A Firefly LARP in the making: What do they want?

[DevP]

(This fits better here, rather that in Game Design, due to the IP content and also because I'm talking more about expectations rather than mechanics here. Mechanics later!)

I'm slated to show off a Firefly LARP at Vericon 2005. Excellent! I'm a big fan of the show, and all the various Color it helps folks bring to the table. However, that also means that people coming will have their own vision of what this LARP should be, and have some high standards that need to be met. (Especially since this will be most of their first event for the convention, so I need to rock.) I have some mechanics in mind, but I'd love some advice about the *paramaters* for the game, so that I don't have players expecting something radically different from they'd enjoy.

Pragmatic/Realistic Parameters
Firstly, size will be indeterminate - easily between 10 and 20, and I can have the cap as low or high as I wish, but I can't really know how many people will show up until that very night. Given the social dynamics, there's just no way around it. Okay.

Secondly, player makeup will include various strangers and new acquaintances, as it's at a convention. This may mean various clashing worldviews or styles, although hopefully not too many. (This is part of what I'm trying to second guess.)

Thirdly, my prowess as a GM: I think I'm a decent GM, but I'm not good at managing lots of variables, and the predominant LARP around here has seemed to be the kind where the GM has lots of special NPCs triggering events, special powers triggering events, and requiring lots of fiddling with tokens and pieces to make the events unfold as they should. There have been some excellent LARPs to this end, but it's just not something I'm cut out to manage. Ideally, I'd probably do best if I could just set up the R-Maps and characters with their motivations and goals to just explode Blood Operatically, and as a GM, use a very few select NPCs / mcguffins to add bangs as necessary to notch up the pace.

Agenda Issues
Although I don't think it's helpful to formalize the CA here, the above does start to sound like some Narrativism, where I'd the themes of family/trust and self-interest would come up, all of which could be represented systemwise in terms of goals, and I think that you can have these alongside the traditional action - gunfights, heists, loot, etc. Am I right? Or am I injecting something into the Firelfy mileau that doesn't quite fit?

Setting Issues
How literally do I need to hold to the Firefly universe to make players still feel like they're getting their money's worth in the LARP? My plan was that reflecting the influence of the Browncoat/Alliance factions would be good & necessary, whereas necessarily including the Reavers, or include the actual protagonists of the series might be shark-jumpy and also limiting.

Also, what kind of setting would work for the LARP environment? I think that the LARP environment could work either for a planet-bound (crew making a deal on land) or ship-bound (stalled or in transit) scenario.

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So, to summarize the various question above: are the paramters I suggest above still enough in keeping with a LARP involving "the world of Firefly"? Or would doing so require a much more limited scope than I'm willing to do?

(And, I realize that this project yearns to be "Dust Devils: the LARP", and that's okay.)

[Lucy McLaughlin]

Dev, I'm afraid I'm not well-versed in RPG theory, but I am a huge Firefly fan and have a given a little thought to what I'd personally like out of a Firefly-based RPG. What's going to follow is a fairly random collection of thoughts that your post sparked off:

Firstly, family, trust and self-interest are very appropriate themes for a Firefly game of any kind in my opinion. You could certainly fit those kinds of themes into a heists-looting-and-gunplay style game, I would think, and that's exactly the slightly-uncomfortable-but-at-the-same-time-exciting mix that Firefly pulls off: the heavily character-driven and thematic alongside plenty of action.

On the setting: I'd recommend against using Reavers or the crew of Serenity, although that might be personal preferences speaking. My impression of the universe itself is that there aren't a great deal of actual Browncoats left in the universe, although Alliance/non-Alliance-friendly would probably be a good source of conflict. The other source of conflict I see inherent in that universe is between the Core and the Border - partly class conflict, and partly conflict between "civilized" and "uncivlized" worlds. It certainly has parallels with the Alliance/Independent conflict.

I think a planet-bound scenario might work better with the social dynamic you described - a ship with a supposedly small crew might be problematic with up to 20 players, and in a planet-bound situation PCs can have more varied connections than a crew, which would probably have to have some fairly strong relationships.

It sounds like your preferred method - setting up the R-maps to create interesting situations from the get-go and letting it run rather than meticulously planning, as I understand it? - would work great for a Firefly RPG, too.

