http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=1982

------

<insert really amusing sig here>

"You know other players by batches, which tell their apparent age and if he's ethnically different from the player."

  This seems like a weird thing for a game that values immersion to do- why on earth would it be necessary to say that someone is playing a character who looks ethnically different to them?

"Do not cheat. Cheating and getting caught is a good way of getting yourself a status of Personana Non Grata and committing a social suicide."

  Is this really a necessary statement?

  I'm also not sure it was necessary to have a 'habits and manners' section in the character briefs.  I've really enjoyed some of the games I've played with pre-genned characters, but I think that they work best when the refs write the basics of the character's situation and then leave the player to decide how the character has reacted to that, personality-wise.

  I'm personally not a major fan of vague mechanics in larp- I prefer mechanics which tell you exactly how you are effected by something, and for how long.  That way you don't need to feel like you're metagaming over how badly your character ought to be inconvenienced by something.  Also, when they were streamlining the MET system (which sounds like a sensible idea), I think there were some effects they probably should have left out but didn't.  For example, the bit where the mortal artist met the Prince sounds like it would have been a really cool encounter, but in my mind it feels a bit silly to have a mechanic that means the artist finds the Prince instantly likeable because he drank his blood.  In a such a political game, it feels like effects along these lines could stifle the characters' need to roleplay diplomacy.  Maybe that's just me.

  As for the 'whole city as a setting' thing- in a way, that sounds like a really tempting idea.  I can imagine it leading to a really great game.  On the other hand, I think the potential risks maybe outweigh the potential benefits.

  "The "Elysium-syndrome"; LARP's tend to happen in single physical place, which is a bit ankward for a large group of players and characters. Players have to fake reasons to stay in the playing area even if it's clear that their characters would not stay there. So either you hang around, with no reason, or go out from the game."

  This *is* a problem in larp, but I don't think using a real city solves the problem at all, especially when the players have access to cars.  If anything, it makes the problem worse, because you can technically be within the playing area but have no contact with the other players and no reason to seek them out (as happened to the mortal guy who the Sabbat kicked out of their car).  It also makes people very dependent on their cellphones, which is why I think that engineering a situation where it made sense for someone to turn their phone off (because it was being tracked) was potentially a bad idea.

  Also, I think I personally would feel pretty paranoid about roleplaying conflict in public.  I know the vampires have a reason to want to maintain the Masquerade, but the mortal policemen don't.  If an IC cop wants to arrest some characters in a public place, then they may have every IC reason to want to run over waving their badge and shouting "stop! Police!" -but that would be obviously inappropriate in a public game.  There are a couple of incidents that the essay describes which I can easily imagine leading to a member of the public calling the OC police- what if someone had seen the players breaking into the GM's house?  What if someone had caught up with the escaping Camarilla girl just as she got to the car, and tried to prevent her from getting into it?  What if someone had mistaken someone else for a player when in fact they were just a random member of the public, and then tried to attack them or arrest them?

  Maybe the refs had some way to be confident that this wasn't going to happen, or some way of dealing with it if it did, but they don't mention one (except to say that people shouldn't play with replica weapons in public, which is entirely true). 

  Having said this, it sounds like the game would have been enjoyable for most of the players.  I think it's good that the review focuses on the problems as well as the successes (with the exception of explaining the potential problems from public conflict).  If someone could explain a good way of avoiding the public conflict issue, then it sounds on the whole like a game that I'd probably enjoy playing.

<insert really amusing sig here>

  Durham Treasure Trap occasionally runs one-off events with pregenned characters.  At the two I've been to, some of the characters were significantly more powerful than others in terms of stats and/or social authority.  I didn't notice any problems.  I think that perhaps if I had only just been introduced to the concept now then the idea would sound restrictive and not particularly attractive.  As it is, I quite like this way of doing things- I think it leads to some interesting roleplaying that you don't always get in larps where all characters start off equal.

 I think that if you're dealing with built-in IC power imbalances, it helps if:

-The players trust the refs to know what they're doing (this is obviously key to ANY larp, but more so in cases where such a lot depends on qualitative judgements from refs rather than on the implementation of soulless mechanics).

-The players are aware from the very start that there will be power imbalances.

-No character is completely powerless.  If you *need* a character who is completely powerless- say a household servant with no special skills, items or connections- then it's probably best to make that an NPC role.

-It's likely that the balance of power will shift during the game (by which I don't mean that Plot should intervene in order to give the less powerful characters more power, but that even the powerful people should be having to work to maintain or consolidate their power).

-The characters are to some extent ref-generated.  I think munchkinism is less likely to be a factor if players are not being given an explicit list of all the skills or social advantages that PCs could potentially have and then asked to pick as many as they like for their character (nothing intrinsically wrong with munchkins, but their powers must only be used for Good).  I think stat choice subject to ref approval is probably ok, as are broader questions like "do you want to play a noble?  Do you want to play a magic user?  Do you want to play someone who's part of an established faction as opposed to being on their own?", etc.

  Larger DUTT events with pregenned characters have boxes you can tick on the booking form saying "I want my character to be screwed over by Plot".  Apparently, most people tick the box.  I think this is a good idea, because it encourages players to see the possibility of a particularly powerless character as a roleplaying opportunity resulting from their own free choice, not as something the refs have just randomly dropped onto them from above.

  I'm inclined to say that this would also only work in a one-off game.  But then, I wonder if this is just my prejudice- perhaps a campaign where everyone was randomly assigned starting characters of different power levels (either by ref choice or by dice rolling) would work just as well?  What do people think?