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Games and Gaming: Three-week-old Panties.

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  1.  
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      CommentAuthorJoel
    • CommentTimeFeb 5th 2007
     # 1
    Ok, it's been almost a month now, but I've been meaning to do a writeup of this game and by golly i'm gonna do it!

    So: I played Panty Explosion at a Portland Indie Gamers gathering, run by the creator Jake Richmond. It was a lot of fun! I've been ruminating on the game for about three weeks now, and I wanted to write an AP report to examine what worked and what didn't, what PE was like to play, the player dynamic, and so on. Hopefully Jake will find it as useful regarding his game design as I will regarding my play. :)

    We had 6 players plus Jake as GM, which I understand is a lot for Panty Explosion, plus Jake GMing. We had Travis, April, Colin Cummins (who also wrote up an AP report), Matt Schlotte (who I believe also helped design PE), and Kim.

    Panty Explosion is about Psychic (and non-psychic) Schoolgirls facing horrible supernatural threats while navigating the ruthless jungle of high school social structure. Characters are designed with ratings in five elements (Void, for spiritual attunement, is the fifth) and zodiac sign and blood type, as well as a popularity rating that the players vote on. Your popularity determines what die size you roll. In practice it seems that the Zodiac and blood type are mostly color, a rough guide for what kind of person your PC might be, and springboard for assigning your attributes. The elemental atts are basically dice pools (rated 1-5) that you roll for actions governed by that element (Fire for aggression, Air for persuasion, etc.). You decide how many to roll from the pool, but you only need one success, and if you run out of dice before the conflict's over, you can't draw from that element anymore.

    You also pick an agenda for your character, and it helps you against the final monster if you accomplish it. Incidentally, since No Good Can Come of Psychic "gifts," use of powers makes the monster harder.

    Our characters were:

    Kyoko (Travis) an obsessive hobbyist who's trying to complete her collection of rare Beanie Baby/Neopet type vending machine plushies. I think she was supposed to have a posse of syncophant girls, but they never came into play. Not sure on the attributes, possibly Air high.

    Kuriko (April) Karaoke enthusiast who dreams of being an Idol Singer. Probably Water high.

    Yukari (Colin) Delinquent girl whose dad is a Yakuza thug. Her agenda was to pass an exam coming up to get into a good school, to which end she wanted to steal the test answers. Fire was definitely her high element.

    Akiko (Matt) a gutsy girl who's super short and looks 10 years younger than she is. She wanted to get on the swim team despite being physically unsuited for it. High element was Earth.

    Mai (Kim) A Psychic who views herself as a Magical Girl. She was pushy and determined and her ambition was to find a Manga artist in the student body to draw her Manga. Probably Fire high.

    Aoi (me) Another Psychic, disturbed and creepy and burdened by terible knowledge. Quiet and reluctant to speak and act. Her goal was to steal a demonic text from the school library, to keep its dangerous knowledge out of careless hands. High element was Void, and Fire low.

    Sad School Bus in Snow

    We started out on a school bus returning to the school from a field trip come evening. It was snowing, and when our parents weren't outside waiting, the bus driver went into the school to investigate. After an eerie incident with a student stumbling through the snow, banging on the side of the bus, then wandering off, Yukari set out for the school on some pretext, intent on stealing her test answers, and of course all the PCs ended up going. Once inside, we split up (hee hee) as Yukari slipped off to prowl for her answers and Aoi followed her. We encountered the vice-principal and Yukari narrowly avoided getting caught, while the other group ran into a trouble, some mysterious figure abducting a popular girl.

    PE has a GM ("Superintendant"), but a lot of narrative control for players, including scene framing and making up story/world details unfettered when narrating a success or failure. Jake started out with a pretty strong hand in scene-setting at first, but story control quickly spread throughout the group. Honestly, it was confusing at first, because the story had a distinctive "mystery to be revealed by the GM as players investigate" feel to it, making players (me at least) hesitant to create their own detail for the mystery--habitually waiting to find out what "is" up with something rather than making something up and inserting it into the narrative. The point at which things "turned a corner" in this regard was when the PCs burst into the room where the kidnapped student had been dragged, and Colin narrated that they found her unconscious and alone on the floor. Jake looked bemused, and Colin said, "Oh, I just totally screwed you up, didn't I?" to which Jake enthusiastically replied, "Yes, but that's just fine!" Then the little light switched on, and I realized how narrative freedom is supposed to function in PE.

