You are Your own GM

[buggy]

Hi there,

My name is Mike Young and I design LARPs and LARP systems.  I am currently working on a new full weekend LARP which uses a system I am designing called You are Your own GM (YaYoG).

YaYoG is less a system of mechanics (which are dirt simple) and more a system of philosophies.  The underlying philosophy of which is that for a LARP, the roles of PC, NPC, and GM can be merged, so that players can adjudicate their own mechanics, and make any runtime decision.  This is based on the theory of distributed processing.  There are only so many GMs and they can't be everywhere.  Rather than interrupt the action to find a GM, players are empowered to make their own rulings based on the simple mechanics.

It changes a good deal of the writing of the LARP.  For example, this new LARP is being written in a bubble; players can see every aspect of it if they wish, and can suggest their own plots, events, and storylines.  This way players have the maximum information available to make their decisions.

YaYoG relies on the principle of the Sufficiently Mature Player (SMP), one who is willing to not only work toward his own fun during the LARP, but also work toward increasing other players' fun during the game, a collaborator.   (It is true that around here, some players seem to have the sense of entitlement of "I paid for the game so entertain me."  I hate that sentiment.  As a GM, I spent more money and far more time than you; is it too much to ask you to meet me a little toward halfway?  But I digress.)

However, my detractors believe that there are not enough SMPs skilled in making runtime decisions for the LARP to work.  I believe that the majority of the players will probably treat the LARP just like any other, and that only a handful of players will try to be floor GMs as well.  This is fine; if I have a core of competent floor GMs it will be a good start toward bringing YaYoG principles to the rest of the LARP community, and the LARP will run just fine.

However, my detractors want to know what sort of plan I have to teach the players how to GM themselves, how to deal with issues such as pacing (they seem especially stuck on pacing). 

The truth of the matter is, of course, that I have no such materials ready to show them, and they know it.  As far as I know, nobody in the US LARP community has ever tried to put together materials to teach how to effectively pace a LARP.  This is because it seems like it has to be learned on the fly, learning as you go.  I have materials on how to make decisions on the mechanics.  I've written them for smaller YaYoG LARPs, but not how to pace the games.

So I ask all of you.  The concept of empowering the players is very indy-rpg.  How do you teach your players to be effective player GMs?  What methods have you used to teach them to work together to increase fun?

Thanks!

PS:  I am aware that my detractors read The Forge.  Of them, I have the request: please don't start talking again about how it won't work.  This is a thread about how to make it work, and if you don't feel it could ever possibly work and that is all you post, you are being obstructionist rather than helpful.  Thanks.

PPS:  If you'd like to read the threads in question, go to http://ambug666.livejournal.com and start backwards from Lullaby of Broadway FAQ, or if you want a bigger history, also read the post after Atlantis: What went well, the one with 57 comments.  Thanks!

[Vulpinoid]

As someone who has run LARP campaigns over the course of a decade, and numerous one off LARP freeforms at conventions, I commend you on attemtping such a system.

I'm not going to be a detractor, and I wish you the best in your efforts.

To get the negatives out of they way, I have found numerous LARP scenes have been disrupted by abusive players who fit into the "I paid up, so entertain me" paradigm, as well as other players who fit the "my character just wouldn't do that, and has done everything in their power to stop your plot-line coming into play" paradigm.

Both of these are really disruptive to the game and I've never played in a LARP group where at least one of these types wasn't present. It basically ends up as running a story by committee, and no-one ends up satisfied with the result.

As for pacing, I've seen far too many occasions when the setting of the game is a court or other place of intrigue, but a group of players decide that it is their missin to stop a character getting into the venue. Either the majority of the game ends up as a combat scene with the GMs focused on that while the remainders of the players get bored. Or a player gets killed in the first few minutes of the game and ends up wasting their time showing up.

Things get even worse when a player decides not to come one session when the predetermined story was meant to revolve around them.

