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Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

Attorney at Funk posted:

TODAY’S ENTITLED, GLOBALIZED LARPERS sit behind computers, not even in costume, while HONEST OLD-SCHOOL PLAYERS sit in coffee shops wearing goatees and frowning. lady liberty in a trenchcoat sheds a single tear from behind the bar. kelly in the bottom right, in a cape: "Shamarilla."

I love this so much.

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Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell

Yawgmoth posted:

Honestly I have never heard of anything good coming from any of these big "living" games. Like, I get it; you want Your Character to have an impact over more than just this game at this one table. I'm sure there's probably some good reason someone could give for this beyond petty, embarrassing megalomania-esque power fantasy. But hell it's hard enough to find 5 people who aren't complete sperglords to play with; trying to find 100+ people who can keep their heads screwed on with something as important as money housing food sexual partners dots on a sheet of paper on the line? You will become an actual Malkavian complete with clan weakness before that happens.

The best 'living' game I ever saw was one where half the NPCs were actually quasi-PCs - as in, the GM would send the events that had been transpiring to old players, friends, and other DMs who were all playing, pretty much by post, an NPC. The NPCs still had 'bit parts' but it was neat stuff like the local innkeeper wants to buy out the mill, so the party rogue has to go steal some documents to make the sale easier, etc. It helped make the world more dynamic and interactive than a single GM can sometimes manage.

MalcolmSheppard
Jun 24, 2012
MATTHEW 7:20
When it works, it really works. I played some great games in the network we belonged to, met lots of cool people and formed good memories. I ST'd a 100 person wedding where folks came in fantastic costumes, and played in some great games as a visitor. But these were peaks. Most nights were okay. Some nights were bullshit, and there were probably as many bullshit nights as peaks. It's hard to do, and I don't mind an MES-oriented system really tuning itself to make it easier. On the other hand I know a significant number of folks who game with me because of that accessible little grey book and casual games, and they wouldn't be here if the rules were hundreds of pages long and unhinged from descriptors.

Reene
Aug 26, 2005

:justpost:

tatankatonk posted:

Clearly the solution to preserving your favorite PCs is to bring them back as dead, philosophically influential setting NPCs in future chronicles!

This except unironically.

Or alternatively, preserve one or more prior PCs as the next campaign's main antagonist.

Hugoon Chavez
Nov 4, 2011

THUNDERDOME LOSER
The problem with those kind of games is always


DJ Dizzy posted:

There's way too many loving spergs out there.


Like anyone that has played in lots of different groups can attest. Usually you end up finding four or so cool nerds in the group and enjoy playing with them, but everyone else makes you reconsider your chosen hobby. The best you can get from a large group of people is a decent, regular sized tabletop party.

Unless you're one of the creepy/cat-piss goons. Then that's basically it for you and I hope your character lives a better life than you do.

edit: when I moved to Spain I kinda wanted to try LARPing since I'm a big nerd, but oh-boy just the fake bureocracy to request entry to the LARP was :spergin: as gently caress, so I forgot about it.

Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Feb 10, 2015

Cable
Dec 20, 2005

it'll come like a wind.

Hugoon Chavez posted:

when I moved to Spain I kinda wanted to try LARPing since I'm a big nerd, but oh-boy just the fake bureocracy to request entry to the LARP was :spergin: as gently caress, so I forgot about it.

You did the right thing. You don't want to be seen around the kind of people that play RPGs in Spain: they fulfill every single stereotype about nerds, and then some.

Hugoon Chavez
Nov 4, 2011

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Cable posted:

You did the right thing. You don't want to be seen around the kind of people that play RPGs in Spain: they fulfill every single stereotype about nerds, and then some.

TELL ME ABOUT IT.

I'm happy that four of my Venezuelan friends moved here and now we can just play together and eat Arepas with 0 olives in sight.

edit: incidentally, if you're in Madrid I've got a group of friendly nerds you can join. We got a great GM moving here next week, too!

Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Feb 10, 2015

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Hugoon Chavez posted:

edit: when I moved to Spain I kinda wanted to try LARPing since I'm a big nerd, but oh-boy just the fake bureaucracy to request entry to the LARP was :spergin: as gently caress, so I forgot about it.
Oh my god THIS. This is the thing that has always stood in the way of me joining even the interesting sounding living games. There always seems to be some laughably absurd "approval" process that I wouldn't wish on anyone, least of all myself. Why would I want to join a group where anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the options are banned, and the other 2/3 to 1/2 are cordoned off in little groups like some arcane buffet? I was invited to one that had an entire wiki just for character creation, because the "if you have this then you can't have that" list was so loving long that it basically had to be built into a Choose Your Own Adventure game. It's up there with STs who want me to write a book about my character and detail every single person that character has ever interacted with that dumps a box of red flags onto the field for me. I'm just not gonna turn a game into an extra full-time job.

Cable
Dec 20, 2005

it'll come like a wind.

Hugoon Chavez posted:

TELL ME ABOUT IT.

I'm happy that four of my Venezuelan friends moved here and now we can just play together and eat Arepas with 0 olives in sight.

edit: incidentally, if you're in Madrid I've got a group of friendly nerds you can join. We got a great GM moving here next week, too!

You're very lucky then! I stopped playing with otaku-convention-tee-wearing nerds years ago and just introduced my more open-minded friends to RPGs. It's been a very good experience that I'd recommend everyone to try, especially with World of Darkness, since is much easier to understand than other universes, and people are more likely to laugh at the idea of roleplaying a dwarf wizard than a hunter or vampire.

Thanks for the offer btw! I'm actually from Valencia but I currently reside in Berlin, so no chance there. I wish you a lot of fun though. Is playing Requiem a common thing in Madrid? In Valencia noone wants to touch it with a stick, mainly because people spent so much on cWoD and because 1e wasn't that good.

Hugoon Chavez
Nov 4, 2011

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Cable posted:

You're very lucky then! I stopped playing with otaku-convention-tee-wearing nerds years ago and just introduced my more open-minded friends to RPGs. It's been a very good experience that I'd recommend everyone to try, especially with World of Darkness, since is much easier to understand than other universes, and people are more likely to laugh at the idea of roleplaying a dwarf wizard than a hunter or vampire.

Thanks for the offer btw! I'm actually from Valencia but I currently reside in Berlin, so no chance there. I wish you a lot of fun though. Is playing Requiem a common thing in Madrid? In Valencia noone wants to touch it with a stick, mainly because people spent so much on cWoD and because 1e wasn't that good.

In my experience since I've arrived here, Spanish geeks are 90% total grognards, it's crazy. nWoD is an abomination, even Warhammer Fantasy 2nd ed. was complete poo poo compared to the first, and nothing compares to d&d 3.5!

Add to that the fact that most spaniards are ridiculously close minded about learning English, which means they only play games that have been translated, and it's usually not worth the effort to find a local group. As usual, you need to convert your geeky friends to the ultimate geek hobby.


I once met up with a group of friends and when I mentioned that I knew English, they tried to FORCE ME to run their campaign. Like, not the one they had, just one they had planned from start to finish but couldn't run because it was intented for some horrible d20 Naruto homebrew game. I ran, I ran so far away.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Hugoon Chavez posted:

I ran, I ran so far away.
Couldn't get away?

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
Been checking stuff on John Keel ever sicne he was mentionned in this thread. A bunch of his lectures are up on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvm77diHCdA
Great inspiration for games.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

I'm sure some people have an amazing time with global LARPs. But if you were new to LARPing and were asking me whether you should do a network or a private LARP, I would say private, every time.

Network LARPs are a loving endurance contest. Typically the people who are the most annoying are the ones who will tooth and nail refuse to quit, no matter what. That means the longer a game goes on the more annoying people you have, and the longer they're in there, the more influence and XP they acquire. If you join a network LARP midstream there are even odds you'll end up getting bulldozed by a crowd of jerks.

I remember joining a LARP that was near the end of its lifecycle (last 18 months or so). I remember maybe one tolerable character. There was a guy who was this really shy Gangrel who described himself as the Prince of an entire state (I won't say which one) and another guy who was, I think, Archbishop of a large region who was cosplaying as Doctor Who. It was a Requiem LARP but there was some girl playing a classic fishmalk babydoll-type character. She was, I think, the Prince of another city entirely. From what I gather this is pretty much the norm when it comes to network LARPs. They just become these self-aggrandizing juggernauts of awkward.

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

Hugoon Chavez posted:

The problem with those kind of games is always



Like anyone that has played in lots of different groups can attest. Usually you end up finding four or so cool nerds in the group and enjoy playing with them, but everyone else makes you reconsider your chosen hobby. The best you can get from a large group of people is a decent, regular sized tabletop party.