    Still, it's a little awkward for me to run an "unfolding mystery" game in this way. If it was traight GMless I'd probably be fine, but having a GM directing things and the players still getting to invent freely is odd. Colin in his AP referred to the free narration as PTA-like. The difference, though, I think, is that PTA is very clearly defined in terms of what the Producer does and doesn't do, so that passing around the narrating and scene-setting torch doesn't step on those toes. In PE it kinda seems like the GM does what GMs generally do, while the plaers at the same time mangle and twist and negate that output. Jake said he was actually being more heavy-handed with the GMing than he normally would; maybe that's why it came across as clashing somewhat, and why I got the conflicting "vibe."

    Once I got in the swing of things, the baton-passing element came more naturally. Perhaps I should explain that all the players select a Best Friend and Rival (which need not be mutual), who narrate that player's successes and failures, respectively. So resolution narration is all in the hands of the players, which gives a lot of group control. Yukari was at least 3 people's Best Friend, so he ended up narrating a lot, to the point where it almost felt like co-GMing. Everyone got to contribute fun stuff though, really stretching their imaginations and riffing off each other well. One aspect that confused me--with the Best friend/Rival narration, I had kinda assumed that these were designated thus so that successes would be narrated sympathetically, and failures cruelly. But in play, everyone was encouraged to narrate complications into results whether Best Friend or Rival. The complications were great (fun to deal with as well as fun and challenging to create), but I was confused about expectations, and whether the BF/Rival names were just :color." Colin wrote in his post, "Despite the fact that I was Best Friend, I couldn’t overcome the temptation to throw complications into the outcomes I narrated," so maybe it's not a part of the game as written, and just a group trend in that instance of play.

    So the story proceeded; Colin's and my chars were caught but explained away our wandering; he got his test answers and I found the demonic tome in the Vice-Principal's purse! The other girls made muhc of their dramatic rescue of the popular girl from the horrible "rapist."

    OK, more next post--God, this is getting long! Sorry. . .

    Peace,
    -Joel
    •  
      CommentAuthorJoel
    • CommentTimeFeb 5th 2007 edited
     # 2
    Night Rape High School, Dist. 13

    The next day at school PCs pursued their more social Agendas like joining the swim team and finding a manga artist. Rumors were buzzing about last night and the cops were sniffing around. Aoi was called into the vice-principal's office, but when she got there the cops were cutting down the lynched V-P's body and two cops were waiting to grill Aoi (In the setting, Psychics are hunted down by faceless G-Men). Aoi managed to get away and allay their suspicions, but not without a psychic outburst.

    This section of the game had a lot of fun comedic stuff, as Mai pursued a shy manga artist and tried to rope Akiko in as her sidekick, Kiyoko pressed Aoi to explain the mystery (she'd seen her filch the tome) while Aoi unconvincingly dissembled, and several girls ran down the wrong leads on the attacker, still assuming it was a simple rapist (when a lecherous boy copped a feel on Yukari in a closet, they jumped to conclusions and chased him through half the school!). In fact, the whole "rumor mill" thing was a source of much comedy, as we gleeflully spun te gossip out of control to =, like, the whole swim team getting raped or something. And one aspect of PE that really shone here was the collaboration in the form of "bit parts:" Colin and Jake tag-teamed as the pair of cops, for example, and when Akiko was trying to get in good with the swim team, several of us who weren't in the scene contributed little kibbitzes as members of the team. it's a great way to keep everyone involved and PE's freewheeling style means that no "story" will get ruined by the players with it.

    Scooby-San, where are you?

