with my own thoughts hopefully somewhat organized appearing after them.Text I'm taking from these articles will appear like this,
First, the concept of 'Us vs Them'. Plainly, this is a very boring way of approaching conflict and usually arises from some amount of bleed (we'll get to that later) occurring. It's not limited to any one person or group, and it's completely understandable. In my own experience, when players take the time to try and avoid falling into this mindset whether online or in person it can lead to much more rewarding and fulfilling roleplay. Instead of distrusting your fellow players and using mechanics/roleplay to deny whatever story they are trying to tell to supplant it with your own. Instead, we should all take a page from improv acting, specifically the concept of 'Yes, and...'. Most of my following points are taken from RULES OF IMPROV by David Alger.
Improv is an art. However, it is also a craft. A craft is something that is learned through practice, repetition, trial, error and hard work. Much like any other art, skill in improv is acquired over time. The more time spent improv-ing the greater the improvement (pun intended). That being said, there are rules which can, in general, make a scene better. As with any art form, you can break all of the rules and still have quality scenes. However, those best able to break the rules are those who first learn and understand them.
Thankfully, the who and where are already decided via the server and our characters, therefore all that is really nebulous is the 'what'. Looking at through the lens of conflict RP, there are all sorts of 'what' that can be the impetus! Things as simple as 'I'm an elf and you're a drow', to a myriad other reasons, even down to 'we both want the same thing, but I can't stomach your methods'. Where the collaboration comes in, is making sure that you allow your 'opposition' to impact the shared story just as much as you are, even if it is to the detriment of your character.Say “Yes, and!”
For a story to be built, whether it is short form or long form, the players have to agree to the basic situation and set-up. The who, what, and where have to be developed for a scene to work. By saying yes, we accept the reality created by our partners and begin the collaborative process from the start of a scene. The collaborative process or group mind helps make us giants, animals, villains, saints and more importantly put us in situations that we would normally avoid.
The ", and!" for a persistent world roleplaying like Arelith can be a lot more varied. Think of all the ways you can help tell the other half of a story, while still involving your own! There's no reason that you should feel like just because your character lost, whatever story you were trying to tell is over. Just like there is no reason that because you 'won' whatever conflict to completely attempt to stifle and shut down stories from the 'loser', because that isn't fair to them as a player.After the “, and!” add new information.
An improvised scene can’t move forward or advance unless we add new information. That is why new information is added after the “Yes” of “Yes, and!”
Example:
Yes, I washed big dawg and I fed him your steak too!
Rather than:
Yes, I washed big dawg. (SILENCE)
Example:
Yes, I accept being your assistant Herr Doktor and will gladly get you the princess’s body from the morgue tonight.
Rather than:
Yes, I accept being your assistant Herr Doktor. (SILENCE)
Saying “Yes, and!" does not mean there will not be conflict or that we would accept something our character would not accept.
Example:
Yes, you slew me in a fight on the Trade Route AND now John Fighter will redouble his efforts in training to be able to win in the future!
Rather than:
Yes, you slew me in PVP.
Whichever side of a conflict you come out on, always be thinking of ways you can help the other side tell their story, rather than just focusing on your own.
Here is where a lot of us can struggle as players, especially when we're experiencing bleed. It's easy to win against your opposition and want to gloat/rub it in/revel in the victory. However, when you do things like this, it's very disheartening to other players. When someone is trying to roleplay in conflict, such as in a tense scenario between two arrayed groups of warded players, remember to not block their attempts at roleplay and/or shut them down by immediately hitting them with a ! and then PVP. Give other people a chance to monologue, after all, it's the best way to let both sides experience some development. After all, what sounds more compelling to read / watch if you were consuming media of some sort;Don’t Block.
The opposite of saying “Yes, and!” is blocking or denial.
Denial destroys or stops the addition of new information or worse negates what has already been established. Blocking is a way of minimizing the impact of new information. It is also a method for the performer to play it safe. The performer maintains control and avoids vulnerability by blocking. But in improv we say the opposite of what we would say in real life, “go there.”, rather than don’t go there.
Blocking at its simplest levels involves saying “no,” or avoiding a subject. At a more advanced level, blocking is something that keeps the action from moving forward or the players from changing.
A) A group of halflings is cut to pieces by an orc warband after the chief says "STOP OR DIE!"
B) A group of halflings is cornered by an orc warband, and the chief launches into a diatribe about how strong his tribe is, demanding tribute from the halflings in silver or blood. A fight ensues after, with the halflings knowing that if they fail, he will take them as prisoners to work in a mine.
Focus on the Here and Now.
Another useful rule is to keep the focus on the here and now. A scene is about the people in the scene. The change, the struggle, the win or loss will happen to the characters on the stage. Focus on what is going on right this at this moment.
Why is your partner moving away from you?
Why did she use a questioning tone?
What did the slight smile mean?
How do you, as your character, feel about what she is doing?
