So used to run a Changeling LARP. My co-ST and I ran a weekly game with about 10 players for around a year and half maybe two years. For the most part it was really fun experience, though I think we could have done a better job. Oh well, there's always next game.

My co-ST and I have strong Sim tendencies, we like the reality of the game to be consistant. One of the intersting things about Changeling is that the game reality is fairly flexable. To reflect this one of our house rules was "If it's cool you can at lest try to do it" Which I think helped along some of the more exciting moments of the game. Our player found lots of creative solutions to the situations we posed.

We tended to make problems fairly open ended. The Baron would like to take over the freehold, what are you going to do? This kid is a changeling but he's in some kind of coma, how are you going to wake him up? There's a metal hospital using banality in pill from to "treat" Changelings what should you do? (make him look bad some the rest of nobility won't support him; use magic to making him think he's butterfly and needs to come out now, rescue the patients and burn the place down.)

I think it some cases this was good but in others the players would have liked a little more direction.

Most of the problems with the game where social. Some players found others not fun to play with, there was some teenage drama going on. None of the players were really intersted in exploring the political issues we had on the table. I'm still not sure how to fix these kind of things. I think starting with a better core group would help, but I wanted to be able to rope in random people and have people bring friends without it being huge deal and that wasn't happening.

So, where do you think the problems were coming from?  The social layer, or the system itself?  Mind's Eye Theatre is a pretty wonky system, if that's what you're using, and Changeling is an interesting but poorly implemented game IMHO. 

But some of the issues you mention sound like there's a strong social component to them -- it reminds me of the recent RPG.Net thread where someone Photoshopped the cover of the Vampire LARP rules to read, "Let's dress up and act petty."

You will never get good political roleplay out of Changeling as written, because the setting refuses to make decisions by the ruling elite actually affect the lives of the people they are supposed to be oppressing.  There are, for instance, no taxes (which is how a feudal system works).  The resources that the nobles control are, by law, open to anyone who needs to use them.  Would-be democratic revolutionaries cannot propose new systems that would demonstrably affect the problems presented in the game's typical situations, because the typical crisis in a Changeling game is a monster (chimera, mundane, whatever) that needs to be taken down.  A noble with a couple knights will do this better, faster, and more efficiently than a congress with a militia.  In Chris Chinn's terminology, the political 'choices' provided are almost all bunk choices.  If you want to tease some political roleplay out of Changeling, you have to pretty profoundly change the way the setting works so that the player-characters will have specific interests that they rely on that are threatened.  Otherwise you will be reduced to dressing up and acting petty -- that's incredibly accurate, Danny.

At lot of the problems seemed social to me. The MET rules are fairly wonky but our system worked for the most part. The were a bunch of implicit rules that kept the power in check. For instantance we only let trusted players play Grumps. And we knew how powerful any given spell should be and didn't let people do wonky magic. We also used Grapevine which was huge help.

I guess the players just wanted differnet things out of the game. The mists of time are hindering me here. I can't think of good example.

Also Changeling is setting that, for some reason, really makes people want to play Mary Sues. That is charcaters that are like them but better. I think the most Mary Sueish Character I ever made was an NPC for that game. She made the best cookies *ever* and fed them to people.

I think part of the politics problem was that no one was intersted in Anarchism. The primary setting of the game was Anarchist freehold that was struggling to remain free form a Traditionalist Baron. The Reformest Countess was keeping the whole situation is check. But that aspect of the game never really took off. Maybe it was something we did.

What games do you think have good political systems?

Anna wrote: I think part of the politics problem was that no one was intersted in Anarchism. The primary setting of the game was Anarchist freehold that was struggling to remain free form a Traditionalist Baron. The Reformest Countess was keeping the whole situation is check. But that aspect of the game never really took off. Maybe it was something we did.

Well, I wouldn't say it killed our game, but it did make so that the whole situation was never the real focus of events.  I think what we wanted was for people to care about the different system of rulership and be emotional invested in them. This didn't happen at all.  And I'm not sure it was realist goal. We cared about that stuff coming into the game, but the players didn't and we could covey our feeling very well.

Did the players have any reason to care about the system of government?

Would anyone lose their livelihood if the Baron took the freehold?
Did anyone think that they'd succumb to the Mists if the Baron took over?
Was the Baron known to do anything destructive or morally objectionable?
...summon demons?
...kill dissenters?
...deny access to freeholds, even?
Did any characters have a prior history with the Baron, and a personal reason to oppose him?
Was somebody's sister going to get raped if the Baron won?

In short, did anyone have anything at stake in the conflict, or were they all observers?

Anna,

Welcome to the Forge!

I wrote Grapevine. So you can guess that I have a lot of experience with Mind's Eye Theater. I also helped run a Changeling LARP for a year or two. I loved Changeling, and bought all the books for it. I've seen a lot of the problems you describe.

Joshua's points are excellent. The Changeling books talk about politics a lot, but it is only talk. Nothing in the game actually supports politics. Instead, it supports other interesting things like amassing huge amounts of XP to grow into a titan of chimerical power.

