Hello there …
Just checking up, but are there any LARP
groups active in Wellington at the moment?
Cheers
Dave K
The local roleplaying group WARGSoccasionally runs LARPS, either as stand-alone or as part of a roleplaying convention (the server is often down, just keep trying).
The next stand-alone one is supposed to be in May, and is something about polictics and Mecha. Kapcon is in January.
Frank (handle is Mundens) has mentioned being in a campaign game called “Victorian Nights”, although I don’t know who is running it.
homepages.paradise.net.nz/~frank … larps.html
Cheers,
Stephanie
Are you in touch with Frank, Stephanie? Maybe we can get him in here to let us know what’s on!
Yes, she is, hi people!
I suspect it would be better to ask Jarrat , the guy who runs it, if he wants to discuss any pertinent details as to how it’s run and stuff.
It may also be not the sort of thing you’re really intereested in listing here, as it’s not really open to new players, as in one would have to be specifically invited by Jarrrat to be involved. It’s quite a close knit group, so it’s unlikely that will happen unless we’ve known someone for a while!
However if people are interested in the style of the game, I’d suggest reading my character’s IC diary http://www.livejournal.com/users/sebastian_beau/, which whlle woefully out of date, will hopefully give people an idea of the sort of thing we do.
I’d be quite interested in finding out how it works. The notion of a Victorian LARP intrigues me.
I’m not moving over to there til next November anyhow, but thought it worth checking.
Not looking to barge in on private groups though …
Cheers
Dave K
Victorian Nights is more like a traditional roleplaying game run using live roleplaying as a system. Unlike big social Larps it isn’t actually a club, just a group of friends playing a game, so there isn’t any potential for expansion. I’m happy to talk about the way it is run, the style and the stories however.
Originally it was supposed to be a Victorian Vampire game with each player getting embraced during the game and finding solace in each other. Instead the mortal side of the game quickly became far more fascinating and my original intentions to embrace someone immediately disappeared. It took about 7 sessions before someone became a vampire. Along the way the other characters found other means of surviving the horror of Victorian London.
Because most of the characters don’t get on, or are pursuing entirely different stories, the game is run through a series of loosely scripted scenes. For example, Wilberforce and Sutherby are both characters with lodge connections so I might throw them into a discussion scene while running something for the other 3 players. Each scene is run live, so people can use props, space, movement and expression to convey the characters they play. Everyone is called on to play NPCs, and most players have at least 1 if not 2 highly important NPCs they play.
The game changed to Victorian Nights when I realised that mortals involved in supernatural stories was far more interesting that completely supernatural characters. I also thought that this way I could explore lots of different stuff and still have it all fit together. The vampire society is probably the most well constructed because unlike most supernaturals they appear and act very much as humans.
If you are interested I can explain a little more of the story later.
That sounds very cool. I imagine it’d be a very atmospheric LARP.
Do you guys have a written rule/stats system you play by or is it mostly roleplay based? How indepth do you guys go with costuming?
Speeking as a player, I’d have to say yes it is. Very!
On occasion I’ve gotten deep enough IC to realy start feeling the emotions.
It makes it far easier to write about when that happens.
Jarrat may have sme rules and stats. I just have a backgrond story for Sebastian and every now and then we do RPS, but most of the time even that isn’t neccesary.
The costuming, especially from the ladies, is great. I get to wear my pirate shirt and a cloak and sometiimes a big white canvas shirt that I pretend is a straight jacket. A lot of the time we have to improvise, especially for NPC’s but we all have a reasonably good range of costuming and props to draw on. May be most stuff isn’t historically accurate, but it’s good enough for candle-light!
Well we made up characters using MET rules on the first character and discussion session. In the end this only served to give people a sense of what they can do. We have never used them and I have never given out experience. Occasionally I might use a bit of RPS to determine an outcome of some contest if I don’t already have an idea of what the outcome should be. I tend to prefer action sequences in LARPs to be a lot more fluid, and because there might only be 1 or 2 PCs in a scene it is really easy to do.
Example.
Madame Camille has just finished performing a ritual with the Martin’s (Vampire’s who study the occult and blood magic), where they tried to free her from her nightmarish visions by releasing them. When they were all weakened they were attacked in the Martin’s chantry by the Vampire cabal the Martin’s were hunting for because of their corrupting use of magic. The two cabals ended up in a magical shootout with fire and wind and splinter servants firing all over the place, and Madame Camille trapped in the middle of it all. In walks the chaotic and slightly insane Gabriel. She wants Camille because she believes Camille has visions from God. Gabriel glides into the room ignoring the battle around her to talk to Camille and shortly thereafter whisks her away.
The battle and the fight was a bunch of guys throwing enchantments and command words around as a backdrop to the actual scene that was happening. When Camile was gone the scene was broken and the result of the fight was revealed later when some other people arrived at the burnt out chantry.
For the most part the story serves as the system. I try to create the scenes so they are about character development. The conflict tends to be verbal and mental rather than physical. That said it is quite important that there is an aura of trust among all the players, and especially toward me. If they don’t trust me to keep the story right then it would be a very hard game to play this way.
Sounds intense, and like an excellent way to do a small private larp with a narrative bent.
Mind answering some more questions?
Do the results of this style feel like a movie or play, with all those small scenes with different combinations of characters? Do the players find there’s a lot of pressure on them to perform in such small scenes?
