Not getting it..

[mneme]

If people don't get your game, it's not their fault, and not the fault of their experiences, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. Sure, if they've gotten training that's too close to what you're doing, it will produce cognitive dissonance -- just like learning a new language, or a new and different martial arts style, or a new dance style. But that's true of anything -- people with extensive experience as storytellers or actors often have to do a bit of retraining when they start -any- form of roleplaying just because the protocols are so different, and the actors often have it -worse- if they've done a lot of improv.

There are basically two problems I tend to see in this situation:

1. People misread the rules, or forget them and put artifacts of other gaming styles in place of them. Often, this is the fault of the game writer. If you underwrite your game, yes, people are going to put their own things into the gap. If you overwrite your game in the wrong directions, when people take a subset of what you wrote down to be "the game", the bits they remember may not be the bits that you thought were the most important. The only way to catch this kind of stuff is cold playtest -- with all your types of target audience, including veteran gamers.

2. People just don't have the skills, and fall back on the skills they know best. This is an interesting one. The early RPGs -- D&D, T&T, and the other hack and slashers -- are really, really easy. For that matter, other games that have worked as Intro RPGs -- VtM, Everway, even some LARPs -- are quite easy, and people can take things slow, playing the game more or less as a wargame, as they work their way slowly into the swing of things and eventually learn to roleplay. So maybe the Indie-Nar community needs (or needs to identify and push as such) some "easy" games that can act as etudes -- study exercises -- to get people slowly into the habit of using the skills they need to play these games right -- and which are still -fun- during the period where you're playing them wrong. And I suspect the study games that are most effective for non-gamers are somewhat different than study games that are most effective for veteran gamers. For example, it might be that Breaking the Ice is an easy game that's somewhat easier for non-Gamers, whereas PTA has enough explicit structure that it's a good game for retraining veteran gamers.

Not getting it..

[mneme]

If people don't get your game, it's not their fault, and not the fault of their experiences, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. Sure, if they've gotten training that's too close to what you're doing, it will produce cognitive dissonance -- just like learning a new language, or a new and different martial arts style, or a new dance style. But that's true of anything -- people with extensive experience as storytellers or actors often have to do a bit of retraining when they start -any- form of roleplaying just because the protocols are so different, and the actors often have it -worse- if they've done a lot of improv.

There are basically two problems I tend to see in this situation:

1. People misread the rules, or forget them and put artifacts of other gaming styles in place of them. Often, this is the fault of the game writer. If you underwrite your game, yes, people are going to put their own things into the gap. If you overwrite your game in the wrong directions, when people take a subset of what you wrote down to be "the game", the bits they remember may not be the bits that you thought were the most important. The only way to catch this kind of stuff is cold playtest -- with all your types of target audience, including veteran gamers.

2. People just don't have the skills, and fall back on the skills they know best. This is an interesting one. The early RPGs -- D&D, T&T, and the other hack and slashers -- are really, really easy. For that matter, other games that have worked as Intro RPGs -- VtM, Everway, even some LARPs -- are quite easy, and people can take things slow, playing the game more or less as a wargame, as they work their way slowly into the swing of things and eventually learn to roleplay. So maybe the Indie-Nar community needs (or needs to identify and push as such) some "easy" games that can act as etudes -- study exercises -- to get people slowly into the habit of using the skills they need to play these games right -- and which are still -fun- during the period where you're playing them wrong. And I suspect the study games that are most effective for non-gamers are somewhat different than study games that are most effective for veteran gamers. For example, it might be that Breaking the Ice is an easy game that's somewhat easier for non-Gamers, whereas PTA has enough explicit structure that it's a good game for retraining veteran gamers.

Larp prep

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Another day of larp prep. I think the Baths characters are in good shape, so long as they can print out readably -- Baths will be played in the pool, so we want things to fit on the back of laminated cards. If a character sheet won't fit legibly on one laminated card, then it will be on two laminated cards.

Hm, we may need to tweak the horde characters a bit, just to make sure that the actual names of the hordlings are on the cards.

We expanded the number of characters for both games. All of the Jamais Vue characters are now viable, I think. And the old sheets have been updated with the new information. Of course, the players start with blank sheets, because it's an amnesia game.

We're not yet ready to print the character sheets -- there's still a bit of cross checking to be done. But, we are hoping to get the bulk of the item cards done, and perhaps the combat envelopes. There doesn't have to be combat at all in the game. One run had hardly any, while the other had a bit more. The system requires a lot of pregame prep, but is really simple in play -- both sides rip open an envelope and compare the number inside. High value wins. Simple is good.

Spreadsheets are also good. Baths is basically all on a spreadsheet. Jamais Vue isn't quite. It probably will be by the end of this run of game prep. Well, perhaps on several sheets. There's a separate spreadsheet for item cards, and I think that has to be the case.