Unless you're one of the creepy/cat-piss goons. Then that's basically it for you and I hope your character lives a better life than you do.

edit: when I moved to Spain I kinda wanted to try LARPing since I'm a big nerd, but oh-boy just the fake bureocracy to request entry to the LARP was :spergin: as gently caress, so I forgot about it.

Right now there is a dude on one of the email lists raging against the idea that a storyteller might have any role in approving characters other than checking the sheet for math errors and another insisting that 20 years of rp experience has earned him the right to play whatever he wants however he wants. Fortunately these are not popular opinions.

Cable
Dec 20, 2005

it'll come like a wind.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Been checking stuff on John Keel ever sicne he was mentionned in this thread.
Great inspiration for games.

I'm unironically into paranormal phenomena/the occult (as in I read a lot about it), and I've found a lot of very good inspiration from actual """real events""". John Keel is definitely a very good inspiration, check also Charles Fort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort and the magazine that carries his name, The Fortean Times. The magazine is however subscription only, but by checking their covers you can get a grasp.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Cable posted:

I'm unironically into paranormal phenomena/the occult (as in I read a lot about it), and I've found a lot of very good inspiration from actual """real events""". John Keel is definitely a very good inspiration, check also Charles Fort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort and the magazine that carries his name, The Fortean Times. The magazine is however subscription only, but by checking their covers you can get a grasp.

Charler Fort's books ar eup on Project Gutenberg! Nice.

I watched The Mothman Prophecies. Fairly decent movie, although it was a bit Hollywood-ize din places. They still left the ending with no answers, though, which I liked. Any more good inspirations for the nWoD? Really creepy stuff.

Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

My favorite LARP thing is the bar where the Camarilla and Sabbat both hang out but they aren't allowed to fight in it because it's Elysium and the Prince is sooooo powerful nobody dares break the rules so everyone just sits around and does accents at each other.

I fuckin' hate LARP.

EDIT: Also as a new player in a Camarilla LARP a couple of years ago I thought it was great how all the powerful badasses (like three guys) would go off with the Storyteller (who also had his own powerful badass character) to do cool plotting and scheming stuff and all the rest of us would just sit around talking about tv shows or whatever because we had no involvement with anything and the Storyteller was in the other room jerking off the other luminaries so we couldn't start anything happening anyway.

I really hate LARP.

Cool Dad fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Feb 11, 2015

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Try reading The Men Who Stare At Goats. It's at least some decent God-Machine fodder.

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




Mors Rattus posted:

Try reading The Men Who Stare At Goats. It's at least some decent God-Machine fodder.

God-Machine and Etherite fodder. :science:

Barbed Tongues
Mar 16, 2012





Gilok posted:

I fuckin' hate LARP.

On one hand, I would tell people that trying to get a good LARP experience from a networked game is exactly like trying to get a good tabletop D&D experience from World of Warcraft.

On the other hand, on those rare occasions that the stars align and everything comes together, those LARP experiences have been amazing. There's some psychological element about embodying a character that makes the feels even more feely.

I regularly tell people my "96th Percentile" theory. 96% of LARPers won't be your style (either because of grognards, spergs, or even just a legitimate difference of opinion on game theory). Just keep trying games and find the 4% of people who do compliment you, then do everything you can to play with them as much as possible.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

Barbed Tongues posted:

On one hand, I would tell people that trying to get a good LARP experience from a networked game is exactly like trying to get a good tabletop D&D experience from World of Warcraft.

On the other hand, on those rare occasions that the stars align and everything comes together, those LARP experiences have been amazing. There's some psychological element about embodying a character that makes the feels even more feely.

I regularly tell people my "96th Percentile" theory. 96% of LARPers won't be your style (either because of grognards, spergs, or even just a legitimate difference of opinion on game theory). Just keep trying games and find the 4% of people who do compliment you, then do everything you can to play with them as much as possible.

But that's just it, you don't need a networked larp for any of that stuff. Everything about network takes the weak parts of LARP and puts it on steroids. The only thing a networked LARP does is let the 3% of the population that has been around long enough to matter feel like they're commanding and orchestrating hundreds of underlings - but that's a lot of stupid horseshit for feeling like you're actually controlling things and completely contrary to the city level soap opera I actually want to play. I would say never playe networked period if it weren't for the fact that in a lot of areas that's the only choice you have.

Seriously small troope LARPs are where its at; every time you join one you can at least try to squint your eyes and convince yourself whatever local brand of stupidity you've encountered at least it's constrained to the 20-50 nerds who are part of just this game. You don't have to worry that the jerk you're dealing with can literally follow you to another venue when you leave, an action which would just be 'cool drama' or however the various networks spin that kind of thing.

Barbed Tongues
Mar 16, 2012





Mendrian posted:

But that's just it, you don't need a networked larp for any of that stuff.

I mostly agree, except that my experience is that Network games have a 50% population boost over purely local games, so you get more rolls of the dice to find compatible players when coming in blind. All things being even (in specific including those playerbase numbers) I'd guess we both recommend local over network.

That being said, there does seem to be an option within MES of local-but-specific play. Meaning anyone from the network can come in and play the local game, but they have to have a character specific to the local game. Not the dickass play-by-proxy ex-Sabbat Kyasid Thaumaturgist you started eight years ago. Though in theory the player would still be entitled to any meta-bonuses for being an admin/staffer which could throw off starting balances.

I'm also curious about the 'deadliness' rating that each MES chapter is supposed to advertise - the number that indicates how likely character death happens in the campaign. A low number means you can be killed for any reason, high numbers mean you have to publicly do some real dirt before a boot squad can legitimately come for you. I like the theory, but I haven't heard anyone talk about the practice with a real depth of experience.

e: spelling

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Gilok posted:

EDIT: Also as a new player in a Camarilla LARP a couple of years ago I thought it was great how all the powerful badasses (like three guys) would go off with the Storyteller (who also had his own powerful badass character) to do cool plotting and scheming stuff and all the rest of us would just sit around talking about tv shows or whatever because we had no involvement with anything and the Storyteller was in the other room jerking off the other luminaries so we couldn't start anything happening anyway.

As a new player in a vampire larp, I was once on the other end of this in that my character and a couple of others went off into a side room with the ST and left the other players out to dry for a whole session. I felt really bad about it when I found out that there wasn't another ST in the other room like I assumed there was. That session was actually quite good for me and the other people in that room but I know that a bunch of people in the main room never came back they were so pissed off. That whole venue was a shitshow, really.

PantsOptional
Dec 27, 2012

All I wanna do is make you bounce
If I can't enjoy something because of 96% of the fellow player base being terrible, why in the wide world of gently caress would I want to keep sifting through to find that 4% nugget? At that point I think it's pretty safe to say that if I don't enjoy playing with the vast and overwhelming sea of shitlords out there, I don't enjoy playing.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Gilok posted:

EDIT: Also as a new player in a Camarilla LARP a couple of years ago I thought it was great how all the powerful badasses (like three guys) would go off with the Storyteller (who also had his own powerful badass character) to do cool plotting and scheming stuff and all the rest of us would just sit around talking about tv shows or whatever because we had no involvement with anything and the Storyteller was in the other room jerking off the other luminaries so we couldn't start anything happening anyway.

I really hate LARP.
Yeah that's basically been my experience with every big network game I have attempted to join. Can't affect anyone because I'm not a 700xp badass, Can't do anything because the ST is busy jerking off the 700xp badasses, half the group is OOC in the hallways jabbering about extra-large corset material and which asian sword is the coolest, and the remainder are dorks who spend all of their time Obfuscated and other newbies who just sort of stand around bewildered by the whole thing because there's no one around to interact with and form motivations/opinions/goals/etc. And then when I had the audacity to say "this is lovely", they blamed be for not trying hard enough. Sorry, assholes; I'm not gonna waste my friday nights padding your broken ego.

Barbed Tongues
Mar 16, 2012





PantsOptional posted:

If I can't enjoy something because of 96% of the fellow player base being terrible, why in the wide world of gently caress would I want to keep sifting through to find that 4% nugget? At that point I think it's pretty safe to say that if I don't enjoy playing with the vast and overwhelming sea of shitlords out there, I don't enjoy playing.

YMMV and all that. For the record, that 96% isn't all terrible, a good chunk is just people at different stages than yourself. They think the game should be more action based, get turned on by monsters of the week and sewer hunts, are anti-NPC or what have you. The shitlords can be bad, and Network games can have a tendency to empower them either as staff or 'spotlight PCs' since they tend to be much more invested than new players.