One of Changeling's greatest weaknesses is that it is not focused enough. Me, I don't play Changeling for politics. I think its greatest strength is its struggle of fantasy vs. mundanity. But some people like the feudal system, while others like the high fantasy adventure. Sadly, Changeling overreaches itself. It allows for all of these things passably, but it does none of them well. That lack of focus ran the game line right off the shelves.

Vampire is a little better for politics, because it has a system for it -- Status, Boons, and the like. I've even had good politics using Werewolf thanks to Renown, Sept Positions and Challenges. But Changeling doesn't have any of that -- it has a rigid feudal structure with little social mobility.

But you want to know the best political LARP system I've ever seen? Take a look at this: Are You A Werewolf?

Sure, it's not what most people think of when you hear "LARP." But just try it with a dozen friends. Watch the arguments and alliances and backstabbing bloom. See how the rules actually support politics? There is something important at stake (your life), there is a political process in place (voting), and there are reasons to lie and deceive (the secret identities of the werewolves and the seer). It's a perfect storm, and it works every time. That's good game design.

Adam wrote:
But you want to know the best political LARP system I've ever seen? Take a look at this: Are You A Werewolf?

I'm gonna quote two of Josh's posts, make some points about Pendragon, then try to bring this home to Changeling:

Joshua wrote: Pendragon may also support some good politics, but I've only heard about the game second-hand by raving fanboys.

Joshua wrote:

Was the Baron known to do anything destructive or morally objectionable?
...summon demons?
...kill dissenters?
...deny access to freeholds, even?

Did any characters have a prior history with the Baron, and a personal reason to oppose him?
Was somebody's sister going to get raped if the Baron won?

In short, did anyone have anything at stake in the conflict, or were they all observers?

Enh.  I'm going to respectfully disagree with Brand and say what he's talking about is exactly the kind of 'political' play that I'd expect out of Changeling.  The key is to connect the big abstract politics with the personal lives of the characters.  Politics are only important when they hit close to home.

Politics is not activists waving signs and defending the rights of people they don't know.  Politics is people with opposing stakes in an open question, having to determine between them how they will resolve the problem.

Joshua wrote:
Enh.  I'm going to respectfully disagree with Brand and say what he's talking about is exactly the kind of 'political' play that I'd expect out of Changeling.  The key is to connect the big abstract politics with the personal lives of the characters.  Politics are only important when they hit close to home.

Brand_Robins wrote: Ah, see I thought you were focusing on politics in terms of resources, governmental control, ideation, and social status...

Joshua wrote: West Wing Geeking Addendum -- The best West Wing episodes aren't actually about the politics at all; the politics are used as a backdrop for compelling character exploration.  No, not in the form of "making tough moral decisions" but in exploring why Sam Seaborne is so driven to seek justice for people he doesn't know, juxtaposed with him finding out that his father has been having an affair for ten years.  Or the clash of Sam's idealism with the brutal legacies of Cold War spies.  In lots of ways, West Wing isn't about politics as it is about the people who operate the political machine.

Brand_Robins wrote:
Ah, see I thought you were focusing on politics in terms of resources, governmental control, ideation, and social status -- West Wing politics, as it were. But if you're talking more about romantic politics, then we are in agreement. I just think it is important to differentiate the two because they operate on different axes, and because its easy to confuse one with the other when thinking "I want a game about politics."

Wow, yes politics that effect the characters in personal emotional ways. That is what I want in game I'm running. I not really sure how to do that though.

In the changeling game we set up the situation and hoped the players would build character that were invested in it. That didn't happen. I do think having the players make character and give input on the situation would help.

What does Pendragon do to support this kind of play?

Adam

That's for the welcome. Grapevine is very helpfull program and really aperate you writing it.

While we envisioned the game centered on poltics, we really did end up explore banality vs. the dreaming a lot. Most of the major villians were hallbrigers of banality in some way.

The one time I've played  Are You A Werewolf? it was fairly political but didn't have a lot of roleplaying going on. This was in part because I was playing as part of board game night, so the group wasn't very focused on roleplaying.

Anna wrote:
In the changeling game we set up the situation and hoped the players would build character that were invested in it. That didn't happen. I do think having the players make character and give input on the situation would help.

What does Pendragon do to support this kind of play?

Anna wrote:
Wow, yes politics that effect the characters in personal emotional ways. That is what I want in game I'm running. I not really sure how to do that though.

In the changeling game we set up the situation and hoped the players would build character that were invested in it. That didn't happen. I do think having the players make character and give input on the situation would help.

Amen to Brand, first of all. Let players create chunks of the game-world, notice what they get invested in and excited about, and then threaten it -- always a good way to mobilize people.

On politics specifically, I'm a great fan of Shakespeare's history plays, which are marvellous examples of politics-as-drama and might be good sources for you. (Even the badly written ones, e.g. Henry VI).

