Embiggening the hobby of LARP
For new players, stepping into their first game can be pretty onerous. There are unanswered questions and a lack of knowledge and lots of uncertainties. Here are ten pieces of advice I like to give new players to help them start with their feet on the ground and pointed in a good direction: Continue reading →
Books on LARP are notorious for being vague with their mechanics. For as complex and majestic as some settings can be I find time and time again that rules as written (RAW) don’t measure up. As a result a storyteller needs to gain acuity at assessing rules, and making choices that enhance the world their characters live in, maintain the intention of the rule and ultimately are fair to their players.
Let’s get something straight: this isn’t your game, it’s our game. Even if you’re the storyteller, you’re just one piece of the creative puzzle. All too often, though, I see people taking actions that are principally self-serving and hurt the holistic wholeness of the games they play. If your idea of fun is at the expense of me, or my players I have no patience for you. The game doesn’t owe you anything, nor should it give anything to you unless you’re willing to give back to it. Continue reading →
It’s time for me to get my hands dirty and start talking more directly about plot. This first article talks about the different ways that you can take plot and insert it into the game’s continuity. The plot hook takes a certain amount of finesse, since it’s very too easy to either over or understate your effort and have it either unignorable or too easily ignored. A properly inserted plot hook allows your players to address your story with the correct level of urgency, and ultimately allow them to enjoy them more. Continue reading →
Maybe you’re a maniac like me and are thinking of running a LARP. You’re probably wondering why you’d ever want to do something like that, given the amount of commitment required to run a game. There are a lot of reasons why you’d want to pull the trigger and start something, because running a LARP is one of the most challenging, fulfilling things you can ever do for others. Continue reading →
The mechanics of role playing games allow us to be faster, smarter and stronger than we are in real life, so why shouldn’t they also let us be more persuasive? This is an old discussion in RPGs, but it takes on a different life in LARP, where it’s far more likely for social mechanics to be used by one player’s character against another. Continue reading →
As players we’re only human. Since we create our characters we tend to do so with a certain consistency. We have a security blanket of habits and values that we wrap ourselves in, and seldom stray out into the scary, unpredictable world of roles that challenge us as actors. Once we come to know our defaults we can strive to take steps to play in new, exhilarating ways. Continue reading →
Let’s say you wanted to run a LARP professionally… is that even possible in North America? I say it is, but that it’s not exactly a career to retire to. That being said there are good ways and bad ways to seek out profit. This article assumes that you’ll be hitting the one-shot convention scene, where paying a premium for games is (in my experience) more socially acceptable than in month to month games in a static location. As much as we’d all like have “professional GM” as our job titles making it’s a long and difficult road. Continue reading →
Some of the most talked about, most successful sessions I’ve ever run are what I’ve called signature games. My old players still talk to me about my clocktower and vault sessions from time to time. These are games where I’ve decided to raise the bar, in terms of preparation, set dec and plot. I usually held them every 6 to 9 months to show my commitment to the game, to provide players with a roleplaying experience they couldn’t get anywhere else, to create fond roleplaying memories and to create vital talking points that helped promote my game in the community. Continue reading →
Players don’t want to start game when they’re supposed to. Players don’t want to wander into the allotted game space at the very beginning of a session. These two statements are like death and taxes, but if you take the proper measures you can inspire a culture where players expect the game to be on time, are incentivized to be there on time and get a lot more out of their session as a result.
