I don’t often view photographs/videos of games I’m in because in my head so much more epic.
This video is in the vein of the 20/20 article we were in. What really got me were all the calls during combat. I appreciate they serve a mechanical purpose, but it sure breaks the immersion for me.
I also think whoever produced this wasn’t as considerate as the 20/20 crew. This seems set up to make people look a bit goofy.
Interesting. It seems they’re less keen to break character to talk about what they’re doing, which adds to that goofiness.
Never talk to an interviewer in character. You just look like an idiot. 
TBH, I thought the interviewer looked as goofy as the players, so I wasn’t really sure what point he was trying to get across.
Agreed re: the calls. You have to have em for some things, but I think the fewer the better. They seemed to have calls for absolutely everything.
A big part of larp is being personally involved. Even with some heavy calls, you can still be involved in the game to the point where they’re not as significant. Viewing them from the outside, it doesn’t have the impact. Still, having damage calls from 1 to 8 points of damage, with additional damage “type” calls as well seems a bit heavy handed. Some games are like this, though even relatively call heavy games in New Zealand are still not of this magnitude. Less is more IMO.
Been to this one - you don’t start with that many calls - that was a high level adventure - lots and lots of magic items and high level powers.
Every event is caterd to the level of players attending so they scale the monsters accordingly.
I couldn’t watch more than a few seconds, it is very painful to watch, too painful in fact.
So… I’ve played lots of different games over the last 20 years, including one for more than ten years that was so complex you needed a character sheet that the refs had to update between fights to keep track of 12 locations, (head, neck, upper arm, lower leg etc.). After each fight you had to “Time Out” to work out what had happened. Every location had 4 different armour values, depending on if you we’re hit by a physical weapon a projectile weapon, a magical weapon or a spiritual weapon (don’t ask what used to happen if it was a magical arrow!)
We’d often have to stop the fight before it got started so everyone could use their super powers to analyze what the monsters could do. Sometimes we’d have to stop half way through a fight if players thought the crew couldn’t hear their calls, Magical Silver Triple!, Magical Silver Triple!
So for obvious reasons I moved to more immersive games…
If you want different levels of damage, how about making bigger weapons do more. Maybe 2H Weapons, 2 Points of damage, once everyone gets used to 2H weapon doing 2 hits job done. I know occasionally people will forget, especially if your hitting them in the back but I think the immersive payoff is worth it in the long run.
St. Wolfgangs has calls and gets away with it by making them part of a holy rhetoric, Holy Blow/God’s Fury (Double/Quad) it’s about all you need. A great game I went to had a few extra calls. For example the monsters could strike people down, and would convey this in-character, “Ha weakling feel my fury as I smash you into the ground (Thud!)”. It’s so much better than Double Strikedown!, chanted like a mantra with each blow.
Here’s my take on it all, I want games that are immersive as possible… So the games I prefer are those with the least calls. I’ve been to a couple of events where members of the public have wandered by and asked where are the cameras?
Personally, I enjoyed watching that simply for seeing how larp is done somewhere else and I could see a lot of similarities to some games here, The Roleplaying aspects there were actually not half bad, Its just that the interviewer came across as dull and uninteresting and it ruined the documentary overall.
As for Calls, In my game I only have calls where something different to a normal attack occurs, or something that is not represented physically or audibly (such as magic or a gunshot). I personally feel that with Good roleplayers, the calls take a back seat in the whole game and personally when I get immersed, I hear the calls in my head but the automatically equate to an in character effect. i.e. When someone yells “BANG” I automatically act as if it were a real gunshot, or magic, I just imagine the effects in my head rather than hearing a person making a rules call.
Just thinking about it now though, I do like the fact that St Wolfgangs incorporates all or most of it’s special abilities into things like prayers. I may look at including this with at least my magic in Chrono Continuum…
I’ve only watched a few minutes of it so far (stupid slow internet) but I think one of the differences between this and the 20/20 report, is that 20/20 never broke gameplay to interview anyone at Chimera - all the interviews were done out of game. In this the interviewer seems to be interrupting at times. Although if it’s a full weekend game there really isn’t any actual OOC time… I wonder though, would any of us have dropped OOC to talk to a reporter in the middle of a fight?
Have just watched the first minute. He defines larp using the exact wording from the Wikipedia larp article… which I largely put into its current form. It’s pretty funny hearing my words repeated everywhere.
And have skimmed through the rest of it. I’m not sure whether I feel sorry for that poor group for having such a useless documentary maker visited upon them, or that it’s their own fault for letting him take the approach he did.