Voting

Last year it was noted that many voters experienced difficulties identifying those they wish to vote for. With so much more people now in the larping community, and so many newbies (yay!), often we wouldn’t know/remember each others’ names and therefore end up with all sorts of creative ways.

The “pilot guy” mentioned before as an example of “this is how you do NOT vote - get the name!” was actually mine :blush: Sometimes you can go and ask the person their name (totally giving out you gonna vote for them and therefore making them happy :open_mouth: ), but if they already voted and ran away to change then you not gonna lurk around looking for them.

Are we going to have the compulsory “wear your badge at all times” thing again? Would the cards with character names be insertable there, totally covering the mundane name?
Can we put character’s name instead of person’s name? (works well unless there is last minute change of player)
Just checking :smiley:

[quote=“Aiwe”]Are we going to have the compulsory “wear your badge at all times” thing again? Would the cards with character names be insertable there, totally covering the mundane name?
Can we put character’s name instead of person’s name? (works well unless there is last minute change of player)
Just checking :smiley:[/quote]

Actually it would be useful if GMs printed out a copy of the cast list with the player names that players can then refer to at voting time. Obviously it doesn’t work for last minute player changes or games that don’t pre-assign characters.

Do we need prizes and voting? Is it divisive? Does it encourage people to roleplay ‘better’?

Does the chance of winning a prize make people more likely to create a great costume?

How about just doing random spot prizes?

An entry in the draw for attending, an extra one for running a game, an extra for giving up a round to help with cooking etc. etc.

I posed these same questions after the last Chimera, and they’re questions I’ve thought after each con.

While I appreciate it’s done in a really good spirit of encouragement and recognition, it does feel slightly divisive to me. I don’t like the “best” descriptor. I don’t think there is a “best” of anything. It’s all subjective.

Random spot prizes and the continued cultivation of a welcoming, encouraging culture where people make the effort to tell people when their costume looks good, or when their roleplaying was great, seems a lot more inclusive to me.

I agree with jackie, I think the voting thing isn’t necessarily the “best” but rather “your personal favourite (costume/roleplaying moment)”

And I think also that the GM having a printed cast list would be a very good way for people to get players names for voting

I don’t think it really encourages people to do better, but it’s a bit of harmless fun that gives people a bit of a “yay me!” moment.

“Harmless” is debatable. We’ve seen comments before from people who have said they’ve tried really hard, multiple times, didn’t get a ‘yay me’ moment and lost the incentive to do their best.

I’ve also personaly heard rumblings at cons in the past that “so and so only won because all their friends voted for them” - along with suggestions that a more pouplar/well-known person is more likely to get votes on personality rather than an objective vote. Which, I think, is why I don’t like the word “best”. “People’s choice” or something might be a little more accurate.

Note: My feelings on this aren’t strong - I’m just presenting opinions I’ve heard circulating amongst the community over the years in the spirit of a healthy debate.

My only strong personal gripe about prizegiving is that it usually happens when I’m ready to go home/go to sleep and therefor seems to go on for aaaaaaaaaaaages!

I don’t think it really encourages people to do better, but it’s a bit of harmless fun that gives people a bit of a “yay me!” moment.[/quote]
I agree that in theory that’s exactly what it should do, and certainly for the people who get a prize they certainly have a “yay me!” moment, but quite often it seems that the same people are constantly receiving the accolades and I’d hate for that to cause any feeling of either resentment, or worse “why should I bother when person x always wins”.

Maybe I’m seeing stuff that isn’t there, or have just seen similar things in the past in different hobbies and would hate it to creep into Larping too.

This is the kind of discussion we’ve been having on and off for years about scoring/prizes for roleplaying at AMERICA events. ‘Big and loud always wins’ sadly has tended to be mostly true in the past, though the popularity thing can also be a factor.

