Short Thoughts: Emotional Work in LARP Running

I frequently get requests as part of LARP running to socially intervene in uncomfortable situations and disinvite people from game. And in those situations, I often get resistance from people when I ask for detailed information about the situation. But what people don't think about is what my experience of the situation is.

People don't realize is that the uncomfortable conversation they want to avoid having is had anyway. They just don't end up being the one having it. I end up having a conversation with someone that ends up being 'someone doesn't want you in game'. But often, I can't do that if I don't have the information, so people get weird and are like, "why do I have to tell you all the details and such?" Because you are asking me to have a very uncomfortable conversation with someone and if I don't have details, then it is infinitely more uncomfortable.

If I have to say to someone, "you aren't allowed at game and I can't tell you why." then I become the bad guy, not just someone difficult to deal with but an arbitrary villain. And so I need to have the information, I need to know why I'm disinviting someone. I need to know that they are an abuser, I need to know that they are a harasser, I need to know that they cheat at game. I need to know these things, because if I don't or if I'm told that I can't talk about them at all, you're just making me be an asshole and that sucks and I'm not getting paid enough to do something that sucks that much.

Remember that emotional work is work and if you are asking someone to do work on your behalf, you should support them doing that work for you in any way you can.

Playing the Fog of War: Narrating an Uncertain World

What to Do When the Story is the Uncertainty
Some stories are about the actions we take when we have incomplete information.  This is something that is very true when it comes to stories about events where nobody has complete information.  A prime example of this is War.  In a war, even the most informed individuals always have an incomplete picture of the world, limited by time, by distance, by restricted information or simply by the uncertainty of the future.  For people on the ground, in the thick of the action, it can be impossible to see and comprehend everything that is going on.  If you look at history, there were often times when even the most informed people lacked very important information.  For instance, during Sherman’s March to the Sea during the Civil War, the US government had no idea where the army even was or if it had gotten into any battles.

While this can make for interesting stories, it is difficult to pull off in a game setting.  A lot of storytelling methods in the modern era opt towards sharing large amounts of information with the reader/player to the point that modern audiences are used to being very informed about current events within a story.  In many cases, this is done with multiple perspective narration or direct info-dumps or opening text crawls about trade disputes.

However, LARPs and tabletops can be an excellent storytelling method for telling these stories differently.  What is it like to make decisions with limited perspective and specific character goals?  This ties into a general game design principle that Interesting Decisions make for Interesting Games(See Sid Meier’s talk at GDC2017).  But this is a hard balance to strike.  Players worry about making the wrong decisions, they worry that they are missing out on game, and sometimes information doesn’t flow quite how you expect.  So, how do you make a game about limited information without highlighting the frustrations of limited information?  Well, I don’t really have all the answers, but I do have a few tips.

Make the Story about the Local
The scale of information can be a way of playing with the notion of limited information.  If there are large scale uncertainties going on, try and make more local things much more certain and much more relevant.  Make games about what is done within a unit, not how massive armies move around.  Make games about what is done in a department of city government, not an entire nation.  Or at the very least, make it so that what is happening locally can be understood and acted upon.

Think Globally, Act Locally, is a principle in many activist circles, but given that game characters are often beings that want to enact larger change in the world, make sure that local action has consequences in the larger world that feel meaningful.  Have a crucial battle of the war on the city streets, or an economic summit be hosted locally.  Don’t necessarily overdo it.  Not every event should happen to happen where the game is unless you want to stretch realism to a breaking point, but honestly, the story you are telling is about this place and these people and remember that.

Reassuring Players about the Unknown
One of the keys to allowing stories to be about uncertainty is making sure to not penalize players for lack of information.  My general policy for LARP is that no "wrong" decision made in good faith should lead to negative consequences for the player.  Decisions made in good faith with limited information should lead to interesting stories and increased storyteller investment, not penalties for 'wrong'ness. 

Any decision made in a game is a risk on the part of the player and risks should be rewarded.  And rewarded visibly, so that other players see that they aren't going to be smacked down for trying.  Because in many games I've seen, players are hesitant to act at all because actions even slightly mistaken become excuses for the ST to lord over them that they don't know everything that's going on.  NEVER DO THIS!  As the ST, you are often the only person who knows what's going on, so don't make the game less fun because you aren't gaming with psychics.

