OP:
Valtiel
This page may, eventually, turn into a description of a setting for a LARP game. For now, though, it's a set of guidelines for how to write such a setting, assuming that you already have a system.
Please comment freely :)
General guidelines:
- The first thing you need to know is how many participants you'll have and how often you will run. Writing a setting for 400 people to play four times a year is very different from a setting for 40 people to play once a week.
- You also need to know what format you're using - tavern nights, linears, non-linear events, big festival type things?
- Make sure your setting reflects the rules. If your call system has no way of telling the difference between an arcane bolt of fire thrown by the devious mind of a mage, a bolt of holy fire called down from the heavens by a priest, and a bolt of perfectly mundane fire launched from the nozzle of some dwarf-forged brass contraption, make sure there's no difference between the three in setting either. If poisons can never instantly kill anyone, don't have backstory about the king having been instantly killed by poison.
- You probably have an economy of some kind. Again, try to make sure that the setting reflects the rules here.
- Similarly, make sure your downtime system has some kind of explanation in the setting.
- Don't exceed your special effects budget. Do not describe the existence of dragons if you cannot actually physrep dragons. Imagination can make up for a lot, but if you can make everything in setting easily physrepped it'll save a lot of headaches.
- On a similar note, try to make sure that all the species can be easily distinguished from each other, and make sure that no part of any required physrep conflicts with out-of-character features or clothing that someone might want to wear as a member of another species. Dwarves always having fake beards seems fine until you realise that a lot of people have actual OOC beards. (I think the TT Kender guidelines are a particularly awful example, since it stops anyone who ISN'T a Kender from wearing mismatched garish-coloured clothing).
- Don't pick a definitive historical period unless you want some people to break the historical clothing guidelines and other people to complain an awful lot about people who break the historical clothing guidelines.
- Don't write something into setting that is completely inaccessible and has no bearing on events, except possibly as ancient history. It's tedious, and it especially sucks when it's something that "everyone knows about" IC but actually half the players DON'T know about because it never has any bearing on events. This is a variation on Chekhov's Gun (if there is a rifle prominently displayed on the wall in a play, it had bloody better go off before the curtain closes).
- Conversely, don't define that something is impossible, or that something doesn't exist, unless you're absolutely sure you never want to use it.
Factions:
- Definition first. A faction is a group of people that will (in general) work together and protect each other, but ALSO has goals and objectives which it actively works to fulfill and which may bring it into conflict with other groups. In TT, the temples are factions, but the colleges of magic and the Alchemist's Guild - which don't really have any goals which could bring them into conflict with anyone - are not. The nobility, despite having goals and objectives, don't work together so aren't a faction.
- Don't have too many factions. I don't know what the maximum is here. You probably want to start by deciding the smallest number of PCs a faction should have, and remember that a lot of characters won't be part of a faction.
- Fewer factions tends to lead to more conflict, ironically, because if there's a major argument between two of the thirteen Great Houses, the other eleven can probably knock some sense into them - but if there are only four Great Houses then that's a full half of them actually engaged in the conflict and unable to mediate.
- Decide from the start how high up the faction heirarchy you want PCs to be able to get, and then make sure it's consistent across all factions.
- Make sure you define how much resources each faction has, how much they can bring to bear at short notice, and - if one faction is more powerful than the others - why none of them have wiped out the others yet.
- If you want there to be PvP? conflict on any kind of scale, write an irresolvable conflict between factions into the backstory. If you write a resolvable conflict into the backstory then someone will come along and resolve it.
Excuses:
- The setting needs to contain good reasons - or, at the very least, plausible excuses - for any plot you want to run. Leaving big areas of the world mysterious and unexplored is a good start.
- Everything important happens in the Wessex Arms. At some point people will start wondering why.
- Similarly, you want to have an excuse for people to do things in uptime, rather than in downtime.
- If you want to run linears in new and interesting places, you need an in-setting explanation for how you got there.
- The setting should have excuses for PCs to go and do crazy stuff that their players think is awesome.
- You will, at some point, notice a bug or an exploit in your rules, and then you will want to change them. If you don't want a vile retcon of some kind, create an in-setting excuse for a change in the way the world works, and do it in advance.
- Also, you - or the players, or their characters - may want to make major changes to the setting at some point. Killing off unpopular gods is the classic example. You want an excuse for this as well, or else you want a definitive reason why it can't be done.
The Powers That Be:
- There is always something harder than the PCs. Define what it is or they'll conquer the universe. Gods are a good start.
- Make sure that the thing mentioned above has a really good reason not to show up in person and kill everyone it dislikes.
- There are also mortal authorities in the world, who probably can't stand up to organised PC groups but might be able to layeth down the smack on a random criminal or two, and who can hold the world together even if none of the PCs are interested in politicking. Decide who they are, how they're organised, why they haven't fallen apart or been overrun yet, what they do from day-to-day to keep the world running, how a PC can rise through the ranks of government, and so on. They probably count as a Faction, except that their goal is to uphold the status quo.
- Unless the world is lawless, define what the laws are, who enforces them (and how effectively), and what the penalties for breaking them are. Ensure that these penalties do not ruin the game for someone who is subjected to them. Capital punishment is fine, because character death is an accepted risk. Lifetime imprisonment or exile are also possibilities, because they can be treated exactly like character death (although feel less satisfying), but someone with enough resources or allies can escape (or return from exile) and live as an outlaw - providing that living as an outlaw is possible in setting. Short-term imprisonment REALLY SUCKS, because your character will reappear at some point so it feels pointless starting a secondary. Severe torture and mutilation are interesting penalties (although can be annoying to physrep), long-term curses similarly so. Non-mechanical penalties like a night in the pillory or thirty lashes will be treated very lightly, because (probably) none of the players have ever actually received a night in the pillory or thirty lashes, and find it hard to imagine how bloody awful it actually is. Not necessarily a bad thing.
- There are Powers That Be in other parts of the universe as well, and people will probably try to interact with them or make deals with them. You don't really have to define these until someone goes looking, but you should bear in mind that they exist.
Adversaries:
- You probably want to create something that is unambiguously evil, bad, and wrong, so that people can go and smite it, or so that you can have something to attack the bar at 9:15 every night. Undead are the classic staple. Also make it something that can be temporarily vanquished but never be completely destroyed, or someone will completely destroy it.
- I'd suggest also creating something that very ambiguously evil, so that people can go and smite it and then OTHER people can berate them, or else make deals with it for power. Or something.
- A reiteration of a point from The Powers That Be: If there's an adversary that's massively more powerful than the entire player base, why doesn't it just come and kill them all in person?
- Be cautious about creating Cthulhu. Specifically, what you want to avoid is plot that punishes people for interacting with it. Sure, plot can be RISKY, and people who are suicidally careless about meddling with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know might well get their brains siphoned out through their ears, but make absolutely sure that it IS possible to get a good outcome from interacting with the plot. If you don't do this, people stop interacting with the plot.
From writing MOSAIC, I agree with a lot of this. I'd say some of this is overkill for a 'quick and easy' larp system, but for a decent setting, it should be considered. --Darktachyon