How Long Should a Game Be?

I've participated in games that have run for vastly different time periods.  Some games I've been in or run have been epic in scale.  Some have been so fast and intense that they've been a single memorable blip.  I've been in games that ran too long, games that ended too soon, games that were unappreciated in their time, games that seemed great in the moment but were forgotten as soon as they wrapped.
Along the way, I have developed some opinions on how long a game should be.
Essentially, most of my answers are going to be somewhat vague, because different games require different things, but most of my answers will be phrased along the same lines.  What should make a game longer and what should make a game shorter.

How long should a game be?
The basic answer is simple: long enough to tell the story.  But that isn't a firm answer.  There are stories that can unfold in three sessions and stories that take five years to tell.  Overall, a game will suffer if it is compacted too much or stretched too much.  A game that's too compacted will feel rushed and can be confusing too much detail in any one point, no time for processing.  A game that's too stretched may end up losing momentum or having players not see how things fit together.  How do you know how long the story takes?  That's a hard question.  I tend to break down stories into steps or dramatic beats.  In order for the neighboring kingdom to invade, they need to manufacture a casus belli, amass troops, move those troops to the border, seize the first line of defense, the second line of defense, find a way to break through the final line of defense and then seize the capital, install a puppet government and demobilize their army except for an occupational force.  So something as simple as an invasion has 9 steps to it.  Some of those might be combined, some might require more than one game, but having the steps of the process laid out can tell you that the story of the invasion of a kingdom is going to take at least 8-10 months.  Every story can be broken into parts, some big, some small.

Beyond just the story length answer are a number of other factors.

I think a LARP should be short enough to maintain a consistent central cast.  There should be people there at the beginning who see the end.  And while a little cast rotation can be a good thing in a healthy game(eliminating those who aren't interested, adding those who found out late), a game that can maintain the continuity of a central cast is generally better than one that can't.

A game should be short enough to avoid excessive power creep.  I've spoken about the perils of experience systems.  The longer games go on, the more power tends to become consolidated/imbalanced.  This isn't just an XP problem, it can be a plot access problem.  When the older players have lots of plot-centric influence they've built over chapters 1-4, those who start in act 5 may feel marginalized.

A game should be long enough for people to settle into their characters and factions.  In games where players create their own characters, there is generally a period of settling into the character.  In games with political factions, it takes time for groups to gel.  A game should be long enough to allow that process.  Some of this can be taken care of with pre-work, but pre-work is just that, work.  It's much more interesting to play out a massive internal factional schism than to simply talk about it.

A game should be short enough to avoid staff burnout.  It takes so much work to run a game that after a while, the staff can get very tired.  Very long projects can feel stifling, as staff members(who tend to be creative project types)want to move on to the next project rather than lingering on the current one.  This can be addressed by adding new staff, but that can dilute the central vision of the game.

A game should be short enough that every part serves a purpose.  Not every game should be plot heavy episode after plot heavy episode, but there should be a minimum of filler content.  Some sessions may be designed to be light on the eventfulness, a chance for people to explore facets of their characters or mix up the general patterns of the game.  Things like bottle episodes or tabula rasa type games can be great for resets.  IC event games like weddings or funerals or holiday celebrations can be fun in a game situation.

A game should be like an ideal gas, it should expand to fit its container.  Running games in many contexts means tailoring the game to the time constraints.  If you're running a game at a con, it should be a quick one shot, set up to develop and resolve within the time slot.  If you're running a game at school, it should be able to be set up and completed in a semester.  I've tailored timelines for games based on local weather patterns.

Overall, finding the right length for a game is a complicated process.  I've already stated my opinions on bounded storytelling, but this is a great time to reiterate that.  A game should have an end.  Endless games are shapeless and memorable not as a whole, but as parts.  If you're going to treat the game as a whole, you should think about the entire shape of it.

Building a Better Player

So much of what I talk about is about running games.  But this one is for the players out there.  I have learned a lot about what makes a good player, a bad player, a great player, a problem player.  This is a brief collection of tips and recommendations for how to be a better player.  Some of these are universal, some of these are my own personal taste, but these constitute my advice on how to be a better player.

Share Focus

Multi-participant games require sharing.  That's something that you were probably taught in kindergarten, but it's a thing that is really important when it comes to gaming.  What you really need to share in the RPG, whether tabletop or LARP, is focus.  This is one of the things I picked up in improv, but basically, the narrative should shift from one character to another, from one player to another, as the story flows.  Think of it like a conversation.  Boring conversations happen when one person talks all the time and the other person can't get a word in edgewise, sharing focus in game is giving the other person time to speak.

This can be done passively, but it can also be done actively.  Some of my favorite players are those who delegate story tasks, taking players who aren't actively engaged in things and putting the focus on them.  Sometimes this can be a matter of faction leading, if you are a faction leader, having minions that you send to do things is a good methodology.  

Ideally, everyone should get to do something at some point, but part of being a good player is being willing to share focus with your fellow players.  

Yes, and...

Another concept from improv that I think makes for a better player is the incorporation of the principle of "Yes, And..."  In improv, it's about taking what someone adds to a scene and building upon it.  When someone says, "hey, look at that kangaroo"  you don't say, "there's no kangaroo"  because that sets the scene back to square one.  Instead you say, "Yea, and I think he's stealing your car!" accepting what someone gives you and going with it.  

