Your Character
Your character is an extreme indie designer. They vaguely resemble Vincent Baker. Pick three characteristics (build, coloring, facial hair, age, eyes, hands, voice) in which your character resembles Vincent Baker. In all other ways, they do not resemble Vincent Baker at all. You get to say how that works.
Stats
Your character has the following stats, measured 1-8.
- Forge Lingo (facial hair)
- Name-Drop (coloring)
- Flamewar (eyes)
- Elevator Pitch (voices)
- Demo Ashcan (age)
- Con Survival (build)
These correspond to the Vincent Baker comparisons. For anything that you have in common with Vincent Baker, go ahead and give yourself an 8. For anything else, roll 1d6.
Note: If you are Vincent Baker, go ahead and take an 8 in everything.
We were trying to figure out what made his players come completely alive at the table, first time out of the hangar, new system and funny dice and everything, because they embroidered scenes and flung characterization like champs. It isn’t just that they knew what to do, which is what we thought at first - it’s that they knew what was possible. They knew the moral, social, and political (for the lack of a better term) “physics” of that universe in a way that a sorcerous medieval setting couldn’t offer.
Tycho of Penny Arcade discussing Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Player buy-in and genre familiarity means a lot.
John Stavropoulos has a pitch he uses to set up lines and veils for role-playing games. Here’s an excerpt:
“…just simply lift this card up.”
It’s so easy! I will then actually lift the card to make it clear physically how easy it is.
“Don’t explain why.”
Explaining is bad because it’s extra effort, a higher barrier to accomplish your goal, and it can feel like being put on trial. Plus explanations means more time not playing.I really like the intentionality that went into the pitch. The author, John, is clearly performing throughout his facilitator experience to provide players with tools to take home to their own tables.
I like that what John is doing for people who are new to RPGs, but I want something more for my own play with experienced role-players. Specifically, I think that an emphasis on communication about the specifics of a veil can be valuable for the continued life of a game.
I took part in a 2012 campaign of the Dresden Files RPG where play had to stop because of a disagreement on how to relate to the fiction. (Is it okay to kill vampires just because they’re evil?) Some players were real-world bothered by the moral stance of our collective game fiction, and so what began as an in-character argument became a real argument. We had enough sense to stop play for the night and discuss the problem. Before the next session we discussed the problem more and possible remedies in detail, eventually finding a workable solution.
Compared to what we did, the X-card seems to call for moving past the issue in fiction with the assumption that it won’t come up again in play. Whereas several issues the campaign was building towards hinged on the nature of vampire humanity. I found that my group’s almost excessive discussion was useful for understanding which parts of the fiction were troubling for people and how we could deal with it. Of course, we were fortunate to have a high level of trust throughout the group and to be dealing with an issue we could talk about without upsetting each other terribly. For these reasons I see the X-card as an excellent tool for one-shots and clear-cut content issues, but not the ideal solution for campaign games.
I was given the impression from talking with John that the X-Card is used primarily for triggering content - sexual assault, rape, too much violence, emotionally intense scenes, etc. For this use in long-term campaigns, I think it’s fine. Agreeing with the fiction or discussions about morality are definitely something to discuss off-table, in my opinion, and I think it’s different than using it to protect players from uncomfortable and sometimes triggering content.
Part of why I like the X-Card - and a variation of it with an O on the reverse that Kira Scott introduced to me - is that it establishes a culture of trust. If I say stop, you stop, and then we move along like we agreed to. (There will be more of this coming eventually from me.)
I agree that the X-Card does a good job dealing with folk’s triggers, and we’ve used it in play for such. But I’ve also observed my own tendency to want to use the X-Card as a signal to start a discussion for a moral issue rather than a triggering topic. I recognize now that this dual purpose is not how the X-Card was originally intended to be used, which is why I want something to be the discussion signaler.
I wait with bated breath to hear about the X/O Card.
John Stavropoulos has a pitch he uses to set up lines and veils for role-playing games. Here’s an excerpt:
“…just simply lift this card up.”
It’s so easy! I will then actually lift the card to make it clear physically how easy it is.
“Don’t explain why.”
Explaining is bad because it’s extra effort, a higher barrier to accomplish your goal, and it can feel like being put on trial. Plus explanations means more time not playing.
I really like the intentionality that went into the pitch. The author, John, is clearly performing throughout his facilitator experience to provide players with tools to take home to their own tables.
I like that what John is doing for people who are new to RPGs, but I want something more for my own play with experienced role-players. Specifically, I think that an emphasis on communication about the specifics of a veil can be valuable for the continued life of a game.
I took part in a 2012 campaign of the Dresden Files RPG where play had to stop because of a disagreement on how to relate to the fiction. (Is it okay to kill vampires just because they’re evil?) Some players were real-world bothered by the moral stance of our collective game fiction, and so what began as an in-character argument became a real argument. We had enough sense to stop play for the night and discuss the problem. Before the next session we discussed the problem more and possible remedies in detail, eventually finding a workable solution.