Make Sure to Reveal NECESSARY Information
Of course, it's important to build out information flow in games.  If you are working with uncertainty and doubt as a key game theme, make sure that there are flows of information so people do have SOMETHING to base their decisions on.  Part of this is working out intentional information flow.  Making sure that information you're putting out into game gets filtered out to others.  My main rule is to never have only one player get a piece of information, always at least 2, generally 3 disconnected people.  That way it is more certain to flow outwards.  And give it to the least important people in a game's power structure if possible.  Information flows upwards, but that allows the telling to be an interesting event. 

I also recommend developing unintentional information flows, where there are rumors and facts that players are able to get at random.  My current game has a rumor system that I fill up with true and false information so that every player gets a piece of information each game.  It may be very relevant, it may be very irrelevant, but it's there. 


Overall, having a game about incomplete information can be done, but always remember, it's most important for it to be fun. 

Adding Characters Mid Game

Stories often need new characters.  Sometimes the directions a story needs to take requires someone to take it in that direction.  Sometimes there's a gap that needs filling in the party.  Games often need new players.  Sometimes people find that a game doesn't fit into their life or that the style isn't a great match, or sometimes, it's just time to expand.  But adding new characters requires thought and care so they don't get lost in the shuffle or find the game inaccessible because they don't have established connections.  There are a few guidelines to follow that help make sure that new characters are able to become part of the game and have a good experience while not taking too much focus from the ongoing narrative.

Build In Opportunities for Natural Additions

Ongoing games can be tricky to add characters to.  In a tabletop dungeon crawl, it's hard to justify a new adventurer just happening to be in the same dungeon on the same mission.  So it's important to think about potential openings and let those openings be part of the process of bringing in new players.  This generally requires a bit of pre-planning and may involve a bit of waiting.  Don't rush a new player in whenever, make it an event, and when planning out a plot structure, think about those events as part of the greater plot structure.

In my current LARP, there are a few structured times where new characters can come in, and these times represent narrative shifts to the world as a whole in a way that makes new characters something special.  Which brings up the next guideline.

Have the New Bring In Something New

New character should add something missing or new to an ongoing game.  Coming in without bringing something new can make things difficult for a new player.  How can they compete with established characters who have established connections that make them more involved in the ongoing narrative.  So the solution is to have new characters come in with new connections that are interesting an appealing and help them get involved.

This can be a matter of introducing a new plot, being part of a new faction that shakes up the status quo, or bringing some new direction or power to the table.  A character that other characters are intrigued by and see as something new is one that has a path into the game, allowing them to get involved without displacing established characters.  Because the secondary aspect of this is that new characters should not try to displace existing characters.  You don't want to overhighlight the new at the expense of the existing, but find ways to let both games be improved.

Create Connections to the Ongoing

One way to do this is to create character connections for new characters that link them to ongoing characters and plots.  Leaving backstory hooks open can be a good opportunity to bring in new characters as contacts, relations, friends, enemies, etc. of existing characters in a way that makes the addition of the new characters into an event for both.  This can be a way of working with existing players who may need hooking back into the plot, or activating loose plot threads that have been dropped. 

These connections help make things more natural for the incorporation of new characters.  It can be very difficult as a new player to make connections, but having that first connection can be very useful for building others, as that gives someone to give introductions and a bit of personal momentum towards relationships.

Don't Start Characters Behind

One thing that I have seen in a lot of games and that I disagree with vehemently is the idea of starting characters behind in experience or power.  The idea that all characters need to start at some base power level and that characters that have been in game will be more powerful is a sure method to make new characters feel irrelevant.  Because how could they be more useful or interesting than characters that are much more advanced than they are?

You can have a sliding scale that characters follow, so that they don't overpower existing PCs(there's a big difference in a point spend system between 100 XP spent 5 at a time over 2 years and 100 XP spent all at once), but new characters should not be penalized for being new.

All in all, the key to the guidelines is letting new characters be a tool to add narrative momentum to games, to help create new relationships and deepen or transform old ones, to bring in new information and to expand the community.  These are people who you want to be part of the game, make sure they feel welcome.

