I’ve been going to Origins and running LARPs for the better part of a decade at this point, though I had to give last year a miss due to an already overly busy and stressful summer LARP schedule. I’m happy to say that this year I’m back and running a couple of brand new things that I think are really exciting. Chronologically they are:

• Friday 3-5 PM: A Serpent of Ash (Event #2412)
• Saturday 2-4 PM: “There Are No Bad Players, Only Bad Games” (Event #9632)
• Saturday 6 PM – Midnight: Threads of Damocles: Los Angeles (Event #2613)

A Serpent of Ash is a work by J. Tuomas Harviainen that I ran at Intercon H this winter after failing to run it at Intercon Mid-Atlantic last fall. Serpent is a discourse-oriented piece for 6-12 players that centers on the meeting of several former religious cult members some years after the cult fell apart due to the death of its leader. This is kind of a hard event to sell for Origins as it is not a genre piece and many people would equate “dicourse-oriented” with “slow,” but I can honestly say that if you’re at Origins and you’re interested in LARP outside of the standard genre fare then you owe it to yourself to play in this event.

“There Are No Bad Players, Only Bad Games” is not actually my event, but is actually a panel being run by “Uncle” Don Ross about “conflicting player/gamemaster expectations” that I was asked to participate in. I imagine anyone who reads this blog has an idea that this is an area which interests me greatly, so I imagine this should be a very intriguing dicussion. It’s worth noting that most panels I’ve sat on at Origins have been small enough that they’re really closer to being round tables discussions, so don’t give it a miss because you think it’ll just be two hours of blowhards like myself telling you how right they are about everything. 

Threads of Damocles: Los Angeles is a stand-alone event written by Gordon Olmstead-Dean, Colin Sandel, and myself and set in the Threads of Damocles universe. This is probably the biggest risk I’m taking at Origins; this is a relatively large event (Caps at 60, and runs best with at least 30) and isn’t tied to a recognized genre/system like World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu. That being said we’ve run the event once before with a relatively low number of players and I still think it went quite well.  This event is set at a rave that’s being run mostly as an excuse for the various disparate powers of a cyberpunk Los Angeles to be able to meet relatively informally. A large collection of characters from both the Corporate and Rave cultures are gathered together for the evening and could end up radically changing the future of Los Angeles. Threads is a lot closer to what is expected to run at Origins than Serpent is, though I still think it’s a bit deeper and more mature than a lot of the material that gets run there. At 6 hours, this is a bit longer than most of our events, but we want to give people time to dance, get into character and what not; this also means that we can take late comers pretty easily so come on out and play!

For reference the events are:

• Friday 3-5 PM: A Serpent of Ash (Event #2412)
• Saturday 2-4 PM: “There Are No Bad Players, Only Bad Games” (Event #9632)
• Saturday 6 PM – Midnight: Threads of Damocles: Los Angeles (Event #2613)

Finally — I’m getting into Columbus on Thursday afternoon and will be there through Sunday. Besides the events I’m running I don’t have any concrete plans for the weekend. If you know of an event I should be checking out then let me know. Also I managed get a suite at the Hampton Inn this year, so I imagine I’ll be hosting some hanging out and light carousing most nights if you’re into that sort of thing.

Think that’s about it for now — though for good measure I’m listing the events one last time:

• Friday 3-5 PM: A Serpent of Ash (Event #2412)
• Saturday 2-4 PM: “There Are No Bad Players, Only Bad Games” (Event #9632)
• Saturday 6 PM – Midnight: Threads of Damocles: Los Angeles (Event #2613)

See you at Origins!

To begin, it’s important to understand what plot is. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the plan or main story (as of a movie or literary work).” That’s a fairly serviceable definition, so long as you don’t fixate on the term “main” too much, as even a 22-minute sitcom generally has an “A” plot and a “B” plot. Additionally, plot is generally driven by conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self). So, in a campaign LARP it’s possible for there to be dozens of plots in play at any given time, each a a diferent point along its narrative arc. (I use “campaign LARP” here because of the idea of staggered plots, as most one-shot events have plots that are meant to last the whole event.) I don’t think any of this will be particularly new or surprising to anyone, I just want to make sure that everyone is on the same page before we continue.