This can be very useful because it's part of constructing the game world. Most games that I run have a framework world, one in which the large details are filled out, with the smaller details remaining nebulous until relevant.  This is the case for nearly any fictional world.  You don't know what color Harry Dresden's socks are until it matters for the story or characterization purposes.  Filling in these details and building upon them can be an excellent thing for players to do in game.  

Some Storytellers don't like when players fill things in, and that's a matter of taste, but I'm happy to have players drop in details like frequented restaurants with revolutionary themes, foul mouthed baby goats, or past experiences.  By working together to fill in and following the principle of "Yes, And..." a player can help build the world around.

Engage with the Content

That said, one of my greatest frustrations in a game is when there is well developed content that is left unengaged with.  So, as I said, I like to develop a framework world, one in which there are several overarching rules of reality, aspects of the world that are set in stone, and then collaboratively fill in details, often sharing them using a wiki or google document.  I get very frustrated when players don't engage with this important information.

Now, I'm not holding Storytellers blameless on this.  Every ST has fallen into the trap of writing an encyclopedia worth of content for a three session game and expecting players to know it backwards and forewards.  I have recently begun to hold myself to a design principle based on the first page of Grant Morrison's All Star Superman, which sums up the essentials of Kal El's story in 8 words and 4 pictures.  

But even that sometimes seems to miss the mark.  Overall, as a Player, try your best to actually engage the game world content.  Don't treat it as pointless or irrelevant.  Read the backstory, look at the map, or at the very least, create a character that doesn't know history or geography if you want to not do so.  Briefing history experts on basic history content "So George Washington is...?" slows down the flow of game and makes it less fun for everyone.   

Meta for Good, Not For Self

Metagaming is a controversial subject and may get its own blog post at some point, but as a player, there are some overall guidelines.  Metagaming is not always bad, especially if doing it improves the game for other participants and does not benefit your character too much.  This is something best provided by example.  I've had multiple occasions where a character wandered off mid action.  The rest of the party was engaged in some dramatic scene that wasn't the specialty of the character and they decided that their character would leave and go elsewhere because it wasn't 'in-character' for them to stick around.  This made it extremely difficult to maintain the game because that demand of focus split up what would otherwise be a really dramatic moment in game.  

In this case, a little meta-gaming would allow everyone to remain part of the game session for a scene and wouldn't create any advantage for the player in question.  Another model of metagaming comes in the engagement with the pace of plot.  Players can try to achieve too much in a single session in a way that would skip over important parts of a story.  Recognizing that progress is sometimes throttled in order to provide opportunities for focus sharing or to preserve a longer narrative thread can make it so more people can engage with things and help others.  But sometimes this takes an understanding of the meta-aspects of game.  

Now, don't ever meta-game for your own benefit.  If anything, meta-game against yourself.  If you the player see someone invisible in the room, don't restrict what you say, get really explicit.  Spread information around and make it interesting.  

CvC, not PvP

Games feature conflict.  That's not news.  But it's important that the conflict stay within the narrative.  Many games fall apart because the conflict within the games becomes a conflict between players.  The distinction I've seen in terms of terminology revolves around the term PvP.  The term PvP refers to Plaver versus Player and is often used to distinguish games where conflict is commonly between player characters.  However, I prefer the term CvC, Character versus Character.  Something that is important to remember as a participant in a game is that all the participants should be working towards the same goal, telling a good story.  When the characters get into conflict with each other, it should be in the service of story.  

What this means as a player is two fold.  One, Players should be selective about the conflict between characters.  Not avoidant, but try to make it a matter of character tension, not a matter of player tension.  Don't agitate against a player you don't like, follow a narrative reason for conflict.  My own tendency is to choose my friends as my enemies.  

Two, when a conflict comes to a head, make sure that you keep in mind that the person on the other end of the conflict is a person too.  When you lose, even if your character dies, recognize that the fellow player didn't set out to hurt you, but that it was part of the narrative conflict.  Even more important, when you win, recognize that the fellow player has been a good sport about things, give them that respect.  Those actions can keep things from becoming too acrimonious between players.

Trust your Fellow Participants 

Which ties into the larger principle of trust.  In an ideal world, we'd all trust each other implicitly and give nobody a reason to distrust us, but we're often in a position where we don't really know our fellow participants very well.  In these positions, I think it's very important to extend trust to people and try and craft an environment where everyone can work together.  Try and find ways to build trust with other participants and treat everyone with respect.  

Trust is one of the most essential elements to a game and there's a degree to which the level of trust limits the level of engagement in the game.  Part of that is being clear when people violate your trust, but part of it is making sure that you don't violate other people's trust.  Ultimately, one can only be accountable for one's own behavior, but as a player, that means that you should follow the golden rule of trust and not do anything that would violate someone else's trust.  

Communicate with Your Storyteller!

Which also translates to the Storyteller.  While this is one that I think sometimes depends on the player-ST relationship, but I feel that it's important to keep your Storyteller in the loop.  As a storyteller, I can't set things up for your plans to succeed if I don't know what they are.  I can't facilitate you having the dramatic confrontation with your nefarious uncle if I don't know that you want one.  Some STs use foreknowledge of plans to screw over PCs, but that's not me and that's not something I recommend.  Instead, being open with your ST allows the ST to set you up to succeed or fail or at least have an interesting experience.  

