Speaking as someone who has mostly reffed for things that are not high fantasy I find that PVP which can end in death should be a part of an event. It means that the players are not restricted (though of course you get players who try and think outside of the game - it's only Friday night and we've got a whole weekend it would be mean to kill this guy now...I'll wait till Sunday) and really can effect things within the world, again I come from a reffing standpoint of the players generate their own plot, the refs are there to mediate
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Oh and absolutely you have to be straight down the line with the rules. It's the only way to do it if you allow it, but part of the responsibility for a good game lays with the players of said game. You put in what you get out, so, do you kill the guy Friday night and trust the refs to have something worked out for him or do you wait to let the other player get something out of the game and possibly have more of a chance against you and kill him Saturday?
It's a question of sportsmanship, but at the end of the day it's the players who are playing, we're the ones who need to mediate when it happens.
In a usually one-shot like Yellow Sign, I don't think the issue of PVP is that difficult to moderate - It becomes more of an issue when someone's character they've been channelling, earning xp for, building a reputation for, for a significant length of time, is cast into a ditch just because another player was having a bad day OC and couldn't help a little bit of over-aggression or whatever spill into rp. In the end, I think the primary motivation for roleplaying is FUN, and to put it bluntly, dying isn't fun. I guess it's another one of those situations where one has to balance the realism against the payoff.
Thanks a lot Spike, for posting this. As one of a group of people seriously considering running a LARP system in the middling-near future, having this kind of experience-backed analysis is very useful for considering our own direction!
See that I would say would be unsportsmanlike behaviour on the part of the player who kills someone IC for no reason. I don't think I expect too much of players when I say I expect a certain amount of sportsmanlike behaviour, but then again, I haven't much experience in Fantasy settings.
"As a player, whether you are going to do the deed, or receive the deed. YOu should make sure that your decisions for doing so are absoultely IC. You shouldn't decide to kill someone and then find a reason for you to do so. Always bear in mind the feelings of the person that has just been killed, they will be upset and angry so treat them with respect, don't dance around and crow your victory to the heavens, if you can offer apologies and buy them a drink."
I don't normally read your stuff Spike, but on this occassion I'm not at work so have the opportunity to carefully think and comment. In short, I have been thinking a lot about the IC/OC boundary in LARP recently, for reasons relating to theories of social performance I'm using for my work. What you have posted sounds very similar to commonly debated thical dilemmas, since in this case everyone recognises that as this is a game, you cannot prevent a little IC/OOC blurring, but 'best practice' is encouraged in carefully keeping the two as seperate as possible. However, it is also true that there are different LARP 'cultures', for lack of a better term, over the object of playing the game. I have recently heard that the French equivalent, for example, is much more about enacting the prescribed storyline/plot, and characters are assigned and rarely repeated between events. By contrast, in UK LARP much of the purpose of the game is character development, and PVP is a huge threat to that, hence emotions run high and transgress the IC/OOC
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I think it's all a case of what you are expecting. PvP, even a mild bit of treachery where noone actually dies but someone gets screwed, in tabletop games or your average Saturday LARP would (and has) driven me round the bend. I can't abide the idea in real life that someone I consider a friend would do something that they knew would hurt me, physically, mentally, monetarily, whatever. This carries over into my roleplay characters. It's a *very* strong feeling
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It's a question of sportsmanship, but at the end of the day it's the players who are playing, we're the ones who need to mediate when it happens.
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Thanks a lot Spike, for posting this. As one of a group of people seriously considering running a LARP system in the middling-near future, having this kind of experience-backed analysis is very useful for considering our own direction!
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AMEN BROTHER!
I approve.
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