Jamais Vu, Take Two

[Lisa Padol]

Oy. Haven't been keeping up with reading, much less writing, between work and prepping for JV, the re-run, at Dexcon. It went astonishingly well, considering we had 8 players for a game we'd envisioned with 13-15, and it was running at 9am on a Saturday. We were even prepped almost completely a week before run time. Much nicer. And some mechanisms worked a lot better this time around.

More later, when I've time.

-Lisa

[Helvetian]

Oy. Haven't been keeping up with reading, much less writing, between work and prepping for JV, the re-run, at Dexcon. It went astonishingly well, considering we had 8 players for a game we'd envisioned with 13-15, and it was running at 9am on a Saturday. We were even prepped almost completely a week before run time. Much nicer. And some mechanisms worked a lot better this time around.

More later, when I've time.

-Lisa

I had a great time. :-)  You guys did a wonderful job running it.

Becca

[Lisa Padol]

I'm glad you enjoyed yourself! We had an absolute blast.

We were very lucky to get a lift to and from the convention, from a guy who would not accept a gift of a free membership on the grounds that he didn't have time to enjoy it, but who still came out, in the rain, on Sunday, to drive us home.

We were even prepared a full week before the game. Weird, but man, I love that.

The original run had 15 full characters written, all of whom were cast. It had 3 rough characters who were not cast, and one character specially written for a woman who had to leave after an hour of play.

The DexCon run had 19 full characters, plus one of the rough characters rounded out -- this one was specifically designed for someone walking in late. We had another rough character, but didn't stress on rounding it out, as we knew we would not fill.

We had 9 sign ups. One no-show -- the guy didn't make the convention, so we don't feel slighted. 8 players. 4 GMs. This was actually a decent ratio.

We had discussed how few we could run for, and decided that we could, if we had to, run for 2 players (Sean and Francis, if you're curious), and we worked out a full casting order. Notes in no particular order:

1. While we were correct to loosen up on allowing certain PCs to unlock doors, next time, we are going to make it much harder to lock doors. At the very least, we want to avoid the incident of having 3 PCs locked up, unintentionally, 2 of whom stayed locked up because the lockers didn't bother getting around to unlocking the doors. Yes, it was in character, and it didn't drag on as long as it might have, but it is still to be avoided.

2. Giving everyone the blue sheets of general background information at the start of the game really, really helped.

3. Having lots of copies of the crew roster to hand out on demand was a good thing. However, we will want more copies of the map to hand out next time.

4. The character sheet presentation worked. In the original run, I just cut the sheet into 3 parts. We were told that it would be much easier on the players if, when they got memory #2, the sheet also included #1, so that they could throw out the old sheet and not have to track itty bitty pieces of paper.

Josh did one better: He highlighted the new information on memory sheets #2 and #3 for each PC. We used html, which is something we will want to convert most of the text into. The rest will likely be Excel. Spreadsheets really are the GMs' best friend in a larp.

5. Folks did not get all 3 memories back in game. One method was a character who was not cast. Another was in a room that apparently never got searched. Another was in an area that was never found. Another was never thought of. So, we invented another way, which meant folks got 2 parts back, and 2 parts really did prove enough to make the game viable.

6. Our method of simulating a computer game was much improved. However, we either need a way to keep track of moves, as we were constantly asked to replay previous moves, or we need to say that previous moves cannot be replayed. We favor the last simply because it is less work for us.

7. It is a very different game with only half of the original roles cast. Certain conflicts that were muted in the previous run blossomed wonderfully. Certain conflicts written involving uncast characters -- well, the conflicts still shaped how people played their characters, but a couple of folks were able to step forward into the limelight more effectively. I'm thinking of Leslie and Pat, as we did not cast Jackie or Tracey. And no, I'm not going to go into more detail here.

8. Josh very much improved the character sheets with his once over lightly.

9. The "dungeon crawl" went well enough, with Beth using a GM screen and an Arabian Nights (the board game that could've been a computer game) -like flow chart.

10. Beth now has larp GMing experience.

11. Mike Young is correct: DexCon is the proper venue of the 2 hour game. We are thinking of writing one. I'm pushing the Roman Baths, but I don't know if Vinny can get us a big enough hot tub.

12. It was a blast. We had great players. The food service was a lifesaver.

-Lisa