    Everyone then started putting their heads together and went snooping in the now sealed off wing from last night. We encountered a doppleganger of a PC, Kyoko or Kuriko, I think, killed it, and torched a bunch of doppleganger embryos, high-tailing it before the police arrived. Aoi borrowed Yukari's lighter and burned the demon book.

    I honestly was surprised at the abruptness of the final act. Not in real-time; it was definitely prety late and we needed to wrap up, but the Doppelganger was easily dispensed with, and proceeding into the "nest" I was definitely expecting the "real" fight. I think this was just of a matter of needing to end, plus having slower, less focused progress through the story with so many players.

    The consequence, though, is that I don't feel that I really got to engage the Panty Explosion system. I never got to exhaust my dice pools because the conflicts were over so quick, which was partially a factor of group size. When six players gang up on a lone doppelganger, it's goin' down, and quick. I didn't even take action in that conflict. So I still feel that I haven't truly gotten to test drive the resolution system of PE.

    I was also left a bit high and dry on the high school social issues aspect of the game. I went in fully expecting a machiavellian game of power and humilation as only vicious schoolgirls can deliver. I created Aoi expecting to be personally hated and humiliated by the popular clique, and possibly befriended by the outgoing delinquent. Instead the PCs seemed implicitly to be grouped as their own clique, and Yukari the delinquent was consistently voted most popular, so the dynamic was wholly different from what I expected. I'm pretty sure that a lot of this difficulty (aside from just plain clash of expectations) arose from the limited nature of the game session. I'd like to play PE again and see some persecution in action.

    Lastly, I was (and still am) confused about tone. The mixture of humor and horror is asn odd one, and for me the horror plays out in more of a light "Buffy" type vein, since the rest of the story isn't taken seriously (and 'cause a bunch of girls kicked the monster's ASS!)When I asked Jake what his genre sources were for PE, it's this dichotomy I was mostly hoping to explain. Jake's since published a source material list, and it seems to confirm that the horror+humor isn't a feature of any one genre, but rather "high school horror" and "high school humor" are two distinct genres mashed together in this game. on Colin's blog, Jake commented, "I do love Azumanga Daioh. That manga very responsible for Panty Jxplosion not being the 100% creepy and frightening Japanese horror game Matt and I had originally envisioned." So it would seem that the humor angle is a graft rather than an integral part.

    it seems, though, that PE is pretty versatile to run anything from "the Ring in a high school" to "Japanese Buffy" comfortably. It just comes back to group communication. Since most of us just met the night we played, it's no surprise our expectations didn't 100% match. Not that they were 100% mismatched either; far from it. I quite enjoyed playing,; it was a blast coming up with wild input and appreciating that of others. I guess it's just that, my PE play, rather than satisfying, just whetted my appetite for more. :)

    Peace,
    -Joel
    • CommentAuthorColinC
    • CommentTimeFeb 5th 2007
     # 3
    Great post, Joel! Otsukaresamadeshita!

    I'm mostly nodding my head in agreement at everything you wrote.

    I was also left a bit high and dry on the high school social issues aspect of the game. I went in fully expecting a machiavellian game of power and humilation as only vicious schoolgirls can deliver. I created Aoi expecting to be personally hated and humiliated by the popular clique, and possibly befriended by the outgoing delinquent. Instead the PCs seemed implicitly to be grouped as their own clique, and Yukari the delinquent was consistently voted most popular, so the dynamic was wholly different from what I expected. I'm pretty sure that a lot of this difficulty (aside from just plain clash of expectations) arose from the limited nature of the game session. I'd like to play PE again and see some persecution in action.

    I think a smaller group would bring more of this kind of drama. Having players agendas closely tied together (2 girls after the same boy, etc) would probably help too.
  4.  # 4
    Very nice Joel. That was a very strange game for me for a few reasons. I was very sick that evening, and had decided that I was going to try to offer a more traditional adventure game then what Panty explosion normally is. In hindsight this was a mistake for several reasons, not the least of which is that you guys didn't get to play Panty Explosion as it is intended to be played. I should have let Matt or Nick run the game, but my pride got the best of me.

