Mystic Crossroads featured on FanService

Recently I had a chance to talk about LARP on a local cable show, FanService, hosted by the Diabolical League of Awesome. While I fully expected the most Diabolical, as it turns out their lair is a pretty neat studio. I am sure that many of their most devious plans were merely tucked away so that I could not catch glimpse of them, but all in all it was a pretty cool group of folks. Gavin, the Diabolical leader of the show was excited to talk about LARP, and as it turns out one of his co-schemers was one I had done some sparring with in the past. 

I arrived early not knowing just what to expect, and Gavin was quite friendly. (I’m sure he also did not quite know what to expect) We were both gamers of sorts and overall the show went well. We got to discuss some upcoming games and films and then moved on to LARP. I brought along some different props and we discussed some of the aspects of LARP one does not get to see and experience when watching things like Role Models. After some discussion we got down to business with some light combat, which is always interesting in a confined space, and even got one of Gavin’s minions to try it out. 

Fun was had, nothing expensive was broken, and folks know a bit more about LARP than they did before. I was invited back (to become part of some diabolical experiment I’m sure) and I think ZPG Games may return to perhaps interest more gaming folks to try out LARP, or at least show the league what they are missing. I’m not sure they were really Diabolical, but they definitely were awesome and I am very glad we got to cross paths.

Engaging Your Noobs

I love noobs. I know I'm not supposed to call people "noob" anymore. I'm working on it. But today I'm giving myself a pass. Noobs are awesome! Noobs are the lifeblood of any larp game or chapter. Players get older and move on for any number of reasons. If a group isn't actively bringing in new players that group will not last. What's more, everything about the game is new and exciting to them. They're not afraid to try something crazy and new like making their own equipment and weapons, or throw themselves up against powerful odds. They're just full of that energy I remember having so so long ago, and I start getting excited for them all over again. Its infectious! Noobs are really the best reason I have to still be playing.

Ok. That's it. No more dropping the N word.

None the less, some players will undermine and run new players off. New players don't have their kit together. Their costume is probably minimal if any, and may well not fit the game world. Players who go on about "decorum" or "emersion" will scoff at these poor folks because they don't meet his or her level of quality. Don't believe me? Watch "The Larp Girl" vid. I just don't have words.
New players are not good fighters. Some players are bullies and see them as their personal beat down targets. Depending on the severity this could be real abuse. I know new unskilled players are going to loose a lot in combat, but if their spirit is broken the whole group looses. Let them pick their targets. Don't backstab them. At least they feel like they got to play and engage with a number of players. They're learning. Tell that to your stick jock. Don't teach them his bad manners.

But enough about what NOT to do. The real problem I've been experiencing is what TO do. I chat them up and try to encourage them to talk to the other players, ask questions, put themselves out there, but some have stayed standoffish. I think my players are generally welcoming and will approach someone new easily in character, but sometimes it has just freaked them out.
I asked folks about this in the Austin Larp Meetup group and got some really good feedback from James, someone who'd tried our game out. 
James told me he had a hard time knowing where his character fit into the world and social order in the game. He really didn't know anything about the world or history, or the groups of allies and opponents set in the game. I felt like we worked a lot in the book to establish these dynamics, but most players haven't really read them. He said he needed more direction as a new player stepping into the role. I had honestly hoped that guildmasters would be there to fill in the gaps for their members like he described, but that hasn't happened either, both because we're a small group, and the guildmaster roles haven't really been taken authoritatively. I'm not trying to sound like I'm putting blame on someone else. This was just my expectation, clearly wrong, and now I can look at how to do better. 

James' best suggestion was that we have a short to the point introduction tailored to the race and guild of a character coming into the game for the first time. The introduction shouldn't be half a page or less for each race and guild, and give a solid overview of how a character should feel about his group and others. I really thought this was pretty brilliant stuff, but I'd never thought about it until I'd talked to the group. Now I have my hands full writing up these new pamphlets. Hopefully I'll have them ready for next month's game. We'll see if they are a help.

Chimeracon follow up

Chimeracon has been the biggest event for us this year. We were offered our own full room for four straight hours and we made the very most of it. We planned and prepared, sewed and built props for two months in prep for this show. It was a huge undertaking for a whole lot of us all working together. Long ago I stopped expecting others to jump into a major project I was in because I've been so often disappointed, but everybody pulled through and made this happen. It was awesome!

Our plan was to have a full dungeon crawl through rooms of monsters and traps, magic and treasure for adventuring parties of five or six players. We separated our room into two sides with art displays covered in tarp. My sister's boyfriend painted each tarp to look like stonework to tremendous affect. I was so impressed I'd like to photograph the process and put it in a future book. We would lead the adventurers from one room to the other through "doors", openings between art displays, and rearrange rooms while the players weren't in them. Effectively we had two sets of actors playing roles, and changing scenes back to back. I was afraid it wouldn't work, but it worked out amazingly well. Robed wizards were accosted by heros at every turn, players were captured and rescued, monsters were made dead, and a huge demon at the end scared the gorgonzola out of everyone!

And that was just the first act!

The second act happened out in the convention, with players trying to collect parts to create a weapon to defeat the demon.

Lastly we used the whole room for the demon's last stand. He, and all the actors crossed swords with all the players who had gone through the game all day. It was really supposed to be easy, but the players were just so timid against such a horde that they huddled in a corner. Finally a player got the magic item and I thought he was going to take the demon down, but no. He gave the item to the demon as it demanded, and all ended as a loss. I was completely baffled at the end.

We learned a lot of things at this event, and had an astounding time. My people were begging to do it again as soon as possible. Let me list what I think we learned.
Paying an admission fee for each of our 10+ actors so we can provide content for someone else's con is bullshit. Chimeracon discounted us a lot, but in the future that is a deal breaker.
Time for set up and take down are crucial. The larp scheduled before us didn't show so that made things better, and the larp after us was pretty cool about us going slightly over, but I know that was not good form.
We are not here to babysit your kids. We had at least one group of young children that just ran around like Romper Room. I think their parents just dumped them so they could go game. We need to have an age limit for players.
We need to charge a fee to play. I don't really want to, but I personally spent hundreds of dollars for fabric for the props for this show. The con charged us to get in. I don't expect to make it back but we need to establish some value for what we're doing. I think this will clear out the little kids too.

This was just a great time, and really showed us what we can accomplish as a group. We need to figure out how to do this again, work out some other plots, and get into practice with this. It was so amazing to be part of. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all the crafters and players who came out and made this work. It could not happen without you!

Our photos from Chimeracon

Relax, man! You're working too hard!

It's been fascinating learning how my ideas of “larp” have been established from years of playing a boffer fighting game, and not an RPG. Ideas about death, as I wrote about in my last post, but also so many other things that I just took for granted until venturing into the greater world of live roleplaying.
In my years of play, games happened every weekend for an afternoon. Fighting would happen as continuously as we had energy for, and then the group would go to the local fast food place, or go home for a well earned shower. We wrote our game thinking such a schedule was normal and expected because it was for us. What a hard lesson we have learned over a year! When we had to write story driven games and imaginative ways of motivating players and characters to do things it became a real draining task week after week, game after game.  It came down to we just didn't have the energy to make exceptional games every week, settling for “good enough” and then, at least for me, feeling panicked every Sunday like I was going to class without studying for the big test. The hardest part was learning that players just didn't want it. It's a big time commitment to come to game weekend after weekend, loosing what amounts to half your weekend for a game that the game designers have put in less than 100% to make an engaging adventure or string of situations for characters. And since we were running every week players felt like if they missed a week or two it was no big deal because we'd be out there again next weekend. Our player base dwindled making it that much harder to run any sort of reasonable game and often there were so few we just sat around talking about the game instead of playing it. We were really in a bad place.
I realized in my desperation that we were missing the obvious rule of supply and demand. We were supplying far too much for the demands of our players. Our quality suffered, and players were bored. We were killing our own game. It seems counter intuitive what we needed to do, for our own mental health and to bring back player interest, but in hind sight it should have been obvious. Stop running so many games. Create a scarcity so players feel like they're missing out if they don't make it to games. Use the time to make better props, develop better stories, and stop freaking out. We cut the game back to once a month and saw what happened. Not only did more players come out, but on other weekends some went to other people's games and see what other offerings were out there. Honestly some found games they liked better and didn't come back, but others kept coming, and told their friends in other games what they liked about ours. Ultimately I think we're getting players that are a better fit for what we are offering.
The other advantage has been character experience changes. Before we offered one XP point per week attendance. I didn't want to create more complex rules that could be applied with favoritism, and I still worry about that. But that meant that players weren't rewarded for going any further than showing up. I hoped the experience of play would be the reward, but some people aren't motivated that way. Now we have tiers of XP; One point for attending, another for coming in costume, a third point for providing service at the game such as running an NPC, and last for supplying physical support such as providing drinks or snacks or bringing pavilions signs or banners that improve the appearance of the game. Players can still earn up to four XP a month so characters can advance just as before, but players are recognized for going further to take ownership of the game.
Only after making these changes and looking at other games myself did I see that larps that are story driven generally only have one game a month, or one larger event per quarter! We had been spinning our wheels trying to fulfill an expectation that we assumed, but no one else really does! This reinventing the wheel thing can really kick you in the pants, you know?

Mystic Crossroads on podcast Hobby Hard

This is probably the most important post I will get to make on our experience running a larp game.

Sam Porter and Dylan Heimbrock, along with their friend Adrien, from podcast Hobby Hard came to our game to experience larp for the first time, and then discussed it in depth. They are sometimes painfully honest, and it was hard for me to listen to, but sometimes that's what you need.