And if there's something you don't like about what's going on, communicate with your Storyteller.  I've had many games fall apart over issues that nobody mentioned.  Storytellers aren't omniscient, we don't know everything that's going on in everybody's minds/experiences.  If there is some aspect of a game that you want more or less of, if there's something going on that you wish wasn't or something not happening that you wish was, let the Storyteller know.  If someone is ruining your experience, let the Storyteller know!

And if they don't take you seriously, or treat your statements with contempt and disrespect, leave the game.  But a good Storyteller will want to respect the needs and wishes of the community.  They might explain to you some reason that things are done a certain way, some aspect of pacing or experience with a given technique that explains why they've made a certain decision, but they might also say, wow, I hadn't thought of it from that angle.  That's a very good suggestion, I'm going to think about that and maybe incorporate it.  But please, communicate with your Storyteller.

What is the Point of Experience (Points)?

What is the point of experience points?  Nearly every game uses them, or at least some variation on them(Karma, Advancement Points, etc.), but what is the actual point of them? And more importantly, are they appropriate for every situation? and do we use them to do too much?

What is Experience?
So, at its base level, experience is a marker of character advancement, a way of representing character change through accomplishment.  As the character achieves goals, they get better at what they do.  But it is something more than that.  Experience points are not just a manifestation of learning, they are a manifestation of story form and to a certain degree a relic of the story forms of early games.  Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy narratives in general are based around a certain unlikely hero story form.  In that sort of story, which draws heavily on traditions of fairy tales, fantasy stories and bildunsromans, the hero begins the story the victim of a villainy or lack and cannot right that villainy or liquidate that lack until they are stronger.
Experience points become the method to explain that strengthening process.  It shows how Conan the boy can become Conan the Barbarian(and slay Thulsa Doom).  It explains how Meriadoc Brandybuck can go from scrumper of apples to slayer of Witch Kings(and liberator of the Shire).  It explains how Rand al'Thor can...do whatever it is he does(I didn't actually read that book series).   Experience points started as a structure to allow for that kind of storytelling.

Variations on Experience Points
In other games, Experience has been adapted but rarely abandoned entirely.  The classic model of Dungeons and Dragons is the linear advancement model.  Experience points buy levels, which progress along upwards power curves.  Other games use point buy systems, where you get generic experience points that are spent to raise specific skills/powers/abilities, representing a manifestation of effort at self-improvement.  This system allows for more nuanced development, but can also lead to oddly unbalanced characters or incongruous advancement(I learned a lot during our fight with that Mummy, like how to better influence local politics).  Some games use targetted achievement systems, where using a specific skill makes it improve.
Games also vary how experience is gained.  The classic model of Dungeons and Dragons is killing things.  Other games use story advancement, achieving plot points or good role playing to earn experience points.  Many targetted achievement systems mark experience through breakthrough moments, where outstanding success marks an opportunity for improvement.  My personal favorite is Dungeon World, where you get experience points whenever you fail at something.
What all these have in common is that they all represent an upwards power curve.  Characters start weak and get stronger.  But that strength is more than just symbolic representation.

Experience as Influence on Narrative
More experience equals more power, and more power equals more influence on the narrative.  Ultimately, a change in power level allows the PC to do more things, to interact with parts of the world that were inaccessible before, to take on enemies that previously eluded them.  This is both good and bad.  For games where everyone advances together and is part of a single team/faction, this can generally add up to the world becoming more the playground of the PCs.
However, this breaks down when you get to games that have multiple groups competing for influence over the narrative.  While experience points are not the sole method of influencing game narratives, they are a part of the overall equation.  When there is a significant power differential between characters in a game, those that have a lot more power are able to exercise a lot more control over the narrative. In these cases, experience point differentials can be a significant problem, because there is very little as disengaging as feeling like you have no influence over the game.

Arguing Against XP
This is one of the reasons that I'm strongly opposed to the current system of experience points being used in most ongoing LARPs and why I think LARPs can take something from standard tabletop practice.
1. I don't believe in XP as an OOC reward system
Some people have more time than others.  Some people have access to more money than others.  Some people have skills that others lack.  Depending on the game, these can be turned directly into narrative influence by volunteering/buying things for the game/making objects for the game.  This disengages people who don't have access to the same resources but still want to participate.
2. I don't believe in an arbitrary universal starting point.
In the D&D games I've played, when you bring in a new character, that character's level is related to the level of the other characters in game.  It might be average level-1 or same as the lowest level character or experience equal to whoever in the party has the least, but almost nobody forces you to bring a level 1 character into a level 12 game, even if everyone else started at level 1 initially.  But in many LARPs I've been to, new characters start out at starting level even if there are characters in the game walking around with hundreds of XP.  I think that LARPs can learn from tabletops here, establishing XP floors that allow new characters to feel like they aren't completely behind.
3. I believe in XP caps

There is a point of diminishing returns on XP as a narrative instrument.  I run bounded games, games with pre-defined beginning and ending points, which regardless of system, puts a cap on the total amount of XP that can be earned.  But not everybody does this.  I have participated in many games that had been running for years, with characters earning experience points the entire time.  In so many cases, I heard players talking about how they didn't know what to spend their experience on, so they were learning irrelevant skills or becoming experts on obscure lore.  This does more than just unbalance a game.  This cheapens the idea of character.  One of the reasons that characters have different skill sets is that it provides a method of focus sharing.  When a character has reached the point where they can solve all problems on their own without help from other characters, then the game becomes not a group participatory exercise, but an exercise in narrative masturbation.  XP caps limit that.  By having a maximum amount of XP, a character can only specialize in so many things and situations that require multiple degrees of expertise thus require multiple characters.  

