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The Endbringer posted:This thread is fascinating. I'm currently on page 6, so sorry if this has been asked between then and now, but has anyone ever thought of character expiration? I play another UK fest system called Curious Pastimes, which has given me 15 drama-free years of good friends, good times and fond memories (seriously, this thread has been like staring into some hideous negaverse where everything I love has been horribly corrupted), and it does an excellent job of stamping on special snowflakes and egomaniacs. I'll see if I can write up an effort post about its mechanics later on.
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Feb 5, 2016 12:14
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MikeCrotch posted:I'd be interested to hear what you have to say, because the stories i've heard from the (admittedly few) CP players I know paint a pretty different view. I am pretty good at tuning out people like that and I've stuck rigidly to a cool and good faction, so I'm probably talking out of my arse and there is a cesspool of terrible people I just never interact with. Edit: 'excellent job of stamping out snowflakes' was overplaying it somewhat, but whatever, I'll get my thoughts down later. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 16:31
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So, CP mechanics. This is just an overview of a system I've enjoyed over the years; there's going to be a lot of overlap with other UK LARP systems, but I haven't played in them so I'll have to leave it to other UK folks to point out which bits other systems do as well or better, which is probably a lot of them. There are no character levels in the game; characters start with just one hit point to each location, and adding more is very costly (you start with 20 points to assign skills with at character creation and one extra hit costs 8 - give yourself two extra hits and you've got almost nothing left for other skills). Armour is much cheaper, point-wise, but arrows, spells and some weapons go through it, so even the biggest armoured bruiser can get slotted by one well-prepared scout (although it's stacked hugely against the scout, of course). Bleedout time (when you lose all hits to the head or torso) is just two minutes and once you are dead, you are absolutely 100% no-take-backsies dead. Executing players is as simple as yelling 'execution!' then hitting them while prone, although you literally have to bellow it at full volume and take a full ten seconds to theatrically ready the final blow, so you're broadcasting your intentions to everyone within earshot. Because of this, death is common, comes swiftly and is simple to administer, and EVERYONE will lose a character to minor misfortune at some point. If a large battle (~500-800 players with half of them NPCing the enemy) goes bad, factions can lose (and have in the past) 50% or even 90% of their numbers, and total faction wipeout is a possibility - I don't think any faction has ever lost literally every member they took to the field, but there have been some close calls, including one of our own faction events, where our faction commander was running it and plotted things in such a way that she almost wiped out her own faction at their own event. It is perfectly possible to survive forever, if you're sensible, but I've generally heard that it's much less forgiving than a lot of systems in this regard. The 1IC, 2IC and 3IC of each faction will start their character with a shitload of skill points to spend and generally be very tough to take down (since they fulfill an important OOC role in the running of the game and having them die too often would be a major headache for the game team), but they are not infallible - a dozen well-prepared players could take them down if they managed to corner them alone and had luck on their side. My faction suffered the loss of our 1IC a number of years back because he said something another faction didn't like, so they stormed our camp and took him out. Characters in this game are pretty fragile, which works both ways - a more powerful character is at a big advantage compared to a weaker one, but they are not infallible, even by that weaker character. You start with roughly half a dozen skills and can gain new one new skill per year if you attend and survive the main event, but it caps out after seven years, so 15 year old characters won't have gotten a drat thing for surviving most of that time. CP have introduced more ways for people to learn new skills outside of the passive once-per-year system as described above, but these are again costly and time-consuming and/or rely on a lot of RP. Blacksmiths and crafters need to roleplay crafting things with tools for several hours, magic users need to roleplay failing at learning new spells, etc. I'm a scout, so I'm hoping to learn a new skill through the Academy of War whereby I make myself seem unassuming enough that people close by will just ignore me so I can dart past or escape. It'll largely be a soft skill once I have it (if the game team think it'll fit into the game and not be too OP), but it's learned through hard skills - I need to think of actual, practical ways this could be achieved (like the way I stand and move and react to people) then RP them myself and report back, and will involve getting beaten into the floor for at least a year by enemies who have no idea why I'm standing around in battle looking like an idiot instead of hitting them. If you want to gain new skills this way, you need to do inventive and/or intensive RP to get it, and it typically involves you failing at poo poo for a while. It also means there is plenty for people to get involved in that will give them a useful and less common skill that people will need and give them a good chance to mingle with other factions, which also helps with those times when older players act as plot hoovers (still a bit of a problem for some factions, though some are excellent for involving people) or if you happen to be like me and fall asleep whenever people start discussing plot and only wake up when it's time to run around and do things. Acquiring new skills gives you a lot more options of course, but they're pretty well balanced and need to be used intelligently to be useful. New characters start with just four spellcards per day for each pick of magic they take, while some characters (through the kind of training and progression detailed above) have spellcards blasting from every orifice, but there are very few spells in the game that directly damage people (fumbling a sword, getting knocked down for a few seconds, being temporarily blinded, that kind of thing) and they require a few seconds to yell the verbals, so they need to be coordinated with other players to be useful, rather than a minor annoyance that puts off your horrible, horrible death by a few seconds. I do a lot of nighttime scouting in areas crawling with enemies, and if you don't know how to stand and move stealthily for realsies, you won't stay alive for very long at all. There is no stealth stat that makes you sneakier or magic stat that makes your spells more effective (countering magic is down to reflexes). A new character is absolutely not a liability compared to an older one if they can use what they've got intelligently. Some people have played zero-point characters very well in the past - they've literally had the ability to use a dagger (which has zero point cost) and nothing else (one hit, no magic, can't count, can't read), but still made themselves useful and wanted. In regards to overlap with other systems, I'll leave that to others who know a great deal more of me about them. I'm interested to hear about them! 4 or 6 weekends a year is enough LARPing for me, so I haven't branched out anywhere near enough. Gravitas Shortfall posted:lol if you think any LARP doesn't have massive amounts of drama and irredeemable assholes It's why I stick to crewing. I don't, it was a very badly thought out comment, so apologies for that. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Feb 6, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 16:28
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Camrath posted:Thanks for the write up on CP- I really know very little about the system. Didn't it split off from the LT many years ago amidst some drama? As far as I'm aware, yes - one of the major complaints I hear about LT from other CP players is how much more restrictive it is in allowing individual players to affect world plot and such, which I believe is what prompted the split. I've heard former LT players in CP griping that they thought of ways of, say, stealing a powerful item, only to have the refs just take it off them and say "sorry, you can't do that" because it would prevent the plot from unfolding as they intended. In CP they'd just roll with it - attempt to reclaim it IC through NPCs or monsters (and possibly fail) or just let the plot go off in a different direction as a result. I couldn't say how true this actually is of LT or what their own complaints about CP are though.
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Feb 9, 2016 14:44
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Yeah, if you talk about it the right way most people find it pretty interesting.ZombieLenin posted:1. Can you talk about your experience with tabletop gaming? Do you still table top game? If not, why not? What is your impression of the difference between the two communities? 1. Never done tabletop myself; the closest I've got is buying Warhammer 40k, getting bored learning the rules and tossing the blast radius discs at the plastic space marines. 2. The closest I've come to this in CP is someone in my own faction who has been playing the same character for over a decade, and she's happily admitted that she'd probably cry a bit if/when her character dies. This isn't really the same thing though; she means the same kind of upset people have if a favourite fictional character of theirs kicks the bucket, she joins in with NPCing and monstering the same as everyone and is a fairly grounded person overall. Having something you can really identify with in a comforting/personal way is one of the good things about LARP, I've always considered, but I guess there's a healthy limit. 3. First one that comes to mind is when we were chilling in camp and a werewolf stormed in and started wrecking poo poo, giant-rear end claws just windmilling everywhere. Everyone backed off and ran to get weapons, except for one lady dwarf with a huge beard who trundled up with her cart full of trinkets and said "excuse me, can I interest you in my wares?" The werewolf paused, lowered his arms and said "err, okay?" Then for ten minutes he had to stand there going "oh yes, very nice" while she draped comically tiny necklaces and beads over his 2" claws. Eventually the conversation ran out and there was an embarassed silence, then he said "well, err, I'll be off then I guess", shrugged at the player next to him and wandered out of camp.
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Feb 12, 2016 19:57
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CP has a bunch of kids running around and runs quests just for them. One event had so many babies they set up a crèche, although that was a good few years ago.
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Mar 30, 2016 16:13
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MikeCrotch posted:A lot of LARPers seems to suffer from Zak Snyder syndrome, where stuff can only have gravitas if it is DARK and GRITTY. Too many emaciated nerds who all want to be Batman. Backstories are loving worthless unless you're an NPC involved in some plot that the players are trying to unravel. No-one cares about a tragic backstory except their own, it isn't needed for you to play your character however you want and Reasons I Invented For Why I'm Super Cool Vol. 795 is the worst topic of conversation both IC and OOC. Half the fun is building a small mythos about your character with whatever you and your friends make up as you go along, and none of it is necessary for making your character cool and interesting and relevant in the present. Becoming a pirate captain in a series of bar games or getting on an entire faction's kill-list so you can play double agent for them while they try to murder you is much more fun to talk about if you actually did it.
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Apr 14, 2016 21:31
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LARP is absolutely not a spectator sport and the presence of, or desire for, an audience should set off blaring alarm bells in your head. If you want an audience, go join the theatre.
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Apr 15, 2016 19:15
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Camrath posted:As for guys turning up as Kiss? A few years ago at the LT, they could probably have made it work- there have been Star Trek away teams, a unit that came from the WH40K universe, scary clowns, one guy in a suit of home made Terminator armour (sadly it looked /awful/- however now he plays a Death Knight from WoW using cosplay-standard kit and gets mad props for it) and all sorts of other oddities. Generally if something looks cool and is entertaining then people would accept it. The game's got a bit more straight-laced in recent years though. I'll be honest and say that that sounds completely and totally insufferable. I go LARPing in part to play out some kind of defined world and what you've described is some Family Guy level of asinine horseshit. Imagine any book, film, game, series that you enjoy and like to get immersed in that isn't straight-up parody. Now imagine KISS or a bunch of literal Star Trek redshirts turn up. If that doesn't sound awful then I don't know what to tell you. I enjoy plenty of levity in my LARP. We laugh, we joke, we drop out of character and make modern day references, if it's funny and doesn't break the atmosphere of the game, which is obviously going to vary depending on whether you're having a drink at the bar or deep in a zombie-infested forest at the dead of night. But pre-planning something that meta to drop on everyone else whether they like it or not is just... gently caress. 
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Apr 16, 2016 12:32
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Yeah, there'll always be a certain amount of inspiration/plagiarism in LARP - my faction is called the Jhereg, which is nicked wholesale from a book. And you're right, there were plenty of Legolas' for a while.
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Apr 16, 2016 20:00
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I'd say that CP generally manages to avoid such Tumblr-esque spats, but on the other hand:Gravitas Shortfall posted:edit; still not as bad as the group in CP called the Tuareg, which is literally a North African Ethinic Group. Or the guys that dress up in bad psuedo-Chinese gear, complete with terrible accents. Basically people are terrible everywhere you go. Also Drow are poo poo and no-one should play them anyway.
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Apr 17, 2016 23:48
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I wondered for years why everyone immediately asks if it's a sex thing when I tell them about LARPing. Then I found this thread. Mystery solved I guess.
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Apr 19, 2016 14:56
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I am a fast, stealthy killing machine, so shiny, clanky kit is right out for me. I do have a nice set of rigid leather armour though, which has lasted me for about ten years at this point and seems like it can take another decade of punishment.
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Apr 21, 2016 21:28
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Not really; it isn't very rigid at this point, so I don't think it would constitute actual armour in the real world.  I am not quite that invested in authenticity.
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Apr 22, 2016 07:38
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The longest CP event is 4 days, and the first and last days are barely half days as it is. By the end I'm completely dead. Who the gently caress has the time or energy for nine whole days of LARPing?
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Apr 22, 2016 15:59
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occluded posted:Holy poo poo seriously? Is Spanish one of those languages? I speak it fluently and being a translator/negotiator guy sounds like so much fun.
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Apr 28, 2016 21:49
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After time out tonight a guy in my faction command mentioned that at Empire there was a thriving IC trade for food and drink, since it basically lets players put in the OOC time and money to offer something to other players in-game for IC cash. Except the link between what players are willing to spend in OOC cash to set this up and what they're willing to accept in exchange for IC cash is hilariously unbalanced and so the goods on offer are stupendously cheap, to the point that if you choose the right role to maximise the IC money you're given, you can basically stuff your face and get paralytically drunk at little to no expense all weekend long. Is that true, because if so I might start coming to Empire.
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Apr 30, 2016 04:15
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LARP events need someone with a GoPro strapped to their chest and they need to show off some actual RP outside of combat. LARP footage is nothing but long distance combat shots and it makes me despair, because there is no worse way of representing it.
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May 17, 2016 11:42
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ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. Snarl, wolverine beastman from the frozen wastelands in the north. So called because beasts in our group are named after whatever sound they make before they learn to talk. Easily bored, totally uninterested in where we go or why, just wants to hunt, forage and explore. Which is why he's currently second in command of scouting and possibly soon to be first, since you don't need to care why the things you find are important, you just need to find out what they are. Learning to be more introspective and responsible due to his position, because character growth is a good thing. I've been gradually morphing his speech from slow and fractured to more regular sounding as well, and he'll be having a shave and a slimming down between events too if I get this new kit finished in time.
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May 18, 2016 11:39
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Things like pretend IC brothels work just fine if the community in question is broadly a cool group that understands social convention. Idiotic sex chat is a pretty universal conversation topic outside of LARP as well, so I'd say it's only goony if you make it goony. I wonder if the UK has an easier time of it due to being a smaller country; you can travel up and down the country pretty drat easily, so there's a lot of overlap between systems and it's easier for word to get around about individuals across the entire national community. trauma llama posted:-Let slip that he had spent literally all of his money buying skill points to make his character incredibly high level. He was bigger than any other character at the event. That included people who have been playing the same character for almost 10 years. He followed this up saying that he is finally content with where his character is level-wise. He tried to that as a point of humility. I take a very dim view of massive power gaps in pretty much everything (I'm much more a Souls fan than, say, Warcraft, however silly a comparison that may be). When discussing my dislike of it with people, the usual counter, even with videogames, is that massive levelling and power gaps make them feel like they're doing something special or achieving something. Give people the chance to do it for real, to other real people, and I'm not surprised at how toxic it can get.
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May 31, 2016 16:53
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I wish I could pay for y'all to fly over and come do an event with me. I really do. This thread is like a terrifying bizarro universe to me.
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Jun 2, 2016 12:45
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Funny, I know someone a lot like that too; big, bearded, does LARPing, teaches martial arts, nice as pie, really wouldn't want to face him in a fight.
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Jul 3, 2016 23:47
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I can't really imagine LARPing in a public place. Practising, sure, but not actual LARPing. One edge of CP's main site partially backs onto some gardens, so occasionally people will open their gate and watch if the larger battles take us all the way up that end, but otherwise its a private site.
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Sep 12, 2016 11:52
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