Death

Death in LRP divides people. I’m a proponent of doing what feels right, and think that giving people control over when they die allows for greater glory and making things feel right. Trusting players is important. LRP is collaborative. We’re working together to make the game.

I like low rules systems. There are places this doesn’t work. For example - you need an agreement about how firearms are going to work, and you may need some agreement about certain skills in order that players can use them.

There are a few main things you need to consider when running an event that relate to character death:

• Do players get a new character if they die?
• Does that change depending on when they die?
• Is the new character disadvantaged at all
• How are you feeding new characters in? We used to have two slots we could use to feed people into Alone games. People would have to wait for those.
• Do you need to outline a way to handle death ic? With most of our games it gets briefly roleplayed over and then ignored.
• Do you have kit to send players back in with?

Death of a character is a big thing. Sometimes it’s the end of the game for someone, and at other times it’s a change in direction. Other characters will quickly move on from it. It’s the nature of LRP. Dead friends are people you talk about around the campfire with a drink a few times a year. They’re a reason to keep fighting, part of the story and some background atmosphere. For a lot of systems there are a significant number of dead characters and the majority of them won’t be individually significant in the game anymore.

For me the best deaths are those with meaning. To die gloriously holding the enemy back while your friends escape or complete setup or to die because someone has put a lot of thought into killing both feel good. That characters death had relevance. It always feels a bit rubbish to lose a character to a random skirmish, because you fell into a shadow or similar. it’s a sudden and abrupt ending that doesn’t really feel like you had any choice in it. Which is realistic, but not glorious. These deaths are also important. I can see their value, but I don’t really like them. They discourage effort spent on making kit that can’t be reused, and for me they make me move on when I may not have got bored of playing something. I don’t like going back to the same thing twice in a row. It devalues death to play the same character twice.

I don’t see LRP as a competitive thing and so I believe people can be trusted to decide when they die. It can still come as a shock. That realisation that someone has put thought and effort into killing you can be a bit of a surprise. For me, this normally happens once the character is dead. Letting you make that choice also allows you to choose to roleplay your injuries appropriately. It makes for far more immersive situations.

With any character death, it’s no longer about you. You’re not the one who gets to decide what is remembered about a character or how people react. In long term campaigns there are often lists of the dead, ways of remembering who has gone before. They add a sense of continuity and ritual to a situation that often has more death than would be fun in the real world.

In most cases it’s important that death is acknowledged. There could be groups that refuse to discuss death or to participate in any form of memorial or funeral rite. That should really be a significant thing about that group though. For the most part how a society deals with its dead is a significant part of making it feel real, especially in a violent situation.

I like death. It’s a nice underlining of the end of a life. It gives solid stops and leaves no ‘after’ for someone to worry about. As someone who runs games it makes it a lot easier to track survivors. If only 6 characters are still alive and I know where they are then I know there’s very little chance of someone showing up with knowledge I don’t expect them to have at future games.

Winter Events

In the UK there is a LRP season. This is at least partially because in winter it's a bit too cold to camp. When I started LRPing it pretty much ran from April/May to September. This year it doesn't seem to exist. 

Planning when to run an event is a bit of nightmare. You want a weekend that's likely to be warm and dry enough that you don't have to run everything in buildings (as long as you've got a site with buildings) and you don't want to clash with anything else. 


Finding sites is a nightmare. We usually want something that's less than £1200, has a kitchen and enough shelter for the people we have attending as well as somewhere to put the crew and is in the midlands. It loses points for every minute further from Coventry we have to drive. If we're running with 50 players we're hoping for 60-70 bunks. 

The site we have booked for our next event has no bunks. People can sleep in tents. However, the event is in September so this should be reasonable.

There are several large fest systems in the UK running with up to 4 events over summer. Off the top of my head I can think of Fools and Heroes, Lorien Trust, Curious Pastimes, Profound Decisions have both Empire and Odyssey and the Vale fitting events into the summer months. Unless we really knew our audience we wouldn't want to clash with these or run the weekend before or after. Dark Hearts, which we ran in November 2013, was based on the Empire system. We were aiming to draw players from there. 

When considering what the event clashes with, in addition to considering where your players come from, you also need to consider where your crew come from. We have some crew who're utterly insane, and will follow a brief through the night, returning every few hours to let their wrangler know they're alive and to eat/drink something. We try to ensure they're available for the dates we want to run our events on (especially with Alone events).