Two examples:
1. Mister Pink is due to be killed tonight. Mister Pink's player isn't told about this and it's it's kept very quiet from him. Since he doesn't think that there will be much to interest him during this session he decide to go to the movies instead of playing this session. Everyone else get's frustrated.

2. Mister Pink is due to be killed tonight. Mister Pink's player is told how important it is for him to show up, the odds are he finds out why he should show up. Mister Pink's players doesn't want the character to die yet, so he doesn't show up.

There are no game mechanics I know of that can eliminate meta-gaming.

On to the positive side:

If you can devise a system where GM's are rendered obsolete in their rule refereeing roles, this would be a great step in the right direction. I've encountered a few systems (White Wolf's Minds Eye Theatre [MET]) which go some of the way toward this, but there is still a lot more room for improvement in that direction.

From what little I've read so far, it looks like you share a lot of experiences in LARP to what I've seen. So you'll probably agree that a successful LARP system needs to be a lot simpler than most Table-Top games, and aimed toward motivational play rather than mechanical.

Back to your topic...

The way that I've found easiest to teach players the ways of LARP and GMing is through the mechanics of the setting. If you're running a old World of Darkness [MET] Sabbat style game, the players are divided into vampiric packs with different roles. You teach the player of the pack priest the rules for the mystic side of things, you teach the pack leaders about higher level social interactions, each players gets a different set of specific rules to master, and this way they don't have to try to learn everything all at once. Most of the other [MET] games follow a similar structure.

You could do the same in a lot of other settings, having an archmage player who is effectively the GM you go to for magic refereeing, while the lesser mages in the game are their delegate sub-GMs. The head of the Mercenary guild is the plauer who you go to for GM decisions about combat, while lesser members of the guild are the respective sub-GMs for combat. The same could work for courtiers who cover the social intrigue of the situation.

This gives the players who seek the prominent roles within the game more responsibility over the play of the game. Conversely it means that the players who do have the final say on ruling decisions really do know what they are talking about because they've probably had to mediate lesser conflicts on their way to attaining that position within the gaming group.

This could also be transposed to a real world mechanic where a player in such a referee role can be judged by their peers. If the head of the mercenary guild is giving bad event resolutions, then the lesser mercenaries might strip them of their role. Thus another player becomes the head of the mercenaries based on a simple vote of the players. In certain types of games, mercenary sub-GMs (those who've proven they know how to resolve combat conflicts) might get two votes reflecting how they know more about this style of play, in other games the vote might be limited to this elite group of players. You need to be careful that you don't get a powerful cabal of players contributing to vote each other into the key positions, a group who could destroy the livelihood of the game for everyone. There are ways to stop this of course, such as limiting players to voting privledges in only one of the GM types (eg. Combat, Magic or Social).

The other way that I've found really useful for helping players gain the basics of LARP is to run them through an introductory scenario in a very small groups that shows them the rules is a series of well defined encounters that lead them into the society shared by the rest of the players. Like the previous suggestion, this is suitable for campaign play because if it's done properly, it can be way too intensive and time consuming for a one off session. The person who would run this session would be the player responsible for bringing this new member into the group, or maybe they could call on the experience of one of the sub-GMs, or one of the Head GMs if they have time.

My wife and I (who actually met through LARP) have been working on a new LARP system on-and-off for a few years now, so we've got quite a few ideas about where certain ones we've played could be improved.

V

[buggy]

Ah yes, problem players exist, and they always will.  Our local larp community has been working for years on the "my character wouldn't do this," issue.  Well, it's more the, "tell me why my character is here" issue, to which the response is: you know your character better than me, you tell me why your character is here.  I think the best solution is managing expectations of players.  If you tell the players up front that the attitudes of "entertain me" and obstructionism aren't acceptable and that they should work with the other players to make a better game for all, they'll be in a better frame of mind to do so.

