[All Creatures Crazed and Feral] Letting players decide the story

[Graham W]

At Dragonmeet, I ran "All Creatures Crazed And Feral", a werewolf LARP . It was about werewolves threatening a Yorkshire village. (If you know British television, then it was a crossover between "All Creatures Great And Small" and "An American Werewolf In London").

It went well and I got good feedback from the players. But there was one major issue, which I'd like advice on. I'll start by saying what worked and then outline the problem.

It was a rules-light LARP with 12 players. They were mostly experienced LARPers, with one or two newcomers, and most conflicts were resolved by negotiation. (I was pleasantly surprised to find that two characters had been tied to chairs without needing to call me over). I intervened when they interacted with the environment or when something affected everyone. Occasionally, I tossed a coin, if randomness seemed like a good idea.

Here's the things that worked. Firstly, the character sheets were very short, with no "objectives" and very little backstory. (A common trend in LARPs is to have a long backstory, most of which is kept secret, and two or three game objectives.) Instead, I gave the characters one major event to respond to: for example, a farmer waking up to find a huge animal had attacked his cows, threatening his livelihood and possibly his safety. Characters also had fragments of gossip and local legend, which they were encouraged to share and embellish.

That all worked well, and the characters seemed to hit the ground running. As soon as characters entered, they started talking animatedly about what happened to them that day.

Secondly, there was a scoring system. All character names were written on a board and players were given sticky stars and red dots. Players stuck a star on a name whenever that character did something good; and a red spot when they did something bad. They were told these scores would affect the game and that they should try to be either very good or very bad. At the end of the game, "bad" characters became werewolves and "good" characters were given more hit points in the final combat.

Thirdly, there was a stunt that came off well. At the end of the game, I told the werewolves that they should gather their "pack" for the final attack. They had five minutes to do this, by running into the convention hall and persuading as many people as possible to play werewolves. I ended up doing crowd control for about twenty werewolves, but we still ran a rules-lite combat effectively, and it was a lovely, high-energy moment.

Here's the problem: the players weren't involved enough in determining the plot. I'd started the game intending to listen to the players and allow the way they played the game to dictate the plot. If they'd banded together and armed themselves, it would have been a combat ending; if they'd starting accusing each other of being werewolves, it would have been a "last man standing" ending; if there was a romantic tone, we could have had a romantic ending.

However, as I ran around listening to the players, there wasn't a consistent tone. Some were fortifying for a last-stand, some were infighting. To make it worse, I didn't have much time to listen, since I was dealing with game issues. In the event, I opted for the "werewolf attack" ending, which I thought people would enjoy. And they did. But it didn't feel as though it came from the players.

There's a subproblem too. Some players came to me asking to research werewolf legends and set traps for the werewolves. These were all things that should have affected the ending, and they didn't, and that's my fault. But I'm not sure: should I encourage so much GM interaction? I'd prefer the players had decided the game ending among themselves, rather than coming to the GM to do it.

I have a feeling that the Forge theory could help here and I hope that people won't be put off by the LARP element. Any thoughts appreciated.

[Levi Kornelsen]

Here's the problem: the players weren't involved enough in determining the plot.

Here's my opinion, based on what you've written.  It may be incorrect, as I wasn't there - I could be misreading you, missing details, or a hundred other confusions.

To consistently unify a group at the end of a LARP, they need something to unify around - a strong leader (often, both in and out of character), a game theme, a set of rules, genre conventions.  Something they all understand inherently, that puts them on the same page. 

You can provide that yourself, though it seems you'd prefer not to, letting them create it on their own.  What that means is they need a reason to create it, and time to create it in.  Creating consensus in a LARP on 'how things are done' and 'these are our options' tends to require a convincing authority.  That authority can be you, a player, the setting itself, the tropes of the genre, whatever works, but it must be present and clear to all.

Was such a thing present and clear to all? 

If not, my suspicion is you'd need to strengthen one of those authorities - your own, player-leadership in general, material available to all players to give them a unified 'feel' for how things work...  something like that.

[Josh Roby]

There's a subproblem too. Some players came to me asking to research werewolf legends and set traps for the werewolves. These were all things that should have affected the ending, and they didn't, and that's my fault. But I'm not sure: should I encourage so much GM interaction? I'd prefer the players had decided the game ending among themselves, rather than coming to the GM to do it.

You could implement a prop room to solve this problem, as I understand it (he says, not ever having LARPed at all).

[TonyLB]

However, as I ran around listening to the players, there wasn't a consistent tone.

