Archon is a few weeks away. I have been putting together a Kobolds Ate My Baby LARP for the Atomic Squash gaming group to run there. The game is called “Tabriz School of Magick”. All of the players are Kobold freshmen trying to avoid death and destruction to win the school cup for their house.

We learned a few lessons from the last game and are using them to make this year’s game better. First of all, I expected all of the players to act as individuals looking out for their own self-interest and survival. What happened was amazing. The players joined together in a group leaving the group occasionally to pursue their own goals. This year we are grouping players in two houses to give them a group of which to be a part.

I gave everyone in the last game a goal of escape and did not give anyone a clear way to accomplish it. This year we have the school cup that one group of players will win.

A player familiar with the tabletop game suggested that we include edges and bogies. This rules are indeed hilarious and work well. But I haven’t thought of a way of including them in the LARP without disrupting game balance. In LARPs it is important that no single player is overly powerful. If there is a powerful vampire for example, it is important to have a powerful vampire hunter. Last game I gave players special abilities taking care to maintain balance. I think it worked well but am thinking about how to improve them.

We charge money for the game. We ask the players to pay one dollar. We aren’t in this to make money. We do this because we limit the game to twelve players and want to insure that players who sign up actually show up to play the game. By the way the money are got last time we gave to a group who came from out of state to run games at Archon.

CptSquash and Pancake have already given me some great ideas that I need to write up in our private wiki. I’m trying to organize a brainstorming session with them for this weekend. I think our players are going to love the great material and improvements we have made this year.