Firefly LARP thread - soliciting ideas/feedback

POSTED BY: TenthCrewMember
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 21:14
VIEWED: 18564
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VINTERDRAKEN

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 8:19 AM

Swedish LARP games are a bit different from most others in the world. First off were not so heavy on rules. Secondly we usually build up the place that the LARP is set, Ie if we ever had a LARP inside a ship we would try to build a ship. Usually we build small towns out in the forest and have pretty big areas in wich we LARP. Average LARP´s have somewhere between 100-200 people on them, and there usually set in a Fantasy setting, but we have alot of Vampire LARPs aswell but these have fewer players (20-50). Gamemasters and support personel usually have normal roles on the LARPs here. Having a Firefly LARP here would be expensive, most likely there would be a colony settlement built up and the story would focus around it. A LARP of that type would probebly cost 75-100$ per person.

You can’t stop the Signal.
Keep spreading the word about Firefly!

DUELIST

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:20 PM

My SciFi Western LARP rules system is called "BIG SKY." A manuscript draft version of the first half of the system, the Player's Handbook, can be downloaded from:

www.savefile.com/files/9805348

I'd really like some feedback on this. The combat system is a bit more rough-and-tumble than most American LARPs, but well within the mainstream for Airsoft or SCA-type events.

I know a number of Airsoft/paintball field owners in Illinois and Wisconsin that could be talked into hosting a Firefly-based weekend Airsoft LARP if there is enough interest. My shop builds props for these guys on a regular basis.

If anybody likes the first half of the rules, I will finish and post the Event Planner's Guide.

CODEXILE

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:33 PM

I very briefly looked over the rules, I'm at work at the moment. I'll look at them in more depth later tonight.

However, I do have a quick question:

Why is your FPS limit so low? I have a group of friends who would be interested in playing, but we already have guns between 350-400fps as that's what' most games we play at allow.

DUELIST

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 9:37 PM

400 fps maximum would be fine with me personally. The actual fps limit used at a particular event is almost always set by the field owner, anyway. I just used the limit the local airsoft field uses, mostly because we have a lot of kids playing with low-end springers - the better-equipped players at the Chicago-Rockford area fields are allowed to shoot hotter. I can shop around for a 400 fps field. Read the rest of the rules when you have a chance and let me know what else seems iffy.

CODEXILE

Thursday, May 25, 2006 12:27 AM

"The standard medium of exchange within the entire system is the Homeworld Credit, or 'HOC.' The organizers will determine how much cash your character has on hand at the beginning of an event, and issue you the appropriate stack of HOCs."

"Expensive specialty gear, like bulletproof vests or surgical tools, will probably be carried only by those with the background to use such stuff."

These things can get out of control in the hands of unfair marshalls. I'd be concerned with people who write a history *intended* to get expensive gear with. Also, beware of marshalls who unfairly give one player more HOC's than another. The proverbial "hook-up" if you will.

"Anything you bring into the game with you may be traded to another player, stolen, or looted by another for the duration of the game event."

This can be bad times. While I for one very much appreciate the realism of theft in a LARP, nobody likes losing their out of game gear. I wouldn't be bringing any expensive guns to a game with this rule in place. At another LARP I play, we use item "tags" to represent an item. If something is stolen you give them the "tag" which represents the item completely, they just need to find their own rep. Of course, if I'm on the ground dead and my good buddy I can trust OOG came up and took my gun, I'd definately let them borrow the rep as well. I just think it needs to be situational, not a rule.

I understand what you're saying with "toys break", etc. I just think a lot of people will end up mad.

"Broken stuff is worth a LOT less, so it pays to take care of other peoples' equipment while you have it."

If my only motivation for not breaking some guys $300 tokyo marui assault rifle is game money, then I think we'll see a lot of mistreated airsoft weapons.

"Any gear that your character acquired during the game that doesn't actually belong to you must be traded in to the organizers for game cash at the end of the event."

In a game where items require tags, you don't even need to add this level of unrealism to the game. People can just keep the stuff they end up with. Overall, it's your call. Just a suggestion.

"A doc may tear or cut your clothing in order to reach a wound site."

Again, I appreciate the realism, but I don't think anybody would be happy about this.

"Players who are known to regularly resist taking hits tend to get sprayed in the face on full auto, or otherwise pounded upon."

Haha, definately.

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I like your medical rules a lot. Especially the emphasis on roleplay.

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" Scanning & Detected - Player calls for using an Adtech Scanner. Think 'Marco Polo.' Call, "Scanning, Scanning, Scanning?." All characters within earshot must call "Detected!" each time they hear the "Scanning!" call."

Does this imply that the Detected players notice they're being scanned, or would that be metagaming? It would be difficult not to cheese that one.

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The ship rules seem really in depth, I'm impressed, How did you come up with all this?

It's hard for me to guage the ship rules without playing, although ship on ship combat seems like it could be quite anticlimatic. I don't know, I just hate die rolls (or any kind of randomness) in a larp.

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What about skills? It doesn't seem like you have any method of learning new skills or improving your character other than getting rich, getting better gear, or writing it into your history.

I think a skill tree could seriously improve this game, but maybe that's not what you were going for. Just my opinion.

I was writing an airsoft larp a month or two back, I might be able to throw out some suggestions for skills if you're interested.

Hope this helps! I really like a lot of the rules here, if I seem overcritical it's just because I picked out the things that seemed off in my mind.

Great job!

DUELIST

Thursday, May 25, 2006 2:48 PM

No problem, criticize away, I need honest feedback. I wrote these rules with the intention of stimulating a little controversy. I was trying for a minimalist Scandinavian-style rules structure, with as strong emphasis on actual roleplay and as little paper-pushing as possible. I wanted to put the roleplaying experience before the respect for disposable property, and to try to inject just a tiny dollop of actual risk/consequences to one's game actions.

So many American LARPs are stultifyingly boring because NOTHING REAL EVER HAPPENS. It's all talk and flashing of cards, with the occasional hurling of a beanbag. From the outside, they look really dumb, because the organizers are overly concerned that Biffy and Billy will be upset if someone musses up their costume armor.

The whole reason I love Firefly as a LARP platform is that the props needed would be cheap and entirely expendable. There is no way I would bring my $300 Tokyo Marui to a BIG SKY game, but I wouldn't be crying in my beer afterwards if my $40 springer pumpgun got stepped on and my $5 Goodwill pants were torn so the doc could patch up my leg. I might be a little pissed and go hunting for the character who shot me and smashed my gun, looking for payback, but that's the whole point. My character would have a real reason for hunting down or avoiding that other guy. Roleplaying is much more interesting when something is at stake. Mal is a huge bundle of just such motivations, and it is his creative decisionmaking that makes him fun to watch.

I understand what you're saying about the desire for a mapped-out skill aquisition path (I'm guilty of writing quite a few of these myself) but I REALLY wanted to stay away from that oh-so-typical American/British LARPer tendency to drain all the blood out of a game through administrative control-freakiness. The problem with skills trees is that they have to be administered, because they are a stylized substitute for actual skills. To do well in a BIG SKY combat situation, a player needs to be able to shoot straight, move well and think clearly under pressure - as opposed to having a handful of properly countersigned lammies that explain he's a 67th level King of Londinum with a Class III Whompum Blaster and a Magic Shiny Hat.

The event organizers issue licenses to Pilots and Doctors, and they handpick certain key characters. Beyond that, if you wanna pick a lock (or whatever,) you better really know how to do it.

I'll get back to you on the whole spaceship section in my next post. I was trying for a very specific kind of experience, one that could probably be better done with networked computers. The overall idea was to create meaningful roles for folk who want to avoid even the possibility of combat as much as possible - the Washes and Kaylees.

DUELIST

Thursday, May 25, 2006 4:34 PM

Oh, yeah, I knew there was something else. Fairness and Play Balance, the twin gods of American gaming. The Myth of the Level Playing Field. LARPs don't have to kneel at their altars, because the goal in a LARP isn't to determine who is The Best. BIG SKY ain't football.

Specifically about money and special goodies: the recommendations for distributing HOCs and specialty items are covered in the Event Planner's Guide, which I haven't posted yet (because I'm not done writing it yet.)

When thinking about such things, it is important to remember that LARPs strive to simulate an alternative life, and that Life is Not Fair regarding distribution of wealth and resources. this is one of the fundamental facts of the Firefly Verse. For a BIG SKY game to work, there must be Haves and Have Nots. The Haves hire the Have Nots to do their dirty work; sometimes the Have Nots perpetrate a little dirty work of their own on selected Haves. Each role has its own appeals and drawbacks. A LARP is not about measuring who the winners and losers are, it's about creating an immersive environment. Niska is a Have, Mal is a borderline Have Not, Kaylee and Jayne and Wash are solidly in the Have Not catagory, the Tams are former Haves now the most desperate of Have Nots. Who's the Best? Silly question, right? The show is a package deal, all the characters are needed, same with a LARP. None are winners or losers - they are simply character roles to be played ad lib as convincingly as possible.

