Saturday, May 25, 2013

Developing the Fear 2: Man Plans, Fate Laughs

So, the time is nearly upon us. New Chronicle. That time in the Mind's Eye Society (nee' Camarilla) where all of the stories go back to the beginning. Everything is rebooted, and we all make new characters. I have been preparing for the New Chronicle in one form or another since August of last year, building and defining ideas for my characters in the various venues as well as the setting for Mage. I have built, organizes, planned and disseminated information.

One of the projects I've been working on is a setting document for the venue. It started when the Changeling the Lost ST made one, and then every other Storyteller in the room (past and present) collective said "I hate you". So I made one, aided and abetted by said Lost ST Abby with assistance from my friends and fellow players Brandon, Ephraim, Greg and Matt. It's pretty cool and I love to share:

The Supernal Stage Handbook

But, that being said. I still don't feel prepared. In fact, two weeks before game goes live, I'm pretty fucking terrified. These are my fears

The first is that The game tanks. Mage just isn't that popular of a game in the city (or really the Region). Most of the players are those who loving LARPing in general (god love em) but in a town where studio space costs to play it gets to be a matter of "Can we afford to hold this small game that isn't bringing much of anything in?" I know I'm a lone few who can say this, but I love Mage and would actually be disheartened if I couldn't play/run in it. I've been dealing with the Coordinator in making concessions to keep Mage strong, as well as trying to use the small size as a way to recruit people into the club. It's a shitty feeling knowing your game is on the chop block, but this is actually something I will fight for to keep.

2) You know that handbook I just posted? All of that material and background going for shit. I don't know how, I don't know where, but just the thought of that amount of work being disregarded. It's just a fear from last chron where there was no sense of personal agency and everything had to be doled out to the players. A few of them are playing a very "a Mage can  be an island". My counter point, and ultimately my plan to prevent this is to remind them that "For those that remember Atlantis, Mages have never had any sort of luck with islands." I plan on making an invested plot for each one, bringing them in a bit further. But this is going to be a lot on me, and I hope I can do the job.

I don't know, I hate this feeling. I've prepped, I prepared, I love this venue, but I feel like I have less of a clue now than I did in October.

Man plans, Fate laughs. And Fate is a very active things in Mage.

later

Monday, May 20, 2013

Putting on the Mask: Prepping for Roleplay

So in my last post I talked about giving your character attitude to enhance your performance and to make roleplay better. I didn't do much of a good job in saying how. The reason for this is simple: I can't speak for you. I can only speak for myself. I hate writing something and making people feel like I mean "And thou shalt." If you have a different method and it works for you, do it up. Hell, TELL ME ABOUT IT. I like hearing new things.

So this post is going to be more about the development of attitude for a character, which dovetails nicely into another discussion: preparing for RolePlay. Ready? Good!

As I've mentioned before, I'm a Jungian Counselor in my day job. One of Jung's many contributions to psychology was the concept of the Persona. The Persona is described as that aspect of our Self (Capitalization intended) that we put on when interacting with others, and is commonly depicted as a Mask. Every day, we put on the Mask of the Student, the Teacher, the Artist, the Worker, The Spouse, The Lover, the Fighter, the Dreamer. We wear Masks that are mixtures of these things depending on who we are with and the setting we find ourselves in.

As a roleplayer, I find it easier to play characters that hold a kernel of myself in them. Taglia was the part of me that wished to help but did not wish anyone to discover his own weaknesses, Rhys was the socially outraged New Yorker, Declan was the writer who never wanted responsibility, Rave was the snarky wiseass who kept secrets to protect himself and ended up bleeding for it. These are all aspects of Me, the Self as I see it. I'm not saying that there isn't anything to be said of creating a character wholecloth. As I'm discovering with Owen, my upcoming Littlefinger-as-a-Sith-Lord Vampire, being a morally grey character after years of playing White Hats is interesting and challenging.