    Let me address some of your questions and concerns.

    We had 6 players plus Jake as GM, which I understand is a lot for Panty Explosion,

    It is. I've found that Panty Explosion works best with 4-5 players. For a group of players who were unfamiliar with the game and a crappy GM 6 was probably to much. Of well. On the other hand, If I had done a better job of explaining what the game was about and how it is played before hand maybe it all would have been fine.

    PE has a GM ("Superintendent"), but a lot of narrative control for players, including scene framing and making up story/world details unfettered when narrating a success or failure. Jake started out with a pretty strong hand in scene setting at first, but story control quickly spread throughout the group. Honestly, it was confusing at first, because the story had a distinctive "mystery to be revealed by the GM as players investigate" feel to it, making players (me at least) hesitant to create their own detail for the mystery--habitually waiting to find out what "is" up with something rather than making something up and inserting it into the narrative.


    There is a lot of wiggle room in the Student/Superintendent relationship. How the game is supposed to work is that the Students choose Agendas that they will persue over the course of the game. The Superintendent uses his Demon conflict to tie these Agendas together. The player progress through a series of scenes suggested by either the Students or the Superintendent and address conflicts that relate to either the Agendas or the Demon. Completing Agendas is supposed to prepare the Students for facing the Demon. Once Agendas have been completed (or at least addressed) the Students move on to the climatic confrontation with the Demon. So as the Students address their Agendas they will learn more about the Demon, and by the time their Agendas are complete they will be ready to face it.

    But that’s not what happened.

    6 players creates a lot of Agendas to address in a four hour game. See, in my sickly state, I thought "why not give them just a simple dungeon crawl/haunted house mystery"? This was a really bad idea because it meant that your weren’t actually getting to play Panty explosion. Much of what makes the game what it is was left out for the misguided sake of simplification. If I had been in my right mind I would have never done this, and now all I can do is apologize. I did you all a disservice by unnecessarily dumbing down the game for ease of play, and I did the game an even greater disservice. My shame cannot be measured by mortal standards.

    The point at which things "turned a corner" in this regard was when the PCs burst into the room where the kidnapped student had been dragged, and Colin narrated that they found her unconscious and alone on the floor. Jake looked bemused, and Colin said, "Oh, I just totally screwed you up, didn't I?" to which Jake enthusiastically replied, "Yes, but that's just fine!" Then the little light switched on, and I realized how narrative freedom is supposed to function in PE.


    Right, right. As I was saying, players decide what they want the game to be about by choosing Agendas for their Students to pursue. The Superintendent decides what he wants the game to be about by choosing a Demon (an actual otherworldly demon, a lecherous teacher, a classroom bully or maybe something more abstract like stress or peer pressure). The game becomes about reconciling these interests. Students frame scenes and introduce conflicts in an effort to complete their own Agendas. The Superintendent frames scenes and introduces conflicts in an effort to introduce the Students to the Demon. Once the Students have completed their Agendas they are ready to face the Demon.

    The goal at the end of the game is the confrontation with the Demon. How the Students get there is up to the players. Students are supposed to create scenes to persue their Agendas. It's the Students (and not the Superintendent) that describe each others successes and failures, and they should absolutely use this to introduce new conflicts and scenes and to persue their own Agendas. The Superintendent is there to facilitate, not to create a narrative. I forgot that, and the game suffered for it. Worse, I never bothered to tell this to any of you. I can't expect players unfamiliar with the game to understand how it is supposed to work right away.10 minutes of education and instruction before the game would have been enough to get you guys going. In my sick state this never occurred to me. Another failure on my part.

    One aspect that confused me--with the Best friend/Rival narration, I had kinda assumed that these were designated thus so that successes would be narrated sympathetically, and failures cruelly. But in play, everyone was encouraged to narrate complications into results whether Best Friend or Rival. The complications were great (fun to deal with as well as fun and challenging to create), but I was confused about expectations, and whether the BF/Rival names were just: color." Colin wrote in his post, "Despite the fact that I was Best Friend, I couldn’t overcome the temptation to throw complications into the outcomes I narrated," so maybe it's not a part of the game as written, and just a group trend in that instance of play.


