[Storyville] GMless LARP

[Arpie]

I really didn't want to have to do a whole damn game to discuss this one concept, but it looks like that's what I gotta do. (Since I've discussed the idea of a game called Storyville with other folks before and since it's a reference to a real place, albeit coated in fairy tale glaze, I hope I'm not stepping on any toes, here.)

Anyway, the setting and theme are pretty much negotiable elements for this game. It is all theory at the moment. I just want to see if I can get the following concept to fly:

A quick-start, avatar-centric LARP with no central GM.

There's a few folks I was discussing this with before they shut down the RPG Theory forum. I hope they have time to look at this and it gives everyone a few ideas. I could certainly use some myself!

Grumpy as I may sound*, I do invite questions, comments and good-natured mockery of this concept.
Please feel free to nitpick, but I'm really fishing for some more generic concepts at the moment.
Thanks for any input or criticism you may have.

You can find the LARP here:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/falk/index.html
or here
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/9229/falk/index.html

I hope you enjoy reading it, at the very least.

*I'm very lazy and resent almost any work that doesn't promise, oh, I dunno, a free cake or munchies at least.

[Adam Cerling]

Arpie,

I am having a pleasure reading this! I will try to comment later when I have more time to really study it, but after a cursory glance, I see much better what you were trying to get at in the Theory thread. Not to mention that all the Color you add to the concept of fairy-tale gangsters is fun and evocative.

I encourage others who are reading this thread to give Arpie's game a quick read!

[TonyLB]

It's sort of odd not to have anybody explicitly given the ability to do magic or lay curses or grant wishes.  I mean, I know that it can be done (in a way) through Wise Gifts, but ... maybe I just need an example of that in action, to get my mind wrapped around it.

Plus, more work for you, and you're so entertainingly grumpy about it!

[Graham W]

This is such a great setting. Fairytale gangsters. I wouldn't have ever have thought of that and it's something I'd love to play in. A lot of the rules colour is great too: the "rap sheet", for example.

I agree with Tony about magic. Since it's a fairytale setting, it would be nice to see magic explicitly included in the rules somewhere. Otherwise, how do I turn someone into a frog when they poke their nose into my family's business?

The division of the GM role is interesting. Some of it looks really good: I like the Fence Edge and the Knife Edge and it looks as though they could really work. It also looks to me as though nothing can happen outside the game area - so, for example, I can't wander off and set fire to a warehouse of glass slippers - because there's no GM to describe the situation. Or have I got that wrong?

I'm not entirely sure what my character does when he arrives in the game. I really like the idea that he should work to protect/expand the family business, but how? The objectives given in the family descriptions are things like "arrange alliances between other families", but, really, I'd like to be poisoning people's porridge or selling dodgy carriages that turn into pumpkins at midnight. In other words, I'd like some objectives that are actually to do with a gangster racket.

All right, that's enough for now. Thanks for doing the game: it's much easier to see how your ideas work now there's an actual game.

Graham

[TheTris]

How magic works:

You ask me to let you into the room I've been told you keep you out of.

I say no.

You threaten me with witchcraft (2)

I say no.

I narrate one of the bad effects as 'as soon as this task ends I turn into a frog until someone kisses me' and the other as 'I have to talk in rhyme/until the happy time/when your unwelcome curse/is finally reversed'

Presto!

Tris

[TonyLB]

Ah, the witchcraft charge!  Of course!  My bad.  Same for wounds (with the Assault charge).  Okay, I see curses and transformations.  Wishes?

It'd actually be really funny if Wishes could only be granted as a curse.

You ask me to let you into a room

I say, No, I'll only do it if you help me fall in love with Jessica.

You threaten to grant that wish with Witchcraft(6) unless I let you into the room for nothing.

I blanch and step aside, holding the door open for you, and congratulate myself on surviving my close call.


Heh.  I may just have to get a group of friends together and play this.

[Arpie]

First off, thanks to everyone who's responded so far. I'm glad you enjoy the color. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong with some of the javascript (it doesn't seem to want to randomize sometimes) but it's probably just because I don't know much about javascript.

But, technical details aside, I'm very greatful to Tris for summarizing my rather sketchy magic system:

How magic works:

You ask me to let you into the room I've been told you keep you out of.

I say no.

You threaten me with witchcraft (2)

I say no.

I narrate one of the bad effects as 'as soon as this task ends I turn into a frog until someone kisses me' and the other as 'I have to talk in rhyme/until the happy time/when your unwelcome curse/is finally reversed'

Presto!

Tris

I think, however, that some special attention in the rules to this procedure would help - as well as a few other examples of play.

Alas, I really am weakest at providing examples*. I like the way Graham did it in Dirty F**king Freaks, but I'm real slow so it'll take a week at least for me to get those tagged into the page.

Yeah, I can definitely see where there's two elements of the magic system that need clarification:
The Pumpkin in a gang and his or her abilities with regards to setting the conditions in which to break spells and the way the witchcraft charge on everybody's rap sheet works.

I should also clarify that you have to distribute all 7 counts and that it's okay to have 0 counts in one of the categories (although you're probably not going like the results at all when you try and play the character.)

Thanks for the input. Keep poking at it and I'll slowly sew on the next bits.

*Which this concept desperately needs

[Graham W]

All right, since we're still poking away, here's a few other quick points. These are much more personal opinion than the others, so feel free to ignore them.

Firstly, I think that TheTris is right, in that he's described how magic works in your game. I threaten you with witchcraft and you decide to turn yourself into a frog. But...I'd much rather threaten to turn you into a frog and then you do. For me, it's more fun, and I want to control which spell I'm casting. In other words, I'd like to set the stakes for the conflict (especially if it involves magic).

I'm not sure about the rule that it's not possible to kill (or otherwise deprotagonise) another character. The problem is that, in a gangster story, it seems important that people die. And in a fairy story, it's important that people are imprisoned in towers or put to sleep for a hundred years.

I'm wondering if there's a more subtle way to do it? Perhaps that you can imprison characters (or put them to sleep or bewitch them) but that other characters can always rescue them, or something? There are some good rules for this in other games: the Bind rules in Scarlet Wake are a really good example.

I also have a slight doubt about the idea of consequences. If you threaten me with three counts of assault, I then have to choose three separate injuries to roleplay. It sounds really difficult: I could end with something like a limp, and a failed right eye, and regular memory loss. If someone then hits me again, I could end up with three more injuries. Could we have a more serious injury instead of three minor injuries?

And again, I have a slight doubt that the injured party chooses the consequences. I'd quite like, say, to be able to break your legs so you can't dance with the princess but, at the moment, you could always choose a different consequence. Perhaps that's just me.

Like I say, probably personal opinion, so ignore if you don't agree.

Graham

[Adam Cerling]

I think you're on your way to a strong proof-of-concept, Artie. It looks to me like you're designing a team sport, which is very different and cool. You might want to look at team sports for elements that could help strengthen your design.

Of course, team sports are also competitive. I get a competitive feeling from Storyville too. I see how the players could have fun competing: I don't see that they would have as much fun if they were cooperating. There's incentive to apply your Edge fiercely against opposing gangsters, but no incentive to work together for the sake of addressing a premise. I'd say the design feels more Gamist-friendly than Narrativist-friendly. I can see why that could be what you want: here the drive to compete replaces the role of the GM in creating and escalating conflict.

Of course, I think a competitive game requires much more sharply delineated limits around what you can do with your Edges and Charges. Right now the playing field is hazy, and I'm not even sure how you keep score.

How do you know at the end of the game that you've really done one thing the family wanted? What are coins for? Why shouldn't I put 7 counts in Witchcraft and use nothing but that to threaten people ever? What stops my Fence from writing up the Wise Gift to end all Wise Gifts ("The holder of this Gift cannot be threatened," for example)?

The competitive route requires clear descriptions of and limits on everyone's powers. If you were to prefer a more cooperative route, however, I'd recommend something different: an incentive to allow bad things to happen to your gangster. It helps people cooperate for story's sake when even losers win something.

So you've had lots of feedback about your design -- is there any part you'd prefer to discuss, the better to pick up where you left off in the previous thread?

[Arpie]

Heck, yeah. Discussion's a lot easier than design at this point.

Since you posted most recently, I'll address your concerns and comments first, WhiteRat.*

As far as desiging a team sport goes, you might be right. I am going pretty heavy on the gamist side, and I hope that's for the best. In many ways, LARPs are a team sport. I would like to tone the competitiveness down a little but I have no idea how. Again, this was more something I threw together as a possible solution to a problem than, for instance, a professional effort. I hope it isn't a lost cause or a blind alley!

I'd like to see it work, of course, so my next step (on this particular project) will probably be to put in some guidelines for self-imposed delays, self-imposed injuries and magic (the consequences derived from using counts.)

I'm a big fan of character specialization, however, so I don't have a problem with folks putting all their counts into witchcraft or obstruction or even assault. I mean, other players would pretty much know what to expect, right? (I think, however, some sort of warning in the game's presentation would be in order. You do that, you'll probably get bored real fast sort of thing.) I know it's min-maxing, but I've never, personally had a problem with min-maxing. Some boring players do it and some interesting people do it. It's a useful tool which sometimes gets misused. But, if you have a cool solution, I'd love to dig into it!

Which bring me to magic, which Graham rightly pointed out needs some illumination. I think a paragraph or two might help - both to set the tone and to clarify the nebulous nature I'd like to preserve about the "magic system." The idea I had was that you could put a specific spell on someone if you wanted and use witchcraft as a backup to do SOMETHING to them even if it didn't (or 7 something if you wanted to be a real jerk about it.)  That seems like a pretty no-win situation for the victim, right? That's why the victim gets to choose the consequences.

I'm kind of hoping that takes the edge off the competitive side of things. You can definately do what you want in the game - when you make a move against someone else, something happens - but they decide what it is if they don't like your idea.  I picked injury, dissapointment and spells both because they fit the milieu and because they're pretty satisfying alternatives for people who really want to cause trouble. (Like, uh, me.)

Also, I like the idea of rescues - but I think they'd need to be more pro-active. Like: you're captured, but you can "ghost" over to your buddies and tag them to rescue you or something.

Now these mechanics are specific to the game rather than the idea of GMless LARPing, but I guess we'll live with that.

But that's personal opinion on my part.

(Oh man, I gotta do something about the Wise Gift to end all wise gifts, too!)

*PS. I love that pseudonym! Feel free to call me Rp. Arpie is a bastardized phoneticization of my initials. I just somehow felt Rp looked weird in an rpg design forum.

[TheTris]

Arpie:  Awesome!  I love the setting and the ideas you've got.

TonyLB:   "It'd actually be really funny if Wishes could only be granted as a curse."

Awesome x2!  That is a brilliant idea!

"Heh.  I may just have to get a group of friends together and play this."

You don't live near Reading, UK do you?  :-(

Back to Arpie:  I was thinking about the system and to me the main problem seems to be that if you set up player control of powers, and a gamist agenda, it's pretty difficult to ensure everyone feels satisfied with how everyone else uses/abuses their powers.  Especially with pre-defined factions, where I might see your character getting cooler stuff because your gang's prop creator plays a bit more fast and loose with the guidance than mine.

That wouldn't be a problem in a non-gamist game, as far as I can see, but if the reason I'm there is to compete...I'd feel disempowered.  I don't mind writing a story about a lone guy, struggling to overcome the odds, and falling to an inevitable fate, but I'm not playing chess against you with my one pawn against your 16 pieces.

The one addition I could think of that might help is to tie the reward system into the player roles.  So a prop-creator gets rewards for the amount of gold he brings in AND for creating less stuff.  So it's in his interest to create stuff, but also to push prices up, and if he just creates cool stuff for his team, he suffers as a result.  Healers could be given a secret list of healing times, usable once per session each.  And they get rewarded for using the mid-range times, and not using the others.  So they want to heal people in an average time, and have to make sacrifices to help their team or hinder others.

Tris

[Arpie]

I think you might be on to something there, Tris. With the rewards system, I mean.
Since this LARP has never been tested, I'm working entirely from theory and my experiences with MET, Cthulhu Live, Nero, IFGS, a couple nifty homebrews I played at cons and this one God-awful thing in Portland.

I've made a few changes to the edges, giving the pumpkin wider magic-deciding powers and suggesting that the fence collect or disburse money for wise gifts, but I'm not there, yet.
Also, I don't know why I can't write examples into the game rules to save my life, but it just... throws me. (For example, I used Frank Silvera's line from "Hombre" rather than a better gangster quote as an example for assault counts. Help!)

I mean, it's just a couple lines of text, but it seems to clear things up nicely.

I'm running up against another problem, however, especially in regards to politics.

I've mostly been using political models to create the gamist side of things. I'm really not comfortable with the term gamist. I'll just use competitive for a while.

I think the article on gamism and the GNS theory does give some nod towards conflict, but, you see, in a LARP - especially if you break away from or decentralize the GM role, players need motivation and competition provides some.

Now, of course, the problem is that I'm not a real competitive person (I never would have gotten into RPGs otherwise.) But a poltical situation just doesn't fly without it. It's driven me crazy for years and while there's lots of great solutions here at the forge, they all really come down to either destroying the avatar (sigh: I guess you'd call it "actor stance" illusion) and immersive element that a lot of players find so inticing (all my friends, anyway) or juicing the GM (training the GM up on new techniques.)

I'm hoping the "team sport" approach in this game might give us all a new perspective on the dynamics of the LARP - rather as a form of compromise/story-rewarding competition rather than either a winner-take-all pretend fest or a GM-as-center-of-loggerhead miasma.

I wish I could work Graham's really neat "crowd gather for fight and cat-calls become votes" mechanic from Dirty F**king Freaks, I can't make it fit. Also, I really like the rescue idea, but I need to invert it so that the person who needs rescuing iniaties it - has the most control.

PS. Color notes: I realized I screwed up the families. The family with the frog godmother has become the Avenants (the prince from Cocteau's Belle et le Bete) and the Fortunatas have replaced a rather more dubious knotnothings (too folkloric) and the Wardrobe is now a pretty poor, but, to me, satisfying, take on the Bureau (with Clive Staples resonance as well.)

[Arpie]

I think I'm gonna call this idea dead. If someone gets a wild hair to test it, I'd appreciate if you'd drop me a line with whatever notes you've got.

The problem with making a game in order to discuss a rules mechanic or a new approach to the hobby is it really kills the brainstorming possibilities for a given train of thought. This idea could have gone anywhere. Instead, it died here. Ah well.

At least it's free!

[TheTris]

I wouldn't call it dead just yet...

I was trying not to hog the conversation, and I'm also pretty busy at the moment, but I've still got some interesting ideas, and the beginnings of a plan to run something along these lines.

Tris

[Arpie]

I didn't put enough info into that last post, sorry. I was kinda tired.

I mean, without some practical testing, I can't take this particular idea any further. Or, rather, this solution to the possibilities of a GMless LARP.
I don't really have the resources to form a LARP group right now. (I live in the midwestern US)

What's more, it looks like Graham Whamley is gonna try out something else GMless that he DOES have the resources for, so I'm gonna have to wait for that. And, in the meantime, this thread will slip into oblivion.

Only the people who've commented on it so far will have any interest in it vanishing from the Forge entirely, so there won't be any new input on it than what's already been. So it's dead.

Anyway, I want to pretty up the stuff I've done on the idea a little bit and I have to make a .pdf version and a few other things. And cookies. I still have cookies to make this weekend.