How To Run February's LARP

Is apparently a lot of information. I tried to write up what was going on behind the scenes, which wound up being nearly as much information as was given to the players in the first place. Hopefully, by reading this document someone else could create a similarly entertaining evening for their friends.

Even those not interested in running the game might be interested in the "behind the scenes" thinking going on in the game. I tried to explain my decision making process as GM, and why and how some things were done. I didn't delve to much into why some characters are written the way they are, but you get a little sense of that in the casting section. It still didn't cover, say, why so many character had few actual demonstrable superpowers (so that they might be suspected of being Brainjack) and similar issues. Perhaps that might be fodder for a future blog post.

LARP photos

Those not present might want to see what the event looked like. Or those present might wish to see how embarrassing they look dressed as a superhero. Either way, readers might wish to see the photos from the February LARP. The only people likely to be disappointed would be those looking for photos of either GM. Amber was busy taking said photos, so does not appear in them. I meanwhile, am apparently some sort of vampire or other soulless abomination that does not show up on film.

Few of the photos are action shots, because during action-y times a GM is busy doing other things. So I don't know if it gives an accurate depiction of the LARP. But it'll give you an idea what the bottom rungs of the superhero society look like.

February LARP report

Despite my total failure at logistics, the game went really well. I though some of the time I had scheduled for 7:30, when I in fact scheduled for 7:00, so we wound up even later than I though we were. Then when we got there, I realized I had everything except the character sheets. Which are, you know, the most important part. So Amber had to drive back to our house to get them, then return.

But that meant that I had half and hour or so to explain to everyone the situation, spell out what each room meant in game, point out the props, etc. And each player had the chance to see what everyone else’s name badges (which we had) and get a little idea of the other character (and a bit about themselves, too).

The Davis family costume trunk served very well for this game. The Bank Robbery game in January had little costuming involved, but everyone had at least a bit to make them look superheroic. Seaman wore a cape, which I thought got the right useless superhero vibe: how do you swim underwater while wearing a cape? Warning Sean ahead of time that he was playing a Viking meant he had some Nero gear, including a vest of chainmail, so his costume was awesome. Hopefully Amber will post some pictures of the game soon so other people can see how it all looked.

Once we got character sheets, everything got going smoothly. The really basic conflict system seemed to work very well, and it seemed to encourage the behavior I wanted to encourage. Actually, it’s surprising how many of my plans actually went as planned, like Copycat not having any powers but always avoiding having to show off his powers (which then put some suspicion on him as the game went on).

Lots of spontaneously entertaining things happened in game. Bjorn Yesterday wound up worshipping Detachable Head as a god, because he saw the Head detach and was confused and terrified. Powerbroker initially tried to explain this as a demon, then magic, but both those encouraged Bjorn to attack, so eventually the only excuse he’d accept was the Head was a god and that was a miracle. Bjorn then followed the Head around and gave him presents and things.

Copycat at one point was cornered by Powerbroker, who wanted to see Copycat’s (nonexistent) ability to duplicate superpowers in action. This was to prove Copycat wasn’t the villainous Brainjack. Using her ability to speak any language, she said something in Swedish about Ikea, so Copycat seized on the only word he recognized and said (in English) “I love Ikea!”. Powerbroker, revising the experiment, tried to have Nestor talk to Copycat in Swedish, but Copycat distracted Nestor by asking or an autograph and asking about stories from back in Nestor’s heyday. By the time the story was done, Nestor’s senile brain had forgotten about the Swedish conversation.

At one point, Nestor determined that maybe Seaman’s true power would only show up under great duress, so he encouraged Seaman to endanger himself or stop drinking water constantly. Seaman didn’t like this plan (what if Nestor was wrong and it just killed him?). So we never got to test it, but I would have gone along with it, because I though it was funny.

There was a lot of good stuff going on in the LARP. I had a lot of fun watching it, and I think everyone else did, too. I think it was more successful than the Bank Robbery larp, overall. Let’s hope next month will be even better than this one. Most of the LARP documents are online, though I'm trying to write up a document about "How to run this game" that might make more stuff clear.

Procrastination sets in earlier than I had hoped

I’m at a point where I’m procrastinating against writing stuff or the February LARP. I expected this to happen, but hopefully this month will be the hardest one: I had all the time in the world to write the first LARP (and actually took a month and a half to do so). But the second LARP has to fall in the real month-long schedule, if I want to keep things on track. And since it’s the first one actually written in a month, I haven’t developed a set of habits for doing so.

But my procrastinating doesn’t help. Nor does losing my USB drive and my written notes for the game. Hopefully, I can reconstruct things. And hopefully, having to rebuild the game from scratch in two weeks will leave me better prepared for future months. One thing that has helped is the announcing the LARP well in advance, which means people are unconsciously reminding me about it whenever they RSVP. Which puts social pressure on top of the personally established system of deadlines. Social pressure might be more effective as a motivator to get me writing than anything I could do myself. And getting myself to write things and run things and try out new things and do some non-D&D based gaming is basically why I’m doing this LARP-A-Month project anyway.

But the longer I write this post, the less time I spend writing up time travelling Swedish superheroes. So off to adventure.