So how did everything actually go?
(Note that there's plenty of spoilers, and you may want to have read the relevant scenarios in Executive Decision and the Cavendish Memo to follow along here.)
In both scenarios, there was always enough discussion that I as GM had very little to do. I sat back and listened, occasionally answered questions, but in general the discussion moved enough and never got repetitive, so there wasn't much GM intervention needed. I had a few bits prepared to introduce new complications and thereby spur on new discussion. but if anything, I had trouble finding a good point to spring these twists on the players.
For the first scenario, the President was Matthew, who was pretty active and forceful and good at having the discussion flow around and making sure each person gave some input. They decided initially to delay saying anything about the memos, and just had the FBI (or whatever the appropriate agency would be) investigate the secretary's disappearance and the missing memo. So we assumed that they waited a day, then reconvened. In that time, the memos were leaked, and sothe White House wound up at a disadvantage on the news narrative. (The FBI did find that the secretary had been talking to a political rival Senator, but that was not much use). So the second day they had to figure out how to respond to the memos, which they succeeded pretty well in rebutting in the final press conference. The White House's story became that they were planning on meeting with Cavendish CEO in person and telling him "no" on loosening environmental policy, but trying to work out some other way to keep the factory in the country. I don't recall if anything was actually decided about a long-term policy change to help the corporation stay in the country.
President Campbell did a good job presenting their story to the press, answering the difficult questions and dealing with things. People had a positive reaction to his presentation, so it worked out well for the White House. Mostly, the reporters stuck to the pre-scripted questions, except for Adam, who didn't get a reporter (we were short one). Adam played a reporter from the Weekly World News claiming the President was a Reptoid. After being escorted out by Secret Service agents, websites devoted to tearing off President Campbell's human mask and revealing his reptilian heritage spread across the Internet.
The second scenario still played out pretty well, but ended a little worse for the White House. Amber played the President the second time, and still seemed to do fairly well refereeing the discussion. But though diplomacy with Kerzhakstan was repeatedly discussed, it was never actually pursued as a serious option. So the PCs never heard Kerzhakstan's side of the story, just the version in the international news. They did communicate with Russia, and Russia was, basically, looking for an excuse for violence against a country that seceded from them at the end of the Cold War. So since they had two warped, negative views of Kerzhakstan and a fair number of military minded PCs (Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, etc.) they wound up pursuing a military solution: send in a commando force to recover the pilot and plane and experimental doomsday weapon (!) and get out.
Doomsday weapon? There wasn't anything like that in the original scenario. That was made up by Director of national Intelligence Stacie, as she tried to find ways to fulfill her agendas. Everyone was surprised the DNI had a secret project like that, but isn't the head of spy operations supposed to do all sorts of sneaky, secret stuff?
Truth to tell, I had been considering putting a nuclear weapon in the scenario for the last two weeks or so, but eventually didn't do so. But Stacie adding it in amped up the tension of the whole crisis, so it was good. It did cause some suspension of disbelief issues for one specific player, but eventually it got smoother over enough for play to continue.
Initially it was some sort of experimental nuclear warhead, but at some point while I was out of the room the players changed that to an experimental anti-matter bomb. Other than the fact that they're stealing from Dan Brown I was okay with the change.
Because of an experimental antimatter bomb, the player characters decided to prioritize recovering the plane over saving the missing pilot. And so the final story was to lie to the Kerzhakstani ambassador and send in the military while distracted. I as GM couldn't see any way for them to pull off a military maneuver without someone getting hurt, so the pretty young pilot died in the crossfire.
(She was apparently the sexiest vegetarian in the armed forces... Google can tell you the weirdest things. I just searched for "air force lieutenant and found her.)
And since Russia was looking for an excuse, and because Kerzhakstan was terrified of Russia and had no idea who was attacking, both basically used it as an excuse to go to war with each other. And America wound up on the Russian side, contrary to the rest of the United Nations. Not great for international prestige.
Because of unexpected military action and unplanned doomsday weaponry, the prescripted reporter questions were much less applicable, so the reporters had to ad lib a lot more. And the President and Press Secretary Ross had a tougher time answering questions. Dead political martyr and internationally unpopular war don't work out too great for America.
