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Heroic Knight
 
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This is something that's been bugging me for a while, there are a number of things that often don't seem to work as well in LARP as we'd like or which have to be flanged away due for OOC reasons.
Here are a few examples:
Non-Persistence of Bodies
Even the most dedicated crew member or player is unlikely to remain playing their last characters corpse for the rest of the event and in the case of the crew the organisers are probably going to need them for the next encounter. So bodies tend to get hand waved away and trying to find out what happened to your mate who wandered off to talk to those friendly men with daggers becomes rather tricky when the corpse phys-rep is now playing a new character.
No visible injuries
Unless someone has gone to town with the make up kit injuries don't show up so it becomes impossible to tell if someone is hurt without asking them OOC or indeed to tell the difference between the PC who has been torn to pieces by demons (and could really do with some healing magic right the hell now) and the one who is just subdued. Oh, and dismemberment or disfigurement is impossible to do without a heck of a lot of OOC effort.
Equipment and clothing doesn't get damaged
Same sort of thing as the previous one. After most combat heavy events the PCs should be wearing blood soaked rags by the end of the weekend.
Disguises
Don't work without at the every least an OOC thought process of 'Who is he/she playing at the moment and is it worth trying to find a ref to find out?' Irritating normally and when it's someone you are trying to kill or who wants you dead it becomes absolutely critical to know ASAP, going to find a ref may not be a realistic option and if they haven’t seen you yet asking them OOC isn't normally feasible either.
Theft and Looting
Of either PCs or of monster crew. Either ends up depriving the organisers of props they might need later on or has a PC worrying if an often expensive item is being looked after properly by a total stranger or even if it's really been stolen OOC.
Main reason I’m posting this is that I’m working on another VapourWare LRP which will never actually get going, but I think I’ve found away round all of the above (at least for the setting I’ve got in mind), but I’m sure I must have missed some.
Any others?
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Wag
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| Bodies: Gall saga managed to handle this quite well using 'facist crew management' techniques where the crew were in fact expected to wait, staying absolutely still, until the players were no longer paying attention to them and had, in fact, wandered off to the 'next encounter'. Does mean that the players never see the bodies move (gall saga had an allergy to common LRP concepts like finger in the air and time freeze) but also means that irritating players will often spend hours playing with a corpse and not getting on with the event. In one example, they sat and ate lunch, using the corpse as a table... though this may be apophrycal. I don't think it is a problem that bodies 'disappear' so long as: - The players have had enough of a chance to search/dismember/desecrate them - It is done in a reasonably subtle manner - i.e. they get up during a quiet time when the players are distracted. Another option is to ask the players nicely to 'do something' about any bodies they encounter - throw them into the bushes, burn them, bury them etc That way, once the players are finished with them, they can be got rid of in a sensible and IC manner instead of just disappearing...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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Prodigal
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| The using a body as lunch table - no-one can actually testify to seeing this happen. Injuries etc - fake blood is good. Fake blood is your friend. It is commonly used in low fantasy / historical style LRP but less so in other genres. The key point is our old friend suspension of disbelief. It isnt real and not all of it needs to be. Personally I find big boom magic far more irritating than disappearing bodies and injuries.
_____________________________________________________ It is not a competition. It is a web forum.
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Squire
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| Non-Persistence of Bodies we had some thoughts with a game using the bodies, and we figured out we'll have to use inflating... bodies. if we could get them cheap- each player is given one, leaving the inflated body with it's IC belongings, for the body scavengers and thieves to collect (that after waiting a reasonable time, or the comotion around the body has died). Disguises- if each player is playing a single character, you have much less of a problem. if you want to disguise yourself do it in a way you would not be recognised. OOC ways of disguising sucks.
Theft and Looting- it takes a hell of logistics, but we had some games where all the costumes, props and weapons were supplied by the game. it was great for the game in a million ways.
_________ deleted.
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Champion
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Chris Parr (11/4/2006)
Main reason I’m posting this is that I’m working on another VapourWare LRP which will never actually get going, but I think I’ve found away round all of the above (at least for the setting I’ve got in mind), ...Let me guess, all players are blind and they have to move in a column holding eachother`s shoulder, and examine wounded by asking 'does this hurt' while twisting their limbs?  I once suggested attaching sponges soaked with red ink to paintball guns to be able to 'charge with the bayonet' and get rid of the POW-rule for when you`re too close to your opponent to shoot. I can see drawbacks for sponge maces and swords, though. Apart from costumes getting wet and permanently stained (one could use red powder ISO ink or other fluids), events would probably have to get rated. I have been playing with the idea of red ribbons to be bound around wounded bodyparts. They can be bandaged over in order to arrest bleeding, can be removed if the wound is healed, and can even been attached over bandages to indicate a wound has opened again, and/or is bleeding through the dressing. In the setting I`m working on, there is a crab-like scavenger that will eat bodies if they`re not buried. Just having one or two moving around and going after fresh bodies will give players the idea. In the old days, our club would hide containers around the site as random treasure. They were bright blue and easily spotted if you knew where to look for them, but they were mostly placed off the well trodden paths, and sometimes simply hidden. Something the like could be done with the possessions of characters that died and weren`t looted.
________________________________________________________ - IRL: Edwin Hofstra
- - mostly crewing at the moment
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Champion
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I can see drawbacks for sponge maces and swords, though. Apart from costumes getting wet and permanently stained (one could use red powder ISO ink or other fluids), events would probably have to get rated.
In the early days of my lrping career, this is exactly what everyone I knew did for monsters. Red paint for 'normal' damage, green for venom, black for something special...
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Wag
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There is always the problem of staining costume to contend with. Paintball only gets away with it because you tend to wear scraggy 'paintballing' clothes for it. If they had a 'dye based' system in Artificer or Maelstrom most of the players would have heart attacks at the risk of damage to their wonderful silk and brocade costumes  Ribbons - not a bad idea but, like make up, requires the player to take time to tie a bit of ribbon where ever they have been injured. Not ideal in most circumstances. One way of phys repping injuries that I have seen work more or less ok was to make sure that all medics have make up kits and fake blood with them. This allows them to phys rep the injuries with make up if the player doesn't mind it/requests it while they are treating or diagnosing. This means that players with decent kit on them can either refuse to be marked up or have the nice kit removed and the make up put on underneath (medic removes the jacket to 'make them more comfortable' then slaps on the fake blood). Should mean that enough decent injuries are visible. Events where I have seen this system in use (Shards being the main one) usually have at least half the player base covered in bandages and fake injuries by the end of the event and so it looks like they have been in the wars. I would also say 'no magical insta heals' or make these very rare. Magical insta heals usually heal in a way that leaves no scars or marks. So if everything is done by 'chiurgery/surgery/physician' type methods there should always be some sign that healing has been done - a bandage, some blood, a scar, bruising - even if the wound is 'healed' and therefore not impairing the character IC. Working on the principle that hits are actually 'pain', 'risk of infection', 'shock through bleeding' etc rather than actual physical damage means that healing is providing pain relief, stopping bleeding and cleaning infection *NOT* repairing/sealing the wound. The wound is still there, it just no longer hurts or is likely to have you collapse from blood loss or die from infection.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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Prodigal
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Using pre-stained bloody bandages can be useful, since it means there is no risk of staining the costume.
------<insert really amusing sig here>
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