Yes, I have been there. I have written three live action role playing games (LARPs) and collaborated on a few more. I have also drawn inspiration from others, such as Tom Javoroski of BYOV and Ron Faltus of SLUGS, both of whom have generously discussed their writing with me. All of this experience has given me insight into some great ideas that you can use to make your game great.

BREAK THE GAME INTO ACTS. Start your game with a introduction. Typically this includes reviewing the rules and giving safety instructions. Then, set the narrative. Prepare and read a statement that describes the setting. Here’s an excerpt from Kobolds on a Plane:

Rival Kobolds disguised as the famous Kobold chef Emerald and his kitchen staff visit your cave. The sneaky bastards arrange a cooking demonstration where they take your entire clan by surprise capturing you in a huge wooden cage. While dining on your clan leader in an epic-level BBQ and contemplating tasty new recipes for their Torg Foreman Grilles(tm), a strange Gnome arrives. He is Phil T. Olaf, an entertainer and entrepreneur. In exchange for two pairs of shiny boots, a bag of cheesy doodles, three Atomic Squash T-Shirts and a yummy Human baby, he acquires all of you! His plan is to transport you to a human zoo where you will be caged and put on exhibit as a rare type of prairie dog.

You are prisoners aboard Olaf’s Gnomish airship, the Pike Maiden. Most of you have managed to claw through your crates and chew your way through the dunnage. You are ravenous and angry (well, that’s normal). Find a way to escape your captivity while managing to live.

Next, consider breaking your game into three acts. The first act is set up. Players are learning their characters and discovering the sandbox which you created. The second act introduces conflict and raises the game to its climax. Players have overlapping and conflicting goals. Throw in some plot twists but make sure they make sense in the universe you have created. The third act resolves the story and the player’s story arcs. Make players aware of time constraints to allow them time to complete their goals.

End the game with a wrap-up. Players enjoy discussing their characters and exploits. Ask them to give a post-mortem but not to give away other character’s secrets. Sometimes the character’s perception and the game’s “reality” are different. Here is an opportunity to reveal character’s true motives. Characters may not know the truth about the story until the wrap-up.

LARPS ARE SOCIAL. When I wrote Kobolds on a Plane, most characters belonged to a tribe. But I gave characters selfish goals. I expected players to work alone and socialize with others when it helped meet their goals. That is not what happened at all. I watched as players united as a tribe to find common tasks to accomplish and then split off occasionally for their specific goals.

I have learned that humans are social animals. That is why we live in cities and towns and not in hovels equally spaced apart jealously protecting them like red-winged blackbirds. Great games group players into clans, tribes, organizations, classes, agencies, allies and opponents. Give the group a reason to exist and explain their shared goals. Whether the player chooses to betray them is their choice.

For the next game, Tabriz School of Magick, I gave the school four houses into which the players were assigned. The houses entered three different competitions for the house cup. Some of the funniest moments of that game took place when the players creatively collaborated.

HAVE A BOX. The author Kurt Vonnegut does not like suspense, but your players will thrill at a mystery. Unlike a written story where the author gives you a guided tour of his fantasy, LARPs exist for players to explore and change. Introduce a mystery box or a strange artifact into the game. Maybe the character who possesses it does not know its true nature. Let the players puzzle over it. What’s in the box?! Then wait until the third act to let them find out.

USE THE PAWNS. How boring would chess be if every piece was a queen? Do not make every character in your game a super spy or an über bad vampire lord. Provide a variety of different characters and strive for balance.

Chess pieces are a good metaphor for types of characters. Consider that there are six different chess pieces:

• Pawn – Pawns are expendable foot soldiers who may, if her actions are brave, be promoted to a Queen. They are the soul of the game and defend each other against more powerful enemies.
• Rook – Rooks move in straight lines. They are governed by systems of rules and laws. Although they may be predictable, they pack enough muscle to survive getting into trouble.
• Knight – The knight’s unique movement makes them the least predictable. They are sneaky and capable of balancing out deficiencies of their group.
• Bishop – Bishops are the smart ones. They most often end up where they are least expected. But it is impossible to win a chess game with only two bishops.
• Queen – Queens are the most powerful and versatile type of character in the game. They hold great potential to sway friends and enemies alike.
• King – Kings are leaders who encourage loyalty and teamwork. They are capable of bringing people together and coaxing the best out of them.

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1. DieCon 7 Recap
2. Settlers and Squash
3. Tabriz School of Magick

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. Please play along!

