More complete LARP report

The French and Indian War started last night.

If anything, the most surprising thing is how close the results were to real history. Jumonville died while trying to talk to George Washington, and battles broke out so eventually the French and British empires would come in conflict.

It was also surprising how many people achieved their goals. Basically everyone, I think, including the deceased Jumonville.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. It will almost certainly help if you read the character information.


First off, the game was based off of, but heavily modified from, The Bloody Forks of the Ohio by Jason Morningstar. I had to modify a lot of it to fit more the sort of LARP I was trying to run, but it still provided an awesome situation and set of characters to play. I took that game, stripped off the system, modified the characters somewhat and made a more specific situation. In the process I sometimes got another step or two away from real history, though some additional internet history helped keep things close-ish to what really happened.


We had seven players, two GMs:

Steve played George Washington,
Geoff played William Trent,
Stacie played "French Margaret" Montour,
Adam played Shingas the Terrible,
Matthew played Half-King Tanaghrisson,
Wendy played Marie-Amable Prudhomme de Villiers
and Russell played Joseph Coulon de Jumonville.

Amber and I GMed. Jacob Van Braam, Torrence Swiney, Captain Pipe Hopocan, and Raspberry Girl all were sadly unplayed. Raspberry Girl and Ignatius Jones remained important as NPCs, though, as the relationship between the British and the Delaware was a key point in the game.


Language played a key role in the game (as in real history): some characters only spoke English, some only spoke French. All the native americans spoke Shawnee (in addition to their own nation's language). Many characters spoke two or more languages. But this meant that some of the key players could not talk to one another: Jumonville only spoke French, Washington only English. Shingas the Terrible and Washington would determine jointly if the Delware would work with Britain, but did not share a language. They all needed the assistance of translators to communicate. This was all handled in the LARP by a series of hand signals: an upraised hand like Indians use in old bad movies meant you were speaking Shawnee, and a clenched fist meant you spoke in French. This actually worked really well, from what I saw.

Which brings up another point: there was a noticeable amount of player/character knowledge separation going on. Several characters had their most hidden secret right on their name badge for everyone to see (including the unplayed Torrence Swiney's awesome Key of "secretly a woman"). And everyone spoke in English, so you could tell if your character was dealing with an untrustworthy translator, even if your character could not.

Overall, the system used planned on there being more mechanical conflicts than there actually were. Very few people actually resorted to cards when they wanted to accomplish things. But there still was enough non-mechanical conflict going on that it wasn't really necessary.





The game opened with a French diplomatic delegation (Jumonville and Marie-Amable being guided by Shingas the Terrible) reaching Fort Necessity. Meanwhile inside, George Washington was formulating a plan for how to deal with the deserter Ignatius Jones. His planwas to free Jones and give him back to the Delaware, though Half-King delayed this plan. Half-King thought they could get more use out of him other ways... possibly by killing him.


Once the French met Washington, Jumonville did his best to piss of Washington, but mainly alienated his translators. Early in the game, he disowned his sister, meaning he had to trust interpreters from the British side. And he slapped Washington in the face and challenged him to a duel, though nothing came of that.

Some people got to scheming quickly, and had some interesting plans. Half-King had a plan to murder Ignatius Jones in the woods and make it look like the French killed him. This would hopefully cause the Delaware to ally with the British, and bring them closer to the Iroquois (also allied with the British). Half-King found and killed a French soldier, but then did not trust William Trent with getting Jones into the woods and killing him.

At some point early on Half-King found the French forces lying in wait while scouting the woods. So he told Washington of their presence. After some consideration, Washington determined that the French hiding in ambush at Deer Lake comprised most of the French forces in the region. Fort Duquesne, therefore, was nearly undefended. He formulated a plan (and later carried it out) to take his men, avoid the French and attack Fort Duquesne.

Somehow in the midst of scheming and being insulted in French, Washington found time to get it on with his French girlfriend. This later resulted in an anachronistic high-five between Washington and (I think) Half-King.


