, Marcus took cover under one of the alien pod trees. I told her that there were tentacles draped over her ANIMa, and, to demonstrate, I dangled my arm limply in front of her face.

Earlier in this series, I mentioned that I think that the most important “character” the GM plays is the War. At this point, I’m going to stand by this assertion. I’ve been ramping up the intensity of the missions, often by increasing the impact of failure or by increasing their length. At the same time, due to increased Trauma and Bliss, the pilots are less able to handle what’s coming at them. This ramping up creates direct pressure on the relationships within the group, pushing the story through towards its inevitable conclusion. To be clear, I think that the authority figure is the other important character that the GM needs to play, but I still think that the War is the most important character. In this game, Jared is mostly a cipher, existing to look foolish and issue orders. We seem to be doing just fine.

Finally, for some reason, Crystal can roll well in Bliss Stage. You need to understand that Crystal is quite possibly the world’s worst die roller. Ralph can testify to this as well. She can roll a critical failure in games that don’t have critical failures. However, in this game, for some reason, Crystal can roll a handful of dice and come up with nearly all (+) results. Weird. Has Bliss Stage cured Crystal’s dice luck? I guess we will find out when we play Steal Away Jordan. So, Ben, stay tuned. You may have an unusual selling point for Bliss Stage. “Cures bad dice luck!”

Rules questions

We did end up with some rules questions.

–Does a denouement caused from battle damage count as a privileged interlude?

–If you successfully create a new anchor, does the new anchor get an anchor ability? If so, who decides?

–During an anchor training mission, can the trainee anchor? Or do you actually need to have an experienced anchor there, plus the trainee?

Closing

I don’t think that we will be going much further with this game. Both pilots have 91 Bliss, so they will both bliss out soon; probably during next engagement, in fact. The end is near.

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

…end transmission…

”It’s not going well”

Jude and Leah had, um, retired for the night when Kay came running to get Marcus. “Jared needs you right now,” she said. So Marcus ran after her. Kay didn’t take her to the office; she took him to Jared’s quarters.

There was blood everywhere.

Jared is pacing back and forth, helpless. “She’s in labor, but it’s not going well. I don’t know what to do. You have to help me.” Beth came in close on Kay’s heels. She had spent several years living in the library, so she knew what was going on.

Honestly, I know enough about birth and pregnancy to know that things can go quite badly. Crystal knows a lot, so I asked her for some appropriate medical technobabble. She obliged quite nicely. Beth looked in on Eve. “She needs a caesarian. We need to cut the baby out.”

Beth needed supplies from the nearby hospital. But, of course, that’s inside Bigelow Boy territory. By this point, word has spread. Joseph turned up and asked Marcus what was up. When he found out, he said to Marcus, “Well, let’s go.”

Kay wanted to go to help. So, as twilight crept across the city, the three of them crept out into the ruins.

Hospital Raid

When I saw that it was possible to run missions in the real world, I wanted to give it a spin. Everyone at the table had known that we would eventually do some sort of raid, but I don’t think that any of us were ready for the intensity of the situation.

Not even me.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Hospital Raid
(A real world mission)
(must be done in order)
Enter hospital without being seen
If failed, fight Bigelow Boys and fail “Return to base without being seen”
If failed, “Locate Medical Supplies” failed and character harmed
Locate medical supplies
If failed, Eve dies
Return to base without being seen
If failed, fight Bigelow Boys
If failed, character harmed
…end briefing…

This sheet was sitting in front of Gabrielle, since Marcus was the pilot on the mission. The simple statement “Eve dies” gave an incredible intensity to the mission.

And did you know that a real-world mission doesn’t have a lot of dice? We agreed that, once at the hospital, we could call on Beth for dice, but to get in and out, the only dice available were from Joseph and Kay. Just for clarity, that’s four dice, with no anchor rerolls.

So, any significant failure, and Eve dies.

I ramped up the tension, too. As they headed north, they found an eight-year old boy, nailed to a wall, with the interlocked Bs of the Bigelow Boys carved into his chest. Marcus found Kay’s hand and held on tight.