It sounds like wonderful fun - good luck!

Lucy

[DevP]

Hey Lucy! Thanks for responding, and if you're at all in shouting distance of Boston, you should check out the VeriCon.

I'm glad to that the themes and planet-based scenario sound sane to you. As for the setting:

On the setting: I'd recommend against using Reavers or the crew of Serenity, although that might be personal preferences speaking. My impression of the universe itself is that there aren't a great deal of actual Browncoats left in the universe, although Alliance/non-Alliance-friendly would probably be a good source of conflict. The other source of conflict I see inherent in that universe is between the Core and the Border - partly class conflict, and partly conflict between "civilized" and "uncivlized" worlds. It certainly has parallels with the Alliance/Independent conflict.

Oddly enough, allowing a few former Browncoats doesn't seem explicitly bad (because they might travel in pairs or such, and also because adventurous types (that the players would want to be) are more likely to be such. Certainly, strong anti-Alliance sentiment on the Border would make a lot of sense, even antebellum.

But the civilized versus uncivilized conflict - I hadn't yet thought of realizing that in the game scenario, since action would take place on the Border world. "Civilized" types would be in the minority, although they could be a potent on in terms of possible plot hooks (since they're probably sitting on loot / connections).

[Sydney Freedberg]

This number of people, and the physical confines of a LARP, might make a sci-fi variant of the old "murder mystery on a cruise ship" the best fit. If the game takes place on a passenger spaceship or small space station, that justifies several things:

- why everyone is confined to the same few rooms: everything else is hard vacuum...
- why there are 10-20 people: you have more passenger capacity than a Firefly-style ship devoted to cargo, but you're also not representing an entire settlement
- why most people are strangers to each other: most of the ship's/station's crew just signed on (which could be a plot point in itself: either it's a new venture or someone fired/killed off the old crew to cover something up) and the passengers on the ship/visitors to the station are all passing through on their personal journeys.

As for Firefly-specific issues -- and I have the series on DVD, so I'm reasonably familiar with it -- I'd agree that established characters like Mal, or characters incapable of social interaction like the Reavers, are both too limiting (for different reasons). I see no problem with a bunch of ex-browncoats around, even if they don't know each other: Maybe part of the plot is one character has called the others together to launch some kind of anti-Alliance operation {EDIT: persuading them to join would be an in-game task rather than something assumed before play}. And as for balancing the civilized vs. uncivilized factions, I'd imagine that core worlders would have more wealth & gadgetry and very high skills in certain specialized areas, but fairly fragile and ignorant outside their speciality*; by contrast, frontier folk would be hardy generalists.

* Examples from the series: the doctor (what's-his-name), who is unbeatable in his area of expertise but woefully naive about life on the frontier; or the Alliance captain from that one episode who has an entire battlecrusier at his command but refuses to believe any such thing as "Reavers" exists.

[Black Iris Dancer]

My disclaimer is as Lucy's: I'm not well-studied in LARPS at all, so it's possible that anything I suggest could be game suicide. On the other hand, I love Firefly with a passion normally only found within the Karma Sutra (metaphor), so…

Jumping off a couple of thoughts from above: you might consider defining groups, or having your players define groups. These groups would already know each other, and there would be pre-existing social dynamics within them. This might help to accomodate the somewhat large number of people while still giving players a chance to explore themes of family and trust and the like. There's a danger here of creating a number of mini-games, which is definitely something you don't want to do, if only because such has the potential to be a GM nightmare of rather epic proportions. You'd probably want some fairly potent element bringing them together—I like the murder mystery on a cruise ship idea (a lot). You could also consider an Out of Gas-esque storyline—engine's blown, life support's off, we seem to be completely humped, etc. Depending on your control of the environment, and your desire to make your players actually physically uncomfortable, this could actually provide some lovely immersive setting elements—set the thermostat on a downward plunge, have a friend kill lights at (in-)opportune moments, etc. This might actually produce more insularity amongst the characters, come to think of it, but that can always be countered by necessity—we're humped, but if we work together, we might be less humped.

a sci-fi variant of the old "murder mystery on a cruise ship"

I want to play this. Badly. (Where badly here modifies my desire, not my method of play. But you knew that. Hopefully.)