    In Panty Explosion the "Best Friend" always narrates success, while the "Rival gets to describe failure. So if my character attempts an action and succeeds the player who I chose to be my Best Friend gets to tell everyone what happened. My Best Friends only constraint is that the action was a success. Other then that she can describe it any way she wants. This allows Students to mold conflicts into any shape they want, and is the thrid part of Panty Explosions "player control trifecta” (the other two being scenes creation and Agendas). You guys picked this up pretty quickly, but this was another example of something that I really should have explained before hand. Again, my bad.

    To be continued...
  5.  # 5
    This section of the game had a lot of fun comedic stuff, as Mai pursued a shy manga artist and tried to rope Akiko in as her sidekick, Kiyoko pressed Aoi to explain the mystery (she'd seen her filch the tome) while Aoi unconvincingly dissembled, and several girls ran down the wrong leads on the attacker, still assuming it was a simple rapist (when a lecherous boy copped a feel on Yukari in a closet, they jumped to conclusions and chased him through half the school!). In fact, the whole "rumor mill" thing was a source of much comedy, as we gleeflully spun te gossip out of control to =, like, the whole swim team getting raped or something. And one aspect of PE that really shone here was the collaboration in the form of "bit parts:" Colin and Jake tag-teamed as the pair of cops, for example, and when Akiko was trying to get in good with the swim team, several of us who weren't in the scene contributed little kibbitzes as members of the team. it's a great way to keep everyone involved and PE's freewheeling style means that no "story" will get ruined by the players with it.


    I thought this part of the game went very well, and it's certainly no coincidence that this was the part where I shut up and just let you guys play. By this point you guys had a pretty good idea of how the game worked, and it was really nice to see you just go for it. The interesting thing with Panty Explosion is that the more I play it the more I am convinced that the Superintendent is unnecessary. This part of the game was a really good example of how play can progress very naturally without any interference from a GM figure. Ah well, maybe next edition.

    I honestly was surprised at the abruptness of the final act. Not in real-time; it was definitely pretty late and we needed to wrap up, but the Doppelganger was easily dispensed with, and proceeding into the "nest" I was definitely expecting the "real" fight. I think this was just of a matter of needing to end, plus having slower, less focused progress through the story with so many players.


    I was sick, I suck as a GM and we were approaching the pre-arranged quit time. This as a pretty unbeatable combo for lameness. It was pretty obvious that the game was ending way prematurely and that everyone was disappointed that the Demon conflict didn't last longer. Again, this was me doing you a huge disservice. Without the big, meaty Demon climax the game felt very hollow.

    I was also left a bit high and dry on the high school social issues aspect of the game. I went in fully expecting a machiavellian game of power and humiliation as only vicious schoolgirls can deliver. I created Aoi expecting to be personally hated and humiliated by the popular clique, and possibly befriended by the outgoing delinquent. Instead the PCs seemed implicitly to be grouped as their own clique, and Yukari the delinquent was consistently voted most popular, so the dynamic was wholly different from what I expected. I'm pretty sure that a lot of this difficulty (aside from just plain clash of expectations) arose from the limited nature of the game session. I'd like to play PE again and see some persecution in action.


    Any game of PE that lasts for more then a session seems to devolve into really nasty player vs player conflicts. Which is tons of fun. Again, my fault for forcing you into scobby-do vs. D&D. That was lame.

    Lastly, I was (and still am) confused about tone. The mixture of humor and horror is asn odd one, and for me the horror plays out in more of a light "Buffy" type vein, since the rest of the story isn't taken seriously (and 'cause a bunch of girls kicked the monster's ASS!)When I asked Jake what his genre sources were for PE, it's this dichotomy I was mostly hoping to explain. Jake's since published a source material list, and it seems to confirm that the horror+humor isn't a feature of any one genre, but rather "high school horror" and "high school humor" are two distinct genres mashed together in this game. on Colin's blog, Jake commented, "I do love Azumanga Daioh. That manga very responsible for Panty Jxplosion not being the 100% creepy and frightening Japanese horror game Matt and I had originally envisioned." So it would seem that the humor angle is a graft rather than an integral part.


