Review: Foglake, a larp on Gather.Town
I joined up to an online larp group at the beginning of lockdown but, between other commitments and available energy, I never really took advantage of it.
But then I saw a game advertised using Gather Town and I was really curious to see how it could be used. I'm so glad I did.
The game was Foglake, a sandbox Regency live roleplaying game by Christian Horsch and Lena Marie Schmitz, and this was an experiment for them as well. I really hope they will be running it again because I will be encouraging everybody to join.
Gather Town
Gather Town is a virtual meeting environment. You see a map from above, and navigate it as a small person. Our map was specifically created by the STs. We had the town centre, a picnic area and a woodland walk for those all important secret trysts, then several buildings you could enter (ours had a cool library among other things). The detail is enough to convey the area, but not too fiddly to put you off.
You move around using cursor keys, the mouse or by following somebody. Most of the time, if you get close to somebody you can speak to them. However the STs also made great use of the other options: a stage from which everybody in the area could hear you; two- and three-person private areas; interactive mats for random character generation and even a letter writing function. There was a door to a safety room on each map.
And how do you speak? Why by voice and video. When you can speak to somebody, their video appears on your screen. So, whilst you don't have the actual physical interaction, you do get most of the visual clues you want for LARP. And most of the players dressed up to one degree or another. (We had a large surplus of lady folk, so many had to rapidly change their hair/clothes to represent the men they were playing. It wasn't an issue in practice, suspension of belief held strong throughout.)
Finally, there's a chat function so if you need to call a ref you could do so without hunting through the map for them. We also used it when sorting out our family dynamics in the workshop.
Foglake
I am not the biggest of regency drama fans. I think I watched Pride, Prejudice and Zombies with more attention than the normal equivalent. But I'm at least familiar with the tropes. But the point of this paragraph is to say: I don't know how Foglake compares to other regency games out there. I only know how this event played out, ideas about other runs is educated speculation.
On the other hand, the basic setup is very similar to how I imagine my unrealised SoapLarp would work. Each player is randomly assigned a goal, quirk and relationship/conflict note. Family groups are arranged then you go and quickly develop who's who in the family. That's right, you don't know who's who in the family until you start talking. But your random traits really do help because together they steer you in certain directions.
You then have more time to "speed date", making use of those private booths, to set up any relationships/conflicts that almost certainly weren't realised within the family.
And that's pretty much it. By the time this is done, you should have more than enough relationships for an afternoon of drama. The game is spaced out over three events, with time in between for time out or for one-one interactions that aren't so practical in event-time. And letter-writing.
In practice
I loved how I could manage an almost eight hour larp without leaving my house. In terms of spoons/energy, it's so much easier. Of course there are advantages of in-person larps, but there are also advantages to running a game across Europe, and where you can nip into the kitchen for food. We even had a player joining from her hospital bed. I am really enthused to use Gather.Town for more things.
I haven't built a map yet. The STs tell me it took Lena about ten hours to create the map using multiple tools (not just Gather Town itself).
The nearby-speaking thing had interesting elements, that in theory you can eavesdrop on a conversation (like in physical larps). In practice I didn't find it that wonderful. It was extremely clear to those you were evesdropping on, and you only heard half the conversation. It might be something that needs a protocol to use for larp, similar to crossed arms for invisibility.
We had three people in my family, and two of them wanted to play young adults, leaving me to play the vicar. (One reason I picked this family is that I reckoned I knew how to play a religious leader of the period. I wish I'd given myself more time to crack open my book of prayers though.)
I was blessed with other players who, like me, enjoyed making things extra complicated, so I had two children by different (legal) wives, both of whom were now dead. Honestly, both children were great. They didn't deserve their weak, disfunctional father.
One of the reasons that I love roleplaying is that you learn about new things. I learned that in a world where everyone is very polite and gentile, you can make bad decisions with little comment (to your face). I was expecting far stronger pushback but it ended up being a more unspoken type of drama. Which I felt was definitely an appropriate trope, I got very emotional at some of it.
And yes, you can be sure that I deliberately chose to add drama. In the debrief afterwards, it was observed that the "parent" generation mainly spoke to each other but, because we had all talked ahead of time and got on, we could be crumby in-character and not break anything.
It all built to a tense resolution, with "my daughter" just about getting engaged and "my son" not.
My one observation is that you should come armed with smalltalk. And if possible, watch/read an appropriate period drama ahead of time. Whilst most of my awkwardness was in character - I really can play chatty - I think my vicar should have been better at distracting pleasantries.
The wider goal
We ended up having a small game. Actually, it seems about the normal size for online larps. But the STs were aiming for 20 with the goal of getting more. Our character setup ended up being exactly three young couples, so there weren't any love triangles or any real competition. How would that change if you scaled the game up? It would certainly mean more choice of who to speak to, more spread-out plots etc. There would come a point where you can't resolve everything in the time, and certainly more people would probably need a bigger map and more rooms in the houses. Does it matter though? Probably not.
Final word on the STs: apart from some minor sound issues, they were extremely clear about what was happening and patient with daft players (me, sometimes). Top marks.
Links
Gather town: https://gather.town
To register your interest for future games of Foglake, you can contact chris@ferrum-orga.de