Homebrew LARP: Player Death

[JamesSterrett]

Hi!

My co-GM and I are embarking on setting up our 4th homebrew LARP.  The friends plahing in the previous three have said they were lots of fun, but having had my mind expanded by the Forge, I'm hoping to try to understand the game better and improve game #4 in the process.

[I know that one of our players, Jacob Ossar, reads this forum (I directed him to it  :) ) , and from long experience I trust him to be able to selectively forget anything he might need to.  If you've played in one of my/Jim Speer's games in the past, and I don't know you're here, I expect the same of you, too.  And drop me a line so I know how many Forgers we actually have playing!  :)   ]

The quickie background:  These games are run for various friends; the largest game had ~25 players.  Some are very experienced gamers and/or RPG players; however, many have never played any kind of RPG before.  This is *NOT* a boffer LARP; combat is done with playing cards and the emphasis of play is on intrigue.  The game is very rules-light; the rules pus explanation of "what is a LARP" fit easily on both sides of a piece of paper.  The game is intentionally as accessible as we can make it.

The topic for this message:  Player Death.

The problem:  

People sacrifice a valuable Saturday to come play, and then their character gets killed.  Now what do they do?  It's potentially a major turnoff: they feel they have lost in the game (true), don't know what to do, etc.  Potentially they are bored or unhappy and never play again.

However, combat is necessary to make diplomacy function; and our combat is extremely deadly for all concerned.  [I have the Widget, which you need; you have nothing I need.  Without combat, there is no reason for me to negotiate with you.  With combat, I have to consider the possibility that you will kill me for the Widget.  With combat lethal to both of us, you'll think twice before trying to kill me, lest you wind up dead too.  The threat of combat makes us talk and lethality keeps combat a last resort, reinforcing the intrigue focus of the game.  It's worked well in practice so far, though I'll listen to counter-argument.]

In LARPs #2 and #3, we came up with means of dealing with this:  we made the basement into the Land of the Dead, which only the dead could enter; in there, they found papers with All The Details on all the characters, Things to Find, etc amen.  The Dead, however, could only communicate with the living via charades.  Thus, death put those players into a new and different game, with lots of information but severe constraints on using it.  Players who were killed consistent report this has been a

In LARP #3, events transpired such that one player, after being killed, succeeded in using the information gained with dramatic effectiveness.  Everybody is probably keenly aware of the potential for gaining lots of information by becoming dead.

In the next run, we *don't* want: a) some ruthless group of players to draw straws and kill one of their own number to gain valuable information; b) players to fear that anybody they kill will become more powerful as a ghost (thus reducing fear of combat, thus potentially undermining diplomacy).

The simplistic solution: tell everybody that the rules for the Dead have changed, but don't actually change them.  This is bad on several levels, from the fact that it will only work once, to the potentially very bad effects of lying to the players.

We could have Dead players mirror-image their motivations; it's a gimmick, though, and sits badly - you'd want revenge on your killers, not suddenly want to become their assistants!

We've given thought to the idea of having a subplot that only the Dead can get involved in, which would over-ride their prior motivations.  Problems: a) we have no control over how many people die, b) body counts tend to be low; c) the killings usually (but not always) clump at the end of the game.

Any better ideas?

[MikeSands]

I'm currently thinking about similar things for a LARP that I'm writing.

One way that my thinking has been going is to say that combat is not necessarily resolved with injury/death. Instead, if one character wins a fight, they have the following options:
1. Injure the victim
2. Steal some object from the victim
3. Get the victim to tell them a secret.

In fact, after some discussion with the other organisers, it may even be up to the loser to decide which of these happens...

In any case, this works to make combat still something to worry about, without the same danger of people's characters being killed off early on. And (to go back to your example) if the Widget is stolen after a fight, the original owner gets to try and find some buddies to help him beat up on the thief and get it back. I'm hoping this will drive the plots forward, as well.

I'm still unsure about how to deal with all the details in terms of the rules of the game (the telling secrets in particular is appealing to me but probably hard to ensure that everyone plays fair on).

[Valamir]

I love the land of the dead idea...its absolutely fantastic!
I agree, however, that once the "rules" of the afterlife become known with certainty there will be a temptation to game them.  Part of the mystery of death is that we don't *really* know what's "out there".

There's alot of ways you could make each "after life" different and interesting...

But what about reversing the order.  What if the real game is going on in the afterlife, and the "living world" is just a prelude.  

Lots of possible directions here.