Soon they arrived in front of the hospital. Out front was a major gathering of the Bigelow Boys. It was utter savagery. I said that they were turning “something” on a spit over the bonfire, but left most of the details implicit. Later, we agreed that they were eating a person, not for ceremonial reasons, but because it was the available meat. There was probably gang rape going on around the fire, too. We never actually said any of this until later; our minds filled in the horrors.

Now, roll to see if we get caught.

I’m the GM, but I’m on edge with everyone else. It’s like I put the situation into motion earlier in the game, but now I’m just as much a victim of it as everyone else at the table.

We pick up some stress, but we get past the Bigelow Boys.

Normally, our missions are loud and boisterous, with loud gunfire and nasty alien creatures. This time, we’re quiet, huddled around the table, hoping that they won’t hear us, praying that the dice won’t betray us.

Now to find the medical supplies and get out. We easily find what we needed, but as we prepare to leave, we hear a noise outside the room where we are.

Joseph moves to the door and looks out. He gestures to us to follow. We slip down the hall, then wait as Joseph slips ahead. There is a wet gurgle from the darkness ahead and a quiet thump. Then Joseph reappears, cleaning his knife and gesturing us forward. We slip through the darkness, stepping over the body of the Bigelow Boy that Joseph killed, and escape into the safety of our home base.

We had the supplies we needed, but no one had the courage to actually perform the surgery. Finally, Joseph stepped up and did what needed to be done. Beth held down Eve, while Kay held her head and sang in her ear. We gathered around her bed and held them up as they walked through this dark valley.

They lived.

Her name is Hope.

At the end of the night

Jude and Leah are away. They don’t know what happened tonight, except that they are together. Intimacy Building.

Marcus is curled up with his wife and daughter. They aren’t talking; they are just holding each other. Beth and Renee are asleep, while Marcus is still awake, watching them sleep. Trauma Relief.

…static…
…re-establishing contact…

…signal restored…

Since we played again last night, I’m going to add last night’s engagement to this report.

Alien Fury

We’re getting closer to endgame, and I decided that the time had come to ramp up the pressure. So we went straight into a briefing action. The aliens were retaliating for the previous raid. Marcus and Jude were each deployed to separate approaches to the base to fend off their assault.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Alien Fury
Protect non-combatants
Prevent damage to base
Defeat enemy pilot
Must be accomplished last
If any are failed, one non-pilot character is killed (GM’s choice)
…end briefing…

Marcus managed to do his part, despite some horrific dice rolling by Gabrielle. Jude’s battle was more gripping. We had decided that, in the dream world, alien remotes look like important adult characters in the person’s life. I bent this a little and made the remote opposing Jude look like Rachel. He waded into combat with it, first body-checking the remote and then blowing its head off. Just in case you missed it, the body-checking is all about Jude’s relationship with Leah.

But both pilots are starting to wear out. At the end of this mission, each pilot was between 85-90 Bliss. The game is beginning to wrap up.

Wedding bells

Jude came out of the mission and immediately went to Leah and said, “Do you want to get married?” It took her a while to realize that he was proposing to her. But then she said yes. They hug! Even though he hadn’t cleaned the crèche goo off. I called this Stress Relief. I suppose I could have said Intimacy Building, but it seemed better this way.

Meantime, Marcus is just babbling at Beth, exulting in the post-mission rush. Trauma Relief.

Then Gabrielle proposed an interlude. Jude and Leah are over at Marcus and Beth’s apartment. Jude decides that he wants to get married right then. Leah is surprised but agrees. So they all troop down to Jared’s office and say that they want to get married.

From one perspective, it was an awkward wedding. Jared tried to read the bit from the Book of Common Prayer, but the water damage made it hard to read. Finally he pointed at Jude and asked, “You want to get married to her? Forever? You promise to put up with each other, no matter what?” Then he pointed at Leah and asked the same questions. When they said yes, he said, “Good. Um, by the power vested in me by the city of Peoria and the Peoria Resistance Group, I now pronounce you man and wife. Go to it.” Or something like that.