Shingas the Terrible turned out to be less terrible and less hateful of the British than one might have imagined. His secret love of French Margaret counted for more than his hatred of the Brits, I guess. He spent much of the game trying to get her away from the battle. Eventually, Shingas confessed his love to her (while escorting away a newly freed Ignatius Jones) in a touching sort of scene. French Margaret wasn't sure how to react, but eventually decided to go with Shingas at the end of the game, as the Delaware and Iroquois both got away from the fight between the British and the French. Ignatius Jones also gave Shingas a nice pep talk about how to make cross-cultural relationships work out.


William Trent wound up acting as de facto translator for Washington and Jumonville. I was a bit surprised that Washington would trust Trent that much, but Trent did try to undermine Washington in other ways. Trent was the one who fast-talked a guard into freeing IgnatiusJones, by telling him that the plan for secretly freeing Jones was Washington's special diplomacy move to help befriend the delware. The guard believed this, and that's actually what freeing Jones did do, but I think it's possible that at the time Trent was planning on murdering Jones. It's not clear to me when the "frame the French" plan was abandoned. In the end, Trent and a handful of men were left in Fort Necessity as a decoy, and sent to a fake rendezvous point while Washington went on to attack Fort Duquesne.


I'm a little unclear on some of what happened between the native tribes, but the freeing of Ignatius Jones (and possibly Shingas's secret love?) made the Delaware more willing to work with the Iroquois, so in the end they were working together and evacuating Fort Necessity together. I am also unsure what happened to Marie-Amable about two-thirds of the way through the game, but she apparently was escorted away to somewhere safe (Gist's outpost, I think, which shows I wasn't the only one doing my homework). The ten men who escorted her were chosen because they were the ten ugliest men in Washington's militia... I guess he didn't want any potential romantic rivals.



The game finally came to a climax when Washington was gathering his troops for evacuation, and Jumonville came up demanding in French to know what was going on. When he did not get an answer, Jumonville struck Washington in front of all the troops, who then attacked Jumonville. French Margaret decided to help the attack on her half-brother, so Jumonville was killed in the camp (thus ensuring the French and Indian War would start as history expected it to). Thereafter, Washington and the native nations left fort necessity, leaving just a skeleton crew with Trent to fool the French waiting nearby.



I'm sure that's only a fraction of what happened. And I'm sure it's also pretty fragmentary. It's hard to take all the strands of a LARP like this and make it into a coherent narrative; there is so much going on, and often I as GM don't know everything that is happening and/or why a character makes the choices that they do. But it hopefully gives some idea the sort of things that happened.

Everyone reportedly enjoyed themselves. The situation produced enough interaction to keep everyone entertained for about an hour and a half once we started playing. At the end, most conflicts were resolved and everyone got more-or-less what they wanted. I am personally pleased by how everything turned out. As always, I feared it could all fall apart at the last minute in some unexpected way. This time, at least, it didn't.

I think the game sparked some interest in the French and Indian War era among some of the players. At least one researched stuff ahead of time, and two or three others said afterwards that they were more interested in the timeframe because of the game. Being educational was a secondary goal at best. (I had a list of historical innacuracies, but stopped keeping track when it got too long.) But if it inspired a desire for learning, then that is pretty awesome, overall.



Things I Might Change If I Ran It Again:

Possibly make Half-King more antagonistic to the Delaware, and make the Delaware hate him more. Should have defined the Iroquois's tyranny of the delaware a bit better.

Focus less on the rules and conflict system, as it didn't come into play very much. Possibly make special abilities more useul, though if the conflict is never used then they're kinda irelevant.

Figure out better reasons for people to move around the larpspace. As it was, everything happened "in the fort" or "outside the fort" and later "far away from the fort". Two rooms I had defined went unused. I guess maybe I just didn't predict where characters would want to go. Should have had the bedroom be the fort's prison cell, instead of Washington's quarters.

None of those are major sticking points, though. The game was totally successful with those things as they were. And I'm not really sure what else I would want to change.


So there you have it. That was longer than I thought it would be, but a lot happened.