For my personal opinion, I don’t think a roleplaying game is something anyone should be trying to ‘win’ - aren’t we all in this to have fun? Bryn and Jackie have both made excellent points on the corollary that if there is a winner, other people are bound to feel like losers and I would suggest that the disincentive from that feeling is likely to outweigh any incentives from there being a prize.

If we are going to keep this prize, then let’s be honest and, as Blair and Jackie suggested call it ‘people’s choice’ or ‘personal favourite’, rather than ‘best roleplayer’. If you want a ‘best roleplayer’ then, as I think was suggested immediately after last Chimera (sorry, I can’t remember by whom), how about introducing a ‘GM’s Choice’. The GMs/gamewriters are in a far better position to know how well people performed with the material given to them (all characters are different, after all) and could reward subtlety and more subdued play where it was called for, that other players may not necessarily notice or appreciate.

The GMs are the people who know the least about what’s going on after “Game on!” call 8)

The GMs are the people who know the least about what’s going on after “Game on!” call 8)[/quote]

Agreed. I am often so busy GMing that I don’t have the luxury to observe all the subtleties of the roleplaying.

Disagree entirely

Disagree entirely[/quote]

Depends on the game. There are different game & GMing styles. So both are correct. :slight_smile:

We did exactly this at Hydra, with mixed results. Some GMs said that they found it hard to keep track of what everyone was doing. Others had a good view and they were able to pick the players that best played that character.

In fact, in the flagship the GMs picked up a player who was playing a subtle character but playing them really well.

So as Hannah said it really depends on the Game and the GM. And both systems have advantages and flaws.

True. I know that working in a team with Chris, he will be taking a more active GMing role and I’ll be more keeping an eye on the game to see what’s happening. If things are getting off track we can then confer and decide whether we need to put additional information in the game or remind someone of something they should already know, or whether to just run with it.

If I’m running a game and don’t have a reasonable idea of what’s going on (given that if it’s a one-off, I will have written the characters and remember pretty much every detail of them) then I’m not doing my job.

Thank you everyone for your input. In light of this discussion, I will conduct a survey in about two weeks of all registered attendees to find out if:

a) people want a voting/prize system at all, and
b) if so, how they would like it worded and voted on.

The survey will be emailed to registered attendees and will be anonymous.

I hope this way we’ll be able to get an accurate gauge of the wider community feeling on the matter.

Think it depends on the game, as some people have said.

If I’m the sole GM on a game with 24 or 30 PCs, then unless they’re all playing Captain Shouty in a small room or passing a talking stick then I’ll be oblivious to much of what’s happening. I’ll wander about and pick up the big stuff, and a smattering of small stuff, but most of the subtle, conniving, backstabbing interaction will fly under my radar.

The players I’m most likely to notice are the loudest and most melodramatic ones, but they’re not necessarily adding the most to the game. Whereas as a group the players have encountered every bit of interaction. Having said that, even the players may not realise some of the subtleties of what happened to them, especially if a particularly deceptive player was involved.

This.

Also, I freely confess that I don’t sole GM unless I can’t possibly avoid it.

By listening to the stories people told, and asking a lot of questions. :wink:

I’m not sure how comfortable I am with the concept of singling players out, but I much preferred the 1 player 1 vote sort of system Hydra had where everyone votes at the end for best overall. The GM picks thing sort of made me feel guilty that we had to pick one person when so many people had put so much effort in*. I do think I prefer it to player picks, but that’s because I only needed to pick people once, rather than every round. :wink:


  • and in the end our justifications for picking one over another were almost arbitrary, despite rationalizing as best we could.

I like the Kapcon system (which we used a Buckets this year) where players get to nominate other players for something cool that they did - rather than trying to figure out which one player you thought was best, you can nominate any number of players. I think it enocourages a more collaborative approach to roleplaying as it puts the focus on quality of interactions - people will vote for someone who made the game good for them, rather than just for the loudest voice.
Of course, this really adds up the amount of work for the people counting.