Having done a bit of work to define plot, now a question arises, “How do you measure it?” Honestly, I don’t have an answer to this. The chief problem with attempting to measure plot is that so much of it is ephemeral — “suffers a crisis of faith” is a perfectly real plot, for example, but it’s primary form of interaction is within a player’s head. Even in more traditional plots it’s only practical, and often feasible, to track progress at a very high level (generally from interactions either with writers or that they are present for, or from following public discussions to gauge information flow). Additionally, “quantity of plot” is difficult to track for oneself as an individual — in my experience it’s almost impossible to do for anything you’re actively involved in; meaning that it’s easy to say “I (or he) was in those plots” and even “He is currently in these plots,” but much more difficult to say “I am currently in these plots.” What this all comes does to is that plot is, by itself, an awful metric.

If plot is a horrible metric, then what can be used in its place? I can think of two: boredom and frustration. Really, these come down to two related states of mind: “there’s nothing for me to do” and “there’s nothing I can do.” Trying to recast a plot problem into these terms is useful, it helps break the issue down into more concrete areas and also helps to suggest solutions. If boredom is the primary issue, then the question to ask (of yourself or of a writer) is “What else should I be doing?” If frustration is the primary issue, then ask “How should I proceed?” If the problem is a combination of the two, then it’s probably worth taking a bit of time to figure out how the elements are interacting with one another. It’s also possible to have these issues multiple times; Plot A & B can seem to be at dead-ends while Plot C seems unapproachable. Breaking things down to that level of granularity is going to be extremely helpful in resolving issues — the more you understand a problem the easier it is to fix.

It’s also worth noting that there’s a third factor that, while not really an independent axis like boredom and frustration, can be a very real catalyst: jealousy. It’s easy to look out at other people and imagine what a fantastic time they’re having, especially if you’re having a less than ideal time. The only thing I want to say on the topic is this: talk to them. They may actually be having an awesome time and unaware that you’re having an awful time, in which case they well be able to help you have a better time. Alternately, they may not be having a great time at all, and you’ll find out years later that you’ve isolated yourself by putting others up onto a pedestal that wasn’t there. (For what it’s worth I’ve personally been guilty of this.) To make a long story short, don’t fall into a jealousy trap, communicate.

Looking back over what I’ve written so far I’m realizing that a lot of this could be reduced to just an argument for personal responsibility, although I hope that’s just me selling myself short. Anyone who’s known me for a while knows I’m a big advocate of terminology (”diegetic” or “locus of control,” anyone?) , and I think another part of this can work just as a push-back to our love affair with the term “plot” (while hopefully bringing up some useful alternative terms / ideas).

But I digress — what does anyone else think about this? Are these sound ideas or am I full of it? Let me know what you think in the comments.

1. Mike Young’s blog has been added to Planet LARPA! I’d still love to get some more blogs participating in the project, so please don’t hesitate to to get in touch with me if you’re interested in having your blog syndicated as part of Planet LARPA.
2. We’ve added two more excellent events to the LARPA Gamebank: J. Tuomas Harviainen’s A Serpent of Ash and Sage Shepperd, Joshua Sheena, Josh Rachlin, and Nat Budin’s The Free Animals’ Republic of MacDonald Presents the Trial of the Big Bad Wolf, to Be Immediately Followed By His Execution, in Honor of Our First Anniversary. Next week we should be adding Jim & Kelly MacDougal’s The Final Voyage of the Mary Celeste – Two.

Think that’s about it for now — hopefully I’ll get back to putting out some actual theory in the near future. LARP just happens to be competing with the ACC Tournament for my attention this weekend.

