August = Fail

I'm not going to offer excuses (though I could), but I need to fess up here that I failed to get a LARP organized by the end of August. Which sucks, but I still want to try for future months. Possibly the work on the Poking the Emperor game will be used for September or November. (October is spoken for already.)

September may or may not be preempted by Game Chef 2009, the annual roleplaying game design competition. Though this year it's not really a competition, any more than NaNoWriMo is.

In the meantime, readers should check out Game Chef, too. Make your own game, or read other people's attempts to make games. When things are finished, read some of the rough draft games that get made, and find one that you love. Playtest things. Have fun.

You can follow my Game Chefing exploits over on the blog made for that purpose. If this keeps up, I'll just have a blog for every topic I ever write about.

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.

LARP Last Night

Last night we had the "Bloody Forks of the Ohio" LARP. Everything went well. I'll try to write a full report after I get some food in me. Until then, you can peruse the LARP documents that are online.

I am currently stuck in the "two weeks until the LARP happens" slump, wherein I worry constantly if anyone will actually attend the thing. Right now there are all of 3 players RSVPed, which makes me wonder how small a group we need to play.

Now, this happens every month, and sometime in the remaining time the guest list expands, but I need to remind myself of this every single time. And I still try to adjust plans as it happens, in case we really do have a below average turnout.



something I noticed just now was that all the female characters in this game are about blending or bridging two distinct cultural groups, whereas the male roles all seem to be more certain about their place in the world. More definite in which group they belong in. I think that's sort of interesting, and worth milking for thematic value, if I can figure out how. It's sort of accidental, but it makes some sort of intuitive sense (especially when you look at the individual characters and the setting, rather than an abstract statement about gender).

Adaptation instead of Originality

It's been a little while since I wrote here, largely because June and July have been really busy. But also because the monthly LARP project went on the back burner for a little while, what with Origins and Amber running the June game and such.

Regardless, I'm now at work on the July one. And what may be the August one at the same time, though that's a collaborative work that will be done whenever it gets done. July, though, is shaping up as an interesting project to write, because it feels different from other stuff I've done.

See, the previous games I wrote wholesale, whereas this one is being based off of a tabletop game written by Jason Morningstar. You might think that this would be easier, but it provides its own set of challenges. The analogy I told Amber was that if you write a novel from scratch, that has its own problems to overcome and issues to work ou: coming up with characters and plotting the thing and such. Now if you are hired to write a novel based off of a movie (or whatever), the characters and plot are already figured out for you. But that doesn't mean you're not writing a novel: it still requires you do a lot of work, just in solving different issues, such as how to translate from screen to text, how to make two hours of film last two hundred pages, and a lot of other decisions on how to adapt it into a new medium.

So for this game, I'm taking a game that lets the characters range all across 18th century Pennsylvania and constraining it down to a specific time and location. And I have to clarify the situation enough that players understand everything that they need to know just by reading their character sheet. And I need to research the actual historical events covered in the game, as the scenario by Morningstar doesn't quite explain what you need to know. I think that Jason assumed others had his level of historical knowledge, so I'm constantly having to learn more to really understand what's built into the game. And of course I need to simplify the characters mechanically, and come up with a LARP appropriate system to use.

So it presents a different set of challenges from previous games. I don't actually know how much those differences will translate into differences from a players perspective, though. On one level the game is still about different characters with secrets and conflicting motives stuck in a limited space until their conflicts escalate and resolve, like most other games I run. But we'll see if a couple innovations take hold, such as this being a (largely) non-fiction game, and a stronger emphasis on player/character separation.

Multithreaded

Because my 30th birthday was the other day, Amber decided to take over the larpwright duties for the month. This is good, as it gives me a break just around when GM burnout was setting in. And it means some vague, secretive plans are being made all around me, though that is more "mysterious" and "worrying" than it is clearly good.

But it leaves me in a position of not having a project to work on right now. I am communicating with Ross regarding the July event, but that's slow going. July's game is a long way away, and the planning is all via email (which slows the sharing of ideas), and I feel like I overrode Ross's input a bit much in the Western game we collaborated on. So I don't want to bound too far ahead of his input by writing more stuff (though I fear this may be happening regardless).

