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Wag
 
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Matt Pennington (5/20/2008)
And yet the Scandowedians are the god-king-emperors of pontification with their talk of indexicality and their ludographies. And everyone who attends them tells me that their games rock. Maybe there is something in this pretentious bullshit after-all... 
I dunno, I've always seen that as something akin to the habit of the owners of one particular games console to defend it to the death in online arguments. Once you've spent a lot of money on something, it's kind of difficult to slag it off or even refuse to defend it.
That's not to say they didn't actually enjoy it, of course - after all, there's also an argument that the kind of people that go to Scandiwegian games are the kind that are likely to enjoy them. And they do tend to wear their intentions very much on their sleeves, which is IMO one of the things they do better than us in general. I don't think anyone went to Dragonbane expecting it to be like the Gathering.
PD - Brother Farael of the Ordo Dictum Dominus
EOS - Some Raggard Scum, previously Some Arimin Scum
6P - System creator (now retired), Andrei Treune of Clan Suner (for the moment)
RL - Will Robinson
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Wag
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I dunno, I've always seen that as something akin to the habit of the owners of one particular games console to defend it to the death in online arguments. Once you've spent a lot of money on something, it's kind of difficult to slag it off or even refuse to defend it.
That's not to say they didn't actually enjoy it, of course - after all, there's also an argument that the kind of people that go to Scandiwegian games are the kind that are likely to enjoy them. And they do tend to wear their intentions very much on their sleeves, which is IMO one of the things they do better than us in general. I don't think anyone went to Dragonbane expecting it to be like the Gathering.
All games are self-selecting in terms of their audience, particularly over time. If you only like small, plot intense, high combat events, then I doubt you'd enjoy Maelstrom.
On the other hand finding reasons to explain why people's enjoyment of an event is not really as high as they are claiming it is, is a little self-defeating when you don't have any other methods to judge the quality of the event. I talked at length to Ben Mars about Dragonbane and he was fulsome in praise of the event saying that the quality of roleplaying blew him away. I trust his judgement since I've known and worked with him a long time. But ultimately when everyone says an event is fantastic, and I haven't been to judge it myself, I feel I have to take what they're saying on face value.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (5/20/2008)
All games are self-selecting in terms of their audience, particularly over time. If you only like small, plot intense, high combat events, then I doubt you'd enjoy Maelstrom.
I agree with you. However, there will generally be a number of people at Maelstrom who perhaps would not normally have gone, but chose it for reasons other than it suiting their preferred style (timing, or convenience, or friends that are going). That strikes me as being much less the case with any foreign game - anyone who takes the time and effort and expense necessary to go is almost certainly going to "self-select", as you put it.
On the other hand finding reasons to explain why people's enjoyment of an event is not really as high as they are claiming it is, is a little self-defeating when you don't have any other methods to judge the quality of the event. I talked at length to Ben Mars about Dragonbane and he was fulsome in praise of the event saying that the quality of roleplaying blew him away. I trust his judgement since I've known and worked with him a long time. But ultimately when everyone says an event is fantastic, and I haven't been to judge it myself, I feel I have to take what they're saying on face value.
This is where we disagree, not least since not everyone said Dragonbane was fantastic. I tend to find that the criticisms given to a system say an awful lot more about it than the fulsome praise. The criticisms made of Strom after the first few events (some of which have been resolved since, some of which have not, and some of which are systemic) were not the kind I would find offputting; the criticisms made of Dragonbane were of that kind. Others mileage will most definitely vary. But in general, I find that a far better measure of a game than the amount of praise it generates, because I tend to think of effusive praise as an automatic result of any event short of a total disaster. It simply isn't very useful.
PD - Brother Farael of the Ordo Dictum Dominus
EOS - Some Raggard Scum, previously Some Arimin Scum
6P - System creator (now retired), Andrei Treune of Clan Suner (for the moment)
RL - Will Robinson
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Wag
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chalicier (5/20/2008)
I agree with you. However, there will generally be a number of people at Maelstrom who perhaps would not normally have gone, but chose it for reasons other than it suiting their preferred style (timing, or convenience, or friends that are going). That strikes me as being much less the case with any foreign game - anyone who takes the time and effort and expense necessary to go is almost certainly going to "self-select", as you put it.
That makes a lot of sense, people probably are much picker about the events when there is that much effort and expense involved. I know I was regarding Dragonbane...
