How to write a good LARP

Community Larp discussion
#1

Alright. Let’s talk about what makes up a good LARP - regardless of genre (although we’ll talk about how this can affect stuff) - things like plot interactions, overlapping goals of characters, collaboration, competition, combat, intrigue, politics, intellectual roleplaying (let’s face it we’re all fairly smart buggers) and what I like to term throttle controls.

I’ll start with that last one (as I invented that phrase - sort of)

Throttle controls in a game are tools the ST’s can use to dictate the flow of the game so as to be able to speed things up if zero-hour is rapidly approaching, or slow things down, if the players are too quick to grasp the overall plot, and threaten to kill the big bad 5 minutes in - because let’s face it, players can often think of stuff that ST’s have not considered.

Much like singing, start off lower than normal, it is often easier to speed things up than slow things down. After all you may drop a wall in the way - but if it’s a hastily (i.e. impromptu) erected obstruction - it may be either impassable - or you may have to reverse the situation entirely to allow the players to progress. Making them feel as if the game is not under their control - nothing hurts a player’s fragile ego than having to have NPC’s save the day.

So - in brief, have pre-prepared hints, memories, props, clues, NPC’s, secret messages… whatever… to direct the players towards the finish line - however you must make sure that they are not left feeling like they have been handed the win (or loss) - or led round by their nose(ring).

This makes throttle controls an essential part of any GM’s repertoire (sp?).

-Might add more - have to go make food for wife now…

#2

Are we talking theatreform, live-action, White Wolf…? Because I think there are different things that make each of those different games tick. There is some overlap, but the approach I’d take to writing say, Masquerade on Fleet Street and St Wolfgang’s Vampire Hunters are completely different (I’ve never written a White Wolf game, so I can’t comment on that)

Some of my thoughts relating to theatreform.

  • In a theatreform, everybody needs allies they can count on. The baddest bad guy needs friends too. The worst times I’ve had in theatreform are the ones where I’ve had no real allies and no real back up.

  • Everybody needs more to do than they can accomplish in three hours, in case some of the plots don’t take off or some of their contacts don’t come through. There should be a variety in degrees of difficulty in the goals, so that people have a reasonable chance to accomplish at least some of their goals

  • Negative goals (“Don’t let anyone find out X”) generally don’t work so well because it is better when things ARE found out.

  • Character sheets need to concise, convey enough information about the character for the player to effectively to play it, but without overwhelming them with useless details about their background that aren’t relevant for play.

#3

I think it’s important to give people character goals that they really care about. (The difficult bit is that it’s different for everyone.)

But as an example, a really common design pattern, especially in theatre-form, is an Object Quest - you have to find out X piece of information or retrieve Y object. A lot of the time they leave me pretty cold - they often feel pretty mechanical and McGuffin like, and I generally have to use an out of character part of my brain if I want to find the object’s location (in three hours of game time, random chatter or subtle questioning isn’t going to cut it; I’ve never been able to find anything without the conversation getting kinda forced) - and my personal larp priorities are to leave my out of character brain out of it as much as possible. But a couple of times (in Diamond Geezers, and that SF Mafia game at Kapcon the year before last), the writers, by accident or design, had hit on objects that were really tied into the emotional centre of my character and I was all over them like a rash and found them really fulfilling plotlines.

It’s an interesting point about throttle control - it’s kinda built into Protagonist/Adversary larps, and a lot fuzzier in the Ensemble-type theatre-form games. In the latter, you do get some pacing control, in the form of staged events (performances, some preorganised ritual, maybe a primed NPC or something), but my advice for that kind of game is to use those early in the game to help build up the momentum and then tail them right off. Big scenes near the end of the game seriously block up movement in the larp space and people’s ability to achieve their character goals, right when everyone’s trying to speed up and get all their stuff done. But also, one of the things I’ve been trying to make myself do is step back from the detailed running of the game, and trust in the writing and the players to bring their own kind of awesome. Things never turn out the way I expect, but if there’s enough good stuff there to start with, they’ll find their own ending that’s right for them, and that I probably never thought of.

