by Ethan "JB" Goldman
This treatise is a lot less important than my last one, and is based on my same observances, but I think it might be useful.
When I wrote about what made the Realms better then 'Competing Product', I did so not to undercut the values of other LARPs, or to say Realms and LARPing are inherently valuable. Everyone who bothers to read a Facebook post about LARPing understands LARPing is fun and instructive on various matters, the point is that Realms is a unique LARP with a structure with many benefits. Many people seem to consider Realms a transitional LARP, something you grow out of, then you play Real LARPS. Then again, the same can be said of college. However the reason the Realms lasts longer then “Real LARPS" is because 'Competing Products' lack many advantages the Realms has, and that a the differences between 'Competing Products' are far less then the differences between 'Competing Products' and Realms itself. The realms doesn't compete with Mythic Journeys, or Magischola, it competes with Everything. And it does so at an affordable price.
That having been said there ARE advantages to a 'Competing Product', mostly a centralized structure and production value. Despite what you may worry about, BOTH of these are quite manageable in our system.
The Realms disjointed sequence of micro-events simply means to get a central narrative you simply have to stick to a single “Nation” storyline, and consider the other events Different Stories. As for production value, most of this simply involves raising the price of an event, or calling in a bunch of favors to ask old EHs for their weird monster outfits.
In fact several nations DO try to run a game like Competing Product, and mostly… they fall flat, or flattish. The things many of these events do well are things REALMS does well, not what the 'Competing Products' do well. So you reach a situation where the events feel like they might have been better if done more typically, despite the Realms proving it can run a summer camp, a space plot, and a dodgeball tournament, effectively. And I believe there is a simple reason why, and when it is resolved a fully dedicated group can surpass other games in scale and scope.
That situation is consistency.
Not consistency in quality mind, this isn't a bootstrap thing, consistency in EVERYTHING else. Most event staff are a rolling number, with a limited amount of administration, event sites are often “Whatever is available” and our events are usually three different formatted events a year, with maybe a similar enemy.
This gives a lot of advantage, diversity in experience, actual content, so forth. But when trying to run an open ended quest they backfire. There is an important platitude of “The more things change the more things stay the same”, and most games do not fully embrace that. What doesn't change helps set the REAL changes apart. You can see the consequences of your actions because it's always on the same canvas.
What makes 'Competing Products' work is consistency in activity and setting. A game will be hosted four times a year, in a single site, with various locations consistently and constantly being “This place here”. So that one can draw a map of the actual game. Often the map would be very bunched up with everything happening within eyesight of the tavern unless “Secret exploration” is needed, but the point is the Tavern is always the Tavern, the mod building is always “Whatever it needs to be” the knights are always at “This other building with the funny banner” etc. This also happens four times a year, with the events focuses less on furthering a specific plot or conflict than selling the idea that, yes you are at Place. Our events can have the same place show up “Wherever it needs to” with one building being multiple things depending on the time of day, and often you rarely meet the same guy from event A and event B. Maybe this is because we keep killing people.
The frequency helps cement the value in remembering details about the place, let's staff remember details about the players, and overall contributes to a sense of general importance for both sides. Rather than too many events happening at the same year to make it hard to remember the Court Juggler, the Juggler simply doesn't show up often enough to cement himself.
Separately, the consistency of locations help sell the general idea that yes, you are in Place, its always been Place, and Place is bigger than the Bad thing. This means there are often at least two main antagonists with different goals, and even lesser C list antagonists that either work for someone else or are more of a nuisance. And while many stories tie into these main antagonists and plot, there are many ways to engage in the world without needed to directly address the issue. Such as the unique skills and talents one can learn, or resource gathering. Contrariwise many of these lesser plots provide tools to either hinder the villains or assist in the means to defeat them. Market control can let one find logistics of the evil armies supplies and start starving them out. Noble intrigue can reveal hidden spies that you can subvert and gain more power from the villain. In general any one plot is either an insulated fun thing simply meant to establish tone and lore, or tied to two different things so that it can contribute down the line to more plots and conflict, as well as directly show causality. At the moment causality can be difficult, since the time between events is such that most specifics become hazy for either side by the time it's brought up again.
The Night Quest, which is unique to us, often remains the same linear super event even in these open ended games, which can cause a big problem, because if players can choose to engage in plots in the day, its possible that the big climatic plot involves a antagonist or story many of the players DIDN'T know about, and have no real reason to engage in. In many competing products the night is more of the day, with the only difference being more dangerous enemies and more unsavory types and higher stakes being involved. In addition often the night quest seems to be one of the few events with real consequences, what happens DURING the more open ended parts of the game do not often seem to matter as much to the events after.
All these issues CAN be resolved, and more, with certain tricks.
