|
|
|
Prodigal
 
Group: Eos Staff
Last Login: Yesterday @ 4:30 PM
Posts: 661,
Visits: 2,995
|
|
| Hi all, You might have seen a while back that a couple of friends and I were planning to run an event-based (rather than a club-style) system called Insurrection LRP. Our influences were Kingship/the Portly Pixie, Shards, Shadowrun/cyberpunk generally and Tony Blair, and primarily a Kingship spin-off called Succession. The core idea is to have the player characters grossly outnumbered and outgunned and actively seeking to change the structure of the world -- primarily politically, however. Other key features are a working economy (with people having to convert starting XP into money if they want to be able to buy things like weapons) and limited (but potentially very powerful) magic. Now, we had to abort running it this year due to some fallings-out within the team unrelated to the game, but we're still keen to get it together and sorted. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to kick some ideas around here to improve it. Some of the really key things we're after are: 1. Combats that are scary; ideally they'd be quick and deadly, but given that it's a high fantasy system too then at least high-consequence.
2. A strong sense of the players banding together, but also with strong inter-factional divides
3. Ways to incorporate ground-level interpersonal plot with higher-level mystical and political stuff. We've got a goodly amount of experience of LRP in general but neither of us have run anything other than scissors-paper-stone White Wolf stuff, which is obviously rather a different setting. So, does anyone have any thoughts on how to mix together the high fantasy and the dystopian sides of things? Cheers,
Joe
---
Joe Rooney - Battle Vegan
Insurrection LRP: high fantasy in a dystopian setting.
Event Two: 17th-19th April 2009. Book now for £20 discount!
Bladelands: Raoul Ortez - apostate, medium, bodyguard and vicious lunatic
EOS: staff (probably the best job in LRP!)
Joe R's LARPCard
|
|
|
|
|
Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 2:24 PM
Posts: 241,
Visits: 367
|
|
"1. Combats that are scary; ideally they'd be quick and deadly, but given that it's a high fantasy system too then at least high-consequence."
I'd reccommend making healing slow and with the chance that a wound may not actually heal within the time scale of the event. A single combat isn't essentially scary, the prospect of several combats means making a mistake may be fatal.
"2. A strong sense of the players banding together, but also with strong inter-factional divides"
This is something we managed to get with Serenity where everyone is grouped into crews, of course you'll probably be wanting to turn things up a notch. If you do it right you can make every group dependant on each other for survival on a ground level (Combat, Healing, Puzzle Solving) yet competing for limited resources to ensure their long term survival (Work, Moeny, Food, Shelter) I think the term is 'Negative Sum.'
"3. Ways to incorporate ground-level interpersonal plot with higher-level mystical and political stuff."
Make sure everyone submits a good background, as from the sounds of it you are familiar with WoD games you can borrow the flaws system from them and have no trouble with this one.
__________________________
"It's not Mordenkainen's, it's mine."
|
|
|
|
|
Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Saturday, December 20, 2008 7:25 AM
Posts: 288,
Visits: 2,785
|
|
If healing is slow you risk the chance that a PC will spend the majority if their time on the floor groaning. How can that be fun?
PD: without portfolio
Serenity: Redshirt #2, Crew of the Qi-Lin
Almost-RL: Photographer for hire
Insurrection: Washer-up
www.disturbing.org.uk
|
|
|
|
|
Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:16 PM
Posts: 331,
Visits: 2,302
|
|
Try and encourage the players to be connected to parts of the world, the thing that comes to mind is secret societies, if the players are members or say have mentors or contacts that are members then you can tie them into the power struggles in the world.
Who the players choose to aid will be the ones who grow in support and perhaps the players will try and unite them against the oppressive regime they're under. That should be a real piece of work to pull off and will probably need players to get into positions of leadership within those secret societies. Remember to include heretics who disagree with 'the true faith' and merchant guilds who are probably illegal due
Demanding quality backgrounds is definitely a key as you can then work on connecting your players into the political background, either by giving people advantages for choosing to do so or tying them into other parts of a background. Perhaps a relative has been killed or captured by said oppressive regime?
Perhaps you could have the first event being a break out from a prison camp if you wanted to start with some sense of unity between players. I don't know if that's too much of an outside force forcing people together, perhaps the players all want to break different people out and they have to co-operate to do so.
If you're going to make combat lethal then make healing plentiful, but perhaps make it not possible during fighting. You'll need to play test this aspect of the system a lot to get the balance of quick and lethal to mass player death that you want. Although you might have to accept a bit of player death before they learn to use tactics and that running away is acceptable in the game.
Magic wise do you want it to be point and click, usable at all in combat or something that takes time to do successfully? While avoiding the need for large lengthy rituals (to avoid the 'lets solve it with a ritual' problem). I'm a big fan of spirit summoning as an alternative to point and click, mages them have to research how they're going to bargain with a spirit or possibly neutralise one that's been set to do something by an enemy. It puts me in mind a little of a netrunner, but without the 'separated from the party' thing, unless you think occasional trips for mages into astral space would be cool  .