My default method is to take a part of me and build with that as the premise. The one thing I truly and totally do not approve of is playing an avatar of yourself with a sheet. I've noticed far too many people who put too much of themselves into their characters take things far too seriously than fun-pretendy times. You are portraying these characters, you *aren't* these characters. So in my humble experience, always build a character that, while in some ways similar, is not inherently you.

So now comes the question: How, Craig, do you do this?

A few tricks, a lot of them coming in the development and referring back to them on the way to the next game. The first is simple: Have a background, write it out, keep a copy with you. Remember the details to remember where you character is coming from. Rhys came from a family without a father and a negligible mother, a manipulative grandmother and a secretive grandfather. As such, his past was laden without trust. Write these out and read them as you start your prep, write out new ones as time goes on. I usually do written reaction papers on the way out of a game or in response to a scene. Sometimes it's easier when your game allows online scenes where you can act out their reactions, have a record, and still be able to walk away from it. But if a game does not generally hold an online aspect there is usually some form of journal or scene written that describes the PC at this point in their life. You take these and you read them to remember who they are and where they are, so you know how they would react to related (and sometimes unrelated) things.

Rhys was very close to becoming a player Avatar, as was Rave. Both of them had my core reaction of analysis and snark. But I put enough history into their backstories as to make their motivations and reactions distant from my own. I'm a writer, I do not write my protagonists to win and they will often suffer even if I have to do it myself. This requires a lot of sitting in the metaphorical mirror and getting real with yourself. Rhys was decidedly more screwed up than anyone care to notice and Rave never finished a story unless he was broken and bleeding either metaphorically or physically.

Another trick I do are playlists, all of my characters have a playlist. Rhys was mostly Muse and classic Rock,  Owen is mostly Rza, Kanye and a few others, all describing sex and power. Rude is mostly Thrice and some Imagine Dragons, earthy tones but with an acid kick. Rave was fueled by Yuki Kajiura, especially the track Cynical World. This is to help me get into their mood, tempos, upswings. I live in the North Bronx, meaning at best I have an hour train ride into New York City. This gives me plenty of time to put the music on, read my material and go in guns blazing

Another thing, and this is the one thing that if you learn nothing else from: Make Ties. Nothing enforces your character more than other players and their characters being in on it. Reality is based on perception, a thing becomes more real the more people agree that it is real. Somebody thought of it, and someone believed it. Right now I'm in the process of building Jacob Rude, my Retrograde Tinker (Who, by sheer nature of being a Retrograde, gets to wear a literal mask) in Dystopia Rising, one of the things that I must do as a player is create ties for him so he can enter the space more readily as other people know him and his story. His credibility as a character is maintained in no small part by the other characters around him.

And having character ties, especially historical ones, helps in building them. Rude had a mother and a father, some siblings. A tie with a PC made another character his uncle on his mother side, gave him a location as his home. Their tie comes in at the Uncle's death, peppering that relationship. My Mage in the Accord venue has romantic ties with at least one PC, which began and end messily in the bathroom of the club he was DJing in. That tells me he's the kind of person who fucks around, and having another PC to attest to that reinforces it. Maintaining this part of the character is easy, you just play. Creating ties nails down aspects of your character into solid ground, because now other people are involved.

Finally, and often something I forget, is the physical build up. By this I mean trying to get a few ticks down in my head well enough so he is distinguishable from me. Rave, my NY Jedi Persona, was a master of Shii Cho, a style of lightsaber combat. I prefer the form myself, but while I am definitely more analytical and observant, Rave was the one hauling through the battlefields after only a quick decision. So before I had to perform for a show, I would do the sword form of Shii Cho we made in Jedi. The first time would be as me, the second time as him. I would do this over again until a little bit of the outward swagger and the snarl formed on my lips, until the careful step forward was a committed lunge. While it was subtle, I felt the shift, and that is all you need sometimes.