Having established when we can run an event we begin the thoroughly miserable business of contacting scout sites, LRP sites, and Youth Hostels collecting prices and dates and locations, while trawling the internet for something a bit special. Drakelow tunnels is one fine that was outstanding for us. SlenderLRP and Red LRP seem to do this considerably better than us. They have found several really interesting locations and they use them brilliantly. They invest a huge amount of work in setting their event in the location of the site and making it utterly relevant. I really rate them for it. 

We typically have an idea what we're after. There's a particular type of location we've been after for years and we may have found it. If we have, we should have a really nice Sci Fi event lined up for next year. :)
 Typically we have to compromise massively somewhere. There are sites we contact event though we know they only have three LRP slots a year and we haven't a hope of getting them as they're booked up by a 40k club as soon as they become available. I'd also love to run something on Bardsey Island, but we've yet to find a whole team that are keen enough to make that work (Any volunteers?). It does seem to suit 1930s Cthulhu style LRP and that's not actually something on our list to run. Also it doesn't have electricity and everything has to be ferried out by boat so we'll be limited in what we can take for set dressing and effects kit. 

The last three weekends I've been at events. I played two brilliant events and catered the CP Lions faction banquet. This last one was at the Court Hill Centre, which has amazing views. The main hall has wooden beams and was amazingly decorated by the Lions (although it was a little dark, the servers kept tripping over shields people had left in the tiny gaps between the tables). We had between 50 and 60 attending and fed them 12 courses over 4-5 hours. They did some of the washing up. Everyone seemed content.

I've previously really enjoyed catering banquets. I really enjoyed the weekend and seeing people, but apparently we've got too good at catering and it's too organised and no longer appeals to my sense of chaos.
I'm really glad we had bunks for this one. I'd been sleeping outside only a fortnight before and it was snowing at a couple of points over the weekend. 

Still, this year the season has finished. It's probably about time. I need to make some new kit before next years season starts on the 24th January... What happened to time for projects?


 
 

Resonance 2

I like LRPing in a group. If you have a group of people you can agree a common look. This helps with establishing an identity. You don’t need a personal identity if people can work out your place from the kit you’re wearing.

You can use it to add resonance. When we played tree worshipping cultists we all wore generic kit underneath and hoods and robes over the top. The look hinted slightly at a religious order which was mirrored by the way we spoke about our selves. The bulking up and furs often worn by beastkinmakes the people wearing it more likely to lounge around on a hot day, and also improves their ability to both hide and loom, which are important ways of separating your behaviour from that of other people.

In the star wars films they used very different clothing styles for the imperials and the rebels. If they are wearing black and have a mandarin collar then they are imperial. The clothes were very fitted, military and ordered. The rebels tended to have layers, v necks and clothing that was loose but belted. We used the same styles through Alone (although this rarely came up). It does mean that if you use those styles anywhere then people will see them in the same way.

I like things to have a coherent look. Anything that looks good does, and things with a coherent look invariably look better. One poly cotton tabard invariable looks quite cheap - a group of them in the same colours look like something meaningful. 

For fantasy LRP I would expect anyone who has been to a couple of events to have IC trousers (appropriately coloured, not jeans or combats) and an ic top (not a t-shirt or something with a modern cut). I have advantage that I generally know what look I am going for and have both money and time to make the items I am after. I’m also of the opinion that in the same way that you couldn’t play cricket without the appropriate gear (the less gear you have the less like cricket it is and if you take this too far we end up arguing about whether throwing a turnip at a spade is cricket), you can’t LRP without the appropriate costume.

LRP is a luxury hobby. You can get appropriate kit for most things for less than the cost of one event.

Most people apply resonance automatically. If they’re playing the groups religious leader then their costume will be taken from their view of what a religious leader will look like. There are numerous interpretations of the phrase ‘Space Cowboys’ but if you use it currently most people will start to look to firefly for inspiration and you’ll get themes that come from there.

If you have an established world you’ll probably want players to be able to identify things from within that world. For example, if you have a particular military unit then you may want players to be able to identify that people are from that particular military unit. Military uniforms create a military look and badges, insignia and hats can be used to tie a group of soldiers into something the players recognise. We’re often tempted to create a set of police-ish uniforms, a set of paramedic gear and similar. We already have a decent set of military gear. A lot of people have a set of military gear, as it’s cheap and easy to buy. A lot of modern or post apocalyptic games are flooded with it when there’s a lot of alternatives that could be used.

We also consider whether it’s a one off event or a series of events. One offs require players to buy in very quickly. They only have 30-40 hours of game time and spending a lot of that working out the setting can really limit things. If it’s a series of events then you have more time to play with and can spend more time establishing something as a setting. You need to work out how much your players will happily read and at what point you’re being so constraining that you’re not leaving them room to make the world their own.

Finally, on another topic, we’re planning on running Jurassic LRP on 25th-27th September 2015.

The facebook group is here. Let us know if it’s something you’re interested in. More details after Christmas.

Make them pay

With small events typically no one is making a profit. If you’re lucky you’ll come close to breaking even.

We have a few rules that make this work for us.

• No one has a place without having paid a deposit.
• Once the deposit has been paid payments must be made each month to keep the place, and the full cost should be paid at least a month before the event.
• No refunds (we use discretion on this, but we typically can’t refund and don’t have time to resell tickets if there’s less than a month before the event)
• Typically half the number of people that say they will definitely show up will. Some of those will crew. If there are 80 people on your facebook group saying they will definitely be there then your player/crew/ref base is probably about 40. Usually a lot of them have said they’ll crew and you’ll find you’ve got a player base of about 17. If it’s only 17 before you’ve announced dates and prices then you may find you struggle.
• Get dates and prices out early. Setting people expectations enables them to confirm they can make your event.

Because we typically run events for our friends these can seem harsh, but it’s utterly worth it. Having to hassle our friends for money is no fun, and having rules in place from the start makes it easier. It also means you know what you’re doing and how much you’re spending and that you have the money in your hand at a point when you can actually spend it (before the event) and it can go to making the event better. 

The 50% rule is really important. It actually applies after you’ve told people the date and price.

Zapfest caught us out because it was closer to 30% actually booked, but because we had the figures we could make decisions based on the actual costs of running the event and knew what we were committing to.

There are a lot of people who have access to kit that can be used for running events. We will sometimes lend kit to people (and also rent out some monsters) and we have catering equipment. Some of the larger event organisers have kit that they can lend to groups running smaller events. We teamed up with Rockets and Rayguns to rebuild our drop pod so that it could be used for both their game and ours. If there is something aspirational you want it’s worth talking to other people who run games to see if it can be shared between groups. 

Link to previous post on Money
An example of our finance spreadsheet

Red LRP

This weekend I attended an event run by Red LRP. Red Letter Day was based in 1994, and we were playing people who were attending a Red Letter Day event in Leicester. It was a close to modern day horror event run by people who have a style I like. So I booked. 

Friday was good. We timed in at the pub (The Fieldhead in Markfield) who decided we were loud and gave us a conference room to stay in so that we could be loud and not scare the other customers. This was good. 
I approve of starting in pubs as it keeps players away from site and, especially for modern day events such as this, lets them time in naturally and drink and eat as they want to whilst the site gets sorted and people arrive who've been stuck on the hell that is Britain's motorways on a Friday night. 

We had a band (Flying Kangaroo Alliance) which was also amazing. Midnight hit and I was stood just outside of the main room and the screaming and applause were less applause and more screaming. We had dead people, a doctor who wasn't a doctor and then refused to go to bed for several hours whilst we started working out what was going on, talked to the police, found the flayed remains of a body in the woods etc.

We found books with secret codes in them and information about us.
I think at some point we managed to get into a building with a darkroom which had photos of several of the characters in it.
Nothing blatently paranormal had happened. 

I got to bed about 3.40ish, and was woken by a phone call at 6.37 (they had phones, these were used to communicate with the refs, to call in game emergency services, to book in game taxis, to call family members and other contacts etc) I can't remember exactly what the call was about. 

During the course of the next morning we were making trips to locations we found out about from the books, and also chose to visit the head office of the company that had set this up. The later trip involved breaking into someones house and stealing their computer, a lot of files, a skull and some books. We also said hello to the cat. 

The main room was now flooded with information and some of us were left chasing people around the woods whilst others went on an extended linear in the real world that involved phone calls at abandoned service stations, breaking into hotel rooms, and into cars in public car parks as well as visiting a shrine to a dead character in the middle of Leicester. 

We gained some more dead bodies at this point. A religious order that had been trying to help us, but were pretty rubbish. 

By this point we'd worked out that we were meant to be being sacrificed for the sake of our families and that we'd been sent here to die. From midnight people scattered, there was a lot of hiding and panic and then we stood in a well lit hut while a thing walked in to suck out our insides and hang our skins on a tree to die. We can't leave site because there are armed police keeping us there. We somehow managed to kill her whilst only losing one more of ours and the survivors gathered in the main hut to work out what to do now. After a while we concluded that sleeping was the answer.

The next morning we tried to leave site, and couldn't. That was disconcerting. We were planning to happily walk to Nottingham and we were stuck, unable to leave. I managed to get stuck in a building with 6-7 surviving players (others were outside) whilst Baal tried to convince us to complete the deal and unfortunately got to close to a man with an axe. My character left this world being deafened by a god who I suspect eventually got his way. 

It was a brilliant weekend and I'm still a wee bit shattered. 

Things I really liked:

Skills - we had one each, and all of them could be used. Mine was photography, someone else could shoot guns (one player could use a gun effectively) another could research, another could pick locks etc. They all worked quite well. I loved having the darkroom so I could do the things I should be able to do. 

Futility - I couldn't work out what to do so I hid in a bush. I was scared and useless enough that it seemed like the best option. It worked. 

Atmosphere - None of us trusted people (until I got to close to a man with an axe). They concluded someone was  bad because he ran off into the dark at the same time as me and I wasn't there when he returned. They thought he'd killed me. 

The real world - The linears were amazing. Breaking into cars, and houses and hotels. Going to local locations and actually using them added so much to the game. It was really good.

There are many others - these are the main 4.

There were some bits of plot that felt less finished than they could have done. It made it a really good game instead of an outstanding one. However, I would like to sign up for the next game now. I'm really glad I played this one. :)

Resonance

How much you choose to be influenced by the real world, or by other stories is important to you, but all options are equally valid here.

With Alone we used resonance. We were using strong visual themes from the Alien and Aliens films. People knew how to react when hit by a facehugger because they knew what a facehugger was and how it had worked in the films. The stories were our own. The plots, characters and backgrounds were things we had created. The reason for things being where they were was all ours. By borrowing the way that the aliens worked, we didn’t need to brief the players on how to react to aliens. We could leave them to work that out purely because they knew what they did.

We may have robbed them of the true terror of being stalked through the dark by a completely unknown thing. I think this was the right decision though. They knew roughly what they were up against, but it was still pretty scary. We usually had the odd unknown in there as well, and it meant that we could stick to the low briefing style of play we love. There was a game in spending hours working out the life cycle of the monster attacking them but it wasn’t the game we were running.

We sometimes use this the opposite way. Young children are generally seen as being in need of protecting, and as being sweet and innocent. They can be used to hook people into a plot as they’re something that a nominally ‘good’ character will want to save. It’s something to fight for. If the thing that is causing the problems appears childlike, then it creates conflict because killing it is a lot harder than if it appears evil. We can also use the increased likelihood that they will trust that thing to harm the players. If they make that decision it can hurt them.

For Dark Hearts we used a lot of fairy tale themes. We were looking at the older, less friendly, version of fairy tales and bringing that into the setting we were presenting. Telling the story was a big part of Dark Hearts. A lot of the village was set up to get people to the place where they could find out what had happened and draw their own conclusions.

We also rigged the entire game to suggest that they were up against werewolves. Everything we produced had wolf references scattered through it. It was a way of establishing a subtle tension, without any actual background to it.

A lot of games are based on books, tv series and films that people have seen. People want to be there and do that and that’s part of what LRP is about. The stories are new, but the setting is something that’s easy to grasp if you’ve watched the material it’s based on. Coming up with something entirely new means that you need to give the players more to know what they should know when they get there - what everyone in that world would know. With the modern day games it’s how to balance those with limited real life knowledge playing experts, especially when they may encounter real life experts in that field in game.

Paperwork

This is a short entry that outlines a few points we need to consider before each event.

• We use LRP Alliance for insurance.
• At our events we always have a named person responsible for medic stuff. They are responsible for keeping the first aid box up to date and appropriate to the event we’re running.
• When we are using guns we call the police first, and we tell them that we’ll be running an event that uses replica weapons. We also give them the site location and a contact phone number of the contact phone on site.
• We have a letter from the police that outlines why we are exempt from the vcr bill. This is useful as it makes the Police less likely to arrest us. There is a copy of it here.
  
• We own our own radios. We have a licence to use them and stick to the terms. 
  EDIT: We need this because while most people use PMR446 radios we use 'better' ones which have to be licenced. Most events won't need this.