[zenten]

The LARP Rate-O-Matic System
Hey all, DocLawless here. Long time LARPer and fledgling member of the Columbus Oddities group. I submit for your carousal the original LARP Rate-O-Matic system. It's something I came up with a year or so ago to entertain myself, and to give an overview of the LARP I was in at the time to long-distance friends who wanted to know what I was up to. I'm posting it here now in hopes that some of you will rate your own games, either here or on your own LiveJouranls. this is your chance to be brutally honest and tell the world what you think of the LARPs you play or have played. So, I submit for your entertainment the first edition of the LARP Rate-O-Matic Instruction Manual.

The process is simple. You take a number of different things that you think are important in a game, and rate them from 1 to 10 as they pertain to the game in question. As always, 1 is abysmal and 10 is excellent. Personally, I'm loathe to hand out anything higher than 7, so I curve the grading scale at 8, but that's just me. Be sure to denote the minimum score in which is required to hold your interest.

Now we continue on to scoring the game itself. For ease of Rate-O-Maticing, I've listed a few (six, to be exact) areas to be scored. You can add more, or change the ones here as you see fit. Be sure you cover a wide area of factors though. The game deserves your fairness, even if it sucks.

- Power Level: Also called "Cheese Factor". Rarity characters, advanced disiplines and out-of-clan disciplines are all examples of what affects Power Level. Contrary to common sense, high Power Levels are Bad Things™. You may disagree, or have a different method, but I feel that high scores are indictive of too much Spice™. Low scores can be bad too though, depending on the game, but generally if you could come into game with a 7/5/3 neonate and feel overwhelmed, it's a high Power Level.

Alternately, Power Level could be made simpler by saying a low score indicates a high power level, and vice versa. But since I like to be difficult, piss on that.

- Maturity Level: Generically speaking, whether or not the other players are idiots, or would be better off playing Changeling. High scores are good here. Some people just should not play Vampire because they just can't handle it. Sadly, many people play it anyway. This leads to Princes who won't run the Setite out of town, or Blood Hunt the Tremere for commiting Diablrie, or characters who won't treat the Caitiff like the garbage that he is, all because the players are good friends out of game, and would never dream of emotionally assaulting their buddy like that. Also, if poop jokes are abound.

- Fun Factor: How quickly the 4 to 6 hour session flys by. High Fun Factor, obviously, means you had a lot of fun. Low scores mean you though it sucked balls, but not for the lack of trying. This doesn't have anyting to do with the way the ST ran the game, or the way the players played it. It's just a reflection of whether or not you had fun.

- Player Base: Were there too damned many people? Not enough people? Indicate this with the Player Base score. High scores mean you couldn't have wished for a more perfectly sized game. Low scores mean you were displeased with the number of players, be it too many or too few. Player Base is also indictive of the attitudes of the players in attendance. Were they chode-chomping fuckwads? Low score. Were they pretty cool people? High score.

- Role-Play Opportunity: So you had fun or you didn't, but did you get to play? This scores the opportunity to go in-game for a reasonably lengthy amount of time. If you spent much of the night waiting for your chance to jump in-character, or didn't have a chance to stay in character for very long, then it's a low score. If there was ample opportunity for damn good scenes (whether or not you took it), then it's a high score. Don't give this area a low score just becasue you hated the game. It has nothing to do with how well you liked the game; only your chances to play the game.

- Involvement: This last section is mutable. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. It's the generic "everything else" category. To me, Involvement is my ability to immerse myself in the game; my ability to forget that I'm playing a LARP, that I'm not actually a vampire, that this isn't a hallway, it's a street, and that this dude talking to me isn't actually a Tremere. It's a self induced auto-hypnosis. That's why I take so long to get in character, and have so much difficulty just dropping out of character when the game is over. Many things will prevent me from being able to do this. Atmospehere of the game site, lack of props, people's inability to remain in-character, etc. So whatever this last category is, the rules are the same; low score is bad, high score is good.

Now that you have scores for all the areas in the game, find the average. Round to one or two decimal places and you have your final score. Is it higher than your minimum requisite? If not, save yourself a lot of grief and drop out now. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Or don't drop out and quit your whining.

