[UA] UA larp

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

Well, you're lucky to have a great many friends. I've
only ever managed to talk one of my buddies into going
to a LARP with me (it was Changeling) and they shafted
him pretty hard.

We both wore costumes.  They were cheap, I admit, and
I've noticed a lot of online stuff where people say
"if you don't take the time to do a costume right,
don't wear one."  This, of course, infuriates me.  My
friend wore some dime-store fairy-wings underneath a
long, somber jacket most of the night (but included
them as one of his character's powers.)  When the time
came, my friend tossed off the jacket to reveal the
wings (to the applause of a few of the other
characters) and the asshole GM said he flew into some
spikes and got impaled or something.

I love dressing up, especially in outrageous attire. 
That's a fun point of the game, for me.  I once spent
a couple hours at a Changeling game bouncing around
from player to player trying to get them to say
something or include me in some conspiracy or, well,
anything.  This was in Portland, Ore., so they were,
of course, all miserably unwilling to talk and my only
other choice was a vampire LARP (I really don't like
playing vampires.)

All of your suggestions are well taken and, I assure
you, I've tried the ones I have the resources, for. 
However, not everyone is charismatic and not everyone
has LARPing buddies.  It may be playing to the LCD,
but I really don't think it hurts to try and provide
for the less appealing players out there. 

PS. I agree with the bit about being a facilitator. 
In  the few LARPs I've run or enjoyed playing, the
Narrators and Storytellers and GMs and what-not have
always appeared as the servants and background
characters while the kings, queens, heroes, villains
and theives have been the province of the players.  In
every single bad LARP I've played, the GMs have given
themselves powerful and important roles, which I think
detracts from supporting the players and their
decisions.

--- James O'Rance <jorance at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a
> facilitator of PCs and an 
> adjudicator of disputes, not a narrator.
<sigh. snip>
> My chief joy is to 
> watch it all develop.

This is certainly the attidtude to have. 

> I think that if people don't want to interact with
> me in a game, then I'm 
> not particularly interested in them either. I just
> ignore them.

Yeah, well, but, you see, I kinda got this thing where
I went to a LARP to, you know, get involved in
intrigue and stuff with the other players.  People
kinda gotta talk to me -maybe share one or two
secrets- for me to do that.  Problematically, in many
LARPs, I don't think there are very many secrets. If
someone writes a UA LARP, I hope they remember to
include some because, in my rules version, which is
closer to MET than I'd really like (see below), the
secrets are a little thin.
 
> 
> This may be an unfair form of blackmail; most GMs,
> upon seeing a sizable 
> number of players readying to depart early, will get
> upset and want to know 
> what's wrong.

Good.

Even though, when I first opened the boxed version
MET, I threw the crappy contents over my shoulder to
rot behind the couch for six months, I eventually gave
the game a try.  I eventually determined that I liked
the way it allowed you to create your own character
for the LARP and it was almost, in a way, possible to
play a quick start/pick-up game.  It didn't really
tell you how to do that, but the possibility was
certainly there.  Unfortunately, all the
quick-start/pick-up versions of MET seem to be about
one thing: a bunch of people in black sort of hang
around in different corners of the room not really
talking about much until one guy announces he's the
new Prince.  Changeling games are similiar, except
there's not even a coup involved.  (I've played other
games of course, but MET is the most prevalent out
there.)

So, in the UA LARP I'm gonna post in a few days

(you can see the skeleton in two or three hours at:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/9229/ualarp/
or
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/ualarp/)

I'm gonna try for a "quick-start/make-your-own PC"
style game.  This is against everbody's advice, of
course, but I assure you I listened to every printed
word of it.

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua