Phys-Repping Things

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Annika
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Phys-Repping Things

Post by Annika »

The following is my own personal opinion and a paradigm that I advocate for any LARP (read: "A rant" to some...)
Finally, here is my suggestion, which I am going to be starting a separate thread on: "If you can't accurately represent it, you can't do it." If your character is in the woods, so are you. If your character is in the lab or in a cabin busy resurrecting someone, so are you.
I wanted to bring this part into a seperate thread, as there is a whole 'nother debate on it and I didn't want to muddle the other area too much.

As an observation from having participated in Final Haven for a while now and run the past event, I think the single biggest impediment to the game is the act of narrating what your character is doing, as opposed to acting it out. Time and again, most people state, "A LARP is not a Tabletop game" and I wholeheartedly agree.

I'm tired of hearing people say, "I make like I'm fixing your armor up, but I'm really going over here to talk to someone" or "My character *would* be sleeping here, but I'd personally prefer to sleep in another character, so if someone comes into kill me, come get me..." This is a ridiculous practice and creates far too many complications and disturbing situations for other people who are really trying to roleplay their hearts out.

Aside from the debate on how many characters a player should be able to play. The rest of the rules seem very clear on how these situations should be handled:

There is no out of game. So you can't sleep "out of game" (save for extraordinary circumstances). If there are 20 bunks and 22 people in a House. Guess what? Two people either need to sleep on a floor or make nice with some other place and sleep there.

This is where we fall back to the "If you can't accurately represent it, you can't do it" rule. The cabins we sleep in are what they are. They are no more and they are no less. This is true in Brighton and it should be true in Phantara.

If your character is waiting to get resurrected. Then your body should be lieing there. If your character dies, and you have any hope for them coming back, then stay there. Don't run off and say "my body is there" and throw a hat down which in no way represents you lieing there. If you get up and go off to NPC, your spirit has left permanently. Otherwise, you should be representing your body in a very significant way, so that people can poke, prod, steal, burn, and raise you if they want.

If you're hiding in the woods, because you've run from an evil man, you should be crouching behind a bush. It creates an (even more) artificial situation when you yank the person out from NPCing, tell them they have to "sit in the bushes... and we can't tell you why... just act natural..." and then see who gets a head start on things. It's just plain bunk.

If something comes up that prohibits you from doing something you would normally do, then roll with it and react as if it is in game. When we seperated house members in Frostfell, there were actually three seperate cabins and we escorted you in game to those cabins. We find out later that people were claiming they were really sleeping in another cabin and thus would not have been attacked. Wrong. "If you can't accurately represent it, you can't do it."


I am flattered that I (and many of the other Orcs) get compliments on our roleplaying. I think the reason is because we all employ this philosophy. "If we can't represent it, we don't do it." We are where our characters are. We are wearing what our characters are wearing. We look how our characters look. We look the age our characters look. We sound like our characters sound. And we act how our characters act. Nothing more and nothing less. We don't tell you, "I speak in a funny accent..." or "I smell really bad" or "I really look 140 years old." When you get into that you get back into table top. If there's some reason why Sara isn't at an event, we tell you Iza is off and away and she is inaccesible to even us. She's not "sleeping in the cabin." This philosophy also prevents another cell phone incident (as an example).

Man, it's time to start living your characters and ROLEPLAYING. That's my election platform... please vote for me. :)
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Post by dier_cire »

heh, meant in all honesty. Your dedication > than me. :D

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Post by GM_Chris »

Well I agree.

I think the problem is the players are following what they see the GM's do and though I wish to say "Hey we as GM's need to accuratly represent" The reality is we cannot accuratly represent as often as we like, but as GM's we tend to have alot less time. I could have 20 NPC's which heck would help alot, but if I am RP'ing an armoy of 100 then I cannot very well lie on the ground dead.

As PC's you have no such problem and should be doing exactly what Tanya said. The game actually started off that way and recently has become very lax.

As for the sleeping situation I have mixed ideas on that, but you know you do make a good point.

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Post by Dallid »

I agree for the most part - but feel there needs to be some trade-offs to maintain a fun factor. If a PC is going to be dead all day, let the poor guy NPC. He certainly should leave a well-declared phys-rep of his body. It's a simple matter then for another PC to go to NPC camp and declare 'During the fighting, I looted his corpse.'

