Observations of the Fox

Yesterday's post  got a bit of feedback, and that's great. It's also interesting to see parallel discussions emerging on various Facebook groups today. I don't know whether it's my superpower of "Tapping the Zeitgeist" at work again, or if those people starting the discussions were prompted by reading my blog. Either way, there's some good thoughts out there and I'd love to engage the area more deeply. One of the great points raised, came from Joseph Teller... " The questions in design you need to ask yourself is, does Age=Experience or does Activity=Experience? " It's an awesome question that isn't really addressed in a lot of games. I'll address it with some instances I've seen over the years. It was probably about four years ago when I joined up with the fledgling Clans of Elgardt LARP. During tbe first couple of months there were teething problems, including a "gold = XP" system akin to the early d...

I don't think I've played a tabletop session since August 2015, so this one will have to be a LARP experience. I think that's interesting in itself. I still consider myself a gamer of all types, LARP, tabletop, miniatures, boardgames... but the last time I played a board game was as a part of a playtest session for University, the last time I played a boardgame that I didn't design myself was Christmas last year... the last time I played a tabletop RPG was mid last year, where the game collapsed because the GM was just a prick and everyone suddenly realised that... the last time I played a miniatures game was probably 2 years ago, or more. Actually, now that I think about it, I think  +Ettin Con  was around August last year, no maybe July and it just misses the cut off. That was a great session, using my game FUBAR, and it reignited my desire to get things happening on that front again...but let's focus on something that's definitely within the specified ra...

I'm working on rebuilding the Elgardt LARP system, incrementally. The problem is that there are other parties who are also integrating changes into the game. One of my aims when designing a freeform LARP is to give everybody too many things to do during the course of play. I like to set up webs of intrigue between players, and give them jobs to do that force them into interaction with other players, while the other parties interested in developing the game further have pushed toward micromanaged quests with small groups led by GMs through railroaded scenarios. The problem I see with that second option is that when you only have one or two GMs for twenty or more players, you can micro-manage four or five (maybe even six or seven) each but everyone else is stuck waiting for their turn to go on a quest later, or maybe they get relegated into the role of NPCs. This is great if everyone is on the same page regarding the game structure, but if everyone is hoping to play their own cha...

The final battle in yesterday's LARP was a bit anti climactic. I was in it (to the right), and had been told that we'd be filmed. Yes, I should have tried to make it a bit more dramatic... but even so, it was over quickly, and would have been over quickly even with a few flourishes. That's how quickly I think combat should go in a tabletop game.

I've been digging through the archives of the unnamed "pirate/steampunk" boffer LARP system I developed last year, and with over a year of regular experience playing this style of game through Clans of Elgardt (CoE), most of my thoughts real haven't changed much. There are a few things that I'd change slightly based on my "experience in the field", and far more things that I'd change about CoE to get a happy medium. There's a certain naivety about the game, but that's to be expected since the original designers had never written a game like this before and generally worked from second hand accounts about what games like this could be. I'd love the rewrite that game from the ground up, because it has some interesting concepts in it, but now has too much baggage and too many other people trying to rewrite things about it (even to the point that one of our local spin-offs is basically a CoE heartbreaker). A lot of CoE is about player abili...

As an interlude while I work through a few more mage comcepts, here's a few shots from one of our more recent LARP training days. I'm testing out my new alternate costume and persona on the field.

Clans of Elgardt is the name of the LARP I take part in fortnightly. I've had a few queries about it, and now I've got a convenient site to send people to, someone in the group has developed a wiki for the game, and over the past few hours it's really started filling out with different players filling in their character and faction details. The main page for the site can be found here. The page for my character can be found here. There is a lot more work to do on it, but it's a great start.