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> Shadowrun LARP, What would you like to see?
Cain
post Jul 21 2011, 08:27 AM
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I've played in a lot of LARPs in my time. I started in Amtgard, which is basically a fantasy boffer fighting sport. I was then introduced to Mind's Eye Theater, the non-physical oWoD LARP. From there, I went to a NERO (classic boffer fantasy) system, and eventually found my way into a playtest for a post-apoc/cyberpunkish game. I've tried Belgarath (pure boffer fighting) and a couple of others.

I know someone in Norway did a Shadowrun larp some years back; I've seen pictures but know nothing about the system they used. I've thought for years about how to best represent Shadowrun in a larp setting, but I've never had a satisfactory answer. The post-apoc game was the closest I've ever come: it had cyberware and magic, but it also had furries.

So, I'll turn it over to you, Dumpshock: What would you like to see?

For me, the first thing I'd like to do is make it real combat, as opposed to oWoD mechanics. That means, if you want to hit someone with your sword, you have to pick up your sword and hit them with it. Naturally, this means safety becomes an issue: you need boffer swords (and cyberspurs) and a safe replacement for guns. I've heard arguments for airsoft, but they're a bit expensive and people would need eye protection. I'd prefer to go nerf on this one.

Races will get interesting. Elves only need ears, but dwarves will be trickier. Orks can be done (facepaint, fake tusks, and ears) but how do you make someone into a troll? In any larp, immersion is key: someone who's 6'4" doesn't make a very convincing dwarf.

What about the actual mechanics? I'm leaning towards NERO on this one: point buy for everything, with an ascending cost as you advance. Basically, the more build points you have, the more XP it costs to buy more BP. Also, I think we need to go with "called" damage: when you hit someone, you call out how much damage you did, and they have to factor everything in themselves. Yes, it's confusing in a major fight, but it works better for modeling complex attacks.

How should cyberware work? In addition to having to wear prosthetics, how do we model the effects of various items? Initiative boosters can't be done, people can't actually move any faster, and you can't tell the other players they need to move slower. Maybe instead make it into a free Dodge?

Thoughts? Ideas?
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Platinum
post Jul 21 2011, 12:58 PM
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I have thought about this one A LOT. I know little of LARP, but I would most likely do something simple.

Originally I was thinking that instead of calling out damage, I would just do number of hits you get. Armour adds a few more hits you can take, but that doesn't work when you have cyberware that increases strength and damage. I like the idea that boosters give you free dodges. They could also give you the number of rounds that you can have in your nerf weapon. reloading slows you down.

I would prefer the airsoft route, but like you said it's expensive. not prohibitively so if you head to Walmart for the cheap stuff. It works, and people spend hundreds on costumes anyway.

With decking of course is the fun part. I would go with the older sr3 style decker instead of wireless hackers, but if someone wanted to try a wireless setup, you could set up a webserver on wifi that they have to scour to get in.

I love creating puzzles, QR codes, that unlock information behind combination locks, passwords, which give you addresses etc/filenames that people have to search for on the terminal (computer). having a zip file with a password, for example that someone has to hack is simple, and a challenge. They have to copy it to a USB, etc.

For levitation you put signs ladders, if people have the spell they can use them. It would be hard to do this in an urban area. Industrial, abandoned or cottage would be best I think.

For skill tests and perception tests, have sign boxes that people pull envelopes out of, that tell them their TN. They then roll and put down their result. If there is a "narrator" sending people information by text would work extremely well. I was thinking about an obscure way to resolve rolls. basically a few pages of preprinted rolls that are numbered. The narrator texts the person that they have to roll, and the TN. The character picks a random number and that roll is the result set that comes back, with successes. I think it's the fastest way and the most auditable.

As for races there was a scenario where someone who was a dwarf wore knee pads and walked around on knees all day. If someone really wants to be a troll, they can wear stilts or be a short troll. It means that they get a str bonus for more damage and reach if they can handle the weapon. RP only gets you so far.

As for rigging and chases, I wouldn't do it really. You might have someone act as a drone taking commands over walkie talkie. There are some wireless cameras that could be used if someone has the tech.
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KarmaInferno
post Jul 21 2011, 02:25 PM
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The official Shadowrun Missions LARPS at GenCon and now Origins use a card based system - you get a number of cards based on your Edge score.

