Have been excited about this game since the One Shot episode back in February and so as soon as I saw it I hopped on. After pledging, it did occur to me that I’m in a weird place re: this game with regard to my normal gaming friends–I’m a dude and most of the folks I play with are women. I’m also basically always the GM of these sorts of things. It occurs to me that given the themes and tone, all female players/male GM might be a really weird dynamic. I was curious if it’s been done or if anyone has any thoughts about it. It’s quite possible this one wouldn’t be for my crew anyway, so it’s more of an idle thought than a big problem to solve, but I am curious.
Have been excited about this game since the One Shot episode back in February and so as soon as I saw it I hopped on.
Have been excited about this game since the One Shot episode back in February and so as soon as I saw it I hopped on.
Seconded. I have a lot of friends who I think would get a lot out of the game, I’m just nervous about being the one to run it. There’s a kind of shared experience effect that it feels a woman Gatekeeper lends to the game, so I’m curious in how men running it have found a balance
Maybe Mark Diaz Truman could weigh in here. He ran it for all three of the designers.
I appreciate immensely the ingenious structure in the game and strong theme. I will most likely not run the game myself though, could play it if it is run in Ropecon next summer, but will not dare to run it myself.
The basic structure is so nice though that I will most likely just hack it into more general form and test that with our group. If nothing else I think things here will influence other games I will run.
So, for me personally, backing this is combination of making sure that this game is made and to get resource for other games. 🙂
What’s making you nervous about running it exactly?
I think my nerves come from separating telling a story with the players, as opposed to doing things to their characters. My exposure to the game comes from listening to actual plays and playing with Sarah Richardson, and in those experiences, I’ve had the impression of a social contract that says, in effect, “You’re going to participate in some really dark stuff playing this game, but we’re all agreeing to it because we collectively know that this story is reflective of the real world.” I want to be very careful in running the game that, as a cis-white-hetero male, I can still maintain that social contract without turning into an oppressor figure. At the same time, there’s a risk of going too far with that caution and making the story toothless.
One of the ways I’ve tried to avoid misogyny and the male gaze in horror games I’ve run is by very specifically focusing on action and consequence. Bad things happen in reaction to the PC’s decisions, not in spite of them, so there’s still a sense of agency. I’d love to hear more on how to create a safe space where everyone feels they can go deep into the darkness but they have a life-line to pull themselves back out.
I’m in the habit of introducing the X card in any games with heavy bleed or dark subject material, but I’ve yet to be at a table where someone actually utilized it. Any advice on getting players more comfortable with using that out when they feel uncomfortable?
I hope I’m being a little more clear, kind of rambled a bit here.
Sarah Richardson, Marissa Kelly, and Whitney Beltrán have a lot more experience running Bluebeard’s Bride than I do… but I did run it for the three of them during one of the early playtests. I was certainly aware of the dynamic that Vincent Eaton described (“I’m a man running this horror game for three women”), but the system, even in an early draft, did a really great job of supporting my work as the MC.
Basically, I look to the moves to guide play… and the designers have already done a lot of work for us by giving us tools in those moves to escalate in ways that are in keeping with the kind of fiction they want to generate. In other words, trust that the game is structured to a specific experience and play towards it!
Specifically, it meant that I created themed rooms, filled those rooms with objects, and then let the players do the work of signaling what interested them. I didn’t force anything on them; like any good horror story, the protagonist chooses their own doooooom. All I had to do was make sure that the escalations (“Now the dog thing is looking at you…”) were in keeping with the fiction that the game demands.
At the same time, those safety tools are key. I usually try to demonstrate using the X-Card myself during the first hour or so of a game to make sure players get used to using it, and I am really explicit before playing something like Bluebeard’s Bride about the content and tone. I need people onboard 100% before we go into this kind of horror experience.
Thanks for the comments, that is useful discussion! Still not sure if I’ll have the group for it (and if I’ll feel comfortable running it myself) but I greatly look forward to reading the full game and hope I’ll get a chance to play sometime.