Overall, I think it went well. Better than last time, on first impression. Some stuff could certainly be improved, and I had two technical difficulties while the larp was going on (the CD of "Hail to the Chief" kept skipping and one projector in the President's eyes burned out after a second of blinding light. I swear I tested this stuff ahead of time.).
One thing that I might do differently is sort Agendas out by scenario, as I did with the player characters (the little 1 and 2 in the upper corner of any character sheet shows which scenario it was in). And be a bit better prepped on what to tell the players at the start of each scenario... the relationship between Russia and Kerzhakstan was initially misunderstood by some players, and it was central to the second scenario. And possibly the Attorney General should be replaced by some other Cabinet official, as partisanship never came much into play. But nothing failed miserably, as far as I could tell.
At some point I might want to write a post musing about how political games like this will shift more rightwards/more conservative, just due to the nature of political thinking and how it works. But that's a post for some other day, if ever.
Monday, June 1, 2009
May LARP report
Cheyenne was unable to attend this month (due to being gainfully employed), so requested a more thorough LARP report. Which is probably a good idea, anyway, as I should do a better job supporting this blog-space, if it is to be meaningful to anyone.
As I hope some of the various larps in the future will be, May's game changed up a lot of how the game was played. There were no detailed character backgrounds, or indeed any pregenerated characters at all. We had a prescripted series of four scenes, and players swapped roles around halfway through the game. There was basically no secret information that the players could have read and spoiled the game ahead of time. There were few secret agendas. And everyone spent the entire game sitting down, probably making it the least larp-like larp so far.
Maybe I should go back and start from the beginning:
This month's larp scenario is taken almost entirely from Greg Stolze's free sper-simple RPG Executive Decision. The players roleplayed being the President of the United States and his Cabinet and miscellaneous advisers trying to deal with some political controversies.
Basically, the game went like this: Everyone got two agenda card that I had made, then chose one of several roles available. Each job in the presidential administration had its own attached agenda, too.
So there weren't any established characters. Just some randomly generated characters. And no one had any fictional names, which got some player rebellion. Some people (well, one) wanted people to have fictional character names, but most didn't care, so they all wound up just using people's real names for their fictional cabinet officials. There were some Name Badges, but they really just identified background information others should know about some characters, like if they were the token member of an opposing political party. These tied into some of the agendas (any with a star in the upper corner). My favorite was the "Protect your job" agenda, since any player that got that agenda had a choice of why their job was in danger. Did they pilot a massive program that failed miserably? Or say something politically insensitive on national television? (Those were the two chosen when the agenda came up.)
Anyway, once people knew what they were trying to do, everyone sat together at a big table, presented themselves and their position and such, and then they were given some crisis that they had to deal with. And then they all would discuss what the president's administration should do until they reached a consensus. In said discussion, different people would try to advance their individual agendas.
The first crisis involved a missing former secretary of the president's, confidential private and politically controversial memo being leaked (along with a terse but vaguely positive response) being leaked to the press. The memo intersected with a lot of different agendas people had, involving giant corporations, environmental concerns, military matters and the like, all mixed together in a tangled mess. Which is often how politics is, in my experience.
The second scenario involved a tiny former Soviet state accidentally capturing an American fighter jet, which worried nearby, antagonistic Russia greatly. And the country acted stupid and went to the international press before the American government, showing the plane and the pretty young female pilot on CNN.
Both these dilemmas were taken straight from the original Executive Decision document. I can't really take any credit for them, myself.
After the cabinet reached a consensus on what to do in each of these cases, then the President (and/or Press Secretary) needed to field questions from the journalists at the press briefing. We took all the players downstairs, gave them an alternate reporter identity to play for a moment, then the President or Secretary had to come down to lots of lights shining right in their eyes and give a speech and answer questions.
More on how the scenarios actually played out, later. And what worked, what didn't, etc.
