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LARP?
I had a dream in which I was talking to Greywolf about running a game at Necronomicon. I was thinking about running something, and trying to decide what. I came up with this idea for how to structure a LARP.
When I woke up, I thought: That's not a bad idea. I should write it down.
I've refined it a little while composing it, but this is basically the idea as it formed in my dream.
This is a generic LARP system. It's designed to be very simple, and can be used to execute pretty much any kind of story.
The central premise is that the players have all the roles present in the plot. If there's a villain or murderer, that character is played by one of the PCs.
The second premise is that the players will not know what type of story they're in, unless their character does. Rather than telling the players from the outset 'This is a murder mystery' or 'the story is about finding the stolen 'Eternity Diamond', or 'it's about rescuing the kidnapped prince,' the players will only get information germaine to their character. So they won't know it's a murder mystery unless they're playing the killer who's hiding the body.
The final, key premise, is that the LARP is not about accomplishing your characters' goals, but about playing your character well. Accomplishing your goals may or may not please the other players, but if everyone plays their characters well, the game should be fun, even if you 'fail'.
Here's the set up.
Each player gets a few pages briefing them on
1) What their character is like
2) What they know about the other characters in the game (including such things as whether or not their character likes another character, for example.)
3) Character goals. These can be simple things like 'Get player C to agree to dinner and a movie,' or complicated things like 'Get away with murder.' Every character should have several different goals.
4) Character abilities. These can be anything: the ability to fix inanimate objects, or defend against an attack, or assassinate other characters. Abilities should generally be germaine to the plot. They should also be simple and easily carried out -- not a lot of die-rolling or paper-rock-scissors playing. You succeed or fail, and move on.
5) Icebreakers. This should be a simple list of conversational gambits or other reasons to engage particular other players in conversation. The idea here is to give people a 'starter', so that they don't stand around wondering what to do next.
They also get a list of:
1) Character quirks. These are roleplay traits, and can be simple things like biting one's nails, saying 'uh' a lot, or smiling constantly, or has a British accent. Or they can be important things like 'Wring hands whenever you lie (and only when you lie)' Or 'hates player D because he tried to date your sister, and so you always say bad things about him.'
2) List of things they know and should share. These may be simple things. For example, Player A dislikes player B and is annoyed by his habit of wringing his hands, and Player A should share this with players C through F. 'Things to share' may be meant to be shared with all other PCs, or only with certain ones.
To help identify players as their characters, character portraits should be printed next to each name on the briefing sheet, and each player should wear the character portrait of their PC. (This could be on a badge, or hung around the neck, or whatever.
The game itself can play out in any number of ways. But to facilitate the key premise -- that you 'win' by playing your PC well -- all players get evaluated in a post-mortem, after the game is over.
The post-mortem scores players on whether or not they played out the items on the second list: how well they stuck to their quirks, and shared the things they were supposed to share. A multiplier is assigned for 'sharing naturally' -- ie, you don't want to blurt out your information randomly, but insert it into the course of conversation.
To handle the post mortem, each player gets a copy of the each other's list, and checks off whether or not they observed the PC's quirks, or learned what they were supposed to learn from that PC. They also check off whether or not it seemed 'natural.'
The GM can score everyone based on these tallies, and declare a 'winner'. But the real motive behind the post-mortem should be less winning or losing, and more about how to improve so that you'll be better able to participate next time.
When I woke up, I thought: That's not a bad idea. I should write it down.
I've refined it a little while composing it, but this is basically the idea as it formed in my dream.
This is a generic LARP system. It's designed to be very simple, and can be used to execute pretty much any kind of story.
The central premise is that the players have all the roles present in the plot. If there's a villain or murderer, that character is played by one of the PCs.
The second premise is that the players will not know what type of story they're in, unless their character does. Rather than telling the players from the outset 'This is a murder mystery' or 'the story is about finding the stolen 'Eternity Diamond', or 'it's about rescuing the kidnapped prince,' the players will only get information germaine to their character. So they won't know it's a murder mystery unless they're playing the killer who's hiding the body.
The final, key premise, is that the LARP is not about accomplishing your characters' goals, but about playing your character well. Accomplishing your goals may or may not please the other players, but if everyone plays their characters well, the game should be fun, even if you 'fail'.
Here's the set up.
Each player gets a few pages briefing them on
1) What their character is like
2) What they know about the other characters in the game (including such things as whether or not their character likes another character, for example.)
3) Character goals. These can be simple things like 'Get player C to agree to dinner and a movie,' or complicated things like 'Get away with murder.' Every character should have several different goals.
4) Character abilities. These can be anything: the ability to fix inanimate objects, or defend against an attack, or assassinate other characters. Abilities should generally be germaine to the plot. They should also be simple and easily carried out -- not a lot of die-rolling or paper-rock-scissors playing. You succeed or fail, and move on.