One Solution

So, for the Changeling the Lost game that I am about to wrap up, I used an experimental system of character advancement.  Rather than have an experience point system that depended on attendance at game, all characters were given a total number of advancements(24) based on the total number of games(24).  These advancements could be used to advance any aspect of the character, so long as there was narrative justification.  

Players could spend them at any point in between games, starting at the beginning of the game with all of them spent or starting late in the game with none of them spent.  This put an overall cap on potential power and allowed for a variety of starting points.  It simplified calculation and character sheet tracking and removed arguments about power differential based on XP.  

Was it perfect?  No.  There is still a power differential based on system knowledge.  There were people who engaged with the system much more than others.  There was some confusion over the timing of things and honestly, when I could no longer print character sheets out for free, we went to a much more system light approach.  But I think it's better than the alternative, maintaining the good parts of XP while avoiding many of the pitfalls that I've seen.

Thorny Questions: Handling PC Death in LARP

Thorny Questions is the series that addresses aspects of game that are complicated and don't present easy answers.  This one is about the complicated question of Player Character Death in LARP, focusing especially on the worrisome issue of PC on PC violence.

I have seen players driven from games based on mishandled PC deaths.  I have also seen games fall apart because unkillable PCs dominated the game and could not be removed.  I have seen games that did not allow PCs to die at game.  I have seen games where the senseless killing of PCs was treated like hunting for sport.  I have seen PC deaths that have reverberated through narratives.  I have seen PC deaths that were instantly forgotten.  I have seen PC deaths that ruin games for third parties.  I have seen PC deaths that have transformed people's characters for the better.  All of this death has given me some strong feelings on the subject of the killing of PCs, but not necessarily clear ones.

1. Consent is Sexy

So, my first big thought on the issue is that basically, PC death should be consensual.  This isn't to say the the character should agree, few characters are invested in their own death, but that the player should be given a chance to consent, especially when another PC is holding the knife(directly or indirectly).  Part of this is having a read of the game and requiring notice.  Essentially saying, no PC can kill another PC without prior permission and discussion.  The player(s) who want to do the killing talk to the Storyteller and the Storyteller can then consider.

There are a number of potential avenues at this point, as well.  Sometimes, a target is not necessarily specific[we need a human sacrifice to appease the volcano!] and the Storyteller might know about another player who has expressed an interest in switching characters.  Then consent can be immediate.  Sometimes, there might be weird assumptions [we must kill the rabbit!  he has all our cereal!] and the Storyteller might be able to encourage further investigation and prevent a ridiculous and painful misunderstanding.  But at that point, the Storyteller can speak with the potential victim about the death of their character.

This should be true for similar consequences that aren't technically death, but have the same effective result[staking vampires and hiding their bodies away comes to mind].  If the player is not on board, then the killing does not go down.  Now, I generally think that there is a long time window that should be observed.  If a player is considering such an act, then they should give at least a days notice ahead of time, so that narrative space can be cleared and Storyteller time can be devoted to this potential event.  Now, Crimes of Passion become a different story.  A situation that fairly escalates to mutual attempted murder is one that can potentially be negotiated in a shorter time frame, but even then, consent is key.

2. Sic Semper Tyrannis

However, there is a flip side to this consent based approach.  Yes, a player should not have their player killed without their consent, but on the flipside, this is theoretically open to abuse.  Ultimately, there is an important narrative balance to be struck and immunity to death should not be immunity to consequences.

To spin out a nightmare scenario of this sort, the prince of the city is a tyrant and rules with an iron fist.  But nobody can take him down, the political structure doesn't allow for democracy, only violent overthrow, and even pooling all their money to hire the best assassin in the universe doesn't work because the player of the Prince refuses to consent to their character being killed.  This leaves other players frustrated with the game and feeling like they lack agency.

A situation like that is extreme, but highlights that there are times when there is a narrative need to kill.  Not all situations where a character would kill another represents a narrative failure.  They can instead be narrative climaxes, the point where an extreme event is required for an extreme situation.

To that end, nobody should have perfect plot armor, in that nobody should be able to abuse a system to escape narrative consequences within game.  This is a difficult situation, but one that is important to understand, because without narrative consequences, extreme power imbalances can develop between players and those extreme power imbalances can lead to disinvestment in the game.  To that end, it's important to sometimes let people know that while their character's story isn't done, a chapter is and then try and work together on making the next chapter one that the player is interested in.

But nobody gets plot armor that protects them from ruining other people's fun.

3. You Get What Anybody Gets.  You Get A Lifetime.

So, how does one approach this in practice?  As a player, as an ST, etc.  Well, there's no universal approach, but there are a few potential tips.  Your mileage may vary on these, but they are the best I got.

As a player, try to have a sense of your character's narrative role and place in their personal journey. Is dying now being cut down in their prime? Is it falling right before they achieve their goal?  What would their last thought be?  Try and be a meaningful presence in other character's lives and be the Eddard Stark you want to see in the world.

On the flip side, as an ST, try and reward the player who dies gracefully.  Recognize that they are making a personal sacrifice for the good of the story and also recognize that this is the kind of player that you want in game.  Overall, you should make sure that losing a character does not deny them participation in the greater narrative of the game and try and find a way of incorporating a new character that gives them a good way in. Also, if appropriate, consider a funeral scene.  Fictional closure works the same as real closure.

