The Six Cultures of Gaming

Emerikol

Adventurer
Skilled play is orthogonal, at best, to bleed (either direction). Skilled play is about playing 'smart' and overcoming the challenge by marshalling your resources in clever and efficient ways. This has nothing at all to do with bleed, except that it may interfere with it due to the mindsets involved. Skilled play is often clinical.
Well we don't roll an intelligence check to see if you pack the right resources do we? The player acting as his character picks out what he will take on an adventure and prospers or suffers based on that choice. So the players intelligence and skill at play is bleeding into the character. That was the point.
 

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Campbell

Relaxed Intensity
Well we don't roll an intelligence check to see if you pack the right resources do we? The player acting as his character picks out what he will take on an adventure and prospers or suffers based on that choice. So the players intelligence and skill at play is bleeding into the character. That was the point.

Bleed is specifically talking about emotional content. So a good example of bleed-in would be best friends who have characters who are fond of each other because of the emotional bond the players are bringing in.
 

Emerikol

Adventurer
Bleed is specifically talking about emotional content. So a good example of bleed-in would be best friends who have characters who are fond of each other because of the emotional bond the players are bringing in.
I didn't see that mentioned. I was taking it as anything player related bleeding over into the character when the character would not necessarily normally be so affected.

So a particular sunset that indicates bad weather in our world, being thrown into the game by a dwarf who has lived underground his whole life. So I was including the emotional but I guess I included a bunch of other things too. What would you call those other things?
 

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!
Well we don't roll an intelligence check to see if you pack the right resources do we? The player acting as his character picks out what he will take on an adventure and prospers or suffers based on that choice. So the players intelligence and skill at play is bleeding into the character. That was the point.
This isn't "bleed."
 



The-Magic-Sword

Small Ball Archmage
In fairness bleed, and the other concept are interrelated, as they both have to do with layers of seperation between you and the character-- some people play TTRPGs to stand in the 'shoes' of their character, which often has to do with winning and losing, fighting a dragon isn't something the characters just overcome in the story, WE AS PLAYERS are also trying to slay the dragon, or in the abstract to overcome the challenges and 'beat' the game, its the concept of wargame, but as applied to fantasy adventure story that sits at the roots of the genre. I 'as' Emrys the Wizard are trying to slay that dragon, if I don't manage it thats a failure state for me in playing the game, not just for Emrys himself.

Meanwhile, in some other games, there's more of a separation-- like in Masks, while the players are fans of their characters and want to see them eventually succeed (and that's usually how the stories the game is emulating end anyway) they're way more interested in creating all the drama that goes into that along the way, its not such a massive breach of etiquette when a player has their character stop doing things because they're having a panic attack mid combat, or surrender. I can have my Soldier playbook character Ronin, do something that will unknowingly put him at odds with the rest of the party, knowing it'll make things more complicated later, because we're not just doing our best to win, we're doing our best to have dramatic stuff happen.

Then all of that ties into the ideas of challenging the player, vs. the character, and how our emotional states bleed into our characters-- for instance if you and I are primarily playing in the first person, an argument between our characters might reflect our actual plans for what to do in that situation (regardless of the separation between what we would do in real life, vs. here) and therefore we might be personally invested in the outcome of the argument, rather than in the narrative implications of it, leading it to be more of an actual argument than just roleplaying if we aren't careful. If I'm really trying to slay the dragon, then when your character gets in the way of that, they're getting in the way of me trying to slay the dragon, not just Emrys doing so. That's part and parcel of bleed I think, when you want something, and someone else is frustrating your efforts.

Notably, this is also kind of in contention, how one 'should' play roleplaying games, some people lean all one way (you aren't trying to win, no matter what game you're playing) other people lean all the other way, and others are mixed, and then even express that mix in different ways (I draw the line at deliberate underperformance in solving the game's obstacles, within reason, before anyone brings up the idea of policing slightly un-optimized characters as a logical conclusion to that.) Heck, the differences are even baked into the different personalities discussed in the DMG player personality section-- the actor wants to express their character, the thinker wants problems they can enjoy solving, and so forth. I think that while DND and such can kind of support either, its very much more about overcoming the obstacles together in the game world, in the first person, thats just how the mechanics are designed, they're levers you pull to make progress towards solving problems.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
By that logic, the entire horror genre (regardless of medium) is unethical.
LOL. No. All horror creators for all media are not given a curated list of the audience's / participant's personal fears, phobias, and traumas. The GM of a horror game (if they're being responsible and using safety tools) is given such a list. And the point of those safety tools is to not poke the players in their fears, phobias, and traumas. A game focused on scaring the players is by definition a violation of that trust and abusive. Or the GM is not using safety tools and therefore shouldn't be running a horror game in the first place. Because they will inevitably stumble into and poke a player in their fears, phobias, and traumas. Dealing with a player having a mental health issue at the table over an elf game is not something you want to deal with...again, that's the point of the safety tools, to not poke the players in their fears, phobias, and traumas.
 

el-remmen

Moderator Emeritus
Yes to this idea that player skill and character skill are not only difficult to separate out, I'd say they are impossible to separate out, though the degree to which they bleed (or whatever term you want to use) varies widely based on approach. I tried to suggest this in my thread on the D&D forum of hybrid approaches to stuff like a character searching a room, but most people wanted to yell at me that since the players aren't detectives or whatever that asking players to describe what they mean when they say their character searches a room (even if a roll is eventually involved) is somehow unfair. What a player knows can't help but influence what a character does (even if technically it shouldn't), even if the choice is to not do something.

Then again, I am weirdo who would put myself in the TRAD culture category with a healthy dollop of OSR style player-skill aspects.
 


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