I stand by my WoW analogy. You aren't going to interact with most of the playerbase, but with a critical eye you can still have a good time. And there is something about that social structure that enhances the experience when it is going really good that I haven't found in other game types.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
All these posts make me want to do is join a LARP as a loud rear end, outgoing friendly gangrel in a Hawaiian shirt and socks&sandals.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy
LARP organizations are the perfect combination of nerd nepotism and entitlement. It's like a stereotypical drama about people clashing for dominance of a corporation or law firm when it's just people trying to dominate recreational group make believe time.

Barbed Tongues
Mar 16, 2012





RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

LARP organizations are the perfect combination of nerd nepotism and entitlement. It's like a stereotypical drama about people clashing for dominance of a corporation or law firm when it's just people trying to dominate recreational group make believe time.

True for most social clubs, in my experience. The amount of inane politics in my mother's Ikebana club boggles my mind. You... you arrange flowers. wtf? That being said, the nerd factor exacerbates things because gamers tend to be a little deficient in social skills. Combine that with Vampire actually teaching/encouraging political machination and you can get some bad combinations.

Still hoping for an oldtimers LARP to pop up nearby that skews toward veteran players rather than college kids and new gamers. A lot of the worst stuff can be curtailed with a little forethought on the staff side of things.

PantsOptional
Dec 27, 2012

All I wanna do is make you bounce

Soonmot posted:

All these posts make me want to do is join a LARP as a loud rear end, outgoing friendly gangrel in a Hawaiian shirt and socks&sandals.

We did that at a LARP that was supposed to be set in Orlando. An entire Sabbat pack dressed as stereotypical Hawaiian-shirt-and-camera tourists so as to blend in with the crowd.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
It really is the perfect cover.

Gerund
Sep 12, 2007

He push a man


My own experience has been that if you want to peek your head into a networked LARP, your first mission is to come in with at least two other friends and present a united front but DON'T all be dressed the same. Uniform costuming scares the piss out of nerds recovering from high-school trauma, while diversity makes it look like you're open to having a good time with others without looking like a lost little lamb.

Also Werewolf games are great if you don't mind people shouting AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS ALL THE TIME RAUGH GRR SNARL

Pocky In My Pocket
Jan 27, 2005

Giant robots shouldn't fight!






American larp stories are always so alien to me. The UK larp scene seems so much friendlier generally

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO
May 8, 2006
The UK has a tradition of state-sponsored LARPing hundreds of years old though - a lot of Americans follow it really closely but nothing we have can match the sheer baroque horror - at every level, from costumes to makeup to the wonderful weekly plot lines - of the royal family!

Yessod
Mar 21, 2007
I play in a networked LARP, and have for some time, and I have a lot of fun. Here's what I do:

1: I found a game that likes the same kind of plots as me. A bit of plot to stir things up but mostly just a soap opera or telenovela with fangs. No monster of the week, few plots that are best resolved by punching them, and lots of pvp intrigue without too much character death.
2: I designed a character who does not need to interact with other games. No overarching clan structure I have to obey. No real desire to travel except maybe for a special occasion. No need to reply to emails, only send emails when I feel like it and have spare time.
3: I designed a character who is interesting to play even when nothing is going on. The nature of LARPs is that sometimes all of the STs will be busy and the other players will be doing stuff you don't want to be involved in. So I chose a character with a weird enough mental viewpoint that I can have fun if I'm sitting on my own for half an hour pretending to be a schizophrenic vampire listening to music or playing cards or talking about the last book he read or whatever.
4: Since I don't tend to enjoy big plots, I designed a character whose involvement in them is mostly "I use supernatural powers and intuition to find a plot hook, then hand it to somebody else."

The benefits of the networked LARP, to me:
1: It's very cool having relationships with people across distance and time, and it's very cool having shared referents. When someone comes into town on a business trip and visits the game, I have immediate shared hooks, because I can talk about people they may know or things that happened near them. It's also neat when people come to the game and have heard of my character in some way.
2: Having a consistent world for a long time. When I was STing I could include things with hooks to plots from 5 years ago, hand them to new players, and basically give them breadcrumbs older players would find interesting too. As a player, there's a shared history - with no reboot every couple of years, when a long-time PC does a heel turn, they become someone who gets referenced for years afterwards as an example, even by people who never interacted directly.
3: It fosters clan play in a good way. People who are in smaller games might be the only Malkavian or whatever - having a network allows them to at least ask their peers for advice.

