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Some of you may have heard...
Apr. 1st, 2007 05:03 amNow, this is completely unrelated to the date, honest. But as some of you heard, Sean and I announced to our players last week that we were cancelling the LARP we've been running for the last couple of years. For some odd reason, it took me just long enough to finish writing a little piece about why for the date to reach the first of April. It's something I've posted on our message board and the old Changeling LARP LiveJournal community, and I encourage my former players to check out the versions there because there's an extra message for them... however, here is the post explaining the reasons why we just can't run the game any more. I know it seems harsh, but all of the behaviors described in this little manifesto are stuff that Sean and I actually had to put up with while running the game over the last two years. The number of players who are genuinely innocent of the behavior described here is a pretty low one, and I'm not counting Sean and myself among those numbers, just for the record.
I originally planned out this huge essay discussing in gory detail my feelings about Morgantown's LARP community as a final statement to go with our announcement of the end of Before the Dawn. It had an outline and everything.
And then I thought it over and realized it was going to be insulting and probably offensive, and tore it down to rebuild from the start. I brought it back to the basics of why we can't do this any more; the stuff we have had to put up with that killed our enjoyment for the game and most likely more than a few other Storytellers in town. We promised ourselves when the weather got bad that we wouldn't pull a Night Lair and go into a weather-enforced hiatus just to cancel, but that's how things seemed to turn out. The time away from the game made us realize just how tired we were of all of the baggage of running it, and made us realize that we just had no reason to want to do it any more and were tired of banging our heads against the wall.
There's the basic answer, folks: We grew tired of it all.
We grew tired of players who were convinced the only way they could have a 'successful' session was by excluding everyone else from 'their' plotlines and often single-handedly tying up the Storyteller-in-Charge for an entire session.
We grew tired of having to correct players who thought that Grapevine was the final word on Trait availability because they couldn't wait until Friday to make sure what they wanted was available or legal.
We grew tired of players who expected us to run a game for them after accusing us behind our backs of cheating just to screw them over and think we'll never hear about it.
We grew tired of players who didn't have the respect or courtesy to bring their issues with the game to us face to face but would fall completely apart if one of us made a suggestion with no malice or subtext concerning their character.
We grew tired of players who would spend far more time and energy into removing other players' characters from game (often over a petty squabble, IC or OOC) than they would ever spend actually attempting to roleplay or even write a decent backstory.
We grew tired of introducing IC material like news reports only to have people discard and misquote them because they couldn't be bothered to care.
We grew tired of being expected to wait out in crummy weather to see if anyone would show up with little to no word of whether we were wasting our time, but being bombarded with phone calls when we ran a little late.
We grew tired of having to argue with each other over the ethical debate of "treat all players equally, regardless of quality" versus "when players actually make the game a joy to run, toss them a bone."
We grew tired of players who, when offered a boon of some sort (whether access to a rare power or the ability to connect their backstory right to the plot), abused it in every way possible for their own enjoyment with little regard to how much it was disrupting the group.
We grew tired of players who would decide to stop coming to game because they didn't want to deal with other players or characters they've pissed off.
We grew tired of players who would randomly join us for a session for no other reason than the lack of anything more entertaining to do and expect their free entertainment to be as focused on them as the players who bust their ass to be at the game and actually want to be there.
We grew tired of players' friends dropping by and insisting on interrupting us with constant requests to play an NPC just because they wanted something to do but would never come back for a second session.
We grew tired of having it rubbed in our faces that the stories we wrote were less important than the social game of 'King of the Hill' that went on.
We grew tired of going out of our way to share behind-the-scenes information with players to lower the barrier between Player and Storyteller just to have nobody care.
We grew tired of gathering people on Fridays because we wanted to tell stories that people would enjoy and being treated like shit when we gave priority to people who wanted to actually participate in the story.
We grew tired of LARP when putting effort into it passed beyond 'fun' and became 'work.'
The end of the LARP has been coming for a while, the seeds of it planted before we even decided to switch games. We've been ready to just end it for some time, especially with how the final session of the Changeling game went. We were extremely close to just declaring it dead then and there, but we spent our last motes of hope on the notion that maybe switching to a Hunter LARP would reinvigorate the joy we once had in the simple pleasure of bringing people together to tell stories and have them act out parts in said stories.
