LARPs

[James Holloway]

This leads me to another more general question. How often do people play LARPS? I play one every year or so. Not often. What's the most frequent rate a LARPer could expect to play?

Mike

At peak, I was playing in one LARP which was on alternate weekends, and one which was every weekend. This got to be a considerable drag on the players and GMs, including one GM who was working on both games. This usually happens in our group around the tail-end of one game and the beginning of another (which was the case here).

[Merten]

Well, this thread certainly got me hooked and I had to register. Because I really haven't digged into the GNS-model (have to do that after I'm done writing my next campaign, it certainly seems to be intresting) and I'm not much of a theory-guy, and the sheer amount of information on this thread is making my mind boggle, I'll just answer to the original question.

Oh, yeah - this is my first post. Hi everyone.

What I would like to do is solicit your ideas concerning LARPs that you have been in, what you think are the differences between live-action play and tabletop play, and how the system must necessarily be different between the two modes of play.

First, a bit of background. Seeing that the methods of Turku school spawned some discussion some time ago (unfortunately, some people seem to have missed the fact that it's written a bit tongue in cheeck and provocative way, though the underlying thoughts are written with quite serious thought), I suppose I'll fit into the immersionist category when it comes to live-action games.

(Note for the theorists: There theory discussion around is here is again raising it's head - I don't know if they have digged into the GNS model, though. Sadly, the site which has all the material seems to be down at the moment)

Having said that, I think there's a difference between tabletop roleplaying and live-action roleplaying when it comes to systems and rules. IMHO, of course.

The published LARP-games and rules that I've seen so far (granted, I've only read ones published by WW and Holistic) seem to rely on rather heavy and tabletop-like mechanics. I'm not a particular fan of that trend, mostly because the tabletop gaming I've played has always had a sort of meta-level in it; players don't stay in their characters all the time, they tend to make out-of-character comments, require clarifications from the GM, flip through the rulebooks and so on. Same goes for the GM; as he has to provide all the information that comes from outside the characters (describing the enviroment, playing NPC's, ruling the game), there's bound to be some out-of-character meta-level involved.

This is where live-action games are different; no one has to, or is supposed to, describe the enviroment, since it's already there. No one is, usually, required to play the roles of NPC's (granted, GM sometimes has to do this), since all the characters are usually played by the players themselves.

Interpreted in the strict way, live-action games should not have the meta-level that the tabletop games have. Unless, of course:

- There are (heavy) game mechanics involved
- The said mechanics need a GM to judge the results

- Players need clarifications on something concerning their characters or the outside world.

When talking about immersion, I (and, most probably, the notorious members of Turku school) see these things as distraction, something that breaks the immersion element, and forces the player to abandon his/her character for a while.

Another thing is that heavy rules tend to disturb the flow of time in games.  In tabletop playing, the GM runs the whole show - while he flips the rulebooks and searches something, the game usually stands still (not always, though - players might continue playinig in-character, unless the situtation cannot continue until some point has been clarified or resolved). In live-action gaming, this poses a threat to the continuity. As the GM(s) do not have control over the whole game (unless there's a fairly small amount of players and characters), using heavy mechanics and resolution systems tend to stop the game in one place, while it continues normally in other places.

One example of this is the celerity-discipline in Vampire the Masquerade. Usually, when something intresting (a fight, perhaps) happens, the characters flock towards the place of it's origin. If it's indeed a fight, it's quite usual that a large number of characters want to attend to it. As the game has several different levels of celerity (along with other disciplines), the situtation quickly comes into a halt, and a GM is needed to both judge and organize the fight. Usually, the game enters into somekind of simulation mode, where the fight is separated into combat rounds, which are then separated into celerity actions and so forth.

The resolution might take time from few minutes to half'n'hour. Meanwhile, the game continues elsewhere - in the worst case, the other characters hear that a fight is happening, but cannot do anything about while it's being simulated. There's a continuity problem, as time moves in different speed in different parts of the game.

Of course, there are ways of going around these sort of problems, but at least I haven't found the ideal one yet. Calling timestop for the whole game does the trick, but then we have dozens of players standing idly in their places while other fight.

That's one of the main differences between tabletop- and live-action roleplaying games. In my opinion, the latter one needs thinner rules, or no rules at all (usual in fantasy games, where conflicts are resolved with those wacky swords, or by doing the combat with steel weapons with slow-motion).

That's my 2 cents, for what it's worth. This has probably been discussed to death already, so pardon me. :)

[Merten]

While I'm on the subject.

Not sure if this has been discussed before, but here's one intresting approach to the heavy-rules problem:

http://users.utu.fi/a/aletal/roolipelaaja/colors/english/

I wasn't in the game (and I'm still grumpy about that - I'm supposed to have a character if the game ever continues, but so far it hasn't).

Separating the tactical part of the game from the live-action itself worked, to my knowledge, fairly well. There are several concepts which later spawned other games, even one to which I co-wrote with two other persons. The concept in that case was a multi-locational LARP (in this case, a whole city with several "hot spots").

[James Holloway]

Oh, yeah - this is my first post. Hi everyone.

Hi, Merten!

That's one of the main differences between tabletop- and live-action roleplaying games. In my opinion, the latter one needs thinner rules, or no rules at all (usual in fantasy games, where conflicts are resolved with those wacky swords, or by doing the combat with steel weapons with slow-motion).

That's my 2 cents, for what it's worth. This has probably been discussed to death already, so pardon me. :)

I'm not sure that LARPs necessarily need fewer rules than tabletop games (some tabletop games, boiled down to it, don't have many rules), but I think they need different rules. Half-hour combats in Vampire? A half-hour combat is like two guys having a punchup 'round here. A big combat can easily last an hour or more. And it's not even tense and exciting like the equivalent combat in a sit-down game, because everybody's cold and hungry and needs to go to the bathroom by the time it's over.

This is one of the reasons I don't groove much on player superpowers in my games. Very few rulesets handle them satisfactorily.
But then, I've always worn my Cthulhu Live heart on my sleeve on this forum, I guess. [/i]

[Merten]

TI'm not sure that LARPs necessarily need fewer rules than tabletop games (some tabletop games, boiled down to it, don't have many rules), but I think they need different rules. Half-hour combats in Vampire? A half-hour combat is like two guys having a punchup 'round here. A big combat can easily last an hour or more. And it's not even tense and exciting like the equivalent combat in a sit-down game, because everybody's cold and hungry and needs to go to the bathroom by the time it's over.

Believe me, I know - I just didn't know how bad it might be elsewhere in the world. :)

But yes, you are correct - Larp's need different rules, because the medium is different. One other aspect is that tabletop games (at least in traditional sense) are almost all the time controlled by the GM. He/she is always there to judge, provide details and so on. On Larp's, it's different - the GM isn't there (and, in my opinion, shouldn't be unless absolutely needed) all the time to provide judging. The players should be able to work out the judging by themselves, and hopefully with as little out of character time and abstraction as possible.

One othe main difference, the lack of NPC's, also contributes to this. Most of the other characters in games are played by other players, not by GM's.

Though, as I said earlier, I'm a bit biased in this. I freely admit being an immersion freak when it comes to live-action games - one who thinks that rules should be used only when absolutely necessary.

This is one of the reasons I don't groove much on player superpowers in my games. Very few rulesets handle them satisfactorily.

Agreed. I haven't seen a single good system, published (granted, again, that I haven't seen too many of them anyhow) or homebrewn. The Colors system is a notable exception, since it clearly makes difference between live-action and tactical phase.

Toning down the superpowers helps, of course. We did this on our last game (it was, what, almost two years ago. How time flies) and it worked quite well.

But then, I've always worn my Cthulhu Live heart on my sleeve on this forum, I guess.

I should probably check the those rules. I've been meaning to do so for the past year or so. ;)

[Walt Freitag]

I've been too busy the past few days to post in this thread, but this is some great discussion to be following. Since my own knowledge of LARP practices is almost ten years out of date, this information has been helping me to catch up.