Each card had one or more keywords and an "attack" that affected other keywords. Opposing players would choose an attack card and if one card was listed as defeating a keyword that the other card had, it won.

In cases where either both cards defeated each other, or neither card affected each other, there was a secondary number on the card modified by your character's stats - like "Your highest Combat Skill rating" for a combat oriented card, or "10 minus your Logic score, multiply that total by 3" for Dumb Luck. I think ties here resulted in a fresh card pull.

I'm not sure I like the system entirely. I can understand what it is trying to do, make a bit more level playing field among the varied character power levels, but it's a little odd when a small group of newbie characters with light pistols class offensive ability can regularly take down the 120-karma walking tank that has multiple heavy-weapon equipped drones, simply because they have more people.

Live combat is fun but wow does it run into a lot of problems. Mostly cos people not involved with the LARP tend to get very alarmed. I cannot imagine it ever being used for the Missions LARPS, especially since those LARPs range all over the convention instead of being confined to a room.



-k
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jaellot
post Jul 21 2011, 02:31 PM
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We ran a SR LARP, about 4 yrs. ago, and it seemed to rock. We didn't go the boffer route, since it was at a con and we had run of the hallways, lobby, terrace, and other such open areas. The cons around here tend to end up sharing the hotel (though not convention space) with other events like children's basketball tournaments, or Special Olympics, so people running around shooting Nerf and swinging boffers is straight out.

What we did do is boil it down to a single roll, a D10, with a varying degrees of success, like Eden Studios does for their games like BTVS and so on. The single die works wonderfully for a con, where there are tables everywhere, and we're gamers so it's not like you don't have a D10 on you, and if not, the dealers' room sells them. We did get tons of decks of cards from the dollar store, and gave everybody an Ace-10 just in case, too.

I think we did some sort of color-coding for the races (a blue face card meant you were a Troll, and so on...). We also did a bit of color coding for commlinks, as we had an underground fighting ring going on where participants could recognize each other via their comms and throw down.

Considering the hotel rules, we couldn't really do much for decorating the space, alas. This is the usual in these parts, too. But I think our LARPers are good at imagining stuff, so there wasn't any complaints.

People dressed up (mesaning they wore sunglasses inside to go with the black trenchcoats/dusters, and their black boots), but honestly they had fun.

Something to consider with boffer style, injury issues. I met a guy who runs a non-profit to provide insurance or some such for some of the regional boffer style LARPs in the event of injuries. Not sure if it's to cover the injuries, or the LARP's ass, but still, you are running around smacking the crap out of each other. Things break (glasses, noses...) and when such a physical aspect is already in play tempers could flair I imagine more so than when throwing Rock-Paper-Scissors (or a D10, or what ever).
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Bushw4cker
post Jul 21 2011, 02:33 PM
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NO, I don't want to see any of the people I game with wearing Second Skin Line Outfits...<Cringe>
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KarmaInferno
post Jul 21 2011, 02:39 PM
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Another note about "live" combat.

It works when you have a group that knows each other and gets together to do this thing regularly.

When many of the participants have never met each other before the LARP and/or never done boffer combat before? Not so much.





-k
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Neurosis
post Jul 21 2011, 06:04 PM
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*As all of my posts on Dumpshock, it goes without saying that nothing here remotely reflects the opinions of CGL or anything but my personal .02 Nuyen.*

As much as KI is right. for me, live combat is an absolute must for an SR LARP. It's why I'm not that interested in the Scramble. Of course, neither this or any of the below takes con regulations into consideration.

Budget not an issue?

Boffers. Spackets for spells, throwing weapons, archery. High-end nerf guns for firearms in the summer; in the winter, since everyone's going to be wearing 'armor' anyway, switch out those nerf guns for airsoft or paintball guns (whichever is cheaper and hurts less). The rules for avoiding headshots would have to be really comprehensive, because we don't want anyone maimed. Finding a place to play would be the harest and most expensive part.

Budget an issue?

As above, but spackets for all ranged attacks. They're much cheaper, replaceable, and they don't ever jam and rarely hurt. Play in real life abandoned buildings, hope not to get arrested or raped by hobos. (Joking.)