For Everything a Season: Act Breaks in Campaign Games

One thing I love about serialized storytelling, in terms of television, comic books, movie franchises, etc., is the existence of story structure.  Many of the works that I love have very evident shifts between parts of the story.  The different 'big bads' of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the shifting politics of Babylon 5's seasons, the changing teams and locations in Claremont's X-Men comics, even the different 'phases' of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all of these break the story into phases that can be understand as part of a whole, but also take different tones and perspectives.

This method of storytelling can be used to great effect in campaign games, both LARP and tabletop.  But for an art form that tends in form to simply continue on a regular schedule, an Act Break may require extra effort or planning and definitely raises some important questions to address in terms of game philosophy and practice.

What is the point of (meta)plot?

Of course, Act Breaks assume the existence of an overarching landscape of plot.  Because if there isn't anything happening on a larger or direct level in the world outside of the characters actions, then strictly speaking, there isn't anything to change between Acts.  So if there isn't a metaplot, then there isn't a need for act breaks.
While I've addressed this in another post on this blog, here's a brief version that is relevant to this topic.  Metaplot is a genre-appropriate developing landscape that provides context for the choices characters make.  By my philosophy of game design, the most important thing for the Storyteller to do is frame decision points for character, essentially asking story questions that give players agency to change the world around them.  So in part, plot is about laying out crossroads so that players can choose their paths(or to wander off the path, a relevant possibility).
Beyond just framing choices, metaplot is about escalating the stakes of the story to match character development and power.  As character relationships deepen, as character power levels increase, as easy decisions play out, characters need new choices that match their current position in the story.  This isn't just about going from kobolds to dragons, but about matters of increasing consequence.
So metaplot should be this genre-appropriate developing(as in, the developments should flow from one another according to the overall genre) landscape that provides context for the choices that characters make.  And by splitting into Acts, that becomes somewhat easier.

Why have Act Breaks in game?

An Act Break is an opportunity.  An opportunity to end specific plot threads and introduce new ones, an opportunity to create entry and exit points for players and characters, a chance to tinker with underlying aspects like tone and theme.

The end of the Act should almost always correspond with the conclusion of one plot thread.  This plot thread may be loose or tight, but should encompass some of the overall theme and tones of the Act.  As things wrap up, it can be easy to create a climactic moment of confrontation and escalate drama to encourage player energy.  When players see that  choices affect the way things conclude, they can see ways of getting engaged down the line.

The end of one act and the beginning of another can be a great set of entry and exit points for players and characters.  New players often struggle with finding ways into ongoing games and the shifting context of an Act Break can often give an opportunity for new characters that have a good reason to be arriving in the game context.  It can also give an opportunity to wrap up character stories or to write out characters that may have drifted away from game.

An Act Break can also convey a shift in tone.  There are excellent examples of stories shifting genres or focuses between acts and seasons in a way that expands the understanding of the world and gives new perspectives.  The Wire shifted the focus of its investigations and focus to highlight different types of dysfunction and change the tone of individual seasons.  Other texts drop sudden revelations at Act Breaks that change the interpretation of things that came before and after.

How to Do an Act Break

So, that's why, but if you wanted to do an Act Break, how would you go about it?  I have a few guidelines about Act Breaks that I tend to follow in game design.

1. Telegraph the act break.
Don't spring an act break on players.  While I tend to have heavily structured games with every session planned out, it is possible to do a looser Act/Season structure, but the ending should never be a surprise to players.  You don't have to tell them what is happening that will change the world, but let them know that things are coming to a head so they can make decisions accordingly.  Players will take greater risks at Act Breaks if they know it's coming.

2. Have something end
It sounds simplistic, but have something really end at the end of an Act.  Certain things will be done at the end of the Act in a way that they won't return.  If nothing actually ends, it can be easy to lose the stakes of the Act Break.

3. Have some things stay
Don't throw out everything, though.  There should be some connective tissue between the Acts/Seasons.  It's more like a hinge than like two separate objects.  That connective tissue is important to keep some momentum.

4. Shift the context seriously
It should be possible by looking at it to know what Act you're in.  This can be based on the physical locations, the common adversaries, or some other aspect of the context, but there should be something marked between Acts.  In the long Changeling game I ran, you could tell what act it was based on whether there was a mirror city in the sky above Chicago.  I even had five different logos for the different acts.

