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How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response)
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@GF said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):
And hey, maybe it’s not even a form of bleed exactly, but just toxic masculinity trying to claim total ownership over women’s identities and sexualities by stepping into the role. There’s probably an element of that, but my vibe is it’s mostly bleed, wanting the vicarious emotional support of constant physical intimacy they imagine happens between women.
While this is almost certainly true, and you’re far better placed to know it than I am, I want to expand your overall point about unhealthy coping mechanism bleed.
We’re all nerds of some stripe or another, many of us with social or behavioural issues that make real life socialisation difficult. I’d wager that a lot of the negative emotional bleed we see is as intense as it is due to the fact that MUing, for some folks, is more than just a silly little hobby and is a replacement - either in whole or in part - for a key part of their real-life socialisation.
So attacks against characters are more easily perceived as personal attacks because the player has, intentionally or otherwise, replaced part of their real-life identity with that of their character.
ETA:
For further reading on this topic:
Waggoner, Z. (2014). My avatar, my self: Identity in video role-playing games. McFarland.
Waskul, D. (2014). The role-playing game and the game of role-playing. In J. P. Williams, S. Q. Hendricks, & W. K. Winkler (Eds.), Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games. McFarland.
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@Pavel That’s a good expansion on and clarification of my representation of the phenomenon. Thank you for adding it.
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@Pavel It’s certainly something that I want.
I had no investment in the ultimate outcomes for the character I drew for last week’s table-top one-shot, but I did invest in the game and in trying to portray the character well. I had a great time as the mother bear of Goldilocks’ fame. But I miss the long-term campaign and don’t want to play one-shots all the time. And part of that is totally about the characters and even the thing where a character is a little infinitely detailed mind-sculpture you made and sometimes polish and gloat over at non-game times.
As a GM, I want players to be invested. And to be identifying with the characters. I hate LARPs but will go to lengths for mood at a table-top game, with music and lighting and metronomes and stuff. I want you spooked, I want your heart-rate to be affected, I want you absorbed.
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I apologize for dropping off the thread a bit, but I do want to comment that what a few folks said earlier is really the key to the conversation.
Bleed and Alibi are both good parts of role playing. With a lot of things, it’s the excess of one (or the other) that can be an issue, and how we handle them.
To use the example of a movie, if I go and watch Beaches and have myself a good old cry during the movie, and then go on with my life, that’s ok. If I keep crying for three days after, then that’s a problem.
Do I expect to cry or have tears when I am in an intense scene on a LARP or on a MU? Yes, I do. Should I be crying next week when thinking about that scene? Probably not.
So having a good mechanism for moving past that is part of what I was referencing when we talk about mitigating it. Just like there are workshops at the start of a LARP to talk about how making bad IC decisions lead to fun RP, there are also some afterwards to talk about how to prevent Bleed once you leave. And then there is DROP, which is a whole other issue (but I imagine one that doesn’t come up much with MUing unless a game ends or you quit for some reason.).
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@mangosplitz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):
So having a good mechanism for moving past that is part of what I was referencing when we talk about mitigating it
Naturally, I agree. I think, though, that in MUing, that has to come from the player themselves rather than something that could or should be expected from the game runners.
In an ideal world, every game should have guidance on progressing through those challenges… but games are run by people who want to run games and tell stories, not by people who have the experience or expertise to help people overcome those kinds of emotional obstacles.
So, what do we do if we want to be responsible and ethical game runners or players? Do we simply have an international list of resources, like helplines, available?
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Talking about what Staffs can do, I agree with those who said that it’s super-hard in a MUSH environment where there are players joining and leaving all the time, and there’s no Session Zero to sort out all of these things (and many other important things). I sort of think that the best thing that can be done about it is a page linked in policy (and maybe the base page) that talks about Bleed and Alibi (maybe Distance or something that doesn’t have the ‘excuse’ implications of Alibi).
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Roadspike said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):
that talks about Bleed and Alibi (maybe Distance or something that doesn’t have the ‘excuse’ implications of Alibi).
I like Distance FWIW.
Personally? I think this is on the players and don’t feel any obligation to try to teach them about how to maintain a healthy distance between themselves and their characters. I’m here to run a game, not try to teach (generic) you how to be a decent human or be a caretaker for your own mental health. That’s the same reason why my policies end at “don’t be a jerk”. If you need me to tell you how not to be a jerk, my game is not for you.
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@Pavel said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):
Naturally, I agree. I think, though, that in MUing, that has to come from the player themselves rather than something that could or should be expected from the game runners.
Honestly I think just providing info about it and normalizing it as something that happens is probably enough.
I think we saw enough in this thread to basically come to the conclusion of “people have this on a spectrum, but a lot of times people say it is bad”. And so people sometimes think that they are “wrong” or “bad” for feeling it, or that it somehow makes them different.
Speaking from my example, until I was at a LARP and someone actually SAID this to me at the first workshop it was introduced to me at, it never occurred to me that it was a thing at all. But once they said it it all made sense right away. So that would be my best thought - put throw up an article or a brief paragraph somewhere. Maybe along with suggestions like “ICA=ICC” and “Ask for consent before RPing intimacy”, except this guideline is more self-directed than the others.
So it’s not like we need to have staff actually DO anything to help**. But it would be nice to just throw up an article or something that references it. I like how on the Ares games at least there are links to articles that talk about what good RP is, how give and take works, etc. Something like that would be good.
** I mention this because a few people called this out. LARPs actually will frequently have paid mental health professionals on-site to help with any of these things that come up during the game or after. I am NOT saying that’s anywhere close to what is needed here.
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@sao said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):
@Rinel Your ability to have empathy for positions that you find emphatically morally wrong is a different skill and one you should prize, but it does make avoiding bleed pretty difficult.
Yeah, of my regrets about mistakes I’ve made, failing to adequately contain this is definitely up there.
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Obligatory mention of the Wild Hunt film, that takes the concept of Bleed to a very dark place. Super divided opinions on this in the LARP community but as a GM I dealt with the realistic version of this stuff more regularly than I would have liked. Either way enjoyable flick imo. https://youtu.be/4OImHW5AGGY
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@shit-piss-love Never heard of this. Added it to my watch list, thank you!
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@mangosplitz said in How to mitigate Bleed (player vs character emotional response):
So it’s not like we need to have staff actually DO anything to help
This. When I talk about this issue, there’s often a response as if the suggestion of being supportive means ‘turn the MU into a mental health clinic’ when what I mean is, give your dial a twist towards ‘supportive friend’ and away from ‘cop and judge.’ If somebody at my tt game is near-tears we don’t all start in on how they’re too attached and it’s a flaw in them as a player, we meet them where they’re at. This actually takes no more energy than telling them they’re doin’ it wrong would.
