LARP Scale Armour (The Verdict)


The reason for building the scale armoured sleeve was today's LARP. It seemed odd to run a LARP in the lead-up to Christmas, a time when families are gathering for BBQs, workplaces are holding their end of year Christmas parties (and closing down for the holiday period), but the majority of players assured me that they'd be in attendance, and a few even told me they'd be bringing new players along. So, with a dozen regular players, a few irregulars promising they'd show up, and a number claiming that they'd be bringing some new faces, I had no idea how many people would actually be in attendance. It could have been as many as 20, it could have been as few as 10 (based on promises)...

I had to be prepared for the most, because if there's one thing I can't stand, it's leaving players bored. I've been to too many LARPs where the story is based on the activities of a select group of players while everyone else just lingers on the edge of the story.

Seven people showed.

On the positive side, it gave me a chance to get into the thick of things as an NPC, testing the new armour, the reinforced shields I've been working on, and the new system mechanisms I've been working on. On the down side, I forgot to take a few key elements of costuming.     


I'm pretty happy that a lot of our regular players are starting to get into the spirit of things by costuming and starting to drive character stories of their own. It lets me step from a storyteller role into a role where I'm more of a facilitator of play. Instead of trying to spread my time across a dozen players, I can let two or three trusted veteran players take some of the other players under their wing while I focus my attention on the new players to make sure they understand how things work.

It's this ecosystem of play that I like to engender in a game. The fact that we only had seven players today meant that the new player was instantly sucked into existing stories, young players who been a part of the game for a while were guided by the older players to develop stories of their own that can be woven into future events. 


As for the armour, today was hot and humid. But the armour was neither too heavy, too constricting, or too fragile. It worked well.

Now it's time to finish off the suit.

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