5. Introduce something new
As important as ending something at the end of an Act is beginning something new with the new Act.  There should be new momentum at the start of the new context to propel people forward into the brave new world.

Pacing and Game Structure tips and questions

Beyond these guidelines, there are a few important questions to ask as part of the process.

How long should an act be?

It depends a bit on the game, but there are a few guidelines.  An Act should be short enough to be comprehensible and easily remembered.  Acts or seasons that take place over a year are hard for participants to really understand as a whole, to really see how the beginning connects to the end.  However, an Act should also be long enough to display visible themes.  My rule of thumb is 4-6 months.  

Should there be a time gap between acts?

If there is going to be a time gap between game sessions, then a time gap between acts makes sense.  Even if not, if you're trying for a larger thematic shift, a time gap may allow a more dynamic change between two Acts.  

Should all act breaks be similar?

No, for instance, as you are coming to the end of a chronicle, I would hesitate to add new players at an Act Break.

What's the border between sequels or Act Breaks?

There is no hard and fast rule.  If the break is longer than the game ran, it's definitely a sequel.  If there's a distinct player base, it's definitely a sequel.  Otherwise, call it as you see it.

Secrets and Mysteries: Information Differential in LARP

Drama almost always involves information differential, some situation where some people know something and others do not.  Dramatic tension almost always emerges from lack of information, where misunderstandings or differing access to information create different motivations.  In some stories, information differential can create conflict where everyone is acting in good faith, but at cross purposes. (admittedly, these are some of my favorites)

However, managing information differential in a LARP is a complex process with several different aspects.  A properly managed information differential involves the selective guarding and revealing of PC and NPC secrets, the encouragement of the experience of learning and discovery, and the distribution of knowledge as power.

Secrets and Rumors
One of the most straightforward engines of drama in a LARP is the secret.  Some aspect of a character that, if revealed, would change the way other characters perceive them.  This information differential is an excellent way of creating personal drama for a character, as the process of holding the secret influences the way the character is performed(I can't tell them I'm a spy for the British Government, but I have to ask some leading questions to get information).  The selective revelation of the secret becomes currency of intimacy and trust, creating or growing character relationships.

The most important aspect of secrets is that they should matter and change. Secrets should influence decisions, should motivate actions, should create drama.  And while characters may not want it to happen, all secrets should emerge over the course of a story.  The key to information differential in a story is that it should be dynamic.  It should influence the development of the story and have motion to it.  As more characters realize that one character is a vampire, they all have to make decisions as to how that affects their relationships.  If none of them ever learn, those relationships are never changed by the revelation, so the story is static.

Rumor systems can help with this, providing a method for driving the revelation of secrets in a slightly uncontrolled fashion.  This lack of control ups the drama factor of having a secret, adding doubt and fear to the process.  You never know who's going to learn about your deep, forbidden love of Chik-Fil-A.

Maintaining the Fun of Discovery
At the risk of sounding like a big nerd(too late), learning is fun.  Discovering new information and knowing more than you used to is a pleasurable experience.  It's also a key aspect of character development.  As you learn new things, you change and become different than you were.  One of the keys of managing the release of information is that the fun is important.  If you forget to reveal information, you are forgetting to add the fun, which is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. 

Revealing information is also by itself a reward for positive play, a way of giving back to those who engage with the world in a creative way.  Increased knowledge can be a way of rewarding play that also adds to the experience of those around the player, because knowledge has a tendency to spread outwards in a way that has the potential to create shared fun. 

One of the rules of thumb I use for this is to make sure that information goes out in at least two different, unrelated places.  If the key goal is to have information spread out and have unpredictable effects, having two spots can make that more likely.  It also makes the world feel a bit more alive, which is a benefit. 