Jude and Leah didn’t kiss very well. They were too embarrassed. Finally, Kay pulled out a kazoo and played the Trumpet Voluntaire.

The players were all happy. Yay! They finally got married! But I had something in my hip pocket. So, when Crystal said, “And Eve had confetti ready!”, I said, “No, Eve isn’t there.” But we kept up the party, until later that night.

…static…
…re-establishing contact…

On the Offensive

Soon thereafter, Jared summoned Marcus and Jude. He had a major strike for them to accomplish. He needed them to head north into enemy territory, locate the alien base, and plant another sensor package right in the base itself. One of them would need to distract the aliens so that the other one could enter the base secretly.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

On the Offensive
(for two pilots)
(Must be done in order)
Deploy stealthily (both pilots)
If either pilot failed, “Spot alien patrol” failed
Spot alien patrol (either pilot)
If both pilots failed, fight alien patrol (co-op)
Locate alien base (either pilot)
if either successful,
deploy sensor array (Pilot 1)
if successful, allows for long-range warning against alien attack
distract defenders (Pilot 2)
if failed, fight alien assault group (Pilot 1)
Return to base without being followed (both pilots)
This is a secret goal
If pilot “ejects”, then one non-pilot character with relationship to pilot enters the Bliss
If either pilot attempted and failed, defend base
If failed, one non-pilot character is harmed (GM’s choice)
…end briefing…

Marcus went on point and discovered the alien base. Along the way, he discovered some objects that looked like alien trees. He and Beth wondered if they were alien growth pods, but they didn’t have time to investigate. They noted the coordinates for later.

Jude had volunteered to be the diversion, because he wanted to impress Leah. So he attacks from the one side, drawing off a large portion of the alien forces. Marcus was able to slip inside and plant the sensor package in an orifice within the alien base and escape.

While the pilots were out, the anchors discovered psychic jamming of some kind coming from the alien base. If the pilots were to be ejected from the dream, the psychic backlash would drop the anchor into the Bliss. So the pilots needed to withdraw from the alien base the old-fashioned way. This was easy for Marcus, but Jude had half the alien army on his back. What would he do?

He headed for the Bigelow Boys headquarters. The players all laughed when Crystal announced this. We liked it a lot.

So Jude charged into the parking lot of the Cub Foods where the Bigelow Boys had holed up, with alien walkers and flying alien probes hot on his trail. Then, as Jude watched in disbelief, two Bigelow Boys appeared in the dream. Then they manifested ANIMas and began to fight the aliens.

In all the confusion, Jude escaped.

Weddings and Babies

In the wake of this last mission, we had a few interludes. First, Marcus and Jude had a man-to-man talk about marriage. Jude was confused and asking questions, which Marcus was doing his best to answer. This seemed like Trust Building.

Then we cut to Marcus with his family. They are on a picnic, celebrating Beth’s pregnancy. Marcus tells Beth that his initial response to her pregnancy was raw panic, but now he is really happy. More Trust Building.

But the most important interlude was the one with Jude and Joseph. Jude tracked Joseph down while Joseph was on patrol because Jude wanted to get Joseph’s approval for his marrying Leah. Jude spilled all this to Joseph. Joseph thought about it, then stood up and said, “You’re all right.” Then he walked off. He meant yes. More Trust Building.

…static…
…re-establishing contact…

…incoming transmission …
… Peoria Resistance Group…

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

Broadcast Archive:
Saved through childbearing
Love and violence in Peoria

Last week sometime, my nine year-old daughter comes up to me and says that she has drawn up pictures of the entire family as Bliss Stage characters. She’s hearing that, in this game, you fall asleep and fight aliens, and that it’s an anime game. So she shows me the pictures and they really are quite good. I don’t mean “good for her age”; I actually mean, “demonstrating skill and technique”. I’m really impressed, and I tell her so.

Then she asks, “So, can I play Bliss Stage with you?”

Quickly, I blurt out, “No!”

Hopefully I kept the combination of panic and laughter out of my voice.