Finally, don't forget to rant and/or rave about WHY you rated the areas in the ways that you did. Not everything can be expressed via the Rate-O-Matic numbering system. A few sentances to a several paragraphs should suffice. Comments like "it sucked" or "I liked it" tell us nothing.

Discuss.

[Arius]

Is there innate penalty for being a LARP and not a table-top?

I kid, I kid.

[zenten]

Ok, gonna post mine now that it won't merge it with the first post.

So, for Dolston's game Fangs & a .45:

Power Level (using the inverse system he says is wussy): 8. There are a few powerful characters active in the game (actualy a graduated scale), and it does make a difference, although you can certanly have fun with a 0 exp character. Also, any higher than an 8 becomes inappropriate for a vampire game imho.

Maturity level: 8. People for the most part are increadably mature, and the few that arn't are handling things better than in most games.

Fun factor: 9. Mind you, I'm playing the prince, so I have a lot to do. Still, I think most other players have simular experiences to me.

Player base: 9. Almost perfect number of people. I could do with slightly more, but not a whole lot more.

Role-Play Opportunity: 10. No reason for anyone to go out of game in this larp.

Involvement: 9. Game started out on a 7, and I think in a few more sessions it will be at a 10.

Total score, 8.83, and is going up imho.

[OffWhite Knight]

Hmmmm...let me try.

Keep in mind, the Requiem game has changed a lot over the almost year it's been around. The player base is radically differently, with a lot of starting players not still around.

Power Level: 8. I know there is some serious munchkining going on...the funny thing, it seems to be combat/discipline related, which isn't common in the LARP itself.

Maturity Level: 6. Some outstanding players, but mainly players that have a hard time getting into character, let alone staying there. There is clearly out of game bias involved too.

Fun Factor: 5. It varies. Some games, awesome. Last game, we left halfway through with other people to go see The Prestige.

Player Base: 5. I'm afraid the game may be withering on the vine, there just aren't enough players to keep things realy rolling.

Role-play Opportunity: 6. Lots of chances, but too many OOGAs going on during the LARP and you can only BS about being a Victorian Era Vampire for so long before you just have to drop character.

Involvement: 3. The website is pretty much dead. Excepted for player driven sit-down sessions, it's just a once a month diversion with nothing in-between.

Total Rating of New Orleans Victorian Requiem: 5.5

I'll wait a bit before posting about the newer OWBN Anarch Masquerade game.

[OffWhite Knight]

Now for rating the newer OWBN Anarch game.

Power Level: I think it's about a 6, but there were a few veteran guests asked to stay away for a while because their existing OWBN PCs were perceived as being too powerful. Amongst the native PCs though, it's more like a 4 or 5. Hmmm...am I not inverting this properly? Let's just leave it at five.

Maturity Level: 9. Lots of really good players and gamers. It's great to be able to make racist comments (IN CHARACTER!) and not have people flip out out-of-character. Most people stay in some approximation of in-character the whole night. Although, some people do go too far with the in-character disgusting.

Fun Factor: 9. I'm having a blast. The first night had 30+ people and was great. The last game had about a dozen. Just as fun.

Player Base: 7. But that's partly because I like bigger games.

Role-play Opportunity: 10. If you *can't* get into character at some point during the night, maybe you shouldn't be playing LARPs. Seriously, this game has some excellent role-play in my opinion.

Involvement: 7. Plenty of chances to do things if you want. Plenty of opportunities to sit on the wall and glare at everyone. OOGAs, whatever. It's not perfect, but good.

Total rating: 7.83.

I'm having more fun with this game than I have LARPing in a while, since perhaps the 7th Seas game a few years back.

[Tuesday]

If you have "serious munchkining" at 8 and "throwing out the too-powerful outsiders and playing real characters who aren't twinky" at 4 or 5, then yes, you've got the scale backwards.

Lame-ass characters based on combinations whose sole personality is expressed by a recitation of their Disciplines? That's BAD, and hence a low rating. Good characters of a reasonable power level? That's GOOD, higher rating - even though the twinks could probably eat the real PCs alive in combat.