I’ve got a bit of a weird situation going on here, and I want to hear what the fellow transes and the fellow RPG players have to say about it. So I’m crossposting it to both communities.
So I started a new Beam Saber campaign, and one of My players came up with the idea of playing as “Egg James Bond”. A womanising super spy who still thinks she’s a cis guy, and is externalising all her gender dysphoria into being a terrible person to those around her. It sounded like a fun story to tell, especially the moment where she comes to accept herself and transes her gender. So we’ve played three sessions so far, and Egg James Bond has been exactly the kind of misogynistic A-hole we were promised.
Except, a complication: The person playing as Egg James Bond is the host of a plural system, and Egg James Bond accidentally becomes her headmate. Her brain adapts to playing as this fictional character, and suddenly he’s another person inside her head. Believe it or not, this is a pretty common experience for plural roleplayers.
One of the other players is really bothered by Egg James Bond out of game, because Egg James Bond is a complete A-hole. She’s mean, petty, doesn’t respect women, etc. Personally, I’m not bothered by this behaviour, because we all discussed the character at session 0 and agreed to make it part of our game. And for Me, the behaviour is staying inside the game. But this other player is deliberately antagonising Egg James Bond out-of-character, receiving exactly the kind of replies I’d expect, and seems bothered by them.
So this other player goes to Egg James Bond and their player/host between sessions, and forcibly cracks her egg. Confronts her and makes her realise that she’s a woman inside. Guides her through choosing a name for herself. And this other player seems really proud of Themself, and says they’ve “fixed” Egg Trans James Bond. And that we can still play through the egg cracking moment in the game, Egg James Bond is still an egg in the game.
But I’m unhappy. I feel like our story has been spoiled. What’s the point of playing the story if we already know the ending? So I want Trans James Bond’s host to make a new character to play in the game. I don’t want to put up with the eggy bigoted version of the character to get to a story moment that’s already happened out of game. I feel like the character’s story in the game I’m running has been ruined. I wanted to play to find out. But now we’ve found out, and most of us didn’t get to play. And I’m bitter that we put up with the misogyny and pouting without getting the payoff. I was fine with it when it was in service to a story we all wanted to tell, but I don’t want to tell that story now that it’s already been told.
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This is the type of story that makes me happy I play with relatively normal people.
It seems like the problem you ran into began when EJB left the table and began to act separately from the game.
Personally, I would never let players create a character who is a 1:1 match for a person in the real world. Now you have that player “my guy’ing” about real world events instead of letting the story and other characters impact what they would do. At that point, why don’t we just read that real person’s biography or journal or whatever and skip the game entirely?
Another complication: would this 1:1 IRL person even be comfortable with being in the game at all? If my friends told me they were playing a game and I was a character, I’d ask them to stop. My question, as someone who is not at all familiar with headmates: Why would T/EJB want to be in the game at all, with someone else controlling them? And if T/EJB plays herself, then she’s already getting ejected from my game for misogyny.
I’ve never had to deal with a case where the 1:1 real world person came to exist because of the game, but I probably would ask the player to create a new character at that point. I understand the argument that off-table events can be considered fan fiction, but when there’s a feedback cycle between play and real-life, I don’t think such events can be easily separated.
Well, most of the players at the table have had that moment happen before, where a roleplaying character becomes a headmate. I’ll tell you My story.
I was playing a space adventure RPG, and My character was Heidi Shipwright, badass space marine with a shapeshifting gun. It was actually an RPG I invented, and Heidi was the first character ever created in the new system, so I put in an effort to create a more familiar character archetype than I normally do. Heidi is tough as nails and spits in the face of danger.
So after a few missions we’re hanging out in the cantina, and I should mention, this is a TTMMORPG, so there’s a lot of players. The Cantina is a place anyone can drop in for a scene of roleplay and maybe agree to party up. So this purple haired lady in a hoverchair floats in, played by a friend of Mine.
And up until this point, Heidi has been a stone cold badass sergeant type. Imagine combining Sergeant Johnson, TF2 Heavy, and that lady from Wreck it Ralph. But Heidi sees this pretty lady, and in My head, her facade of bravado just melts. Turns out she gay! I didn’t plan that, but she’s gay, and she wants to ask the pretty lady out on a date, which she’s very nervous about.
And that’s how I realised that I’m plural. Because I was playing a roleplaying game, and Heidi wanted to do something in the game that was absolutely not what I expected to roleplay her doing.
Autojects like Heidi Shipwright and Trans James Bond are natives of the imagination. Their foundational memories happen inside of fiction. They’re from other worlds, worlds that only exist in the minds of these few people. Those fictional worlds tend to be important to them, because they’re home. Their default state is being roleplayed by their hosts.
One of the other players is really bothered by Egg James Bond out of game, because Egg James Bond is a complete A-hole. She’s mean, petty, doesn’t respect women, etc.
Was Egg Bond’s player acting like this out of game?
No, but Egg Bond was.
Yeah, ok, that’s not cool. Maybe everyone at your tabke signed up for that amount of bleed, but the default expectation is that behavior like that is not allowed out of character.
In that case the Egg Bond system is the one at fault. Technicalities about different headmates doesn’t excuse being a dick out of the game.
It sounds like there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossing here. I don’t know much about the system/alter/DID dynamics (or if those are actually related even) but it sounds like you made a metaphorical tulpa in your friend’s head by accident. I don’t think this is a healthy group dynamic. You should not be feeding stimulus for a new personality to your friend who is susceptible, that seems dangerous. Or, if its actually fine, maybe talk about boundaries. Did they want to be Egg James Bond? Do they even want to be Trans James Bond? There’s a difference between acting and making a character a part of you. It doesn’t seem like anyone should have cracked Egg James Bond because as trans people we shouldn’t be forcibly doing that to each other. And at no point, if any of this is being taken seriously within your group, should Egg or Trans James’ Bond’s personal story be for your entertainment. You somewhat created a person or personality and you imbued it with a very turbulent emotional condition that takes years for some to come to grips with. Who knows how that is interacting with the system and its other selves. If this can legitimately happen to people with alters/systems/DID, that strikes me as cruel. You are in a way all responsible for their wellbeing. Your friend should apologize to Trans James Bond and all of you should talk to your friend’s other selves and apologize.
Edit: Also there is no excuse for misogyny at the table. The line for roleplaying a misogynist is thin and has already been crossed.
My player’s system is what’s called an endogenic system, which means they don’t have DID. They became plural through mental techniques that are a very long and somewhat sad story. Trans James Bond is a kind of headmate, or system member, called an autoject. That’s a member based on an external source, which was created by the system. Autojects have a lot in common with parogens (formerly known as tulpas), but the key difference is that they aren’t created intentionally. Autojects also tend to have ties with a fictional world which can complicate things.
Also, this is good advice, and I will be sharing it with the player. I already checked on Trans James Bond and made sure she’s doing okay. But I also wanted to share the terminology for these kinds of situations. I recommend pluralpedia as a good resource for plural terminology.
I am sorry if the term tulpa was a loaded term, I suspected it might be loaded and only used it for lack of a better term. Thank you for sharing these resources, I’ll give them a read.
First, you need to have STERN words with the player who forcibly cracked EJB’s egg out-of-game, if you haven’t already. Dick move.
Second, what happens outside the game is just fanfiction of the game. A spec-fic or an AU fic doesn’t ruin the season finale, whether it’s accurate or not.
Third, nothing has actually changed. You knew how EJB’s story would end before you began playing. You put up with the misogyny BECAUSE you knew the ending. There is value in simply telling a story, even (or especially) if you know how it’s going to end. Ever seen Hadestown?
