Hey all,

Some time ago, I brought up larps in general in this thread, but today I would like to revisit the idea by presenting an actual larp rulebook. This evening, I finished this semester's revision of the Mass Acres rulebook and posted it to http://www.angelfire.com/games/freerpg/mass_acres/ specifically so that you all on the Forge can look at it. The website for the larp is out of my hands at the moment, but here is its link: http://www.geocities.com/mass_acres/

As a proof-of-concept, I ran a larp for a while based on the FASA game Shadowrun. To make the game more appealing to the local gamers, I stripped these rules down into Hunters in the Shadows. This larp never got off the ground, but a couple friends wanted to run an Highlander-style immortals larp and invited me to help, so I resurrected the hunters rules to form the core of the Mass Acres rules. Having based the larp rules on an existing, extensive tabletop game, I have never been at a loss for rules to cover any particular situation. On the other hand, it also influences the color, and to an extent, the premise of the game.

I have no intention of ever publishing these rules--that is not the point. I am presenting the actual rules from a LARP for which I am actually a gamemaster. My point is to open discussion from just tabletop games to other forms of gaming.

Please feel free to make any comments or ask any questions regarding these rules or my experience running Mass Acres.

Later,
Grant

Hi Grant,

I'm going to start by asking a lot of questions. My first impression of these rules is that they are way too tabletop-y rather than larp-y, but to a large extent that depends on the general framework of how the game is run and on what you want the game to do.

Let's start with the basics:

How many players?

How long a duration for a game event? (The experience rules indicate that you intend a multi-event ongoing game, but for now I want to focus on just one meeting.)

How many "officials" (people empowered to make rulings about the state of the world, whether you call them gamemasters or something else)?

You have a lot of rules for system, but few indications of how these rules are put into effect on the live stage. For example, your rules start with a description of Boston's neighborhoods. Do players physically travel to these neighborhoods to do things (and if so, what)? Or are portions of the playing space designated as representing certain neighborhoods? Or must players narrate their characters travelling to these neighborhoods and doing things with a GM? Or do characters not travel to these neighborhoods at all? (In which case, why is a description of them the very first thing in the rules?)

How are skills that affect, or yield information about, the world (rather than another player-character) actually used in play? What does the player actually do? Does he, for instance, go to a gamemaster and say, I'm using my Police Procedures skill to investigate this crime scene, and the gamemaster tells the results? Or must the player do some real investigating of the scene using some sort of pre-arranged hidden clues?

If I fire a gun at a target twenty meters away, how does the target know he's been fired at?

How might the motor vehicle skill be used?

"Ghost barrier creates a dome of glowing power which surrounds the caster..." No it doesn't. Not in the real world. So in the real world, how does it work? How do other players know the caster is surrounded by a dome of glowing power?

It appears that all this stuff has to be narrated out of character, often off-camera, and most of it has to be refereed. Even stuff that would normally be possible to do for real in a LARP, like leadership, intimidation, and negotiation, are represented by skills in the system. If I'm trying to buy something another player has, and the player refuses the deal, can I use the "negotiation" skill to force him to accept it anyway against his will (assuming I win the test)? Can I force another player-character accept my "leadership" by winning a test? (If so, for how long?) Or am I expected to mostly be using those skills on off-camera characters or NPC actor characters?

I've seen LARP systems with this many rules before, but all of them focus on the real-world implementation of each action in the system. For example, a player casting a "wall of fire" spell might have to indicate the effect of the spell by placing a ten-foot piece of red yarn or rope (which he must have ready) on the ground where the wall is supposed to be. In theory, all the other players recognize what the yarn represents and can behave appropriately towards it, such as counting damage on themselves if they pass through it. In theory, no referee is even required for this. (In practice, players need to be reminded of rules and complex multi-player actions bog down anyway.) But at least some semblance of simultaneous real-time action can be sustained. That doesn't appear possible in Mass Acres. What it looks like is, just about any use of a character ability brings real-time play to a halt, requiring the character to resolve the effects with a GM or requiring everyone to start playing an elaborate tabletop-like combat system. (I can picture two groups of players across a room from each other having a gunfight, trying to resolve it by shouting out numbers and procedures between them, until someone says the heck with it, lets just find a table and get out some miniatures and play this out.)

One important missing rule is when does combat begin? Since everything changes from real-time action to turn-based resolution at that moment, it can lead to some problems if it's not clear. For instance:

PLAYER 1: I pull a gun.

PLAYER 2: (Runs away)

PLAYER 1: Wait! You can't do that, combat was started and I should have initiative first.

