(no subject)
The strange thing about running a series of regular LARPs is how the mind begins to look at everything as a potential seed for a future game.
Last night for work I attended a city councilwoman's community meeting talking about a nearby poorly designed intersection. And I spent the entire time watching the group dynamics of the situation, and considering how to run it as a LARP: more structured than the Bloody Forks of the Ohio July game, but less so than the Executive Decision May game. Several people play local residents with insane, contradictory demands, while the rest of the PCs play small time local officials trying to justify decisions they did not make and cannot change.
Or then I read an article in Newsweek about marijuana smugglers in the 1980s, and think about a game like that: they just scored a big score, and are throwing a huge bash, but fear government surveillance and potential undercover cops. One smuggler's wife thinks he's cheating on her, while he is trying to keep that a secret, and both want to keep their occupation secret from their young son...
Anyway, I begin to see where there is a disconnect between authors and normal people regarding the question "where do you get your ideas?" When you put your mind in the right setting, everything you encounter is a bit of narrative waiting for you to remold it into a story. Everyday people less often think in this way, I think, so they are surprised by the universal authorial answer of "everything I do is fodder for ideas" or the like.
Last night for work I attended a city councilwoman's community meeting talking about a nearby poorly designed intersection. And I spent the entire time watching the group dynamics of the situation, and considering how to run it as a LARP: more structured than the Bloody Forks of the Ohio July game, but less so than the Executive Decision May game. Several people play local residents with insane, contradictory demands, while the rest of the PCs play small time local officials trying to justify decisions they did not make and cannot change.
Or then I read an article in Newsweek about marijuana smugglers in the 1980s, and think about a game like that: they just scored a big score, and are throwing a huge bash, but fear government surveillance and potential undercover cops. One smuggler's wife thinks he's cheating on her, while he is trying to keep that a secret, and both want to keep their occupation secret from their young son...
Anyway, I begin to see where there is a disconnect between authors and normal people regarding the question "where do you get your ideas?" When you put your mind in the right setting, everything you encounter is a bit of narrative waiting for you to remold it into a story. Everyday people less often think in this way, I think, so they are surprised by the universal authorial answer of "everything I do is fodder for ideas" or the like.