1. I don’t usually participate in these things. I’m going to respond but not tag anybody new.
2. I wrote three live action role playing (LARP) games: Kobolds on a Plane, Black Tie Affair and Tabriz School of Magic.
3. My high school mascot was the Orphans.
4. I have a twin brother.
5. I have two computers and two laptops.
6. Growing up we did not have a television in my house.
7. I play the guitar but need more practice.
8. In video games I collect the shiny things.
9. I like the sounds that trains make.
10. I taught myself to play chess when I was eight.
11. I like toast without jelly and butter.
12. I hate needles.
13. I want to visit Europe, maybe parts of Ireland that were once divided as recently as 20 years ago.
14. I want to learn another foreign language, maybe Russian.
15. Televised baseball puts me to sleep.
16. I used to sing in a choir.
17. I work on my social skills.
18. Beets make me sick.
19. I think global warming is a hoax designed to prey on our fears.
20. I like Mary Ann but when I was younger I was seduced by Ginger’s shiny dress.
21. I don’t have any tattoos or piercings. Why mess with perfection?
22. I was in a church play in high school, the beginning and end of my acting career.
23. I have learned to walk around my house without the lights on.
24. In the summer between high school and college I taught nature classes at a Boy Scout camp.
25. I am a Christian who once thought the little fish that folks stick on their cars meant they bought it from a Christian car dealer.

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1. 25 More Random Things About Me
2. Chicago Blues Fest 2004
3. DieCon Postmortem

As I thought about what the next game might be like. I wondered if I would be onboard to write a third, a fourth or more. I recalled the conversation I had with David Collins at GenCon. He has written dozens of LARPs using his Courting Murder rules system. He told me that he usually writes five or six games in a setting before he moves on to another one. This made me realize that perhaps there is such a thing as a creative limit. This may explain why some of our favorite shows jump the shark in dramatic fashion. I loved the X-Files but, friends, the latter seasons were never as great as those that preceded them. I want to believe that I can realize this in my work before it happens.

Every game I write I like to challenge myself to introduce conflict in new and fresh ways. The conflict can take many forms: character vs character, character vs environment and even character vs herself. For “The Black Tie Affair” we used a dysfunctional family. All of the family members were at odds. The father was missing and probably dead. The mother put out a hit on her son. The son was a dope fiend with no love for his mother. For “Kobolds on a Plane” the clan leader was dead and two different Kobolds wanted to claim his spot. In “Tabriz School of Magick” there were two houses with many rivalries between them. Of course, sometimes the players take the conflicts and turn them on their ear. The player who played the mother in “The Black Tie Affair” decided to cancel the hit and reconcile with her son. I’m okay with that. After all the game is for the players and we should never make them a slave to the story.

Related posts:

1. DieCon 7 Recap
2. Toward a Perfect Character
3. Quick Update

Me at Archon 32

This past weekend was Archon 32. I started Friday afternoon by making a trip to Office Depot to pick up name badges, folders and sheet protectors for the materials of the Kobolds Ate My Baby LARP. I arrived at Archon where I ran into a bunch of old friends and signed up for games with my buddy Jim.

We headed out to dinner at Applebees. There he filled me in on the latest goings-on in the world of politics. I must admit that I had been busy with convention prep and didn’t spend enough time to understand the details of the recently signed $700 billion “emergency” financial market bailout bill. Jim told me that it felt like a stealth tax to subsidize mortgages for poor folks and to profit politicians. I agreed with him thatsome of the fundamental problems still exist even after the massive give-away.

After dinner I joined Jason’s Circus Imperium game. We were joined by a group from Ohio. We teased two of the girls from Ohio by calling one of them the “nice” one and the other the “mean” one. Both played the game enthusiastically and were amusing.

Jason has a room party that night. His was the only party that night. Once he told folks that he wasn’t giving away free alcohol, the foot traffic to the room died down. I played a little Rock Band and a dice game. I left around 1 AM to go home to print out all of the materials for the Saturday morning game.

The Kobolds LARP started at 10 AM Saturday morning. I was surprised that we sold out all of the slots for 15 players. I was even more surprised that all of them showed up. In 2006 we had a number of no-shows. I had writing help this year. Jason and Adam contributed a number of ideas I tried to incorporate into the game.

The LARP was set in a school of magic. The players were divided into two houses with three of the players having no house alignment at all. Each house had six players. During the writing process I drew influence from chess pieces. I realized that there are six different types of pieces: pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, kings and queens. So I spent some time thinking about high school archetypes and how they might correspond to chess pieces. For example I wrote a bureaucrat that corresponded to a pawn and a class president that corresponded to a queen.

Jim’s two oldest boys joined the game. They are grade schoolers with little gaming experience. So I made with House Elfs. Their goal was to help their school house, much like a brownie or a billiken.

We ran three different contests for the House cup competition. The first was to write a drinking song. Since Adam decided to sleep in, we drafted one of the house elves to help judge. In a stroke of hilarity one of the players bribed him with a dollar bill to vote for his house.

The second contest was a competition called Snatch the Troll’s Stash. We lifted ideas from the game Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. We laid out a grid on the floor using paper plates. We marked off a line using masking tape. The goal was to go from one end to the other on the plates. They draw cards for movements. If they drew a King or an Ace, then the Kobold that was furthest along was moved back to the beginning. Unless, of course, they were past the marked line in which case they drew against the Troll Cave Horrible Death Chart to determine their fate.

The last contest was Headditch. In our last brainstorming session Jason got the idea to set it up like fuss ball. We laid down six parallel strips of masking tape on the floor. Players had to stay on their strip of tape. We gave them sticks with nets on the end. We pulled the head off of a Kewpie doll and used that as the ball. The players moved the head to the end of the room to their goal to score a point. We did some improvisation, but it worked out.