The rules....should be point-buy, definitely. Everything would need to be massively simplified to be calculable in real time, all very doable, but the Matrix and the Astral would provide the biggest challenges; these are hands down

***

Full disclosure: I have been running/writing a science fiction LARP, Systems Malfunction, for six years that rips off Shadowrun at least as much as the original Shadowrun ripped off Neuromancer, if not more. Of course, it's not at all a Shadowrun LARP; it's set in the far future and in space, there are aliens instead of elves, and it has its own astonishingly intricate setting, which is probably closer to Alastair Reynolds or Mass Effect or Eclipse Phase than SR, though it predates some of those things. But it does have (non-SR style) magic and SR style cyberware (much of the 'ware is stolen wholesale from SR), and its run successfully for many, may years as a live combat LARP. Mechanically, it is very close to my answer to the question 'how would you design a Shadowrun LARP?'

It runs in Westchester county NY, BTW, and it has a very small player base, so if you've played NERO or Amtgard you should not be expecting anywhere near as many people as that. Nor should you be expecting anywhere near as much emphasis on props and costumes and makeup; we don't have the budget and we know it. People costume as well as they can, and no one bothers with makeup. We're currently on indefinite hiatus, but for the curious if you click through the appropriate links on my blog you can find its website. (I tried to recruit a Dumpshocker, Jonny_Reload, earlier this year when we were actively playing, but he disappeared on me.)

I would literally just design a Shadowrun LARP out of whole cloth and post its rules as a direct response to this thread, but I've promised myself not to start making any more games until I finish all of the ones I have already started.

QUOTE
With decking of course is the fun part. I would go with the older sr3 style decker instead of wireless hackers, but if someone wanted to try a wireless setup, you could set up a webserver on wifi that they have to scour to get in.

I love creating puzzles, QR codes, that unlock information behind combination locks, passwords, which give you addresses etc/filenames that people have to search for on the terminal (computer). having a zip file with a password, for example that someone has to hack is simple, and a challenge. They have to copy it to a USB, etc.


This sounds frigging awesome, actually. I'd love it if you could actually set that up, it would be so cool.
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Platinum
post Jul 21 2011, 06:25 PM
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QUOTE (Neurosis @ Jul 21 2011, 02:04 PM) *
This sounds frigging awesome, actually. I'd love it if you could actually set that up, it would be so cool.


contact me rickstjean on my gmail account. We can work out what you need and I can help you set it up.

Will need to know what kind of devices that you can have available. wireless, routers, computer to use as server, ie iphones, blackberrys, android phones, laptops, tablets,brief cases, combo locks on trunks etc. We can also use GPS coordinates if you have the room and are outdoors.

I have a million ideas, and it is simple to set up some of the stuff that I have been writing into my ARG.

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Neurosis
post Jul 21 2011, 07:58 PM
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QUOTE (Platinum @ Jul 21 2011, 02:25 PM) *
contact me rickstjean on my gmail account. We can work out what you need and I can help you set it up.

Will need to know what kind of devices that you can have available. wireless, routers, computer to use as server, ie iphones, blackberrys, android phones, laptops, tablets,brief cases, combo locks on trunks etc. We can also use GPS coordinates if you have the room and are outdoors.

I have a million ideas, and it is simple to set up some of the stuff that I have been writing into my ARG.


If you mean Systems, we don't have the hardware to accomodate this or the budget to purchase it AND we play outdoors, but thanks anyway. Maybe I'll contact you to talk shop one day, about any number of the games I run or the LARP/ARG hybrid I've had sitting on the shelf for months now. You seem like a valuable source of ideas. : )
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Platinum
post Jul 22 2011, 02:33 AM
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if someone can bring a laptop, we can load a web server on a usb key and run that hacking portion from there. If not, then someone must have a blackberry iphone or android, that can scan qr codes and use gps. I would love to talk shop and figure out how to put ideas into action.
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Cain
post Jul 22 2011, 02:41 AM
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First of all: Live combat is a lot more intense than rock-paper-scissors or rolling dice. There's something about actually bobbing and weaving, swinging your sword or angling to get that next shot in, that really makes things seem real. The whole point of a larp is that it's live *action*. oWoD/Mind's Eye Theater, to me isn't a larp, it's a theater game with rules.

Setting: I'm definitely not going to do this at a con. Cons really frown on live boffer combat. This would need to run on the NERO model: a weekend event somewhere relatively secluded from mundane eyes. I've seen how other games handle this: they usually rent out boy scout camps. It won't look right for Shadowrun, since they're in the woods; but maybe an old warehouse or something?