It doesn't sound like there was any mechanic that would help them communicate what they wanted for a consistent tone, so I'm not surprised that they didn't end up achieving one.  There was no feedback system telling people to get on board with what other people wanted.

Personally, I'd have recommended red hearts for cool romance/interpersonal, gold hearts for cool combat/preparation things and silver hearts for cool sniping/infighting things.  Then people could look at what was being rewarded and (subconsciously, I expect) adjust their game-play accordingly.  Plus, you'd be able to just look at the board and know what people were getting stoked about, without having to go wandering around trying to divine it by intuition.

Whaddayathink?

[Graham W]

Thank you, good stuff. OK.

Joshua, the prop room thing is interesting. I'm interested in the more theoretical issue, though, of how you combine contributions from all the players and produce a satisfying ending.

Levi,

To consistently unify a group at the end of a LARP, they need something to unify around - a strong leader (often, both in and out of character), a game theme, a set of rules, genre conventions. Something they all understand inherently, that puts them on the same page.

Well, in a sense, that's what I did. I used my GM authority to create an ending to the game. Specifically, I stood on a chair and shouted "Freeze! At this point, the werewolves attack. Here's how we handle this.". But I'm not entirely happy with that.

Now, I could have done that with a "strong leader" NPC. "People of Darrowby! It's been a long night. But we must prepare to fight, like veterinarians have never fought before!" But I'd still be forcing the plot in my direction.

And, again, I could have given one of the characters the power to decide the ending. For example, I could have created a "mayor" character and told all the characters to respect his decisions. But that would only have satisfied one of the players.

What you say about rules and genre is interesting and it's probably the way to go.

Tony,

It doesn't sound like there was any mechanic that would help them communicate what they wanted for a consistent tone, so I'm not surprised that they didn't end up achieving one.  There was no feedback system telling people to get on board with what other people wanted.

Yes, absolutely, fair point.

Personally, I'd have recommended red hearts for cool romance/interpersonal, gold hearts for cool combat/preparation things and silver hearts for cool sniping/infighting things.  Then people could look at what was being rewarded and (subconsciously, I expect) adjust their game-play accordingly.  Plus, you'd be able to just look at the board and know what people were getting stoked about, without having to go wandering around trying to divine it by intuition.

That's nice. It still pushes the players in one of three directions, though. It rules out, for example, the players negotiating with the werewolves, or all becoming werewolves themselves. Perhaps something more freeform - getting the players to write how the game should end on a slip of paper.

I think there's a wider theory question here. It must have been discussed before in the tabletop context. How do you take contributions from players and, from that, produce a satisfying end to a story? For example, are there any games that produce climaxes particularly well?

[Jason Morningstar]

That sounds so fun to me, and I've always assiduously avoided LARP in all forms.  It makes me think of poor Mr. Chinnery from "League of Gentlemen", too. 

I think a little boundary-setting might be useful when you have a large group with possibly diverse enthusiasms.  You could, for example, explicitly state that the event would end in a certain way, or that it was to have a certain tone from the outset - a little structure can help people sometimes, rather than hinder them.  "This is going to end with a do-or-die seige against rampaging werewolves - how do we get there?"  Another idea along these lines would be to outline three possible endgame circumstances, and let Tony's heart currency decide which gets triggered at the appointed time.  That way they can, as players, let their actions lobby for the one they think is most fun from a limited universe of options. 

Within these constraints, your players still get to frame the story.  They just have some firm guides in place to bounce off of rather than unlimited freedom. 

[Josh Roby]

What Jason suggests is good.  If the players know that there will be an ending, and they determine how that ending happens or what that ending is, everybody is on the same page and aiming for the ending.

Alternately, if that's still too constrained, you can replace the stickers on posterboard with a whiteboard where people can write end-scene suggestions and then stick stars around those.

[Lig]

In terms of running conventions and suchlike, I dont't have any experience, because I play larps from upwards of 500 people, and run a larp with upwards of 400. They are also campaign events, so a lot of the interaction builds up over time, and is based on previous actions by the players. The stuff I'm currently playing and running is also designed to be "character-driven", meaning that the outcome is entirely created by the actions of characters at the event (be they PC or NPC).

Clearly, you don't get the "ongoing" story with a one-off game - you need something to draw people in and set the playing immediately (and credit to you, because I wouldn't know how to do that), and by virtue of being one-off, every previous experience of the character has been created by your (the organiser's) imagination, and is thus entirely your creation. So, no matter how well you write the brief, it belongs to you, not the player.

So, you could open it to the players a little by letting them write their own character, but that isn't really what I'm suggesting; writing the briefs is one of the strongest means you have to influence the game, and it would be a mistake to lose that. What you really need is some to get the players to create spontaneous action that is of their choosing, alongside any background and objectives that you supply.

If you start offering this level of creative input to all players, you will need to back it up to make it work. This is the hard part. As long as you choose or create an ending, then the ending will always be yours. You have to give up all control, and have no ending beyond that which the individual players percieve.

As this isn't a campaign game, make the time limit of the session very clear to players, and perhaps even indicate when things are finishing, to spur people into resolving their problems (thus generating action, and usually an ending). This kind of organiser-influence wouldn't be acceptable in a campaign, but it makes a lot of sense for a one-off.

Another variation would be give "action hooks" to each character, which you, the GM, could trigger (explain in advance that this is how the game works). In this way, you can control the pace, and, to an extent, the type of action, while still letting the end be an emergent property of the characters. For example, you might specify that one werewolf has a big issue with "normals who wear blue shirts", and should play around that issue. At some point, you can go and poke the player, getting them to act on it (you would of course have created a normal, or several, with a blue shirt). So, you generate more action, or more pathos, or whatever, at any point of your choice.

Facilitate the players roleplay, and let the roleplay create the end.

[Graham W]

Apologies for taking so long to respond to all this. This is partly because I've been thinking about your answers and partly because I've recently got a girlfriend, who's getting in the way of game design.

That sounds so fun to me, and I've always assiduously avoided LARP in all forms.  It makes me think of poor Mr. Chinnery from "League of Gentlemen", too.

Fantastic. Actually, Mr Chinnery is based on Tristan from All Creatures Great And Small.

I think a little boundary-setting might be useful when you have a large group with possibly diverse enthusiasms.  You could, for example, explicitly state that the event would end in a certain way, or that it was to have a certain tone from the outset - a little structure can help people sometimes, rather than hinder them.  "This is going to end with a do-or-die seige against rampaging werewolves - how do we get there?" 

Nice idea.

Endgames are tricky, though. I can see two dangers of saying to players "This is going to end with a werewolf attack":

a. The players get bored and seek out the werewolves in the first hour of play
b. The players spend an hour preparing for the siege and then wander round for the next two waiting for the attack to happen

Now, actually, seeking out the werewolves in the first hour is a fantastic idea. It opens all sorts of plot avenues: perhaps the players could kill one werewolf pack, only to be surrounded at the end of the game by loads of packs wanting vengeance; or perhaps they could find a farmhouse full of humans with lycanthropy. But then specifying the end game would limit the directions this plot could take.

It's interesting to see how a game like My Life With Master handles this. That has an endgame - the Master gets killed. But there's no possibility of the players saying "Screw it, let's kill the Master now", because they can't. They need to collect Love first.

It might be possible to copy this. You could tell players that the game ends with a werewolf attack that won't be triggered until they've accumulated some resource. For example, the attack is triggered once someone gets ten heroism "stars" stuck to their name.

More thoughts in a moment...

Graham

[Graham W]

Let me try and break this down a little.

The question I'm asking here is: how can I produce a satisfying climax to the game? Looking back through the thread, some answers are:

1. Use a huge GM deus ex machina to end it

Which is what I ended up doing in the original game.

2. Just trust the players to end it

Which is what I tried to do in the original game.

As Levi points out, this is only likely to produce a satisfying climax if there's some ending for the players to unify around. For example, if I ever run a Reservoir Dogs LARP, the players will realise it ends when they all shoot each other.

And Lig suggested using a time limit to help this.

3. Get the players to vote between a limited set of endgames

Tony's suggestion. It would definitely produce a satisfying climax. One slight problem is that it doesn't let the players invent their own endgame.

4. Get the players to suggest their own endgames and vote on them

Joshua's suggestion. It would probably produce a good climax too.

5. Get the characters to vote on how the game should end

This hasn't been mentioned so far in the thread, but it's a natural extension of the suggestions above. Get the characters to vote on, say, whether to attack the werewolves head-on or wait for them to attack; whether to hunt the werewolves outside or concentrate on finding the werewolves in their own party.

Then respond to their suggestion appropriately: if they want to attack the werewolves, end with a combat endgame; if they want to find the werewolves in their own party, end with a Last Man Standing endgame.

6. Tell the players how the game will end and let them get there

Jason's suggestion. Actually, on further reflection, it's a really good one. You could say "This game ends with a fight against the werewolves. The fight can be here or somewhere else; you can go looking for them or stay here and get ready to fight; you can be prepared or surprised."