The first is to simply have more Quests, replace North/South war with Spring Folkestone Questing, which is STILL in Teng Hua and the tavern is still a dumpling shop, and the training yard is still where Yokai are and so forth. The locations remain the same, the faces are familiar but the problems are new. Repetition creates recognition. With this familiarity and consistency, what happens at these events can cause consistent localized consequences in these locales.
The second is to simply expand the scope of the problem. Not in the on paper scale, but when going between event sites, you establish these are different places, show some different features or characters… then you show the old characters and establish their reach or danger. These events also are able to affect the bigger Wide Event, with NPCs remembering players based on what happened at these events, all tying into a apparent eye for detail (in reality most often these staff have several Plot Leads with near absolute control over one or two of these quests once they get greenlit, so only the Plot Lead for say, tea house plot, has to remember all the tea house stuff, the Samurais can remain entirely ignorant without breaking the idea that what that player did was a big deal).
This is what the Realms tends to do wrong for a Wide Event. Too few events to establish importance and maps and faces tend to be too varied or flux. Having designated NPCS who are involved and introduce the same string of plots in the same places will really cement the significance of the different events within the bigger plot.
Now advantages the Realms has for such events.
The Feast. The Feast and tournament can easily serve as backdrops to help establish characters for the more open ended roaming quests. With many feasts having quests, you can simply tie small quests of fighting and exploration to various people who will show up in the Bigger Quests. For tournaments you can do the same, and introduce antagonistic competitors. You can even just take a one day linear quest and have the quest giver and foes be recognizable and establish it as a big deal in the open ended questing event later. The Realms can further a longer more open ended story with the more typical fair, so long as the open ended events remain important for interaction and progression. (Some times it seems the story only moves forward thanks to the linear elements of an event such as the night quest, not what you did during the day). The Realms is really good at setting up linearly designed plots and quests, what it needs is how to divide that attention to groups while still seeming like the same product.
Nations. One of the things that make it hard to follow plots in 'Competing Products' is that you wont know what no one tells you about, and so you might not be in a storyline you would REALLY want to be involved in, or any storyline, because you don't know who is involved in what. In fact most games will have an eventual calcification of players into different subgroups based on the storylines and skills they have and are involved in. In our games our players wear billboards advertising the tones and elements they are interested in, which means it can be easy to either cater a plotline to a certain group that seems bored, or know which players to seek out for a plotline to ensure the content is pulled off successfully. And those players have an incentive to bring in other players, so it can be much easier to split and entertain individuals. Example, if you tell Neden “Funny Pickle Man is actually the arch angel Zuriel and he needs your help saving the dreams of children from dark forces”, Neden will play that ENTIRELY STRAIGHT, far straighter then Neden plays anything else, including our characters. We will die for Funny Pickle Man, the children need us. And if Funny Pickle man needs us to deal with a Demonic Board Game from Hell during the night quest instead of fighting the armies of Valshire, well thats a whole nation out of the night quest with the cost of maybe 2 NPCs and a game of Monopoly.
Staffing. It can be a lot harder to get staff for certain games, usually they need to recruit almost everyone who is helping them before the first event and stick to that group forever. If a Realms event needs extra muscle they can simply offer gold, or ask nicely, which makes it much easier to actually run the events. Most 'Competing Product's don't have what it takes to run a quest that has “Everyone” in it, they have to split the groups and divide and conquer to ensure they have the manpower to not be immediately bowled over. The realms CAN get the ratios of staff to pcs to do this. It's EXPECTED to. Thats a hell of a thing. Hell so many players are mercenaries so you can just have a NPC hire a player TO NPC AS THEIR PLAYER, and they WILL.
Note this advice doesn't make a great EVENT, Realms HAS great events. We have thoroughly mastered the Dungeon quest to a T, and generally know what makes a night quest fun. But these skills do not fully apply to intrigue and dramatic stories, in my opinion this is whats needed.
To showcase the successes. A huge thing Folkestone did was make sure Feast Of Teng Hua happened BEFORE Folkestone questing. This really established the tone of Teng Hua and what to look for before that event started. So players were able to find what they were engaged in. The day events always help establish WHY the night quest is important, so everyone understands why they are engaging in a high profile attack against this big evil ghost general.
Likewise Chimeron often successfully can handle several divided events of different tone at the same event.
The things these places need is not something New compared to what they are trying now, its More of the Same, with Ghost Generals and Yokai and reacting to the past and allowing emergent story telling to unfold.
Reversing this, Ragnarock succeeds heavily in consequence driven story telling, without the open ended “This is Ragnarok” feel that Wide Events have. No one will doubt the importance of Saurabia in saving Ragnarok, or that its thumbprint is clear and distinct from the hand of “The Players”. All it needs is the wide format where players can look at all they accomplished and chill with their dinosaurs.
When both of these techniques are accomplished by a single nation or EH group, the Realms will be able to fully and totally compete with the ninety dollar Big Boys on their own terms.
