#pre-written characters

[encounter21]

The Big Bad City: Running Urban Larps

This post is going to cover how to run games in cities, I don’t mean pub games but rather games that use the urban landscape itself as site. City Larps offer a unique game experience. Because you are larping in the real world, they create a level of immersion that is difficult in other games, and they allow for the integration of real world places. 

City games lend themselves very well to investigation and social games but very poorly to combat.

 City games need to be handled carefully though, because they take place in public spaces there are a lot of things that need to be considered that aren’t necessarily a problem in other types of games. 

OC Logistics

The first major consideration when running a city larp is not causing any sort of incident with the police. You must let them know that you are planning on running something and you need to consider how your system will interact with normal people. Give the police a time frame (we will be running from 10am to 5pm) and a way of recognizing the people in your game (everyone involved will have circuit board tattoos on their face) and a brief idea of what people will be doing (if your local police department is unfamiliar with larp it might be easier to describe your game as a costumed scavenger hunt or something of that ilk).

It is also worth asking permission of anywhere that you think will be used a lot over the day. Make sure they are ok with you using their space. Try to be as non-disruptive as possible. If its a coffee shop or the like make sure you are spending money while you are in there so they are not losing business. 

Combat

City games take place in public. In the interest of not getting in trouble or causing incidents with the police combat either needs to be heavily scaled down or not part of your game. DO NOT ALLOW THE USE OF ANY WEAPONS THAT LOOK REAL. Seriously. Make sure your players understand the importance of not causing public disturbances. It is perfectly valid to run city games with no combat system, in fact I would recommend it. But if you *do* want combat in your system there are a couple ways to integrate it which minimize problems with the public

1) At risk of being repetitive. Make sure any weapons are obviously fake. Brightly colored nerf guns are what I would recommend.

2) Adding rules about where and when combat can be used is worthwhile. For instance combat can only be used in places where there are no witnesses. This makes combat difficult, but retains the threat of it. It also makes sense in the context of setting a game in a city, because murder is not something you would commit in a public setting

3) Consider having a non standard combat system that doesn’t look like combat from the outside. For instance trying to get stickers or clothes pegs  on people without them seeing. 

An Open World and What This Means for Planing

City games don’t have a set location per-say. When your site is a large area with lots of people this means that finding players can be very difficult, especially since the entire point of a city game is to integrate the real world urban setting into your game. In practical terms this means you need to integrate modern technology such as phones into your system and that realistically you need to use pre-written characters with minimal (re:no) crew.

If players are comfortable with the idea I would suggest having a database of mobile phone numbers so any character can get in contact with any other character. At the very least players should ALL be able to get ahold of refs who should be able to get ahold of any single player. This means players can set up meetings with one another and pass information.

In terms of crew, since you will almost never know where any of the players are at any given time it is best to set it up so that almost all of the plot enters play with the players, and that they are in competition with each other so that you do not need to provide monsters or antagonists of any sort. Reffing city games is a relatively hands off affair consisting mostly of making sure you can answer your phone and setting up the occasional drop of information.

Do think about hiring out a small amount of space if you want to create any sets (a fake crime scene or a lab full of dubious materials for example). Just because a city game takes place over a wide space doesn't mean you cant have important locations

Plot

Obviously the specifics of plot will be down to whatever sort of game you decide to run, but city games do lend themselves to specific sorts of plot. The first question you should ask yourself is What will the players be doing in uptime? Each player should have at least three things to be involved in and do in uptime. Plot should interweave so they involve multiple players and players should have a mix of shared goals and mutually exclusive goals inorder to foster both teamwork and conflict. Making sure there is enough plot is vital in city games because it is almost impossible to add anything in after the game has started. However, since your game *is* going to run in a public space its worth making sure that your plots do not lend themselves to extreme reactions which may cause a public disturbance (this a mistake I have made in the past).

Plots which work well in city games:

Investigation: clues can be scattered both in players backgrounds and props such as newspapers or pen drives as well as sets (fake crime scenes or notes left in books in the library). Subsets of investigation can include: Blackmail, what really happened?, professional investigation

Hiding the Truth: The other side of investigation plots. For evey secret someone wants to find out there should be someone whos main interest is hiding it.

Social: Awkward reunions, enemies forced to work together and close friends in need. There is alot of mileage to be had out of social situations in city games. 

 An example of a character background and accompanying plots from a film noir based city game can be found here (Written by Ellen Green and William Thorley)

Costuming

It is important to have some element of costuming that sets your players apart from the population. This is firstly so they can recognize who is and is not part of the game and also so that outside bodies (such as the police or any cafes or shops that you have gotten permission to run in) can recognize your players. It doesn’t have to be something very big, but it should be noticeable. 

A Final Note on the Importance of Briefing your Players

I would always argue for briefing your players on OC things before games, no matter what sort of game you are running, but it is doubly important when you are running city games. Players need to understand that they are playing in public spaces, and as such some behaviors are unacceptable. It is very important that everyone is on the same page and that players know how to contact a ref. 

[encounter21]

Burn Baby Burn: The firewood theory of larp

A friend introduced me to firewood theory when we were discussing different play styles and it has been an important part of my approach to game design since. I would like to get this out of the way now, no one of these categories is better than any of the others, they are simply different. Firewood theory is based on what people do when presented with plot, and can give you guidance for how to create groups in the case of games with pre-generated characters or how to target plot hooks in the case of games with player-generated characters. 

Firewood theory goes like this: peoples approach to plot can be broken down into three groups

Kindling: These are the people who take plot and explode, getting their plot all over everyone else. If they have a problem its *everybodys* problem. 

