And then there was NERO
Continuing the theme of staffing LARP’s I’ll relate my experiences this weekend where I ran some mods at a local NERO chapter. Unlike my experiences last weekend at Seven Virtues most of the things I ran were things I had personally written. It was also at a much smaller event with a host of unique challenges.
The VALOR chapter that I play here in Virginia has gone through a particularly rough streak. The last “normal” event they ran was in October a year ago. It went pretty well. The opening event this year in May was very poorly attended due to some scheduling conflicts. The next event got cancelled at the very last second due to an administrative snafu with the campsite. The event after that ended up getting cancelled as well when the campsite was badly damaged by the recent hurricane.
Then a few weeks ago the chapter owner was involved in a motorcycle accident and is now in a back brace. So for this last event of the year he ended up recruiting a hodge podge of different people to come in and run guest plot for the weekend. We were never able to get together to do much in the way of coordinating things, and this resulted in a strange Frankenstein event where three different groups of people ran completely separate stuff.
For my part I ran two different series of connected mods. The first series was heavily based on puzzles. Leading up to the event I made a series of in character plot posts in the in game message board challenging the PC’s to follow links which led to various free online puzzle type games. Five PC’s responded to them on the message boards, and so during the event I hooked those five PC’s into a series of puzzle based mods which eventually led to a small roleplaying scene at the end where the Puzzle Guy gave them a reward.
The other series I ran I humorously labeled “CSI: Blackstone” after the name of the duchy the game was set in. The local noble informed the PC’s that a thief had stolen his magic shield from a nearby building. The PC’s were led to the building where a number of clues could be found (footprints, some odd paper, boxes, unlocked windows). Later when they returned to town a merchant arrived to sell items, and observant PC’s were able to spot that several of the clues matched this person. This in turn led to a trap mod where the PC’s had to get in and retrieve the shield.
These two things ended up consuming pretty much all of Friday night and most of Saturday for me. Since all of the mods were heavily based on puzzle solving and roleplay and didn’t involve much combat at all I was able to run them almost entirely on my own. The advantage to this design was that it meant all the NPC’s could be used to support the other staff members’ more combat driven mods. The disadvantage was that all my mods had elaborate and prop intensive setups that ate up a lot of my time.
I finished out my final scene just before dinnertime on Saturday. I was prepared to stop staffing at that point and to finish out the event as my PC. However they were short NPC’s for the last big centerpiece encounter for the event so I went ahead and just stayed an NPC for the remainder of the event.
Two of the people who had been recruited to help run the event are these crazy artsy engineering types. They got this idea to build a giant elaborate maze in the woods and to run PC’s through it. They recruited a bunch of their friends to help and for nearly all of Friday and Saturday they were off in the boonies with power tools and rope and miles of tarp rigging this crazy maze.
The end result was like nothing I had ever seen at a LARP. The maze had a spider theme to it. The initial part was a tunnel created by covering a small ravine with a tarp roof. It ended up being about 3’-4’ high and they crammed it full of spider webs, tea lights and a smoke machine. When the PC’s came out of that they ended up and a regular stand up maze constructed of walls of black plastic tarp. It had lots of hallways and hidey holes, some dead ends, a big room at the end with a giant lever that dropped treasure, and a pool of acid they had to cross using a rope.
They ran that mod as a repeater. I played a generic low statted orc whose job was to just run around the maze chasing and being chased by players. I had an absolute ball trying to hide and ambush people around corner and behind trees and hiding in the smoke machine fog. The whole time this is going on there were two people standing outside the maze singing Itsy Bitsy Spider accompanied by banjo played with a violin bow. That may sound corny as all get out, but nearly every player commented how eerie and creepy that made the mod.
With the ending of the event the VALOR chapter now intends to go on hiatus. For my part this is something of a mixed blessing. I love playing VALOR and it is where my main NERO PC is a noble. However my LARP schedule has gotten to the point where it is entirely too crowded and I knew I needed to make some cuts somewhere. Hopefully now going into next year things will be a little bit easier for me to manage.