As I hope some of the various larps in the future will be, May's game changed up a lot of how the game was played. There were no detailed character backgrounds, or indeed any pregenerated characters at all. We had a prescripted series of four scenes, and players swapped roles around halfway through the game. There was basically no secret information that the players could have read and spoiled the game ahead of time. There were few secret agendas. And everyone spent the entire game sitting down, probably making it the least larp-like larp so far.
Maybe I should go back and start from the beginning:
This month's larp scenario is taken almost entirely from Greg Stolze's free sper-simple RPG Executive Decision. The players roleplayed being the President of the United States and his Cabinet and miscellaneous advisers trying to deal with some political controversies.
Basically, the game went like this: Everyone got two agenda card that I had made, then chose one of several roles available. Each job in the presidential administration had its own attached agenda, too.
So there weren't any established characters. Just some randomly generated characters. And no one had any fictional names, which got some player rebellion. Some people (well, one) wanted people to have fictional character names, but most didn't care, so they all wound up just using people's real names for their fictional cabinet officials. There were some Name Badges, but they really just identified background information others should know about some characters, like if they were the token member of an opposing political party. These tied into some of the agendas (any with a star in the upper corner). My favorite was the "Protect your job" agenda, since any player that got that agenda had a choice of why their job was in danger. Did they pilot a massive program that failed miserably? Or say something politically insensitive on national television? (Those were the two chosen when the agenda came up.)
Anyway, once people knew what they were trying to do, everyone sat together at a big table, presented themselves and their position and such, and then they were given some crisis that they had to deal with. And then they all would discuss what the president's administration should do until they reached a consensus. In said discussion, different people would try to advance their individual agendas.
The first crisis involved a missing former secretary of the president's, confidential private and politically controversial memo being leaked (along with a terse but vaguely positive response) being leaked to the press. The memo intersected with a lot of different agendas people had, involving giant corporations, environmental concerns, military matters and the like, all mixed together in a tangled mess. Which is often how politics is, in my experience.
The second scenario involved a tiny former Soviet state accidentally capturing an American fighter jet, which worried nearby, antagonistic Russia greatly. And the country acted stupid and went to the international press before the American government, showing the plane and the pretty young female pilot on CNN.
Both these dilemmas were taken straight from the original Executive Decision document. I can't really take any credit for them, myself.
After the cabinet reached a consensus on what to do in each of these cases, then the President (and/or Press Secretary) needed to field questions from the journalists at the press briefing. We took all the players downstairs, gave them an alternate reporter identity to play for a moment, then the President or Secretary had to come down to lots of lights shining right in their eyes and give a speech and answer questions.
More on how the scenarios actually played out, later. And what worked, what didn't, etc.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Note to Self
Dear future self,
If you're going to store all the information for the monthly LARP on a USB drive, make sure everything is backed up somewhere. Because you don't want to go emptying your pockets two days before the LARP and wonder "Where did that USB drive with the last month of my work go to?"
In this instance that where is "still in the computer that has Indesign installed on it at work". But in the future it might be "to the West Mifflin Garage onboard the 53F Port Authority bus, never to be seen again". So watch it.
Your Truly,
Your past self
If you're going to store all the information for the monthly LARP on a USB drive, make sure everything is backed up somewhere. Because you don't want to go emptying your pockets two days before the LARP and wonder "Where did that USB drive with the last month of my work go to?"
In this instance that where is "still in the computer that has Indesign installed on it at work". But in the future it might be "to the West Mifflin Garage onboard the 53F Port Authority bus, never to be seen again". So watch it.
Your Truly,
Your past self
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Back on track after a brief interlude
For whatever reason, this month began with a lot of stressing out, a lot of self-pity and negative feeling about the LARP project. I don' want to get into that right now, really, but it took me a while to get started actually working on the May LARP. And that procrastination there also meant that I was avoiding writing anything here about how it was all going.
Luckily for me, a weird quirk of the calendar means that I had an extra week between larps this month. The last few games were going off every four weeks, and now enough time spilled over now that I had five weeks to get the May larp ready. And at the same time, the game I have planned this time required substantially less prep work than previous games. So I have actually been spending some time working with Adobe InDesign to make some nice looking documents. This is a big improvement over previous month's Word documents, at least in my own opinion. Don't believe that it's a big improvement? go look at this character that won't get used and see for yourself.
