Another weekend of LARPing, another weekend where I was left sad and angry and disappointed. There were either issues with the character, or issues with the game, or both. ( Read more... )
An honest account. In response, I have to say that I gave you one of the best characters I wrote for my game. I'm just sorry that I couldn't get the story out in a cohesive fashion. If you do find yourself drawn back to the fold, we ought to request characters that are linked in whatever happens in the future as it occurred to me that we've never played properly linked characters.
Yeah, I was kinda torn about doing this recap. Because I know a lot of my friends like you worked really hard on those games. I don't want to be the guy who goes "I'm hurting, so I'm going to lash out at everyone else so they hurt as well". And like I said, your game was the only one where I got the character and went "This guy is going to be awesome to play!".
Bryn raises the very good point that maybe 3 hour LARPs are not my cup of tea, that I prefer LARPs where I get to make the character and influence their personality and direction. He might be right.
It does sting a little, but trust me, I'm much harsher on myself then you could ever be on me. 10 mins into the game and I started to panic about a whole list of things I assumed would work and didn't. I'm serious about that offer though, you're one of my good friends who I haven't actually properly RPed with (although I'm enjoying working with you in Crucible). For the record, I thought Seda was a badass because of your portrayal (in that I didn't want to fuck with him) and you decisively owned on your opponent in the fight before he was poisoned (so I was going with you as the man to beat). I know it's not any consolation, but I thought I'd say it.
Every time I see you as a character I assume he's important because you're playing him. Obviously that hasn't been the case from quite a number of your experiences, but that's what I think anyway.
Thanks Nick. Yeah, having run a game at last years Hydra, I know about being your own worst critic. I was not really happy with how that played out, but it ran and I got through it and I learned from it.
The fight with Kerry was fun - I certainly feel the work on Sundays helped, wasn't sure if he was just letting me beat him, but I certainly felt that my feints and counters (thanks to the 100 blows exercise) worked well - most blows I landed on him were due to the initial feint. Although as we had Paper-Scissors-Rock'ed before, I wasn't sure if he was just letting me land them. I'm certain he wasn't being as aggressive as he could have been.
My feelings on Roadhouse Blues were much along the same lines as yours Jon. I was really excited going in to be playing your brother. The game was ok and I came out feeling has a lot of potential. Listening to Nick talk about it afterwards it really sounds like he has a good grasp on where it was lacking and what to work on for next time.
I had a very different experience in Blackhart of Camelot to yourself but then I was playing King Arthur. However I did play the game when it originally ran in Wellington however many years back and in that run I played the same character as you, King Pelles, and had a magnificent time of it. But every run of a game is very different with a multitude of variables that will affect how successful it turns out and even then it will vary for individuals. From my perspective playing Arthur, I thought your character and all of the other rulers were enormously important. In fact I felt beholden to you all, trying to balance your various desires as best I could so you didn't pull your support and have the
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Hey Jon, thanks for the honest recap, I plan to also post on my Gaming Blog about my weekend.
I'd echo a few points here, but instead will leave it for my blog. Brave man for stating your side of things. Your friends won't be slighted, they will take the criticism on board and will use it to better their games.
I've played Camelot twice now (once as Merlin, once as Gawain), and the problems with unequal distribution (and timing) of plot were apparent both times - though usually not for the Kings. And I am wondering how badly your experience was affected by the absence of Mark and the Cornwall faction.
LARPing is a cooperative venture, where you work with others to tell an interesting story. In Stephen Covey speak, it’s about finding the win-win, the way that you can all have a great time. Too often these game become about win-lose: someone has to lose for the other person to win.With villains, the trick is to find a way where you can lose gloriously, so you get the achievement of having provided a worthy antagonist and some fun from chewing the scenery. Being poisoned in the first hour definitely isn't losing gloriously, and its a shame that the fallback ghost mechanic didn't seem appropriate (but I can totally see why). But its very difficult to address this in game design, at least within the framework of theatre-style, where we have
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It sucks when that happens, but in many ways it is simply the medium. I realise I'm something of a LARP agnostic, but that sounds like straightforward defeatist nonsense. I think it's very easy to say "it's just the medium" about problems in Table Top too, but I think we can see with the explosion of diversity in solutions that while a lot of these problems are difficult, they're not insurmountable. Of the things you list above, "Plot-prioritisation" decisions sound an awful lot like "I don't want to write stories for all the characters in my game", and if you're leaving 'bumping into the right character" kinds of loose ends, you've clearly not built the game environment well enough
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I realise I'm something of a LARP agnostic, but that sounds like straightforward defeatist nonsense. I think it's very easy to say "it's just the medium" about problems in Table Top too, but I think we can see with the explosion of diversity in solutions that while a lot of these problems are difficult, they're not insurmountable. Of the things you list above, "Plot-prioritisation" decisions sound an awful lot like "I don't want to write stories for all the characters in my game", and if you're leaving 'bumping into the right character" kinds of loose ends, you've clearly not built the game environment well enough.
