Barf Forth Apocalyptica
hacks => blood & guts => Topic started by: Eruditus on March 10, 2011, 09:57:06 PM
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Two concerns:
Do Brainers allow/instigate players to not have to connect to their characters? I feel like several of the Brainer characters I've seen in my game and other APs are disconnected from the group/reality (cool) but make it difficult to relate to the Brainers. Does this get in the way of playing it real?
Secondly, is there a Brainer that doesn't take the Violation glove? Doesn't this remove opportunities for rolls to get in close and have the Brainers social awkwardness play out?
Thanks for your input. Just looking for experiences and anecdotal evidence how this may or may not be the case.
Thanks,
-Don
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Good question about the violation glove. Does it make play more interesting? In our game the glove just looked like a regular glove. In retrospect I think that was a mistake.
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In both the longer games I've been involved in, the brainers were certainly disconnected from the other characters (both player and not), but their attempts to deal with people despite this were amazing to watch.
I have the same feeling about the battlebabe, except that the disconnect comes from being ice cold rather than psychically weird.
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Man, the Brainer, the Battlebabe, the Skinner and the Hocus are, IMHO, the most interesting and grabby playbooks. They are exciting and challenging to play. I feel like the violation forces the player and not the character to be a human being and make hard choices because it's the most potent piece of gear/playbook in the game.
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I agree the Brainer is compelling. Playing the unusual type in a crowd is compelling. I call it "playing the Data." (every Star Trek has it's variant character - Spock, Data, Otto, T'Pol)
But is playing that character a means for escaping having to connect and worry about your characters wel being in a really harsh world?
I think the hypothesis is "the less you relate to your character the less connected you can become and the easier it is to distance yourself emotionally from playing it."
I honestly don't have an answer and the behaviors I've seen have been limited and could be about those specific players less so than a character type enforcing emotional content.
Simon, I agree that the Violation glove should be more obvious. I may have that change through failure over time in my game.
Mike, yeah I think we're really drawn to the idea of humanizing or connecting with the disconnected... ie why Data has a cat named Spot.
Nathan, what are the hard choices a violation glove offers? Honestly I feel it's just the opposite, it makes those choices seem less gripping. Now instead of having to put yourself into a situation where you have to be vulnerable... Or tying the poor bastard down - you just have to shake his hand. Please explain the hard choice the Player is making so I may better get your point. Thanks.
-Don
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Oh, the once it's easy to get the answers to the deep-brain scan questions the Brainer's player has to decide what to do with them. The answers to those questions make everyone extreme vulnerable to the Brainer. Because of that, the player has full autonomy to make ethical decisions about power and knowledge. Role-playing those decisions honestly is both difficult and very engaging.
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Cool. I'm with you on that. Isn't that offered with Deep Brain Scan in general?
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Right but now it's anyone you touch.
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I have had Brainers in both games I have MC'ed and they are characters who are socially awkward but with tremendous social power. One talks to herself and likes her dog best because it doesn't talk to her.
Yeah, both took the Violation Glove. I think its more for the cool-sounding name than anything else. Its an amazing power that really changes the game.
I like that they are outside of the necessities that other playbooks provide: transportation, medicine, fixing shit, killing shit, entertainment. They lay out raw human weakness, frailty and shame in a way that takes all of the other pieces and shakes them up considerably.
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I wonder if I'm playing wrong. :)
My Brainer has a brain relay and receptivity drugs. It seemed like the glove got a lot of play so I went with something else. I'm also not like completely estranged from the hold's social life; I'm married to the Savvyhead and I think I'm generally considered the more normal of us.
So, I don't have a problem relating to my character or the group.
But, this game is online and moving slowly; we're only on the second "session."
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All but one of the 15 one-shots I've run (not counting "Last Rock Band on Earth" which uses pregens) have had a Brainer, and only once has the Brainer not taken a violation glove. Once the Brainer took a violation glove when he didn't even have the moves that use it. That was great. I always have the Brainer player describe his/her/its glove. Not one of those descriptions sounded the least bit like anything you'd care to have touch you. They've been great.
So far no Brainer has taken TWO violation gloves, but I live in hope.
One Brainer took violation glove, deep brain scan, in-brain puppet strings, and for his first improvement took Healing Touch from the Angel's playbook. With Wierd highlighted we almost got to see The Ungiven Future in a single session, wheee.
One of my favorites so far was the one that used to watch people secretly through their windows, her assistant taking notes, then they'd go back to their brainer lair under the rock and act out what they'd seen. Practicing being human.
I think violation glove and then probably brain relay are the best gear, but if some brainer wants to take the roads less trampled, good on them!
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Thanks for your input. So a quick opinion poll...
"I think Brainers are easy to play because you don't have to relate to them... Kinda like actors getting nominated for awards for playing mentally handicapped characters."