Two sides at war to up the body count.  After they are dead the puzzle is that the "real enemy" at the source of the conflict is a supernatural entity (demon, liche, whatever) and the dead must try to put aside thoughts of vengeance in order to defeat the real opponent.  A great gamist twist would be to give prizes to the winning side, but every one loses if the demon wins.

A plague that strikes down people in the living world could up the body count.  In one game a friend of mine told me about, certain players were given a blank sheet of red paper.  As they met and interacted with people they were told to tear a piece off of the paper, sign in and give it to someone that they'd spent some quality time with.  Yes, if someone gave you a piece, you could tear another piece off and give it to someone else, etc.  Anyone who collected 3 such pieces of signed paper was to report to a referee for a prize...which was being declared dead from the plague...the red paper being the contagion.  

You could Matrix it, with the initial world being just an illusion, and death being like waking up from a dream to the real reality.  This would give players the chance to be killed again.  In theory you could have many such levels like an onion with different clues in each.  

You could have a set of victory conditions for players who are alive.  Then have dead players return to the game as a ghost with a new set of victory conditions, basically, continueing to play with a new character.  The new set might be tied to the old set in a twisted sort of way.

[WiredNavi]

One idea I've toyed with for a LARP - in this case, a weekend-long boffer LARP - is to set it in a pretty primitive tribal/mystic society and have a 'spirit world'.  If you die, you become a spirit, and have different rules for interacting with people (i.e. it becomes very difficult for you to interact with living people, but can interact with spirits much easier).  Certain characters - shamans, etc. - would be capable of more interaction with spirits, and could potentially lead others on visionquests where they temporarily became spirits themselves.

The spirits of the dead would have until the next dawn to reach a location and be restored to life (in this case, the Navel of the World, which is the place where the spirit and mundane worlds intersect) or be lost to the spirit plane forever.  Hostile spirits and spells could make this a lot harder, while shamans could lead visionquests to aid the dead.  Thus, dying becomes another potentially interesting part of the plot and something which could involve other people - living and dead - insetad of 'Whoops, sorry, make a new character'.

[JamesSterrett]

Mike - I'm interested in more precisely how your system works; we tried something broadly similar in our second game, and it did not really work all that well - players didn't use it much.  Actually, game #2 had a couple problems, probably worth dicussing separately.  :)

In fact, despite my attempts to make it extremely streamlined, combat is still often a showstopper.  [Most recent (and most workable so far) version of the combat mechanics, in a nutshell:  Everybody carries card from Ace - 6 and starts at 100 health.  When you attack somebody, draw a card and inflict that much damage.  Weapons multiply the damage done by a fixed amount.  Spellcasters can trade in their own health to damage an enemy, at a fixed multiplier (varies by player).  Armor soaks up damage before you do.]  Often it isn't the mechanics per se, but some odd question that comes up, and then everybody waits while a GM is brought in to answer.  I really wish I could make the combat "just happen", though that may be a pipe dream.  The good side of the combat is that, under the latest version (or, at any rate, in game #3), nobody takes it lightly, so it is explosive and memorable when it occurs.

[JamesSterrett]

I love the land of the dead idea...its absolutely fantastic!

Thank you!  :)

The plague mechanic is entertaining - filed for future use.  :)

We're trying to avoid the supernatural/demons angle thing time, largely because previous games have either had a Lovecraftian tinge or been all-out Lovecraftian.  While it's fun to be able to say, "Cthulhu?  Yep - he's in my basement.", we're hoping one of the surprises this time is his absence.  

That said, the reversal may work very well.

The Plan for the opening & setting of game 4:  Everybody gets onto a blimp for a trip to Atagonia (a ficticious 3rd world country we've used in the past).  They think that Atagonia Airways Flight 314i will land in two hours; everybody is packed into the house, with first-class passengers upstairs and steerage confined to the basement.  An hour into the game, surprise! - we crash the blimp.  Strange but true, all the people of interest to character's plotlines turn out to be on board, and they need to figure out how to both get rescued and also achieve their other goals.

We've been thinking to introduce some sort of Dr. Who-ish spacetime anomaly, and physicists who can try to act upon it with their Weird Science in order to make a hole back to reality.

[We also always include a treasure hunt aspect - which, this time, comes in the form of "find your luggage, which fell out of the blimp as it crashed".]

