At the Closing of the year

This is the obligatory "End of the Year Summation" blog. It will involve sarcasm, self-deprication and personal insight.

You've been warned.

It's been an interesting year, filled with ups and downs and sideways. It's not unlike a Wonk-vator. A fair chunk of it was spent gaming. The problem with being unemployed is that you have a lot of time on your hands. Gaming actually helped do something productive, from prepping for the next chron, to writing plot for Mage, to going to Dystopia Rising. It gave me a chance to be creative and constructive while I waited for interviews and shipped off resumes.

During the year, I've learned a lot about myself in the LARP circle. I figured it would be worth to Share.

The Wrathful LARPer's Top 4 Life Lessons in LARPING 2012

Lesson 1: Knowing how I play the game.

I know, it's in fashion to not adhere to labels. Well, as my Classics professor once told me "you have to learn the rules before you can break them." Using the GNS theory, the best way I can described myself is as a Narrative-simulationist. My main focus is on the Narrative of the game, where is this story going with these characters and how does that affect/change/alter/end that story? I add Simulationist in that a lot of the games I play runs almost entirely on decided source material and in a specific space. There is a lot of "I do this, this happens back" in the games and I tend to enjoy it.

This has become apparent over the past few months as I've explored games like Dystopia Rising and De Profundis, which strip the Gamist out the the GNS theory to give a chance for exploration and narrative. My love of Mind's Eye is still strong, but it's my goal to run a game like Dystopia Rising where people can play their characters in setting and make it less about playing a game and more about becoming these characters. Which brings me to.

Lesson 2: I love being an ST

It's been a bit rocky, still trying to get used to being in charge and having to be The Authority in the room. It's been a challenge, but things could be worse. Mage is one of those games where you have to be aware of your rules the closest, because the question of "What can these characters do" becomes closer to "what *can't* they do" Very. Freakin. Quickly. You have to know what the rules are, and fill in the gaps in them where they are brought up.

One of the other fascinating things about being an ST is the approvals system. As a Venue Storyteller, you're the first person whose gotta see these plans, whether it's just for stuff that is in your game or has to be sent out to Regional or National. It becomes very interesting to see how players see their PCs and their views on the abilities/items/whatever they are applying for through their approvals. This has also helped me figure out my concept as a gamer, as my main focus tends to be "What is your character's purpose in having this? what is being told here? How does this affect the story of the City? What is the story of this character attaining it."

Lesson 3: Upping my game.

I've been LARPing for exactly two years now. I walked into the December 2010  Requiem game with my Mekhet Dragon, Vincenzo Taglia. I knew dick about a lot of things, like how to write and effective sheet and knew only marginally more about the world around me. The Ordo Dracul in the City is played by a team of some of the most dedicated players and MES club members around. I've learned a lot about the Venue, the Club and LARPing in general just by hanging out with them during Covenant meetings or just hanging out.

Most importantly, during these travels I got to meet with Class A players and their legendary characters. I got to be a part of these plots from the far reaches of the Club and getting to do things with people I'd only heard about vaguely. Working with them, and especially their dedication and ethic towards LARPing has upped my game as a player enormously. Having my Mage character get trained by an awesome PC, run by my now-friend and ooc mentor Ericka, helped give me a deeper sense of the world I'm playing in and what I can do with it. So if anyone asks about my concepts on Mage and gaming: blame her.

Lesson 4: I like the global Chronicle

I know there is a lot of screaming going back and forth with the people running the global chronicle. That's not what I'm talking about. Keep that and never bring it up again. What I'm talking about is the ability that my character, and by extension me, can play with players in other regions around the world, that we're all in this together. My Mekhet can counsel PCs in Seattle, My Mage can Attune to Cities around the World. My Changeling can record the stories of others. I like the fact that my Retrograde Tinker can roam around the Caravan's of Dystopia Rising and find himself along the East Coast settlements, and if he's less than lucky, to the Lone Star settlement in Texas.