PLAYER 2 (after being rounded up by a GM and brought back to the scene): All you said was you were pulling a gun, sure I can run away, I did it didn't I?

I'm confused by the rules for Immortals. There's no information suggesting that player-characters can be generated as Immortals. So how are these rules relevant? (Or are all the player-characters Immortals? If so, you might want to mention that much earlier in the rules, like perhaps in the first sentence.)

Finally, what do players actually do in the game other than fight? Are the GM's planning to introduce scenario elements into the game, things for the player-characters to explore? Mysteries to solve, advantages to strive for, important NPCs to deal with? As a player, do I have any reason to try to accomplish anything other than (1) attempt to recruit as many and as powerful allies as I can, and if successful then (2) go out and try to kill everybody else?

The police roles can be especially problematic. I've been cast in LARPs in security-chief roles several times, usually with a stated goal to "prevent crime" or "keep the peace" -- which given the overall scenario amounts to "go out and try to prevent the rest of the game from happening" -- which is obviously impossible as it is vital to the interests of the GMs as well as all of the other players that the character fails to do so. You want to avoid putting players in that situation at all costs. This is not a problem if the police characters are rogue cops with their own agendas. But if that's the case, you might want to say so before players select their factions. Being a dutiful law officer in almost any kind of LARP is unrewarding.

The style of LARP you're dealing with is one you're apparently already familiar with, while I'm not (though I can point to other ways of doing things that you might not be familiar with, if you're interested). My comments and questions probably sound highly critical, but I need to learn your feelings about these issues. My ultimate goal here is to try to see past "that's not the way I would do it" and focus on any instances of "that won't do what you want it to do" that might exist. So please, if you can answer some of these questions I think I can be much more constructive and helpful further down the road.

- Walt

Hey Walt,

Excellent questions. Keep them coming.

This is why asking for outside opinions is so critical to designing an accessible game. Allow me to address this first batch of questions:

There are currently three gamemasters, but we would like to have at least four. The player base from last year was approximately two dozen per event. Ideally, we would have over fifty players. The game session begins promptly at eight o'clock and goes until approximately twelve-thirty.

We play at the UMass Campus Center every other Friday night, which gives us a comfortably large space with both corridors and gathering spaces. One room is assigned to us by the campus center staff, and that room is our game-ops room. Important locations in the game are represented by specific areas within the campus center, and a list of those locations is written on a board in the game-ops room. We try to keep the list consistent from session to session, but because game-ops moves and the space is both public and used by other groups, modifications are necessary.

Part of the suspension of disbelief necessary to the game is that walking from one side of the campus center to the other represents traveling from one side of Boston to the other, whether by car or by foot. Because the players can only travel so quickly, the method is mere color. For example, a drive by would simply by a couple people walking by, describing their car as part of the combat scene. Every player is in-game wherever they happen to be. Only gamemasters have the privilege of saying they are elsewhere. If the player is not in a designated area, he has the option of saying he is anywhere within the city that he likes, but others still have the right to be in that same location.

Certain skills are mostly used with a gamemaster. Only a gamemaster has access to certain information, so the player must walk up to a gamemaster, preferably in between scenes, and ask to begin a scene with the gamemaster. That gm will ask for the appropriate skill tests as necessary.

We have no budget for props, so investigations are inevitably conducted narratively, just as in table-top play. Important items are represented by index cards which indicate the name of the item and any extra rules which apply to it.

Generally, players exist in a default state which we can call a roleplaying scene. Time flows roughly as we would expect it to and players generally do everything in-character. However, combat is a very different beast. When one character wishes to enter combat, he must indicate this to any players in the area. Generally, this is verbal and goes along the lines of, "Bang! I shoot [Player X]!" This tells everyone they must choose to participate in the combat or vacate the premises, if it is reasonable to do so. After this 'surprise round', combat proceeds normally as described in the rules, with players standing for their characters, as if it were a live-action chess match.

If a gamemaster is present, he will control the flow of the combat scene, resolving the order of actions and mediating rules questions. Otherwise, one of the players will usually fill this role. It is important to note that our standing agreement is that any terms two players can negotiate between themselves is binding to the extent that it does not affect other players unduly. This principle applies at all times, both within combat and without.

The motor vehicle skills are largely color. However, a situation may present itself where a character feels that the direction of the scene is properly determined by making a skill test. For example, one player is chasing another, and they are "in cars".

Within the game world, Ghost Barrier does create a glowing field. However, for most people, this color is irrelevant. When it is relevant, e.g. within combat, the caster must narrate the effect, or simply tell everyone.

