LARP review: Small Town Folks
Small Town Folks is a LARP for 12 players by Peaky Games set in a hurricane shelter in a small Nebraska town in 1962. The character gender ratio is reasonable with 4 female, 5 male and 3 gender neutral characters. Of course, Wellington skew being what it is, when we ran all the gender neutral parts were played by females and we still had to have 1 woman cross-playing a male.
Small Town Folks is unusual (although not unique) in that the characters are all ordinary people and there are no supernatural elements. The first forty-five minutes are spent in the hurricane shelter as the tornado rages through the town. In our run we had a storm sound effect MP3 that we ran for the duration. (We also had a tornado warning siren that we sounded at the start of the game. However, as we were in a residential location we could play it very loudly).
Eventually the storm finishes and the PCs get to discover what has become of their town. There is some GM boxed text to read at this point, which is a little clunky but necessary unless you have really elaborate set design (at this point I should thank exiledinpn who did make the town's memorial cross for our run).
One of the plotlines in Small Town Folks requires the players to solve a series of puzzles. Going into the game I wasn't sure whether this would work. Puzzle can be problematic, and not everyone enjoys them. However, in this case I think the puzzles were pitched about right: not too easy or too difficult. There were also clues that could be given to some characters if the players were having trouble solving the puzzle (and the GM had some flexibility in who the clue could be given too, which is useful for helping to keep everyone involved). More importantly, players who weren't interested were free to follow their personal melodramas instead.
There is certainly scope to create lots of extra documents (e.g. maps, before and after pictures of the town, town records) that would add to the game, although this would be a lot of extra work for a 1-shot game. Hopefully as more people run this there might become some additional resources available online.
Overall, Small Town Folks is a solid game. There were a couple of minor consistency errors (there always are), but nothing that really impacted on gameplay. There's a reasonably high "stuffing" load (i.e. things to print out and stuff in envelopes), but the game instructions do clearly guide you through this process. As written, the game uses item cards and some GM narration, but with talented prop designers and set dressing these could be eliminated.
Small Town Folks is unusual (although not unique) in that the characters are all ordinary people and there are no supernatural elements. The first forty-five minutes are spent in the hurricane shelter as the tornado rages through the town. In our run we had a storm sound effect MP3 that we ran for the duration. (We also had a tornado warning siren that we sounded at the start of the game. However, as we were in a residential location we could play it very loudly).
Eventually the storm finishes and the PCs get to discover what has become of their town. There is some GM boxed text to read at this point, which is a little clunky but necessary unless you have really elaborate set design (at this point I should thank exiledinpn who did make the town's memorial cross for our run).
One of the plotlines in Small Town Folks requires the players to solve a series of puzzles. Going into the game I wasn't sure whether this would work. Puzzle can be problematic, and not everyone enjoys them. However, in this case I think the puzzles were pitched about right: not too easy or too difficult. There were also clues that could be given to some characters if the players were having trouble solving the puzzle (and the GM had some flexibility in who the clue could be given too, which is useful for helping to keep everyone involved). More importantly, players who weren't interested were free to follow their personal melodramas instead.
There is certainly scope to create lots of extra documents (e.g. maps, before and after pictures of the town, town records) that would add to the game, although this would be a lot of extra work for a 1-shot game. Hopefully as more people run this there might become some additional resources available online.
Overall, Small Town Folks is a solid game. There were a couple of minor consistency errors (there always are), but nothing that really impacted on gameplay. There's a reasonably high "stuffing" load (i.e. things to print out and stuff in envelopes), but the game instructions do clearly guide you through this process. As written, the game uses item cards and some GM narration, but with talented prop designers and set dressing these could be eliminated.