At this point I have a few last bits to finish, and some more cleaning around the house, but everything should be ready in time. And hopefully it will all work out well. I have one or two reservations going into the game, which I might discuss after the event is over. That's only a few days away at this point, so we don't have to wait long.
Luckily for me, a weird quirk of the calendar means that I had an extra week between larps this month. The last few games were going off every four weeks, and now enough time spilled over now that I had five weeks to get the May larp ready. And at the same time, the game I have planned this time required substantially less prep work than previous games. So I have actually been spending some time working with Adobe InDesign to make some nice looking documents. This is a big improvement over previous month's Word documents, at least in my own opinion. Don't believe that it's a big improvement? go look at this character that won't get used and see for yourself.
At this point I have a few last bits to finish, and some more cleaning around the house, but everything should be ready in time. And hopefully it will all work out well. I have one or two reservations going into the game, which I might discuss after the event is over. That's only a few days away at this point, so we don't have to wait long.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
LARP photos
Amber posted photos from the April LARP for people to see.
On the other hand, I still don't have anything concrete for May's game. I should get on the stick and figure out what it is we're doing.
On the other hand, I still don't have anything concrete for May's game. I should get on the stick and figure out what it is we're doing.
Monday, April 27, 2009
April LARP: worked out pretty well
Didn't work out perfectly by any means, but most of the players enjoyed themselves a lot, reportedly.
As is the standard operating procedure here, all LARP relevant documents are up online for you to view and/or use for your own purposes.
Since this game was less GM intensive than the previous one, I will try to write up GMing notes so you could run it on your own, if you wanted.
There was a pretty good quantity of awesome in the game, as the hacked together mechanics for the game worked as they were supposed to and the characters interacted with each other. In particular, the poker mechanics meshed nicely into the rest of the game and subtly drew away the PC's ability to accomplish anything without killing someone. There were one or two mistakes on the character sheets, since plots had to be swapped around at the last minute. When two players cancel at the last minute, you have to scramble to adjust how the PCs fit together. But apparently I missed updating a few or the characters who were affected.
One or two players seemed somewhat dissatisfied with parts of the game. I'll see what we can do to rectify things in future months. Speaking of which, I should figure out what next month will be. At this point it's still almost entirely an unknown to me. I'd like something with less PC versus PC conflict, but still have to work out how to do that without increasing the GM workload.
As is the standard operating procedure here, all LARP relevant documents are up online for you to view and/or use for your own purposes.
Since this game was less GM intensive than the previous one, I will try to write up GMing notes so you could run it on your own, if you wanted.
There was a pretty good quantity of awesome in the game, as the hacked together mechanics for the game worked as they were supposed to and the characters interacted with each other. In particular, the poker mechanics meshed nicely into the rest of the game and subtly drew away the PC's ability to accomplish anything without killing someone. There were one or two mistakes on the character sheets, since plots had to be swapped around at the last minute. When two players cancel at the last minute, you have to scramble to adjust how the PCs fit together. But apparently I missed updating a few or the characters who were affected.
One or two players seemed somewhat dissatisfied with parts of the game. I'll see what we can do to rectify things in future months. Speaking of which, I should figure out what next month will be. At this point it's still almost entirely an unknown to me. I'd like something with less PC versus PC conflict, but still have to work out how to do that without increasing the GM workload.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Delayed thoughts and failure to write instructions
I tried to write up instructions on how to run the March LARP. I really did, but I don't think I'll be able to. The March game was a mystery game, see, and so it had a lot more stuff to it that wasn't on people's character sheets. There was another entire story, not directly spelled out anywhere in particular, that would need clarified and properly ordered for someone to be able to run the game themselves. And a lot of talk about the game's science fiction setting and then some conflict resolution rules.
You see, lots of stuff that wasn't already ready to be posted online. Which is a bit of a pity: by now I'm busy writing the April game.
(And if I ever get a chance and remember I should write a post about my mental boom/bust cycle writing these things, or one about the inversion of authority from how it works in a traditional tabletop RPG or lots of other things. But right now there's cowboys to write up... mainly cowgirls, actually, given the game's gender ratio.)
