Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

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Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by Alyxnia » Sun Jul 31, 2022 10:56 pm

I think that it can be easy to fall into an 'Us vs Them' mentality regarding conflict on the server. I also think that it is somewhat common for people to try and separate 'mechanical conflict' (pvp, etc.) from 'narrative conflict'. I am here today to offer my own thoughts on both of these things, stemming from my own history as an Arelith player since the server first stood up as well as close to two decades of both tabletop roleplay DM'ing and LARP DM'ing. I'm typing this up as I go, so forgive a bit of rambling and expect my novella to veer into a discussion of the concept of bleed as well. I'll be using several online articles, and linking them, and encourage anyone who's remotely interested in my nonsense to read them as well.
Text I'm taking from these articles will appear like this,
with my own thoughts hopefully somewhat organized appearing after them.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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;

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).
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
Now why does bleed matter to us?

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:
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.
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.

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:
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”.
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.

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.
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.
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.

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.
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  • Trouble Brightwood - Missing 411'd
  • Avdotia Zakharova / "Hathran" - Finished her investigations
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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by In Sorrow We Trust » Sun Jul 31, 2022 11:02 pm

Comprehensive, awesome, never disappointed. Thank you for that awesome read.

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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by Dershar » Sun Jul 31, 2022 11:37 pm

An amazing post Alyxnia. I wanted to add a little bit more to the discussion:

Bleed Denial

One thing I wanted to emphasize though, is one bleed strategy that I don't think works at all. Bleed denial. I've seen individual players who either try and deny that bleed is happening, or even whole guilds just have flat-out rules against bleed. Deciding not to feel things out of character when things happen to your character is the best way to get affected by them.

Ignoring bleed leads to getting wrecked by bleed... or at the very worst, getting affected by bleed without realizing it, coming up with other justifications for why you are feeling hurt. Often those justifications can be assuming wrong-doing on the part of other people involved.

By observing when bleed happens, you can then try and process it, feel it, and when appropriate, let it go. Alyxnia's rituals are a good start... but sometimes if things get too strong, you might even need to step away.

Feeling bad

With the recent raids being something of the topic, much of the bleed you have to worry about is feeling bad. Feeling frustrated or angry that you lost. Feeling afraid of greater loss. Feeling powerless. (You also feel bleed when you win mind you, but fewer people complain about feeling happy or prideful ooc) You might wonder why you would want to feel those things... and I think this is where a lot of hurt feelings can come from in conflict roleplay.

You might be engaging in conflict, betting on feeling good when you win, while risking feeling bad if you lose. This is an approach doomed to failure, as nobody wins all the time, and the more often you win, the more infested and deeper committed to winning you can start to feel.

I think the answer instead is to try to feel bad. Which sounds odd... but really isn't.

That is what horror movies are, that is a good half of romance. The suffering that hurts so good. The fear of the killer. Those can be visceral, those can hurt, but those can also be endlessly entertaining. And if you go into conflict seeking them, the relief of victory can feel sweeter through the contrast.

Focusing on your partner

Ultimately, I think the goal here in the long term is relationship RP. Many of the people engaging in this want a nemesis, they want a rival. They want someone to oppose. In opposing someone, your own character becomes richer. Killing a boss monster for their head isn't really satisfying, they don't interact in a meaningful way, and they don't bring context to the world or your character. And when you treat another player like just a boss monster, you disservice both them and yourself.

But a relationship with another character, brings out new dimensions of your own, and really enriches your experience. Ultimately, I think the richest most effective RP I have found has been between individuals bouncing off of shared setting and context.

Now one of the big parts of this, is focusing on the other player you are roleplaying with. Finding out how they see their character, try and figure out something that they want out of the interaction, and then give that to them. Are they a terrifying monk? Figure out ways to try and ambush them at range. Address who they are and the story they are telling and adapt. In roleplaying, there is both the yes and, and then unspoken parts of the character, replying to those unspoken parts can be rewarding on both sides.

Speed Dating

You might have noticed that I have been using romantic imagery in this post. This is intentional. Oppositional RP, at its best, is very close to relationship RP. You are finding somebody to bounce your character off of and try to surprise in new ways. A lot of the recent attacks on the surface have effectively been speed-dating. Hey, here is some conflict, would you like to try some more? Hey, here is my character and what they do, would you like to be eternal enemies?

Now with that said, I think allowing quick exits for those who don't want this sort of rp is very important, not everyone here wants to speed date, and not everyone here wants their character to experience sorrow or despair.

