[Dolston]

As a player, what do you particularly enjoy in a MET game?

What would you like greater focus put on?

What would you like less focus put on?

[jadedeath]

As a player, what do you particularly enjoy in a MET game?

What would you like greater focus put on?

What would you like less focus put on?

I like the interaction of it... and the size... if you're in an elysium and you want to speak with the Daeva elder you can get up and wander over to talk to them... depending on the size of your game {and the quality of players} you could even have player plots being the reason why people show up to the game...

Logan

[zenten]

I want to be someone else for awhile. I want complex, player driven plots. I want a fair ST team that will create a good larp, not simply someone who wants to tell a story (that's what tabletop is for).

[jadedeath]

I want to be someone else for awhile.  I want complex, player driven plots.  I want a fair ST team that will create a good larp, not simply someone who wants to tell a story (that's what tabletop is for).

I agree... but unless you have a cast of at bare minimum 15-20 people you won't get player driven plots...

I ran into this problem in Pembroke where at maximum we had 15 players... the burden was on the ST to create the plots and keep people coming out...

Logan

[zenten]

I agree... but unless you have a cast of at bare minimum 15-20 people you won't get player driven plots...

Oh, I agree, that's why I think a truely good game session requires at least 20 people showing up.

[jadedeath]

Oh, I agree, that's why I think a truely good game session requires at least 20 people showing up.

that' s probably why {unfortunately} Ottawa doesn't have a LARP running right now... you need at least 20 people to have player driven plots... however... you can't sacrifice quality for quantity... therein lies the problem... if you don't have 20 good players {or at least average players} it becomes too much of a burden on the ST and they can't keep the game up and running for years on end if they are the one's doing most of the work...

luckily down here in TO the game I'm playing in now we're bordering on 40 players and possibly 50 by the game thereafter... so the player driven plots are growing exponentially...

Logan

[zenten]

Actualy, I thought it was because most of the players here want to be led around by the hand.

[AstraKiseki]

Well. we have a very small group (I think at most ten, if we are lucky), and we are muddling though the aftermath of what one PC (now gone) did. It's quite fun, actually. But that damn Portier....

[Dolston]

If you want a player driven game you need driven players. The number of players is less relevant than their desires.

[Luxifer]

I think that one thing that is important with LARPS is to insure that there is in character rivalry, right from the start.

[jadedeath]

If you want a player driven game you need driven players. The number of players is less relevant than their desires.

true but 4 people can only drive a LARP so far {thinking in Vampire terms} before interacting with the same other 3 people gets a little on the boring side and they start turning to the ST for stuff to do... it ends up being a coterie table-top game quite quickly... really you could end up playing the entire game around the table at someone's house instead of going out to a venue and getting dressed up...

As for Ottawa... I think what Zenten said was correct but that problem is just the end result not the overall problem... eventually after interacting with the same small group of people in a LARP you start turning to the ST... this happened many times with me in Pembroke with some really good roleplayers as well... like K the player of Nyx Adon... she was an awesome player and played that character quite well {she had a dark secret that she kept and to this day noone knows what it was for 2 years of playing the character} but after awhile of interacting with the same other 6-7 people she got bored and looked to me as ST for stuff to do...

Unless you have a good solid player base of I'd say a minimum of 20+ people you will probably have the result of player boredom and looking to the ST to fix it...

Thus the problem of sacrificing quality for quantity... again I'll use Pembroke as a starting point for it... at the VERY end of the games that M ran we had a hefty chunk of players who regularly came down from Ottawa... I think the last game he ran we did break the 20 barrier... but that's where another problem was... the quality of the players was sacrificed for the quantity of players that we got... we had players handing in character sheets from other {long gone} games that had 200+ pts on them and asking to play them... when the average player in the existing game had no more than 50 and the ST rubberstamp approved it... incredibly unbalancing the game in the favor of the new players and leaving alot of the old players with a real bitter taste in their mouths...

The problem is in Ottawa I think is getting 20 good players together on a regular basis and making a game out of it... I'm not saying that there isn't 20 good players in Ottawa... it COULD happen... I mean Kingston is smaller than Ottawa and I've heard they still have a game up and running with 40+ players in it... the problem I think is real life... sometimes it gets in the way and you end up having people not be able to show up due to working the nightshifts or something similar...

In short... without a steady player base of about 20+ good roleplayers {you can get the combat twinks etc. to fill it up to about 30 or so but the 20 should be able to keep the rest in line} you can't really have a game unless you as a ST are prepared to drive a good chunk of the plot... the game I'm in down here I haven't actually seen combat... I still don't know how the combat system works... as I haven't really seen it in action...

Logan

[Dolston]

People put too much stock into good players over bad players. There is precisely one player I know of who was good the first time she ever played. That means everyone was a "bad" player. At one point in time.

But so long as you have players who are willing to be responsible and work at improving their skills as players means you will have a good game.

[jadedeath]

People put too much stock into good players over bad players. There is precisely one player I know of who was good the first time she ever played. That means everyone was a "bad" player. At one point in time.

But so long as you have players who are willing to be responsible and work at improving their skills as players means you will have a good game.

alot of people don't though... first you need a core of good players who are willing to take people under their wings in the course of the chronicle and guide them outside of the ST because the ST can't be everywhere at once... and not just play combat characters and one specific clan all the time... I can think up some choice examples which I think you already know of... or players who would try to take advantage of new players who don't know the rules altogether yet... that kinda thing you don't need and you need to be sure as a ST that you have players who WON'T do that sort of thing when your back is turned...

that's why I place alot of emphasis on good players as opposed to quantity of players... and your second paragraph is totally what I define as a good player...

Logan

[zenten]

People put too much stock into good players over bad players. There is precisely one player I know of who was good the first time she ever played. That means everyone was a "bad" player. At one point in time.

But so long as you have players who are willing to be responsible and work at improving their skills as players means you will have a good game.

What you're describing in the last paragraph is what I mean when I say "good player".

[jadedeath]

I think that one thing that is important with LARPS is to insure that there is in character rivalry, right from the start.

that's definately a good thing too... the ST I have now started lineages in his game and got people to volunteer to be part of one lineage or another... said lineages have a backhistory some are a part of this Covenant and others are a part of another Covenant... some who are a part of Covenant A have defected to be a part of another Covenant... it definately makes for some interesting roleplaying scenarios...

Logan

[Tuesday]

As a player, what do you particularly enjoy in a MET game?

What would you like greater focus put on?

What would you like less focus put on?

#1: Seeing players *act* out their character's reaction to IC events.

#2: That your objective during the game is to make sure everyone else has as much fun as possible - as long as that happens, your own fun is guaranteed. Also: Costuming and acting, as a way of accomplishing the first part: making everything LOOK as good as possible helps greatly in making it FEEL real, and feeling real is part of the fun.

#3: Mechanics. Not just game mechanics, but also social mechanics: the concept that Status is an in-game measure, or that a Prince has a jurisdiction, or that Anarchs are really free to ignore status without repercussions, or that it's "impossible to rescind a Blood Hunt", or that there are situations where retaliation is "not allowed". I'd like a much greater respect for the THEORY that the rules are mutable, and much less focus on the rules of society as something that can be loopholed or bypassed.