[Kabuki LARP] lar

[Mike Holmes]

In my indoor games, I usually want to avoid having players physically chasing each other around, so there's usually an after-combat escape rule that says the opponents cannot re-initiate the engagement for a certain amount of time (e.g. five minutes) and cannot chase or follow each other during that time (allowing either party to escape, if that player wants to, without turning into a footrace). Though the original intent of such rules was safety, hence requiring no in-game-world explanation to justify them, I've found that players often interpret them, on a different metagame level, as a formal "end of scene" process. A rare example of scene framing in larp.

Fascinating. I remember playing a Pseudo-LARP based on the module "Prison Planet" for Traveller at GenCon circa 1985. The idea is that you walk up, roll up a character for Traveller, come up with some crime that they've committed, and then are deposited on the prison planet - meaning you just wander about and talk to the other players, make deals, etc. Just a free-for-all. Equipment and other physical holdings are represented by cards made out by the game admins.

Well at one point a player comes up and shows us this card that has on it something like "Briefcase with 1 Million Credits." What ensued was about a dozen players chasing this guy pell mell through UW Parkside at full speed. That nearly got the game banned from the Con. So I very much understand the need to have such "escape" mechanisms.

I'm just wondering for the game in question what methods might be being used. Is there any follow up, or no?

Mike

[Albert of Feh]

Well, I'm back and recovered from a weekend in the mountains, and now it's time to dig in again...

I think I'm leaning towards the end of the conflict acting as the end of scene (or at least end of that issue in the scene). I want the mechanic to also potentially function for social and mental conflicts, and I could see things getting bogged down if one player just keeps on hammering over and over until he gets enough Payoff to accomplish what he wants.

On the other hand, Leaving out the auto-escape clause does a lot more for the brinkmanship at the lower end of conflict. Even if you only need a minimal Payoff to conclusively exit the danger situation, that still pushes you to hold out until you have an acceptable chance of winning a strike (or pushing your opponent to strike while he still has an acceptable chance of failure).

Let's see. What happens if we try this:
The Winner of a conflict (Striker if he won, defender if the striker did not) may spend a small amount of his Payoff (probably just a single point) to officially End the conflict for the scene, whether by escaping, sending the opponent away, or simply imposing the fact as social reality.

The Loser of a conflict, regardless of how much anyone has accomplished their goals, may spend some honor at the end of a conflict 'round' to do the same, but must do it in such a way that puts him on the disadvantage (i.e. physically retreating or making social concessions).

If you're a character that relies heavily on honor as your currency (namely, the characters that start with higher honor scores and are more strongly placed within the social structure) and you want out of a conflict, you'll have to accept a strogner honor penalty to escape if you're not winning, and if you're running out of honor, you may not even have enough to do so, requiring that you still play to win, if at lower stakes.

[Mike Holmes]

Ooh. How about you only lose honor if you do retreat? If you stay, allowing your opponent to, potentially, hammer on you again, you don't lose any honor. Or maybe just less? Put another way, the cost to stay is less than the cost to escape?

Cool.

Mike

[Albert of Feh]

Ooh. How about you only lose honor if you do retreat? If you stay, allowing your opponent to, potentially, hammer on you again, you don't lose any honor.

If you struck and missed, your opponent is not going to be doing much of any hammering. You've already lost some honor, and if you want to get out at that point, you may do so at the cost of more (unless your opponent opts to end it first).

If you struck and hit, you can end it at a small cost of Payoff.

If your opponent struck and hit, you haven't lost any honor, but may spend some to retreat, if so desired.

If your opponent struck and missed, you will have a very small Payoff, probably just enough to end the conflict without loss of honor.

...Is what I basically arrived at. It sounds like we're saying the same thing.

-Albert

[Mike Holmes]

So are you going to publih this somewhere? I really like where it's going.

Mike

[Albert of Feh]

Well, the primary purpose of this is to act as the core mechanic for the game I'm running this weekend. At the very least, the game as a whole will probably end up online to give interested players an opportunity to look at the whole document.

I can't say I've given much thought beyond that, but the idea of beefing it up a bit and perhaps producing some sort of independent one-shot-package or perhaps even a more complete game has some appeal.

...But first I need to get everything ready for Saturday. I've been very happy with the work I've put into the core mechanics, but I still need to have setting and fifteen players' worth of situation set up and ready to go by Saturday evening.

-Albert

[Albert of Feh]

I have completed version 2 of the system and setting document. These two documents are still missing some details, notably some description of Kabuki Color and the less mechanical components of a character. But here it is:

http://www.stanford.edu/~awa/KabukiSetting.html">setting
http://www.stanford.edu/~awa/KabukiSystem.html">mechanics

[Mike Holmes]

Cool. Those sites were mostly what I was looking for. Thanks,

Mike

[TheTris]

I'm late commenting here, but your fans mechanic is brilliant.  I had an idea to make conflict faster and still flavourful - though I don't think there is much wrong with your system.

Fans with numbers on (1 to 20)

Each person chooses a number using the fan.

The higher number wins, but only if it is within 5 of the lower number.  The higher number chosen is the degree of success that whoever wins enjoys.

The more you risk, the more the contest can go against you, but the more you stand to gain if you have been slightly more aggressive than your opponent.

An extension of this is to adjust the amount by which a player can exceed his opponents bid by according to his skill - a master duelist can be as much as 9 above his opponent in a duel, whereas an untrained child might only have a margin of 2.

[Albert of Feh]

That gets a similar idea for bidding risk, but unfortunately lacks the main pacing characteristics I was aiming for when I created the system.

The actual game happened a couple of weeks ago. Overall, it was a success. Once my finals are done, I may discuss the revisions of the basic system and ponder where to take it from there.

But now I have to get back to writing about nuclear weapons.