#4

I take it that “ST” means “StoryTeller”?
(then that would imply the “storyteller system” ie White Wolf and variants… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyteller_System)

Can you say more about these “throttle controls”? Maybe an example of one in use?

What “makes” a “good” game is really context-specific, and not everyone will agree on how things should be measured. But there are different ways you can adjust aspects of how a game might pan out… for example:

If you want to…
Speed up/ smooth out combat: use a simple system
Reduce likelihood of combat breaking out: give characters other options for conflict resolution, environmental restrictions (eg. “there are only six of us on this life raft, better get used to each other”), have characters aware of negative consequences eg. legal
Improve the acting: Write your character briefs in a way that is genuinely engaging
…but each of these things is optional, y’kno? Not better or worse.

I’m also a big fan of larps where characters have a shared reason for actually being there. There aren’t actually that many cases where people that don’t know each other will come together and hang out for three hours spilling secrets about themselves. But if the writers can come up with a good reason for it, that’s awesome. Some that I like are:

[ul][li]You are working together[/li]
[li]You are all aboard the same ship (eg. Hindenberg) so you have no way to leave[/li]
[li]Some disaster has cut you off from the outside world[/li]
[li]This is the entire village[/li]
[li]A wedding ;-D[/li]
[li]See if you can think of other reasons why groups of strangers actually come together in the same place for 3+ hours.[/li][/ul]

#5

Sorry - Bulk of my LARPing has been WW - So ST is natural for me to say - I’m referring to the generic GM, DM, ST God in charge of telling you stuff…

Not specific WW.

As a matter of fact, once the rules get involved I hate the WW system - great setting - but could we just gloss over the mechanics puh-lease…

#6

Things I like in a LARP or things that I consider with each game.

  • Simplified rules system, that still is flexible and allows for different abilities or strengths if needed. In this years LARP I really liked the Desperado, Booze Hound… It felt like a nice mechanic for flavour and getting secrets out there.

  • Decide if you are going to allow combat and whether players to be taken out of the game or how you will deal with it (ghosts, rebirth, stunned)

  • More goals than people would usually achieve, people can pick and choose what they follow up. Nothing worse than someone feeling like they have nothing left to achieve.

  • I liked having the groups to start with in Refuge, means those players who are newer or more shy have people to come in with. Although don’t want to confine people to these groups.

  • Keep character sheets nice clean and concise. Give the players all the information that they need but don’t drown them in info.

  • Steph and I have talked abit about those throttle controls/Pacing interactions, and I agree with a lot of what she said. I think it’s better to have those sorts of things earlier in the game.

#7

Yeah, really big things that you need to be able to answer for every character is “Why are they there?” “What are they going to do?” and “What’s stopping them from leaving?” If you can get really strong reasons for that stuff (instead of plain GM fiat), it’ll probably drive a lot of the story for you right there.

[quote]As a matter of fact, once the rules get involved I hate the WW system - great setting - but could we just gloss over the mechanics puh-lease…[/quote]And whatever kind of game you’re trying to run, make sure that the mechanics support the kind of interactions that you want. (Surprisingly, in not a small number of systems, the reverse seems to be true.)

#8

I think it’s much like what makes a good meal. It has to be what you feel like at the time. It needs to be balanced, and you don’t want the same thing every time.

#9

I don’t think I’ve written enough larps to give advice but, may I ask, does there have to be a finish line?

#10

I don’t think I’ve written enough larps to give advice but, may I ask, does there have to be a finish line?[/quote]

I presume that, even if the larp is just a bunch of hungover art students hanging around in a room insulting each other and trying to figure out what happened last night from hazy memories, the cops turning up outside is still a finish line of sorts. An end to the game, even if that is the GM walking up on stage and saying “everybody dies as the giant fire demon, which everyone’s been ignoring the entire last half of the game, storms through the place killing everyone.”

#11

Actually, I do think there ought to be a finish line of some sort. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the Prayers on a Porcelain Altar game, but the fact that it just stopped, with no answers or resolution of any kind left me feeling puzzled and annoyed! When it became obvious that we didn’t have the information between us to accomplish anything toward solving the mystery, I kept waiting for something to happen from a GM but it never did.