Remember, it isn’t just about the words; it is about what is happening. The words are tools used to accomplish or to pursue a goal (objective or need).
Every time your character enters conflict, whether emotional, verbal, or physical, it is a chance to use such as an inciting event to let your character develop and change. Winning often doesn't give your character much of an impetus to change or develop, as whatever they are doing would seem to be working fine. It's loss, struggle, strife, these things that can let you explore the depth of your characters shortcomings as well as how far they are from, and how to get to, what they aspire to be.Change, Change, Change!
Improv is about character change. The characters in a scene must experience some type of change for the scene to be interesting. Characters need to go on journeys, be altered by revelations, experience the ramifications of their choices and be moved by emotional moments. We go to the theater to see the unusual days characters have, not the everyday moments of stasis and stagnation.
You don't need to use PVP every time your character is in conflict with another, either. There's just as much material to help tell stories between two clerics of the same god who disagree on scripture or tenets, or between a ranger warning off gnoll from his forest without killing it if he doesn't have to, or between two lovers who find themselves drifting apart for whatever reason.For serious and emotional scenes, focus on characters and relationships.
A long form improv set should contain a variety of scenes. Some scenes will be emotional, some will be tense, and some should be funny. The easiest way to make a scene serious is by focusing on the relationship of those on the stage (their characters). Other ways to make a scene dramatic is to hold a moment, use the silence, and focus on the shifting emotional points that emerge as a scene unfolds.
I hope the takeaway on this section is as clear as I think it is. We should all strive to use conflict as a tool to help our characters change and develop, and remember that we are all here to tell cooperative stories and not just win in PVP. Much of the time, that change and development comes from your character losing, which can be a spur to change themselves.
This neatly segues into my second rambling I wanted to get into, which is the concept of bleed. Here is a well-worded definition taken from the Nordic Larp Wiki.
Now why does bleed matter to us?Bleed is when emotions bleeds over between player or character, in either direction.
Bleed is experienced by a player when her thoughts and feelings are influenced by those of her character, or vice versa. With increasing bleed, the border between player and character becomes more and more transparent. It makes sense to think of the degree of bleed as a measure of how separated different levels of play (actual/inner/meta) are.
Bleed is instrumental for horror role-playing: It is often harder to scare the player through the character than the other way around. An overt secluded dice roll against a player's perception stat is likely to make the character more catious.
A classic example of bleed is when a player's affection for another player carries over into the game or influences her character's perception of the other's character.
Many jeep games rely on bleed either to influence player's actions or to achieve higher purposes in the premise. For example, Fat man down uses bleed to encourage the players to reflect over society's treatment of fat people. Playing Doubt close to home regularly causes bleed as a consequence of using own experiences in the game and re-living relationship situations or reflecting on relationships. Sometimes, the entire purpose of a game is to create bleed.
People often refer to bleed-in when it is the player's emotional state that affects the character. For example, a scared player may lead to a character that is jumpy, nervous, or overly cautious. Bleed-out is used to refer to bleed in the other direction - here it is the character's inner state that affects the player. So, a character who is in love with another character may bleed-out into the player feeling affectionate towards the other character and/or the other player.
Bleed isn't something that is just restricted to live action roleplaying. Every time our character loses in PVP we can feel frustrated, or angry, or sad. Conversely, every time our character wins at PVP, we feel elated and excited and all of that. Now, that isn't a bad thing, in and of itself, however when we let bleed start negatively impacting ourselves out of game, or our out of game feelings beginning to negatively impact how our character is played, that can be a problem that leads to a lot of heated emotions and accusations flying around between players on either side of what is an in character conflict.
Put another way by Courtney Kraft in her articleCOPING WITH EMOTIONAL BLEED DURING ROLEPLAY:
Arelith (And Neverwinter Nights PW Roleplay as a whole) is a particularly impactful flashpoint for bleed, because while on the one hand it is a video game where our characters navigate dungeons, it can also have surprisingly emotional depth and complexity.It’s a phenomenon where the emotions from a character affect the player out of the game and vice versa. Part of the joy of roleplay comes from diving into the fantasy of being something we’re not. When we play a character for a long time, it’s easy to get swept up in the highs of victorious battle and the lows of character death. When these feelings persist after the game is over, that’s when bleed occurs.
These two factors determine the "magic circle," where the reality of the real world is replaced by the structure of another reality (in this case, Arelith). The magic circle is not a magic wall -- it's porous, and players can easily have discussions about what's happening in the real world, make jokes derived from popular culture their characters would never know, or even just be influenced by their real life surroundings.