But if you do, join in on a raid, or stick around when one comes by, and show what you have to offer. Put on your best war mask and disguise... and only actually start to dance if you are sure that is what you want to do.
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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by Alyxnia » Sun Jul 31, 2022 11:47 pm

Thank you SorrowKitten and I agree more or less with your post in it's entirety Dershar. Bleed happens, and its silly to try and just refuse it. Your screed on feeling bad is exactly what I was trying to get across when I was talking about seeking out "loss" for your character as a way to spur growth.
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  • Trouble Brightwood - Missing 411'd
  • Avdotia Zakharova / "Hathran" - Finished her investigations
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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by magistrasa » Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:09 pm

OP, I sort of wish you made two separate threads because I feel like there's two very distinct and important takeaways that can come of this conversation. The ideas on "bleed," I think, are perhaps the most poignant ones here, and it's basically what I've been trying to preach for the past year. Rather than attempting to entirely divorce your feelings from that of your character - which is, I have to emphasize, IMPOSSIBLE - I think it's far more healthy and productive to embrace the emotional crossover and engage with the process purposefully and in a self-aware manner. That way, you have more control over the degree to which it affects you; and when you are more conscious of your behavior and motivations, I think you in turn become a more considerate roleplayer. You no longer apply the same faulty assumptions of emotional segregation to others, and can understand the fact that everyone else is "bleeding" just as much as you. With that awareness, you can channel your efforts towards crafting more engaging and compelling narratives. "A bad roleplayer is a self-insert, but the best roleplayer is a self-aware self-insert."

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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by Edens_Fall » Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:57 pm

I really enjoyed reading this (Special thanks for the links to helpful sources!). Of it all, what hit me the most was the "Yes, and". I never really thought of it like that and now seeing it can look back on times when I both DID and DID NOT act on this. I'm hoping over time, practice, and a bit of self-awareness my own RP will improve. It truly is a never-ending battle to not get stuck in one's ways and keep an open mind. Forever looking out for "bleed" and making sure its doesn't give a negative impact on the server.

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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by Alyxnia » Mon Aug 01, 2022 8:48 pm

magistrasa wrote:
Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:09 pm
OP, I sort of wish you made two separate threads because I feel like there's two very distinct and important takeaways that can come of this conversation.
I sort of wish I did too, but I didn't want to burden the forums with it, and I think it's better to give a good springboard for discussions than to overwhelm people with my own ideas of how to manage bleed and how to 'Yes, and!' your way through conflict.

Very good points as well, everyone does have bleed. For some people it's not an issue at all, and others struggle with negative bleed deeply. Wherever you land on the spectrum doesn't make you any better or worse at roleplaying, and it's a constant effort on my own part to make sure I'm noticing my bleed and acknowledging it. It's why I made such a point to say 'your character' rather than 'you'. A lot of people refer to their characters and their actions in the first person, i.e. "Oh I'm so mad that John Palemaster killed me!", rather than "My character was killed by John Palemaster, which has them upset".
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  • Neli Ore - Flew too close to the sun
  • Trouble Brightwood - Missing 411'd
  • Avdotia Zakharova / "Hathran" - Finished her investigations
  • Ghashburz Swordeater - In search of honor
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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by With Darkness and Silence » Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:21 pm

I have to drop characters over hostile bleed, so this was an interesting read. I tend to encounter it over largescale storylines. Things get really, really out of hand when multiple factions/the whole of Andunor is involved and someone is trying to achieve a particular goal.

These are the worst situations because how could you possibly ask for a clean up? People come out of these things with permanent grudges between characters and a completely different OOC story. It even happens so fast sometimes that the details just don't make sense.

Trying to keep your character drive through stuff like this is deeply challenging. I tend to come out of the conflicts then look at my romance storylines and apologize that my ability to play the character is gone.

So it's not these more independent storylines that usually murder me with bleed, but actual large scale conflict. The last thing I even dealt with, people all assumed my character was involved somehow in one side, and no one ever said anything to him from either side while both raged at each other oocly. I couldn't keep at my personal storylines after this. It's just upsetting to have people endlessly berate you while not telling you anything.

Big conflict storylines are tough. Especially high concept ones.

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Re: Building Better Collaborative Stories (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Conflict)

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:10 pm

Bleed is 100% one of the biggest problems with Team Good, historically. Great to see there being a 'term' around it.

And while it often can be problematic, that fusion of player/character sometimes leads to the most believable characterization, and from a game play perspective, can make Arelith the most fun and feel the most immersive.

But really great to name it. There's a kudos in that.
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