Planet LARPA

This is my new pet project which is being sponsored by LARPA. Planet LARPA is a LARP blog aggregator — the goal is to create a central source for accessing LARP theory blogs on the web. Right now it only aggregates two feeds, this blog’s and Gordon Olmstead-Dean’s. But we are currently accepting applications to be added to the feed. The only requirement is that your blog be primarily about LARP theory and/or production — the occasional diversion is fine, but it needs to be generally on topic. The litmus test is “would this interest someone who never met me but was interested in LARP theory?” I hate to be rough about this, but since the idea is that interested parties can subscribe just to Planet LARPA so that they can get updates from all of its member blogs I need to be a bit of a stickler about signal-to-noise ratio. If you’re interested in being listed leave a comment here with the address of your blog.

LARPA Gamebank

After a disgustingly long period of downtime, the LARPA Gamebank is live again! We have all of your old favorites, along with all of the entries from the 2006 and 2007 Small Game Writing Competitions. There are a lot of great events in there that I heartily suggest anyone interested in running LARP should check out. We’re always looking for new submissions as well, though they have to agree to being released under the Gamebank license.

New Forums

We’ve killed all of the spam that had infested the old forums (if you don’t know, don’t ask — I don’t like to talk about it) and upgraded to a new forum system that finally gives us all of the email (and RSS) notification goodness that we desired. It’s a great venue for any LARP conversations you may want to have, and is significantly easier to monitor now than it has been in years past.

LARPA-Gen is Dead

This is tied to the last announcement, but we’ve also finally pulled the plug on the LARPA-Gen email reflector. The group is still live, but has moved to announce-only and simply reflects messages posted to the general discussion forum of the forums. We waited a long time to get the forums to the point where we felt comfortable in retiring this venerable workhorse (and arguably LARPA’s greatest asset), but we’re confident that the current forum solution is a more than adequate replacement.

I think that’s about it for now– if you have any thoughts feel free to comment here (comments now working in IE6!) or on my repost of this information in the new forums. It’s looking like a bright new day to me!

There’s been a decent amount said about this episode in the hours since it aired (I’m personally partial to the coverage at The House Next Door), so I’m not going to try and do even a remotely decent recap. Instead I’m going to focus on a couple of key ideas that I find inspirational as a writer.

Honestly, the most significant aspect of the episode for me was the emphasis late in the episode on the cyclical nature of things. A lot of stories like to end on some sort of “up” or “down” note; that The Wire avoided this was exciting to me. I think this is what disappoints me about a lot of LARP; there’s some assumption of that “good” will triumph, which seems a bit contrived to me. I recognize that that’s a more acceptable narrative structure to many players, but I can’t avoid thinking that it’s a bit of a cop out when it comes to narrative depth and complexity.

Notably, there were a number of scenes which specifically called out to the first episode of the series, which made me wonder why a campaign needs to end with a “big victory” for the players. I’ll acknowledge that that’s what most casual LARPers are interested in, and as such I’d likely never get away with this in a mainstream campaign, but if the journey really is more important than the destination than why can’t the destination be somewhat less than 100% fulfilling?

Moving back on topic, I’ll admit that some of the “cyclical” scenes seemed a bit overwrought — Michael and Dukie’s new lives being the most prevalent examples of this. I can’t really fault it; if nothing else it can be written of as fan-service (which, despite protestations to the contrary, I’m not above), though I think it’s worth making note of. I think it’s actually noteworthy that The Wire opted for a more easily digestible ending than The Sopranos; the ending of the latter might be the sort of thing I dream of writing, but the ending of The Wire is much more likely to be the sort of thing I could reasonably get away with (though in fairness the end of Six Feet Under seems even more likely, given the attention given to character-based fan-service in it’s finale). There’s a fine line between being a bit of an auteur and just being an asshole, and I think I’d prefer to stay on the side of the former.

The other concept that was addressed quite heavily in the finale was the idea of compromise. Throughout the episode characters were forced to choose between what was best for them, what was best for society, and what was actually acceptable to do. That’s actually an important theme of the season; to what extent is it acceptable to commit ills in the name of the greater good? That’s very much the sort of ideology that we’re trying to push in Threads: Los Angeles, so seeing similar representations in other media is always quite instructive. I’m generally against the idea of there being a “magic bullet” which can resolve problems, so seeing The Wire toe that same line is heartening. Any serialized fiction that refuses to give in to easy resolutions is an exceptional example for me as a writer.