I imagine you’d do quite a lot of narration between scenes. How about during scenes?
I can picture this being a good way to do the soap larp that CiCi was thinking of running.
I’ve been trying to avoid the TV/Film style roleplaying thing. While I can see the value in using the TV series formula as a tool in a roleplaying game, I also find it kind of limiting. Similarly I find the same with a Film style model, which in reality is best suited for one-offs.
Live Roleplaying is far closer to theatre or improv. Unlike theatre it is more freeform and unlike improv there is a built in safety net, a guide, and a direction.
I hadn’t considered the play angel, but I don’t think it really feels like that. All players are almost always involved, even if only providing mood through sound effects or movement, therefore there is no external audience, only an internal one.
Part of the reason I called the game Victorian Nights was a play on Arabian Nights and its multitude of stories. I break the scenes down more as they would be in a novel and the game moves very slowly. Within the game because it has an internal audience, and most novels attempt to draw you into them, I feel it plays a little bit like that. I want to draw people into the characters they play and the scenes they are involved in.
Good question. I hadn’t really thought about it. I can see how in some instances of Live Roleplay there is a lot of pressure in a similar way to Improv. However the pressure is not there to please an external audience. It is the roleplayers job to please themselves, and as a co-operative activity, provide a space in which the other players can do the same. Antagonistic roleplaying (player vs player) would lead to pressure but I think it is important to play the character first obviously and to get that right.
I personally feel a bit of pressure to get the characters and the scenes right but it isn’t that crazy nervous pressure when catering to an external audience. Sometimes a scene doesn’t work as well as it did in my head and other times they just blow me away. Mostly roleplaying is like a continuing experiment so people shouldn’t feel too much pressure from it.
All that said, these players prefer things run live, and actually being their character rather than sitting around trying to play.
Actually I do very little narration at all. I might describe where the scene is and who is involved, and if needed I will inform a player of and NPC’s character and goals in a scene.
The only realy narrative stuff that happens is with Wilberforce in his library and all the things he wants to look up. Sadly I have not been able to make a hundred or so prop books with actual information so we have to rely on the good old Storyteller/player dialogue. A library would be excellent though.
Within scenes I might throw in a line or something if required to explain something that happens, often when physical or supernatural effects are happening. I try to keep it brief and in mood so as not to break people to far from the scene they are participating in.
Hope that helps.
Yep, that gives a clearer picture thanks. I think I can almost imagine this in play. The one thing I’m not sure on is to what extent you drive the narrative. And I guess a lot of that comes down to what you do with NPCs.
I guess if there’s not much PvP conflict, then a lot of narrative direction comes from your NPCPBPs (non player characters played by players). Do you give the players a lot of briefing on how to play the NPCs, or do they drive that too?
For example, in Mordavia there is a mixture of NPCs that are designed by GMs and handed over the the crew to play (we have a dedicated crew for playing NPCS), and NPCs that the crew create themselves. Sometimes the GMs have really specific goals for NPCs and brief them closely. Sometimes it’s really loose, or they are filling a general function (e.g. offering trade services or products or providing a loosely-defined sort of conflict). once they go in character the crew can play the NPCs however they like, and often end up doing things the GMs would never have thought of (and may not approve of, but that’s often a good thing in my book). They’re not supervised by GMs, usually, because that’s not possible in a free-roaming game with 70 or 80 people.
Also, some NPCs are designed before events (typically because prior events or character backgrounds clearly call for them) and have written briefings, and some are created on the fly during events because ongoing PC or NPC actions call for them or because someone has a stroke of genius that we want to capitalise on immediately.
There’s another interesting question around how much information you conceal from the players, given that they are playing the NPCs. Are there mysteries that no-one knows, even the people playing characters who should know them?
Also, having the players take on NPCs reminds me of what I’ve heard about “troupe-style” play in Ars Magica. Is that an inspiration?
Well as the game has developed the mysteries have faded away, either to be replaced by more mystery or diferent intrigue. Some of the NPCs don’t know exactly what is going on with them, part of that is that i don’t know yet myself, or that they haven’t been played since things have changed. In most supernatural games the mysteries will fade over time, however I like adding new mystery to the game. There is a lot that hasn’t been explored so far.
The narration is a bit difficult to explain. A lot less than you would probably expect. I will generally let people go to. Between scenes there isn’t so much narration as setting the scene. I try to keep it brief to keep the flow of the game going. After 19 sessions now it is pretty easy to give people something and run with it.
Our last game only ended up having 2 longer scenes, both holdovers from the previous session. IN the first I had to do a bit of work to explain the various NPCs in the scene and what they had been doing as we hadn’t seen them in a while. The previously mentioned Martin’s had appeared in a vision but hadn’t been seen since the magical showdown, so I needed to make sure that the players being the vampires and ghouls knew what had been happening with them, and also I wanted to add a bit more flavour to their backstory so I had to make sure that the player playing the other Martin (the one that was not played by me) knew that information.
In this scene a vampire was staked, blood was let, wrists were sliced. All these things needed a quick confirm so that people knew what had occured.
The second scene was a direct carry on and only really had one NPC so there was no need for any narration. During the scene I had to quickly explain that one of the characters could not move forward which then turned back into roleplaying. Later in the scene the NPC I was playing tried to attack Eleanor (one of the PCs) and in doing so released some serious magic which washed away a ghost. All quickly narrated.
That was probably the extent of it.