Plot prioritization is by players, not GMs. As a player you are presented with effectively a menu of possible story options. Which one do you follow, and in what order? Some players ruthlessly triage at game start - "this looks unachieveable / uninteresting / I don't want to go there so I'm just not going to bother". Others just find that one of their plot threads ends up eating all their attention to the exclusion of
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I am in no way offended that you didn't get a lot out of Oz. As you say the game needs some work and I probably gave you one of the two hardest characters, or ones that I wasn't sure that they had enough. Thom got the other. I felt a bit down at the end of Oz because it just didn't work as well as I had hoped. As a GM I just hate seeing people sitting down and not enjoying themselves because they have nothing to do. So for me it was easily the worst game of the con and it was the one I ran. Doesn't make one feel great for sure after all that work. I guess the really tough thing with one off 3hr LARPs is that you really just can't playtest them that easily. So sometimes they hit and sometimes they don't
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Yeah. There were some really cool things in Oz. I liked that each character had a number of "power ups" (their green cards) which if they achieved they could improve themselves. However I just ended up giving away the extra keys I got to people who seemed to need them (or the Lion, who ate it).
I liked the reveal of the different areas that were off limit. It did give it a feeling like we were making changes, or it changed the dynamic. But it seemed that things fell apart once we got entry to the Emerald Palace. It semed like that should have been the part where we realised the endgame / what needed to be done to fix things, but it was about that point that I got lost in terms of what was happening.
I have a much better plan for the Emerald Palace in future runs I think. It was also the point where as a GM the game just fell apart. When half of your game goes through a door and you need to follow to explain things the rest are all left hanging. It would have worked great if someone could have gone with them, while another couple of GMs helped the others on their quests
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I have a much better plan for the Emerald Palace in future runs I think. It was also the point where as a GM the game just fell apart. When half of your game goes through a door and you need to follow to explain things the rest are all left hanging. It would have worked great if someone could have gone with them, while another couple of GMs helped the others on their quests
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Comments 34
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Bryn raises the very good point that maybe 3 hour LARPs are not my cup of tea, that I prefer LARPs where I get to make the character and influence their personality and direction. He might be right.
Reply
Every time I see you as a character I assume he's important because you're playing him. Obviously that hasn't been the case from quite a number of your experiences, but that's what I think anyway.
Reply
The fight with Kerry was fun - I certainly feel the work on Sundays helped, wasn't sure if he was just letting me beat him, but I certainly felt that my feints and counters (thanks to the 100 blows exercise) worked well - most blows I landed on him were due to the initial feint. Although as we had Paper-Scissors-Rock'ed before, I wasn't sure if he was just letting me land them. I'm certain he wasn't being as aggressive as he could have been.
Reply
I had a very different experience in Blackhart of Camelot to yourself but then I was playing King Arthur. However I did play the game when it originally ran in Wellington however many years back and in that run I played the same character as you, King Pelles, and had a magnificent time of it. But every run of a game is very different with a multitude of variables that will affect how successful it turns out and even then it will vary for individuals. From my perspective playing Arthur, I thought your character and all of the other rulers were enormously important. In fact I felt beholden to you all, trying to balance your various desires as best I could so you didn't pull your support and have the ( ... )
Reply
Reply
I'd echo a few points here, but instead will leave it for my blog. Brave man for stating your side of things. Your friends won't be slighted, they will take the criticism on board and will use it to better their games.
Reply
Reply
LARPing is a cooperative venture, where you work with others to tell an interesting story. In Stephen Covey speak, it’s about finding the win-win, the way that you can all have a great time. Too often these game become about win-lose: someone has to lose for the other person to win.With villains, the trick is to find a way where you can lose gloriously, so you get the achievement of having provided a worthy antagonist and some fun from chewing the scenery. Being poisoned in the first hour definitely isn't losing gloriously, and its a shame that the fallback ghost mechanic didn't seem appropriate (but I can totally see why). But its very difficult to address this in game design, at least within the framework of theatre-style, where we have ( ... )
Reply
Reply
I realise I'm something of a LARP agnostic, but that sounds like straightforward defeatist nonsense. I think it's very easy to say "it's just the medium" about problems in Table Top too, but I think we can see with the explosion of diversity in solutions that while a lot of these problems are difficult, they're not insurmountable. Of the things you list above, "Plot-prioritisation" decisions sound an awful lot like "I don't want to write stories for all the characters in my game", and if you're leaving 'bumping into the right character" kinds of loose ends, you've clearly not built the game environment well enough ( ... )
Reply
Plot prioritization is by players, not GMs. As a player you are presented with effectively a menu of possible story options. Which one do you follow, and in what order? Some players ruthlessly triage at game start - "this looks unachieveable / uninteresting / I don't want to go there so I'm just not going to bother". Others just find that one of their plot threads ends up eating all their attention to the exclusion of ( ... )
Reply
Reply
I liked the reveal of the different areas that were off limit. It did give it a feeling like we were making changes, or it changed the dynamic. But it seemed that things fell apart once we got entry to the Emerald Palace. It semed like that should have been the part where we realised the endgame / what needed to be done to fix things, but it was about that point that I got lost in terms of what was happening.
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