So this leaves me with no LARPs to be writing right now, just as the habit had formed. My solution at this point is to create a couple of outlines for future games, which will get fleshed out in the remaining months before the games are actually needed. This is good, since it provides a creative outlet and such. And it means I'll have preplanned ideas for in the future when people ask what's up for future months.

Now, depending on how things play out, some of these ideas might not get actually used. Any assistant GMs I have may wind up disliking the available list of potential LARPs, and we'll opt to write and play something entirely new. And at this point it looks like I have one more LARP idea than there are remaining months in the year. And, of course, more ideas will come in the next six months as well. So some of these ideas won't get played. At least, not as part of the monthly LARP project.

Some readers may think "Hey, you could continue the monthly LARP series into 2010!" But that's crazy talk. By next January, I'll need a good break from doing this. And I'll probably find some other creative outlet at that point. But part of the point of this (in my mind, anyway) is the limited scope: you write twelve games, run them, think critically about what happened, then move on with that information.

I'm sure more LARPs will happen in the future. But one a month is a difficult rate for me to keep up. Which is why I challenged myself to do so int he first place.

Tabletop Play, Inverted

Something has been growing clear to me as I run a series of LARPs each month. It has to do with power relationships between the players and the GM. But first I'll have to talk for a while about tabletop RPGs, before circling back to my monthly larps.

You see, LARPing is really a secondary hobby for me, despite it currently taking up a decent amount of my time over the last few months. The majority of my roleplaying historically and preferentially takes the form of "tabletop" roleplaying (if you're a larper) or "pen and paper" roleplaying (if you play computer based RPGs). People sitting around a table telling a collaborative story.



Now, in a typical roleplaying game, the setup goes like this: The GM says, "Hey, I want to start a campaign of Unknown Armies" (or whatever their game of choice might be). Then all the prospective players create backgrounds and personalities for their characters. Once characters are made, the GM creates a plot and the players react to that plot.

While the GM has some ability to influence character choices during character creation, the players really have primary control over what their characters will look like. The GM has relatively little power during chargen (relative to the GM's later power level, that is, not necessarily relative to the players... that varies from game to game and group to group). Players, on the other hand, often have a lot of poer to establish things in their character background and such.

Once play begins, though, the GM has near complete control over the events in play. Sure, abusing your GM power can get accusations of railroading or deprotagonization or otherwise upset players. But the GM has a lot of power over the system, in a traditional game. In particular, the GM controls a lot of the "plot" of a game, and can control flow of play more effectively than any other player. Meanwhile, players have reduced capability to establish facts about the game world: you might have made up an ancient ninja secret society that controls the government in your character's backstory and it was acceptable, but trying to bring it in during play will encounter more resistance. And in terms of controlling plot, the players have some ability, but it is noticeably less than the GM's.



Now, it's important to note that you can have very different power structures for your game. Different systems actively create alternative setups, and different groups often create looser power distributions, where players have more ability for input in play. A variety of "indie games" explore setups where players get more power, or less, or where there isn't a GM at all or the GM's role is conscribed in various ways. And these games are fascinating to me theoretically and often a lot of fun to play. But I'm talking about an abstracted ideal of traditional roleplaying arrangement, in order to contrast it to the Larps I've been running.


There we are, back at the larps. See, the power distribution of the larps I've run goes very differently. Players have almost no power ahead of time, as I write all the characters and arrange a situation and such. But once play begins, I as GM have very, very little control over the flow of play. There are no NPCs to speak of, rarely any scene breaks or other pacing mechanics that a GM could use to channel play in various preplanned directions. My general GMing mode is "set up an interesting set of characters in an interesting situation, then react". Which actually is a really good way of running tabletop games, but isn't exactly the default assumption for how a game goes.

So my power as a GM of these larps goes: lots of power ahead of time, but relatively little once play begins. Now, other larps could imitate that traditional rpg power setup, and we could do that in a future larp. But I'm not sure I'm interested in going that direction with future games. The most recent larp had the most railroading that I really want to do, which consisted of a handful of facts coming out as the game went on, and two scheduled press conference. Rather, I want to see how I can vary the power structure in future larps in other ways... the randomly generated character of the political larp is an example.

Or maybe we will have a game where players generate characters in the future, though we'd have to figure out how to guarantee interesting conflict between the players. Or have it be a more external conflict of some sort? Now that I've identified a pattern, I want to figure out how to vary that pattern in new and interesting ways.