All of these things help to build and enhance your character's Mask and keep it going. Congratulations, you've got a character Persona you can portray. I think this method is healthy because you've built up something that is insulated from your personal Self. I can't imagine playing Dystopia Rising, a game that is as much physically taxing as well as it is emotionally taxing. My friend Ericka plays a charcter who, in one of the more recent games, was executed on the steps of the main building by an invading army. She also recounted the traumatic experiences of her character (she got better after her brains were blown out) in the more previous game and decided to back out because it was becoming too much for her. She decided to take off the mask of her PC and be herself for a while/do things she as a person wanted/had to do. Imagine a player whose character was only a weakly veiled version of themselves. Imagine someone who was Too Far in the head of their characters in a full Method Acting overboard Tom Cruise kind of way? How ugly could that turn if their character went through that? How much damage? Having a metaphorical mask to put on and take off helps protect you from the wear of this other poor bastard you're playing.

Now, for the most important trick, what to do after the game. I like to call it the Debriefing Process, in which a person comes down from playing their characters, effectively removing their mask until they need to put it on again. A lot of this is doing the reverse of building/putting on the Mask in the first place. Write out your character stuff as soon as you can and then set it aside until the next game. Pour the memories out and then put them aside. Listen to music, but put it on shuffle, let other themes and tracks be heard. The idea is to reassert yourself as your dominant Persona and not the one you've created. Debrief and take a break.

It's not a perfect system. I had a hard time doing it when I first did Dystopia Rising, it's the shock of the immersive LARPing experience. It's easy to throw yourself into hypothetical scenarios when you aren't actually in the woods in the middle of the night with things chasing after you with malicious intent. It took me a weekend of NPCing to get to that point, with the key moment of me putting on the mask of an outerguardsmen and knuckling up to the front lines of a battle.

Live Action Role Play is all about exploring situations and scenarios, some of them maybe be a little too far out but that's what the extra padding of the Persona is for. It's the land of make believe, and you get to play whatever roles you've always dreamed of in worlds you may or may never have for a few hours, or a day, or a weekend with other like minded people. We enhance our time together by making the veil of disbelief as see through and raised as we possibly can and then share in the communal come down once veil has lowered. That is the core of what we do, in my opinion, take with it what you will.

Later,



Saturday, May 18, 2013

Walking the Walk: Attitude in LARP

Last week, I did a class for New York Jedi. The class was about doing quick solo performances that display your character (Shameless Plug Here). In the end, it wasn't what I expected. Everyone did sword demos and movements, but there was something missing for quite a few of them.

A few years back at New York Comic Con, my friend Rob watched us perform. Also a performer, Rob mentioned that the fight choreography was mechanically sound, but it was clear that it was stage and choreographed. It was missing character. Showing off the videos from the class, I realized that this was the same thing. Characters have ticks, small little things that make them their own. This can be as simple as a repeated flourish of a saber, or the bark of laughter to punctuate a strike, or the snarl of a fierce competitor. Without those beats, those little nuances, what is the difference between your character and you?

The reason for my belief comes from he fact that we as performers have the task of making the audience, that nebulous clutch of people for whom we don't exist, complete the circuit to lift of the veil of disbelief. They've come to see and to try, we have to give them the boost. In Jedi, our audiences are usually fan boys at conventions or passersby on the street. They've seen it before or they don't know what they're seeing or expecting. So we as performers need to give them as much of a boost as possible. We need to give them the illusion that this is a fight and not just a staged fight. There's a difference. The difference is Attitude.

But wait, this is a LARP blog.

The same principle extends to LARPing, how does your character comport themselves when interacting? What are their ticks, their reactions? I've seen players come in and just portray themselves cranked to eleven. While this is all well and good, it gets boring if it's the same character all the time in and out of game. So what makes your character distinct from the other characters and yourself?

Let me take a look back at my past PCs and some of the future ones.

Vincenzo Taglia: The phrase "drink to forget" didn't apply to uber-eidetic vampire, but like hell if he didn't try. The need for a drink was strong in Tag. His major character moment came when in his first game the Ordo Dracul went out on a mission to rescue a missing Dragon. They returned and the wine had been drunk. Taglia went on a five minute rant in broken Engilish/Italian (another tick, he would slip into his native Italian when upset) to the rescued Dragon about the wine being gone. Wine/Lacrima became something of his tic. To the point where when three other Mekhet came up to him with plot, they asked if he was ready to listen. "No," he said. He drained his glass of wine and filled up the next one. "Now, I'm ready."

