labcats | Lessons from 2 Weekends of Larping

From the weekend long larp Torch of Freedom:

1. The mass combat system in Torch works for Torch. However, we are not, not, NOT going to even attempt anything approaching that level of complexity for Dark of the Moon! When

mnemex tries to convince us we can go more complicated, just say no.

2. The badges in Torch are a lot like what we were thinking of for Dark of the Moon. There is a lot of information encoded in the badges, including such basics as a character's name, gender, and apparent age. In addition, I had a ton of information scattered through various blue sheets, and I even sat down and summarized it into one sheet Friday night, after the game closed for the evening. Despite this, I missed some very basic information, including

a. The age of one character. Fortunately, someone told me that the PC was 12 before I did something silly.

b. I was putting together family trees as the game went on. I'm good at this. It's what I do as a gm. Despite this, I missed realizing that certain people were related, even though their last names were clearly printed on their badges.

This drove home, more than anything

zrealm said, just how much players don't absorb.

I expect that we'll still try to encode this information into the badges, and probably into blue sheets as well. I just won't assume that the players will actually put all of the pieces together. I think I'll try to cover for this with a Who's Who sheet, but again, while players really ought to be able to figure out basic, non-secret stuff, we'll need to remember that they won't necessarily actually do this.

zrealm also thinks that badge pictures of the PCs are useless. I'm not convinced, but that's actually a side issue. The game doesn't stand or fall on whether we have these.

From Intercon MidAtlantic:

1. Yes, really, if there's no way to steal or otherwise obtain in-game items from non-consenting PCs, PCs will beat each other up to get items from each other.

2. Even people who've been larping long enough to know better will sometimes agree to let their PC go down a dark alley with another PC.