What you've sparked (and I'll need to run it past Jim, though he'll probably be favorably inclined):

We'd originally planned to have everybody survive the blimp crash.  What if each passenger class thinks the *other* passenger class is gone?  Steerage survives, but in the Real World.  First Class (and most of the blimp's crew) wind up in the other dimension.  Each one is told it's in the real world, and to treat the other badge color as a ghost - no talking, no talking near them, no physical interactions.  Items in the game follow the badge color label - "ignore items not of your badge color as if they didn't exist".  The solution to rescuing the people in the anomaly is still dependent in part on information from the real world, and the thicket of side plots hasn't disappeared either....

Death:  from the 1st Class realm leads you back to the real world, and from the real world to Death as per previous games, but with much more limited information; and the existence of a large population of apparent ghosts should introduce some uncertainty into exactly what's going on.  In addition, death from the 1st Class realm brings you into the real world without any memory of events after the crash, and without Your Stuff - so to bring your memories and Your Stuff back from the alternate realm, you need the Weird Science.


"Killing" people in the blimp crash gets us a sizeable population of people in each group - which is one of my main worries about a layers-of-the-onion Matrix-style approach: if there aren't enough people in your layer to play with, then it could get lonely or boring.  (The second is trying to have What Happens figured out enough that we can hand out relevant chunks of new plotline to the recently awakened without slowing the game down or causing unintentional chaos to the plots.)  [Plots in the sense of "these characters' motivations set them on a collision course", not "the following outcome must occur".]

[JamesSterrett]

Jinx - In games #2 and #3, we've included a means for player resurrection, but it's probably been too obscure (have to find the relevant Ancient Tome and get components for the ritual) - as far as I'm aware, none of the players have seriously contemplated attempting it.  That probably means we've set the bar too high on actually performing the ritual.

We also haven't mentioned the possibility in the rules and briefings, so it's possible it was simply too obscure?

[Walt Freitag]

James, if you're interested in the approach to combat that Mike Sands described, take a look at "conflict system" in the LARP described in this post.

As for player-character deaths in LARPs, a quick summary:

Ways of Avoiding Player-Character Deaths:

- Closed environment with few lethal weapons available.

- Controlled setting: the setting is presumed to have ambient levels of law enforcement not necessarily represented by actual players. For instance, a rule might state that anyone attacking another in any public place is automatically captured by law enforcement immediately after the act. (Victim and perpetrator must both report to GM control room areas for resolution of their cases.) An all-seeing security system might turn all attacks into temporary stun for both sides, as in Larry Niven's Free Parks.

- Invulnerability to some or all lethal effects (e.g. vampires, undercover aliens, trolls, immortals)

- Ablative combat. If combat results in long-term loss of health, power points, or whatever, it discourages combat deaths by discouraging all combat. There's little reward for combat if even the winner is left weakened and easy prey for anyone else. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on what you want. I once played in a superhero game where no one could really act like superheroes for fear of using up their "power points" and becoming sitting ducks.

- Complex combat: I've played in at least one LARP where no combat took place because no one could figure out how it was supposed to work.

- Metagame rules for stylistic violence: Some LARPs have instituted special metagame mechanics based on genre conventions for personal violence. For instance, in a LARP based on Dick Francis novels (detectives, mobs, and horse racing), bad guys who wanted to get nosy detectives off their case had to do it in a certain ritualized way, first sending warnings, then having the detective beaten up by thugs, then having him beaten up worse and dumped outside of town, and so forth before they could actually attempt murder.

Ways of Nullifying or Undoing Player-Character Deaths:

- Resurrection magic.

- Transmigration: player becomes a different person suddenly possessed by the memories and personality of the dead character (essentially, coming back as the same character).

- Technology: characters are backed up on tape (e.g. in a cyberpunk setting), or clone duplicates are available (a la Paranoia). Hyper-medicine allowing total regrowth from cellular debris can turn death into a time penalty (typically, a few hours).

- Resuscitation: who said the character was dead, and how did they know for sure? Even without magic or futuristic technology, medical miracles do happen. (Though it gets suspicious if they happen too often, or too quickly.)

- Replacement: dead characters are replaced by an associate character with a different identity but essentially the same role -- e.g. a secret agent is killed, another agent from the same agency (and played by the same player) is sent in to complete the original mission and investiage the first's death; a reporter is replaced by another reporter reporting on the death of the first; a viking is replaced by his nearest kinsman; etc.

- Mysterious: dead characters return with no rational explanation; usually this ties in to some big central mystery or revelation in play, for instance, everyone is really a hologram in a starship's computer and doesn't know it, or it's a set-up by aliens (e.g. Riverworld), or it's all a virtual world.