I like the fact that I can travel across the world and still get to play. I like the fact that I can see how other players play their games without having to roll a new one every time I'm in town. I like the fact that, sooner or later, I'm going to be at  convention where numerous players from everyone show up.

Those are the four main points. My plans for the next year include new challenges. The Chronicle begins in June and I'm ready to prepare my characters as I've written in a previous post. It's going to be interesting playing characters out of my usual range, but that's the challenge. The other is to visit Dystopia Rising more often and bring in my Retrograde for some  fun. I also have the challenge of potentially building the next Mage game from the ground up. How will that go? I'll probably report here.

It's been fun, 2012.

Later

The GNS Model and Mind's Eye Society: Balancing the Scales

 Lately, I've come across a lot of discussions about how people play in the Mind's Eye Society (formerly The Camarilla, God rest it's Zombie Bones). The most common discussion I've noticed is the rise in people playing a Game that is meant to be won, using the system of the LARP, the straight up numbers of the characters sheet to justify their actions.

However, there is a not so silent minority that believes that LARPing is about a story being told and a world to explore. These players coming from a literary and artistic background, the actors and theater fans who enjoy being a part of an ongoing narrative based in a fictional world.

As I said, there is a very distinct opposition between Playing a Game and Playing a Character in the White Wolf based LARPs. Those that tend to Play the Game site the system of rules in regards to card pulls, actions, and modifiers as justification of using them. Those that like to Play the Role use the system to justify their actions, but not dictate them. Fine line walking? Indeed. Which one is right?

Well, According to the GNS Theory, the answer is  both. The GNS Theory, written by Ron Edwards, states that there are three separate types of goals: Gamism, Narrativism and Simulationism. I'm going to explain these parts and then go into depth about how they relate to us as a club.

Gamism: As described by Edwards, Gamism is expressed by competition among participants (the real people); it includes victory and loss conditions for characters, both short-term and long-term, that reflect on the people's actual play strategies.

Simulationism: heightens and focuses Exploration as the priority of play. The players may be greatly concerned with the internal logic and experiential consistency of that Exploration.

Narrativism: expressed by the creation, via role-playing, of a story with a recognizable theme. The characters are formal protagonists in the classic Lit 101 sense, and the players are often considered co-authors. The listed elements provide the material for narrative conflict (again, in the specialized sense of literary analysis). 
 Let me clarify that these aren't entirely personal philosophies. They're way of seeing and attaining goals in a game system. We each have a profound way of handling things, and each have an innate tendency towards one or two of the three.

I'm clearly a Narrativism-Simulationist. I want a world that is fleshed out or that can be fleshed out while exploring questions and seeing how people interact with each other. I'm not really interested in Winning a Game, I want a playground to play in and interactions. I want my characters, who while fictional do live in the world they are placed in, grow.

This is reflected in my Storytelling style, I hope. My focus is on telling a good story, and allowing my players to grow and explore as much as they possibly want. It's been pretty light lately, but I leave the door open. Mechanics, the game part of the game, is tertiary, and is often used more for scaffolding than anything. Do people play this way? Absolutely. Do people play in a way that heavily favors mechanics? Absolutely, the job for me is to balance it without killing my own creativity.

So, going back to the problems in viewing this in club terms. Which side is right in regards to the dispute? The Gamists or the Role Players? The problem, looking at it through GNS, makes it a matter of the system for which the World of Darkness games are played. The World of Darkness games, and by extension the LARP clubs that play, is practically built on the concept of the GNS. The gaming system, with it's focus on Attribute+Skill, appeals to Gamist goals. "I have this and this, therefore I can solve this."  The background of the games however, from the sourcebook to the expansion books, each one focuses on allowing for a rich potential for a simulationist game. Considering the Addendums for the Club, we're all deciding how and what we base our simulations on, trying to keep and maintain the internal logic and balance of the world we're in. But finally, we have the players themselves, who after years of playing and getting to know one another, see these characters as living beings living side by side. They each have their own foibles, theirs dramas, and their own stories. More often then not, these are all things that are played out in smaller groups, but those scenarios can reach out and affect entire regions, maybe even the entire club.