That’s right. The Peoria Resistance Group is at it again. Jude finally begins to be a sympathetic character, we discover another resistance group, and we fight nasty aliens that look like flying Koosh balls. So suit up, strap in, and prepare for launch!

Jude’s big break

During the last mission, Jude’s relationship with Rachel broke. According to the rules, we needed to have a denouement action to close out that relationship. So, we led off with that. Crystal says, “Rachel comes into the base looking for Jude, and she shows up while Jude and Leah are having dinner.” And so it was. Joseph catches her trying to sneak in, and he brings her to Jude, right in the middle of his romantic dinner with Leah. This puts Jude in a difficult place, to be sure.

So, Jude goes off from Leah and confronts Rachel, pretty much discarding her like a tramp. It was pretty harsh, actually, and Joseph was there, watching the whole thing. In response, Rachel slapped him across the face and then kicked him in the groin. Joseph was making sure that Rachel didn’t escape, but he wasn’t necessarily making sure that she avoided all physical contact with Jude.

After this, Crystal called for an interlude with Jude and Leah. Jude dragged himself back to dinner and told Leah everything. He sat there and dumped his entire life into her lap.

And she still accepted him.

We called this Stress Relief, because it couldn’t be Trust-Building.

Anchor Training

I can be a sadistic GM. I admit it. And so, when the briefing action came down that Jared wanted Jude to train a new anchor, it was fairly obvious who he was being paired up with.

Along the way, Jude started asking Jared questions about this whole “getting married” thing. Apparently, the group has an old copy of the Book of Common Prayer, and they read through the marriage ceremony (at least the bits that aren’t water-damaged) to get married. Jude is suddenly quite interested in this.

But then, when he arrived at the ANIMa crèches, he saw who he was going to be training.

Gloria.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Anchor Training
Form ANIMa
Visualization test
Guidance test
If all successful, character is now an anchor
…end briefing…

So, uh, yeah. This didn’t really go well. Gloria didn’t really trust Jude, so she had her knife out on the console when he got back from getting changed into his pilot suit. Then the mission started.

Gloria’s inexperience was fairly obvious, but she did okay until the guidance test. Gloria had Jude turn right around a corner and walked him straight into nightmare. A dark cloud engulfed his ANIMa. She tried to back him out, but it was getting worse. In fact, the chassis took damage, breaking Jude’s relationship with Gloria. The dream started leaking across into the real world. A black tentacle reached through the fabric of things and groped for Gloria. She screamed and cut it with her knife. Then she slapped the panic button.

As I recall, Jude completely went off on Gloria before stalking away. Gloria yelled at him too, then stormed off the other direction. On the console, the severed tentacle twitched.

Blowing off Steam
Jude blew into Jared’s office and started screaming at him about his incompetence. Underneath, Jude was afraid. Very afraid. He was almost lost in the dream because of Gloria, so he’s turning his fear into the fury that he is venting at Jared. I called this Trauma Relief.

In contrast, Marcus told Beth that he needed to get away for a bit. So he spent the day away from everyone, not seeing anyone or being needed. Trauma Relief.

…acquiring signal…

…tracking signal…
…re-establishing link…

…static…

….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…

…tracking signal…
…re-establishing link…

…static…

… help … Marcus off…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 …to be far too …happy interludes…..

…break…
…re-establishing communication…

This was cross-posted to the Forge. You might find the discussion there of interest.

…incoming transmission …
… Peoria Resistance Group…

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

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 …..

…break…
…re-establishing communication…

This is cross-posted to the Forge. You may find the discussion there interesting.

…tracking signal…
…re-establishing link…

…static…

…squick out…alien goo…melting pieces of…justifying…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…

This is cross-posted to the Forge. You may find the discussion there interesting.

…tracking signal…
…re-establishing link…

…static…

…fumbled…settled…placate Beth…would stay up…that night…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
…begin briefing…

Dawn Patrol
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.

…break…
…re-establishing communication…

This is cross-posted to the Forge. You may find the discussion there interesting.

…tracking signal…
…re-establishing link…

…static…

Yeah…projectiles…metastasize…target….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.

…break…
…re-establishing communication…