And I could always tell them this two-thirds of the way through the game, so that they don't spend the whole game getting ready for a fight. Which would be dull.

Lig, thanks for posting in such detail, and they're good suggestions even though I haven't responded to them. You've got me wondering about player input on characters. Even though the briefs are pre-written, there's no reason players shouldn't choose, say, an objective or a mindset or relationships with other characters. That might be interesting.

Graham

[Lig]

Firstly, I made a massive typo above. If only the game had 400 players! We run with 40-50, although numbers are on the rise.

Having done some pondering, what you're talking about here is a means of "creating ends" with regard to the body of interactions at the event, ie. you want each chain of interactions to reach a dramatic conclusion at, or near, the end of the event. If you control the body of interactions, then it's possible for you to direct certain chains of interaction to conclude at the right time.

But if the players are generating the ending through their character actions, you lose all such control. One of the things that I've noticed while playing and running character-driven larp is that players are quite good at creating beginnings, but left to their own devices, they're not so good at creating resolution. That said, with larger numbers of people, there are lots of individual conclusions, and so each conclusion becomes less significant. Also, at campaign larps, there is more scope for biding your time, and concluding things at a later event.

Although my earlier statement about "creating ends" might seem a little obvious, it occured to me earlier that my work is always about "creating beginnings", or rather, encouraging the potential for beginnings. This is done subtley, through mechanics - ie. the rules encourage certain types of behaviour. If your rules say that the werewolves get stronger with each human they kill, then you are encouraging the werewolves to attack normals.

That's a simple example of what I mean - a slightly more complicated example would be one where vampires had to drink blood from humans during the event, which encourages not only attacks on humans, but also more complicated interaction (keeping them prisoner, to drink when the vampire wishes). If the vampire can drink without killing, then the interactions become more involved - some humans might be willing servants. Depending on how important you make this "blood" chain of interactions to the game, you have further influence on how likely it is that such interactions will happen. The specifics of the player interactions aren't relevant - the mechanics assume that they can arrange everything themselves. In one sense, the mechanics provide physics and need, which will force certain types of interaction,

This works well if you're aiming for "beginnings" (also, the campaign style allows each conclusion to create further conflict, thus more conclusions, and so on). But would it work if you want to create "ends"?

What if the basic rules of play encouraged certain actions that add up to an end. Let's think of this as individual "processes" (I mean this in the mechanical sense; although the suggestion might be extended to non-mechanical interaction, I don't see it myself). Each process has a number of inputs, and an output(s). Keeping it simple, let's assume that we're running a very linear event (for the sake of example - I'll expand it later). There are 3 processes, A, B and C, which need to be completed in the right order. Each process has 3 inputs (eg. A1, A2, A3...etc), all of which are needed before the process can be completed.

If you introduce all the inputs at the start, the players can complete all the processes when and if they choose. If you spread the inputs amongst the players, they'll have to do a certain amount of interaction first (I like the "scattergun" approach, but for what you're doing it makes more sense to write characters who need to share inputs, but have serious conflicts to resolve first), If you introduce most of the inputs, but hold back on one key input for each process, until a time of your choice, then the majority of the interaction will happen at the players pace, but the processes can only be completed on, or after, a time of your choice.

Further, if we move away from the linear description, and create a complex network of processes, each outputing to several different processes, you can set up some interesting chain reactions, perhaps even holding back key inputs until close to the end, so that there is lots of activity and conflict as several processes suddenly happen.

It probably sounds like I'm just outlining "plot" here, but there processes are the means to your "ends" - they aren't the ends in their own right, but rather a way to generate them.

This means that you need several processes, or indeed families of processes, which the players can pick up and play with as they choose; you can always keep rigid control of a few processes, if certain things have to happen.

The processes could be anything mechanical - or certainly anything "hardwired" into the larp. If might be that a portal to the spirit lands can be opened by a skilled character (A1) with an ash wand (A2) and handful of liverwort (A3). Or maybe there's an abandoned mine, but the players need to get a warrant to enter it - it needs a character with authority (B1), evidence of a problem there (B2) and an armed character to lead (B3).

To make this work, you'd need to keep in mind that the processes are *not* descriptions of roleplay (although each would have a roleplay element to it). The roleplay comes between the processes, as the players choose and plan and scheme what they want to do, and how they're going to do it.

I hope that isn't too far off the wall.

[Jason Morningstar]

And I could always tell them this two-thirds of the way through the game, so that they don't spend the whole game getting ready for a fight. Which would be dull.