My answers to Mikes's question about how often people play, as of back then, would be that it depended very much on how far one was willing to travel. A group would typically stage one SIL-style LARP per year, or perhaps two if one of them was a "rerun." (The design and runtime implications of rerunning authored-character LARPs, given the likelihood of repeat players, could be a whole thread in itself.) So by travelling a few hundred miles within one's local urban corridor one could play about three or four times a year. Jetting around like an Enron executive you could play just about every weekend.

Currently it appears that shorter and smaller games are more popular, which could facilitate more frequent events. I haven't seen a greatly increased number of events resulting from this, but perhaps they're being marketed in different places. There's definitely been a shift in focus from SF conventions to gaming conventions, associated with the shorter format and with the commercial game system tie-ins.

Fighting fantasy LARPs were and I believe still are a different story, with the most popular groups able to run at least a game a month (winter excepted) in one locale. Any style with ongoing characters (regardless of how those characters are created) doesn't require tens of thousands of words to be authored for each event, so more frequent meetings are possible (which in turn facilitates turnsheet mechanisms and other off-camera downtime mechanisms). Also, by using a combination of straight railroaded "adventure obstacle courses," and totally unstructured free-form play (we all hang out in town and occasionally a monster wanders in that we fight, or a damsel in distress comes along and leads us on an adventure obstacle course), the action breaks down into totally scripted or totally unscripted -- either way, reducing the demands of most runtime GMing to basic refereeing (except for the organizers behind the scenes handling the logistics). So participants can trade off GM and NPC-playing duties, reducing the problems of GM burnout.

Fang, your group's characterization of the different GM functions in LARPs is spot on (that is, it agrees with my experience). My group never actually enumerated these functions explicitly, but they were all there. I would add a sixth category, "off-camera NPC contact actor" who often had complete gamemaster powers to originate information and had their hands directly on the information flow, but whose efforts could be orchestrated by the person who is gamemaster in your parlance. Your own designs tried to turn more of that function over to players, I see, but that wouldn't work in my style which apparently is more dependent on information gradients.

I think it's possible that the LARP "gamemaster" role you describe does have its analogues in tabletop gamemastering as well. Player-character-focused intuitive continuity might be one such.

Merten, welcome to the Forge! And thank you very much for the observations about the more recent styles of LARP that you've seen. The issue is familiar from my own LARP designs; the way it crops up anew is always interesting.

In the first few years of SIL LARPing, a casual disdain of the game mechanics arose which I tried to oppose after seeing some bad results in play. (For example, I played in a supers game in which no one wanted to use their powers, because to "balance" the game the designers had introduced a limited currency of some kind of Power Points that were difficult to replenish. If you got into a fight and used up Power Points, then whether you won or lost, you were now vulnerable to everyone else.) There was a general feeling that because the mechanical rules should be as minimally intrusive in play as possible, that spending much time thinking about them was unnecessary. I wrote an article in a LARP publication around 1987 pointing out that, in so many words, system does matter. Need I even bother to mention that I got flamed from all sides for it?

I also wrote an article in which I examined the types of "power" that LARPs pretended to offer in character descriptions and via special-ability mechanisms, and contrasted that with the types of "power" that actually existed or could exist in play. I advised players, "Figure out what type of game you're in. If you're in a power game, then play for power, because that's how you gain relevance. If you're in a style game, then play for style, because that's how you gain relevance." This distinction might have a familiar ring to Forge readers...

James, I want to hear more about your Cthulhu Live game. (What a great name for a morning talk show...) How did this game avoid the problems that Merten describes in the vampire games he saw? Certainly Cthulhu player-characters would not be super-powered, but what about supernatural nasties? Was there a mechanism for sanity, or were players trusted to just act (and react) appropriately?