I also had some success in creating a highly political roleplaying campaign some years back (I wrote the system, wrote the setting, GM'd, the works) by a very, very simple expedient, drawn directly from the Shakespeare plays I loved: Make the protagonists the dukes, princes, queens, and barons themselves. There were some NPCs of equal power to the player-characters, but no NPCs of greater power than the PCs, which meant that anything the players wanted to do affected the politics of the setting automatically -- even if they just wanted to go off and be alone for a while ("Sorry, m'lud, but if you don't receive the Ambassador in person, it will be a great insult and start a war!"). This is the opposite of the traditional White Wolf model: You don't make the player-characters the least politically powerful people around and have uber-NPCs control everything, you give all the political power to the player characters and make the NPCs the pawns.

To translate this to your scenario: The Traditionalist Baron should be a player-character. The Reformist Countess should be a player-character. The whole Anarchist Freehold should be represented by one player character only - okay, maybe a couple if there are factions -- if not relegated to NPC status altogether on the grounds of being politically puny. Any other PCs should be big, powerful forces in their own right, like, oh, the King's High Constable investigating the situation, or the Countess's outcast brother and his army of bandits, and so on, and so on.

Sydney wrote: To translate this to your scenario: The Traditionalist Baron should be a player-character. The Reformist Countess should be a player-character. The whole Anarchist Freehold should be represented by one player character only - okay, maybe a couple if there are factions -- if not relegated to NPC status altogether on the grounds of being politically puny. Any other PCs should be big, powerful forces in their own right, like, oh, the King's High Constable investigating the situation, or the Countess's outcast brother and his army of bandits, and so on, and so on.

Joshua, for having no LARP experience, you give good advice about how to make it work!

To all the MET games I've played has clung the unspoken idea that the chronicle should go on and on with no end in sight. This idea, I think, causes people to design LARP settings in stasis. If the political structure is poised on the brink of collapse, how can you be sure there will be a game to play twelve months from now?

Instead, Anna, set up a LARP that would play really well in five sessions. It doesn't matter if the game runs longer than that: get to the good stuff now. When you come to the end of those five sessions, if there's still life in the game, plan another five. If it's winding down, kill it and start something new.

To create the kind of politics you want, try a technique that I'm using for a LARP system I'm writing:

1. Sketch out a setting in broad strokes. "There's a Barony, with the main freehold. Then there's this other freehold that's just been discovered by commoners."
2. Have your players create characters for the setting. As they do so, prompted by their questions, fill in the detail of the setting. When they ask things like, "Can I play the Baron?" say yes. If they ask for detail like "What House does the Count belong to?" say, "I don't know, what House would be cool?"
3. Tell your players to write down on their character sheets three to five things their character cares about most deeply.
4. Design the LARP completely around the those things.

Read what people care about. You'll be able to tell pretty quickly if nobody gives a rip about the new freehold that's been discovered. Look for common themes among characters: you might be surprised to discover that three or four people are really passionate about exploring the Dreaming. That's something to use.

Then threaten those things. Don't only threaten them with NPCs: create situations that pit those things against one another. If a bunch of characters care about upholding the Escheat and a bunch of other characters want to create more Dreamers, design a situation in which breaking the Escheat would help create more Dreamers.

If you need to give one particular character grief, pit two things she cares about against themselves. Force the lady courtier to choose between her True Love and her loyalty to the King.

I ran a one-shot Changeling game this way last September, and we had a blast.

Adam wrote: 4. Design the LARP completely around those things.

Joshua wrote:
You will never get good political roleplay out of Changeling as written, because the setting refuses to make decisions by the ruling elite actually affect the lives of the people they are supposed to be oppressing.  There are, for instance, no taxes (which is how a feudal system works).  The resources that the nobles control are, by law, open to anyone who needs to use them.  Would-be democratic revolutionaries cannot propose new systems that would demonstrably affect the problems presented in the game's typical situations, because the typical crisis in a Changeling game is a monster (chimera, mundane, whatever) that needs to be taken down.  A noble with a couple knights will do this better, faster, and more efficiently than a congress with a militia.  In Chris Chinn's terminology, the political 'choices' provided are almost all bunk choices.  If you want to tease some political roleplay out of Changeling, you have to pretty profoundly change the way the setting works so that the player-characters will have specific interests that they rely on that are threatened.  Otherwise you will be reduced to dressing up and acting petty -- that's incredibly accurate, Danny.

Sorry to double post, but I forgot I'd reworked the Changeling LARP rules once myself:
Again, please learn from my mistakes (I was kind of angry at the time and I was still trying, more-or-less, to hold on to the basic stylistic elements of both the Changeling and White Wolf milieu.)
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/chxart.html
Thanks for looking, if you get a chance.

PS. Yes, one person should represent an entire political movement. I agree. It makes for more dynamic diplomacy.

Thanks everyone. While I'm not planing on running another LARP soon. I'll keep your advice in mind when I do. I am planing on trying to apply to it to some tabletop one shots I'll be running over winter break.

On Bunks: We used a system modeled on Jester's Rules from the players guide. Basically some one does a bunk and we assign a number of points based on how long it took, how it fit with what they were trying to do, and impressive-ness. It worked well for us.