You are correct in saying that out-of-game matters bring play to a halt. However, whenever a matter cannot be resolved in-game, the rules must come into play, just as in table-top play. This is unfortunate, but it is one of the facts of life for non-combat larps. This is such a fundamental matter that I would prefer you start a new thread if you would like to debate the issue. Again mentioning suspension-of-disbelief, time flows whether or not an action would reasonably require less time. Time is a very flexible thing within a larp.

The Immortals thing is best described as an oversight. All characters must be approved by a gamemaster for play. The standing rule for making an Immortal character is that a back-story must be submitted for approval before the character itself can be approved. The same is true for Mages. Also, there are essentially three 'races': normals, Immortals, and Mages. Immortal powers and spells are exclusive.

The run has a decently extensive back-story at this point, having been started at the beginning of last semester. Plot generally revolves around the factions and their goals and relative power levels. Without giving away too much detail, there is a shadow faction that has goals which drive the meta-plot of the game, causing all sorts of negative emotions and havoc. In out-of-game terms, this provides an excuse for the players to indulge in their inevitably anti-social behavior. It is known to the Immortal players that a Gathering is happening in the here-and-now of Boston.

Saying the police are a problem is like saying the Pacific is slightly larger than a tea-cup. However, there are people who enjoy stymieing the other players. This gives them one more legitimized means for doing so. In theory, the police are the in-game reason why the other players cannot do just anything they please, including carrying around the biggest guns they can manage. In reality, the cops are just as crooked as the other characters. However, their actions drive the storyline, just like any other faction's. As necessary, we gamemasters play police or other law-enforcement characters to apply the brakes to excessive zeal on the players' parts.

Your comments do indicate a lack of familiarity with our style of play. However, your comments and questions give me a lot to think about in terms of drawing new players and making the game as accessible as possible. I thank you for them.

I can see that a revised rulebook is in order. Now, I wish that I had asked for outside opinions sooner.

Later,
Grant

Hi Grant,

Somewhere along the line I got a rather false impression of how much actual play of this game you'd already conducted. (I thought I was commenting on a future plan based on the rules you posted.) That changes everything. And you're quite justified in reacting to my saying "such and such might be an issue" with a heartfelt, "well, duh!"

For your successful play so far, congratulations!

In any event, I hope my previous comments are helpful in pointing out aspects of actual game play procedure (such as loudly announcing an action to start combat, or generating an Immportal PC) that are not actually covered in the rules. This is probably not a major issue -- most of the procedural matters would probably become obvious to anyone observing the play for a few minutes -- but it might make it a bit easier for newcomers if the text covered them. Perhaps even in a separate document, which could omit the detailed skill, magic, and Immortal powers lists and focus more on the generalities of how play is conducted, including some of the information you just laid out in your post.

Outside of the combat system, just about all the elements you describe are things I've used or done myself in LARPs, such as the mapping of the playing space as a compressed virtual version of a larger world, use of item cards, the fluidity of time, and the faction-based plots. Including the shadow faction; the MIT Assassins Guild hybrid Assassin-SIL LARPs always had the same shadow faction, called SWORD; everyone knew it existed but never, from game to game, who was in it (these were two-week games with no character continuity from game to game).

(Warning: shadow factions can have a larger advantage than the GMs sometimes intend or realize. Typically a shadow faction is designed to have a pre-placed mole in each of the game's other factions, while the shadow faction itself has perfect loyalty. So the shadow faction has security and the other factions have none. This is a difficult advantage to overcome, despite the difference in numbers.)

Using item cards makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. There may also be opportunities to use card and paper mechanisms in other ways that you might not have thought of. (A card is a poor substitue for "the real thing" but it can be far better than having to elicit information from a GM, especially for actions outside of combat.) For example, you can scatter face-down cards with clues written on them at a crime scene. (This can be done while "the police" -- in this case a GM -- has the scene cordoned off temporarily.) On the back of each card, face up, is the skill and difficulty level required for a player-character to pick up the card, such as: "Police Procedure 3" (for a piece of physical evidence) or "Computers 4" (for information obtainable by hacking a computer).

The one question I still have is how the Social skills Intimidation, Leadership, and Negotiation are used in play. Especially, can they be used on player-characters in some way? Unlike most of the skills, magic, etc. that are usable mainly in combat or in off-camera actions, these skills, if applicable to player-characters, would appear to intrude abstract resolution into play that would otherwise be live action.

Beyond that, I think further discussion should be based on addressing any concerns you might have about your game. Are there elements that you would like to try to improve? Do you have concerns about the future course of play? Are you happy with your current player gender ratio?

- Walt