Convention LARP

[xiombarg]

Okay, the other week I was at MACE 2002, and I (along with several of my friends, all working as GMs) ran a White Wolf Mind's Eye Theatre LARP. It was set during WWII in Casablanca, so not only did we have vampires and werewolves, but we had Nazis. If you want the the rambly version it can be found on my online journal.

Instead, I'd like to distill some of the lessons I learned during that weekend for discussion here on the Forge:

1. Say all you want about role-playing being like a band, but a good convention LARP is a whole different animal. We had 80+ players, and that ain't a band, it's an orchestra. And say what you want about the incoherency of White Wolf, but it packs in the players, and, frankly, we couldn't have had the complicated tale of Nazis, French restistance, pre-war America, regrets from WWI, and the Kabala without that many players. If that means throwing in the supernatural with my Nazis, so be it.

2. Connected to the above: When dealing with so many people, forget about power-sharing with the players. Not only do you need to lay down the law as GM, but you need as many GMs as possible (because play will be spread everywhere), and you need to be unfied -- last year, we had problems where one or two GMs were dancing to a different tune to the rest, and as any parent will tell you, this leads to problems -- especially as at least some of us were willing to enforce calls we didn't agree with so as not to contradict, while other GMs felt it was okay to loudly diagree with other GMs while on the floor in front of players. This year, we had a nice social contract discussion even before we all got into it, and agreed to back up each other's calls, but also to consult with each other before acting.

3. And when it comes to (2), above, don't understimate the power of technology. Since the field is large, we all had radios so we could talk to each other no matter where we were, which guaranteed that, say, the person who wrote the background for character Y was available when a different GM was adjudicating a combat involving them. Last year our radios didn't work and this compounded mis-understandings by making it difficult to consult with each other. I attribute how smoothly things went to not only the pre-game social contract referred to in (2), but the fact we could communicate easily during the game.

4. On the flipside to (2), it has always been a key factor in Ivanhoe Productions (our LARP "troupe") that protagonism is important, before we ever had that term for it. The way we write a convention LARP is to come up with a complicated situation -- yes, we drew relationship maps, tho we didn't call 'em that -- and write up all the characters in the situation, in detail. Then we hand the characters to the players and -- this is important -- let it go. Every character, no matter how "minor", is written up as having at least three goals, and with the idea they're vital to the plot -- tho in practice it's not always possible, in theory every character is a "main character". But I can't emphasize letting things go enough -- once the game starts, we just adjudicate, we don't try to make the game come out a particular way. This is particularly important in historical games (a tradition at MACE -- Ivanhoe's first game was a Dark Ages Vampire LARP, and, as another example, last years game was set in 1920s Chicago) to give the players a sense of freedom -- as it was, the deformations of history the players caused were minor, at worst.

5. Remain "professional". With so many players, there's bound to be some GNS issues, so a feeling of fairness and impartiality is important. I got angry with a player and said some things I shouldn't, which could have caused some serious problems if I hadn't smoothed things over. Even more so than normal, with 80+ players you need to respect styles of play -- and types of social interaction -- that you wouldn't normally tolerate. Say what you want, but with all sorts of players out there in such, the idea of "GM as referee" becomes all the more important, even to Narrativist play. (Again, tho, I would not have cut back the numbers for anything -- it MADE the sorts of stories we had at that con.)

6. With a big enough game, you CAN please all styles of GNS. The complicated combat options offered by different supernatural beasties in MET, plus the simple listing of goals at the end of each character packet after the detailed background, seemed to satisfy the Gamist urge. Our detailed character writueups and concern for historical accuracy, plus our impartial mode of GMing based on "how the world works" seemed to please the Simulationist urge, and the complicated, story-driven, "players first" situation we set up, where what PCs did made a real difference, seemed to satisfy the Narrativist urge.

7. As many threads here on the Forge have mentioned, new players are IMPORTANT; nuture them. We made one big mistake in the game: We wrote it with the local (Triad area NC) LARP crowd in mind, with little accessibility to newcomers. Naturally, WWII has a lot of broad-based appeal (Nazis are great villians, duh) that we should have anticipated, and we had an unprecedented amount of new players this year. As it was, our more experienced players were very good to them and rose to the challenge of teaching them, and some of our best scenes involved new players, but next year we're going to have a "new player orientation" before the game begins. Especially for convention games, you need to remember there's going to be new people around; even if they're already gamers, that doesn't mean they're the gamers you're expecting, and this is a GOOD thing.

8. Remember that sometimes intense roleplaying can be disadvantageous when it becomes uncomfortable, and respect people's boundaries. We almost had an incident at this game: several of the players playing Nazis were in full SS regalia handing out swastika armbands to the other people playing Nazis... and a real-life WWII vet saw this, and, well, started shouting at them and foaming at the mouth. He calmed down when it was explained that this was, essentially, a play, and no one actually supported fascism. (I think he was at the hotel rather than at the con, as it were.) Friendly, socially-adept players were a boon in this situation -- if your game has Nazis, be careful who you let play them! I shudder to think what would have happened with more elitist, socially-inept players. As a corralary to this, considering the intensely "in-character" nature of LARPs, as one player pointed out in opening announcements, if you're about to do something IC that's potentially offensive or generally angry or intense, sometimes it's good to step OOC to remind people it's just a game, and the way you're about to behave is simply an IC-utterance. Following such a simple guideline kept the game on an emotionally even keel, and kept things mature, preventing a breakdown of the social contract, as it were.

Comments, questions, rude remarks?

[Valamir]

Nothing really to add, but some great insights.  Thanks for sharing.  

I gather you were at a con which didn't have the standard "big-con" prohibition against 20th century military uniforms (the way the "anti-nazi" clause is usually euphimistically worded).

Did you discuss with hotel officials which parts of the hotel were open for LARP gaming or were you in specially designated con locations

[xiombarg]

I gather you were at a con which didn't have the standard "big-con" prohibition against 20th century military uniforms (the way the "anti-nazi" clause is usually euphimistically worded).

It's a small con. I didn't even realize most cons had such a prohibition.

I feel like we were redeemed by the big Nazi purge that happened the first night... The Nazis got jumped IC a LOT... Perhaps more than was historically accurate, but oh well. ;-D

Did you discuss with hotel officials which parts of the hotel were open for LARP gaming or were you in specially designated con locations

We used the designated con areas and the lobby, which we had used in the past. The con itself handled the negotiation with the hotel -- I don't think there were any real problems, other than the one I alluded to, and that was smoothed over.