Also, an important aspect of this is to make sure there's not significant splashover.  I once spent an entire game trying to protect a character from assassination.  At the end, I learned that the player had decided not to play the character any more and that no matter what I did, the character was going to be killed, even if the STs had to bend reality in order to make it happen.  The whole experience left me deeply disinvested in the game, because it felt like my efforts meant nothing and I'd wasted my time all game long.  If I'd known ahead of time, I would have played the entire night differently and gotten a satisfactory experience out of it.  Sometimes, things affect more than one person.

Overall, this is about transparency and forethought.  Having a plan for dealing with eventualities is an important part of running games.

And They Have a Plan: Creating Memorable Antagonists

Antagonists are a useful part of many types of storytelling.  While not every type of game requires antagonists, many games do and in my experience, nothing is quite so great as having a memorable antagonist.  But making an antagonist memorable is a very complicated process.  Antagonists are balancing acts, trying to have them be interesting enough to justify the story while not so dominant as to overshadow the actions of the protagonists of the story. I have a number of tips to creating interesting antagonists.

1. Plans
Antagonists need momentum the way that all characters need momentum.  And part of this comes with having plans.  Any antagonist should have an agenda, something that they are trying to get done.  And in some way, that agenda needs to run counter to the interests of the protagonists.  But agendas are more than just a general list of wants, memorable antagonists have ideas about how to achieve things, they have methods of gathering information, they have patterns of action.

One thing that I find makes for better antagonists is to make sure those plans do not include omniscience or immutability.  Memorable antagonists make plans based on information available to them, and that can mean they are unprepared.  This can be addressed by adding complicated redundancies to antagonists plans.  And plans need to be mutable, a plan shouldn't hinge on a single event occurring in a specific fashion, because if the protagonists attempt to change that event, then as a Storyteller you have to either completely rethink things or tell them they can't and either way can be highly problematic.

So what I suggest is this, don't think of antagonist plots as a series of specific actions so much as a series of sequential goals, and have them move on their own, adapting based on an idea of how the antagonist reacts to setbacks and opportunities.  Everyone has a way of reacting to changes in their plans, there's no reason the antagonist shouldn't have the same.

This brings me to the most important part of any antagonist's planning.  The escape plan.  It's no good trying to craft a memorable recurring villain if they have no way of outrunning the protagonists.  Escape plans should be in effect from the moment an antagonist enters the room, whether it's the use of proxy communication, the possession of a contingent teleportation effect or a bargaining chip of information that dies with them.  Memorable antagonists shouldn't resolve easily.

2. From Justification to Culture
One of the aspects of having a plan is having a justification.  Memorable antagonists are those who do what they do for a reason.  This reason can be flimsy or incorrect, but they need to have some justification for actions that they take.  One of the key reasons for this is that their justification should affect other aspects of the antagonist. On a personal level, it should affect their decision making.  Someone who is attempting to overthrow a kingdom out of lust for power will make different choices than someone who is attempting to overthrow a kingdom out of misguided patriotism, the former would have no qualms allying with the kingdom's traditional enemies, while the latter would never do so.

This justification also goes beyond just the central antagonist of the story as well.  Justification defines the culture of an antagonistic organization.  It defines who an antagonist is able to recruit and what participation in such an organization means.  Is an antagonistic organization a band of cut-throats, who will turn on each other for the narrowest advantage?  Are they a knightly order, with their own strictly defined rules of conduct?  Are they organized in loose cells, so they don't even know anyone outside their own small circle?  Importantly, do they even know the antagonist's endgame?  Justifications can help define the ways in which an organizational culture develops.

3. Minions and Pacing
This brings me to the concept of minions.  Memorable antagonists rarely work alone, and the idea of having an organization is very useful for conceptualization, but having minions is more than just creating a context, minions allow for more interesting antagonist plans.  First, complex plans require multiple participants and the more participants(up to a point), the more complex a plan can be.  An antagonistic plan as big as overthrowing a country or stealing the most important Macguffin in the world can't be done without people in multiple roles.

Second, minions can provide a very good way of pacing the defeat of an antagonist.  Minions are effectively character based story structure, as their defeat can represent milestones in the defeat of an antagonist's plot without forcing multiple direct confrontations.  At the same time, they offer the potential for the hand of the antagonist to reach further than direct presence allows without making everyone a teleporter.

4. Setbacks and Choices
And when the hand of the antagonist reaches out, it should in some way motivate action.  What really defines an antagonist is that their actions affect the lives of the protagonists in a negative way.  This can be the creation or maintaining of a lack, the commission or sustaining of a villainy, or simply pursuing plans that oppose those of the protagonists.  And a big part of this is maintaining that sense of loss or potential loss at the heart of the antagonist's plan.

And part of this is making every victory a little bit pyrrhic.  In a game especially, where the action should be defined by the choices of the protagonists, antagonists exist to force the protagonists to make choices.  Some of the most memorable choices that protagonists make in games are when they are forced into difficult situations by the actions of an antagonist.  On the flipside, nothing makes for a more frustrating antagonist than being put in situations where there are no choices to make, no ways to change the outcome of situations.  At that point, an antagonist just becomes a bully holding down the protagonists and asking them why they're hitting themselves.