Rhys: The stereotypical New Yorker. Nothing shocked him, he saw it all, he'd seen it all. Even if he hadn't. It didn't help that Rhys was tethered to the will of New York City. He'd walk, in, see the situation, sigh and then go off. The phrase "I'll ask"/"I asked" became his thing, as he went off to get information from the City. His identity as a New Yorker in a game trapped in a train station helped set him a part from the other Mages. This character and his attitude will be coming back to the Accord venue.

Now, the problem comes in the development of the next characters. How do they carry themselves?

Jin: My West Court Lost, is the designated Common Sense in the room. While I tend to play things frustrated, Jin is more stoic and direct. He follows the attitude of the knife, the answers are simple once you cut away all of the rubbish. So his tone is direct, his motions sure. He doesn't do anything that isn't being fully committed on.

Owen: Owen lives in the world of Greys. He's neither actively evil nor openly good. His tone is usually ambiguous, and his mannerisms passively flippant. A lot of Littlefinger and Alan Rickman, the shrug of death to morally questionable things. "What is his talking about?" /Shrug "No Idea".

Jacob Rude: Oh dear sweet, half rotted off Jacob Rude. Acerbic, speciest, pragmatic and with a survival track a mile wide. Jacob's main trick is always being mindful of the exits. He's not a coward, but he's not stupid. He's not a fighter, he's a fixer. He knows when it's time to cut and run. If he's in a room with multiple exits, be sure he'll try and stay in the center. If he's in a room with only one exit, his back will never be turned to it.

So with these in mind, how does one go about having attitude?

It's simple: just do it. Don't make a show of it, don't explain to people what you're doing or be obnoxious about it. It sucks to beat your audience (in LARPing, your fellow players are the audience) over the head with what you're doing. Just do it, it's natural to your characters, make it natural to you. If Rude is going to check for all of the exits, then I'm going to do a cursory scan, maybe calmly peek into a a room. Someone calls me out on it or brings it up, you answer. It's not a big thing to him, it's natural. That's what attitude is about, you don't broadcast it, it just is. It won't be perfect at first, it never is, but you work through the kinks and you make it more natural until you can get it. I do recommend preparing and post-game. But more on that in another post.

Later,

If you want me to go into this more, or wish to add to it, please comment. This blog is me trying to put my thoughts in order, and having another voice always helps - C


Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Genre Appropriateness: It's not what you do, it's how you do it.

This blog comes from something Michael Pucci, game developer and founder of Dystopia Rising, had said. To paraphrase, he commented on the act of players watching movies and taking in media to get into the mood before a game. He mentioned that the popular movie of choice was "Zombieland", a comedy/action movie about the Zombie Apocalypse coming in and survivors with their own agendas.

It's nice, it's got Zombies, Tallahasee is definitely a Merican if there ever was one, but it doesn't nail down the Genre. What the story is at it's core.

A few years back I taught a class at New York Jedi about Psychology and Storytelling of Star Wars. I open it up with one simple question: What genre is Star Wars?

It's a fairly simple question, right? Wrong. I got Sci Fi, Space Opera, Adventure, Mythic Epic (someone was trying to appeal to the teacher). In the end, Star Wars is a Fantasy-Adventure story. Yes it has Aliens and Spaceships, but that could just as easily be Races and Ships in a more medieval setting. Star Wars took elements from several genres, Western (Tattooine), Jidai-geki (The Jedi), WWII films (the trench run and the Empire in general) and a bunch of other sources and mixed them in a bowl. At it's heart, it's a Fantasy-Adventure tale.

Why Fantasy instead of Sci Fi? Because the Force is explained in great length (some times too much length, Episode I) and the technology is never glanced at. Planet Killers? Sure. Swords made of expanding beams of laser that can somehow stop? Done. No questions asked. The Force is gone to at great lengths by Yoda, Obi-Wan, Vader and the Emperor. It's their magic system, and that makes it a Fantasy.