A voice was heard to say, “Who dares disturb the crypt of the Immortal Space Bitches?”
“I am Grimm Shado,” said Grimm Shado, triple wand claws extending. “And I am here to take it to the limit.”
|
|
|
|
|
Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:16 PM
Posts: 331,
Visits: 2,302
|
|
Oh here's a random cool idea, make your players select the crime for which they are wanted for, the kind of thing that goes on their Wanted poster . For example Crimes Against the State, Heresy, Criminal Lifestyle, Theft of State Resources, Murder, Corruption, anything which sounds sufficiently Stalinist and would look cool on a Wanted Poster. Which you could then get printed up and have players come across them .
Also if you can get hold of a copy have a look at Underground the RPG, it's a odd game of superhero cyberpunk but has some interesting systems which players can use to encourage social change and track how their efforts are effecting it.
A voice was heard to say, “Who dares disturb the crypt of the Immortal Space Bitches?”
“I am Grimm Shado,” said Grimm Shado, triple wand claws extending. “And I am here to take it to the limit.”
|
|
|
|
|
Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 2:24 PM
Posts: 241,
Visits: 367
|
|
Simon (6/2/2007)
If healing is slow you risk the chance that a PC will spend the majority if their time on the floor groaning. How can that be fun?
There shouldn't be the assumption that 'healed' means starting status. It's entirely fun to be covered in bandages and limping about perfectly capable of roleplaying and fighting, just not on full hits points and may not operating to full weapon skill.
__________________________
"It's not Mordenkainen's, it's mine."
|
|
|
|
|
Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, January 04, 2009 1:36 AM
Posts: 167,
Visits: 347
|
|
| I agree. Wound should mean wound, not "I'll find a healer and be fine in ten minutes." I'd also suggest you put something like infection that can be fatal over the long term unless treated. Something that is gradually debilitating and uses up resources can be a great, grim catalyst for role play. Have you considered starting the game with just about all the magic in the hands of their enemies? Something like Stalinist Russia with the ability to read thoughts or attack people from afar sounds seriously creepy to me. Perhaps the catalyst for people to get together might be that one small group or even one person has found a way to combat their enemies magic for the first time in living memory?
Maelstrom - Captain Sasagani of the Havocstani Medical Corps. "Every inch the wolf - all five feet of you."
|
|
|
|
|
Prodigal
Group: Eos Staff
Last Login: Yesterday @ 4:30 PM
Posts: 661,
Visits: 2,995
|
|
| Thanks for the ideas! Re: healing, we were thinking of a system whereby you'd need a First Aid skill even to be able to stop bleeding, much less use various pharmaceuticals to prevent infection, heal damage or set broken bones. Untended wounds would become infected (go "septic") in a period of time determined by stamina -- of which more in a bit. A septic wound, and any further wounds to that location, can't be healed until the infection's dealt with, and over time would likely develop into fever, gangrene and/or death. Stamina works as a mechanic whereby you start each event with a set number of beads (5 by default, up to 20 max at start-up if you're the right race and spend lots of development points on it). Every time you're taken down and are healed, you lose another bead; if someone does surgery (and possibly magical healing) on you, you lose more. Each bead you currently hold represents one minute of "life clock" -- the amount of time before an untreated wound goes septic or before you bleed to death if your vitals or two of your limbs are down. There would be no natural refreshment of these beads over the event (which likely would last Friday-Sunday), although there are pharmaceutical methods of restoring it. We're encouraging players to have their characters join one of five pre-defined factions. As well as linking characters up to a specific agenda and take on insurrection, it gives them benefits in terms of access to teachers for appropriate skills. I really like the negative-sum idea; as I said, we're really keen to have a functioning economy, because resource-hunger should really focus people's minds away from the task at hand... And, yeah, backgrounds are a must. Anyone got any good ideas on enforcing that? Just plain refusing to let people play without? Offering extra XP for submitting one (or docking XP for not submitting one)? The set-up for the first event is probably going to be a meeting between the five different groups to discuss whether there's room to work together. I do really like the Wanted poster idea, but I'm not sure we can make it work in the setting just yet. Magic should be a really big part of the setting; there's both point-and-click stuff and spirit-summoning stuff, but no "let's do a ritual and solve it" magics. However, the demands of the character generation and progression systems mean that the player team will likely have very little magic at the first event, and little ability to improve it over time, whereas the Commonwealth (read: recently-formed Stalinist state) have all of the magic and material resources necessary to make a big go of it. Cheers, and please keep the ideas coming!
Joe
---
Joe Rooney - Battle Vegan
Insurrection LRP: high fantasy in a dystopian setting.
Event Two: 17th-19th April 2009. Book now for £20 discount!
Bladelands: Raoul Ortez - apostate, medium, bodyguard and vicious lunatic
EOS: staff (probably the best job in LRP!)
Joe R's LARPCard
|
|
|
| | |