Another question is, when talking about the "immersion in the character's point of view" that some LARPers prioritize (hmm, when added to "playing for power" and "playing for style" as priorities, one could derive some kind of threefold model...), can mechanisms ever enhance immersion or can they only aim to detract from it as little as possible? For example, if I wanted a character in a Cthulhu LARP to have an ability to translate a certain ancient language, that might take the form of handing the player the substitution cipher that decrypts in-game documents written in that "language." That, to me, appears a good way to "capture the spirit" of the activity being represented (decoding the text is somewhat laborious and solitary, with some suspense and surprise likely as the details of the text become clear) without requiring a real-world talent. But to some players it might be no better than some combat mechanism where everyone pulls out dice and tables.

I don't know if all styles of play are equally possible as LARPs; certainly, not all types of scenarios can or should be LARPs.

That's very true. And thinking about those constraints reminds me of some of the constraints I accept in tabletop gaming when I'm aiming for "congruence" between GNS modes (that is, attempting to prevent differences in GNS priority between participants from visibly affecting play). For example, fictional LARP settings work the best when they are caricatures whose details don't impinge much on play. ("You're all in a castle" is effective, but "this line on the floor is a portcullis and this spread-out bedsheet is a bottomless pit" is not). Similarly, "who narrates the setting details in event resolution" is one frequently-seen overt distinction between Narr-focused and non-Narr-focused tabletop play.

This is just an idle observation with no hard evidence to back it up, but it's possible that certain aspects of LARP play (esepcially with large groups) puts real GNS coherence and focus more or less out of reach, making congruence a more sought-after goal.

- Walt

[Merten]

Merten, welcome to the Forge! And thank you very much for the observations about the more recent styles of LARP that you've seen. The issue is familiar from my own LARP designs; the way it crops up anew is always interesting.

Thanks (and thanks to James as well, if I forgot to mention it).

Talking about recent styles of LARP - I was just reading the new Nobilis supplement, Game of powers, which has an intresting (I'm biased, here, again) part written by a friend of mine (chapter Hedges and Thorns, alternative preparations). It's a good primer about something I think, or at least was, a new innovation few years ago - separating a LARP game into multiple locations, or using a large area (like a small city) as a game area. I participated in writing and running such game few years ago (with the said author and one other writer, who had experimented with the idea few years prior to that) and though there were some dilemmas, the outcome was still quite positive. I participated in one other game with similar theme recently. It was intresting to say, at least.

There's something akin to breaking boundaries in that concept - at least the games I've played in prior to those games have been very strict in limiting the game area into single (or few) locations. There's a sort of invicible barrier in where the game area stops and real world begins and you're not supposed to take the game out of that box.

Roleplaying (and being immersed into a character) in normal, everyday areas of the city, like cofeterias, pubs, boulevards was certainly intresting experience, at least in the first game whch used such methods. Gamemastering such game is (at least from my point of view) even more demanding that GMing a "traditional" LARP which is tied to one physical place.

Aww, there are so many issues connected to that one that I think I'll stop the monologue here. I think I had a point connected to the immersion discussion when I started, but somehow I lost it on the way. ;)

Anyhow - has anyone done similar experiments?

Another question is, when talking about the "immersion in the character's point of view" that some LARPers prioritize (hmm, when added to "playing for power" and "playing for style" as priorities, one could derive some kind of threefold model...), can mechanisms ever enhance immersion or can they only aim to detract from it as little as possible? For example, if I wanted a character in a Cthulhu LARP to have an ability to translate a certain ancient language, that might take the form of handing the player the substitution cipher that decrypts in-game documents written in that "language." That, to me, appears a good way to "capture the spirit" of the activity being represented (decoding the text is somewhat laborious and solitary, with some suspense and surprise likely as the details of the text become clear) without requiring a real-world talent. But to some players it might be no better than some combat mechanism where everyone pulls out dice and tables.

Intresting idea. And yeah, I think it could and most probably would work. I'm prone to think that the "immersion" is just a little bit more about feeling and image of what you're doing than doing just that actual thing. In your example, I think using cipher to decrypt a text would be a good mechanic for translating a text. Almost as good as really translating something (for example, for me the most "real" thing might be trying to translate a text written in Swedish to my mother language - I know the basics of Sweden, and I know that the grammar has certain similarities with English, which I know a lot better).

