Another weekend of LARPing, another weekend where I was left sad and angry and disappointed. There were either issues with the character, or issues with the game, or both. ( Read more... )
Does that affect the validity of my comment? You brought up the imbalance in Camelot, and for you to back-peddle away from your own example with such rapidity makes it hard to move the conversation forward in terms of an example leading to a general case.
Ryan made conscious design choices (some weakly involved / unnecessary characters) to allow Camelot to run with a variable number of players. That has consequences (a poor game for the players of those characters if they are present). I tend to make the opposite choice - I try and make every character I write necessary and involved (note: "try". I don't always succeed). That too has consequences (low variability; meaning the game requires a full cast to run and will suffer badly if it doesn't). Which approach works better depends on whether you have an environment where games reliably fill or not.
I wrote this great plot for my LARP that failed in the field: that's a design problem.
It may be a design problem. It may also be a casting problem (someone gets the wrong character, either because the GM screwed up, the "right" character wasn't available, or the information they provided to aid casting was wrong or useless), a runtime problem (counterparties just too busy; plot triaged), or even a player problem (player or counterparty just having a bad day). With a limited dataset, its difficult to identify which, and with an only ~50% chance that the game will ever run again (yes, really; as of last year only 48 of 106 NZ theatreforms run in the last 5 years ran more than once; dataset here) there is little incentive to waste flops trying to improve the existing game, rather than writing the next one.
The article was Steve Hatherley's "If it ain't broke, don't rewrite it". It appears to no longer be extant due to the demise of his FLAR site, but may show up at the UK Freeforms wiki eventually.
I guess that's right - if I pitch you a character as one who's destined to go down and you play it, it's on you if you don't like losing. However, I seriously doubt that virtually any player characters are actually written that way.
The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow was certainly a player character. He was the protagonist of his own story. That story was most likely to end in failure, but it certainly wasn't destined, and in any case he didn't know that. I as a player knew, but that was part of the process of ensuring that I was well-cast (specifically, that I didn't mind losing - a question which is now common on casting surveys).
In the absence of a character sheet, I can't comment on super-hero wedding reception.
Ryan made conscious design choices (some weakly involved / unnecessary characters) to allow Camelot to run with a variable number of players. That has consequences (a poor game for the players of those characters if they are present). I tend to make the opposite choice - I try and make every character I write necessary and involved (note: "try". I don't always succeed). That too has consequences (low variability; meaning the game requires a full cast to run and will suffer badly if it doesn't). Which approach works better depends on whether you have an environment where games reliably fill or not.
I wrote this great plot for my LARP that failed in the field: that's a design problem.
It may be a design problem. It may also be a casting problem (someone gets the wrong character, either because the GM screwed up, the "right" character wasn't available, or the information they provided to aid casting was wrong or useless), a runtime problem (counterparties just too busy; plot triaged), or even a player problem (player or counterparty just having a bad day). With a limited dataset, its difficult to identify which, and with an only ~50% chance that the game will ever run again (yes, really; as of last year only 48 of 106 NZ theatreforms run in the last 5 years ran more than once; dataset here) there is little incentive to waste flops trying to improve the existing game, rather than writing the next one.
The article was Steve Hatherley's "If it ain't broke, don't rewrite it". It appears to no longer be extant due to the demise of his FLAR site, but may show up at the UK Freeforms wiki eventually.
I guess that's right - if I pitch you a character as one who's destined to go down and you play it, it's on you if you don't like losing. However, I seriously doubt that virtually any player characters are actually written that way.
The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow was certainly a player character. He was the protagonist of his own story. That story was most likely to end in failure, but it certainly wasn't destined, and in any case he didn't know that. I as a player knew, but that was part of the process of ensuring that I was well-cast (specifically, that I didn't mind losing - a question which is now common on casting surveys).
In the absence of a character sheet, I can't comment on super-hero wedding reception.
Reply
Leave a comment