    Panty explosion is a game about social interaction between a group of high school girls. The backdrop to that is psychic horror, demons, and social issues bound to the Japanese educational system. There's really nothing funny about that. While humor in social situations among teenage girls is far from alien, there's nothing in the games text (I think) that suggests that it should be part of the game. But I'm a silly person. I tend to lean toward comedy, even when I don't really want to. And there is something about Panty Explosion, something not actually in the text but unintentionally implied, that seems to bring out the same thing in other people. Maybe that’s for the best. Often the best horror has a dash of humor. In any case, I can't really help it. I'm just a ridiculous person.



    So after all that, after all my apologizing it sounds like Panty Explosion is actually pretty awful. You guys were kind to say that you enjoyed yourself. I can only invite you to give the game a second chance (either with me or on your own) and try it the way Matt and I wrote it, without my horrible and sickly interference.




    Jake
    •  
      CommentAuthorJoel
    • CommentTimeFeb 6th 2007
     # 6
    Posted By: jake richmondThis was a really bad idea because it meant that your weren’t actually getting to play Panty explosion.


    Yeah, this matches up pretty well with my impression. I went into the evening anticipating the experience of Panty Explosion, and I ended the evening still kind of feeling "Well OK, that was pretty cool, but I'd still like to actually play Panty Explosion."

    And when I say I had fun, I mean it. The whole game was fun, all springing from the participants' entertaining contributions as we started bouncing things off each other, including you. You were very "together" and entertaining especially considering your illness. Not that I'm trying to hush up your self-ciriticism; I acknowledge and agree that the problems were there as you describe them. Just injecting some perspective: we all had a blast, and that was partially creditable to you. :)

    The premature end of the game was, in fact mostly due to the latenes of the hour. I hope I didn't make it sound otherwise. Yes, with six people and their agendas, it would've been hard to wrap things up in time even IF you were running PE as intended. Hel, we only managed to address four of the Agendas out of six. I guess Kyoko's got touched on, but kuriko's Pop Idol dreams were a no-show. in any case, we all seemed to come out of the game thinking, "wow, this would be great material for a follow-up session." It was just too much to address in an evening.

    I feel your pain; previously I had played Capes for the first time with a 6-player group at a New Year's party, and instead of the projected couple of hours we went something like 5, well after midnight, edging out any other activities. But looking back, I wouldn't be able to pick anyone's input to "cut out," if I were to rewind and run it with 4-5. Same goes for the PE game.

    regarding the issue of humor: You're right, at least in the preview document I didn't see anything that supports the gonzo Azumanga Daioh tone. I think the wackiness comes from A) the name, and B) from your personality, as you said. I'm aware of why youchose the name, how it represents in a sort of free-association way the two elements of the setting. But in practice, especially when you talk about panty shots being "in genre" (we managed to avoid that, but substituted the "selling soiled panties on the internet" running joke ^^), Ithink that's going to pretty consistently bring to mind more lighthearted fare. Interestingly, your play example in the preview text gives a good example of the "panty-exposure humiliation" motif being played more seriously. There it becomes an instrument of cruelty and brutal ostracization. I'm reminded of the opening seen to Carrie, which while not about panties per se, is definitely the king (queen?) of depictions of the awkward pain of blossoming female adolescence.

    Good God, did I just write "blossoming female adolescence"??

    Well, anyway, you see my point I trust. And that does remind me--one thing that was interesting about the game: it was pretty effortless to get a bunch of mixed-gender mostly 30-somethings siting in a room pretending to be high school girls. I mention it because it's not usual fare in my roleplaying experience (I know you're aware of this, you've mentioned it as a criticism of the game). Sure, there's occasional female PCs by male players, and of course a GM will act out all manner of NPCs. But the concentrated nature of PE's "We all play Japanese High School girls" setup didn't feel forced or awkward in any way. We all merrily went on about which girls liked which boys, what the current gossip was about the popular girls, and who just started their period, and whatever, without a hint of embarrassment or the giggles. I dunno what to make of that; I know those who find PE unappealing on those grounds ain't gonna change their minds, but for my part I found it a refreshing and new experience.

