TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
... Welp. I'm sold.
I'm gonna zap and re-flag this, 'cause I need to change my vote. Thanks for the information, good sir.
Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Might want to reflag the pen and paper game too because thats most of what he is talking abut.
edited 16th Jul '12 1:09:15 PM by shadis
☆♥☆
The visual novel has one angel vote now.
Are any of you planning to re-vote on the tabletop game as well?
Thank you for reconsidering.
I AM willing to admit that some of the article that I wrote did the game no favors and that the article, as it was, needs to be rewritten.
TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
likes the cheeses.
I'd like to take the day to think on it before making a final decision, but based on the information given in this thread I will be reconsidering my vote as well. It definitely does not sound as pandering as it was made out to be originally.
I appreciate you giving your thoughts, TL. Having direct input from the creator is really helpful, as we don't have to do any guesswork as to why certain elements were done in particular ways.
Like I said, I'll take some time to think on it, so any other thoughts for or against restoring the work are welcome.
Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!
I would like to clarify that the original tabletop game is by Ben Lehman. I'm just a fan that got his blessing for the VN.
likes the cheeses.
Gotcha, sorry for the confusion.
TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
If it means anything, I've always my suspicions that my vote wasn't really based on an accurate account on the game. I didn't press it because, well, we had other works to deal with.
Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.
No problem; I'm just glad that I was able to change your mind. I'm more than a little upset at Something Awful for their hackjob of a review; it's why I don't go there anymore.
TL, personally, I'm convinced that the game in all its current forms is okay by our standards, and that you have no desire to making anything that would violate our standards. Nor do I think you have any pedophiliac motives, and it would be really wrong of TV Tropes to attribute any to you.
However, because of the misrepresentation and misunderstanding that has gone on on this website and others, you might want to discuss with Ben Lehman the possible advantages of capping intimacy levels for younger teens (perhaps middle schoolish age teens in the 13-14 range) at non-sexual levels for your Visual Novel that is under development, the way you apparently do at present for characters that are relatives.
"The way I apparently do for relatives?" This isn't something I do; it's explicitly mentioned in the tabletop rulebook that the dice pools cap at 5 (4+1 for relatives, in other words).
There is going to be a romantic storyline in the VN between Sara (14) and the protagonist (15), and it is going to be complicated and problematic in-universe. I will talk with Ben Lehman about this whole thing and hash out a press release regarding the controversy. I don't think future editions of the tabletop game are going to set a hard age limit, but I'll ask Ben about including a discussion of the problematic parts of the game in the second edition.
By the way you gave a demo of the vn to some of your backers a while back right?
Do you think sending the 5p a copy might help them decide what to do with it?
I'll ask the other team members. We're going to have our public demo out in a matter of weeks, as well.
Well if there is no difference we can most likely put the vote for the vn on hold until then if its not too long.
edited 16th Jul '12 5:05:44 PM by shadis
The lead programmer just told me that the updated public demo will be done this Sunday, the 22nd. Do you need an older version sooner, or will that be enough time?
I am not 5p I am mostly just throwing out ideas(and kinda adopted the bliss stage issue) but if I had to guess I would think we can wait, the game has been on the list for months I don't see a few weeks making a difference.
edited 16th Jul '12 5:18:39 PM by shadis
likes the cheeses.
I would say not to worry about it for now. Komodin already has the info he needs to make his decision, and I will probably decide how I'm voting by tomorrow.
Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!
Yay, I'm unneeded. Glad to see this was mostly resolved without me.
Just wanted to say thanks to finally getting around to addressing this properly. The way Bliss Stage was handled in the beginning always bugged me, and whenever it got brought up again it was quickly brushed under the rug.
Whatever the decision ends up being, I'm glad it can be addressed fairly with all the information in the open.
They told me they would get to it when the work load lightened so I focused on keeping them aware of the issue but trying not to push it when I did so.
likes the cheeses.
After giving it some thought, I will be voting to restore the tabletop game as well. With the information provided to us in this thread, I don't feel that sexual content in the game is meant to be a major focus of the work, or designed to titillate or pander.
I'll vote to keep the visual novel as well, with the understanding that it can be re-reviewed if the game in its completed form has content that violates our site policies.
Now Tsundere mentioned that the Bliss Stage page was written in a misleading manner. Does that refer to the Tabletop Game, the Visual Novel, or both?
That was nothing personal to you or this work: we unfortunately get immediate petitions to restore almost everything we cut, which gets tiresome and bogs down the process if we addressed each one immediately. A "cooling off" period is best before re-reviews are done, I think, to make sure that everyone can come into the discussion with a more open mind.
edited 17th Jul '12 6:36:07 AM by Meeble
Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!