The specific game I'm running will almost certainly not have problems with player characters dying early -- it just isn't in genre -- and it shouldn't have a problem with players keeping other players out.  Again, that's something we've been working hard to drill into people's heads; it's more fun for everyone if people are included than if you try to exclude.  That works not only for excluding potential rivals, but also for trying to keep people out of danger.  Rather than keep someone out of danger, and exclude them from the game, go with them into danger and protect them when it happens.

Also, we're pretty clear about out of game expectations.  If Mr. Pink were going to be killed tonight (which isn't going to happen in the larp I'm going to run), I'd sit down with the player of Mr. Pink beforehand and explain everything out of game and give him options for a dramatically satisfying death and what he could do as a player afterwards.  That way there are no nasty surprises for Mr. Pink.

But that's kinda irrelevant to the larp I'm running.  It's called Lullaby of Broadway and is based off of classic Broadway musicals.  http://www.interactivitiesink.com/larps/broadway  It's a one shot weekend long game, well a series of them with no continuity of character or plot.  I expect that the majority of the player base will treat it just like any other LARP and that there will only be a few who take advantage of the abilities they are offered as being their own GMs.   It's tough to come up with a small introductory scenario with that sort of game.

Thanks for you advice though.  I'll continue posting ideas on the system.

[Callan S.]

Hi Buggy,

How do you currently manage when people should work to entertain others, and when they should stop doing that and just enjoy  entertainment given to them? It'd be self defeating if one person is trying to entertain another, but that person isn't paying attention to it (because he's trying to entertain someone else at the same time). How do you manage that issue, if you see it as an issue?

[buggy]

Well, with a LARP, I've found the focus isn't so much on entertaining others as it is interacting with others (unless you consider interacting with someone to be entertaining them).  But that's sort of the crux of pacing.  How do you tell a person that their interactions are monopolizing the game and not allowing others to interact, thus sort of cutting them out of the game?  That's really what I mean by increasing fun, I guess, making sure that all players feel they are a part of the game and not on the sidelines.

How do I do it?  Wow, that's tough.  I've never put that down on paper, and I'm not sure I have a formalized system in my mind. I have suggested to players that they include others, sometimes specific others, in what they were doing.  I have told players flat out that their interactions were holding up the game and that they needed to wrap them up.  And I've made people aware of the out of game temporal constraints of the event, for example that we only have the function space until 7PM and must wrap up by then.  But how do I teach the players to do it themselves, well, that's what I came here to get suggestions for.

But I don't have a formalize mechanism to govern interactions.  Hm.  I wonder how well something like that would go over in LARP? 

I hope I understood your question enough to provide a useful answer.

[Vulpinoid]

One of the observations I have about one-off LARP events is that most players start in clusters of similarly backgrounded characters and as the game progresses, these groups disperse and gradually reform into clusters of characters with like-minded goals.

Those characters who fail to break from their "background nature" to their "goal nature" are left on the sidelines and often feel left out. Many freeform LARPs that I've been a part of at conventions have dramatically suffered from this. I know the first couple of times I played, I was working on the assumption that LARP was like most other types of roleplaying and that the GM should provide a story for me. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the nature of LARP was completely different to Table-Top, and that those players who had the most fun were the ones who ran with the subtle hints provided by GMs and rounded up other players into interesting storylines. I guess this is the sort of thing that you're going for, but you need a critical mass of players with that mentality to achieve an event that's memorable for the right reasons.

Most standard LARP events work off the concept of a group of players who react to seizmic events provided by the GMs, events that shift the balance of the setting for all the players (for example, a key NPC is murdered and this works as a lure for a core group of players, persuading them into a certain story arc, the other players may be called in to help with the investigation/retaliation but typically they have their own scene specific events to react to).

A scene like this gives a bit of impetus to the game for half an hour to an hour, maybe longer if the players really get into it. I guess that's where the traditional rule-of-thumb of 1 GM to five players in a LARP has been developed. One GM can develop the storyline for a group, while another then heads over to another group to inspire them with a new plot twist. The true fun in this style of play comes into play when characters have multiple goals and are torn between which story arcs are more important to them.

