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May 6th, 2008
11:44 am - Solmukohta 2008 Report
Somewhat belatedly, I'm including here my report on Solmukohta 2008 -- an international larp convention with a focus on analysis and discussion, held this year in Finland that I flew out to. (I had a separate post about my personal experience of it.)
I'll post this material soon on my Convention Reports page.
( Long enumerating of larps and program items )
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March 28th, 2008
11:56 am - Off to Solmukohta 2008
So tonight I'm leaving for Finland to attend Solmukohta 2008, an international larp convention that rotates between the four mainland Nordic countries. (I've sometimes called it the Scandanavian larp scene, but I should correctly call it Nordic now if I'm going to Finland.) So there's a week of sightseeing, larping, and drinking beforehand (called "A Week in Finland" by tradition); then the convention itself which is more about analysis and theory than play.
I'm especially interested in what they have for the book this year. I have an article in it about parlor larps, which I hope is a good introduction and issue raiser, but nothing ground-breaking. I am eager to see what others wrote, though.
See my Knutepunkt 2005 Report and Knutpunkt 2006 Report for more details on what it's like in general, along with my larp LJ tag.
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June 6th, 2006
12:35 am - Knutpunkt 2006 Report Up
So, after a long delay, I have finally posted my report on Knutpunkt 2006 report, the international Scandanavian larp theory convention. (I had previously just posted pictures.)
Knutpunkt 2006 Report
Any comments or questions about it are welcome. Something I've been pondering about is writing a general essay on my impressions of the comparison between Scandanavian and American LARP. On the LARP discussion front, note that for a few weeks now, RPGnet has opened up a new RPGnet LARP forum, which has various European and Americans participating.
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May 18th, 2006
12:37 am - RPGs in Scandanavia
I haven't finished my report on Knutpunkt 2006 yet. However, I do have KP06 Pictures posted (warning - a lot of images in that page).
Lacking my report, I give links to other news of RPGs in Scandanavia:
Matthijs Holter, author of the Norwegian fairy-tale RPG Draug, recently got a government art grant to work on his WWII Holocaust RPG, "[We all had names] The story of one family in the Holocaust". He's getting NOK 167,500 (roughly $27,000 in US dollars) per year over two years -- with some conditions. Taxes will take out a third of that, and he's not allowed to work more than half-time during the grant period. I've browsed a copy of Draug when I was in Norway -- it looked pretty neat, but I didn't get much out of it. He announced this on the StoryGames forum as "It's official. We are artists".
In a parallel news, Jacob Klünder earlier announced in an RPGnet post, "Roleplaying school opens in Denmark". It is a school made by and for role-players as part of the curriculum. He writes: "The school is a so-called Efterskole (lit.. after-school); a boarding school that is generally geared towards preparing the kids for High School, covering 9th and 10th grade and following the Danish "free school" rules, which means the school is free to design its own curriculum, as long as it is "up to the standards of a standard school" in Danish, Math and English." Unfortunately, I missed Claus Raasted's talk on children in Danish larps -- but I have heard before about the phenomenal numbers of kids in fantasy larps in Denmark. So the school fits with what else I had heard, but I really hope to go to Denmark next year to see more for myself.
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May 4th, 2006
09:55 pm - Back from Knutpunkt, Report Soon
So this week I got back from attending Knutpunkt 2006, which was Thursday to Sunday held at a site outside of Stockholm, Sweden.
Jonas Barkâ posted his "Knutpunkt is Over" entry. I had many misgivings as KP06 was approaching because it was hard to tell what was going on before the event. However, it turned out to be a ton of fun like the previous year. My thanks to Jonas as well as Anna, Tobias, and all the other organizers. I'm reading through the convention book now. Tobias Wrigstad has a few mentions of it on his blog, but doesn't claim the credit due. I was bad in this, in that I promised to send in a paper on a review of the techniques and history of publishing larps, but failed to do so. I did give an hour-long lecture on "New Developments in American Roleplaying", which prominently mentioned Shifting Forest's Parlor Larp series, comparing it to earlier publishing efforts like Walter Freitag's Nexus and later ones like Interactivities Inc.'s The Book of Larp.
The whole thing was crazy fun at what is basically a kid's summer camp, with lots of drinking, dancing, and partying mixed with roleplaying theory discussions. The first pictures are up, as German attendee Boris posted his Knutpunkt 2006 Pictures. (Though you don't see me except in the background at Elge's mixed-drink party.) My pictures should be up in a few days.
Certainly the highlight of it was just the low-key hanging out and chatting with all of the participants. My favorite presentation was Emma Wieslander's "Roles, Identity, and Personal Myth", which was excellent covering the concept of personal myth and emphasizing how it is generated. She emphasized that beliefs are socially created, and suggested face-to-face workshops where players can help generate each others characters. I just wish I knew of a nice write-up of the ideas she presented. My biggest regret was missing international man of mystery Claus Raasted's "The Children of Tomorrow – Saviours or Devourers", in which he covered the new phenomenon of kids in Danish larps. I feel that involving kids is hugely important, and I wish I hadn't gotten distracted away from that.
