Spotlight: CollabNarration

I didn't have a proper chance to welcome Zoë into the fold when her blog originally came out. I was taking a little break *coughstarwarscough* at the time, but her blog seems to be moving right along.

And you know what's great? You can add to it, too!

Her blog, CollabNarration, gives LARPers a chance to submit stories to the site. I think it's a great idea. We tend to lack a central forum for LARPers from different games, and even when that happens, people don't like surprise walls of text.

So, now we have a place where people can put their stories (in-character or out-of-game) for others to enjoy. Much better than a common forum, because people know to expect a wall of text, and flaming is a little more difficult when someone can just delete your comments.

I know the best part of LARPing for me is the stories, and I know that I plan to submit some stuff to CollabNarration once I get a little more free time *coughstarwarscough*.

Seriously, though. Check it out, throw those people who have posted stories some support in the comments, and if you're brave enough, submit some content of your own!

NPC Exchange

In light of the recent Joint event of Exiles and Wastelands, I think it's a good time to talk about NPC exchanges in Cross-Gaming.

This tactic was first brought to my attention when reading about Accelerant, a system with many games with very similar rule sets. A lot of these games run in close proximity to one another, so the player pool is somewhat limited.

While many people are willing to play both games, there is still a significant portion of players that simply don't have the time, money, or interest in playing in two LARPs. Additionally, fighting for these players could end up hurting both games, as one of the largest problems for LARPs is a lack of NPCs.

So they developed the NPC Exchange.

Basically, I can NPC for one of the games and use the experience from that on my character in the other game.

The real benefit of this is that players only have to get costuming and such for one character, but they can enjoy both games. This also gives built in NPCs that don't really PC, so the issues around limiting the NPC information to prevent metagaming are not really a problem. Not to mention you would get more NPCs for your games, because players who only want credit in one game will have to NPC the other in order to get credit.

This really only works for smaller, more independent games, but could be utilized in larger games with enough checks and balances, and could go a long way to fixing some NPC issues that people have.

Would you NPC a second game to get experience for your primary game? Do you think this would break the experience system? Drop your opinions in the comments!

Going Camping

This is a pretty common conversation between LARPers and non-LARPers.

"What are you doing this weekend?"
"Going camping."
"Really? Where at?"
"Somewhere down south, don't remember the name."

LARPing is demonized and a lot of us are afraid to admit what we do. A few years ago, I let my co-workers know what I did and let them know I'd answer any questions about it. I haven't received a lot of grief about it. On the other hand, I've got a new boss now who doesn't know, and I totally use the camping line on him. It's hard to explain why I feel I need to.

Some of us suffer from the dreaded facebook circles of Work and Friends connecting, which would out a lot of us. I imagine it would be hard to explain a picture of you in full dark elf makeup to your HR department.

We were discussing this topic after the Exiles event, and one of my friends came up with a brilliant idea.

We, as LARPers, should have a secret handshake.

How amazing would that be! We could find out when first meeting someone if they were a LARPer, or at the very least a LARP sympathizer.

So someone who's got a degree in handshakeology should come up with something, and we should embrace it. Then we'd know who we could talk to and who we'd have to be in "Camping" mode around.

Any ideas?

Looking For Contributors

If we're to truly cover all LARPs in the Ohio area, we'll be needing a few more contributors. Tim and I really only cover two game systems - NERO and Exiles, so there's a pretty big need for help from other games!

Next week, we'll be heading for Origins and we'll be twisting some arms to get some help on the blog. In the meantime, if you know someone who is involved in any of the following games who might be interested in contributing to this site, let us know in the comments or send an email to larp.plot.tips@gmail.com!

Alliance
Amtgard
Belegarth
Dagorhir
Triumph

Or, of course, any other organized game I may have forgotten. We want you all.

Edit: We would also take contributors from historical re-enactors, like the SCA, as there is a lot of crossover from LARP combat to what they do.