I'd consider a token system, in which all players get the chance to direct story flow by offering a vote toward what type of plot twist they'd like to see come into play next. A plot twist could be generated every half hour or so, but the one that comes into play is the one that most players would like to see. As the session progresses towards its end, these plot twists would get more dramatic and confrontational, and the chances of each coming into play would be modified based on the event results earlier in the session.

For example: If we're working off an idea with competing theatre troupes in the 1930's all trying to get their version of a musical onto a single stage at the end of the session. Early in the session, we could have an audition scene where each of the two troupes chooses their lead actor and actress. A plot twist could be that the owner of the stage wants a comedy musical do the vote will be for the best comedians. Later in the session, a possible plot twist could be that the owner of the stage is found murdered, or maybe the Nazis invade town and the type of musical has to change dramatically. The final twist in the plot would come in when the competing theatre troupes face off against one another to show off what they want the show to be about. Maybe the head Nazi (or new stage owner, depending on earlier plot twists) is gay and wants to assert his sexuality through the musical, maybe they are after a musical without music and the players have to wrap their head around how this can be done (a la "Stomp!", or spoken word rap if the players think that this sort of thing could make for a humourous and satisfying ending). The game then ends with the curtain opening as the victorious theatre troupe gets ready to make their first performance.

To keep the mentality of "the show" happening, I'd divide the session into three or four acts, where each act the players get the chance to regain their vote tokens so that they can contribute to the next twist. The game would naturally develop politics as each player tries to get the others to vote their way in the next act's twist, or as they try to come up with a twist that will overthrow the current dominant theatre troupe.

At the end of each act, the next twist is revealed. These twists could be from a predetermined list that the session writer has developed, or optionally they could even be new twists that developed by the players through the course of play. It depends how freeform you want the session to become (perhaps newly developed plot-twists have their number of votes halved, to keep the tendency of the story to follow the writer's original goals). Once an act twist has been revealed, the viable twists for the next act are revealed to the players. 

If each player was given three or four tokens each scene, they might be able to vote on lesser plot twists as well, or these tokens could be used to gain successes in challenges during the course of play. Thereby forcing players to seriously consider whether their tokens are best spent on twists that affect play for everyone, or on their own benefit.

These ideas may be helpful for you, or they may be way off the mark. I guess the basic gist of what I'm saying is that you need a mechanic that pulls everyone into the story and makes them feel that they a voice in what's happening, and you need to make sure the action escalates to a natural conclusion.

Interactivity of this degree is something I was aiming toward a few years ago, but I've never had the chance to put it into practice so I haven't been able to see how successful it might have been.

V

[Callan S.]

Lets say you could handpick a few people to act as floor GM's, and you knew they were mature and whatever. In that case you could have time points - each player has tokens, each of which are worth a certain amount of time. When they want ajudication, they can go up to a floor GM and pay these tokens to 'buy' some of his time, during which he focuses on them. Of course they only have a limited amount of tokens, so they can't take up all the floor GM's time.

This includes the person who's stuck in the background of the action - he can make some signal to indicate his character stays but he's off to get a GM. Pay the token, bring back the GM and describe to him what he wants to do to get in on the action.

[Vulpinoid]

That's an elegant solution as well, because there will often be players who enjoy watching a scene unfold but won't necessarily want to be involved in the risks that the developing scene entails. They could contribute to a scene from the sidelines by offering their time tokens to keep a GM involved in a scene when otherwise the GM might have been called over to another developing scene.

The only catch here is that Mr. Young wants to be developing a system where the need for a player/GM dichotomy is minimized. While this idea of claiming GM time reinforces that notion.

Most of the successful LARPs I've been a part of have been run as a benevolent dictatorship, with a single GM or key player directing the flow of action within the game. A werewolf elder, king of the local court, lead theatre producer, the president, etc. They tend to delegate their responsibility to other "senior players" or "sub-GMs" where they think the flow of the game needs a bit more of a careful observation and manipulation. 