Next I played a game of Living Greyhawk using Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 rules. The players were cool but the game was kind of a bummer. It ended by having us watch a village burn to the ground.

I headed to White Castle with Jim to pick up some carry-out. I wanted to make a 7:30 PM Arkham Horror game so we got the order to go. On the walk back to the convention hotel a mini-van pulled out of a parking lot. We thought the driver was slowing for us. Jim started crossing in front of him. But he lurched forward. Jim quickly ran out of his path. Then the van swerved toward me! I put a death grip on our sack of Slyders and spun around to deflect most of the force of the speeding van. Only then did the driver decide to stop. He opened his door and asked if we were okay. We were shocked but fine. The only damage was that the chicken rings that were sitting on the top of the sack were not strewn all over the ground. Ah well, another Archon, another White Castle adventure.

Will ran a game of Red Dragon Inn. It was a fun casual game and a nice change of pace from the inexplicably short Arkham Horror game.

Then, somebody started a game of Werewolves of Millers Hollow. This game requires eight players. So Archon is about the only place I get to play it. The game started with around 12 players. A couple of tables were added and the number of players expanded to somewhere around 30. I snapped some pictures with my cell phone camera and uploaded them to my Flickr account.

I didn’t make it home until around 5 AM on Sunday. I was exhausted and slept most of the day. So, this year was another great Archon. I met some new friends and spent some time with old friends. We are already talking about plans for next year’s Archon and discussing writing games for next year’s Die Con.

Related posts:

1. Tabriz School of Magick
2. Archon is Next Week
3. DieCon 7 Recap

Character Development FlowchartVolumes of books have been written about defect management. There are times when it is impractical to eliminate all possible defects from a system. It could take more than a year to test every possible combination of characters that could be entered into a tax preparation program. This is no good when the program has to change every eight months due to new tax laws. So in order to eliminate defects you must be practical.

I believe it is possible to implement a process to reduce, and maybe eliminate, errors in character sheets. I know the word process summons images of straitjackets to some. But those folks are only fooling themselves. Processes improve quality.

Here is my process. I introduce the concept of a status to a character sheet. When a character sheet is first written is in the working status. Once the author feels it is ready, then he submits it to the scrutiny of a peer review. Let us call this a review status. Other authors have the opportunity to examine the character and provide constructive criticism. If too many defects are found, the character is rejected and returns to the working status. Otherwise the defects are fixed and the character gains the accepted status. Once a character is accepted, the project leader must review it. If there are more than minor changes, then it returns to working status. If not, then the character is ready for the player and reaches the finished status. If an accepted or finished character is modified, it returns to the working status and must be reviewed again.

Now this process is not so rigid that it cannot be bent. There is little benefit in sending a character back through for review for relatively minor fixes. The important points are 1) all characters are subjected to the scrutiny of your peers and 2) the project leader has the final approval on characters.

You may point out that this requires more time in order to produce a character. But I believe the turnaround time for peer reviews can be improved by setting a reasonable deadline for comments and gathering them electronically, i.e. through the character’s wiki talk page.

Does this seem unreasonable for a volunteer project? I do not think so esp. if your goal is to produce characters without embarrassing flaws.

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1. DieCon 7 Recap
2. Four Tips for Writing Great Live Action Roleplaying Games
3. Creative Limit

It inspired me to try my own hand at poetry. This one is dedicated to the lovely Signgirl.

AM QUIETLY MAN

We left for
a trip
to the place
up north

You drove your
big car
and listened
to tunes

We always
go back
for something
we forgot

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2. Trip Back Home
3. Aye Cap’n, Up Thee Sevens!

I wrote and helped run the Spycraft LARP for Atomic Squash. In all we had about 22 players and wrote 35 characters. Sorry Jirel, but the Cynthia Pride character was cut due to lack of players. Thanks again for writing up the information on the collectible card game.

Our biggest asset for LARP development was the wiki. I believe the ability to work online and see the edit history and recent changes made us more productive. It took some time to become adjusted to the wiki-style formatting. But everyone who used it seem to pick it up fairly quickly.

We published a guest list, a list of characters, on the Atomic Squash forums before the game. The feedback to the list helped us gauge player interest. We were better able to select which characters to put in the optional column in case not enough players showed up.

For a three to five hour game I feel that a 300-400 word character description worked well. It gives the player a good feel for the character and improves their game. For example I gave the Doctor Lo character a family. It was not important to the immediate events of the game, but helped define the character.

There were not big stories that encompassed a large number of characters. This allowed us to safely cut characters and augment the game by playing the museum curator and auctioneer as non-player characters (NPCs). Most players had at a couple goals that encouraged interaction with other players. Making Otto’s disappearance a mystery discouraged players from sticking to their small circles and encouraged them to circulate among the other players.

A couple players told me how much they enjoyed their characters. Seeing them enjoy the game made all of the hard work worth it.

I was thrilled to see Signgirl laughing and enjoying the LARP. Big points for you, sweetie! Now I’ll have to draft you to help me write a new Kobolds LARP.

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1. DieCon 9 Recap
2. This Just In
3. Tabriz School of Magick