Dead Fox Junction - blather and pics
or: trying stuff can also work better then you expected sometimes...
We're always searching for cool locations and between the endless sifting and the ever-changing locations (some sites just don't get updated) you find a pearl sometimes. Back in 2008 Olga found the Melody Ranch, but back then it was without Saloon and only had about 20 sleeping spots, though you could pitch tents. Still, built of logs by an enthousiast and rife with western stuff we kept an eye on it. How it came back on the radar at the annual EE-weekend I can't honestly remember but despite us really having nothing more then a passing interest in the Wild West, Melody Ranch came up again in the same sentence as 'one shot'. Dead Fox Junction was born.
Over the course of several meets ideas evolved (har har, a pun) to try a very basic setting with the characters and their foibles being the central core to the story. The story would be largely player-created with the SL's guiding character creation but leaving the sandbox to just the players, and the rulesystem was as simple as: make it look good and it works (reminiscent of the jeepform "pain hurts, death kills"). Also: no NPC's and the SL's would do their very best to be invisible (but not like Exit, where invisibility meant truly no seeing SL's). We played unimportant characters and kept out of the plotting, though I did have a lot of interaction with the villagers. More importantly, it left dramatic timing and pacing also firmly in the hands of the characters. Also, it was one-shot, but the goal was to play an isolated Wild West frontier village where people really know each other, and 36 hours is hardly enough to build that... Still, the sign-ups were very popular, filling up very very fast and with that trust we moved forward.
Solutions were found in guiding character creation firmly and asking everyone to first build three concepts and let us choose. After that they would recieve their concept and a set of 'pointers' which included secrets, relations to a few other characters and some bits 'n bobbins to think about. The rest was left up to them. From the initial flow of concepts a set was selected to not only reflect the village and be interesting, but also give us a village that did not have three sheriffs and four mayors. The pointers were then added and Brenda and Matthijs coded a system to allow people to edit their own bit on the Dramatis Personae so everyone could read up on each other. It all worked reasonably well, though this kind of pregame does ask a lot of the players. Some people had less time then they hoped or had circumstances, but a flurry of mails, facebook messages, PM's and dinner dates were set up to build character relations and get to know each other because not all participants had larped together before.
Another major factor was concept and background monitoring to ensure they all aligned. We tried to keep out specific dates and timelines and keep it generic Wild West, which sounds harder then it actually is. In the end it was a few backgrounds that more or less decided that it was somewhere in the first few decades after the Civil War, but no more detail then that. Fact checking took long, though, because it meant we had to synch up a collective timeline that come forth from player backgrounds and work with what little event-based plot we had. We had planned a climax and closure to the event on Saturday night with a chill morning, photoshoots and a freeform stunt fighting lesson by Noorderwind.
While the preparations were harder then expected arrival at the event itself and time-in were pretty smooth. As the night went on a weakness in the pointer-system and interconnectedness of the player characters was made pretty apparent: both the players of the deputy and the sheriff were very late and this meant that some things did not fully come into being before the arrived on the grounds and were able to go in-character. We were able to speed up that last bit a lot, but a 'flaw' (if you want to call it such) of the system is that it places a lot of responsibility with the players. You are responsible not only for your own character, but also those that have pointers to and from you. Dramatic tension and 'plot' pacing also falls to the players which is especially crucial in emotional scenes: if one player is roleplaying his or her hiney off over a bad decision in their past you don't want another player going either 'lame!' or 'I iz way more sad then you so give me the attention!'. All that being said, I think with this group of players it went quite splendid, but the leaving of all this control and responsibility (for lack of a better term in my afterlarp-dipped brain) is something that runs counter-intuitive to the instincts to most organizers, especially in these small games.
There is lots to tell still and it will probably be told by participants in the coming days and weeks over social networks, blog posts and the good old "no shit, there I was" grapevine, but I am happy with the end result. We have the evaluation meeting tonight, and the many comments that we got so far (thanks all!) are pretty darn positive - so, here's to Dead Fox Junction, and on to the next!