I guess its all a case of viewing the scene as a top-down model (with a few key individuals controlling the action), or a bottom-up model (where the group as a whole controls the destiny of the scene). When there is an interplay between these extremes it seems to work best.

If I were going to work with the "Time Token" concept, I'd ensure that there were less time tokens available than the total available GM time. For example, a 3 hour session with 5 GMs, where a token buys 5 minutes of GM time (12 tokens per hour), this would mean a maximum of 12x5x3 = 180 tokens distributed among the players. I'd cut that to 75% of the maximum to give our "senior players/GMs" a bit of chance to play for themselves.

If we were going with the plot twist voting concept, I'd let these "senior players/GMs" use these time tokens to vote toward the next scene's plot twists. This means that they get more of a say in upcoming storylines in exchange for the time they've spent mediating disputes for others (developing new storylines might even be limited to these "senior players"). A bit of a reward for the work that they've done, it might also make these players a bit more mercenary in competing for player's attention so that they gain a bit more control toward the overall story flow.

Such a system would require a badging convention where regular players have a white name badge while "senior players" have a red one, to differentiate who might suitable for conflict resolution, but most LARPs use a similar type of badging mechanisms anyway so this wouldn't be hard to incorporate.

V

[buggy]

A lot of good, interesting things have been said here and I need some time to absorb them before replying, but I did want to make a note of this:

One of the observations I have about one-off LARP events is that most players start in clusters of similarly backgrounded characters and as the game progresses, these groups disperse and gradually reform into clusters of characters with like-minded goals.

Those characters who fail to break from their "background nature" to their "goal nature" are left on the sidelines and often feel left out. Many freeform LARPs that I've been a part of at conventions have dramatically suffered from this. I know the first couple of times I played, I was working on the assumption that LARP was like most other types of roleplaying and that the GM should provide a story for me. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the nature of LARP was completely different to Table-Top, and that those players who had the most fun were the ones who ran with the subtle hints provided by GMs and rounded up other players into interesting storylines. I guess this is the sort of thing that you're going for, but you need a critical mass of players with that mentality to achieve an event that's memorable for the right reasons.

This is brilliant.  One of the things that had been mentioned on my LJ was that weekend long theater style larps of the 1990s tended to break down on Saturday afternoons with nothing happening and with some players feeling alienated, but I think you've managed to hit the nail on the head as to why. 

Friday night is usually all about getting into the game: learning your character, discovering the world, meeting the other characters even though your character may have known them for years, maybe even testing out the waters of the game mechanics and so forth.  The game doesn't really get into earnest until Saturday morning when people start really talking about what their characters are up to and what they wish to accomplish this weekend.  Alliances are made, lines are formed, and the game begins.

Saturday evening is the big climax, usually there is a big event and everything comes to a head.  Sunday is denouement.  Sometimes the big event is Sunday, but that causes Saturday evening to drag as well.

But your analysis crystallized the reason for the Saturday afternoon drag.  By Saturday afternoon, the more goal-oriented players have their wheels in motion.  The less goal oriented ones are sitting on the sidelines and the game slowly passes them by unless the goal oriented ones make an effort to drag them in.  But still, with nothing that needs to be done until Saturday night, the game drags.

Oh, we've come a long way since then, we make sure to have scheduled events to occupy the players all during the game.  We put in a number of different goals with different "popping" times, so a player may need to get one thing done by Saturday afternoon and another thing done by Sunday morning, for example.  Also these goals tend to involve different groups of people to get players circulating all over the game.  The "big event" has evolved into number of smaller events set at different times during the game, thus giving more spotlight time to different players.  And the GMs are proactive about plots and characters, making sure that things are progressing at a good pace, slowing things down and pushing as appropriate.

I've been doing that sorts of thing for years, but it never really hit me *why* things were the way they were.  Your analysis helped tremendously there.  Thanks!

I promise I'll look at the rest of the messages and reply soon.  Thanks again.