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February 6th, 2006
12:09 pm - 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 ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) 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...
( Read more... )
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July 7th, 2005
11:52 am - LARP Report #3
So two and a half weeks ago (June 18), my usual Buffy group played one of Shifting Forest's Parlor Larps series -- their sole science fiction game, entitled "Garden Station 4". This was for 4 to 8 players, and as it turned out we had only four (plus me as Director). The scenario was that scientific teams from two rival nations (the Union of Planets and the Cerian Empire) were stranded on an alien space station. We had:
Liz as Sandy Applebaum, the independent explorer stuck there for 5 years.
Bill as Jansor Tantorian, the UP journalist.
Heather as Yurla Fels, the UP computer specialist.
Madeline as Jan17 Grey5 Ellisville, a Cerian guard.
The Parlor larps have a system where all characters are classified as Emotion-oriented vs Goal-oriented; Dark vs Light; and Simple vs Complex. The full set of eight characters will have all combinations of these three dichotomies. It is often a little unclear in practice, but here are the assigned ratings of the four characters played:
Liz : Sandy : Goal-oriented / Dark / Complex
Bill : Jansor : Goal-oriented / Light / Complex
Heather : Yurla : Emotion-oriented / Dark / Complex
Madeline : Jane17 : Emotion-oriented / Dark / Simple
It was clearly stated in the event description that this was soft science, but suspension of disbelief was stretched a little thin as we tried to reason out the consequences of some things. It would be easier if it fit into a well-defined genre, but there wasn't an easy handle for it -- in particular how we had interstellar action with no faster-than-light drives.
During play, there was one important assumption clash. There were five computer terminals set up, each of which had a set of controls -- out-of-game represented by a photocopied sheet with a list of functions, invoked by informing the director. Bill's character did something at one of the terminals, and Bill thought it would keep going after he left -- but the phrasing of the function was unclear. So it wasn't until twenty minutes later that we confronted the different interpretations. Not an event killer, but a significant distraction. In larps, everything has to be really crystal-clear to the players -- much moreso than in tabletop games where you have constant GM interpretation and explanation.
In a blog post, one player wrote: Played a larp with the Buffy gang Saturday night. My character was the only one who didn't get killed at least once (it's a long story), but I think I ended up "losing", in the sense that my character utterly failed to achieve any of her goals. I guess I had a hard time getting into character -- I was supposed to be a spy for a Brave New World-esque authoritarian galactic empire. Oh, well, at least I had fun.
I would note that the character Yurla was classified by the game as "Emotion-oriented" rather than "Goal-oriented". As for the character, I think the background of the game was a little too obscure. It would have worked better if there were more simple genre hooks to understand the situation and the rival sides (UP and Cerian Empire).
Liz mentioned that she appreciated the "garden" symbolism and had fun that her character had "Nature Poetry" as an ability (Liz being a poet herself).
Overall, I think it was a great idea for a scenario, but could use some work on the explanations and description. To be fair, it is listed as Director difficulty of 4 out of 5 -- i.e. difficult for the director (me), and I'm not that experienced with directing larps. Some of the problems could potentially have been averted if I was more familiar with the scenario and could explain things more handily.
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June 6th, 2005
12:00 am - LARP Report #2
Also two weeks ago, I played in the third of Shifting Forest's Parlor Larps that I'd been exposed to. I had played in one of these -- Queen of Spades -- run by J Li at Dundracon in February. At that time, I bought five of the published booklets. Just after Dundracon, I went to Knutepunkt in Norway, where I ran (under difficult conditions) the Hamlet larp with a bunch of the guys there. We had some discussion of it. To them, the larp system was very mechanics-heavy, but they were good sports about trying it out. (You can read more in my Knutepunkt 2005 Report.) Two weeks ago, I encountered J Li again at Albert Andersen's Kabuki larp. She invited me to another of the parlor larps two days later -- a modern supernatural horror game called "All Saint's Eve."
I came to the event on the Stanford campus at a dorm lounge. Socially, I was being introduced to a fairly tight-knit group of college students. Though I had been a graduate student for a long time, I am now 35, and married with a kid. It felt a little awkward to me, but the group were open and friendly. From the game description, I had come expecting to play a debauched rich suburban teenager, and had dressing the part. However, I have a wide comfort range in PCs. So during character selection, I opted to go for whoever was least wanted by other players. This turned out to be an 11-year-old abused lower-class kid, Ariel Thompson.
For me, the game was mostly about impotent rage. Ariel hated most of the people in the room -- the mean teenagers and the even nastier adults. His goal was to get his friend Jenny Carter to run away with him. He was extremely resilient and strong-willed, but he was essentially powerless. This was actually fairly cool to me. I think other people avoided the 11-year-old for just this reason, that it is liable to be powerless. J played Ariel's 11-year-old best friend, Jenny. I think it was no coincidence that she was an organizer who had been involved in making this, and took the less attractive "weak" role. Socially, it's worth noting the disjuncture that while the characters are 11-year-olds, I'm sitting and holding hands with J -- but this actually wasn't awkward at all. I think we were both very used to larps and had clear lines of what is in-game.
I spent much of the game sitting in a corner with Jenny, or trying to protect her from whatever was around, by running interference and standing by to take draw attention away from her. At several points, I found myself just sort of standing fixed still, arms at my sides, twitching with anger and wishing I had a gun or something to shoot someone. However, he didn't have any supernatural powers or expert skills, and acting violent would just have brought adult wrath down on him. I considered lying to cause dissent or to frame one of the adults I disliked, but I didn't have enough secret information to make it plausible.
The one point where I was really on the line was when a spirit had possessed Jenny's father momentarily, and it/he tried to shoot Jenny's brother. I was on the edge of rushing forwards to stab him at that point -- not to defend myself or Jenny, but to take advantage of his physical and social weak moment. Since he had just acted evil via possession, I could probably have gotten away with it to the others, though on the other hand I doubt I could have done much damage to him.
Ariel did have something of a dramatic arc, from my point of view. In the original description I wrote of him, I said that he wanted Jenny to run away with him because he wanted her to keep him sane, not out of any feeling for her. He would, after all, be dragging her away from a rich life much better than his own. However, by the end of it, he threw himself in the path of a bullet meant for her. I'm not sure how anyone else saw Ariel -- he was generally pretty sullen and annoying.
Another interesting point was that I made a bit of a point about Ariel being Jewish, in response to various questions about Christianity that came up during the game. It wasn't mentioned in the background, I was just improvising based on his first name. But it added a small bit to the cosmological/spiritual issues which came up in the game, I think.
In the broader game, there was the usual issue in larps of social hierarchy and positioning. On a social level, the two players of the adult fathers were vying for dominance of everyone else. They were joined by the players of one of the teenagers, Lars, who managed to get the gun and hold everyone else at gunpoint. Still, the other four kept active to a fair degree -- though this was more myself and J. The player of the secretly-guilty party remained pretty isolated and quiet most of the time, not wanting to draw suspicion, I suspect. And one character was killed about two-thirds of the way through, leaving the player lying down and out of it for over an hour until the end.
Overall, though, it was a good setup for dramatic tension between all the characters. I had a good time with my character, and I thought the story was engaging for most people there.
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June 5th, 2005
11:57 pm - LARP Report #1
Two weeks ago (May 21), I played in a homebrew LARP at Stanford, entitled "Kabuki: The Shinano Matsuri and the Mask of Honor." The organizer was Albert Andersen. I had met him online via The Forge and Vincent Baker's blog. I realized that he was right at Stanford, about 15 minutes drive from my house. I inquired at the Kabuki larp, and was invited. I went with a friend of mine who plays in our Buffy tabletop campaign. Obviously, it was set in Japan -- it was set at a small mountain village during a religious festival.
Some links:
Game Announcements Thread
Color Document
Setting Document
Conflict Resolution System
I was playing Nagao Kansuke, a wandering Ronin. He was the lowest honor of all the characters there by a fair margin (5 out of 20). The characters each had a few special powers which were exceptions to the basic rules. Roughly, the situation set up that some characters were trying to keep the peace, while three characters (including mine) were seeking revenge on someone who had ignobly destroyed our former master. I jumped into intrigue, and did many questionable things. I signed up with the man I wanted to kill (similar to the ronin in Kurosawa "Yojimbo"). At the very end I tried to kill him, failed, and killed myself.
My general evaluation was that the game was offputting. As an experienced player, I was able to get along. However, many players were confused by the system -- and many players were also confused by the setting (i.e. 18th century Japan and Kabuki dramas being unfamiliar to them). The system was similar to the conflict resolution of some tabletop games like Dogs in the Vineyard -- which is difficult for a larp which doesn't have a GM or established group to get used to it. So you can declare a conflict about anything, go through a bidding and semi-random number picking process, and then the conflict is declared resolved. Several times, players were scratching their heads over what resolving a given conflict meant. The combination of a difficult system with unfamiliar setting was rough. I think for the unfamiliar setting, a simpler larp system would be appropriate.
Also, the circumstances were such that while there were dramatic motivations, there wasn't much excuse to act on them during the festival. For example, three characters (including mine) were motivated to kill Gengobei, but it seemed like a bad time to do so during the festival. The social and systemic influences were to act honorably and keep the peace. So there wasn't any burst into dramatic action until at the very end when two players (myself and one other) basically decided to sacrifice our characters in a finale.
However, it was strong on color between the flavorfulness of the system, the costuming, the acting, and the plot. Essentially, you bid upwards from a 5% chance. You could either raise the chance by up to 15%, or strike taking the current chance. This made for a good tense period. Then there was a semi-random number throw by secretly picking a number from 1 to 20 on a fan, then revealing the fans simultaneously.
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