In that setting, the metaphysics of the world have changed significantly. Magic was previously the provence of men and was used for everything - but most critically to bring the rains and perform other essential tasks. In the books, men are losing the ability to perform magic and women are gaining it and the books look at the consequences of this change.

So, here is my thought... How would you set up a LRP setting where such a significant change in the metaphysics were to occur? What would an organiser need to think about before they started running? Would you start the game with one set of metaphysics and make the changes in play and see how the players cope or would you have it that the change happened before play and the players are having to deal with it as soon as they go time in?

Any thoughts?

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

To get the effect you want, you'd have to change it in game.  Once you start playing, it's the world you've always known.  So, if the world starts changing around you, that gives the players all sorts of plot.  The decision you'd have to make is, can they affect the plot or will it happen regardless?

*edited to fix quotes

You see, to do this effectively you need to not tell the players that this is going to happen when they sign up. So they make characters based on the existing game metaphysics (say, taking magic skills). What then happens if these magic skills are lost due to the change?

It happened to me in one campaign. Though it was entirely the player character's fault that it happened. We had two choices - close the realm off to the spirit realms and thereby prevent invasion by an immense ethereal force but lose magic or leave it open and fight to the bitter and inevitable end with magic... It did mean that, in the final game of the campaign, I was left with the ability to do basic herbalism, swing a staff at monsters and talk for hours on an academic subject which no longer had any real world relevance...

So I did what all academics whose subject has lost relevance do... moved from industry into Academia and got tenure  

The point being that if you have a points and xp based system and you change the rules so that some skills are no longer any use this means that a lot of players who have built thier characters on those skills will lose out on that points investment. Now, none of the players who lost out in the game I played minded - we took it IC and adapted - but I can see a case where players would complain about it. So, how would you ameliorate it? Give something in compensation? Allow them to respend their character points?

One suggestion from the Hambly books is an interesting one - in that there is the case where you have the men who used to have power and who don't any more who still  know the spells and knowledge side of magic. They just don't have the power to cast them any more. Whereas the women, who now have power, don't know how to use it because they were never taught and rely on the men to teach them. There are other subtleties (the fact that some spells the men know cannot be cast by women due to a problem in sourcing power from different places) but generally the fact that you have the knowledge makes you potentially useful still even if you can no longer do anything with that knowledge...

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

Well, yes, of course, but that's the point.  If there was a change and no one minded, what would be the point of your larp?  I think the ideas you put forward probably would be ok, but there will be some people who get PO'd that this happened.  If I was playing and this happened for no discernable IC reason I'd be pretty damn grumpy.  Or rather if there was no discernable IC reason that was caused by player action/inaction.  The point of LARP for me is that my roles will let me affect the world in a way which is impossible in reality, being unable to affect something by reason or violence or mechanical means is extremely frustrating and means that I'd pretty much stop trusting the organiser of the game to play "fair". 

Fairness is of course an illusion, but it's one people need to be happy.  Changing the rules mid way is:

1) The only way to get some real interesting roleplay out of this

and

2) Pretty OOC dangerous for the longetivity of your game.

If you made it clear that something was "in the air" as the players started the game that might help?

I have to say that the only game where I saw a major change in the metaphysics was in a game that ended an event after the change occured. This was intentional - an end of campaign point. The game then intended to restart but quite a while in the future with the new metaphysics in place.

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

While telling them about it OOC beforehand will stop this, I also feel (like Coffmeister) that it would reduce the impact of the change.

One question: Do you think it is any different to allowing in game actions to significantly change the political system in a game? Does the fact that the metaphysical changes affect the rules directly (as opposed to maybe affecting status points, if such exists, which are still part of the rules) make it any different?

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester