Don't fear personal plot

by Martin Gill

What’s your favourite film?

Is it the one with the awesome special effects where the heroes spend the entire time scratching their heads, wondering why people they've never met before are attacking them? The one where the heroes have deep, complex back-stories involving the lust for revenge, unrequited love, long-lost friends and deep, dark secrets, but none of that is ever referenced in the movie and the whole thing is shallow and lacks motivation? Or maybe the one where none of the heroes have any emotional link to the villain, and really don’t care one way or another whether their evil plan works or fails?

No?

You wouldn't watch those movies, they’d be boring. The characters wouldn't tie into the plot and there’d be no emotional investment in either the hero or the villain living or dying, winning or losing.

So why do so many LARP events play out like this?

I'm constantly stunned when I hear (and I have done frequently) experienced, established event organisers make comments like “I don’t want personal plot, it gets in the way.” To me, that’s a ridiculous position to take. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what engages audiences. It’s a flawed and even arrogant assumption to assume that just because you've written an uber-complex backstory and a wicked plot with some cool set-piece encounters, anyone is actually going to give a crap about it in- or out of character. 

Not every event has to be deeply interactive, but every event should be engaging, and the players should feel linked to the plot and able to impact its outcome in some way. Otherwise, it’s just fancy-dress sport. The best props, set dressing and combats in the world mean nothing if none of the players care why they are there, and worse still, often unfathomable plots and uber-NPCs mean that the players are unable to influence the outcome of events, so feel even more disenfranchised. Amy Farrah Fowler eloquently describes this phenomenon in Big Bang Theory…

“Indiana Jones plays no role in the outcome of the story. If he weren't in the film, it would turn out exactly the same… If he weren't in the movie, the Nazis would still have found the Ark, taken it to the island, opened it up, and all died, just like they did.”

Personal plot doesn't have to mean that every player has a set of richly described and acted NPCs. It can, and often that makes the experience even richer for the player, but it can be as simple as tying players into the main events of the weekend so they feel as if they can influence the outcome of the story in some way. You don’t have to re-write your entire plot – just tweak it so that it’s personally relevant to your players. Orcs killed someone’s family? Well then make the orc baddies members of that very clan, not another random bunch of orcs. Give the chieftain a one line, throwaway comment at the start of one of the combats as he points at said player and yells “Ha, I killed your father, now you die.” It doesn't take much, but that minor change suddenly makes that entire plot ABOUT that character, rather than it HAPPENING TO a bunch of characters that are really neither here-nor-there about it. 

Personally, I believe in going a hell of a lot further when it comes to immersion and personalization of the LARP experience to your players. I’ll write more on that in the future. But for now, here’s my rallying call to event organisers everywhere.

Don’t fear personal plot.

Plot and brief writing - finding the perfect formula by Martin Gill

All Rights Martin Gill

How to write an awesome character background that refs will love

“Grythor the Ranger was born in the remote village of Oldbridge in the northern territories. He wandered the woods as a child, learning the secret paths of the forests and even at times, the very tongues of the animals. He was taught the old ways by Harborth the druid, who died leaving no other apprentices. But one day, on the morn of his sixteenth birthday, he returned to his village to find naught but charred ruin. His mother and father lay dead, as did all of the villagers. Grythor’s superlative tracking skills allowed him to follow the trail through the forests. There he found orcs, a tribe of them. For the next five years, Grythor waged bloody war upon the Severed Hand tribe, slaying every last one of them. Dead. Now, his revenge complete, he has become an adventurer.”

Sound depressingly familiar?

I’ve been running LARP in one form or another for more than 20 years now. I’ve lost count of the number of backgrounds I’ve read which enter into excruciating detail about their characters favorite food, the cities they visited while they were on their gap year or the shade of autumnal gold their dead girlfriend’s hair shimmered under the light of the setting sun.

Who cares?

OK, so maybe you do as a player, because it adds richness to the way you portray your character, which is all good. But as an event organizer, this often doesn’t help me. Here’s why. Far too many character backgrounds are either way too long, masking important detail amidst needless ephemera, or are so short as to contain almost no useful hooks an organizer can work with. Worse still, they outline a plot hook (orcs killed my parents…) then close all possibility of that story continuing (…and I slew every last one of them), forcing organizers to dream up ghosts, long-lost orcs and such to persist what was obviously a pivotal moment in your character’s development. But the biggest crime most backgrounds commit is they tell us nothing about how you see your ongoing story arc progressing.

They look backwards, not forwards.

So how can you change this? Well, here’s three simple things you can do to write a background that event organizers can have fun with, and in turn provide fun for you…

Be clear on what’s important and what isn’t. Sure, dream up tons of detail on the names of your four cousins, their dogs and cats and what flavor cake they all like. But if it’s minor detail, leave it out, or at least provide a summary of the critical components to help the refs (who are reading dozens of these things).  For instance, “My wife has been kidnapped, I’m searching for her”. Additional details include, I’m Catholic, I was educated at Oxford, I have a BA in History, I admire the poetry of Yeats, I have a sister who lives in San Francisco who owns a book shop. All interesting things that your refs can riff on, but not the main point, and presented in 10 pages of wordy prose, mask what’s actually important.