I think what you have here is an issue with point-of-attack:  Getting ready for a fight with fucking werewolves shouldn't be a dull activity.  At least for the first hour - so perhaps that's the length of your game.  I recognize this is probably a different game than the one you want to run, but it could be a fun one!

Maybe the answer is to have three of these mandates, each very intense and about an hour in length, and then put them in sequence somehow. 

--Jason

[Graham W]

I think what you have here is an issue with point-of-attack:  Getting ready for a fight with fucking werewolves shouldn't be a dull activity.

Well, I don't know. I think that getting ready for anything can be dull.

When I did improv theatre, a golden rule was that you should never postpone anything. You should do it right away and see what happens after. And I think the same applies with LARPs. Why say "You've got an hour to get ready for a fight" when you can say "You're fighting right now".

This happened in a Mage LARP I played recently. The GMs said: we're doing a ritual in 30 minutes time. God, those 30 minutes were dull.

[Graham W]

Firstly, I made a massive typo above. If only the game had 400 players! We run with 40-50, although numbers are on the rise.

Well, I'm still impressed.

This means that you need several processes, or indeed families of processes, which the players can pick up and play with as they choose; you can always keep rigid control of a few processes, if certain things have to happen.

The processes could be anything mechanical - or certainly anything "hardwired" into the larp. If might be that a portal to the spirit lands can be opened by a skilled character (A1) with an ash wand (A2) and handful of liverwort (A3). Or maybe there's an abandoned mine, but the players need to get a warrant to enter it - it needs a character with authority (B1), evidence of a problem there (B2) and an armed character to lead (B3).

But that sounds incredibly linear.

I've tried plots like this in LARPs - God knows I've tried - and they always seem to end one of three ways:

1. The players figure out the process in fifteen minutes
2. The players don't care about figuring out the process and do other things
3. The players get incredibly frustrated figuring out the process

Take your "portal to the spirit lands" example. Why should the players want to go through the portal anyway? What if they just want to stay on the side they're on and summon the spirits out? What if one of them decides to die, become a spirit and go through the portal that way?

What I ideally want is this. I want to set up a load of characters, who all have relationships and reasons for interacting with each other. Then I want to present them with situations they can't ignore: a werewolf attacks them or a family member gets torn apart by one.

And, so far, that's all fine, that's how my games run. All the characters interact in exactly that way.

But then, however they react to those situations, I want to escalate everything until it reaches a climax. If they go hunting for the werewolves, I want it to end in a combat. If they start blaming each other for the deaths, I want it to end in an intra-party bloodbath. If they start researching magic rituals, I want it to end in a huge ritual which might or might not go wrong.

And ideally - and this may not be possible - I want this all to happen without any explicit voting on the ending.

Instead, I want to use my GM interventions to respond to the characters' actions, in a way that guides them to a climax. So, if they go hunting for the werewolves, they'll gradually discover they're surrounded by them. If they start blaming each other for the deaths, I'll infect some of the characters with lycanthropy to increase the party infighting. If they start researching magic rituals, they'll discover the werewolves responding with their own breed of magic.

There's two things standing in my way of doing this and they're connected. The first is that the players all do different things. Some of them research werewolf legends, some of them fight with each other, some of them play out love stories. Which makes it difficult to guide them towards a single climax.

The second is GM knowledge: I don't know everything the players are doing. So perhaps I need some kind of formal feedback system.

Thanks for your ideas so far. Honestly, I'm not sure there's an easy answer. But I'm finding it useful to state the problem.

[Lig]

Ah. I've made a bad job of explaining that. These processes are not meant to be the focus of the players interaction - the idea was for them to provide climaxes for the various possibilities that you want to "hardwire" into the game.

The processes aren't intended to begin roleplay - they are meant to end it, or at least provide climatic points (and as I suggested before, it might be possible to stack them in such a way that the climaxes work closely together). I'm thinking of something very freeform here, with only mininal ref intervention.

However, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree - it may be that the kind of mechanical processes that I'm describing are unsuitable for creating "ends". I'll have to think more about it, and get back to you.

The game I co-run is N-E-X-U-S, a character-driven larp using airsoft weapons for firearms, running 3-4 times a year. Apart from writing NPC briefs at the beginning (and creating the world and the mechanics, obviously), we organisers have no influence on the game whatsoever - I actually rely on players to tell me what's going on, because the admin desk doesn't have a any windows, and I'm usually there all weekend (except for the occasional NPC stint). Not that we do anything with what they tell us, but it's nice to hear some stories about the larp that we put so much blood, sweat and time into...

Honestly, I'd never, ever suggest running a linear. I'd hang myself before I'd do that...