Ways of allowing player-character death while allowing the player to continue to participate:

- Give the player a new character.

- Recruit the player into a different function in the game, such as playing walk-on NPCs or monsters, or becoming a GM or GM assistant.

- Give the player a new character in an entirely separate game taking place at the same venue.

- Afterlife: Dead characters can interact with each other in a parallel plane or afterlife, where there are separate adventures and intrigues going on, but little or no contact with the "living" characters. (Best if the afterlife players can at least observe the living, and if the afterlife plots tie in with the main plots in some way.)

- Ghosts: Similar to afterlife, but more communication between "living" and "dead" is permitted. Perhaps the most popular technique is that ghosts cannot affect the living in any physical way, but cannot be prevented from watching the living or speaking to the living (at least, not without additional magic; perhaps necromancers can control or banish them). This works well in fantasy games in which factional power struggles predominate. Factions that too often resort to murder find that they've made secrecy impossible for themselves.

Of course, these can all be combined in a zillion different ways in the same game.

- Walt

[MikeSands]

The system that I'm considering for my larp, in case people are interested. It includes a few aspects that other people have mentioned.

I should also say that this is all just ideas at the moment, I'm planning on running a playtest or two to shake out exactly these kinds of issues.

1. Every player starts with a set number of combat tokens. Probably these will range from 2 (for the most incompetent fighters) to maybe 15 (for uber-badass characters).
2. In a fight, each bids some tokens hidden in their hand.
3. Bids are revealed, highest bid wins the fight.
4. Both parties lose 1 combat token to represent general light injuries/tiredness/etc
5. The winner (or maybe loser) decides that the fight results in one of the following:
 a. Loser takes injury equal to their whole bid
 b. Winner steals an item from loser
 c. Winner forces loser to tell them a secret.
 d. If the loser has *no* tokens left, they may be killed. (I'm also considering saying that they cannot be killed if they still have items to steal or secrets to reveal).

Note that the fact *both* parties always lose 1 token is designed to make anybody reluctant to get into a fight. It also protects people with low combat token levels - they can lower their own risk by bidding low.

Characters with more tokens to burn are going to be steered into combat with each other, so they should have a more tactical game of bidding.

We'll also deal with people being outnumbered by simply getting the victim of a group to bid against all of them, so weak characters should be able to take advantage of their allies if they need to go up against a tougher opponent.

One issue that we're still not sure how to fix is the problem of multiple fights with the same victim. We may say that after you beat someone in a fight you can't attack them again for a half-hour, with an 'all bets are off' time late in the game after which people are welcome to get into as many fights as they want.

Anyway, those ideas may help others with these problems and I'd be keen to hear any suggestions to smooth over any rough edges you notice here.

[RaconteurX]

James, you might want to take a glance at the Tales of Pendragon site. I can attest firsthand to the elegance and efficacy of the rules, having just come from the event this past weekend. It may not be precisely what you are after, but perhaps it will serve as further inspiration. :)

[JamesSterrett]

Thanks to all for the replies - especially the links to older posts.  Much food for thought there.  :)  Walt - our LARPs are what I think you'd call SIL-style games.

Mike - I've used a somewhat similar system in the past (I used card draws instead of tokens; in a vastly overcomplex method, players kept the cards they drew from other players, making winner's own hands work against them in extended fights.  This caused far more confusion than it was worth!)

The trouble, I found, is that players didn't tend to initiate combat until their objective was to blow somebody away.  This may be, in part, because once diplomacy has run its course, players don't think through the notion of "I'll surrender and let you take Widget X/tell you about Y if you'll stop attacking me" once combat has begun.  Also, the rules on "can't attack somebody again for N minutes" caused a lot of confusion: can somebody from a different faction attack you?  Can a series of people launch single attack with the objective of wearing you down, even though no one person attacks inside a given N minute timeframe?

Eventually, I simply ditched the excess....  Players have the option of attacking each other.  Why they're doing it, how often, to what end result - is up to them.  The fact that mid-battle diplomacy is rare doesn't mean it cannot happen, but neither is it mandated.

I'm not claiming this is perfect, but it cuts down on the rules overhead and rules questions.

For reference, the rules we used in game #3 are:

---------------------

Books and Items and Skills, Oh My!

   Books:

   In the course of the game, you may come across various books or other documents.  These may contain information of use to you.

   Reading the book means you learn any skill found in the book.  Go talk to James to get the card for the skill; the time it takes to find James and ask for the skill is the time it takes to learn it.