5) Icebreakers. This should be a simple list of conversational gambits or other reasons to engage particular other players in conversation. The idea here is to give people a 'starter', so that they don't stand around wondering what to do next.
They also get a list of:
1) Character quirks. These are roleplay traits, and can be simple things like biting one's nails, saying 'uh' a lot, or smiling constantly, or has a British accent. Or they can be important things like 'Wring hands whenever you lie (and only when you lie)' Or 'hates player D because he tried to date your sister, and so you always say bad things about him.'
2) List of things they know and should share. These may be simple things. For example, Player A dislikes player B and is annoyed by his habit of wringing his hands, and Player A should share this with players C through F. 'Things to share' may be meant to be shared with all other PCs, or only with certain ones.
To help identify players as their characters, character portraits should be printed next to each name on the briefing sheet, and each player should wear the character portrait of their PC. (This could be on a badge, or hung around the neck, or whatever.
The game itself can play out in any number of ways. But to facilitate the key premise -- that you 'win' by playing your PC well -- all players get evaluated in a post-mortem, after the game is over.
The post-mortem scores players on whether or not they played out the items on the second list: how well they stuck to their quirks, and shared the things they were supposed to share. A multiplier is assigned for 'sharing naturally' -- ie, you don't want to blurt out your information randomly, but insert it into the course of conversation.
To handle the post mortem, each player gets a copy of the each other's list, and checks off whether or not they observed the PC's quirks, or learned what they were supposed to learn from that PC. They also check off whether or not it seemed 'natural.'
The GM can score everyone based on these tallies, and declare a 'winner'. But the real motive behind the post-mortem should be less winning or losing, and more about how to improve so that you'll be better able to participate next time.
no subject
For instance, for a murder mystery, you might have not only the murderer, but you might have an autistic janitor who came across the body and is convinced that if he is caught with it, he will be the one pinned for the murder. The murderer, however, has a conundrum because he had worked out a perfect way to dispose of the body, but by the time he came back, the body was gone!...
no subject
What I really had in mind when I was dreaming of this, though, was a way to structure a game so that the players could build their own plots. So that you could have a good time playing even if you missed the murder mystery entirely, as it were. The two times that I played in LARPs, I felt at the end as though I'd missed most of the story, and it soured me on playing. One way to get around that is to make sure the story is easy to unravel from a lot of directions, as you suggested. Another is to make lots of little stories interweave.
It's probably easier to do one story that unravels from several directions, though. :)
no subject
This, I think is a very important and key element in an LARP. Convention LARPs don't have the advantage of an omnipresent narrator/gamemaster/dungeonmaster to keep everyone in line ... and to provide NPC opponents. Every character is a player, and they generally have goals at odds with each other, or else it'd be a pretty dull game. But if the emphasis is put solely on winning, then a lot is going to be missed.
There are far better ways to play a game, and play it fairly, than to let a bunch of people loose with a pretend role, some rules, and little to no supervision. It's usually just so easy to cheat in a LARP, and if there is the pressure to "win" or the lure of some sort of material prize, it makes it that much more likely that someone isn't going to play fair.
At least, that's the concern I usually have: fairness. That is what I would have been focused on, had my dream self been true to character. But you bring up the OTHER point that I wouldn't have given due consideration on my own: If you're so focused on the game, on winning, then you can miss the experience of the role. And the role is what really counts; that's what makes this special, as opposed to running across a grassy field with a leather ball, or moving plastic pieces of white and black across a checkered board turn-by-turn. ;)
I find the idea of LARPs fascinating, really. Unfortunately, LARPs have a bad history at Necronomicon, particularly the "vampire" ones.
They've had some trouble at the con with unsanctioned games being run by convention-goers. This wouldn't be bad, except that the runners of these unsanctioned games are generally rank amateurs who can't handle such basic ideas as:
1) Don't freak the mundanes. They aren't players in your game, so don't involve them in it.
2) Don't go running down the halls, making a big ruckus and play-acting in loud voices getting clobbered in the wee hours of the night. Someone might think it's REAL and respond in kind!
3) Don't push people down stairwells. =P That's what happened last year. Some "vampire" LARPer pushed some kid down the stairs. I still don't know what came of that. I just happened to be up and about in the wee hours, when I ran into a police officer in the hotel.
That's the main reason why I'd be very careful about what sort of LARP and who I'd let play. In my "SwordTag" days, even though it expressly involved a certain amount of simulated violence by whacking each other with padded weapons, we knew each other. (We didn't invite anybody too many steps left of reality. And, believe me, you'll find people like that at a convention. =P )
Hmm. I can see it now. "In order to play this LARP, you must give your name, address, contact number, show proof of identity, and certify on the following form that you have not been convicted of any..."