Here is the text of the page:
—>But more importantly, this is a game about the endurance of humanity. —>About the courage of heroes. —>About the power of love. —>About hope for the future. —> - Ben Lehman
—>Right now, the moment you began reading this, Humanity is devastated by an alien attack from the edges of our understanding.
—>It is the first blow of a terrible war. Seven years later, armed with technology you cannot comprehend and can barely operate, you will strike back.
—>This is how. —> —Back cover copy
Bliss Stage is a tabletop roleplaying game written by Ben Lehman and produced by TAO Games, explicitly intended as his homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion and similar works such as Bokurano and RahXephon. It is available at his website, These Are Our Games,
with more information at the blog and fansite Love Is My Weapon.
In addition, Tsundere Lightning was recently tapped by the original author for an official Visual Novel adaptation of the game, Bliss Stage Love Is Your Weapon, which recently launched a Kickstarter page here.
The moment the game begins, malevolent aliens afflict humanity as a whole with The Bliss, a form of stasis locking the adult population of the world into a sleep with apparently blissful dreams, leaving the child and teenaged survivors in a Crapsack World ravaged by occasional attacks by alien terror drones.
A lone, insomniac, and very probably Ax-Crazy adult manages to rally the local survivors and, to their enduring astonishment, capture one of the drones. They quickly reverse engineer it into the Alien Numina Inversion Machine, or ANIMa, a machine that converts relationships into a source of Psychic Power taking the form of a Humongous Mecha: The deeper the relationship, the more powerful its weapons. The pilot of this ANIMa needs to be properly Anchored (in a manner similar to the duties of the Operators) by a "trained psychologist," usually just someone who they have a crush on.
The game being a Deconstruction of The Power of Love, a pilot's ANIMa is powered by their relationships with other characters, so extremely complicated romantic entanglements just happen in Bliss Stage. In addition, each pilot accumulates Bliss throughout the game, eventually reaching 108 Bliss, whereupon they either die or leave the game. Endings are often bittersweet or a little more disturbing.
This game provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Both averted and played straight, in different ways. The economy and infrastructure of the civilized world collapses without the adults, but the PCs are all teenagers and the Authority Figure is inevitably a Magnificent Bastard at best and a Jerkass at worst.
- Animesque: An unusual example. While there's no art or animation, Ben Lehman listed Neon Genesis Evangelion, Macross and Rah Xephon as influences, and the influence of Japanese tropes is evident.
- Applied Phlebotinum: the ANIMa, big time.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: One of the possible results of the endgame.
- Black Box: No one knows how the ANIMa work; the rulebook even speculates that the only functional part of the entire rig is a chunk of alien brain.
- Black Bug Room: Where a pilot ends up if you botch a Pilot Safety/Nightmare check. The reason you need an Anchor is to prevent this from happening.
- Break the Cutie: One of the character types is the Innocent Sweetheart, so this is likely to happen.
- Competence Zone: Between the ages of 13 and 17. Before that you can't Pilot: after that you Bliss.
- Crapsack World: No electricity. No food. No sewage systems. Aliens trying to kill you. And you Bliss at age 18.
- Deconstruction: Of The Power of Love, though most players try to immediately reconstruct the trope. And succeed.
- Deus Sex Machina: In the form of Level-Up at Intimacy 5 and More Friends, More Benefits.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The Bliss, which has knocked out all adults before the start of the game.
- Failure Knight: You can safely assume you are not your Anchor's first love. Or even their first pilot.
- Fun with Acronyms: Alien Numina Inversion Machine shortens to ANIMa. ...Sure, Ben. Sure.
- GMPC: Required in the form of the Authority Figure. In fact, if any other player has a character who becomes the Authority Figure, that player must become the new GM!
- Handsome Lech: As of the beginning of the one-shot, Keenan Caine has snagged all of the girls (judging by their Intimacy scores). Depending on what names and genders you assign to the Anchors, he's also snagged a couple of the guys.
- How Do I Shot Web?: The ANIMa was created six years after roughly "Right Now". The war began in earnest after another year of deadly trial and error. And it's still very hard to control an ANIMa without the guidance of an Anchor.
- Heroic BSoD: the probable result of getting to 108 Bliss in the Endgame.
- Humongous Mecha: the ANIMa and the alien terror drones.
- Insistent Terminology: They're a Creche and a Cradle, not a hangar and an Entry Plug, respectively.
- Intimate Healing: Since the game mechanics are mostly based on a character's emotional state rather than their physical state, this can happen in the form of a Stress Relief or Trauma Relief result during an Interlude.
- Jerkass: Any Authority Figure, period. Some also say this about Keenan.
- Kick the Dog in the continuing examples, followed soon afterwards by an attempt to Murder the Hypotenuse:
- La Résistance
- Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Trope namer; the only way to be effective in ANIMa combat is to deepen your relationship with your Anchor and others.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The Bliss itself could potentially be one, depending on interpretation.
