Goals And Assessing Goals in LARP

It's month Five for the new Chronicle of stories in Mind's Eye Society. Tensions are raised, alliances made, drama unfolding. And then there are the character interactions. *insert snare drum*

If this were TV, by this point into a season I'm starting to look and see what threads are starting to form, what arcs are beginning to build. I'm debating to see if the show itself has merit or not as time goes by. While LARPing isn't TV, there is definitely an episodic element to it as we meet and gather every month and most of us storytellers run with our personal themes and arcs. So as I assess the new chronicle lineup, I start looking more towards my characters and what they've got going on.

Not much, from the looks of it.

In Lost, my PC Jin is in a fit of dire straits as the Seasonal Courts (which he used to be a part of) are growing more and more erratic in their actions, which are leading to an increasing worry from the Directional Courts (which he is now one of the rulers of). It's a bit difficult to express this, because he's West Court, he's Honor and Warfare. His first notions are to try and maintain or rolling in and shooting shit. He's also in a position in which his backup is non-existent. The Directional Courts, minus Jin, are all NPCs. That means that most of the Directional Courts gusto falls on me and Jin to deliver to the other players. So I have a goal there, but how do I go about doing it? Do I just back away and build up my resources to make sure that when the West Court is needed, it won't just be me on my loansome? Or do I throw in with the others and basically go against my PC's principles? At this point, due to the drama, Jin is almost forced to the sidelines as anything would be a breach of his position and his code.

In Requiem, Owen was meant to be a go between between the founders of his House and the rest of Kindred Society. Most of the Founders have taken a more hands on approach, which I expected, but it does relegate Owen into more of a 'gopher' position that isn't congruent with his other abilities and talents. This is a problem I and the players of the founders are aware of, but right now Owen doesn't have much to do other than sit with the Founders until Shit Happens and then deal with it. Craig, while grateful for the not running around, enjoys chasing plot every now and then. Requiem's plot so far as been the High Castle intrigue, which is something I as a person am not great with at all. In the Game of Thrones, I'm Samwell fucking Tarly and I always wanted to be a wizard. There is really nothing that is investing him (and really, me, for that matter) in the venue.

This is generally a problem I have with my characters. What are their goals? What are their plans for getting them. LARPing is about people interacting in their own private stories and agendas, at least that's how I've always seen it. My guys don't have those in any concrete sense.

Part of me thinks that this comes from my beliefs as a writer. I'm what Brandon Sanderson (dear god, that man needs to write his shit down into a textbook for fantasy writers) calls a Discovery Writer. Discovery Writers have broad ideas and then they just write. Stephen King is notorious for it (it shows) and I tend to do it very often. I don't usually have these long drawn out outlines of my PCs, I literally make some of this up on the fly. I didn't realize that my Lost PC last Chronicle, Declan, was Bi until he was approached by someone for a casual encounter. I knew Jacob Rude had brothers and sisters in Dystopia Rising, but until pressed I didn't know if he was the eldest or not (he wasn't). I enjoy discovering bits and pieces about my characters, but I also realize that when you're in a social based game, where you can literally make an impact without ever having a sheet, that puts you at a disadvantage.

So what do we do? This is a question I'm asking you, folks, cuz I'm fresh out of ideas. That's not true. The first thing to do is to figure out your PC's priorities. What matters to them. This is easier for me to decide with Jin, as he has the most to gain through conflict between the various Courts, having been apart of one Freehold, a Sovereign of another, and friends with the third. Jin has knives in every direction and he's one of the only people who actually sees the game in terms of The City and not The Freeholds. For those of you playing the home game, this probably puts Jin on the Martyr track, which can be totally fun to work with if we can work with it. What are the challenges to that, what are the ways we can make that work, how could it fail?

Owen is more difficult. What does he want? He wants his family alive. Okay, that's great, and as a Shadow Assassin he can do it pretty easy. But that doesn't make him a character, he's a function. I could proxy his sheet in to game and have that taken care of without needing to be there (I have an article in mind in regards to this). He's the challenge. I want to build him up as a better occultist, for when the inevitable blood magic/weird shit plots start happening, Owen can go "I need three gallons of pigs blood, a bundle of dead rhododendrons and a plunger...DON'T THINK, JUST GET THEM."

So that's where I'm at. Really, this is the part where the Storytellers should be talked to, as they are there to help plug in the PCs into the story (and the story into the PCs sometimes). It's the running gag where a player comes up to his Storyteller and says "My PC has nothing to do!" And that's usually when something awful happens that starts the ball on some evil plot. A previous Requiem Storyteller was notorious for this, as players brought it up and then sicced NPCs on them as experiments. So sooner or later, that discussion will happen. Until then,

Later