It would have about the same amount of work and concentration, and the result would pretty much be the same. As a player, I'd know that I'm really just decoding a message, but I suppose my Suspension Of Disbelief could stand that.

Darn, I'll have to use that, some day. :)

[Mike Holmes]

If you're interested in Nobilis and LARP, then, IIRC, the man to talk to would be Gareth Hanrahan, AKA Mytholder. In fact, if you're out there, Gareth, do you have anything to add to all this?

Mike

[James Holloway]

James, I want to hear more about your Cthulhu Live game. (What a great name for a morning talk show...) How did this game avoid the problems that Merten describes in the vampire games he saw? Certainly Cthulhu player-characters would not be super-powered, but what about supernatural nasties? Was there a mechanism for sanity, or were players trusted to just act (and react) appropriately?

Right then. Now, Cthulhu Live as published is very explicitly designed for small groups doing sort of mystery versions of the "adventure obstabcle course": that is to say, the players mingle and interact and whatever in a particular area, gradually amassing clues by talking to one another, locating items, deciphering texts, etc., until the horror hits. The GM is frequently involved to adjudicate skill and SAN checks. Combat is a pretty typical LARP system (all attacks are simultaneous, attacker has an attack total, defender subtracts his or her defense total and takes the difference in damage), but in CL 2nd ed. there are just so few options (players can devote all their energy to defense, all to attack, split their efforts, or flee) that it moves very quickly. Furthermore, most combats last only one or two rounds, unless it's a boxing match (two unarmed combatants fighting mostly on the defensive).  Otherwise, people end up in the hospital - or the boneyard - pretty quickly.

In practice, I felt that the SAN rules as written were not helpful to immersion, which is what I was trying to go for in a horror game. At moments of high tension, I would rely on the players to do their own reactions, bearing in mind what their character sheet told them about their character's mental state. This seemed to work pretty well, especially since the game is very focused on creating atmosphere - players often act freaked out because they are genuinely freaked out. SAN losses for reading books or seeing props were provided in the texts themselves or on accompanying cards. In some games, I just used a little sanity meter down the side of the character card which said something like BLISSFUL - CALM - NERVOUS - SHAKEN - UNSTABLE - BUGFUCK. When players got a shock, they could move a paperclip down the meter as a reminder.

Supernatural nasties under the combat system can slow things down if not properly handled - to be honest, I've never run a standup fight between a big monster and a group of investigators. It's not something that happens a lot in most horror fiction or films, and it's not something that I've really gone in for. I imagine the results might be pretty slow, since monsters typically have multiple attacks, special abilities, etc.

Some of the later supplements include "real time" combat rules which are pretty good.

Another question is, when talking about the "immersion in the character's point of view" that some LARPers prioritize (hmm, when added to "playing for power" and "playing for style" as priorities, one could derive some kind of threefold model...), can mechanisms ever enhance immersion or can they only aim to detract from it as little as possible? For example, if I wanted a character in a Cthulhu LARP to have an ability to translate a certain ancient language, that might take the form of handing the player the substitution cipher that decrypts in-game documents written in that "language." That, to me, appears a good way to "capture the spirit" of the activity being represented (decoding the text is somewhat laborious and solitary, with some suspense and surprise likely as the details of the text become clear) without requiring a real-world talent. But to some players it might be no better than some combat mechanism where everyone pulls out dice and tables.

That's certainly one way to do it, and plays to one of the game's strengths. Characters in CoC are deciphering things, investigating mysteries, etc. This is pretty easy to simulate and maintain immersion. It's not as if they're flying starships or fighting in battles.

That's very true. And thinking about those constraints reminds me of some of the constraints I accept in tabletop gaming when I'm aiming for "congruence" between GNS modes (that is, attempting to prevent differences in GNS priority between participants from visibly affecting play). For example, fictional LARP settings work the best when they are caricatures whose details don't impinge much on play. ("You're all in a castle" is effective, but "this line on the floor is a portcullis and this spread-out bedsheet is a bottomless pit" is not). Similarly, "who narrates the setting details in event resolution" is one frequently-seen overt distinction between Narr-focused and non-Narr-focused tabletop play.