But the primary question I have is the rules. How do I rejigger the rules to approximate the Shadowrun setting? I can get the look of certain things: instead of cybereyes, you wear mirrorshades. But what about smartlinks? If we go live combat, no rule will actually make a player shoot straighter. I was thinking that smartlinks could add damage instead, so when they hit, they hit harder.

As for the Matrix, I was going to go text messaging for that. Little unfair if the player doesn't have an unlimited text plan, but we could do a skill-use system: the more you buy a skill, the more times per event you can use it. So, if you want to bypass a maglock, you text the GM that you're using your lockpicking skill. They check the rating of the lock against your skill, and tell you if you can proceed or not.

I have no idea what to do about astral space, honestly. I was probably going to ignore it and spirit summoning for now. Maybe bound spirits can provide services, like adding damage to a spell (Aid Sorcery). Just carry a card and mark it off when used.

But before I start actually planning out things, what would you like to see? What kind of game would you like to run it?
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Jhaiisiin
post Jul 22 2011, 02:55 AM
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LARPs are the devil. That is all.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) That is my wholly unhelpful contribution. And now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
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Yerameyahu
post Jul 22 2011, 03:01 AM
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Why is it hard to do a dwarf? Just wear a t-shirt that says "I'm a dwarf."
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Platinum
post Jul 22 2011, 03:59 AM
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QUOTE (Cain @ Jul 21 2011, 10:41 PM) *
First of all: Live combat is a lot more intense than rock-paper-scissors or rolling dice. There's something about actually bobbing and weaving, swinging your sword or angling to get that next shot in, that really makes things seem real. The whole point of a larp is that it's live *action*. oWoD/Mind's Eye Theater, to me isn't a larp, it's a theater game with rules.

--snip--

But the primary question I have is the rules. How do I rejigger the rules to approximate the Shadowrun setting? I can get the look of certain things: instead of cybereyes, you wear mirrorshades. But what about smartlinks? If we go live combat, no rule will actually make a player shoot straighter. I was thinking that smartlinks could add damage instead, so when they hit, they hit harder.

As for the Matrix, I was going to go text messaging for that. Little unfair if the player doesn't have an unlimited text plan, but we could do a skill-use system: the more you buy a skill, the more times per event you can use it. So, if you want to bypass a maglock, you text the GM that you're using your lockpicking skill. They check the rating of the lock against your skill, and tell you if you can proceed or not.

I have no idea what to do about astral space, honestly. I was probably going to ignore it and spirit summoning for now. Maybe bound spirits can provide services, like adding damage to a spell (Aid Sorcery). Just carry a card and mark it off when used.

But before I start actually planning out things, what would you like to see? What kind of game would you like to run it?


I would not do it at a con either. maybe I would do a spy game there, but not a guns out shadowrun.

Smartlinks - I would allow people to have better nerf weapons or more ammo they can fire. maybe even 1 guarenteed shot.

For the matrix, I really like the puzzles. It is so much more satisfying to figure things out. For AR, do you remember those old red glasses that you would put on and look at a page with red lines, and then can see the writing behind.... messages and images can be hidden that way. Really I would colour code things for AR and astral space. Spirits would be players/npc's like rigger drones. An old barn might be easier to get than a warehouse.
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Runner Smurf
post Jul 22 2011, 05:14 AM
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I've played and run in some sizable LARPs in my day, and I have always pondered how you would do an SR LARP.

Boffers/Airsofts vs. Non-Contact
I'm not a huge fan of the boffer stuff in general, and particularly with SR. While you can make swords/spurs/razors work, and guns to a (very) limited extent, there's a bunch of stuff you can't model very well. What comes to mind are various reaction/initiative enhancers, smartlinks & AR, long-distance shots and spells. You can fudge some of them, but I think fairly quickly you'd have some many kludges that you'd lose any immersion advantage you'd get out of using boffers and beanbags.

Metahumans
I think this one is fairly easily solved: don't allow trolls or dwarves, unless the player is unduly huge or small. "I am a dwarf" signs or the like break immersion pretty easily.

Astral Project
Another fairly easily solved problem: don't allow it. If you have to, you could allow purely astral recon, and describe/handwave it. But you'd probably be best served by not having the story focus on magical phenomenon.

Spirit Summoning
Assuming you had sufficient staff on hand, I think you could do this with nothing more than some colored sheets. Yeah, not the most immersive, but it would get the point across. And you'd have to severely restrict the number of spirits someone could use.