The VALOR chapter that I play here in Virginia has gone through a particularly rough streak. The last “normal” event they ran was in October a year ago. It went pretty well. The opening event this year in May was very poorly attended due to some scheduling conflicts. The next event got cancelled at the very last second due to an administrative snafu with the campsite. The event after that ended up getting cancelled as well when the campsite was badly damaged by the recent hurricane.
Then a few weeks ago the chapter owner was involved in a motorcycle accident and is now in a back brace. So for this last event of the year he ended up recruiting a hodge podge of different people to come in and run guest plot for the weekend. We were never able to get together to do much in the way of coordinating things, and this resulted in a strange Frankenstein event where three different groups of people ran completely separate stuff.
For my part I ran two different series of connected mods. The first series was heavily based on puzzles. Leading up to the event I made a series of in character plot posts in the in game message board challenging the PC’s to follow links which led to various free online puzzle type games. Five PC’s responded to them on the message boards, and so during the event I hooked those five PC’s into a series of puzzle based mods which eventually led to a small roleplaying scene at the end where the Puzzle Guy gave them a reward.
The other series I ran I humorously labeled “CSI: Blackstone” after the name of the duchy the game was set in. The local noble informed the PC’s that a thief had stolen his magic shield from a nearby building. The PC’s were led to the building where a number of clues could be found (footprints, some odd paper, boxes, unlocked windows). Later when they returned to town a merchant arrived to sell items, and observant PC’s were able to spot that several of the clues matched this person. This in turn led to a trap mod where the PC’s had to get in and retrieve the shield.
These two things ended up consuming pretty much all of Friday night and most of Saturday for me. Since all of the mods were heavily based on puzzle solving and roleplay and didn’t involve much combat at all I was able to run them almost entirely on my own. The advantage to this design was that it meant all the NPC’s could be used to support the other staff members’ more combat driven mods. The disadvantage was that all my mods had elaborate and prop intensive setups that ate up a lot of my time.
I finished out my final scene just before dinnertime on Saturday. I was prepared to stop staffing at that point and to finish out the event as my PC. However they were short NPC’s for the last big centerpiece encounter for the event so I went ahead and just stayed an NPC for the remainder of the event.
Two of the people who had been recruited to help run the event are these crazy artsy engineering types. They got this idea to build a giant elaborate maze in the woods and to run PC’s through it. They recruited a bunch of their friends to help and for nearly all of Friday and Saturday they were off in the boonies with power tools and rope and miles of tarp rigging this crazy maze.
The end result was like nothing I had ever seen at a LARP. The maze had a spider theme to it. The initial part was a tunnel created by covering a small ravine with a tarp roof. It ended up being about 3’-4’ high and they crammed it full of spider webs, tea lights and a smoke machine. When the PC’s came out of that they ended up and a regular stand up maze constructed of walls of black plastic tarp. It had lots of hallways and hidey holes, some dead ends, a big room at the end with a giant lever that dropped treasure, and a pool of acid they had to cross using a rope.
They ran that mod as a repeater. I played a generic low statted orc whose job was to just run around the maze chasing and being chased by players. I had an absolute ball trying to hide and ambush people around corner and behind trees and hiding in the smoke machine fog. The whole time this is going on there were two people standing outside the maze singing Itsy Bitsy Spider accompanied by banjo played with a violin bow. That may sound corny as all get out, but nearly every player commented how eerie and creepy that made the mod.
With the ending of the event the VALOR chapter now intends to go on hiatus. For my part this is something of a mixed blessing. I love playing VALOR and it is where my main NERO PC is a noble. However my LARP schedule has gotten to the point where it is entirely too crowded and I knew I needed to make some cuts somewhere. Hopefully now going into next year things will be a little bit easier for me to manage.