So while I don't have any new deep thoughts for you today, I do have some thoughts I wrote a month or so ago, regarding the scifi mystery game, tropes caused by writerly laziness and the Disney Channel:
--------------------------------------------------
The original background for the March game went like this:
A science fiction research outpost found an alien artifact, which could be used to raise and lower someone's intelligence. One survivor of the research team has been turned into a bestial monster man by having his mind drained, while others used it to raise their intelligence greatly. Unfortunately, raising your intelligence thusly lowers your empathy for normal human beings, leading you to think of them as insects, or tools for a job. Or pests to be exterminated. One of the scientists used this item to raise their intelligence to amazing heights, then created a time-space anomaly to wipe out most of the crew.
I was a bit unhappy about the intelligence modification stuff, because I'm sometimes bothered by the fictional trope of intelligence = evil and being dumb is morally superior. You see this in various forms. The place it always annoys me most is in, of all things, Handy Manny, where the smart and almost always correct flathead screwdriver is looked upon poorly for pointing out how stupid the other, moronic tools are.
Moving on from criticizing anti-intellectualism in children's shows, I am happier with the new background I came up with. It's mostly similar (research outpost, alien artifact, crew member made half-human, wiped out by guy who experimented on himself) except the artifact does not raise or lower intelligence. what it does is store someone's personality in little crystal things. One of the crystal things found contained an alien intelligence, stored by one of the race that made the thing. This alien is very anti-human, and its motives are unclear except that it wants humanity off its damn planet. Possibly, the alien was some sort of alien psychopath, imprisoned in a mindcrystal as punishment for something. Or maybe all the aliens would be this violent and anti-human in such a situation, I don't know.
Either way, it removes the moral qualm/aesthetic problem I had with the initial plot. Not that anyone else would have even likely noticed or cared.
You see, lots of stuff that wasn't already ready to be posted online. Which is a bit of a pity: by now I'm busy writing the April game.
(And if I ever get a chance and remember I should write a post about my mental boom/bust cycle writing these things, or one about the inversion of authority from how it works in a traditional tabletop RPG or lots of other things. But right now there's cowboys to write up... mainly cowgirls, actually, given the game's gender ratio.)
So while I don't have any new deep thoughts for you today, I do have some thoughts I wrote a month or so ago, regarding the scifi mystery game, tropes caused by writerly laziness and the Disney Channel:
--------------------------------------------------
The original background for the March game went like this:
A science fiction research outpost found an alien artifact, which could be used to raise and lower someone's intelligence. One survivor of the research team has been turned into a bestial monster man by having his mind drained, while others used it to raise their intelligence greatly. Unfortunately, raising your intelligence thusly lowers your empathy for normal human beings, leading you to think of them as insects, or tools for a job. Or pests to be exterminated. One of the scientists used this item to raise their intelligence to amazing heights, then created a time-space anomaly to wipe out most of the crew.
I was a bit unhappy about the intelligence modification stuff, because I'm sometimes bothered by the fictional trope of intelligence = evil and being dumb is morally superior. You see this in various forms. The place it always annoys me most is in, of all things, Handy Manny, where the smart and almost always correct flathead screwdriver is looked upon poorly for pointing out how stupid the other, moronic tools are.
Moving on from criticizing anti-intellectualism in children's shows, I am happier with the new background I came up with. It's mostly similar (research outpost, alien artifact, crew member made half-human, wiped out by guy who experimented on himself) except the artifact does not raise or lower intelligence. what it does is store someone's personality in little crystal things. One of the crystal things found contained an alien intelligence, stored by one of the race that made the thing. This alien is very anti-human, and its motives are unclear except that it wants humanity off its damn planet. Possibly, the alien was some sort of alien psychopath, imprisoned in a mindcrystal as punishment for something. Or maybe all the aliens would be this violent and anti-human in such a situation, I don't know.
Either way, it removes the moral qualm/aesthetic problem I had with the initial plot. Not that anyone else would have even likely noticed or cared.
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