Observations of the Fox

Which RPG have you played most since August 2016? Hands down, the game I've played most in the last 12 months has been my monthly LARP, Nexus. This is true even if we did skip a few months due to bad weather, and even though I probably spend more than three-quarters of my time at each event running the proceedings. I've been trying to step back from micro-managing things, and now that we've got a few more players willing to take on some of the responsibility in the game I might be able to do that. But between the time I've spent making props for the game, the time I've spent writing storylines, and the time actually running things out in the park, this game has taken u more of my free time than anything else. I'll be interested to see if any changes in this regard over the next 12 months.

For the last few months, after every LARP game, I've been tracking how characters have done in their assigned missions. I've done this by following a few key ideas: Missions occur in key marked locations Territories are expanded for factions when their missions have been successful. Territories turn from factionally aligned to neutral if a faction succeeds in a mission in another faction's territory. Influence spreads to adjacent territories if these adjacent territories are uncontested. Influence does not spread to adjacent territories if two different factions could see their influence spread into the territory. The overall power of the factions throughout the region is simply determined by adding up the number of territories they control. This process started after the third game of the LARP, when I decided the players needed a bit more focus and the factional system was brought into effect. Today saw the end of game 6. End of Game 3 - The Nomads (Green...

Not eveything can be Game Chef this week. I need to keep my mind active on a few projects otherwise I go stir crazy. Here's a logo design I've been working on for the Nexus LARP.

In a "boffer" LARP, combat is resolved quickly and easily through the use of foam weaponry. Magic is often handled through spell packets (which are colour coded balls or birdseed filled bags, each of which have specific combat effects), elaborate rituals (which are typically the focus of entire game sessions), or special abilities granted to characters (such as the abilities to temporarily enchant someone with benefits, penalties, or the ability to issue commands to other characters). In a more politically oriented LARP, combat is usually frowned upon, and magic is typically limited to behind-the-scenes effects, where the story focuses on gathering enough people to conduct a ritual effect.  The kinds of stories that work best in each type of LARP can be very different, they typically function most effectively when they work with the strengths of the play style, or when they fill gaps where the fundamental mechanisms of play might otherwise leave things a bit flat. These ...

One of the features that a LARP campaign organiser needs to take into consideration is the transient nature of player attendance. I’ve been a part of some campaigns where attendance is via RSVP; if you don’t tell the organisers that you are coming, then your presence isn’t welcome, and if you do tell the organisers that you are coming and don’t show, then your character is killed (or suffers some long term impact that will make you think twice about doing it again). In campaigns like this, the story can be moderated in advance, faction sizes can be taken into account, storylines can be specifically written for each character, over-arching story-lines can be written for factions of characters taking into account how many characters might be working toward a common goal or how many characters might be in the factions that would be opposing specific goals. This is the kind of thing that is done in an Australian Freeform game, but over a series of sessions. I’ve also been a pa...

In the previous post, I discussed the idea of dividing characters in a LARP into 5 factions in a general pentagonal arrangement; where factions are on corners of the pentagon, allied with those on adjacent corners and opposed to factions on the distant corners. An interesting court ruling has been posed by a US court, regarding the adoption of game mechanisms by companies. So this makes me feel a bit more at ease with the adoption of the Magic: the Gathering colour system as a basis for this. My first thoughts regarding the factions was the have each group midway aligned between two colours… one white/blue, one white/green, one green/red, one red/black, one black/blue… in some cases this seemed to work well (the cult worked well as blue/black, criminals worked well as black/red, the university could have worked as a blue/white, but the military didn’t really work as a white/green). I found that the factions worked better as a straight up analogue of each colour. It also made ...

The new Southern Highlands LARP Game has a name. It is called Nexus, and the organiser has released a rule set and character generation system for it. Character Generation Rules All in all it's pretty similar to what we've been seeing in a lot of the LARPs through this part of the world. This is basically because a group of guys wrote the original set of rules that everyone has spun away from. I've discussed this previously  (and as a follow up to that post, the last Elgardt Game we ran had a total of 2 people showing up...me the Storyteller/GM, and the Venue Co-ordinator). There's a few interesting concepts in the rules that have been considered taboo in many of the other local games, like the potential for permanent character death if you aren't careful. There's a few other things that personally I'd be changing, but at the moment I'm happy for there to be another game to go along to. A bit of playtesting and we'll see how things go. N...