Organising a pool of players larger than six can be a tad problematic.

Maintaining consistency if you have differing GMs is also difficult.

Nothing monumental though, and I'd like to see if a living game of an Indie stylee would be more robust than the horrible mismatched expectations and resultant bitching that say, the Camarilla has.

Like everything round here, I suspect if you led the way others would chip in.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

First off I think the euphemism "continuous play" game is used, since Living plus a game name is a trade mark of a well known games association whose owners have pointy hats.

So you need
People willing to write the scenarios
A defined way to generate characters if your system has various numbers of points, and details of which parts of rule books are out of bounds.
People willing to write the scenarios
If characters can increase in power either a system that can cope with widely different levels at the same table, or given enough players groups people with similar power levels (but possibly biased towards certain skill sets) and have the adventures scale in difficulty according to power level.
People willing to write the scenarios. Is each scenario played by many groups - the usual way of doing it, but you then need to aggregate the game outcomes to determine effect on campaign - or each scenario is only played by one group, Lihr does this but has lots of writing time put in and runs at fewer conventions?
If you have players all around the world, is the effort and power delegated locally at least for some things? Players like to meet their coordinator face to face.
People willing to write the scenarios. Did I mention this? It's important if the campaign is to continue. If you intend it to run just a year or two make sure players know in advance. Sudden cancellation of a treasured campaign is a good way to upset players.

Do you need people to write scenarios?

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

I'd argue about how successful the Living stuff is. (I'm sure anyone who had to "live" through -- endure? -- some of the struggles over the years would honestly assess them as being anything but simple and entirely successful.)

It certainly gets a lot of play. But, then again, a lot of effort is put in by a number of people for that to happen. And I mean a lot of effort.

For me, I would say that the idea of a "Collective Endeavour" wide or mandated "Living-style" set up would be wrong.

There is a whole mish-mash of publishers, volunteers, enthusiasts and so on going into the pot there. What if we don't agree on direction, and this has been a key point for the "Living" stuff.

I would suggest that Duty & Honour might well benefit from organised play. If you were willing then you should start it up and let us know how it goes.

Personally, I am not at all interested in having an official, or even endorsed, organised play organisation/set-up for 3:16, in fact I would actively oppose it.

But that's just my take on it. I am not against having wiki sites for game input like Hot War and Covenant have, though.

I wasn't thinking about the whole, I was thinking about a part - one game. As an experiment. I find it all interesting because another one of my hobbies is shared universe fan-fiction which seems to have a little of this going on. Another is CCGs and I have always admired the L5R storyline system. It seems useful.

However, I am intrigued now because a number of people have given guarded responses about the shenanagins in other 'living-style' games. Care to share? Here? Email? Elsewhere?

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

So I've done a lot of LARP. Possibly too much.

Many LARPs subscribe to a persistent world approach to gaming (I'll call it that instead of living). Many LARPs use systems that are not ideal for this.

This creates a set of social expectations that do not match with rules expectations, and hence cause what can nicely be referred to as a social cluster-fuck of passive aggressive behaviour and facilitation of people to actively destroy other people's fun in the name of "realism", "game balance", "the metaplot", "canon" and "fairness" or whatever justification is du jour. Combine this with a social expectation that it's absolutely OK for the organisers and GMs to do this kind of shit. Unfun.

I've seen this bullshit and walked away.

Avoiding that in any game where a large number of people are expected to participate over a long period of time is, well, tricky. Your rules have to be rock solid, your expectations managed and your social organisation impeccable. Games with a consistent approach and rules that match their marketing rhetoric are more likely to succeed, but it's never guaranteed due to the number of variables and egos at work.

I think Gregor's point about Organised Play is useful. Maybe an experiment with a series of inter-linked con games might be a useful starting point?

-Matt

Realms Publishing

There was Living stuff at IndieCon but only because the organiser and GMs effectively missed the con by doing it. They might as well, IMHO, have been running in someone's house. The organiser I spoke to was friendly and enthusiastic, but, man, what a thankless task. But, hey, it's his life (and it seemed to take over his life).

In the past there have been huge gnashings of teeth and stress caused by the RPGA/Raven politics and hierarchical push/pull. The personal upset that is caused is huge, even when run on a very local scale, and the fall-out is non-trivial.

Well-meaning people are often the worst offenders too!

I'm not quite understanding this?!

You have a game. You have a character. You come to a convention. You play the same character across different adventures at different cons. Your character grows. The results of each game are fed as a news report to a wider group of people who are also interested.

Thats what we are talking about, right?

I'm honestly struggling to see how something as seemingly simple as that can suddenly arrive at the clusterfucks you are describing. I'm not denying that they have - I'm maybe just wondering whether it is more that it is being done by immature, self-serving egomaniacs rather than balanced, mature, fun people. I'm done organised play before on a massive scale in different media and well, I have seen the best and the worst sides of the LARP thing (never again...). The roleplaying side seems to escape me though.

Hmmmmmm .... I will think on and post my thoughts on how I would do it later. I'm smelling that certain terms and modes of play have been sullied by previous cock-ups maybe?

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Honestly, Neil.

You have a game. You have a character. You come to a convention. You play the same character across different adventures at different cons. Your character grows. The results of each game are fed as a news report to a wider group of people who are also interested.