I know that the way I made my character contributes a lot to my enjoyment of the game. When I tried to play a more conventional character I got burned out in many of the ways you guys describe. My current character allows me to pretty much just ignore the annoying things and only do the things I find interesting, in part because that is exactly what my character does, and he doesn't care too much about the consequences. If I was playing someone all about the long term plans and brilliant intrigue I would have to be polite and play along with dumb plans and wouldn't be able to write profanity-laced incoherent tirades if someone really pushes his buttons. I've played that before, and it's pretty poo poo in this kind of game.

paradoxGentleman
Dec 10, 2013

wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

Gerund posted:

Uniform costuming scares the piss out of nerds recovering from high-school trauma, while diversity makes it look like you're open to having a good time with others without looking like a lost little lamb.

What sort of high schools do you have in the USA, that gives people PTSD like that?

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

Yessod posted:

I play in a networked LARP, and have for some time, and I have a lot of fun. Here's what I do:

1: I found a game that likes the same kind of plots as me. A bit of plot to stir things up but mostly just a soap opera or telenovela with fangs. No monster of the week, few plots that are best resolved by punching them, and lots of pvp intrigue without too much character death.
2: I designed a character who does not need to interact with other games. No overarching clan structure I have to obey. No real desire to travel except maybe for a special occasion. No need to reply to emails, only send emails when I feel like it and have spare time.
3: I designed a character who is interesting to play even when nothing is going on. The nature of LARPs is that sometimes all of the STs will be busy and the other players will be doing stuff you don't want to be involved in. So I chose a character with a weird enough mental viewpoint that I can have fun if I'm sitting on my own for half an hour pretending to be a schizophrenic vampire listening to music or playing cards or talking about the last book he read or whatever.
4: Since I don't tend to enjoy big plots, I designed a character whose involvement in them is mostly "I use supernatural powers and intuition to find a plot hook, then hand it to somebody else."


I'm glad you're having fun but it's telling that two of your points involve playing a character who doesn't have to interact with the plot. Not everybody can play a Malkavian or whatever - sometimes you just want to play a leader or a firebrand or an occult scholar. And the fact is that the bigger your game is the less you can realize those concepts in a network game.

I guess the problem is that in a private game if the game sucks you can blame it on the leadership. If a game sucks in network then it probably affects even Storytellers who aren't lovely. I'm not saying it isn't cool to have your bud from Chicago come over to your place in DC for a visit and have his character come with him. I'm just not sure it's worth the cost, you know? Plus it sounds like you used to be an ST (correct me if I'm wrong). You're kind of already part of the LARPing 1%.

I like private LARPs because there are no assumptions. Sure the ST can suck - they can cook up a completely boring setting or one dominated by NPCs - but everything is sort of a mystery going in. Odds are good if you pick a niche you'll be the best person at that niche in the game. In my experience network games will pull in a Tremere from three towns over to do what your character should be doing and that's boring as hell. I always got the message the new players shouldn't play in, for instance, an MET game unless they were fine with picking up whatever plot crumbs they could.

Here's my issue. Plots tend to be anemic in LARPs because you've got 4, maybe 5 STs trying to keep 20+ people engaged. At any given time one of those STs will be running a private scene or a scene for a couple of players or doing bookkeeping, so that leaves 3 or 4 people to keep everything rolling. Players will, in my experience, go to a painful amount of trouble to avoid conflict with other players. They refuse to take contrary stances on controversial topics, they don't gently caress with each other unless they can do it in the safest, most passive aggressive way possible, and they go along to get along. Then when a plot point happens you've got 20 bored players charging off in the direction of the relevant object, usually with guns and swords drawn.

I've had fun in that environment but I can't have fun if even the ability to interact with the plot is taken away, which has been my experience with network. I guess I'm willing to concede I might be some kind of outlyer, and that it's cool to have fun with that.

Barbed Tongues
Mar 16, 2012





Mendrian posted:

I've had fun in that environment but I can't have fun if even the ability to interact with the plot is taken away, which has been my experience with network. I guess I'm willing to concede I might be some kind of outlyer, and that it's cool to have fun with that.