- Love Triangle: In the continuing examples and the one-shot. Triang Relations Type 4: Josh is A, Sarah B, and Keenan C. Happens a lot in actual play, too, sometimes to the point of a —
- Love Dodecahedron: If your Pilot doesn't have one, they're seriously underpowered.
- Mission Control: the Anchors. In game, the Anchor's player acts as Mission Control and describes the terrain in combat.
- More Friends, More Benefits: Former Trope Namer. The path to More Dakka in this game is wrapping your Pilot in a Love Dodecahedron of ludicrous proportions.
- Moe Couplet: Sara and Josh. Their love is so innocent. This in a relentlessly Grimdark game.
- Parental Abandonment: The Bliss in general — and Josh Preston's father, the Authority Figure of La Résistance in the continuing examples, who didn't look for him after the Bliss hit in particular.
- Present Day Present Time: This is when the Bliss hits, while the actual gameplay takes place 20 Minutes into the Future.
- Promotion to Parent: To be expected when the world suddenly loses all adults.
- Psychic Powers: Mechanically significant combat takes place entirely in a bizarre dream-world.
- 108: Word of God has it that this is the reason the game ends when you go over 108 Bliss.
- Only Fatal to Adults: The Bliss. Specifically, it's only fatal if you turn eighteen.
- Relationship Values: There are six stats in the game. Three of them are Relationship Values - Intimacy, Trust and Stress. And the other three measure how screwed your Pilot is.
- Rule of Cool: The only possible explanation of why the ANIMa creates a robot.
- The Power of Love: Ben Lehman's favorite way of describing the ANIMa is "It runs on weaponized love."
- Tsundere: Anna Lin in the running examples and introductory adventure.
- Teenage Wasteland
- The Virus: The Bliss had serious overtones of this, before the before time.
- This Is Not a Drill: Uttered in the example first action.
- Word Salad Title: While it may seem like this, the trope is averted: the name is a reference to the "Bliss Stage" of a relationship - basically, the psychological term for the honeymoon period.
- Write Who You Know: The rules suggest naming Anchors after the players' unrequited crushes from when they were the age of their Pilot characters. It's also pointed out that using the name of someone you still know would be rather creepy, considering certain mechanics.
- You Lose at Zero Trust: The Trope Namer.
likes the cheeses.
Thanks, lu!
I requested the page to be posted here so that any necessary changes could be made before restoring the work. If you spot something that needs cleaning up or rewording, please let us know.
Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!
Sure.
Roughly: Intimacy 1 is knowing of a person. Int 2 is having interacted with a person. Int 3 involves emotional intimacy - having shared food, caused lasting emotional harm, sung, hugged someone or patted them on the head and so on. Int 4 is physically transgressive behavior; seeing someone naked, kissing someone, or causing lasting physical harm (my benchmark is "drawing blood.") 5 is sex. In addition, immediate family gets a bonus point, and family relationships cap at Int 4+1.
In my opinion, saying that the game mechanics encourage sexual relationships is disengenous. From a tactical standpoint, I think that it encourages people to have a romance - chaste or otherwise - and at least one low-Intimacy high trust confidant.
The game is structured so that an extremely intimate sexual relationship is one HELL of a mixed bag. It means your Pilot get a very efficient source of dice - each relationship also needs a die assigned to it, and 4 extra dice is nothing to sneeze at. It ALSO means that a Pilot did something that brings up a lot of Trust issues - and since Trust translates to hit points, Pilots need to be very careful not to snub or betray their lover because a lost Int 5 relationship deals a TON of Bliss (permanent, irrevocable damage that ends a Pilot's career when it goes past 108 points) and takes out their most efficient weapon.
If I were going to be a munchkin and make an extremely powerful Pilot, an Int 5 relationship wouldn't be nearly as important as a lot of high Trust relationships and a good Anchor. I'd get an Innocent Sweetheart with a brother or sister, get them in a chaste Int 4 romance with someone, and tank everything with a Int 3 / Trust 5 relationship.
I don't think my visual novel is pornographic, no. I don't think it caters to pedophiles, either. We never intended for the sex scenes to be explicit and we're going to fade to black before that stuff happens. I also think there's a moral difference between a narrative about two teenagers falling in love and having sex, and an adult having sex with a teenager; and another moral difference between a story about two teenagers in love having sex with no consequences, and one where it complicates their lives immensely.
There are consequences in the tabletop game and the visual novel - social fallout in a small group, for one, which is potentially deadly in Bliss Stage. The chance that someone might get pregnant, which we DO deal with in the VN and is addressed in the tabletop game. All of the weird trust issues that come up between two lovers taking that step. Stuff like that.
edited 16th Jul '12 1:01:21 PM by TsundereLightning