[UA] Feedback on UA-ish convention scenario concept

[Timothy Ferguson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu [mailto:ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu]On
> Behalf Of James O'Rance

> The basic premise is that the players are each playing a splinter
> personality of someone with dissociative disorder.

May I note that this is a really great way to annoy the Hell out of your
local DID community?
That being said...

(I assume you mean dissociative identity disorder?  Not simple dissociative
disorders like those found in the autistic?)

> The players
> are not aware
> of this at the beginning of the scenario; they are each given a character
> briefing that describes different aspects of the same person, but
> are lead
> to believe that they *are* different characters.
>
> Each personality will perhaps be described as though they have
> five failed
> notches on a different Madness Meter.

Most social alters don't look odd.

 There will be some kind of incident
> that lead to the creation of these splinters,

Note - Non-PC.

> but each
> personality will only
> possess pieces of this knowledge. The relationships between each splinter
> personality and the others will be worked out; it is possible that some
> personalities will not "know" the others.

You need a central...a personality in partial fusion with the rest,
otherwise you get utter quarantine in some basic skills.  This could be your
guardian...your protector alter, run as an NPC.  Note that you get
quarantine in other ways regardless, your violence-coping personality is
likely to be unable to do other things, for example do basic arithmetic.  It
simply can't think about these things.  Your character's sexuality is likely
quarantined in some way too.  That means that only a few of your alters will
think about sex at all...will be -able- to think about sex, and very few
could actually do it.

If you don't have a central, then some of the alters will have blackouts,
when they are non-social.

> As the GM runs these personalities through the scenario, he is actually
> portraying a psychiatrist who is giving therapy to his patient
> through some
> role-playing exercises. The GM takes some care to act towards the
> players as
> he would towards an actual patient, not someone in a convention
> scenario, in
> regards to body language and tone of voice. More significantly, he only
> speaks directly to one player at any one time - the "dominant"
> personality
> of the patient.

Um, you have multiple socials?  In true DID what would happen here is that
the one you spoke to would be the one who was situationaly dominant.  So,
during violence you'd always speak to Fred, while working through a grocery
list you'd always speak to Virginia...

I'd point out that role-playing with DID is a sort of pandering, that is it
is legitimatising the mechanism instead of challenging it.  It goes the
other way, though.  During my OCD counselling my therapist wanted to try
dissociative role-playing (basically imagining yourself as a community of
people each with a role/cause/beef).  It didn't work too well on me, because
the premise is that its a way of telling yourself truths you don't want to
face, and that doesn't suit the pathology of OCD at all.  Take that, Jung!
8)

> The other players are free to converse with each
> other, of
> course,

There is no "of course".  Many DID people can't communicate between all of
their alters.  You can just say that Sandy hates Jessica and will never talk
to her...or that only 3 of the characters can see Snuffleupagus.

By the way, "alter" is the term you are looking for.  Splinters might be the
same as "slivers" which is a colloquialism I've heard for alters that have
one, single function.  The best example I can think of is Rabbit from "When
Rabbit Howls" whose function is to scream.  She doesn't do anything else.
She's a quarantine space for pain.  You should have one of these as an NPC -
as the key to your cause.  You should also be aware of "shadow troops", the
ability to create slivers for a limited purpose.  When your players get
this, they have the ability to make NPCs for brief purposes.  This should
freak your players out a little- when they realise that it isn't systemic or
coincidental searching.  Let me explain, from my experience with Amber:

- "I go find a plumber" is acting as if everything were real.
- "I look for a passing guy with a toolkit?"  is still acting as if
everything were real, but co-incidence seems to favour you.  Players in most
games try this on.
- "A plumber happens to be passing" as above, but the player is claiming
control of the game state.
- "I make a plumber appear" the character has generated a splinter.  A
character in this sort of therapy is co-GMing, in a sense, but even in real
life, a DID person might generate a sliver to just deal with a problem.

> and the GM should switch focus when it seems appropriate.

> I don't have enough knowledge of this disorder to know if role-playing
> techniques have ever been used to treat it (although I'll be doing some
> research).

No, not usually.  It'd be pandering.  Then again, each case is different.

> A friend who I would normally ask about psych stuff
> wants to play
> anything that I run at Necro, so I can't use his advice!
>
> The goal of the scenario is for the splinter personalities to realise the
> truth about their situation, to face the cause of their distress

DID is often causeless, although there is a heightened statistical
occurrence in abused children.  Abused-child-DID is a bit of a cliché among
those who have it.

, and
> (perhaps) to begin the process of reintegration. Whether they decide that
> they want all of this would be entirely up to the players, of course.

They don't get to choose, in the real world - virtually all DID people use a
non-democratic personality structure.  One person gets control of the
muscles virtually all of the time and frankly if you were the social, would
you allow all of these fractured monomaniacs to take over the muscles?
Actually, many do, but I wanted to make the point that the idea everyone
puts their hands up before a reintegration is wrong.  DID is not a
"democratic" state of mind.


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