It didn't. Familiar patterns were beginning to emerge. We don't want to come across like we're blaming everyone else for the problem, and I know some of the problems I described seem pretty minor individually, but the fact is that over the last two years we went to a great deal of extra effort of trying to get around and get past some of the problems that past games had. And in response, several of the players just brought the same baggage to our game that they brought to other games in town because they were more interested in their own entertainment than that of the group.
On another message board someone once made a speech about how you only get from a LARP what you put into it. While I personally think that in the particular context he was far out of his tree and should have known better, I think in general the maxim holds true. LARP, whether people realize it or not, is a more collaborative effort than tabletop. What many players don't seem to realize is that while it's at least partially up to the Storytellers to make the game fun for the players, it's also up to the players to make the game fun for the Storytellers.
A good LARP needs players who are interested in helping the game run smoothly. Sometimes dropping a grudge to follow up plot hooks is enough. Sometimes it means calling Storytellers on their bullshit in a mature manner. And sometimes it means knowing that the Storytellers aren't running the game you want to play and going home rather than forcing your ideas of 'fun' on everybody and ruining the experience all around.
I've always been of the theory that occasional abuses of Storyteller authority in Morgantown have sprung from Storytellers who've decided to pervert the game to their own ends because they've given up on finding other ways to get enjoyment from the game. This behavior leads other players to assume too often that all of their Storytellers are corrupt, which leads to a cycle of misery that simply can't be broken by some Storytellers alone and won't be broken by others.
And this is why I have my standard line about how LARP is twice as hard as tabletop to run with only half the satisfaction. For far too long, the majority of players in this area have come to LARPs with the goal of securing their own entertainment and to hell with everyone else's. I can't speak for anyone else, but I enjoy simply being part of the story and feel the best way to do that is to know when to back off with my own requests and let the people in charge run the game.
Sean and I offer our thanks to those few players who've gone the extra mile to be a joy to run the game for and we're sorry that we had to cut it short like this. But the occasional good session aside, it's been a long time since running the game has been genuinely fun and having 3 or 4 of the greatest players in the world simply would not be able to turn the tide of what we've had to go through unless we were to run game only for them and nobody else. The long nights and nervous tics and weather-related colds that have resulted from it simply have not been worth the abuse we've suffered in return. It's actually gotten to the point where I honestly don't think I could ever actually play OWoD Changeling again, let alone any other OWoD LARPs.
I still plan on supporting other LARPs in the area, whether playing in them or just wishing them luck. I have an idea of the uphill battle ahead of them, but I honestly don't think that Morgantown will be able to get another big LARP to work unless players decide that they're more interested in a successful game than they are in selfish ego-masturbation.
I originally planned out this huge essay discussing in gory detail my feelings about Morgantown's LARP community as a final statement to go with our announcement of the end of Before the Dawn. It had an outline and everything.
And then I thought it over and realized it was going to be insulting and probably offensive, and tore it down to rebuild from the start. I brought it back to the basics of why we can't do this any more; the stuff we have had to put up with that killed our enjoyment for the game and most likely more than a few other Storytellers in town. We promised ourselves when the weather got bad that we wouldn't pull a Night Lair and go into a weather-enforced hiatus just to cancel, but that's how things seemed to turn out. The time away from the game made us realize just how tired we were of all of the baggage of running it, and made us realize that we just had no reason to want to do it any more and were tired of banging our heads against the wall.
There's the basic answer, folks: We grew tired of it all.
We grew tired of players who were convinced the only way they could have a 'successful' session was by excluding everyone else from 'their' plotlines and often single-handedly tying up the Storyteller-in-Charge for an entire session.
We grew tired of having to correct players who thought that Grapevine was the final word on Trait availability because they couldn't wait until Friday to make sure what they wanted was available or legal.
We grew tired of players who expected us to run a game for them after accusing us behind our backs of cheating just to screw them over and think we'll never hear about it.
We grew tired of players who didn't have the respect or courtesy to bring their issues with the game to us face to face but would fall completely apart if one of us made a suggestion with no malice or subtext concerning their character.
We grew tired of players who would spend far more time and energy into removing other players' characters from game (often over a petty squabble, IC or OOC) than they would ever spend actually attempting to roleplay or even write a decent backstory.
We grew tired of introducing IC material like news reports only to have people discard and misquote them because they couldn't be bothered to care.
We grew tired of being expected to wait out in crummy weather to see if anyone would show up with little to no word of whether we were wasting our time, but being bombarded with phone calls when we ran a little late.
