|
|
|
Wag
 
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Today @ 7:40 PM
Posts: 1,993,
Visits: 8,393
|
|
Posted reply in Herofest forum.
Marios
|
|
|
|
|
Wag
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Today @ 6:28 PM
Posts: 1,387,
Visits: 1,920
|
|
markst (4/20/2008)
I am however running Herofests now asfest events and was planning to avoid player vs player death becauseI thought that was what people wanted. I am still convinced that is what some people want however I am more than convinced that there is a solid number of people out there who are happier to kill and potentially be killed if the circumstances are right.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I would be very wary of listening to rule7 on this subject. Most of the active voices here (more than 50%) play Maelstrom regularly I think, and that's a game almost entirely predicated on killing other people's characters... If you're planning to run a game actively targeting that crowd and that's your mental picture of your audience then the feedback is invaluable, but I wouldn't confuse academic interest with LRP interest. I'm fascinated by your game, I'm keen to see it do well and I'd love to go. But I won't be, because I don't have that weekend free, so my opinion matters not one iota, since I won't be there and the opinion of people who aren't planning to come to your game isn't worth a great deal...
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
|
|
|
|
|
Prodigal
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 1:45 PM
Posts: 580,
Visits: 1,096
|
|
Matt Pennington (4/20/2008)
markst (4/20/2008)
I am however running Herofests now asfest events and was planning to avoid player vs player death becauseI thought that was what people wanted. I am still convinced that is what some people want however I am more than convinced that there is a solid number of people out there who are happier to kill and potentially be killed if the circumstances are right.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I would be very wary of listening to rule7 on this subject. Most of the active voices here (more than 50%) play Maelstrom regularly I think, and that's a game almost entirely predicated on killing other people's characters... If you're planning to run a game actively targeting that crowd and that's your mental picture of your audience then the feedback is invaluable, but I wouldn't confuse academic interest with LRP interest. I'm fascinated by your game, I'm keen to see it do well and I'd love to go. But I won't be, because I don't have that weekend free, so my opinion matters not one iota, since I won't be there and the opinion of people who aren't planning to come to your game isn't worth a great deal...
Hey, your opinion matters a great deal dude! It's your event that rekindled the love of larp from "oh my god, how sad, wearing fake faces and hitting each other with rubber swords" for umpteen years. I've not had a great cross-section of larp events to my name yet but you got the balance right for me at your event to make me overcome my being uncomfortable wearing costume in public and pretending to be someone else! If you can convince me to love larp then your opinion means a whole load of Swiss bank accounts in influence! 
On a previous point, I don't advocate changing my game in order to put the extra effort in. If I'm going to kill someone then (conditions allowing) I'm going to spend a bit of time doing so either in creative build up, creative killing and/or creative last words to the dying and disposal. Matt P will testify that he wishes he didn't insist on me searching him properly and then throwing his boots 20' away after checking them. It's all about thinking "I'm about to shiv this person, let's put the effort in and give him a good send off" rather than "how would this person like to be killed and how will I achieve this" as then you're changing your game. Thusly, if I was about to get mugged I'd like a bit of banter, perhaps if the situation was suitable I'd like some dying words to someone listening. Now rules are quite explicit in most games on death and having "last words" but I quite like the idea of one last verbal shot at the attacker. I like the simulationist game, but death of a cherished character deserves a "memory tombstone". The entire Aivielle of Eos have that in my mind whether they agree or not, their deaths were memorable to me but it's slightly different in that I didn't die and it could be misconstrued that I'm gloating (which totally isn't true). They died very excellently and their RP was top notch to the end, and so that's encouraged me to do the same when it happens to me. I just hope that whoever kills me thinks the same of my dying efforts. 
___________________________________________________
PD:- Dr/Cpt Heinrich Bellamorto - Pickled Surgeon
- "Shoot him in the eye, the face is for ruffians and amateurs."
- "I'm holding a pistol and I have a pocket that cries PARTY! We are NOT having a quiet one!"
- "Lovable in a Hitler kind of way" - Sass 
EOS:- Jarn - Psychotic Runty Orc Beserker
- "Hello my Pretty Pretty...fancy some muddy cuddles?"
- "If we are what we eat, I could be you tomorrow..."
RL:- Pete Bridges - IT Mercenary and RA (special) Agent for Suffolk Mental Health Partnership
- "[LARP], it's not like drugs although it's probably just as expensive"
- "Yes, I snorted the Everclear and the Strawberry stuff with pips in"
|
|
|
|
|
Wag
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Today @ 6:28 PM
Posts: 1,387,
Visits: 1,920
|
|
Pete Bridges (4/21/2008)
Hey, your opinion matters a great deal dude!It really doesn't you know... Opinions can have interesting ideas or be clearly or poorly stated, but they have no inherent value, no matter who expresses them.