My personal belief is that you have to go into network LARPs with a bit of a mindset change. I tend to expect my experience to be:

50% Personal Goals
25% PC interaction / Politics
25% Plot / NPC Interaction

You hit the nail on the head with most games having that plot-starvation issue with players. You need a core group of people that understand for every half-hour of attention they receive from an ST, they should be putting another half-hour into non-ST interactions with other players. You need to have some default goals you can fall back on when there is no ST in the main room. Even stuff as simple as "I'm trying to start a Nightclub" can work wonders. Hit up the Ventrue for investors, the Daeva for performers, the Gangrel for event security, things like that. Be willing to trade boons/favors for fluff, since they can often lead to other plot/player hooks and fun screentime.

It's the whole proactive vs. reactive players issue that sometimes get argued.

And yes, there's totally a sweet spot between "No one is willing to risk PvP politics/agendas, only PvE" and "Players take it personally when they suffer setbacks" that can be tricky to get, especially combined with massive escalation: 'Insult to Boot Squad' types of things.

Yessod
Mar 21, 2007

Mendrian posted:


Here's my issue. Plots tend to be anemic in LARPs because you've got 4, maybe 5 STs trying to keep 20+ people engaged. At any given time one of those STs will be running a private scene or a scene for a couple of players or doing bookkeeping, so that leaves 3 or 4 people to keep everything rolling. Players will, in my experience, go to a painful amount of trouble to avoid conflict with other players. They refuse to take contrary stances on controversial topics, they don't gently caress with each other unless they can do it in the safest, most passive aggressive way possible, and they go along to get along. Then when a plot point happens you've got 20 bored players charging off in the direction of the relevant object, usually with guns and swords drawn.

I've had fun in that environment but I can't have fun if even the ability to interact with the plot is taken away, which has been my experience with network. I guess I'm willing to concede I might be some kind of outlyer, and that it's cool to have fun with that.

Yeah, that's a very legitimate problem, but I'm not sure it's a problem with network LARPs in specific. In my experience, LARPs don't work very well when they're run like tabletop games, with constant plot points to pursue and antagonists to fight. Due to the imbalance on the number of STs to players (and I usually see like 2-3 STs to 20-30 players), you can't really run plot that everybody gets to participate in at the same time. LARPs are fundamentally about the direct roleplaying, and due to numbers imbalance you typically can't have more NPCs present than you have STs, unless said NPCs are basically just cardboard cutouts with combat stats (and even then it's challenging, hence the tendency for LARP combat to be a big pile of PCs against one or two huge NPCs).

Basically, LARPs and Tabletop games are about different things. In a tabletop game you are playing a protagonist, and can run around following plot and chewing scenery, but you should typically avoid too much party conflict. In a LARP, you need to be able and willing to let other players have the spotlight, and the game needs to focus more on roleplaying and interaction between PCs. If the players of a LARP deliberately avoid interplayer conflict, they are avoiding the majority of the conflict possible in the game. With a Tabletop game the ST can do all sorts of time jumps to skip directly to the action, so the firebrand gets to do nothing but firebranding, and the occultist gets to do nothing but investigate the occult. With a LARP, there are almost definitionaly times when you are playing your character, the STs are running a plot you're not directly involved in, and you're waiting your turn with them and just hanging out talking with other characters. If your character has no conflicts with other PCs, and no interests other than their one thing, that's likely to not go well.

I have seen games that work like you describe. They must work for some people, since people play in them. I actually tried out a non-network LARP a year ago which ran the way you describe, with constant ST plots providing 90% of the conflict. It was boring as hell, the STs were running scenes off in a corner with a handful of players and nobody was interested in inter-player drama so it was just investigate plot, mass combat, sit around OOC waiting for STs. I showed up for a few games, tried to stir up things by talking to people and creating inter-personal conflicts, got told mostly OOC I had to deal with some plot instead, tried to address said plot and got no traction or time with STs, and stopped playing.

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Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

The issue is that in order to role play I need people to bounce stuff off of. I am completely willing to be an insufferable jerk if it creates drama and tension.

In my experience you need someone who is about as invested in the drama as you are to really have fun. This is a fundamentally social environment. Network larps reward the people who have been around the longest, so if you want to create drama and tension you typically have to contend with a room full of people heavily invested I'm having zero conflict with one another and a lot of xp to back it up. I love social, self-driven larps, it's just in my experience the bigger it is the harder it is to break into and hence is much less enjoyable as a social exercise. Maybe some people think of that as "challenging" bur for me it's just frustrating.

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