We grew tired of having to argue with each other over the ethical debate of "treat all players equally, regardless of quality" versus "when players actually make the game a joy to run, toss them a bone."
We grew tired of players who, when offered a boon of some sort (whether access to a rare power or the ability to connect their backstory right to the plot), abused it in every way possible for their own enjoyment with little regard to how much it was disrupting the group.
We grew tired of players who would decide to stop coming to game because they didn't want to deal with other players or characters they've pissed off.
We grew tired of players who would randomly join us for a session for no other reason than the lack of anything more entertaining to do and expect their free entertainment to be as focused on them as the players who bust their ass to be at the game and actually want to be there.
We grew tired of players' friends dropping by and insisting on interrupting us with constant requests to play an NPC just because they wanted something to do but would never come back for a second session.
We grew tired of having it rubbed in our faces that the stories we wrote were less important than the social game of 'King of the Hill' that went on.
We grew tired of going out of our way to share behind-the-scenes information with players to lower the barrier between Player and Storyteller just to have nobody care.
We grew tired of gathering people on Fridays because we wanted to tell stories that people would enjoy and being treated like shit when we gave priority to people who wanted to actually participate in the story.
We grew tired of LARP when putting effort into it passed beyond 'fun' and became 'work.'
The end of the LARP has been coming for a while, the seeds of it planted before we even decided to switch games. We've been ready to just end it for some time, especially with how the final session of the Changeling game went. We were extremely close to just declaring it dead then and there, but we spent our last motes of hope on the notion that maybe switching to a Hunter LARP would reinvigorate the joy we once had in the simple pleasure of bringing people together to tell stories and have them act out parts in said stories.
It didn't. Familiar patterns were beginning to emerge. We don't want to come across like we're blaming everyone else for the problem, and I know some of the problems I described seem pretty minor individually, but the fact is that over the last two years we went to a great deal of extra effort of trying to get around and get past some of the problems that past games had. And in response, several of the players just brought the same baggage to our game that they brought to other games in town because they were more interested in their own entertainment than that of the group.
On another message board someone once made a speech about how you only get from a LARP what you put into it. While I personally think that in the particular context he was far out of his tree and should have known better, I think in general the maxim holds true. LARP, whether people realize it or not, is a more collaborative effort than tabletop. What many players don't seem to realize is that while it's at least partially up to the Storytellers to make the game fun for the players, it's also up to the players to make the game fun for the Storytellers.
A good LARP needs players who are interested in helping the game run smoothly. Sometimes dropping a grudge to follow up plot hooks is enough. Sometimes it means calling Storytellers on their bullshit in a mature manner. And sometimes it means knowing that the Storytellers aren't running the game you want to play and going home rather than forcing your ideas of 'fun' on everybody and ruining the experience all around.
I've always been of the theory that occasional abuses of Storyteller authority in Morgantown have sprung from Storytellers who've decided to pervert the game to their own ends because they've given up on finding other ways to get enjoyment from the game. This behavior leads other players to assume too often that all of their Storytellers are corrupt, which leads to a cycle of misery that simply can't be broken by some Storytellers alone and won't be broken by others.
And this is why I have my standard line about how LARP is twice as hard as tabletop to run with only half the satisfaction. For far too long, the majority of players in this area have come to LARPs with the goal of securing their own entertainment and to hell with everyone else's. I can't speak for anyone else, but I enjoy simply being part of the story and feel the best way to do that is to know when to back off with my own requests and let the people in charge run the game.
Sean and I offer our thanks to those few players who've gone the extra mile to be a joy to run the game for and we're sorry that we had to cut it short like this. But the occasional good session aside, it's been a long time since running the game has been genuinely fun and having 3 or 4 of the greatest players in the world simply would not be able to turn the tide of what we've had to go through unless we were to run game only for them and nobody else. The long nights and nervous tics and weather-related colds that have resulted from it simply have not been worth the abuse we've suffered in return. It's actually gotten to the point where I honestly don't think I could ever actually play OWoD Changeling again, let alone any other OWoD LARPs.
I still plan on supporting other LARPs in the area, whether playing in them or just wishing them luck. I have an idea of the uphill battle ahead of them, but I honestly don't think that Morgantown will be able to get another big LARP to work unless players decide that they're more interested in a successful game than they are in selfish ego-masturbation.