If I'm going to kill someone then (conditions allowing) I'm going to spend a bit of time doing so either in creative build up, creative killing and/or creative last words to the dying and disposal. Matt P will testify that he wishes he didn't insist on me searching him properly and then throwing his boots 20' away after checking them.
Lol. One of my best deaths that. A real cracker. Going over the hill for a final confrontation with the evil orcs in which you butcher them despite their overwhelming numbers is ok, but really it gets dull after the 50th time... But going over the hill for final confrontation with the evil orcs in which you get butchered despite your overwhelming numbers was fantastic. It just felt so right... It appealed to my sense of irony, I can almost see the orcs in years to come telling their children "Wave upon wave, an endless horde of elves crashing down on us like a tide, we cut them down in droves but it seemed like there was always another to take his place. A dead elf for every inch of ground we gave, but still they kept coming...." Well it makes me smile.
One of Mark's original questions was about "Can you enjoy dying". Some of Marios' comments seemed to imply that wanting to die meant not really giving the game your all and playing the martyr. At a recent Maelstrom event I had two player frothing at me about how great it was that their character had been killed. Both of them were long running characters with years of accrued game skills and one of them had a costume that was so good we put a picture in our costume guide to showcase it as "best in class". Getting killed can be the personal ending to your story. If you're playing a fairly villainous character then taking over the world and killing everyone is ok, but getting stopped by the heroes and brutally murdered for your heinous deeds is so much more fun. We've talked about giving everyone their 15 minutes of fame, but a good death is the best 15 minutes you're ever going to get in LRP. Sure it can be mediocre but it can just rock. It is any surprise that players who have felt that buzz go in search of the experience again? Is it unfair to deliberately play your characters in such a way that they provoke your chance of having a good old stabbing up? I refuse to apologize for my record, with the exception of one spectacularly unsuccessful Gathering character of mine who was forced to interact with plot for three years until he died of boredom, I've never had a character that went more than 12 months without being killed. Two of my top events were where I got killed at my very first event out as that character (GD and EOS - I was the first player death in GD, not sure if I managed that in EOS or not).
Dying is great. My first ever character death I had my murderers go OOC over my cooling body to spend ten minutes apologizing for murdering me but saying that everything I had done had been so cool and so evil they just had to kill me, they had no other choice IC... (I'd sort of double crossed them and invaded their country - a bit). I just can't think of anything more flattering to the ego than that. "Your roleplaying influenced and affected us so powerfully that we just felt we had to take enormously personal risk with our characters and expend valuable resources to kill your character." It's like a little LRP Oscar... Complete with rubbish bin...
And every aspect of dying can be fun. At EOS I was thanked by one of the orcs after I refused to let people just take my armour lammy and insisted they pick up my unhelpful body and physically remove the chainmail I was wearing by hand. Wanna loot me? Bring it on! You nicked my boots Pete and I have to say it was as much fun to have them nicked as I suspect it was to nick them. It would have been even funnier if you'd worn them... (IIRC the Stepney Lads, a great group, used to share out the clothes of any member of the group who died). Being dead doesn't happen often in LRP (think about how often you spend alive compared to how often you spend dead). I've had some great experiences being dead and it's really cool when people go to the effort to treat you properly, stripping your corpse, dumping your body in a bush. It's fun!
I like the simulationist game, but death of a cherished character deserves a "memory tombstone". The entire Aivielle of Eos have that in my mind whether they agree or not, their deaths were memorable to me but it's slightly different in that I didn't die and it could be misconstrued that I'm gloating (which totally isn't true).
The point of all my rant above is that I don't feel the need for my death to have been a great experience for everyone else to give it meaning, because it was a great event for me, and that's enough for my satisfaction. Of course it's nice if it was fun for the orcs as well, that's very flattering and I hope it was, but it was cool for me which is enough. I didn't need dying lines, I don't think I even said anything, it was all just stabbing and dying. At the end of the day, a group of elves went over that rise to do battle with the orcs and one group did not come out alive. Who else at EOS got an experience like you and I did? I don't know. I had some good moments in the event, but none to top that. It just wouldn't have been the same if somehow I'd come out alive (I felt desperately sorry for the poor Baconator after some vindictive bastard rescued her! Robbed she was!). Good but not as good as it was.
Good deaths are great. Bad deaths can be a bit dull and damp squib, but they're pretty easy to avoid, statistically. Just pick some quality opposition at your next event, annoy the heck out of them IC and pretty soon you'll be dead. Do it often enough and you'll spend so much time being murdered you won't have any time at all to get caught by random muggers. I've died loads of times and I don't think it's ever been because of NPCs or muggers once and I put that success down to the fact that I work hard at getting myself a good death.
