labcats | Entries tagged with larp

So a thing I've known for a while when designing Intercon-style larps:

Never, ever tell a player that their character is shy.

The problem with writing a larp character as "shy" is that the player might roleplay this characteristic. And while sure, some players can play a "shy" character and still turn it into a fulfilling and engaging experience, it's one of the easiest ways to tell a player "your character shouldn't engage in the game, shouldn't talk to other players" -- exactly the opposite of good play in most larps.

So one thing that occured to me today rewriting/editing A Vue to Kill:

It's fine to tell other people that a larp character is shy.

If you tell people that a character is shy, they're probably not going to avoid them; instead, they'll reach out to them, try to make space, seek them out and draw them in; and those -are- behaviors you want. Of course, that opens the question of how you write a game where one player doesn't know their character is supposed to be shy while other players do. My answer is that you can tell them their character is awkward around people, that they get nervous, are bookish, tend to look to other people for cues as to how to act, etc -- all those things make them -seem- shy, and fit the basic goal of making a character that other people are making an effot to talk to. But NONE of them tell them that their character avoids talking to people, which is the behavior you want to discourage.

mneme

This is the current design for the secrets/senses/recognition system for DOTM.

( Sesere: Secrets, senses, and recognition )

mneme

This is the current design for the Combat/Conflict/Voluntary revelation system for DOTM.

In the name of giving things cute quasi-descriptive names, I'm calling it Reveal.

( Reveal! An information-economy combat system )

mneme

This is the current design for the secrets/senses/recognition system for DOTM.

( Sesere: Secrets, senses, and recognition )

mneme

In the spirit of open design, I'm about to post the two existing systems for
our (that is,

drcpunk,

ladymondegreen,

batyatoon,

akawil, and my own) long-in-development, 60+ person full-weekend theatre style LARP: "Dark of the Moon".

A bit of context may be required to understand the design goals here:

A traditional theater style game (as this is) uses GM-designed characters played over a limited time game in a single (usually) session. The characters come with pre-written relationships, histories, and backgrounds, but are not scripted -- instead, they are entirely within the players' control once the game starts. Morover, there are generally few characters beyond those played by the players, and the most important characters (and all important sides of any issue) will be player characters.

In a good game, there is no pre-determined course of events -- there may be some pre-set events at various points to help shape the narrative (for example, Dark of the Moon, as a psuedo-victorian setting, will have a formal ball at some point), and the GMs may intervene to help control pacing and try to make sure the game's material covers the entire time alotted, neither coming to a grand conclusion within the first 25% of the game nor petering out before most of the events can come to a climax, but exactly what will happen is at the players' discression, the GMs primarily acting as facilitators and judges.

Often, characters will have secrets -- these may be secret to most of the other characters, or to all but a few, or may even be secret to the character in question in some fashion. How these secrets are revealed (and while many games allow secrets to not end up being revealed by the end of the game, I feel it's important that they -are- revealed for the most part, and this is reflected in my mechanics) impacts and changes how the game plays out, often in very extereme ways.

Ok, that should be enough context -- if you have questions on how this whole concept works, rather than any (either) of my mechanics, post them here.