So I made a larp. I may have mentioned it before. So, ladies, gentlemen, digital echoes, galactic supersoul clusters and even sad onions 0-3! I present to you – Blip. (Check back for updates, 02.02.16. Let me know, if you run it.)
Blip. (and the stop is part of the title) is a space tragedy larp for three to four players. You can read how it's played in the .pdf above. Instead, let me regale its history.
In the far off summer of 2014 I went to the Larpwriter Summer School (LWSS). It was a life changing experience, but that's a tale for a different time. At LWSS there were 3 important things that came together. We played White Death, which was later referenced in a talk about the verbal/physical design decision. I.e., White Death is an almost purely physical game, with what little verbality it has being unintelligible. I started wondering what the inverse would be – a game that is almost completely verbal, but still counts as a larp and not a tabletop RPG.
Over the course of 4 hours I had a prototype. This is where the third thing came in – we had access to a black box during the evenings. So I jumped at the chance to test my newly born gameling. It... went poorly, but not in a crash and burn and cry in the corner kind of way. It failed better. I got a lot of good feedback from the players and a lot of good observations.
Most notably, I dropped an entire section of spaceflight theory that is cool to know, but has absolutely no bearing on the game. I wanted to have a second test of it, but things did the thing they do best – happened – and I didn't get my second playtest in.
However, at the end of LWSS I signed up the game for Blackbox Horsens. Which meant that I had to eventually bring it over from paper to a printable format. Thanks for the push, Simon!
The game was mostly stuck in a state of mulling for the rest of the year. I had my 2nd run only at the very beginning of 2015. It failed even better. I hadn't given enough basis for the characters, even as thin as they are in the end. This run also prompted a range of usability improvements. This was also the occasion to try making a blackbox in my own home, which worked wonderfully!
I did want to have a third run before going to Denmark, but it never came together. So my last test was also my first "public" run. And, despite being written on the plane/train, it went wonderfully. The expectations were clear, the characters worked and the drama, OH!, the drama! A bit of sacrifice, a bit of giving up and a great deal of bad jokes about Starbucks.
Earth below us
Drifting, falling
Floating weightless
Calling, calling home
Goodbye, Carter and Padilla
I have 2 big takeaways from this process.
1) Game language matters. One of the reasons my Latvian playtest went poorly was the lack of setting-appropriate language among my players. The terms for spaceflight exist in the language. But there's very little popular media about it and as such it's not in anyone's active vocabulary. When you're drawing on external sources for player inspiration, what language are those sources?
2) Hide your systems. I love designing explorable systems. In Blip. it's the altitude/thrust effect relationship. I believe that is the prime learning component in this larp, but the more visible it was, the more it interfered with play and ended up not achieving the learning objective anyway. In the end, the players not seeing the system helped immensely.