Agree or Not.
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Are there any pieces of gear other than maybe the Angel kit, that gets picked as consistently as the Violation Glove.
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Don, have you played a Brainer? If not, why not?
In the games I've played in and run so far, one Brainer took the glove, one didn't. Both had/have functional but really weird relationships with and connections to the other PCs. Your basic premise, that playing a Brainer allows the player to disconnect, rings false to me - from what I've seen, playing a Brainer means getting inside some weird skin and digging in the dark places, usually with fantastic play results. Sure, they may be a step or two sideways from the reality the rest of the PCs experience, but not so much as to make it impossible to relate to them. So I disagree with your polling question.
One of the great things about the splat books is that people pick what they are drawn to play. If an MC was assigning splats, then sure, I'd expect players to disconnect all over the place, and not just with Brainers.
And as to gear, the pain wave projector is more practical and diverse than the violation gloves. Show me a Battlerbabe, or Gunlugger, or heck, any PC that doesn't want a reusable hand-grenade!
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Oh man. Pain wave projector! As MC, I do not fuck around when I describe what that does to people. In our last game, two people on different occasions ran through gunfire to get out of the range of a PWP.
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I agree that the violation glove is an extremely appealing choice... for me personally. I think that the name itself is sufficient warning as to exactly what that gear choice entails: It says you want to rape someone's brain with a mere touch. Whatever form the violation glove takes, everybody who sees it (in action, if not at first glance) knows exactly what that does, and then might understandably keep the brainer at arm's length. Compare and contrast with, say, unnatural lust transfixion; I think it'd be very possible to have an extremely social brainer rather than an extremely manipulative brainer, and I think that different types of players would choose different types of gear and moves according to their preference. The pain-wave projector, for me, seems like a terrible choice because it doesn't say anything about not affecting your friends...
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The fact that it gets everyone except you is what makes it *awesome*.
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I too play up the "violation" aspect of the violation glove. Sure, it's very powerful and lets you skip all the work and niceties involved with getting intimate with someone. On the other hand (har har) it lacks subtlety. I describe victims going into seizures, watching the brainer with eyes full of pain and fright as their brains are raped. Nobody walks away from glove use none the wiser.
To further separate the two options I play up non-glove uses of moves like puppet strings. An NPC may very well go on believing that killing that preacher was the only right choice if the move was pulled off with finesse.
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The only Brainer I've ever played was one who took a brain relay and the two brain relay-compatible moves, specifically because I knew every other Brainer I had seen went with a violation glove. It became a pretty important artefact in the game, but this isn't really the space for any "my character" stories.
When I MC'd a game with a Brainer who had the glove, I did the same as Neurook, playing up the "violation" aspect of the word with as much intensity as possible. By itself, without flavour, the glove is arguably the most potent piece of brainer-specific gear in the book. Once you start adding stuff to it, like seizures, the ramifications of mind-rape, it changes in its use and style throughout the game.
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The brainer I played last had the brain relay and the receptivity drugs, I think. She introduced herself as the Angel, that was fun.
The brainer in the group I'm currently MCing in took the pain-wave projector and the brain relay. He really wanted the glove, but realised he liked the other moves more than the ones that actually let him use the glove.
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I'm in a campaign that happens to include the brainer, and two things that have been noted as common came up: one, she was a little detached from the rest of the group whereas the rest of the group had a very thick web going (admittedly, the brainer kind of lends itself to that), and two, she took the violation glove. She's not still detached--she put herself out there, took risks, acted on and spoke about what she's passionate about--and she's getting closer to the other characters as a consequence of these things.
That said, I don't think the brainer is there for people who want to be detached from their own characters. Hell, you could do that with any of'em--and the brainer is not necessarily that hard to relate to, but I speak as someone who, if asked to generate myself in Apoc World, would go brainer. They're unusual, sure, but if you look past the creepy psychic powers, they represent someone who's really out there: someone who's introverted, who maybe didn't have the best social skills on the surface when they were growing up or perhaps even today, but these days, even watching and learning from the outside, they've come to understand people. Their distance lets them see the things that people who are closer would miss due to emotional attachment or because the person being observed shows closer people some other side of themselves. Their ability to step back and see people as they are rather than as they want to see them gives them understanding that the more emotionally invested would not want to have. Also the words "GET OUT OF MY HEAD" are the funnest words to hear, no shit; that moment when someone realizes that you're telling them exactly what they're thinking is a blast. Of course in real life I can only torment my inner circle with it, but hey.
Or maybe some people just want to play the creepy psychic stalker weirdo who watches people sleep. To each their own.
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The player who played a brainer in my first game didn't take a violation glove because he thought it would make his character less creepy.
edit for clarification: he thought *having a violation glove* would make his character less creepy.