Pics courtesy of aroka, woran, EE's own gallery and Jan Entjes, owner of the Melody Ranch.
This is not what it looks like. He can explain.
A few of the ladies of Dead Fox Junction. I found it great to see their status and professions reflected in their clothingstyles.
Ashley 'Ash' McParland, Deputy.
Gerard Oudebergen, former miner, now the mayor of Dead Fox Junction.
Thijs Brandtz, former officer in the Confederate army and now retired as a banker to Dead Fox Junction.
Jacob, the barber.
Thijs Van Oldeveldt, the local brewer.
Willem Mandemaeker and his estranged daughter Isabel.
Peter and Ben Smith, local barhelp and entrepeneurs.
Reverend David Poort and his wife, Tirza.
Barend Vlek, the local seller of potions.
Sister Sophia, nurse and confidante to pretty much half the village.
Laura van Oldeveldt, former hooker, now the sweetheart of Deputy McParland.
A little Romance blooms between Troy West, the undertaker, and Josefien van der Molen, the baker.
And even the stiff Mr. Brandtz finds love and comfort in the arms of Betty Tadema, the school teacher.
A rare in-character shot. The view from the saloon porch to the log cabin on the other side of the grounds.
The graveyard, well kept by Troy West.
Lots of discussions in the village of Dead Fox Junction.
Tense faces during the trial of Berend Varkenspoot, the butcher. During his drunken brawling he accidentally fired a gun which hit the Reverend in the leg.
Emma, owner of the saloon, and Sarah, the hooker, watch the proceedings as the men vote for mayor.
The election for mayor. Only men can vote, of course...
The group picture. Because it was Sunday after time out it does not feature all the players but it sketches a good picture of the mood and the attention to detail that many players put in their characters.
Of course, there is also time for a little fun...
Hats, we haz 'em.
Men!
Nuns and guns. What else do we really need?
We're always searching for cool locations and between the endless sifting and the ever-changing locations (some sites just don't get updated) you find a pearl sometimes. Back in 2008 Olga found the Melody Ranch, but back then it was without Saloon and only had about 20 sleeping spots, though you could pitch tents. Still, built of logs by an enthousiast and rife with western stuff we kept an eye on it. How it came back on the radar at the annual EE-weekend I can't honestly remember but despite us really having nothing more then a passing interest in the Wild West, Melody Ranch came up again in the same sentence as 'one shot'. Dead Fox Junction was born.
Over the course of several meets ideas evolved (har har, a pun) to try a very basic setting with the characters and their foibles being the central core to the story. The story would be largely player-created with the SL's guiding character creation but leaving the sandbox to just the players, and the rulesystem was as simple as: make it look good and it works (reminiscent of the jeepform "pain hurts, death kills"). Also: no NPC's and the SL's would do their very best to be invisible (but not like Exit, where invisibility meant truly no seeing SL's). We played unimportant characters and kept out of the plotting, though I did have a lot of interaction with the villagers. More importantly, it left dramatic timing and pacing also firmly in the hands of the characters. Also, it was one-shot, but the goal was to play an isolated Wild West frontier village where people really know each other, and 36 hours is hardly enough to build that... Still, the sign-ups were very popular, filling up very very fast and with that trust we moved forward.
Solutions were found in guiding character creation firmly and asking everyone to first build three concepts and let us choose. After that they would recieve their concept and a set of 'pointers' which included secrets, relations to a few other characters and some bits 'n bobbins to think about. The rest was left up to them. From the initial flow of concepts a set was selected to not only reflect the village and be interesting, but also give us a village that did not have three sheriffs and four mayors. The pointers were then added and Brenda and Matthijs coded a system to allow people to edit their own bit on the Dramatis Personae so everyone could read up on each other. It all worked reasonably well, though this kind of pregame does ask a lot of the players. Some people had less time then they hoped or had circumstances, but a flurry of mails, facebook messages, PM's and dinner dates were set up to build character relations and get to know each other because not all participants had larped together before.