It's been interesting adding characters to both games. For Baths, the characters were all there from the time we tweaked it for the Columbia University Games Club run. The only difference is that then, we didn't know how many people we'd have, and we didn't get a huge number, whereas now, we have 23 sign ups. So, I looked over the characters, and picked out the ones that seemed most viable -- that is, had the most stuff to do. It's a two hour game, and we had a lot more done than I'd feared.

Then, we jiggled things a bit. One bit character got bumped up based on one person's character questionnaire. I think we tweaked a second, but would have to go back and check. No one is cast as horde, which means that anyone with nothing to do at Intercon F during the time we're running the game can drop by and have a good chance of getting a horde roll.

If not, well, the gms can be horde characters, if needed. Or, if not, that's fine too.

It's interesting planning for different variables, and it's been interesting adding characters to Jamais Vue. crash_mccormick had explained the theory to me some years ago, when we first started working on the first run of JV. Ignoring the fact that it's an amnesia game, you decide on your basic plotlines, factions, groups, whatever. You get your core minimum. Then, you keep adding, like petals around a flower, building out.

At first, you get a bare sketch of a new addition, but a bit of work makes it click. Of course, then, you need to go back and tweak the rest, or at least, some of the rest, to incorporate the new material.

But, what if you have fewer characters? This has come up before. For the first run of JV, we had exactly as many players as we had full characters. That worked. Actually, we had one more player, but she could only play for an hour. As we knew this ahead of time, we wrote a character designed for that.

For the second run, we added four more characters. And, we got half as many players. This called for some creative casting. Plus, we didn't have questionnaires, I believe, so we did a lot of snap decision making that worked out quite well. It was a good run, but a very different one from the first.

And, we had discussed what to do if only two players showed up, or only one. We have taken JV apart and put it back together a couple of times. It gives me a good perspective on the type of larp I tend to play and tend to want to write.

Larp prep

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Another day of larp prep. I think the Baths characters are in good shape, so long as they can print out readably -- Baths will be played in the pool, so we want things to fit on the back of laminated cards. If a character sheet won't fit legibly on one laminated card, then it will be on two laminated cards.

Hm, we may need to tweak the horde characters a bit, just to make sure that the actual names of the hordlings are on the cards.

We expanded the number of characters for both games. All of the Jamais Vue characters are now viable, I think. And the old sheets have been updated with the new information. Of course, the players start with blank sheets, because it's an amnesia game.

We're not yet ready to print the character sheets -- there's still a bit of cross checking to be done. But, we are hoping to get the bulk of the item cards done, and perhaps the combat envelopes. There doesn't have to be combat at all in the game. One run had hardly any, while the other had a bit more. The system requires a lot of pregame prep, but is really simple in play -- both sides rip open an envelope and compare the number inside. High value wins. Simple is good.

Spreadsheets are also good. Baths is basically all on a spreadsheet. Jamais Vue isn't quite. It probably will be by the end of this run of game prep. Well, perhaps on several sheets. There's a separate spreadsheet for item cards, and I think that has to be the case.

It's been interesting adding characters to both games. For Baths, the characters were all there from the time we tweaked it for the Columbia University Games Club run. The only difference is that then, we didn't know how many people we'd have, and we didn't get a huge number, whereas now, we have 23 sign ups. So, I looked over the characters, and picked out the ones that seemed most viable -- that is, had the most stuff to do. It's a two hour game, and we had a lot more done than I'd feared.

Then, we jiggled things a bit. One bit character got bumped up based on one person's character questionnaire. I think we tweaked a second, but would have to go back and check. No one is cast as horde, which means that anyone with nothing to do at Intercon F during the time we're running the game can drop by and have a good chance of getting a horde roll.

If not, well, the gms can be horde characters, if needed. Or, if not, that's fine too.

It's interesting planning for different variables, and it's been interesting adding characters to Jamais Vue. crash_mccormick had explained the theory to me some years ago, when we first started working on the first run of JV. Ignoring the fact that it's an amnesia game, you decide on your basic plotlines, factions, groups, whatever. You get your core minimum. Then, you keep adding, like petals around a flower, building out.

At first, you get a bare sketch of a new addition, but a bit of work makes it click. Of course, then, you need to go back and tweak the rest, or at least, some of the rest, to incorporate the new material.

But, what if you have fewer characters? This has come up before. For the first run of JV, we had exactly as many players as we had full characters. That worked. Actually, we had one more player, but she could only play for an hour. As we knew this ahead of time, we wrote a character designed for that.

For the second run, we added four more characters. And, we got half as many players. This called for some creative casting. Plus, we didn't have questionnaires, I believe, so we did a lot of snap decision making that worked out quite well. It was a good run, but a very different one from the first.

And, we had discussed what to do if only two players showed up, or only one. We have taken JV apart and put it back together a couple of times. It gives me a good perspective on the type of larp I tend to play and tend to want to write.