With this in mind, so what if an event planner showers one player with goodies? That player is now a Have, and some Have Nots will be gunning for him or her for no other reason than that's where the money is. Part of the role of that "fortunate" player is now to stay a Have, which can be real tough sometimes - think of River, or Jayne right after his skiff got whacked over the future site of Jaynestown.

Squeeze the inequities out of the LARP, and you squeeze out a lot of the flavor as well. You have to leave room for people to have genuine emotional responses, even unpleasant ones like anger and frustration, so any victory that comes along will seem genuinely sweet. Your players must be mature enough to understand this critical fact. The key to such lofty LARP goals is to screen your players the way that the Scandinavian LARPers do.

Anyway, spaceships. I hate dice too, but the idea behind the BIG SKY ship rules is that the ship Ref is the only one who ever has to roll 'em. Most weekend-long games will involve no more than a one to four ships anyway. The Pilots all experience the rolls as announcements of ship status over their radios. To players, this will all sound and feel a lot like an airplane pilot communicating with the Tower. The whole ship system is a compromise of my goal of creating a minimalist LARP. I tried to design a simple and low-tech substitute for an element not in my power to reproduce more realistically. Like I said before, the whole ship thing would probably be better done on a computer network, but I'm no programmer.

CODEXILE

Thursday, May 25, 2006 4:45 PM

Cool. I can appreciate your "Have" and "Have Not" style of game without the guise of fairness

I think I've played too many LARP's where everybody needs to have the transform and the +3 to play the game.

----

EDIT:

Ooh, that came out wrong. What I meant is, with inequality as a game mechanic, it's a cool idea.

CAPTAINDAK

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 12:11 AM

Where is your Big Sky LARP located?

TUJIAOZUO

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 9:14 PM

Nerf guns can be modded up really well for some firefly esque weaponry.

Matilda before

Matilda after

I used a few faux finish spray paints to get a nice metal effect on some pieces, then took the time of add some gold paint in tiny amounts to certain edges to give it some added texture and in the end took a rag and some black paint to it and weathered it (it has a nice black burn around the barrel from 'repeated firings'). The trick is to use a clear coat to seal it all so the paint doesn't scratch, then put it carefully back together. I've also seen people glue little bits of metal work to them to gussy them up a little.

guns and ammo
- http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=amb_link_5392602_4?ie=UTF8&node=165793011&
field-asin=B002V1F7K4|B002V1B2J4|B002VEC86W|B002VEC876|B001RC5M5I|B001RBWY14|B0002UP0IA|B002VEC8TO|B000ETQR3Q|B0013UCANQ|B0013U95U2|B00083HJ26|B002VEC8WQ|B002VEC8X0|B002VEC8V2|B002VEC8VC|B002VEC8SK|B002QFZIH2|B002QFVBD2|B00196B8O6&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-6&pf_rd_r=07JKJZ46CK870PG3MQJ2&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1264181382&pf_rd_i=368868011

- http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=amb_link_5392602_10?ie=UTF8&node=165793011
&field-asin=B002G1PS76|B00284C4FK|B002GPYHB0|B00284C4FA|B002QG1B4U|B002QG1B9U|B001RC5MDA|B001RC5MDU|B00284C4FU|B001LOTI0W|B001BR7JBO|B001GJ0Q1M|B001GIYA2Y|B001GIYA42|B002VEC87Q|B002VEC880&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-6&pf_rd_r=07JKJZ46CK870PG3MQJ2&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1264181382&pf_rd_i=368868011

The maverick is a nice model. it loads like a six shooter and rarely jams. Nice feel, goes well with the sci-fi western motif. I've done a few standoffs with a friend who bought the Strike Recon Cs-6 the same time I bought my maverick. His clips jammed frequently and the if he put the removable barrel on slightly off it would bend the trajectory path of the darts. Maverick's a solid shot and I've pwnd him quite a few times.
- http://www.amazon.com/Nerf-Strike-Maverick-Blaster-Double/dp/B002VEC8T
O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1276722565&sr=1-2

annnd some mod/paint links-

- http://www.instructables.com/id/Pirate-esque-Nerf-Gun-Conversion/

- http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Ultimate-Nerf-Vulcan-Mod/

- http://www.scribd.com/doc/6132685/Nerf-Gun-Paintjobs

- http://www.weeklygeekshow.com/2007/09/how_to_make_a_kick_ass_steampu.p
hp?fbc_channel=1

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