I guess I like my larps to have at least a minimal storyline where something definite happens.

#12

The thing is, sometimes the finish line is that the characters get up and go home, which is pretty much what happens in those ‘discourse-based’ larps that Idiot’s been introducing. And sometimes the ending is going to originate out of what the characters do based on the conditions that they start with: The Discarded at this con was like that, Tigger frontloaded the game with all the characters’ issues, an immediate dilemma, and a physical environment, and then he spent the rest of the game reacting to what we did. We could have had a very different ending, and I don’t think he had any plans for what was going to happen.

And sure, if you want to finish up with a big standup fight, or a puzzle solved, or an impressive staged event or whatever, you should go for what you want and do what you can to shape the game in a way that guides people to the ending that you had planned. But that’s not the only way to write a good Larp.

#13

Another big issue is information flow.

In this respect, live games are the diametric opposite of tabletop games. In the latter, everyone’s in the same room, focused on the same activity, and you have to make an effort to have in-game secrets or forget the details of something that happened that your character wasn’t present for but you observed in game. In the former, there’s this huge morass of conflicting observations, Chinese whispers, people forgetting stuff they’re supposed to know, not noticing Clues, thinking that non-clues are clues, drawing incorrect conclusions from the information they have, getting distracted by other stuff, and just general churn.

If you have some information that has to come out in your game, then give it to multiple independent sources. If you have a puzzle that needs to be solved in the game, make sure that there’s sufficient information for the players (with multiple ways to get it) and that you’re OK with them coming up with a solution that you hadn’t thought of, because trying to have your big heroic moment while you’re trying to work out which combination of A, B and C to use in which order and being knocked back time after time can be frustrating (and a puzzle that to you seems blindingly obvious may be a real stumper to other people who think in different ways to you). So long as they come up with something that’s logically consistent with what they know, I suggest finding a way to make it work in game.

Also, I think it’s been mentioned in one of the other threads - goals like “This must remain secret” or “Protect this item at all costs” can be problematic because sometimes people believe you, when what you actually want is information coming out and objects circulating. You could maybe consider substituting those goals with “You need to find the right person to tell this to” or hot-potato items that people want to pass on or reveal. (BTW, I thought that Booze Hag trait in Refuge was a really good idea in terms of getting secrets to come out.)

#14

Weaknesses seem to be extremely useful in larping. It’s all very well to focus on your skills (more for campaign larps) and usefulness to whatever group you are in, but it’s often the weaknesses that provide the best roleplaying.

The Booze Hound/Hag and other weaknesses in Refuge were great. The entire Devlin clan converging on the bar in spite of all the important stuff going on being one example. Another being Uncle Devlin, drunk and at the gambling table (two weaknesses) in spite of us all knowing by then that the dealer was a filthy cheat. RPing trying to convince him to leave the table and him insisting “I know whut I’m doin’ hic” :smiley:

#15

On the vain of secrets, I figure a good solution might be to give it to someone else and tell the character instead to prevent the other person from saying anything. Another way could be to just admit that the players are extroverts who would enjoy the big reveal and tell them to use their secret to maximum effect in relation to another goal or similar.

As for items being protected, it might be an idea to give them to someone else, and as suggested, make them a hot potato item. Then you can still have the original character trying to protect it, but not actually possessing the item.

Two cents, for your consideration.

#16

Actually, I do have some advice.

Structure the game so that it can survive 5% of the players not turning up, with little or no notice. Because, with the best will in the world, things just happen. Also, one of those players was probably going to run a really important character…

#17

Carefully cross-check the character sheets so the people who are supposed to be on the same page really are. Make sure that relationships/interactions are the same on both character sheets (unless, of course, you want it purposely unbalanced, in which case be sure to mention something like “s/he seems to think your relationship is more serious than you do” so the player can be suitably uncomfortable/flattered/etc.)

Also if a character has “secrets” a list of who else knows or might know them - for good or ill - is handy. Likewise with goals. I was surprised in Refuge to discover my precious daughter knew about the debt I had inherited from her father, though I was pleased when she made it apparent that she was willing to do her part to help.