This is just an idle observation with no hard evidence to back it up, but it's possible that certain aspects of LARP play (esepcially with large groups) puts real GNS coherence and focus more or less out of reach, making congruence a more sought-after goal.

- Walt

Right; these concerns are also addressed in how the GM stages the game. For example, I have played in two games set in a castle. These were played in a castle. The fact that much of the castle was obviously much later period than the setting of the games was ignored; the castle constituted a "closest reasonable approximation" (a phrase which sums up pretty much what I'm going for in LARP locations and props).

I think modern LARPs (Vampire being a good example) benefit significantly from players being allowed to narrate event resolution. However, in the conflict-ridden atmosphere of most LARPs, this can be impractical. The bigger the group, the more likely the game is to fall into an incoherent mess. I'm not a huge believer in GNS, but the sight of factions of Vampire players tugging against each other along Game/Sim lines (in total mutual incomprehension, needless to say, and each proclaiming that their way is the "right" one) did a good deal to convince me.

- James

[John Wick]

I haven't read anybody's post on this subject... wait, that's a lie. I read Jared's because he's neat. You asked for personal experience, so here's mine.

Most LARPS bore me. People dressing up and pretending to be people they aren't so they can flirt with people doing the same thing. If I want to do that, I'll go to a dance club.

Then, I find most LARPS are extensions of the GM's ego. If I get invited to a LARP, I find out if the GM has an NPC. If the answer is yes, I decline the invitation.

I used to run L5R LARPS when I was working at AEG. One day, we were planning a game for the next LA convention, and I was talking to Jennifer (then Mahr) about the game. "A bunch of people walking around, half-bored, hoping someone will talk to them," she said. "Fun." She suggested a fighting LARP, but without the boffer stuff. We talked about it, shared some thoughts and designed one of the most exciting, loud and jumpin' LARPS I've ever been involved with. And I ain't tootin' my own horn. It wouldn't have worked if we didn't have the kick-ass LA L5R fans backing us.

THE (now famous) GOBLIN GAME

Forty players. Ten samurai, thirty goblins. The scene is the Shadowlands, a place where evil lives and breathes. The ten samurai are in a fortress with the goblins outside. The objective for the samurai: survive three hours until reinforcements survive. The objective for the goblins: get into the fort and kill the samurai.

We used a simple hand system (Trait + Skill + random number). If you got hit, you took a hit point. Everybody had 1, 2 or 3 hit points. If a samurai died in the fort, he had to join the goblins as a goblin. If he died outside the fort (the goblins pulled him over the wall, through the door, etc.), he joined the goblin army as an undead samurai.

If a goblin died, he had to go to the Goblin Penalty Box. The Box had a timer. Every five minutes, the goblins in the box could come back to the game. As the clock ticked by, they chanted the seconds.

The goblin leader was The Exaulted Ugu (an L5R personality) who had goblin magic. The power of the magic depended on how many goblins he had chanting with him (we got complaints from the hotel - hee hee!).

Other systems were designed on the fly by Dave Williams and myself. There was no conversation, no bargaining, none of that. Just three hours of pure survival.

In the end, only one samurai survived. And everybody was laughing and saying we should run it again the next night. The hotel recommended we not do that.

I share that story a lot. It was a boffer LARP without the rubber swords. A lot of players playing together without a lot of worry about rules. We even had one samurai throw himself at Ugu, just so he could be a goblin (he did do 1 hit point to Ugu, not enough to kill our little shaman).

That's the best LARP I've ever seen. Nobody was ever bored.

[Le Joueur]

Fang, your group's characterization of the different GM functions in LARPs is spot on (that is, it agrees with my experience). My group never actually enumerated these functions explicitly, but they were all there. I would add a sixth category, "off-camera NPC contact actor" who often had complete gamemaster powers to originate information and had their hands directly on the information flow, but whose efforts could be orchestrated by the person who is gamemaster in your parlance. Your own designs tried to turn more of that function over to players, I see, but that wouldn't work in my style which apparently is more dependent on information gradients.