Another major factor was concept and background monitoring to ensure they all aligned. We tried to keep out specific dates and timelines and keep it generic Wild West, which sounds harder then it actually is. In the end it was a few backgrounds that more or less decided that it was somewhere in the first few decades after the Civil War, but no more detail then that. Fact checking took long, though, because it meant we had to synch up a collective timeline that come forth from player backgrounds and work with what little event-based plot we had. We had planned a climax and closure to the event on Saturday night with a chill morning, photoshoots and a freeform stunt fighting lesson by Noorderwind.
While the preparations were harder then expected arrival at the event itself and time-in were pretty smooth. As the night went on a weakness in the pointer-system and interconnectedness of the player characters was made pretty apparent: both the players of the deputy and the sheriff were very late and this meant that some things did not fully come into being before the arrived on the grounds and were able to go in-character. We were able to speed up that last bit a lot, but a 'flaw' (if you want to call it such) of the system is that it places a lot of responsibility with the players. You are responsible not only for your own character, but also those that have pointers to and from you. Dramatic tension and 'plot' pacing also falls to the players which is especially crucial in emotional scenes: if one player is roleplaying his or her hiney off over a bad decision in their past you don't want another player going either 'lame!' or 'I iz way more sad then you so give me the attention!'. All that being said, I think with this group of players it went quite splendid, but the leaving of all this control and responsibility (for lack of a better term in my afterlarp-dipped brain) is something that runs counter-intuitive to the instincts to most organizers, especially in these small games.
There is lots to tell still and it will probably be told by participants in the coming days and weeks over social networks, blog posts and the good old "no shit, there I was" grapevine, but I am happy with the end result. We have the evaluation meeting tonight, and the many comments that we got so far (thanks all!) are pretty darn positive - so, here's to Dead Fox Junction, and on to the next!
Pics courtesy of aroka, woran, EE's own gallery and Jan Entjes, owner of the Melody Ranch.
This is not what it looks like. He can explain.
A few of the ladies of Dead Fox Junction. I found it great to see their status and professions reflected in their clothingstyles.
Ashley 'Ash' McParland, Deputy.
Gerard Oudebergen, former miner, now the mayor of Dead Fox Junction.
Thijs Brandtz, former officer in the Confederate army and now retired as a banker to Dead Fox Junction.
Jacob, the barber.
Thijs Van Oldeveldt, the local brewer.
Willem Mandemaeker and his estranged daughter Isabel.
Peter and Ben Smith, local barhelp and entrepeneurs.
Reverend David Poort and his wife, Tirza.
Barend Vlek, the local seller of potions.
Sister Sophia, nurse and confidante to pretty much half the village.
Laura van Oldeveldt, former hooker, now the sweetheart of Deputy McParland.
A little Romance blooms between Troy West, the undertaker, and Josefien van der Molen, the baker.
And even the stiff Mr. Brandtz finds love and comfort in the arms of Betty Tadema, the school teacher.
A rare in-character shot. The view from the saloon porch to the log cabin on the other side of the grounds.
The graveyard, well kept by Troy West.
Lots of discussions in the village of Dead Fox Junction.
Tense faces during the trial of Berend Varkenspoot, the butcher. During his drunken brawling he accidentally fired a gun which hit the Reverend in the leg.
Emma, owner of the saloon, and Sarah, the hooker, watch the proceedings as the men vote for mayor.
The election for mayor. Only men can vote, of course...
The group picture. Because it was Sunday after time out it does not feature all the players but it sketches a good picture of the mood and the attention to detail that many players put in their characters.
Of course, there is also time for a little fun...
Hats, we haz 'em.
Men!
Nuns and guns. What else do we really need?