So what is Dystopia Rising at it's core? It's a Survival Horror game. Here you are, at the end of it all, with low resources, the clothes on your back, and an entire world that wishes to rip your face off and eat it/wear it/wipe it's ass with it. Zombies are just the more obvious attraction, cockroaches in the grand scheme that just seem to multiply and swarm.. You've also got Raiders, Nazi's, Pikies, G-Men, Stephen King's managerie of Oh My Fucking Christ You Sick Bastard,  and anything else coming out of the minds of the sick puppies running the show.

Hi Guys.

So is a game that has Zombies in it a Zombie game? Up to you. Me, Zombies may be a common occurrence, but the themes of the game are survival and community. One of my favorite novels is the Newsflesh trilogy, written by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire). Beautiful political thriller about the media, it just happens to be during the Zombie Apocalypse, except the Apocalypse happened and people just moved on with their lives a lot more paranoid and very armed. I love the series and would love to play DR to the effect of the series, but it doesn't mesh because the themes in it do not jive fully with Survival Horror.

So to counter that, people suggested a few other sources. Spaghetti Westerns (The Original Django comes to mind, look it up); Deadwood, with it's backwater encampment feel and ensemble cast of bastards, fuck ups, and the odd decent person is actually perfect for reference; Book of Eli, a Post Apocalyptic movie starring Denzel Washington nails most of the aesthetic of being in a "after the end times" scenario. Hunting cats, trading, scavenging, moral ambiguity and a sense of nihilism vs. higher purpose; the Original Evil dead, cabin in the woods with unspeakable nightmares just waiting.. There are dozens of other sources, but I think at it's heart you have to focus on the elements of Survival in nightmarish times.

This whole talk got me to thinking about my game: Mage The Awakening. What were 'It's Themes? It's genre? The story of Mage is, at it's core, a story about the corrupting nature of Power and the corruptibility of the Soul. You have access to the powers of magic, can sense, nudge, shift, control and hack the very fabric of Reality. How does this affect you? What happens when you fuck up? Last chronicle, the game had taken a very strange "Superfriends" vibe. These were people who joined together to do battle against evil...except they had arbitrarily declared himself "Good". That was boring, because what is the point of playing in the world of Darkness when everyone is playing the hero?

So, I reminded them of the problems of the soul. And corrupted ta number of them to the power of the Abyss. This chronicle, I'm building a setting where the enemies have taken over the City and the players need each other and the NPC factions to stamp them out. Power is not just who can use the biggest spell, it's how they're used. I drew a lot of inspiration for the Seers of the Throne, the mega conspiracy that attempts to rule mundane and magical societies, from the Syndicate, the conspiracy in the X-Files. These are men that may never be seen or heard from the players, but their agents and influence are always felt.

I also, personally, find the nature of the soul a fascinating and key topic for the venue, especially when most of the threats to Mages are often ones that seek to eat/corrupt/control their souls. I tend to find the esoteric discussions of Ghost in the Shell (both movie and the Stand Alone Complex Series) as well as the Matrix Series (minus Keanu 'I know kung fu' Reeves) as good examples of this. Mage deals with the concepts of Reality, Perception. There are no hard truths except the ones we make, how do we deal with that when it is shown that we can be wrong about how we see the world? These sources are actually listed in the core book of the game as being inspiration.

So what am I saying with all of this? Be mindful of the genre in which you are playing, discern and parse through it. Does this mean that those wanting to use Zombieland to psyche up for DR? Or Chinese Wuxia for Mage? Hell no, you add to the palette and sandbox of the game. However, always be aware of what the game is at it's core. This runs the risk of lockout or hijacking a game.

But more on that in another post.

Later

If you liked this article, disagree with it, or just wish to throw your love and devotion (or even your hatemail) comment down below. If you have a topic, or would like me to follow up, shoot me a comment here as well. - Craig