Actually that is meant to be a part of the role "gamemaster."

Third is the ‘gamemaster’ (I know using this name can be somewhat confusing, but we wanted to stay away from pompous titles like Moderator or Storyteller), who is kept abreast of the major goings on and introduces ‘agitation’ in areas that are losing the players’ interest or becoming overwhelming.

That would be the "agitation."  Any kind of interference or information flow "agitates" play in that area, but the advice is well taken.  It also speaks to something we (in our 'closed game, all NPCs are played by players' game) have been recently considering.  Instituting a 'closed economy.'  Instead of just letting players bring in significant resources whenever they want, there has to be an 'out flow' of equal value.  Secrets, money, property, blood, 'heat' (both guns and police), all these things balance out.  If too much blood is being spilled, more 'heat' enters the game.  Secrets are paid for, one way or another.  Only player 'work' creates 'value added product.'

It's only just a theory at this point, but it is pointed at keeping what 'off the street' players have from having a spirallingly smaller value.  It also keeps life from losing its value (we hope).

Fang Langford

p. s. Who quite probably spends too much time thinking.

[Wart]

Then, I find most LARPS are extensions of the GM's ego. If I get invited to a LARP, I find out if the GM has an NPC. If the answer is yes, I decline the invitation.

Out of interest: what if the GMs play multiple NPCs during the course of the evening (as they do down our way in our weekly freeforms)?

[James Holloway]

Then, I find most LARPS are extensions of the GM's ego. If I get invited to a LARP, I find out if the GM has an NPC. If the answer is yes, I decline the invitation.

Out of interest: what if the GMs play multiple NPCs during the course of the evening (as they do down our way in our weekly freeforms)?

I think there's a difference between a GM jumping in to play, say, Johnny the Shoeshine Boy or Officer O'Malley or whoever the scene calls for - even J. Random Passerby - and the horrible GM ego-stick beating that is most GMPCs in LARPs.

Is this problem confined largely to Vampire? That's sure been my experience (well, World of Darkness, anyway). I've literally spent whole combat scenes watching NPCs beat the tar out of each other...

- James

[Wart]

I think there's a difference between a GM jumping in to play, say, Johnny the Shoeshine Boy or Officer O'Malley or whoever the scene calls for - even J. Random Passerby - and the horrible GM ego-stick beating that is most GMPCs in LARPs.

Is this problem confined largely to Vampire?

It has been a problem in some of our weekly Oxford freeforms, sufficiently so that in many recent game contracts (which tend to be written and published on the game website for Oxford freeforms) there's been a clause saying "The GM team promise not to throw smug unbeatable NPCs at the players".

The problem seems to be when an NPC turns up that is

a) damn powerful.
b) damn smug, expecting PCs to go "oooh, you're so big and powerful, we must pay a lot of attention to you".

When the 2 symptoms turn up together you can be sure there's a GMPC on the rampage. (Powerful characters as such not necessarily being bad, it's the way they're delivered.)

[John Wick]

Then, I find most LARPS are extensions of the GM's ego. If I get invited to a LARP, I find out if the GM has an NPC. If the answer is yes, I decline the invitation.

Out of interest: what if the GMs play multiple NPCs during the course of the evening (as they do down our way in our weekly freeforms)?

What I object to is the GM playing the most powerful NPC in the world, absolutely powerful, too powerful for any player - hell, even all the players ganged up - to overcome or deal with.

A friend of mine used to ask me to play a powerful NPC in his Mind's Eye Theater game. He asked me to play - get this - Tu Tu the Doubly Evil, a super bad ass evil mummy. He asked me because he knew I'd walk around scaring the PCs, but staying in the background. The FAR FAR background. I'm backdrop.

The bottom line: PCs are the stars, not the GM. I've found this is the opposite in a lot of LARPs, and thus, I avoid them unless they're run by someone I trust. I'm there to have fun, not watch the GM play with himself.

Take care,
John