Example: Player A falls in love with an enemy commander. They decide they shall run off with the commander consequences be damned. There is tons of fallout 

Logs: These are the people who get their plot and get on with it. They tend to be proactive but don’t necessarily involve everyone or make a big noise about chasing their plot.

Example: Player A falls in love with an enemy commander. They broker piece between the two nations and take sensible actions to resolve the situation. There is minimal fallout. 

Wet Logs:These are the people who need a little bit of a push to get involved in plot. They tend to favor internal roleplay and be quieter players. Often new players fall into this category as well.

Example:Player A falls in love with an enemy commander. They decide that it is a doomed love and that they should not act on it. They have a lot of angst as a result but there is no fallout for the player base as a whole.

How Firewood Theory Can Help You

These three groups of people interact with each other. If you are running a game with pre-generated characters you can combine them they way you would a fire (small amount bit of kindling, some logs, some wet wood)  you get dramatic, tense situations that can play out without burning out too quickly. Kindling often create situations with *very* little provocation. Logs react and give the kindling something to bounce off of, and similarly wet logs get drawn in to the action without having to initiate. Its also useful when designing characters so their playstyle lines up with that of their player.

Example: Player A falls in love with an enemy commander and runs off betraying the nation (Kindling). Player B swears revenge and decides to take out Player A (Log). Player C is suddenly worried about the extremity of Player B’s response and tries to find a better solution (Wet Log). 

In terms of games in which you don’t have the luxury of being able to arrange groups as a ref, firewood theory can still be helpful. different types of player react to different types and strengths of plot hooks. If you want to target different players knowing what type of thing they will react to, or how strong a hook you need is useful. 

Or course firewood theory is dependent on you knowing your players, which means it might be difficult to apply in large games or games in which you don’t know pretty much everyone. But its still useful to think about if only to make sure you are not assuming players will react the way *you* would react to any given situation.

[encounter21]

Drawn This Way: On the Virtues of Pre-Written Characters

On of the first decisions when you sit down to write a larp is whether to have player designed or ref designed characters. Most systems in the UK run off player designed characters however some one off events will provide a pre-written character for each player. 

The biggest, in my oppinion, advantage of pre-written characters is that it allows for complex netwoks of interacting character backstories which simply are not possible when the players build their own characters from the ground up. Done correctly even high conflict events can be run without monsters in this way. Plot can be seamlessly introduced into backstory and refs can make sure that players have equal access to plot hooks and story.

Lets start by defining terms: A pre written character is a character whose backstory is defined by a document the refs write for a player. In most cases players fill out a form and refs design a character based around their preferences. Briefs are normally written from the characters perspective and can contain false or biased information without the player being aware.

Ex. Character A thinks character B left them at the alter, but Character B thinks character A dumped them via letter. Character C is responsible for the letter.

In terms of players it also allows for very customizable game, assuming the game organizers ask the right questions. For example, if Player A indicates on their booking form they really like puzzles and also want to roleplay with Player B their character can have hooks into the most puzzle heavy plot and background links with Player B. With player designed characters it can be difficult to tell at the beginning of the game which types of plot which types of game.

Of course it is important to get player input before writing a character for them, especially if they are someone you do not know well. I personally would make sure that I had the answers to the following questions before writing a character for someone

1)What would you like to be doing in up time (examples of game types: puzzles, politics, fighting, ball gowning, sneaking/ploting ect. A ranking system is useful for this)

2) What sort of stats would you like (mechanical stats are very different to what people do in uptime but do often impact character design. For instance I might want to play a mage but really like politics and fighting. Or I might want to play a warrior but want mainly to be doing puzzles and ballgowning)

3) People you do not wish to roleplay with (Sometimes people do not get along but this is not immediately obvious to event organizers. It is important to know who is happy doing what with who and that everyone feels safe. This information should stay confidential)

4) Are you ok with romance (self explanatory. some people enjoy IC relationships, some people don’t)

5) An opt out system for starting in bad positions. (Some people like being screwed over at events, some don’t. Some people are ok with some types of being screwed over but not others. Example: Player A is ok with having false information in their brief but not ok with being the target of another characters grudge) An opt out system means people are guaranteed any specific things, but they can avoid the things they don’t like. 

There are many more questions that can be asked, but I personally feel these 5 make up the core. The important thing to get as much information as possible about the sort of game players want rather than character specifics. 

It is worth being wary of people using real world references when talking about what they want to play. Someone writing I want to play Harry Potter might mean “I want to play an orphan with a wise mentor who undergoes a crisis of faith” or it might mean “I want to play an unwitting celebrity who is the subject of prophesy” or it might mean “I want to play someone marked by their worst enemy”. Or countless other interpretations. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play something similar to another character, but it is worth clarifying which bits people mean.

Pre-written characters take a large amount of work on the part of the event organizers. Backstories need to be thought out and the question of “what will they be doing in uptime” needs to be carefully considered. Simply writing someone an awesome backstory doesn’t make a good event on its own. How different characters would have viewed the same event is another important consideration, which has the potential to both add and take away from plot. 

Uptime action should always be the guiding light when writing characters. If a part of a backstory does not contribute to a players uptime game it is a waste of ref time to write. It doesn’t matter that you killed a dragon if nothing relating to the experience is uptime relevant. his also holds true to negative events. Having a deep dark secret is useless if it has no affect on anything that happens at the event.

TL:DR

Pros: 

Pre-written events allow for more intricate plots and different sorts of plots (investigation works very well in this format)

Plot can be spread evenly

Players can get customized experiences

Cons:

Its alot of work

No seriously it is

If done wrong players can feel they are trapped playing characters they do not wish to play.

Secondary characters need to be provided in case characters die or players are not enjoying the characters they were originally given (This blog is a supporter of rule 1. If you arn’t having fun, play something else)