In my experience, though, it is better to distribute information in pieces.  There are a few reasons for this. 
1. show don't tell: if you just give all the information at once, you are essentially just giving the outline of a story.  Which is generally less satisfying to people. 
2. allow for the complications of player input: Players will sometimes interpret story pieces in unexpected ways, focusing on certain aspects of a piece of information.  By giving it in pieces, the Storyteller allows a level of player input into the plot, creating a feedback channel for player creativity.  Don't go all Chris Carter on this and throw out clues that you have no idea what they mean and lean on the audience to interpret them, but do allow player interpretation to act as a Yes, and...
3. pace out the story: it's just more fun to have things happen over a few steps and it makes for more of a story.  Stories have beginnings, middles and ends and this is true for microstories like learning a secret as well.

Knowledge is Power
However, it's important to acknowledge that information differential is power differential and to use that responsibly.  One of my hard and fast rules of running games is to never use that power against players as an ST.  It's one thing to joke about how the things that players don't know about as dangers, but wielding that knowledge can make a game very un-fun, very quickly. Don't exploit that power to make yourself feel important. 

As part of this, it's impossible to know how simple or complex a mystery is in a game.  It may be simple to you because you see all the different parts, but your players do not have access to your brain, unless you are playing a much more complex game that I am.  By the same token, you may accidentally have a set of clues that line up with a player's master's thesis and have them solve the riddle in 30 seconds.  roll with it.  Give more clues and have a backup mystery if necessary. 

First Games and Pilots

The first game of an ongoing LARP is an experience both exhilarating and anxiety producing.  After months of preparation, the day approaches and everything changes from being completely potential energy to being kinetic.  In some ways, the first game is the most important game of a series, it can set the tone for everything else to come for better or worse.  In some ways the first game is the least important, as it is often like a dress rehearsal for game, a chance to have everyone try on their costumes and characters and see what fits.  Regardless, there are a few tips for Storytellers and Players alike to help make game 1 go as well as possible.

The ST approach to Game 1
Starting Things in Motion
One of the biggest challenges to game 1 is the lack of momentum.  Game 1 doesn’t have ongoing plots or continuing drama.  This can be a real challenge, because one of the things that really gives a game oomf is the sense of continuation.  To address this, I like to make sure that a game starts in motion.
Starting in motion is about having something propelling characters to the event that the game represents.  I think I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post how LARPs benefit from a sense of eventfulness, well the first game can set that tone by making a big deal about the initial inciting event.  A first session should feel like a big deal, a new beginning, and that involves starting things in motion.
For the game I’m starting now the inciting motion involves a major shift in the status quo.  What had been an open meeting that only NPCs attended changed by the removal of those NPCs, creating a sense of disquiet and questioning that drives the PCs to seek out answers.  This changes the dynamics of the world and also sets things up so that nobody is quite familiar with what is normal.  My hope is that this will bring characters together with a drive to create something new.

The Pilot Effect
When players come together for the first time as their characters, everybody is new and the dynamics between them are unexplored.  In many ways, this is like the pilot of a television show, a demonstration of some of the potential, but also a chance to try out things and see what works.  Some players may realize they created a character too mean or too aimless or didn’t make use of the system to represent their character properly.
As a storyteller, it’s important to embrace this and allow the first game or two to work out some of the kinks.  Let players know that they aren’t completely locked into choices made in the first game.  Don’t set up permanent choices in game 1 for social structures that may not fit down the line for the game.  Keeping an informal pilot atmosphere to things puts less pressure on players to decide everything instantly.
For the game I’m starting, there will be room during the first act to tweak certain aspects of backstory and system to better suit how character dynamics develop.  The new nature of the social structure also allows for a period of negotiated social dynamics to represent how things become rather than setting up a completely new dynamic.

Making a World Feel Lived In
While game 1 may be the first time that the characters are together in the same place, it’s rare that the world did not exist before the characters came into being.  In preparing for a first game, it’s important to make it feel like the world didn’t just appear ex nihilo(unless that’s what you’re going for).
There are multiple ways of doing this, and every game will have some degree of this from the existence of the characters, but this is not usually quite enough.  At the same time, one of the worst ways of establishing this is the creation of a 75 page text history of the world.  Because from experience, nobody is going to read the whole thing and regardless, they aren’t going to absorb it.  The best way to approach this is to make the development of the world an active pre-game and in-game activity.  People learn better by doing and may absorb information better by contributing to that information/actively engaging with it.
At the same time, one of the truest ways of living in the world is having limited knowledge.  It’s fine for people to only know their corner of the world and have the ability to discover the world around them.  Some players revel in playing the completely new person, some want to be steeped in the world’s lore ahead of time.
For this game, I did a combination of active pre-game exercises and in-game exercises to try and simulate the lived-in nature of the world’s history.  I did collaborative worldbuilding from the beginning to help people be involved in the world’s details and followed up with more detailed faction building to give people a sense of the small world in which they live.  I have also put together a pre-game/in-game exercise where players provide rumors about their characters, some true, some false, and then receive rumors about other characters at the first game.  This gives them a chance to know a bit about the world, but also gives seeds for social action, where they follow up on these rumors in some way, fueling the development of the world through interaction.

