Delayed LARP writing thoughts

I wrote this a month ago, but kept it stowed away to keep from spoiling the game. Looking at it now, I'm less certain what I thought would spoil anything. After the old text, I'll write something talking about how it turned out.



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February 11th

I am writing the February LARP, in which incompetent superheroes, guard a real hero’s base while he’s gone.* As I write, I need to keep reminding of two things:

1: Make the game silly. This is a comedy LARP, though I’m not sure how to encourage or enforce genre and playstyle on the payers, really. But the inspirations for the game are clear: The Tick (comic, cartoon and live-action all, though especially the live action one), Mystery Men (comic and movie), etc. But how to make sure the players get the right feel for the game, and don’t take themselves seriously?

2: Make sure there’s enough conflict. A superhero story usually involves good versus evil battles, but the sorts of games I run usually just have muddier morality, and a big web of conflicts. A simpler, binary Manichean morality would mean the LARP quickly resolves all conflicts: this might be said to have been an issue in the January game.


An answer for #1 that I’m considering is a system where you’re rewarded for making people laugh. And possibly rewarded for other character appropriate silly behavior: the supervillain might get rewarded for monologuing, and the ancient Viking warrior might get rewarded for not understanding what people say to him in English. I’m still uncertain about this, though I do think that this game will need a bit more system than the January event.



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The mechanical benefit for doing funny stuff did seem to work out as planned, and did make people do funny stuff. Characters wound up in tone somewhere in the middle of the Tick cartoon/Mystery Men/live action Tick spectrum of tone, which worked out pretty well.

There was certainly plenty of conflict, though it maybe collapsed down into one big conflict a bit easier than I would have liked. A lot of the game was focused on the Brainjack plot, and several subplots got relatively little play. But they all seemed to come up to some degree, so it wasn't a failure by any means.



Right now I'm failing to get much headway done for the next one. This is largely because of being sick for the last week, which has prevented proper concentration on mental tasks like planning a LARP. The planned sci-fi mystery LARP might get pushed back to April while I run a fallback scenario. Which might also help with sme scheduling difficulties. We'll see what I can get done, though, and what my volunteer assistant GM has to say about things.



*Yes, I stole the plot from an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Why do you ask?