Absolutely. In theory. And for a lot of players it probably does run like that.

In practice, it becomes complicated by perks for GMs and anyone putting their time in. The feelings of ownership of non-owned or mutually-owned things and the bitterness when slighted and snubbed. Roll in status games, genuine power and a host of other irritants and you'll find yourself stressed out about the same paragraph above.

I would love you to prove me wrong.

I'd suggest that there is a potentially large differences between LARPs and tabletop when it comes to ongoing play.

LARPs tend towards PvP (or, it is hoped, character vs character), in a way that tabletop doesn't always do.

I've LARPed for a number of years, and I've experienced the sort of "clusterfuck" stuff that can happen. A lot of that is down to the PvP aspects and (what is perceived to be) rules biased in favour of other characters/factions.

In tabletop, the group dynamic and social contract are more well known issues. I've not had the sort of issues that Gregor talks about the gaming table to anything like the extent that I've had/seen in LARPs.

Now, a lot of this is game dependent: games that angle towards PvP can lead to more of the bullshit that we're talking about here. Does the same hold true for games with a tighter group cohesion going on?

If characters tend to being on the same side, and assuming that people are willing to obey Rule 7 ("Don't take the piss") and "don't be a dick", do you get better cohesion?

Cheers.

Mark

I think you should try it.

I've seen the downside of these things. The continued game becomes much too important and people become too attached to their character.

But I think you're talking about something lower key. What you're suggesting is pretty much like saying, at the start of a Duty and Honour game, "I've still got the characters we used last time. Shall we use those and carry on where we left off?".

I think something that low key could work very well. OK, it's slightly more organised: there's a database of characters and your name's on a mailing list.

I don't think you should get involved in the paraphernalia that usually surrounds such games: "downtime", where people write you emails about what their character is doing between games; overarching plotlines; coordinating games into a coherent "world".

Something low-maintenance, though: try it. Don't promise too much - say it's an experiment with keeping central characters for convention games - and see how it goes.

Graham

Part of the problem (and I'm speaking from experience with L5R rather than the Living games) I think, comes with story attachment. People get into your story ... which is cool, but then get bent out of shape when it doesn't go their way, or when they don't make an impression (and other people do).

The problem is that you don't see the other people playing their games, you just see the game world not responding the way it ought (or the story not going the way it should) based on what you did in your game. The more story influence you give the players (in theory) the more that rankles.

I could see it working very well for D&H though, if you didn't offer big story changes, but just integrated everyone into the same front ... so that you can have them mentioned in dispatches, or hear about each other's exploits, or maybe sometimes co-operate on big missions?

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/ - http://cubicle-7.com/starblazer/

That is exactly what I have in mind. None of the ephemeral BS, just a way that everyone can feel like they are part of the D&H 'world'.

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

The first thing I would look at would be organization requirements.
If players are going to be using their own characters, you probably need some kind of database to ensure sheets don't magically alter between Cons.
Let's use D&H as the example and call it the "Batallion Roster".

As much as we want to have fun and trust each other, it reaffirms the aura of fairness and should help players feel secure.

Then maybe you use a reference system where you log characters details under their real name and a given reference number to make sure players are using their own characters and to easily organize your potentially massive number of characters.
Let's call it their "Enlistment Number".

So now people can play in a "Living" con game, register their character and come back and play it again in future living con games, where ideally their sheet is downloaded from the "Batallion Roster" and printed at the start of the game (depending on resources available).

One part of the system that would need a little touch up are missions.
Given the nature of the play style, certain personal missions that go over a long period of time may not be so easy to implement.
The Military mission of each game is easily implemented.
Promotion missions are also stille asy to track and implement.
As for personal missions, I would consider making these optional and have all missions have a set time limit of the Con Game only to suceed or fail. As continuous bookkeeping of these may become challenging.

What about Reputations?
If you all exist in this wonderful D&H world, and you hear of the exploits of these great soldiers form Con games, do you actively manage their reputations and add interesting things where reputations cross over? Or is thata gain too much bookeeping.
Could a player at a Newcastle Con try to take the character who he heard about in a dispatch who played in a US Con as a Rep/Influence?

In a game where players will often have strongs outside their own immediate sphere, it's an interesting thing to consider.
How much do you want the Con games to be "Living" and influence each other?

Now the Military Mission.
Standardized scenarios can be written, but as the players are allowed to craft the skeleton that the mission adheres to, it allwos the same scenario to happen countless of different ways.
I like this. I could feasably play the same mission at 15 Cons and likely have a completely different game each time :)
All the "Campaign Writer" need do is generate a background for the mission, a rough skeleton of what needs to be done and then insert some general pointers, ideas and a associated NPCs. Maybe discuss outcomes.

Then all you need is a standardized "Field Report" for the people running the games to send back with a list of database updates needed for characters and you can then take those results and make news letters or take an average of all the games played and decide on the "shared universe outcome".

Could be very fun :)

One game I'd love to see it done with would be Piledrivers & Powerbombs. A World Tour themed living campaign with local house shows and regional championships would be the win :D

********
We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams...

That's just crazy enough to work! PvP-tastic. And I wouldn't even have to write any scenarios. XD

JoE

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....