The deeper a player engages in the magic circle, the more immersed that player becomes. Governing the player's social contract within the magic circle is something Nordic LARP calls this "the alibi," in which the player accepts the premise that their actions don't reflect on them but rather their character:
Where things get sticky is when real life circumstances apply to imaginary concepts. Bleed exists within the mind of each player but is influenced by the other players. It is fungible and can be highly personal. Additionally, what constitutes bleed can be an unconscious process. This isn't a bad thing when the rush of playing a powerful hero 'bleeds out' to you in the real world, but when negative things happen to your character (A PVP loss, your spy ring being discovered, etc.) it's easy to let that anger or despair or other negative emotions impact you on the outside.Rather than playing a character who is very much like you (“close to home”), deliberately make character choices that separates the character from you and provides some differentiation. If your character has a very similar job to your ideal or actual job, find a reason for your character to change jobs. If your character has a very similar personality to you, find aspects of their personality that are different from yours to play up and focus on. Or play an alternate character that is deliberately “further from home”.
This can easily create a sort of 'feedback loop', where negative emotions bleed out after your character is subjected to something they may not have wanted, which then upsets you as a player, and then you bleed these negative emotions back into your character. We've all seen this before, in some way or another. Whether it's another player blowing up at you in tells after they lost a PVP fight, or accusations of favoritism/metagrudging being leveled against individuals when a player feels they are being targeted OOCly.
I'm not going to go into a full article-length discussion of bleed here (plenty of that is available in the links in this post), but I do want to take a moment, now that we have a definition of bleed as a phenomenon, to discuss strategies to manage bleed that we can try and remember as players whenever our characters end up in conflict. Now, the article here is written from the perspective of Live Action Roleplaying, and therefore not all of the examples given will translate directly, but there is still plenty there for us as players to examine and perhaps try and embrace individually.
I personally have a strange roleing/deroleing ritual in that I pick a very specific genre of music that I listen to while playing one of my characters. This lets me more easily put myself into the headspace of my character using these aural queues, as well as pull out of it when I cut the music or throw something else on.Players with a strong distance between self and character may find themselves mystified when another participant feels long-lasting emotional devastation at the loss of an in-game companion, for example. I believe that we should acknowledge that the perspectives of both of these types of players are valid: those who experience strong bleed and those who do not. Furthermore, as a community, we can learn strategies to help individuals recover who feel emotionally overwhelmed or confused
An important post-game strategy is creating rituals of de-roleing. De-roleing is a method by which the player ritually casts aside the role and re-enters their former identity. Some strategies for de-roleing include: players removing an article of their characters’ clothing and placing it before them in the circle; participants stating what they want to take with them from the character and what they want to leave behind; organizers leading players through a guided meditation to ease their transition; etc. These symbolic actions allow players to switch from the frame of the character to the player in a manner that is less jarring than a hard stop.
Debriefing is another useful strategy to help players process their emotions. Creating a formal space after the game for players to express their feelings and share stories in a serious manner often helps contextualize bleed. Additionally, assigning a “debriefing buddy” provides players with a safety net for private communication after the larp with another participant. Positive, out-of-character communication with other players who were part of intense scenes may help alleviate lasting negative feelings, e.g. “I’m sorry that my character was so cruel to you in-game. Would you like to talk about it?” For a more extensive discussion on debriefing, refer to my article in this series, “Returning to the Real World.”[19]
Informally, players also can engage in out-of-game socializing, such as dinners, afterparties, charity events, etc. These events help players feel connected to the community outside of the context of the fiction and their characters. Social events reinforce the co-creative nature of the role-playing experience and open up spaces for dialogue about the game, allowing for greater communication. Online forums and social media can also work toward this aim if used with the intention of building out-of-game community.
Some players find writing a useful strategy for managing bleed. Examples include journaling in- or out-of-character, writing a letter to one’s character, creating new stories around that persona, sharing written game memories with other participants, etc. Telling war stories to each other is another popular method of sharing. Externalizing the experiences in a linear fashion, whether verbally or on paper, seems to help immensely by allowing players the chance to reframe their story in a manageable way.
Further strategies include becoming immersed in other experiences. Some people can easily throw themselves into their work, while others have difficulty returning back to daily life. Often, the first 48 hours after a weekend-long game can prove difficult in terms of adjustment. Playing video games, another role-playing game, or immersing into another fictional reality like a television show can help ease this transition. Most importantly, adequate sleep, eating, and hygiene can help reset a player’s psychological state to some semblance of normality.
Debriefing is something that can be done relatively easily, and even during particularly intense scenes of conflict. Even a simple 'Hey I'm sorry my character is being so mean to yours' sent in a tell can help someone disentangle their feelings of hostility from you as a player and your character.
Out of game socializing can be done here on the forums, or on the servers discord, or anywhere else you can think of where you can get together out of character. Of course, there are always people who aren't the friendliest OOC, but you shouldn't let your feelings with players like that bleed in to your character either.
Finally, it's important to remember this (which I could not put more eloquently if I tried):
Regardless of the degree of immersion or bleed each player feels, ultimately the role-playing experience is a co-creative and collective one. Understanding bleed and developing tools for compassionately managing intense emotional reactions can help role-playing communities reach deeper levels of trust and collaboration. Recognizing that each individual contributes an important part to the whole is an important step in this process. A healthy community is made up of individuals who feel safe and able to openly communicate with one another about their experiences.