Yes, it detracts from the immersion a bit, but is, IMHO, a worthy trade-off for allowing the dead guy to not lie inactive all day.

However, a player should stay in (deceased) character if that state is likely to last a couple of hours or less.
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Post by GM_Chris »

I agree with Doug, except for those with medical reasons and well they get special compensation.

We shall call it the gimp rule.


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Post by Nelkie »

I believe we all come to Fh to have fun. So here is some ideas I have:

If you die and you want to go NPC until you are resurected, create a dummy, borrow the NPC's skelton, place a tag on it, do something that shows where the body is, and have it tagged!

Slepping arangements. When it comes to sleeping, I believe everyone should have a bunk to sleep in. We are paying money to have a bunk, heat, and porty johns. If you are sleeping out of game, put a tag on your bunk! If you are sleeping somewhere else and you cannot make the proper agranments, cot, air matris, etc, tag your bunk you are sleeping in, and suffer the conquence of what happens in the cabin you are sleeping in.

The most inportant thing to do is tag! If it isnot taged, it does not exists!
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Post by GM_Chris »

Dont forget if you get up off the ground you drop all your tags, resources.

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Post by Annika »

I believe we all come to Fh to have fun.


Aaron, please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to shit on anyone's parade. I realize there are many people who are much more lax in the way they play. But please also keep in mind that for more hardcore people like myself a lax environment often creates just plain laziness when it comes to roleplaying and that actually detracts from our fun. A good balance should be struck at any LARP. I don't think FH is bad at all, but in my opinion it could be much better if the GMs cracked the whip a bit more about simple adherence to some common sense stuff.
If you die and you want to go NPC until you are resurected, create a dummy, borrow the NPC's skelton, place a tag on it, do something that shows where the body is, and have it tagged!
I have absolutely no problem with this. As long as it is done consistently, even in the middle of battle. Sadly, during the Gnosh and Silverthorn mass battle scenes, there should have been dozens of bodies on the ground... as a healer, within 5 minutes I couldn't find any of them because many people were helping to NPC or off smoking. There was no representation (aside from a few, who threw down pieces of clothing... for whom I had no idea what the hell I was seeing) and frankly Grok "ran over" several corpses which she wouldn't have done had the phys-reps been there.

I'm also not saying that a person has to lay on the ground for 5 hours, but at least make good effort to wait 1/2 hour as the first alchemy could raise you and that's when the most activity with your body would likely take place.
Slepping arangements. When it comes to sleeping, I believe everyone should have a bunk to sleep in. We are paying money to have a bunk, heat, and porty johns.
Agreed.
If you are sleeping out of game, put a tag on your bunk!
This is dictated in the rules. It should probably be reminded to most that only scouts and possibly a few others for special reasons can actually sleep out of game. This is getting lax again.
If you are sleeping somewhere else and you cannot make the proper agranments, cot, air matris, etc, tag your bunk you are sleeping in, and suffer the conquence of what happens in the cabin you are sleeping in.
I absolutely disagree with this. This is the point of my entire post. You are where you are. Period. If the Guild of Light hall only has 20 bunks, that is true in both Brighton and Phantara. There is no reason why your guild hall should necessarily have as many bunks as you want it.

Keep in mind that Phantara is a post-cataclysmic world, with limited resources AND THAT INCLUDES SHELTER! To me, it is absolute cheese to say, "well, I'm here for convenience... but my character is over there..." it also creates multiple scenarios where there are opportunities that are lost and cheating in others, for example:

* An entire cabin is shifted to another plane of existence, your character would have slept in this cabin but there is no room. Instead you bunked up with another group and were having in game discussions with them. When the cabin shifts out, do you go with them because you tagged that you would have slept there? Mid-conversation? I'd say no way. You weren't there, you weren't there. If, under your guidelines, the character does, now not only does a GM person have to trek specially to your cabin to find you, but now the GM is going to have to alert the other players essentially that something is up in the other cabin. This creates an artificial awareness that could and should easily be avoided.

