Veils and NGH
So I just found Meg and Emily's blog Fair Game via Vincent's "anyway". There I find a fascinating post called "More Alphabet Soup" -- about the two ways to treat other players' boundaries: "Nobody gets hurt" (NGH) versus "I will not abandon you" (IWNAY).

I think an early and still excellent treatment of boundaries is Brian Gleichman's Interaction Model for Campaign Morality from rgfa in 1997. His key insight was recognizing that there is a big difference in how players draw their lines over the game, in particular regarding their character. So there are four ratings: Player vs. Player, Player vs. Game, Game vs. Player, and Game vs. Game. So, the same thing might be acceptable for a PC to do to an NPC -- but would be out of line being done to a PC. On the Forge, discussion was influenced by Ron Edwards' Sex and Sorcery supplement and introduced the term of "The Veil" for such things.

In general, I think I am a NGH sort of player. I don't go for shock, and I think there is plenty of meaning possible within people's boundaries. I'm more of a Jane Austen sort (like Jay Loomis) than a Kill Puppies for Satan sort. There is good art which transgresses -- but there is also very good art which does not. Still, we do draw in a lot of issues from real life into our games, and it's a very good question how we treat boundaries.

In the last episode of our Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign, we hit on a whole bunch of things which I'm hoping will be bigger. The comedic center of the episode was having the PCs beat up on a bunch of geeks who were bringing down the reputation of their favorite bar. But then the magical influence turns some of the PCs into uber-geeks. It was comedy -- we all realize that it's in fun, and we have a safe rather than transgressive feeling. But at the same time, we're mocking ourselves and each other. It wasn't perfectly on -- I could have hoped for cooler satire, but we made a stab at it. It's NGH, I think, but also still personally meaningful.

There is another largely comedic subplot bit about mothering -- since my PC Slayer, Dot, recently had a baby and even more recently duplicated herself to watch the baby and slay vampires at the same time. So Dot has these two halves, one of whom is out and about while the other is watching the baby -- an obvious but I think still interesting narrative device about a mother's split of identity. Anyhow, I felt a little on my toes here as a man portraying a woman and new mother -- particularly in the same game with my wife, who was a full-time mom for our son's first year. Again, this is playful and comedic -- I would say NGH, but still meaningful.

I think that there is something about this that relates to Push/Pull as well. Essentially, NGH play feels more Pull -- players feel safe and open up their boundaries as a result. IWNAY play feels more Push -- players break through boundaries but then stay to make sure it is made OK. All of this is very touchy-feely, not very well-defined talk which I hope to formalize more after having digested it more.