5. Resonance
Of course, this gets further into what the point of an antagonist is, in some ways.  A memorable antagonist should resonate in some way with the protagonists.  What do I mean by that?  There should be some recognizable connection between them, some way of highlighting some aspect of the antagonist and protagonists.  This can be a personal connection over villainy(Thulsa Doom burned down my village and all I got was this weird Austrian accent), a shared past that now divides(Cosmo and Bishop in Sneakers), a contrasting theme(an all powerful, all moral Superman juxtaposed against an all too mortal, all too immoral Lex Luthor).  In some way, the antagonist should highlight characteristics of the protagonist(s).

Of course, a lot of this is dependent on genre.  When designing antagonists, what works in one genre as a contrast doesn't necessarily work in others.  Don't be afraid to embrace Genre.  It can be your best friend.  And while I'm on genre, have you thought about a good antagonist monologue?  They can be excellent tools.

6. Presence vs. Absence and Resolution
Of course, as we get to this, there are a few important things to note about the role of antagonists in stories.  Mainly, the story is not about the antagonist.  And that should be clear within the story structure.  One of the key ways this falls apart is that antagonists are best represented by infrequent presence.  An antagonist who shows up too often gets real old, real quick.  And ultimately, the antagonist should not overshadow the protagonists in the story.  This can be a major problem in a game with multiple competing antagonists.

This can be solved with having an antagonist who uses minions well and only communicates through mysterious letters.  Or an antagonist who is not seen until the final act.  But ultimately, an antagonist exists to be on screen at the climax of things and to be defeated.  And this leads me to my final point.  An antagonist is there to be confronted/defeated/redeemed, etc.  The whole point of a story with an antagonist is that it should in some way come to a head. Memorable antagonists don't just fade away.

Final Thoughts

A few last thoughts.  You can't always plan a memorable antagonist.  Sometimes some event will resonate in a way that cements a character in the minds of the players.  In these cases, it's best to see if you can just go with it.
One example that springs to mind comes from a fantasy game run by a friend.  In one encounter, our druid[more or less] tried to exercise mental control over a mouse that was being used to surreptitiously deliver a message.  Despite having an epic sized dice pool, the druid dramatically failed.  Thus was born the legend of Messenger Mouse, the true villain of the tale and one who would keep appearing.  The storyteller didn't quite rewrite things so Messenger Mouse was the true antagonist, but they became a presence in the story.  My memory of the adventure is a bit incomplete, but Messenger Mouse will survive in the legends of the game.

Thorny Questions: The Right to Participate

Trigger Warning: Talk about Suicide, Relationship Abuse

One of the complex aspects of gaming is the multi-participant nature.  The fact that games require the active involvement of many people means that participation is more than just a simple matter.  But the question of who gets to come to game is one that I have found thoroughly under-considered in light of its importance to the idea of community in game.  This is definitely a thorny question though, and one that touches on some very complex and personal issues.  In the first part, I am going to talk about philosophical angles and principles and in the second, I am going to talk about examples.  But I want to be clear, I am NOT going to present any real situations.  While there will be things that take parts of situations that I have experienced, these aren't veiled depictions of real situations.  The goal of this is to unpack the complexities of these questions, not to offer final answers.

So, who has a right to come to game?  I think this is actually a multi-part question, or more to the point, splitting it into multiple questions makes it easier to understand all of them.

1. Who has the right to join a game, either initially or in process?
This, in many ways is the easiest to answer and the one that most games have explicitly defined.  When a person or people decide to start a game, they decide who to invite or how to recruit.  A game might be completely open, any member of the public can wander in and join.  A game might be exclusive invite, only people specifically chosen by the person running the game.  But there is generally a methodology decided upon as part of the game.  However, this becomes more complicated as games progress.  Do you allow any new person to join at any point?  Do you require prior contact of some sort?  Regardless, most games have a decision making process for who can join.  My personal opinion is that both open and invite games have their advantages and disadvantages and that the important factor is consistency and fairness.

2. Who has the right to continue participating in a game?
This is a more complex question.  On the one hand, I feel like once someone participates in a game for more than one session, I feel that they gain the right to continue participating in a game and that the right is theirs to lose in some way.  Absent behavior that in some way removes that right, someone currently participating theoretically has the right to continue participating in a game.
Now, this is a player consideration, not a character consideration.  There can be character choices that preclude the appearance of a character at a certain in character event or at the very least make things complicated, but those in-character choices should not necessarily remove the right of the player to continue in game, they might simply make it so they have to create a new character to continue in game.

3. Who has the right to decide whether someone can participate in a game?
This is finally the most complex part of the question in general.  In most games, there is a centralized authority resting in the Head Storyteller or Storytellers.  But there are a lot of complicated permutations.  If one person hosts the game but another runs the game, is there joint authority over who is allowed to come?  And what is the process by which someone can appeal to that authority to have a person's right to participate revoked?

Generally speaking, I feel like this is better approached from the sense of principles and complications rather than from a set of specific rules, because there is no one-size-fits-all way of looking at the problem. However, I think individual games should have a clear policy that covers these principles and situations.  Not necessarily public, but one that is clear and consistent and well articulated within the staff(1).   So, what are the principles that I think are important.

Principles

Principle 1-Neutrality and Fairness

Any process of justice, because let's be fair, any situation where someone's rights are being potentially revoked is a process of justice, should be founded on principles of Neutrality and Fairness. Part of this is consistency.  Revoking one person's right of attendance for a specific offense and then not revoking another person's for the same or equivalent offense will almost certainly draw accusations of favoritism.  At the same time, everyone involved in a game does deserve at least some consideration.