So the question doesn't become "Which one is right?" but "How do we balance this out." Unfortunately, the first thing that will get supported is the mechanics aspects of the game, the information is Quantitative, easily measurable and controllable. That gives Gamists a lot to work with right there. However, that sets a covert gaming culture that rewards people who favor the mechanics over those wanting to tell a story or explore the source material, both things which are Qualitatively measured, making it more difficult to predict. Storytellers have to decide how their games function. I know firsthand how difficult it is, it's a pain in the ass, especially in the presence of people using Gamist goal solutions. But the World of Darkness is based around all three methods, and that requires balancing the act.

There are of course games that don't follow the Theory, or downplay a method. In playing Dystopia Rising, I know that the mechanics are severely lessened from systems like World of Darkness (considering that the creators was a WoD developer originally, this isn't surprising). By limiting the mechanics to Health Points, Mind Points and what equates to Skill Licenses, they are focusing more intensely on Simulationist methods, using the world of the game and the setting around them, and the Narrativist methods of letting people run around an area and dealing with situations on their own terms and, most importantly, creating their own. A lot of the RP I saw, and the sheer amount of emotions visible made the game intense and incredibly personal. Through in the fact that you are literally IN the game space, and this is a pretty decent Simulationist Game.

Another example is De Profundis. De Profundis is a letter-based LARP that emulates Lovecraftian horror. The entire game is based on players letters to one another. In this, we have a game that espouses an almost purely Narrativist gameplay. Each letter enhances the world, and each letter is written by a player. The whole scenario becomes one gestalt storyteller and enforcing of the world/game they are engaging in.

Gamist games are the most abundant. Go ahead, turn on your game console. Crack out your chess set, or board game. If the idea is to win, to solve the puzzle, then it is evoking the Gamist in people. It's one of the reasons I don't like using them in a LARP. If I wanted to just grind out xp for killing monsters, I'd hit up World of Warcraft (ugh) or Skyrim (yay!).

The reason I brings these games up now is to drive home to point I want to make in regards to the Mind's Eye Society as a whole and to each separate person in it, Storyteller or Otherwise. Know what kind of game you want to make, promote it, and enforce it. If you want a game where Gamist solutions are going to work, then be upfront and honest about it so everyone can adjust. If you want a game where Narrative or Simulationist actions are more preferred, please speak up. Balancing is a pain in the tits and while you can try, you're human and therefore may not be able to make it. But at least make the effort and be honest about it. Because this game is about the people in it interacting with the world, with mechanics built to help enforce those interactions. If we didn't want to be here, we'd be home alone playing something else.

Like World of Warcraft. Ugh.

Later.



http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/

Allow me to reintroduce myself...

After a month away whilst doing NaNoWriMo, I have returned to you my faithful few.

Be grateful, I could have been sleeping.

So there are a few things that have happened this month that I'd like to talk on that is Cam or LARP related. Since I'm starting to warm back up, let me go through them.

First things first. NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month. The annual event where writer's write a whole draft of a novel in the 30 days of November. Last year I had written a diesel-punk (think steampunk, but set in the 20's-40's), this year I decided to do something less originally. I wrote about my Mage character. It was an experience, because at the time, I had never heard of a New World of Darkness novel, or anything this level that wasn't part of the corebooks. I thought it would be a good challenge.

It was.

One of the most challenging things was translating game mechanics into story mechanics. Mage has a lot of mechanical considerations, the Arcana, the Imago, the Rotes and Improvised Spells, the Paradox. A game is all about mechanics and chance, a story is all about drama and theme. I needed to make the magic mean something more than "I'm going to use this spell to do this". Having a character who was a literal Master of Time also was a problem because many of his abilities are cheats in a dramatic sense. He can remove himself or his enemies from Time. He has a spell that can rewind himself back in time. For a player in a game, that is a wonderful spell to have

For a protagonist in a story, that's a pain in the balls.

So I wrote the book in three Acts. The first Act is how magic works well for Rhys. The second Act is that going to shit. The third Act is the aftermath.

Hopefully, it worked.

