jhkimrpg (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jhkimrpg) wrote,@ 2006-02-06 12:09:00 |
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| Entry tags: | actual play, larp |
Playing Another Parlor Larp - "The Mirror Room"
So Friday night we played another of Shifting Forest Storyworks' Parlor Larp series. This time was "The Mirror Room", by J Li. It was a very dark game, directed by lizhenry as her first time in a GM-like role. By their self-rating system, it was in the "Thriller" genre, and put priority on "Morality" and "Atmosphere" over "Discovery", "Relationships", and "Strategy". It was 5 out of 5 for darkness, 0/5 for NPC difficulty, and 3/5 for general directorial difficulty. It had a particular note for disturbing content.
We also considered "Argentin" and "A Little Magic" for this. I was slightly pushing for the latter as a romantic, non-conflictual game (Dark 1/5) -- but Liz's tastes went to the more dark. Like several of the series, it all took place in one room -- a mystical chamber with mirrors on all walls. With help from brother-in-law Tim, Liz lined much of the walls of the living room with tin foil to indicate the surrounding mirrors. cf. her Flikr Photos of the evening. Some spoilers follow behind the cut... imnotandrei wrote about his experience in a LJ post, "Last Night I was Emilio Sando -- LARP ramblings". We had ten players total, so Liz had to write in two extra characters to the group. All the characters were a scattering of people from the Boston area seemingly snatched from their homes at random. So starting with the other five of our regular group, the players and their characters were:
- Me playing Richard Kilgore, the utopian journalist.
- zdashamber playing Davina Stanton, the abusive doctor
- cynthia1960 played Lian Zhi, the Chinese communist
- druidsquirrel played T. Rosa, a soccer coach with a heart of gold
- whumpdotcom played B. Jackson, an added character written by Liz, a arty actor
- imnotandrei is a friend not in our gaming circle (at least not yet) who played Lyle Abernay, the experience-seeking rabbi
- vvvexation is another friend not yet in our gaming circle who played Chris Neumann-Ansette, the nice teenage mother
- Jacob is an acquaintence who we met over email and was interested in larping, who played Ellis Callahan, the lying brat (age 11)
- Laura is Liz's sister and played Christina Evergay, the vengeful vigilante
- Tim is Laura's husband and played Artemis Steinwell, a trouble-making little kid (age 7)
Without revealing too much, everyone is supernaturally drawn and trapped together in a room walled with mirrors. I think it did very well what it set out to do -- given its claimed priority on "Morality" and "Atmosphere" over "Discovery", "Relationships", and "Strategy". It is a dark, nihilistic crucible which puts all of the characters in a confused and horrible situation. Several people didn't know quite what they had signed on for, in particular Laura and Tim. They kept up for the most part but really weren't into it, and had been hoping for more of a strategic game like a dark murder mystery. It was very atmospheric. I thought at first that the tin foil was a cheesy bit of propping, but it turned out to be very effective. Steven had some interesting comments, in particular:
As an emotional tool, it was remarkably effective; I don't know if it would work for me on an ongoing-character basis, or whether it would work in a larger group. I freely admit that I felt like I was playing the hero of my own story, and whether or not I would be the main character in an external observer's retelling of events, I'm not sure -- I suspect so, but I was, shall we say, a biased observer.I'd agree that Lyle Abernay was the most central figure in the game as it played out. However, this was a very closed immersive event -- meaning that there were a lot of character secrets which were never made public. To a degree, each character had their own little story which was played out in part but never totally exposed. This would drive certain story-centric role-players nuts, I think.
In hindsight, I think that one of the two added characters should have been dark. Instead, they were both light -- which made the group more orderly and civil as a whole, so there was more consensus. There were a number of conflicts, during which the darker figures (Madeline and Laura) were both beaten down to low function levels which left them unable to do much later in the game. Another dark character like Stanton or Evergay would have mixed up the pot more thoroughly. However, hindsight is of course 20-20.
Overall, I think that the Parlor Larp setup and formula is very good. It is quite similar to "All Saint's Eve" (also by J Li).