Be open and leave hooks. We are back to the “…and I slew every last one of them” vibe. Invent enemies, foils, problems, things you haven’t solved, weaknesses. What’s going to haunt you? What do you need to resolve? “I’m a space smuggler with a broken down old ship that’s prone to conking out, a price on my head that every bounty-hunter this side of Ord Mantell wants to collect and a penchant for princesses.” Which leads us to…

Tell us what you want to happen to you. What’s you character’s story? Revenge? Finding love? Hitting it big? A descent into madness? Finding his kidnapped wife? Focusing on what you want to happen next is a much more direct way of telling the organisers what you will enjoy at the event, rather than forcing them to try and interpret what you want form the detail of your background. Sometimes, your story might not fit, in which case the organisers can be honest and let you know you might need to think of a different approach. But you reduce the risk of coming away form an event saying “well, my character really wanted to find his kidnaped wife, but she never showed up” because the organisers lost that critical hook in the morass of other information.

Think about what you want to happen to your character, not what has happened, and remember that your event organisers aren’t psychic. Be concise, be open, tell them what you want form the event and sure, invent tons of detail, but leave that for your own characterization.

Your background makes your character who she is today. It’s what you do on events that makes LARP fun. Make it easy for organisers to give you what you want.

Typical crew! - all rights Martin Gill

LRP Catering diary - a humorous portrait

A year to go you agree to make food for a planned event.

6 months to go you send in a proposed menu and ask for £15 a head, it is haggled down to £10, you adjust the menu accordingly, then are encouraged to do the original one.... For £10 a head.

3 months to go - there is a discussion about making in-character food, that looks bad, but tastes good. You explain that they asked you to do it because you like making nice food. If they wanted prison food they could just buy tins. They discuss adding dye to make your good food look bad. You politely decline.

2 months to go - a picnic, tea, coffee, baby food, loo roll, washing up liquid, bin bags, milk and in character pizza oven are requested as part of the budget.

1 month to go - you are asked what roles you can also "do" to help. They say crew will wash up to help you. The least you can do is have a character name and background, you think this up and send it in.

3 weeks to go - they think about moving the location of the dining and ask if you could deliver it by rickshaw. Still no numbers or cash.

Two weeks to go, you celebrate the coming of cash... you mourn as the numbers have increased. You ask whether anyone has allergies to be aware of and are bombarded by requests to avoid foods they dislike. You work out you have to make 6 different meals per serving. One of the party only appears to imbibe dust and water.

One week to go - you go to the warehouse after work and buy a car full of food.  The whole week you return home from work to cook until 11 pm and then wash up. Your work clothes, bed etc. all smell of roast pork. You scrape together 2 unmatched socks and a pair of pants as you haven't managed to do laundry in 2 weeks.

Friday morning - you pack car and drive a long way through the worst weather and hold ups. A 4 hour trip is made infinitely more jolly by the addition of 3 hours.

Friday night - you arrive late, unpack in a rainstorm, carry it all to site and get food on to heat. Then get into kit so as not to ruin the atmosphere. All the players queue up with plates from the moment they smell food and bay like ravenous hounds until fed. You then get the scraps and wash and clean up for an hour. You have a vague notion you will stay up for a while - then remember the breakfast preparation and go to set up your tent in a hailstorm and fall into a damp cold bed.

Saturday morning - you are up at 7 to get breakfast going. This is made more difficult by the night owls having trashed the place. The early birds also constantly enquire over hot drinks. Everyone wants all the food asap. Despite saying you will finish breakfast at 10, you have folks asking what's left at 11.30.

Saturday lunch - after a restful 30 minutes sitting down where you nodded and smiled to some folks whilst mentally going through the prep for lunch - you prep for lunch. Once started you are invariably asked when it will be ready by the refs- there never seems to be an answer that will NOT result in the request for it to be an hour later. Guess what? - still no washing up help...

Enjoy the 2 hour sojourn - perhaps get some sun on you while you walk to the toilet or wash your face. True masters often enjoy a penny-lean snooze. On field events you enjoy the second walk to the tap for a gallon of fresh water and on your way carry 3 bin bags mostly full of cans and empty bottles.

Saturday dinner- only 3 of the planned 8 vegetarians turn up, but they seem to have been replaced by another 6 "I want all meat and won't eat vegetables" types. You think you are nearly finished but are asked feed some folks that were busy running encounters - at 10pm. You eventually clean and wash up. You fall into bed exhausted.

Sunday morning - alarm fails and you run ragged trying to get breakfast done asap. Portion sizes on previous must have been wrong or you catered for an extra 6 without realising. Items run out before service ends. Sad faces and grumps make you miserable.

Begin clean of catering kitchen - it has not been cleaned thoroughly for about a year...filters on cooker produce a crude oil that could run the gennie. On field events you disassemble your kitchen and have to carry it back to the car as everyone else is busy.

You only make enough to cover going to the event.
You work for about 6 hours every day, standing up.

So why does anyone do it?! ....for the appreciation and recognition. Seeing folks enjoy their food is a massive buzz. Knowing you add to an event for your friends is great too. 

So let us love larp caterers! Show appreciation, and if you have complaints, don't share them, because they are not running a business, instead they just worked a whole week AND weekend to try and make your event better.