At the same time, I’ll admit that the finale was a bit anti-climatic; realistically very little happened over the the 90 mintutes of the episode that couldn’t be considered to effectively be epilogue. Most significantly of these happenings was the resolution of the McNulty/Feamon Homeless Murderer plot line — which realistically found its dramatic peak last week when their plot was revealed, and as such this week was largely spent on dénouement. Dénouement is, of course, a relaive term, as this episode represneted almost 15% of the entire season, but I think the general feeling was there, even if there were mini-arcs which existed within the episode.

Anyways, long story short, I was quite pleased with the final of The Wire. I have to agree that the episode wasn’t a tightly scripted as last week’s episode, but I think it performed admirably given the weight of expectation that was placed upon it. It’s also a much less controversial ending than The Sopranos, which seemed fairly likely. The Sopranos had, by the end, largely turned into a character study, while The Wire continued to be as concerned about institutions as it was characters. In a LARP sense, The Sopranos ending would be a neat thing on a player level, but I doubt a GM of an event of any reasonable size could get away with it, which The Wire hits a much more realistic ending.

As a final note, I’m obviously not planning on spring any sort of “post-modern” ending on the players of Threads of Damocles, although I do think it’s very likely that this will be representative of the sort of writing and social contract that I’ll be using in my future projects.

I’ll miss you, The Wire. David Simon, Ed Burns, George Pelecanos, et. al., have done a fantastic job with the series, and I honestly think it’s one of the most significant pieces of modern literature that I’ve  experience. I’m extremely glad that I’ve had the opportunity to view it, and can only hope that it helps further my development as a writer.  And even though I live much closer to Baltimore than most viewers of the series I’ll admit to taking a lot of my knowledge of the city from the series (for better or worse).

Requiescat in pace, The Wire.

10 Bad Modules in 100 Bad Minutes (or 10BM, for short) is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a very different beast than A Serpent of Ash. Where Serpent is a quiet, serious, and contemplative event, 10BM is cacophonous, absurd, and scatological. It’s also deviates a bit the standard 10 Bad paradigm: it’s still centered around (appoximately) 10 events that are either poorly conceived, in extraordinarily poor taste, or both, but we added some tenuous connecting material between scenes to give it more of a campaign feel. Additionally, players were given characters that they were playing for all 100 minutes of the event (it’s actually two characters — someone who’s playing in the campaign and his character), which had the effect of making the players as involved in the collapse of the campaign as the GMs (this contrasts with my impression of most 10 Bad events, which is that players are playing them in good faith, even if they are atrocious).

I don’t want to into much detail on any of the modules; not because I’m concerned about secrecy so much as because I think a lot of the humor would be lost by knowing what’s coming. That being said, I think it is fair to say that the campaign is a spiritual successor to 1936: Horror, covering most of World War II as the PCs attempt to thwart the Germans. There are diplomatic scenes, combats, social puzzles, and just a smack of edutainment all contained within one sweet 100 minute package. None of them are any good though — such is the way of 10 Bad.

In a bit more seriousness, I think 10BM went very well. A number of scenarios could use a bit of tweaking, but I think the characters (and players) carried us through the slower spots with aplomb. We also did fairly well at working in some blatantly offensive material (no 10 Bad event is complete if there isn’t a module that’s so obscene that you’re both insanely proud of it and deeply frightened that the wrong people will find out about it); a lot of the worst stuff is strip-mined from easy topics, but I like to think that’s fairly in-character for the franchise.

As a side note, I’m glad that the “safety boffer” props seemed to be well received — they’re actually one of the earliest ideas I had for the event, inspired by Dr. David Šnajardian’s comment about “(living) in a reality where honor is defended with pool toys which are depressingly phallic in nature.” It was kind of fun to write something that was pretty much just slapstick and prop-comedy.

It seems likely that 10BM will run again in the future — it got good marks and I think there’s enough of an audience for it that it should have some play left. It’d also give us an opportunity to clean it up a bit and maybe get the documentation into good enough shape to be runnable by someone other than us (though that may just be a pipe dream).

Coming up next: A report of what LARPA has been up to this week.

From what I can tell, the event ran well, we were in one of the smaller spaces at the convention, but it was plenty of space to hold the sort of meeting which occurs in the event. As Harviainen had indicated in his notes, the event ran for almost exactly 90 minutes; the players actually decided to end the event on their own without any intervention from myself as a director.

Once the event had started I was in and out of the event-space a good deal; it was very important to me that the players not use me as a proxy for interacting with the event (and each other). I actually made a speech to this effect prior to starting the event; one of the things I remember learning from Juhani Eronen’s runs of Carpathian Night was that American audiences tend to need this expectation to be set explicitly, as GMs tend to be more actively involved in events here. (As an interesting side note, one of the players had actually played in Carpathian Night and was speaking to some of the other players about it before the start of the event.)

So, while my personal recollection of the event is a bit disjointed, there are a couple of things from my notes that I think are worth recounting:

• Discussion about the circumstances of Timothy’s death did gain traction, and the whole story was known by the time the event ended.
• The format of the meeting never really deviated from the initial chair circle. Based on some of Harviainen’s notes, I’d expected this to break up eventually, but evidently I was incorrect. I’m actually curious to know if the meeting usually breaks up or not.
• I noted several times that pro-Liberated sentiment seemed fairly strong, and there were several times that the idea of reforming the group came up as a topic. I actually missed the resolution of this topic, and if it came up during the postmortem I’ve since forgotten what was said. I was a bit surprised by how much traction this seemed to have, as I was expecting some of the anti-Liberated characters to be a bit more vocal. Then again maybe they were and I just missed their “moments.”

A lot of the postmortem focused on discussing the form of the event (this is quite possibly because of direction I added to the conversation) — I think all of the players “got it.” I’m very glad that I took a moment to set expectations before the event started, both about my role during the event and about “going off sheet.” My general impression was that players had been nervous about the amount of information received (the average sheet at an Intercon game is probably several pages), but seemed more comfortable once they’d been told how to use the information given to them.

Overall I think the event went quite well. If anyone who played the event has anything to add please feel free to do so, all of you probably have a more useful and complete understanding of how the event ran than I do.

Thanks again to all or my players and to J. Tuomas Harviainen for allowing me to run the event.

Coming up next: 10 Bad Modules in 100 Bad Minutes

Happy Presidents’ Day all!

Maryland: Wine Bill Hearing Monday

Right now, Maryland’s state legislators are considering Senate Bill 616 and House Bill 1260, which, if passed, will significantly expand your choice in wine. The bills are based on the “model” direct shipping bill working successfully in the majority of states and allow ANY licensed winery or retailer in the US, regardless of its location, to ship a limited amount of wine to you.

HB 1260 will be heard this Monday, February 18 in the House Economic Matters Committee, so time is of the essence to voice your support for legal, regulated wine direct shipping!

Everyone in Maryland with an interest in less restrictive wine laws and/or free trade should go to the issue site set up by Free the Grapes! and take a moment to email the committee members who will be hearing the bill Monday and notify your representatives of your interest in the issue. This is one of the issues that most annoys me about Maryland, with a bit of work and a bit of luck we might be able to make our antiquated laws a bit more modern.

Rather than try and recap the episode (which would be difficult since I failed to take notes during either of my viewings), I want to focus on three scenes that I feel were particularly emblematic of the episode: Chris and Snoop schooling Michael, the discussion of the schools at The Baltimore Sun, and McNulty unleashing his “grand plan” (as it were). Each of these, in my mind, speaks volumes about this season, this series, and David Simon’s world view.

The Chris/Snoop/Michael scene is actually a late addition to this piece; it wasn’t until I’d started writing this that I was struck by it’s importance. The bit of interest if at the end of the scene, when Michael asks why Junebug has to die and is told that it’s because he called Marlo a dicksucker, though neither Chris nor Snoop can confirm that. Chris does offer that it “doesn’t matter if he said it or not; people think he said it,” which is probably the most succinct explanation of the truth/media theme of this season that we’ve heard thus far (the Bunk’s quote that’s in the first paragraph is a bit heavy-handed, if apt). What really drew me to this exchange, though, was the way it echoes back to something Slim Charles said (and got the title card quote for) in the third season finale, “Mission Accomplished”: “…we fight on the lie.” We like (need) to believe that there is some underlying order or sense to the way that things work, and it is possibly better (at least in the short term) to keep living the lie rather than recognize that it is one. Of course in the long term it’s guaranteed that the lie will collapse (like the school budget situation from last season, the effects of which are still at the fore of this season’s plots) — perhaps making the lie just a facet of Simon’s villainous “post-modern institutions.”

Speaking of institutions brings us to a convenient point to move discussion to the discussion at The Sun about doing a series on the schools. Thematically I think the scene was quite clear; so clear, in fact, that it ended up being one of the more egregious fourth wall breaking moments that I can remember seeing recently. I can’t imagine anyone with even the slightest bit of background knowledge about the show seeing the scene as anything other than David Simon saying, “I am right and the news media is wrong, and if you don’t believe me go watch the critically acclaimed 4th season of my show, The Wire.” I’m not saying this is a bad thing; I may even agree with him, but it’s just a bit more heavy handed than I was prepared for. The core dynamic of The Sun actually reminds me of the police in the first season, when it was easier to see McNulty as a generally right-minded rebel and Rawls as only a few steps removed from the devil himself, although now we have Gus Haynes and James C. Whitting III as our rebel hero and face of the institution, respectively. It feels a bit black-and-white compared to the levels of nuance we’ve seen in the last few seasons, and I can’t help but think this is a bit intentional so that Simon can really drive his point home about the press. I’m still liking where the focus on the press can take us, but I’d love if it were a little easier to read as something other than the execution of a vendetta. (As an aside, does anyone else find Whitting to be one of the most odious characters on the show? The only comparable character I can think of is the 1st season rendition of Rawls, though he acted with a double middle finger style malice of forethought, while Whitting seems to be more blithely unaware than vindictive.)

Finally we come to the crowning jewel of the episode: McNulty’s plan. Here is an idea that takes the “the bigger the lie” ideology to heart. It’d been pretty clear for most of the episode that McNulty would hit his breaking point, and the scene in the coroner’s and the detectives’ discussion at the bar seemed to be pretty clear indications that faking a crime scene was going to be how it happened. Because of this, when McNulty started staging the crime scene I felt felt a bit of excitement at seeing the payoff. Then something threw me; McNulty said, “there’s a serial killer in Baltimore,” which was a much bigger lie than I was ready for. I figured he’d just try to pin something more tragic on Marlo so he could get the case back, but that doesn’t even seem to begin to scratch the surface of what McNulty’s after. In a way he reminds me of a post-modern Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles’s corrupt sheriff in A Touch of Evil), though Quinlan had the advantage of being the law, and therefore only having to wage his war on criminals. In Baltimore, though, no man can be “the law” (even Burrell’s hands seem tied these days) , so McNulty is stuck waging war on both the law and criminals, and it would seem that he’s finally reached the breaking point. It will be interesting to see how things progress from here – whether McNulty’s plan can even get far enough to have people think there’s a serial killer in Baltimore before Bunk (or someone else) shuts it down. (Another aside: Was McNulty’s time walking a beat and living with Beadie another “big lie”?)

So far this is looking to be another excellent season of The Wire, there’s so much that either is spiraling out of control or just on the verge of doing so that I can’t even begin to imagine how things are going to end up. I think that’s the thing I’m missing right now; there was a lot of hope early in the last season: hope that the four kids would be the exceptions (only one was) and hope that Carcetti would really bring a new day to the city. That hope is what made the season so visceral; up until the very end it still seemed possible that things might work out. This time I’ve been left with a feeling of impending doom since the very beginning; I have to imagine that things will either get very bad or Simon will throw a curve ball and lighten up in the end (although I’m not betting on the latter).

More next week — comments are, as always, both welcomed and encouraged.