   You have the option to try to destroy items or books.  If you wish to destroy something, bring it to James, who will assess the consequences for you [some items might not want to be destroyed....]  

   Some books may cause you to lose a bit of sanity.  This will inflict a quirk on your behavior.  These quirks are *not* intended to prevent you from playing effectively.  They should provide color and fun, not cripple your ability to participate in the game.  You're welcome to play them up, but don't let them stop you entirely.  Thus, while gaining an aversion to walls because of the Horrific And Unspeakable Things You Can HEAR HIDING BEHIND THEM may be on the book, and you can feel free to play it up, you shouldn't feel you then must avoid entering buildings.

   If you would like to substitute a different sanity penalty for the one listed on a book, discuss it with Jim or James.

   Skills:

   The card for a skill should explain the nature of the skill, and when and how you can apply it in the game.  If you have any questions, ask James.

   Items of equipment:

   You can also acquire Items, which confer various advantages or abilities as displayed on their card.  Some items are one-use-only, as noted on the card, and should be handed over to the GM after use.  Please don't get worked up over the fact that some items could not be logically carried - if you have a card that claims it is a 55-foot motor yacht, you own a 55-foot motor yacht and whatever is necessary to bring it into use at an appropriate place.

   Locations:

   A few places in the game area are off-limits to players without direct and explicit permission from the GMs to enter.  These will be clearly marked.  If you don't know if you have the right to enter - you don't.  The place of this category you're most likely to run into is the cellar.  Nobody except Jim should use the inside stairs to the cellar (and the laundry room leading to those stairs is itself off-limits) or enter the areas of the cellar near them - Jim is storing and running his special-effects kit there.  When specific circumstances transpire, you may wind up on a trip into the cellar via the outside door, led by Jim.  Jim will control entry to the cellar on a case-by-case basis and you should not enter it without him.

Your Continued Good Health:
   
Everybody in the game has a statistic:  Health.  Everybody begins with a health of 100.  If it drops to 0 (zero), you are dead!  

   If you do drop to a Health of 0, please drop all game possessions (remember that possessions are different from skills; thus you'd drop a card for a flowerpot, but not a card that gives you knowledge of accounting.)  Then go directly to James to discuss your situation as a Recently Deceased Entity....

   As with sanity, do not let a low health stat get in the way of playing the game.  Limp if you like - but allowing a low health stat to stop you from playing the game isn't fun, so realism can stuff it in this instance.  
   
Combat:  

   Combat is unpredictable and extremely dangerous.  You may want to attempt negotiation or stealth instead, if possible.  Nonetheless, combat is an option, and it inevitably produces a lot of rules.  I've tried to keep this very simple.

   The combat mechanism can seem jarring and out of character with the rest of the game.  It's a means of providing a framework for an event, without descending into arguments over "I shot you!"  "No you didn't!"  Please feel free to act out the consequences of the results indicated.

   Each player is issued six cards (ace (counts as one) through 6).  These are used for combat.

   Combat proceeds in rounds:

   Each player draws a card from an opposing player's deck.
   The player from whom you drew loses that much Health.
   Return the card you drew.
   Repeat until the combat ends.

   Combat ends when all players on one side are dead, or when one side concedes defeat.

   Players with combat-related spells may cast them instead of a card draw.

   Players with pistols may fire them.  This multiplies the damage taken by one enemy by the amount listed on the pistol's card.  Every time you fire a pistol, you must shout "BANG!" as loudly as you can.
===========================================
Ground rules:

   - No physical combat.  No physical weapons.

   - No smoking/fires/pyrotechnics inside any structure.

   - Bill's house is not open for play!

   - Nothing will be hidden indoors in such a manner that it is hard to put things back together; we don't want the house torn apart.  Thus, there is nothing in boxes, drawers, cupboards or our file folder system.  There is nothing hidden on the computers.  However, it is entirely possible for items to be hidden in books, of which we have no shortage - but things will not be inside the binding or some such, but simply inside the book like a bookmark.

   - The bathroom and bedroom are not game spaces.  You can go into them, but no game actions can take place there - including reading of books!

   - The game does depend on player honesty, though I do not imagine this will prove a problem.

   - Take rules disputes to the GMs (James or Jim).
-------------------

[Most of the "main game" stuff directs players with questions to me because of the division of labor between me and Jim - he spent a lot of the game running vision sequences in part of the basement.]

The main thing that went wrong with these in game #3 was confusion over the combat mechanics.  :-/