In fact I think that's probably my key point. In a fest event you can't just sit there and wait for a good death to come to you. You have to go out and make a good death happen to your character. Pick a big group and start a fight with them. Refuse to back down. Ever. Spit in their faces, spill their pints, invade their country. In a linear the monsters will just come at you and eventually you'll end up dead - it's like you hardly need to try really. I think that's what appeals about dying in a PvP game, it's so much more hard work, it just feels more real, more fulfilling. That wasn't some statted up monster sent to kill you, those characters out there are not going to murder you unless you seriously rile them up. Dying is an accomplishment in a PvP game, you're going to have to work at it. Think about things you could do that would really piss characters off. It's good to go to an event with a list of at least three things you intend to do that should get you killed. Every time you survive an event think to yourself "What could I have done better? Did I compromise somewhere? Did I miss a fight I could have started? What will I do different next time?".
You can't die at every event you go to, but there's no reason that anyone needs to aim for anything less!
If you can convince me to love larp then your opinion means a whole load of Swiss bank accounts in influence!
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
|
|
|
|
|
Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Saturday, October 11, 2008 2:36 PM
Posts: 270,
Visits: 473
|
|
My personal opinion, if characters are finding time and engergy to kill each other, then unless its specifically a PVP game, then something is seriously wrong with the plot, and the people running the plot should make more of an effort to make characters work harder and keep them on their toes.
Personally no real opinion, i dont mind it as long as I'm on the winning side really, but I prefer for the game staff to challenge me with plot, puzzles and monsters, and not just be lazy and set me up vs other players, which is not an unreasonable attitued to have if you've paid money out
____________________________________As the old robot saying goes "does not compute"
|
|
|
|
|
Wag
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Today @ 6:28 PM
Posts: 1,387,
Visits: 1,920
|
|
Xollob (4/21/2008)
My personal opinion, if characters are finding time and engergy to kill each other, then unless its specifically a PVP game, then something is seriously wrong with the plot, and the people running the plot should make more of an effort to make characters work harder and keep them on their toes.
I would more or less agree with that sentiment, although in a roundabout way. Plot has an essential tendency to damp down PvP conflict, the more impact the plot has, the less likely PvP is to occur. If the Great Evil is coming on, say Sunday, (or Monday if it's a bank holiday weekend) to destroy the universe and end all life as we know it, it becomes distinctly less credible to be engaged in your own petty schemes for power. Inevitably you have to put aside the PvP stuff and concentrate on the plot. It's why I tend to avoid games like that.
Personally no real opinion, i dont mind it as long as I'm on the winning side really, but I prefer for the game staff to challenge me with plot, puzzles and monsters, and not just be lazy and set me up vs other players, which is not an unreasonable attitued to have if you've paid money out
Everyone's entitled to enjoy the game they've been sold. In my experience it can actually be quite hard work to set you up vs other players though. I've always found it a lot harder work than writing "plot", but possibly I've been doing it wrong all these years... I've find that if you don't work hard to set the players against each other they have a compulsive desire to make peace with each other. There is a kind of assumption that players will just fight each other if you let them, but below massive scales (3000+) it simply doesn't work like that, you have to motivate players to be aggressive towards each other.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
|
|
|
|
|
Prodigal
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 1:45 PM
Posts: 580,
Visits: 1,096
|
|
I think my lack of exposure to various kinds of larp meant that at Eos when the supposed outside threat came along and we all banded together I really liked that. It forced my character to evaluate the merits of carrying on the aggro or combining forces to defend against whatever was out there. Since really all I've played is Maelstrom and the first Eos the whole aspect of playing something awaiting the onslaught of "evil" if very appealing only if because it's a change. Eating your favourite meal every day means that eventually it becomes "normal", so other things have to be thrown in there to remind you how good the favourite is. I doubt many larps can equal the Maaaaarvelous M and the Epic Eos but then I won't really know until I try others to be able to compare. Of my little experience I have to say that I very much love that at least the vast majority of the participants are PCs (or at least very convincing NPCs) and that if I get killed by any of them then I would feel that I've been killed by someone with a genuine reason to kill me, rather than an unlucky random encounter. I must say, I'm still very much surprised that I'm still alive in Maelstrom, but then I'm playing the full game and going the distance with some very epic win conditions so Matt P's try hader to die thing is counter productive to my game. But then, that's the beauty of it all; with each new character you can explore beautiful new wondrous possibilities of adventure, which is ultimately why we're all involved in the hobby.
Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!
___________________________________________________
PD:- Dr/Cpt Heinrich Bellamorto - Pickled Surgeon
- "Shoot him in the eye, the face is for ruffians and amateurs."
- "I'm holding a pistol and I have a pocket that cries PARTY! We are NOT having a quiet one!"
- "Lovable in a Hitler kind of way" - Sass
EOS:- Jarn - Psychotic Runty Orc Beserker
- "Hello my Pretty Pretty...fancy some muddy cuddles?"
- "If we are what we eat, I could be you tomorrow..."
RL:- Pete Bridges - IT Mercenary and RA (special) Agent for Suffolk Mental Health Partnership
- "[LARP], it's not like drugs although it's probably just as expensive"
- "Yes, I snorted the Everclear and the Strawberry stuff with pips in"
|
|
|
|
 Posted Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:37 AM |
| | | |