Larp family tree

Community Larp discussion
#1

Via Reddit, and related to the NZ larp history and timeline, someone is trying to build an international larp family tree

http://djnorris2000.pythonanywhere.com/larptree/

This is basicly looking at what games were influenced by other games, and obviously games can have more than one influence. Anyone can add to it.

In NZ terms, as I understand it, Mordavia was influenced by the UK’s Maelstrom, and in turn influenced St Wolfgangs, which influenced Teonn. I’m less sure about the influences on 33AR, Crucible, Saga, Exile, Musketeers (other than the obvious), Consequence, or other more recent games. largely becuse I didn’t play them, so had little interest in their mechanics.

Does anyone know the influence pathways here? @Ryan_Paddy ? @Anna_K ? @Lady_Prema? @HexualSealing? @u_ne_korn?

#2

Mordavia started 3 years before Maelstrom. It was mostly influenced by Portal Games which was an Auckland group, and somewhat by Lateral Worlds which was also in Auckland.

I’d read about international games, mostly UK and US, and they influenced the design a bit, but not any game in particular. Mordavia had a couple of other designers too, but I don’t think they borrowed from larps outside Auckland. Our design mostly came about indigenously through trial and error.

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#3

I stand corrected!

#4

The ruleset for 33AR was not strongly directly influenced by any other NZ boffer, primarily because I had only done 1 weekend crewing at Teonn and Thom hadn’t done boffer in ages when we started writing. Nick had done Teonn, and so the first draft of the rules might have been more influenced by that than I realised (but I don’t recall actually reading the Teonn rules sooo…)

At the time, I happily handed out special powers left and right, because my justification was “This is not a fair fight, so I don’t need to write fair combat rules”. The crew would respawn until either everyone was sick of fighting for the time being, or the players were in the exact emotional state I wanted them in. 80% of the time I wanted that emotional state to be “phew, that was a hard fight, well done everyone”. However, in hindsight, it made things difficult for the crew to remember more rules, and rewarded squeaky wheels in a way I would not encourage in future larps. But it also encouraged creativity, which is a balance I’m struggling with.

I see very clear influence of 33AR in some aspects of Saga rules and Embers used my safety briefing and some logistics documents word-for-word (they worked!) but otherwise I don’t see much influence in any other games.

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#5

Saga was influenced by the larps that came before - pretty much every larp we had played. Its really hard to pinpoint where some mechanics/ideas come from - does it count as an influence if you looked at it and go I like this stuff, but how can we do better in this area.
There are some direct mechanics influences from St Wolfgangs, 33AR, Crucible, Musketeers - to a lesser extent the other Auckland games we had played in. We were also inspired by larps we had written before: Wands at the ready (Theatreform) and Moonbright (day campaign) - where we found mechanics that had worked and liked. Another big inspiration on a more general level came from attending Drachenfest and Myhtodea in Germany.
But I think most larps here are built a little from the ground up - what is the setting and how can the mechanics support that.

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#6

They certainly think so, according to the FAQ. And I expect that sort of influence is quite important overall.