I attended Maelstrom in the UK, which had about 1000 participants and was almost entirely PvP and faction-based.
My experience of Maelstrom was entirely opposite to Norman’s experience of Mythodea. I never saw any NPCs, or if I did I didn’t know it. I saw constant PC interaction, and I got involved and had big impacts that affected factions. Someone told me later that I’d started something that had a big ongoing impact.
What probably helped is that before I went, I recruited a handful of UK larpers into a new group that I’d be the leader of. Having that number of followers allowed me to position myself as the most senior figure in one of the 5 churches (a bishop), even though it was my first game. I did this because I knew that in a fully PvP (they called it “player led”) game like Maelstrom, you’d have to be in the upper leadership of a group to get into lot of interesting meetings where faction-level decisions would happen, and to have a say. I wanted to experience high-impact decision making at that level. If I’d wanted a more relaxed, less influential experience I’d have played a follower in an established group.
My position meant I could go and speak on an even footing with the leaders of factions and other churches, although it did take a while to establish my credentials. I decide to focus on suppressing the native religions (it was a colonisation game, like Crucible) and the rather demonic “fallen eidolons”, both of which were played by PCs. I set about creating an alliance between the rival colonial churches to achieve that.
I met with 2 of the other church leaders. There were many things we didn’t agree on, but they felt equally strongly about destroying the native “idolator” religions and the fallen eidolons. While some fallen eidolons were obvious, it was hard to tell many of the, from the good ones. After lots of information gathering and wrangling over options, the deal I suggested which was adopted by 2 of the other church leaders was to create a “black list” of known demonic PCs who would be killed on sight by the church’s followers (as immortals they were able to respawn, but this helped suppress them). It was that kind of campaign - really no holds barred PvP. We agreed that all the church leaders must agree before an eidolon could be added to the black list
Having made that deal, I then went about investigating the disappearance of one of my subordinate priests, Name of the Rose styley. Then got murdered myself. I never knew why, but it was after I identified myself as a leader of my church so probably for religious reasons or maybe they were pro-fallen eidolon or something.
So much fun!
Of course there were downsides. Organisation wasn’t perfect and there were sometimes long queues for the “GOD” (games operation desk) tent to get things done with a GM, the weather was shit, two of the PCs I recruited were newlyweds and spent most of the game in their tent. Their mate who was also one of my group disappeared for most of the game, so I had a pretty lonely time wandering around on my own until I made some acquaintances. At one point, sitting down alone with needle and thread to raise the hem on my mud-soaked robes so I wouldn’t fall over them, I felt really tired and over the whole thing. But then I got back into it, and could have really used a friendlier environment where I could go an have some risk-free cooperative fun (like most heroic fantasy, which this definitely wasn’t). Then I got over myself and got back into it.
Apart from being ganked without warning by someone who was acting very friendly until they suddenly murdered me, the closest thing I came to “issues” was a couple of times having people yelling hostile stuff at me IC as I walked by. On that one hand, that kind of thing could have been demoralising OOC, especially given that I was kind of on my own most of the time and in a foreign country. But on the other hand, it was totally believable IC, just like my murder was! My character could easily have had enemies, there was hostility between groups, there were nasty PCs around, it all made sense, and that’s what I really crave in a larp. Actions and consequences, not people OOC worrying about offending people constantly or whether they will make friends.
If I was the kind of person to take things personally OOC and want everyone to like me, it could have been a brutalising experience. But I wanted that IC hostility, I wanted it to feel real and I wanted my sometimes unpleasant actions to have consequences. At one point I helped rally some troops to butcher some native PCs. I was feeling a bit squiffy about it both IC and OOC, but after the totally one-sided battle we discovered they had a massive blood-soaked stone device for crushing human sacrifices. Time for me to make a big speech to the victors about the evils of idol worship and what a good job they’d done in suppressing it. They looked like they needed the pep talk too, actually.
One thing that Maelstrom did really well was multi-layered factions. You had national factions with their leadership and subgroups. But then you also had religious factions, with their own leaders and subgroups, and trading factions with leaders and subgroups, and so on. The religions and trading groups crossed national boundaries, so you could wander into an “enemy” camp to talk to someone from your trading company or religion.
I was constantly finding characters who were followers of my religion in unexpected places, and that meant it wasn’t a black-and-white world. It also meant everything was far more inter-connected than it could have been, rather than discrete factions. Another character could be opposed to yours in some respects (e.g. trade), but allied in others (e.g. religion).
From what I saw on forums, many people struggled with the PvP nature of Maelstrom. It did an excellent job of creating a “player led” game (both on paper and in practice), but that just wasn’t what a lot of people wanted. Even among those who liked it, some probably felt it could have had a friendlier or more constructive feel. Some OOC friction probably occurred. I probably wasn’t able to seeing inside that from my vantage.
Want a friendly atmosphere where you gank lots of inconsequential monsters and get a happy outcome? You’d be out of luck at a factional player-led game like Maelstrom, where every kill was a PC kill. Want a complicated, messy game where every action has unexpected and unknown consequences and the greyness is deafening? That’s what Maelstrom did really well, but it probably came at the expense of being welcoming, morale-inspiring and community-building like a cooperative larp can be.
It’s notable that after Maelstrom, Profound Decisions went on to create Empire. There are still rival PC factions, but they exist within a single nation that is under threat from external forces. That can give the “all in it together” feeling of heroic fantasy, and it also means you get to have lots of big battles where PCs aren’t dying. I don’t think it’s an accident that they moved to that model for their next big game, and made it explicit, because I think it has a wider appeal and can be better for building a happy OOC community.
I like both of those approaches, I think they have different advantages.
But I don’t think I’d enjoy the Mythodea style game as much. It sounds a bit too scripted and not player-driven enough for my preferences.
