I'm not very comfortable, personally, with very strong bleed-out. I've seen players run out of the room in tears, shudder in terror, flip a table in anger, and dance around the room with triumphant joy. This isn't specifically a post about that, so this list is incomplete.īleed-out is when the game world affects the players. In tabletop RPG theory we call this "simulationism" "sim character" "getting in character" or "immersion." You can google those terms to find more tips on immersion.If you play a game that requires them, keep them in a box until combat starts. They tend to literally create distance between the player and their character. Use props that encourage the players to think of themselves as their characters - things they can hold like an orb, wand, scroll, note, puzzle, or crystal.Encourage your players to take on an accent or do a voice themselves. Break out the renn fest tankards and fill them with frothy ale for a D&D game, for instance. When you have food and drink, make an effort to bring items that the characters eat and drink.Have people talk like their characters, avoiding anachronisms. Play in a less frequently used room of the house, if possible (the basement is a cliche, but totally works!). Keep the real life away from the game.Try getting everyone to go around the table and announce where their character was at the end of last session having the GM recap the last session playing opening credits for the game formally announcing the game is starting and asking people to put away phones and such or setting up the minis and battlemat.
The more formal and structured, the better. Have a ritual that begins the game session.You can reduce bleed-in by tightening the membrane between the real world and the fiction. The intense short-run Vampire LARP might be designed to be very permeable to bleed-out, but relatively impermeable to bleed-in.īleed-in is when the real world intrudes into the magic circle. The casual after work D&D game might be permeable to bleed-in and relatively impermeable to bleed-out. If you have an established group, they probably have a group consensus of how permeable the magic circle membrane should be in each direction. Others are serious immersion-focused emotionally intense affairs. Some games are casual after work affairs for relaxing. Some GMs might want more bleed than others. The magic circle's barrier can be made more or less permeable. You can't eliminate or guarantee bleed, but you can make it more or less likely. So what can you DO with these ideas? You can adjust the level of bleed by building a harder magic circle. Knowledge, patterns of thought, and emotions bleed through the membrane. Did you just learn about the Cathar heresy? You might be more likely to burn some heretics in tonight's D&D game. Did your 8 year old Shadowrun character just get killed by a dragon? You're going to go home with a bittersweet sadness and maybe you'll be a little on edge in your facebook comments that night. Wait, what? Things can pass through the magic circle? Well of course! Did you have a great day at work where everything went right and you kicked ass? When you settle in to your Vampire character, you're going to be excited, self-confident, and satisfied. The "Magic Circle" is the boundary between the real world and the shared imagined space of the game. Let me turn it into a simple tool for you to use. But I digress! Let me tell you about magic circle.
So why isn't it a common concept in tabletop RPGs? Probably because only indie designers ever really talk about these ideas. Read it here!) LARP theory has spent a lot of time talking about magic circles and bleed and other concepts of immersion and virtual worlds. (I wrote about Immersion in a later post. It's a useful idea that relates directly to the concept of immersion and shared imagined space. What, you've never heard of the magic circle? It's such a studied concept there are academic papers and even a pretty detailed wikipedia page.