Right off the bat, I apparently really offended them with the term "noob". In the world I live in, the word "noob" is common and I've come to think of it as neutral. But I see now it was rude and I need to cut that out.

Let me say, without trying to dodge blame for anything, these guys were way way outside my cultural world. Aside from the "noob" thing, they didn't understand vernacular that I've come to expect to be common language to any gamer. D&D was an unknown to these guys. Renfaire was outside their experience. They new video games, but I don't really know enough to make that a common basis to work from. The terms "PC" and "NPC" were foreign. Other common words I used in way of explaining the game caused me to stop and ask our guests if they understood. Then it was backtracking to cover common ideas. That was really strange. Goose step? Mage? 

Moving on. I decided, since I knew these folks were here for a one-time experience, I would give them an easy role as wandering monsters, getting them into combat and not bore them with the character building process. Not letting them in on character creation robbed them of that experience and as they explain, I could have created a much more fulfilling game for them. 

Instead, I assigned them monster NPC roles and made notecards with what I hoped the'd need to know to jump into killing people. Apparently I wrote too damn much for some, and didn't give nearly enough hands on explanation of how fighting works. This was my second big mistake, and I think I just felt stretched across too many jobs. I didn't feel like I had time to do this, and support my normal players. Now I don't even know if I just stressed myself out.

Secondly as NPCs they just stayed in one area and waited for PCs, which was really boring. PCs avoided them, or failed to respond to their powers. I really needed to be there and referee because no one knew what I assumed what at least the experienced players knew. 

Just writing this, I'm just kicking myself all over again.

When I went over to check on the interaction, too late to fix much, I suggested they move back toward "town" to kill anyone, but it just didn't happen. On the up side, they seemed to have a good time when they did get to fight with swords, "ditching" or practice fighting, or amuse themselves at our expense. Just everyone, I wish I'd focused completely on these guy's experience and let the regular players be damned.

In the end I did really enjoy having these guys out, and I hope they give us another chance at some time. I know this was far out of their comfort zone, and I'm glad they gave us their afternoon, with minds open enough to try out something bizarre. They are always welcome.

Reconsiderations on Character Death

Through our most recent games, and through recent player feedback, it has appeared that a very important game mechanic has been missing from Mystic Crossroads. Something that undermines many, if not most plot and character interaction. That thing is fear of death and its consequences.
This wasn't exactly an oversight by us as writers. My partner and I come from a game background in Amtgard and spin off games. These games, and others, are designed very well as mass combat systems. Dying part of the game and happens constantly. And I mean every ten minutes or so if you're a typical player. Dying is easy, and really no big deal. Don't get me wrong. The combat systems we found in these games worked worlds better than the LARP games we ran across. They were just… murderous deadly.
Though we tried to make our game less so, we knew death would be a regular part of the game. What we didn't want to do is make death so costly that players were afraid to fight. Combat is a fun part of the game we were making, and dying is just a part of it. So we wrote Mystic Crossroads expecting battlefield deaths as normal and gave everyone four lives to spend in every game.
What we didn't know is what were giving up by making this choice. Outside of a battlefield death is not common, but when death happens it is done with purpose to plot and should effect those killed, and those who commit the killing. As it is the act means nothing, the dead character comes back in ten minutes. There is no fear, no shock, no consequences at all. No punishment for killers, and no way to punish, because nothing matters. This can't continue and have a worthy game.
So we must create a more deadly game than we have been playing. However, I'm not interested in the increasing threat of total character death that other games have. It favors the skilled and punishes the unskilled. Instead I'm considering the following. There are two kinds of deaths that characters can experience; significant and insignificant death. Insignificant deaths happen on the battlefield or in skirmishes and do not have impact on plot. They will continue to be as described in Mystic Crossroads Rulebook.
Significant deaths, however, are ones deemed to be plot significant by the Game Designers or referee. Characters sacrificed in some ritual, killed in a duel, or given a prison sentence by a noble for criminal acts take a significant death. They may return to play only at the next event, or in ten minutes at the cost of four character points. Players should consider bringing a change of costume to play another character if they take a significant death, so as not to lose their character points. This game rule sounds harsh, at least to me, but it allows players to manage character deaths without taking permanent penalty unless they chose to burn character points and possibly be on the run from their enemy for the rest of the game.
Since this is a major change to rules I wanted to put it up for discussion before making it part of the game. Please take this opportunity to tell us what you think about death and fear and losing character points vs. possibly losing a character.

I'm pretty sure I don't know what I'm doing

This is our first blog entry! Woot! This is more of a test, really, to see how everything works in our fabulous new web site! I'm pretty excited to finally get us online as it was something we should have done a year ago at least. Can't do everything with just us two between job and family, and of course larping.

So, now what? One of the reasons we had for this blog and web site was to post videos! I love videos. But I've been searching through Youtube.com for larp vids, and seem to be disappointed with what I find. There are LOTS, but they're generally embarrassing. No wonder the mundies think so badly of this hobby.



I guess we have our work cut out for us.