Compared to what we did, the X-card seems to call for moving past the issue in fiction with the assumption that it won’t come up again in play. Whereas several issues the campaign was building towards hinged on the nature of vampire humanity. I found that my group’s almost excessive discussion was useful for understanding which parts of the fiction were troubling for people and how we could deal with it. Of course, we were fortunate to have a high level of trust throughout the group and to be dealing with an issue we could talk about without upsetting each other terribly. For these reasons I see the X-card as an excellent tool for one-shots and clear-cut content issues, but not the ideal solution for campaign games.
Bacchanalia just went on sale in the US. It’s been transformed into a beautifully illustrated card game.
(or serious bleed-y games in general)
This is absolutely something I wanted, but didn’t know how to get until now.
Fanfic is a game for collaboratively creating erotic “fan fiction,” naughty fan-created stories inspired by existing works of fiction, and it aims to do it badly. …[The game] strives to emulate everything that is quirky and ultimately endearing about fan fiction: bodice ripping; stilted dialogue; awkward turns of phrase; and improbable coupling. What better way to learn to do it right than to do it oh-so-wrong?
Wendiferous, fuddiscourse and I played tonight. We did not record our game, but we figured you’d want an update anyway.
In our Fanficiton Lego Gandalf (Riding Lego Shadowfax), Lego Legolas, and not Lego Gollum revealed their true feelings for each other. Our highlights included (feel free to add more wendiferous and fuddiscourse):
- Gandalf’s wizardly dildo hat (his hat is a dildo)
- Lego Legolas’ reveal that he was actually a vampire
- Gandalf’s delicate, quivering pedapalps, and subsequent reveal (itpiercesskin, don’t look it up)
- The one cock-ring to rule them all (and the lengths one hobbit was willing to go to cast it into the fires of mount doom. Hint: its *kind-of* canon)
- Gandalf clearly stating his boundaries (ie. YOU SHALL NOT…)
- Only the left side of anyone’s body received sexual attention
In the meantime, Ben sat in the corner playing Sexual Fan-Fiction Bingo, which he and I put together just before the others arrived. He amassed three bingos over the course of the night. They were
- Flagrant violation of canon, three bad sex puns in a row, a threesome, eyebrow related foreplay, and wendiferous getting really excited about something
- Illegal fetish, cockblocked, Ben cringes (the free space), eyebrow related foreplay, and breaking the fourth wall
- Breaking the fourth wall, wendiferous getting really excited about something, oftenfuzzyfaced reveals his lack of sexual knowledge, dramatic plot twist, and collarbones!
A fourth was almost completed, composed of breaking the fourth wall, fuddiscourse explaining something disgusting, awkward pause, and bestiality. Astonishingly, “fuddiscourse making it really weird” failed to occur.Did I miss anything wendiferous and fuddiscourse?What oftenfuzzyfaced left out was the delightful bestiality that occurred during this game! The Lego Shadowfax/Not Lego Golllum pairing had a wonderfully successful scene (completely to the left of course, nothing so untoward as to infringe upon the right).
This game is brilliant! I highly recommend it!
My favorite moments from my most recent game:
- I solemnly swear I am up to no good!
- Harry drinks felix felicis in order to nick Prof Flitwitck’s firewhiskey but gets caught by Prof Snape and sentenced to solo detention. Did the potion not work or has Harry’s luck just kicked in?
- The real room of requirement
Fanfic is a game for collaboratively creating erotic “fan fiction,” naughty fan-created stories inspired by existing works of fiction, and it aims to do it badly. …[The game] strives to emulate everything that is quirky and ultimately endearing about fan fiction: bodice ripping; stilted dialogue; awkward turns of phrase; and improbable coupling. What better way to learn to do it right than to do it oh-so-wrong?
Dear Pentagon,
Why don’t you live in my house so we can play this game right the fuck now?
Yours Truly,
itpiercesskin
ps- I know what we are doing at WisCon 37
pps- I have a great idea for an Action Panel at WisCon 37
Safe words have a very important place in games, for a different reason than they are important in sex.
A safe word gives permission to players to say no by creating a ritualized way to do so.
As an example one group I played with used “Moose!”. Moose was called when the table chat wandered away from the game, when OOC jokes and chatter got too much. This gave everybody an ‘ok’ way to remind everybody to get back to the game, a prompt acknowledged and anointed by the group and so became a better way to say ‘I like Red Dwarf too, but can we get back to the game because we only have 5 hours left and we all want to see how this thing ends’
While it is technically possible to break character and disagree with something in a role-playing game at any time, tools like “moose” are important because ritualize disagreement. The words are a reminder of previously agreed-upon social permission to dissent, and that is powerful social design. Hat-tip to Meg and Vincent Baker.