    Thanks for enabling me to have that experience, man. I'll look forward to playing PantyExplosion "for reals. But in the meantime, I think it's my turn to hopelessly mangle a game session for you.

    See you next game night!

    Peace,
    -Joel
  7.  # 7
    Well, anyway, you see my point I trust.


    I do. And despite everything, I did have fun. You guys were a great group to play with, and I look forward to doing this right some time, as well as playing other games with all of you.

    it was pretty effortless to get a bunch of mixed-gender mostly 30-somethings siting in a room pretending to be high school girls.


    One of our goals with Panty Explosion was to create an enviroment where this was okay. Men playing female characters has a bit of a taboo surrounding it. If everyone has to play teenage Japanese schoolgirls then the taboo mostly goes away. It becomes the norm. Of course, the idea that playing a teenage girl is weird is pretty stupid. Teenage girls are just as interesting and have just as much potential for emotional depth as any elf, space marine, FBI agent or super hero. Once everybody sits down to play it becomes obvious very fast that it's the characters interests, ambitions and agendas that make her interesting and worthwhile, not that she's a 14 year old Japanese student. So yeah, it's really nice to see how well a group can take to this.

    But in the meantime, I think it's my turn to hopelessly mangle a game session for you.


    looking forward to it.



    Jake
    •  
      CommentAuthorJoel
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2007
     # 8
    Heh. A couple of years ago a (terrible, terrible) Gm railroaded my into getting gender-reversal cursed in our D&D game. He said, "Well, I thought it would be a good roleplaying challenge for you to play a female character."

    Stunned silence. Forget the controlling GM-issues for a sec. . .as if the magical alteration of my male character wich resulted mostly in jokes about PMS and how "Rafe's got boobs now" had ANYthing to do with "playing a female character."

    So yeah, your game? Breath of fresh air. :)

    I think one concern (at least *I* worry about it) with guys playing girls is the worry about parody. I mean, you can parody a prissy little elf or big dumb barbarian or any other stereotype, but when you're actually parodying a gender, especially if you're playing with members of that gender, that's a little more personal, potentially offensive, or whatever. And that D&D game I mentioned sure devolved into parody right quick, admittedly with the eager participation of that gender.*

    I know we used a lot of teenage-girl humor in the PE game, but it felt. . .different, I guess. Like the humor wasn't mocking so much as naturally arising from the situation. Not that I'm against the silly in principle, and I dunno, maybe it's a "had to be there" distinction. But I guess what I'm saying is that yes, I liked playing a teenage girl in your game. :)

    Peace,
    -Joel

    *I must say, roleplaying it was easy. "Hmm, my character feels frustrated and put out by this change, *I* feel frustrated and put out by this change, it's a perfect match!"
    • CommentAuthorColinC
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2007
     # 9
    I don't have much to add to what you guys have posted, mostly just nodding my head in agreement at your observations.

    Jake, I look forward to playing PE with you again. (^-^)

    Cheers,
    ColinC
  10.  # 10
    I think one concern (at least *I* worry about it) with guys playing girls is the worry about parody. I mean, you can parody a prissy little elf or big dumb barbarian or any other stereotype, but when you're actually parodying a gender, especially if you're playing with members of that gender, that's a little more personal, potentially offensive, or whatever.


    Panty Explosion can certainly be used for evil. That was always something Matt and I feared. But I haven't heard about a lot of that happening, and I haven't seen it in the games I've played. Most of the time players seem to forgo stereotypes and focus on what makes their characters unique. I think this might have been more of an issue if some f the players wre allowed to play boys (although this hasn't come up in the Classroom Deathmatch playtests yet).

    Colin, Joel, Thanks for the comments.


    Jake

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