STG 162 - Safety and Bleed with Dr. Sarah Lynne Bowman

Saving the Game

Professor, researcher, leading thinker in the psychology of RPGS both tabletop and LARP, and contributor to the first college textbook on RPGs Dr. Sarah Lynne Bowman joins us for a second time (we first spoke to Sarah back in episode 111) to discuss more of the psychology around RPGs.
The episode starts with a quick discussion of the new game Peter is going to be starting up in October with some StG listeners, and an excellent and thoughtful question about playing characters of the opposite sex from John and Ginny Swann.
From there, we move into our scripture and a discussion of the player archetypes that Sarah codified in her book The Functions of Role-Playing Games. These are a useful tool descriptive tool to discuss who we are in games on a more psychological level and complement more traditional player types (like tactician and actor) nicely. With that groundwork laid, the conversation turns to a discussion of the phenomenon of bleed (psychological transference from player to character or vice versa) in gaming and how that's tied up with safety techniques. As you'd expect, we touched on the free (and excellent) Consent in Gaming document recently published by Monte Cook games, but also used an experience of Peter's from a few years back to illustrate why safety techniques are a good idea. We also spent a bit of time talking about how gaming can go past mere safety and into growth, another topic that Dr. Bowman is passionate about.

Scripture: Proverbs 4:5-6 , Galatians 6:2, Philippians 2:1-4, 3 John 1-6