[Lucy McLaughlin]

"Murder mystery on a cruise ship" scenario in the Firefly 'verse? You know, that'd be enough for me to fly the three and and half thousand miles to Boston if I only had the money.... (I'm in London. Thanks for the invite though, Dev!).

To clarify earlier comments, I wasn't saying that including former Browncoats was an inherently bad idea, just that I feel a little like characters like Mal and Zoe who still wear those brown coats with pride might not still be all that common. I could be wrong about that, though! :) Anti-Alliance feeling on the Border and among the people who take to adventure and/or crime for a living seems pretty inherent to the 'verse to me, though, and I guess that may or may not be something else entirely. (It strikes me that anti-Alliance feeling doesn't necessarily imply Independent allegiance.)

I think that "we're humped, and we might not like each other, but if we work together we might be less humped" is in many ways the perfect set-up for a Firefly game. After all, it's how the series started...

Aw, I want to play....

[DevP]

Wow, there's a lot of love for the "murder mystery on a space ship" thing. I'll sketch out the relationship maps, and try to figure out which scenario is the best.

The problem with a "murder mystery" is that everyone will align towards "solving" that crime, derailing my overarching goal of simply having them deal with each other. I was specifically not wanting a "central plot", because I've been in LARPs where I simply didn't catch onto said central plot and missed out on the fun. I ideally give everyone (a) relationships within their clique to puruse, (b) possible relationships outside of their clique, and (c) goals to achieve, by inter-cooperation with other players. I don't want these to be dampened by players feeling obligated to figure out the murder.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Wow, there's a lot of love for the "murder mystery on a space ship" thing...

Actually, when I originally tossed that out, I wasn't thinking so much of One Plot To Rule Them All as of the principles (1) "we're all stuck here together" and (2) "something just happened we can't ignore." (Your classic teen-slasher flick works on the same principles; so does the Firefly episode "Out of Gas," mentioned above). I agree that it's not wise to force everyone to solve some common problem, but rather to let all of them shoot off on their own agenda.

[TonyLB]

Does the murderer have to be known (to staff) at the start of the game?  I'm just thinking... you could do the following:

[*]Give everyone secrets, including their motive, method and opportunity for having committed the crime[*]Provide ways for other players to have access to those secrets, whether by giving them directly or letting them be discovered through the mechanics of the game[*]Provide an open forum in which those secrets can be officially and globally disclosed ("I suppose you wonder why I've gathered you all together...")[*]Declare (before the game even begins) that the player who has the most of their secrets revealed will be retroactively made the murderer.[/list:u]Then, instead of a reactive situation where the players are forced to follow a trail of bread-crumbs, you have a proactive situation in which they have secrets about other people and they need to decide what to reveal, what to conceal.  And where a breach of faith (i.e. revealing someone's secret) is a really serious deal, because it's one step closer to them being the Big Bad of the episode.  But simultaneously, you can reveal the secrets of someone you don't like in order to distract attention from your own secrets (the classic murder-mystery motif).

Mind you, it might make more sense to have multiple crimes, so that the first really obnoxious player that everyone decides to reveal on doesn't permanently solve the mystery and end the challenge.  Sorta like the Survivor mechanic of voting people off... folks are weeded out progressively as they fail in their alliances with other players.

[DevP]

Sydney: I see what you mean. My thinking was towards having a few possible sorta "explosive" events at hand, to be released at will when I feel the need to tighten the pace. Such as, a major power outage, or a hostile boarding by bounty hunters, or an emergency transmission from the Cortex about "wanted fugitives" matching a player's profile (this information could be erroneous). I'd even be happy keeping a "murder mystery" on hand - i.e. being willing to kill one of the GMNPCs if the pitch of the players was right.

Does the murderer have to be known (to staff) at the start of the game?

That's an excellent idea that MUST be used! Although I'm not sure I want that to be the focus of play; how about the outcome being a hi-lo system? Both the characters with the most and least amount of secrets revealed are equally likely to be the "murderer", and a private coin flip between them let's them determine who actually did it.

I think it counts as a system in itself; want to start a new thread to discuss that Murder Mystery mechanic?