This is where we disagree, not least since not everyone said Dragonbane was fantastic. I tend to find that the criticisms given to a system say an awful lot more about it than the fulsome praise. The criticisms made of Strom after the first few events (some of which have been resolved since, some of which have not, and some of which are systemic) were not the kind I would find offputting; the criticisms made of Dragonbane were of that kind. Others mileage will most definitely vary. But in general, I find that a far better measure of a game than the amount of praise it generates, because I tend to think of effusive praise as an automatic result of any event short of a total disaster. It simply isn't very useful.
That is also very fair. Interestingly the Dogma99 authors note the same thing on their website. I once attended an event that I thought was a benchmark in bad LRP. Partly the organizers fault, partly not, but it was just awful. And it still had fulsome praise afterwards. In public.
Personally I think this links in to comments made elsewhere about poor attendance. After the event everyone says how wonderful it was and I think that can easily give the organizers a false impression of how well attended the next event is going to be. But that's another issue.
In this case I go back to what Ben Mars said to me. He raved about Dragonbane, not publically on a forum, but in private conversation to me about it. He noted things like how well the rules worked, how beautiful the setting was and in particular the very high levels of roleplaying from even the youngest attendants. (He had a classic experience with a young child having to tell him that she was roleplaying after he mistook roleplayed terror for real terror). He was very clear that the standard of roleplaying at the event from young pre-teen children was much higher than he encounters from most adults in this country.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Live roleplaying's greatest cheerleader...
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Measuring a game? The only way is by numbers that pay and turn up and even then if it’s a closed mates only game then you can’t. Whether a game is any good is like gauging the greatness of a TV show. Some folks (actually quite a lot) like Buffy. Me? It leaves me cold. That doesn’t mean Buffy is no good it means that I personally don’t go mad over it.
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RL: Mr Sofar
Curved core weaponry and bespoke stuff.
ShelfordFX
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Heroic Knight
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| Based on everything I have heard from customers, many prefer the deeper involvement/roleplay experience they get with smaller clubs, and in essense this is where many of the old big event players are going.... either setting up small clubs and doing their own thing or finding >100 player events. Much feedback from the ladies is that the "getting pissed" shirt ripping, gribbly bashing can be a put off.. so if you want more, I would guess, maybe the more family friendly event is called for... not to mention the lack of properly fully catered events there are. Its all very well having toilets and showers.... but they need to be kept clean and working !! and you'd think by now, we'd all know how to flsuh a loo  Matt, you seem to be one of those who have cracked running big events well and although I have never played your system, I cant think of a negative that's been passed on to me, thou I'm sure there will be some who dont like it's flavour. As to the offer made by LRPstore it was simple... Carte Blanche come to me with a proposal, an idea, some serious committment and a clear plan and LRPstore would put some weight behind it. Love us or loath us we have a large enough customer base to fill quite a few places ...
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www.lrpstore.com LRP Store the UKs No1 LARP Shop Use the Code RULE7 to save ££££'s online 
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Wag
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Shelford (5/20/2008)
Measuring a game? The only way is by numbers that pay and turn up and even then if it’s a closed mates only game then you can’t. Whether a game is any good is like gauging the greatness of a TV show. Some folks (actually quite a lot) like Buffy. Me? It leaves me cold. That doesn’t mean Buffy is no good it means that I personally don’t go mad over it.
You're kind of missing the point. I was trying to get across that "everyone says it rocks" isn't really a good measure of a game. Not "measuring", but "a measure" - ie an indicator of what the game is actually like, rather than some kind of nebulous numbers.
Criticising (not judging, note) a game is not really that much like criticising a TV show, because as a player you are part of a game. It's an interactive medium. Some people like Buffy, it leaves you cold, but it might still be good - but it's something external to you. If someone has a criticism of a LRP, OTOH, then they're criticising something they were required to be part of themselves. It tends, in my experience, to produce a more level and rounded critique (even if most critics are fairly immediately leapt upon by the system's fanboys regardless of merit).
PD - Brother Farael of the Ordo Dictum Dominus
EOS - Some Raggard Scum, previously Some Arimin Scum
6P - System creator (now retired), Andrei Treune of Clan Suner (for the moment)
RL - Will Robinson
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Wag
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| Smiley face evaluation forms work well - people don't have to think too much about how they phrase their answers- but you have to make sure that the questions are spot on. We use a whole arsenal of tools to measure the success of our events, workshops, programmes and interventions. Something is bound to fit!
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