If You Love Something, Set it Free
Once game 1 runs, the storyteller has to be prepared to let go.  Before game 1, the game often feels like it belongs only to the storyteller, with everything that happens subject to storyteller approval.  But the moment that the game on statement is given, the game is no longer solely the property of the storyteller.  This can be a hard thing to accept, but it’s very important.
The Storyteller will still be one of the most influential hands steering the game, but once things start, they share control with everyone in the game.  My advice is to embrace this and watch how things develop, following the leads of the players rather than pushing back too hard.  There’s an often misinterpreted statement about product development, “the customer is always right”.  If the people in the game are telling you they want drama and you think they want comedy, you’ll have more success running a drama because they are generally right about what they want and no amount of direct pushing is going to change that.

Advice for Players in Game 1
So, as a player, how do you approach game 1?

Finding Your Voice
Well, I find that the first thing to do is to find your character’s voice and mannerisms.  Be prepared to introduce yourself a lot, and to tell people who you are.  If the game is a first meeting, this is your chance to establish details about yourself and your public image.  How do you want other characters to think about your interactions and how does that inform how you speak and act.
The exercise that I often do as a player before playing a new character or a new game is to simply practice my character’s personal introductions, “Hello, my name is Cecil Marley Philips but my friends call me Yorkie.”  “I’m Alexander Hamilton, I’m at your service, sir” “Murph.”  There’s a lot that can be conveyed in an introduction, so make it work for you.

Finding Your Friends(And Enemies)
LARPs are about relationships and how relationships influence the decisions we make.  If at all possible, come in with some established relationships before game 1, friends and allies are a great place to start, and that often brings along with it goals and motivations, why do you hang out with these people, what common interests do you have?
Even if you don’t have things set up beforehand, build bridges at game 1.  Make friends, find those who you can form relationships with and who may have your back down the line.  Find unlikely allies who you can get to know and have uncomfortable alliances with.
And make enemies.  In real life, we generally seek not to make enemies.  That’s good, you don’t actually want people to hate you in real life.  But in game, enemies can make for an interesting story.  Especially if you are nominally allies.  Find the points of contention and lean into them.  Turn those into momentum and motivation.  This will help drive your character and make game more fun for everyone.

Finding Your Style
It can be tempting to wait on costuming until you have a sense of the character.  You may have something big you want to purchase but aren’t sure it fits for the character.  That’s perfectly reasonable, but don’t take it too far.  Costuming and props are one of the best ways to establish character and can be an excellent way of getting into a character’s mindset.  Hats, wigs, props of various sorts, little things can make it feel less like you are dressed like yourself and more like you are dressed like someone else.  So even if it’s a token costume, a single prop that will carry through, definitely do something for the first game.

Everyone Has a First Day
So, what if it’s your first LARP ever and you are not sure what to do.  A piece of wisdom I have for every situation is that everyone has a first day.  Every expert you meet, everyone you see excelling at something, every person who can make something look easy had a time when they were new.  You get to be new at something, and the community should support you.
For those who are experienced, don’t drive people away who are new, keep the game open and allow the fresh perspectives to expand the world around you.  I guarantee if will make for a better game if you are more welcoming to the inexperienced.

Overall, game 1 is complicated, but those complications can be opportunities if used correctly.  The energy of game 1 is unlike anything else and while it comes with a lot of stress, you can’t get to game 2 without game 1, so embrace the chaos and move forward into the future.

LARP worldbuilding I

With a new LARP coming up, it's inevitable that I return here.  Today, it is to talk about worldbuilding.  Worldbuilding for a LARP is different than worldbuilding for a tabletop game.  While a number of the principles that I use are the same, LARPs require an extra level of collaborative development.  But over the years, I've developed some methods for building a LARP world that help promote player investment and involvement.  

Why So Collaborative

The main goal in LARP worldbuilding is establishing collaborative investment in the world.  In a tabletop game, ownership of the world is pretty squarely in the hands of the Game Master/Storyteller.  While good tabletop games provide avenues for player input into the world, the world is always constructed with the consent of the GM.  

This is much more possible in tabletop than in LARP.  In tabletop, the GM is theoretically present for every interaction and can fill in gaps of information, even reminding people of established facts of the world should they forget them.  But LARPs do not generally have that luxury.  STs cannot be present to reinforce the world all the time. 

But how to approach this problem?  The way that I try and do this is to make a collaboratively built world.  One where players help build out the world so they know its corners and nuances.  And the way I approach that is to build a world not as a fully nuanced set of details, but as a framework, an open sandbox where things can be built.  But there are tricks to it.

Building a Framework

One of my favorite principles of game design is "draw maps, leave gaps".  Make a world adaptable to the needs of the participants and of the moment.  In the context of building a LARP world, I like to construct a framework of fundamental truths.  These are the borders of the Sandbox, the immutable aspects of the world.  

This framework establishes the ground on which people can build.  On the one hand, this needs to be tight.  You want to make sure that the characters all exist in the same context where the action takes place.  Part of framework creation involves who the characters can be.  Some of this often comes from a game system.  If you are running Vampire, then your framework includes being vampires.  But this also involves things like where the characters live and work.  

On the other hand, the framework should be loose.  You want to make sure that the context doesn't excessively limit students and encourages variation.  LARPs are best with a variety of characters and the framework can be important to encourage that variety.  Some of this can be creating a variety of categories or character types that are part of the world.  

Sample Framework

So what does a framework look like?  I am in the process of preparing for a character creation session for my upcoming game and I considered what to write on one of my numerous whiteboards around the apartment and came up with the following.  

The Framework for TBD

There is a Prison in Chicago.

This Prison Holds Monsters.

This Prison is Guarded by Heroes.

These Heroes are descended from different Gods.

These Heroes are Destined to guard this Prison.

These Heroes are joined together in a Conclave.

This framework is a collection of open ended fundamental truths.  They define where the game takes place(Chicago), who the characters are(Heroes), what brings them together(Destiny).  Many of those terms are deliberately undefined.  Some of these are thematic.  But they exist as a set of frameworks, of borders into which characters should fit.  What these aren't are details.  There are a number of details beyond this, but they are not the fundamental framework.  

And within this framework, players will create characters.  Characters that define their own versions of these framework statements.  What does it mean for them to be a Hero?  How do they guard the prison?  How do they live in Chicago?  These characters will create a lot of the fundamental details.  The map is filled in by characters.

Knitting Things Together

What then is the role of the Storyteller in such a system?  If the Storyteller isn't creating the world, what is their role?  Well, part of it is allowing the creation of details while maintaining a veil of ignorance.  Part of being a player is maintaining a limited perspective.  You want to be part of the world, not overseeing it, but tying your details to other people's details requires that overview.  The Storyteller is that overview in this method.  They provide the general perspective that allows them to tie characters together.  

This is an important aspect to Worldbuilding because it allows for more organic and multi-perspective character building.  So, there's a study about brainstorming that is relevant to this process.  In the study, open brainstorming sessions were found to be dominated by early ideas rather than actually bringing in multiple foundational ideas.  When brainstorming included an initial phase of separate silent brainstorming by individuals, more foundational ideas were brought in. 

This is part of what the framework method of Worldbuilding allows.  When characters are created separately, characters are more unique and diverse.  A feedback process allows those characters to then be tied together and allows the Storyteller to build on these unique details to create a full world out of the different character ideas.  This increases player investment in the world because they explicitly helped create it.  

Conclusion

Overall, there's still a lot of complexity to the Framework method of worldbuilding that isn't included here.  There are plenty of details that need to go into the world, definitions that get expanded.  You need to make sure that there are resonant structures that people actually can invest in.  But this is a general view of the method I use.

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.