Exalted Monthly LARP in Planning Stages

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Open Call development meeting for preliminary stages of LARP.


Meeting Location: Predator Games in Dickinson, TX 2PM June 14th 2011


Invited: ALL interested Parties, especially Storytellers.


Likely LARP night: Friday 7PM


Points to be Discussed:


Frequency of Game - Bi/Monthly/Weekly


InGame Setting Location: Realm/Threshold/Direction/City


Walkthrough of Character Design


Initial Story Hook


Acceptable Props


For more info:


please see "Live Action Exalted Houston" Facebook page


Head Storyteller: Morgan Oviatt
 
I write LRP systems as a hobby. I used to run them too, but life and work sort of ate my free time and I handed my systems over to others. Last year I worked up some rules for an Exalted LRP, partly as a sort of bet with myself as to whether it was possible. I have no idea how much anyone on here knows about LRP so I'm just approaching it as if the reader doesn't know much about it at all, which seems the safest option. Apologies if any of this seems at all patronising, it's not my intention.


I was aiming for my usual thing, which is UK-style action LRP (US players call it "boffer LRP" I believe? Although we don't use the massive padded boffer sticks, we use foam & latex products like these). This gave me several specific limitations:


1) General WYSIWYG approaches regarding visual effects mean that things like caste marks and anima banners had to be severely curtailed.


2) Since LRP combat resolution is based upon some simple calls layered upon the "hard skills" (reflexes, co-ordination, and practise) of the player, combat Excellencies are pretty much out of the window, along with most other potential skills.


3) Super-fast attack capabilities are impossible to implement without halting the flow of play.


4) All of a player's statistics, especially their resources such as Essence or Willpower, need to be kept in the player's head and therefore need to be kept to a minimum to avoid distracting the player trying to remember too many stats, or spending OOC time "battleboarding".


My general approach, bearing all this in mind, was to start out by building a system for mortal combat, with some simple combat rules similar to those in most UK combat-oriented games - global hits, assumption of a single point of damage on a successful strike if nothing else is called, characters at 0 hits begin to bleed to death. On top of the basics I laid a 3-stage skill system, with Apprentice, Journeyman and Master degrees. Some of these skill degrees require the expenditure of Willpower, which means even the "mortal game" could potentially be a nail-biting game of resource management and expenditure in the thick of combat. I managed to reduce the 25 skills in Exalted down to 20, of which perhaps 10 are useful in combat and the others are either miscellaneous or used between sessions in various ways.


Then, having defined how the rules work for Mortals, I went about breaking them for Exalts. First problem was the whole "anima banner" issue. My solution to this was to abstract out the whole "building up the Anima" element (neatly dealing with the caste mark problem along the way, but I'll come to how I brought it back in later). Essentially, all use of Charms and Combos requires the loud and clear announcement of the name of the Charm as it is used. This represents the burst of energy released when using a Charm. Yes, I made them all Obvious by default :D Charms could also be tagged Subtle, which means they can be invoked with a subvocalisation/mouthing and thus not attract attention. One major benefit of this is that we'd end up with people bellowing out the completely awesome names of the Charms in the midst of combat. "FIRE AND STONES STRIKE! DIPPING SWALLOW DEFENCE!" Perfect anime feel.


My machine's been crashing a lot recently, so I'll carry on in another post lest I lose this one...
 
Next step was the timeslicing problem. How do you represent a Peony Blossom Attack in a LRP context? Many games implement a Time Freeze system for this sort of thing, but that can lead to every fight being an endless sequence of halts. My solution was a special player-triggered type of Time Freeze call I named "Freeze Frame". All Charms that permit use of Freeze Frame can be used even if someone else is already using it, and they all have strict limits on how much activity they allow (in terms of steps taken, attacks etc), after which the player is forced to halt. Once all players who wish to have acted using Freeze Frame abilities, the game restarts... but no-one else is then permitted to use Freeze Frame abilities for the next 5 minutes (by which time most combats will be long over). The intended result is a game of chicken, with players daring others to use Freeze Frame first but not wanting to get caught out and thus unable to use Freeze Frame at all for 5 minutes.


Next up, passive defence charms like Fivefold Bulwark Stance and the various Dodge abilities. I implemented Fivefold Bulwark Stance as a potent damage reducer able to pretty much negate most mortal attacks entirely, which appears to be its intent. Most Dodge Charms I specialised in Freeze Frame but there are a couple of damage reducers in there too. This led me on to the biggest problem - implementing the inability of Celestial Exalts to use more than one Charm at a time. My resolution to that was Powers and Stances.


I split the Charms into three kinds - Enhancements (passive Charms that can be used freely), Powers (Charms that have an instant effect of some kind, like Heavenly Guardian Defence) and Stances (Charms which have a specific effect which shouldn't be allowed to overlap with others). So for example, I turned Fire And Stones Strike from an Instant Charm into a Stance which increases damage calls by a significant amount. PCs can continue to use Stances after they are activated, but the use of any other Charm apart from Enhancements breaks the Stance and forces it to be declared again and the Essence re-spent.


In short, players are forced to choose between offence and defence just as in Exalted tabletop. The major difference is that the balance of combat Charms is hugely shifted towards persistent but temporary effects which do not stack with each other unless a Combo is used.


I have been thinking since typing all this up that this last is actually a model which wouldn't be a terrible suggestion for Exalted 3rd.
 
1) General WYSIWYG approaches regarding visual effects mean that things like caste marks and anima banners had to be severely curtailed.


Not necessarily, DBs are in yards and since the game as a massive LARP works better when everyone gets to be cool, not just a couple characters(Remember that we are thinking long term here so if 5+ solars makes it difficult imagine a group of 50[50 solars in one place would be the type of thing the realm would curtail quickly] and you quickly see the problem), so since DBs are so numerous, it makes story-sense to have that be your default character. Thus the ranges are reasonably close together.


2) Since LRP combat resolution is based upon some simple calls layered upon the "hard skills" (reflexes, co-ordination, and practise) of the player, combat Excellencies are pretty much out of the window, along with most other potential skills.


Again with our experience that has been relatively untrue as well. Our combats are at times sticky, but most of that is because those are the times when we get 15+ characters acting at once(the times when DBs do quite well in eliminating the baddie of the month) so most of thoose problems happen at the end of the night after much of the game is already concluded.


3) Super-fast attack capabilities are impossible to implement without halting the flow of play.


Here, unfortunately, you have a decent point. I concede this one.


4) All of a player's statistics, especially their resources such as Essence or Willpower, need to be kept in the player's head and therefore need to be kept to a minimum to avoid distracting the player trying to remember too many stats, or spending OOC time "battleboarding".


We dumped the Virtues to the main one(since it relates to the character) and have Willpower on a 1-5 scale, since nobody in 10 games has used more than 2 ever, including our sorcery cadets. I don't know the term battleboarding, so I can neither confirm, deny or comment on that, but the rest, if I understood context should be close to par for answering the question correctly.


the rest of this reads like you are threadjacking, maybe not intentionally, but yeah, so..okay.


Anyway, since one of our storytellers has the day off on July 5th Tuesday as well, he will be at the site for those who wish to know more from 2-3 or longer if he gets longwinded, which he does. current hope is to start the long-game on July 8th Friday and consider a biweekly friday game.


Exalted LARPs... Think Epic
 
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