* An entire cabin is slaughtered in the night. Of course, the NPC didn't see the little slip of paper you called a tag. In the morning you find that all of your supposed cabin mates are dead, but somehow you lived. You gonna take the death? Of course the player won't. They'll not only whine that their character somehow lived, but that the entire situation would necessarily have been different, you would have been the key to their success, and none of the other PCs should be dead, for it is certain that it wouldn't have played out that way.

* You want to kill Grok. You sneak in to her cabin. You get to her bed and see a tag. Now you have to go to god knows where to find her. Way anti-climactic and again leads to shit like "oh! I was awake! I see you coming!"

* The Guild of Jackasses only has 20 bunks and have alienated everyone in town. Now they have 25 members. They just tag up everone they have and let people sleep where they may. Now, not only can I not firebomb the entire cabin and get them all in one shot without having to go to multiple places and alert everyone, but the Guild of Jackasses now has no accountability in terms of their actions because they don't have to negotiate a way to accommodate all of their people.

I guess what I don't understand is what is so difficult about just being where your character is? Why should you be able to artificially create situations just so it's convenient for you as a character?

There are certain things that just are. I'm only 5'2" and weigh over 200 pounds, to top it off I'm only sorta cute. I'm not gonna walk up to you and say, "You see a tall, slender, beautiful Elven maiden, who speaks with a voice that sends chills down your back." I'm also rather crude, uncoordinated and ungraceful, so you won't hear me saying, "I do a beautiful pirouette in the middle of battle... it brings tears to your eyes." There's some shit that physical reality just doesn't allow us to represent no matter how we try. This includes having extra bunks in a cabin that we want because it's convenient. Start dealing with it in game.
The most inportant thing to do is tag! If it isnot taged, it does not exists!
And I would argue that just because you do tag it, doesn't mean it exists either. Phys-rep it.
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Post by GM_Chris »

Yep I agree with the physrep and tag thing.

I also agree that a bit more wipping may be in order once we properly explain what it is we want.

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Post by Peace420 »

So what happens if someone wants to build a building or something else IG? How is that handled? The person is responsible for providing a building or mill or loom? Truthfully I don't have the time or inclination to build a psuedo loom or building and bring it to every event, my life is jam packed as it is and so is my car on the way to events.

Physrepping a disguise is all fine and dandy but it doesn't keep people from knowing who the player is and what of people that change their costume as "normal" people would? I came in playing a completely different character to the last event with horns and fangs and completely differently costumed with one piece, a belt and pouch the same as any other character I play and all friday night I was responding to people with "Who is this Atrum people keep calling me"
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Post by GM-Mike »

I believe everyone should have a bunk to sleep in. We are paying money to have a bunk
I'm tired of people claiming they have a right to a bunk. I vote to get rid of all bunks next year...Maybe, if you're real nice, we'll add electricity instead, but I'm serious, no bunks! :lol:
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Post by Dallid »

Too true. It's a totally off-topic arguement, but I see it as we pay money to participate in a game - nothing more or less. That money goes toward offsetting the costs incurred by the GMs in running and maintaining that game.
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Post by Peace420 »

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Post by Nelkie »

No bunks next year, well that will make it interesting.

Tonya, I agree with you to a point. I agree that people should be sleeping where there characters are. It keeps it simple and clean. But some times it does not work out and people have to shifted around. I have a feeling this problem will be going away at the new camp ground.

I believe all our points is tag, tag, tag and where you are is where your character is.

So, at the new game area we can tent. So a guild could make a tent city if they wanted to sleep together or sleep as a group in the giant Inn. How will the sleeping agreements be handled? Is the building a giant INN with open floors for everyone to sleep. Will tets be clasified as buildings, will they have to be built in game? Just curious.
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Post by WayneO42 »

Dallid wrote:Too true. It's a totally off-topic arguement, but I see it as we pay money to participate in a game - nothing more or less. That money goes toward offsetting the costs incurred by the GMs in running and maintaining that game.
This is a very good point Doug. To continue off topic, I need to rant:

[rant] Sometimes it is VERY frustrating to hear players complain about things not getting done when I am putting in hours of work a day on Final Haven. We as GMs make no money from FH. In fact, we spend considerable amounts of our own money to make it a better game. If we charged more money, you would see us run it more as a business. As it is, FH is our HOBBY too. FH is a club, not a company which is why we like to see the players pitching in to help with rules and props and such. [/rant]
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