So that was the long project. Let's get into this month's games.

Friday was Changeling. Now, I've said it before and will continue saying it again, Changeling is probably the tightest game in the City. By this I mean that it has a fully fleshed out world complete with NPCs and territories.

Unfortunately, I am not a big fan of my character. He got shoe horned into plot but has since ended. So I opted to NPC. The NPC I was given was Hamilton Halloway, the king of the Sun Court. The Sun, or Day Court are one of the side courts in game. They are focused around traditions, laws, and doing the right thing and their trademark emotion is Shame. Hamilton is an Gargantuan Ogre, meaning he is the size of a mach truck and twice as strong. His Shame comes from him not being able to do anything without destroying it. He serves mostly as a supporting figure, guiding others.

He walked around and dropped some plot, and dealt with his Moon/Night Court counterpart, Marty. Night Court uses disgust, and basically lives up to that. Considering he's a walking Rat, yeah. It was interesting, because while the other Courts have their niche's, the Day Court has an opposite but equal number. My acting was improved because I was riffing off of Marty's player's actions. The more disgusting Marty was, the more amenable Hamilton became. It gave me new respect for the both Courts.

Because of Plot, my character got called in to be used. Declan is a Wizened Author, which grants him bonus' in translating any written text. His Entitlement (an order one can belong to) grants him perfect memory. So he had to remember and translate and entire Japanese ledger. So yes, I had to not come to game as my character for my character to be useful.

Near the end, I played a mortal NPC. The game was set in a Marketplace that bordered the normal realm and the Changeling's Goblin Market. He made a deal to find his son, lost during the Hurricane (more on THAT later). Making a deal with Faeries, even their runaway slaves, is a bad-bad idea.

It was fun playing all of those roles, and made me appreciate NPC play even more. NPCs help flesh out the world of the game more, as it gives  you information that doesn't come from the players and gives it in the context of the world around you. This is why I've opted to do NPC shifts at Dystopia Rising, this way I can better understand the world and the way the game is played.

Saturday morning was Mage. This was the first game where I felt comfortable going in. It was a smaller game, a more sedate game, but a good one. Chris St. Louis, one of the best players I've ever met, came in to play an NPC from way back at the beginning of Mage's inception in the City. The first hour or two was pure Roleplay, followed by introductions to a new NPC. His name, or at least the one that the players know him by is Sellers. He basically laid out the goal of the 'antagonists' and basically gave it to them swift, but also laid out that these aren't antagonists. He also brought in two interesting points to game. Despite the fact that the PCs have dubbed themselves the heroes and protectors of the City, what have they done to help the City?

The other question, the one that lead to an interesting discussion that ended the game, was what would  happen if the Abyss, that sprawling source of Anti Reality and Magic that keeps the normals from understanding Magic and the Mages from becoming literal Gods. In the end, people came to a disturbing conclusion: The Abyss may in fact severed a regulatory function that helped make sure that the world was ripped apart by nigh-omnipotent Mages.

To finish off the weekend was Vampire. The game was tense, with a lot of work for me. Let me explain. My PC, Taglia, is the Priscus (think Senator) for the Mekhet Clan of vampires. Mekhet are known for being highly intelligent, yet wholly eccentric. Boy howdy. Three of them have been investigating a strange obelisk underneath the City, and are now being haunted by the Vampire-cum-demigod who resided in it. Another one is engaged in a war of words with the Prince's Harpy (court-reporter) which almost became a full war. Another was nearly killed in a plot involving his Sire-surrogate, who is also a Mekhet.

In short, I had to be a responsible adult. Which sucks, but I think I managed. Now next month is the Mekhet gathering, which brings with it a lot of potential interesting things. More importantly, I have to plan for it.

In the end, one of my busiest, and most fulfilling games. However, I've been noticing it in a lot of players and just in general a sense of ennui and lack of enthusiasm. A lot of it I think comes from the fact that we know the game will end in May. The end is nigh, what is the point? The rest I think is just years of drama in a global club coming to a head. It's still fun, but it's clear people are looking forward to the new games.