Principle 2-Game vs. Non-Game

There's a degree to which game decisions should be based on game events.  Participation in a game should not necessarily mean opening up your entire life for review by the Storytelling staff.  This doesn't mean that there should be no attention to activities that go on outside of game, but it does mean that there should be a stricter level of scrutiny for in-game as opposed to out-of-game actions. In-game activities impact the game much more directly and are much more likely to be a problem than out-of-game activities.  That said, out-of-game behavior that hurts other players can be problematic.

Principle 3-Community Safety
An important principle for this, however, is community safety.  Ultimately, considerations of whether someone still has the right to come to game should be based on the likelihood that their presence is disruptive to community safety in some way.  One of the aspects of this is the necessary matrix of trust that is part of game.  If someone cheats or otherwise violates the rules of the community, it can undermine that trust.  If someone harasses another player, it can undermine the confidence of the player in the community.  If someone does not feel safe around a participant, they might choose to drop out of the game.  This becomes a conflict between the rights of two participants.  Overall, community safety is a top priority.

Principle 4-The Game as a Priority
However, the game itself can also be a priority.  One of the peculiarities of being a Head Storyteller is that the authority comes with expectations.  And one of the most straightforward is that you make the effort to keep the game going.  All participants expect that barring catastrophe, the game will continue.  So one of the decision principles that must go in is the preservation of the game.  Part of this, in my mind, is that it's not fair to punish the people involved in the game who are not part of the problem.  However, there are complications to these principles that mean that it isn't completely straightforward to decide.

Complications
Complication 1-Does Anyone Deserve Special Status or Priority?
So, one of the factors that complicates things is the question of whether there are people who deserve special status, a free pass or reduced level of scrutiny.  The obvious question for this is Significant Others.  Does an intimate partner get a pass where others don't?  This is an important and complicated question.  Is it different if it is a spouse or long-term partner? The other aspect of this is whether STs, including the Head ST deserve this status.  As members of the community, STs should be accountable for their behavior.

Complication 2-Friendship vs. Responsibility
The second complication is that games often require a balance of friendship and responsibility.  The short version of this is that gaming as a hobby often involves friends and balancing the desire to support friends with the responsibility to the game community as a whole.  There can be a strong desire to prioritize friendship over responsibility, and that is sometimes the right thing to do, but I feel there's a degree to which being the Head ST of a game involves accepting certain responsibilities to the participants in the game.  Overall, these two can easily come into conflict and the choice is not an easy one.

Overall, I don't have universal answers to these.  I think that to a certain extent Storytellers occupy a special position within the game, but that position is one that is more likely to bring strict scrutiny than automatic immunity, because there is so much power associated with it.  And I think that friendship and responsibility is a tenuous balancing act that is different in every specific situation.

Toolkit
So, what are the tools available to deal with some of these things.  I deal with this aspect differently than some people and I don't support things like summary expulsion or three strikes rules when it comes to these situations, because LARPs are social groups, and being summarily dismissed from your social group really sucks.  So I use a few other things.

Open Communication- Being an ST sometimes means having uncomfortable conversations.  If a player is having a problem or being a problem, then the first step is communicating openly about what is happening.  It isn't always easy, but talking openly about what is going on can be a major tool to solve problems.  One major aspect of this is discretion and confidentiality.  Sometimes people bring confidential concerns and it's important to respect that, because if you violate someone's trust then they won't tell you the next time they have a problem, and all of a sudden there's a problem that you don't know about.

Hiatus-While I don't believe in kicking people out summarily, I think mutually agreed upon hiatuses can be a good tool.  Sometimes, a break to get some distance from a problem or issue can be a good tool for consideration.  One potential issue is that people aren't used to being asked to take a break and may react as if the hiatus is summary expulsion in disguise.  This issue can be fought against with more open communication.  Meeting with someone before their return to game and specifically reaching out to set up such a meeting can be very useful.

Story Solutions- In concert with the hiatus, one important thing can be the use of narrative explanations for any necessitated absence.  It's important to work with players to make sure that being open to community solutions doesn't mean they are penalized in game.  Short term quests or mysterious imprisonments can give interesting way of taking a character out of game while the player is out of game and giving them momentum to re-enter.

Policy- One of the most important tools is to have some degree of policy as to who has the right to participate and to try and apply that policy fairly.  I think future games that I run will have something in the genre of constitution/user agreement/statement of principles that lays out rights and responsibilities and remedies as well as what will be done to address issues.  I'm not really one to think about things as punishments, but a sense of methods of reconciliation/remediation/community care are something useful as well.  That said, fairness isn't always about absolute identical treatment.  It's more about due consideration and open process.

Examples

So, here are a few examples that speak to some of the potential issues in a game.  While all of these draw on things I've seen, they are not cunningly disguised real world examples.  They are hypothetical situations, any resemblance to real events is probably because a lot of these are pretty universal.  These are my opinions/approaches, not what I think everyone should do, but these kinds of situations do arise and should be considered.

Example #1 

The Breakup
Situation: Jack and Diane were both heavily invested in Horror in the Heartland, but after their messy breakup, they can't be in the same room together.  Both play influential characters and have been part of the game since the beginning.
My Thoughts: First, I would try and talk with both of the participants and see where they stood, making sure that I wasn't only getting one side of the story or taking one person's word for everything. My first strategy would be to try and get the two of them to work out something between them, perhaps alternating sessions or agreeing to split the game space in some way.  Then I would do what I could to narratively support their proposed solution.  If they couldn't reach some arrangement, I would speak with each of them about the issue, then move to my second strategy, which would be to ask them both to take a short hiatus.  Overall, my main priority would be to prevent the breakup from dividing the game itself.  

Example #2 

Smooth Criminal
Situation: Danny Ocean just recently plead guilty to a Class A misdemeanor theft charge after being caught swiping some iPads from the campus library.  He has expressed interest in joining the Glaives and Goblins game, but other players have expressed trepidation, given that lots of real world possessions are unmonitored in the out of character area.
My Thoughts: I would have a conversation with Danny before considering his request to join the game.  I would emphasize the fact that a community can be very hurt by things like theft and try and make sure that he understood that any theft would be met with a loss of his right to participate.  I would mention that there were people that were uncomfortable, but that I would be willing to give him a chance.  I wouldn't name names of who was uncomfortable and I'd come in with a stock response should any specific name be inquired after. "I'm not going to talk about who expressed concern."  However, I would also make sure that people were securing their possessions in the out of character area and make sure that things were not being left out where anyone could take them.  I might also buy some 5 dollar luggage locks and allow people to borrow them during game for their own peace of mind.  If Danny was accused of stealing something, I'd investigate as fully as possible, but I'd also be willing to revoke his right to participate.

Example #3

Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be

Situation: Polonius has been on the ST staff of Something Rotten in the State of Denmark for the past year and Laertes has been a player just as long.  During a trip to GenCon, Polonius and Laertes shared a hotel room, but Polonius hasn't paid back Laertes for his share yet.  Other players have begun to complain that Laertes has been using this leverage over Polonius to get favorable rulings in game.
My Thoughts: This one would require multiple conversations probably, trying to get to the bottom of the situation, but ultimately, I would start with letting both know individually that the behavior was problematic[Laertes shouldn't be asking for favors and Polonius shouldn't be giving them].  If the problem recurred, I would probably ask both of them to take a hiatus until the debt was settled unless the recurrence was obviously one sided and the other person talked to me directly.  Overall, this is about the use of any outside power dynamic in game, any condition that induces favoritism between player and ST, in either direction.

Example #4

Haters Gonna Hate
Situation: Roderick tells racist jokes.  He often tells them with an "I'm not racist, but" disclaimer, but the other players at the Trouble at Totleigh Towers LARP have grown uncomfortable with them nonetheless.  Several of them approach Reginald, the ST about how this is making them uncomfortable and that they won't come to game if Roderick keeps making those jokes.
My Thoughts: This would be a hard conversation, but I'd sit down with Roderick and let him know that his actions were offending members of the community(not naming names).  I would emphasize that the main issue in this case is that his actions at game are hurtful to other participants.  I would then let those who had brought up the issue know to bring up any additional issues that may arise.  If Roderick persists, I would ask him to leave the game as he was not respecting the needs of fellow community members.

Example #5

Goodbye Game
Situation: Wanda has been coming to the Neo-Dixie Punk LARP for about a year, when she hears that Earl came to a recent character creation session.  She contacts the STs, letting them know that she and Earl were in a relationship that ended because of abuse.  She won't continue to participate in game if he begins coming.
My Thoughts: This is a tricky balance in some ways, but my decision would be clear.  I would prioritize the safety of members of the community rather than let someone who is a danger to them enter their safe space.  One hard part is making sure that Wanda also has resources to deal with Earl outside of the game space, because his attempt to join might be an attempt to re-engage, which might be grounds for legal action.  Ultimately, I would speak with Earl, let him know that because of prior negative interactions with another [anonymous] participant in the game, he could not participate in the game.  I would let Wanda know the actions that were taken and make sure she knew she could reach out to us if anything else occurred.


Why Does This Matter

I can talk a bit about why this matters in a very general sense, talking about what exclusion from a community means, about the importance of fairness and equality, but for me, the idea of inclusion/exclusion is far more personal.  When I was in college, I was running a small Changeling: the Dreaming tabletop game.  I had a number of players and was a few sessions in when a friend who had not done much gaming expressed indirect interest in joining the game.  I had known him for a while and while we did not hang out regularly, I knew that he could be a bit shy and that led to him being a bit isolated. Ultimately, I did not include him in the game. At the time, it was partially a matter of the game being more or less full and me not being sure about bringing in someone new to gaming.  I didn't explicitly say no, but I could have directly addressed his implied interest and incorporated him or explicitly invited him to another game or at least explicitly explained my reasons.  But I did exclude him, whether I had reasons or not.

A year or so later, that friend committed suicide.  I don't blame myself for his suicide, and I'm not saying that any case where someone is denied the right to participate in a game bears that threat, but I do think that had I chosen differently, I might have been able to help my friend.  And since that time, I have approached the idea of inclusion/exclusion very differently.  It may lead to me being very conservative with my approach to exclusion.  It may lead to me thinking about this issue much more than most people.  But I feel the idea of the right to play is one of the thorny issues in gaming with the worst "is addressed: needs to be addressed" ratios.

We need to talk about this, in small groups and large.

(1) This is an important footnote.  I feel this way because one of the recent crises in my game was partially precipitated by my own failure as a Head ST to properly examine this potential issue and to articulate a potential response.