Locations
This is actually what I most love about the idea of doing a SR LARP. You can use real-world settings. You can do the meet with the Johnson in a bar, etc. Players need to meet with a contact...meet at another location. The players drive from place to place. This is another reason I don't like boffers for SR - it really limits your ability to do this in public. And for meets and the like, part of the point of being a shadowrunner is that nobody notices what you are doing. One of the GMs houses could fill in for a corporate facility, but you could easily get really creative with this.

Matrix
Easy to do. One staffer runs the systems - the decker player interacts via text message commands, with the GM rolling the dice. You could even go the extra step of setting up wifi routers and web sites, but it's really just a question of how much time and money you are willing to flush up front. With ubiquitous smart phones, you could do some basic stuff using skeleton web pages and files. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could build an iPhone or Android app (depending on who has what) that would basically implement a subset of the hacking rules. But that would be a fairly significant investment.

Drones
You can actually get small helicopter drones and RC cars, so you could do this by actually buying the RC kits and duct-taping wireless cameras to them, etc. However, this would be expensive, and you'd still be limited to just overwatch stuff. And thumbing joysticks is a far cry from how drones work in SR. So I'd think you'd be better off not allowing drones, or providing pictures to the team to represent drone-gathered intel. Alas, I see no practical way to do Drones-Go-In-First type operations...other than having some pore staffer pretend to be a roto-drone. Could be done, but it would kill immersion.

Physical Security
The budget killer. Go to Frys, Spend a thousand bucks on IP cameras and motion detectors. Have fun. Or, if you are better connected than I, use an actual corporate office.

Costumes
Always a big part of the cost of running any LARP. A trip to an Army/Navy surplus store would be a good bet - a set of fatigues could easily do for corp sec, and a few extra accoutrements could allow for KE or LoneStar uniforms. Everything else can be street clothes.

Story - The Real Stumbling Block
The real killer - and the reason I've never done more than noodle an SR LARP - is that the core conceit of SR doesn't translate well to a LARP. With a bunch of resources (time or money), a dozen GMs to run NPCs, guards, etc. and a good location, you could put together a pretty sweet shadowrun...for 5 or 6 players. To make the LARP work on a larger and/or more efficient scale (with more players than GMs), you have to get the players to interact with eachother and have them create their own conflicts and stories. But I've never been able to come up with a good solution to this problem.
  • Players as NPCS? Having some players play the guards or the contacts or the Johnson doesn't work as being a guard is boring, and the Johnson is only involved at the start and the end.
  • Multiple SR teams going after the same objective or have competing objectives? Chaos will ensue (which is good), but timing issues would become killer. It would pretty much always reduce to a team deathmatch scenario in the end.
  • Teams running after each other? See above - it would fairly quickly reduce to a slaughterfest.
  • Turn the focus of the game away from a shadowrun? Kind of loses the point.
About the only option that I can see making any sense is to have 3 or 4 teams essentially doing variants of the same run at the same time so that you essentially recycle your staffing assets. One team's Johnson is another team's NPC. Have the runs they are doing take place in multiple stages, with the order of stages differing for each. It increases your up-front prep costs and staffing needs a bit, but I think you could make it work.

Mind you, I'm insane enough that I think it'd be fun to do the whole 2-staffers per player ratio, but you'd need a lot of staffers. For about $50k, you could make a really kick-ass game. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
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Cain
post Jul 22 2011, 06:11 AM
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QUOTE
I'm not a huge fan of the boffer stuff in general, and particularly with SR. While you can make swords/spurs/razors work, and guns to a (very) limited extent, there's a bunch of stuff you can't model very well. What comes to mind are various reaction/initiative enhancers, smartlinks & AR, long-distance shots and spells. You can fudge some of them, but I think fairly quickly you'd have some many kludges that you'd lose any immersion advantage you'd get out of using boffers and beanbags.

I think it can be done, at least with guns. Given safety restrictions, nerf is safer than airsoft, even though airsoft looks better. For initiative enhancers, I was considering going to an "encounter power" mechanic, allowing the player an automatic dodge instead of going first. AR I can't do, but I can do smartlinks: you do more damage. Even if you're physically a bad shot, you'll do more damage when you hit, and under SR4.5 the main benefit of a smartlink is that you hit harder. Long distance shots are a problem, given that I'm leaning towards nerf, even the best nerf guns only go 50 feet or so. However, the venues I'm considering will be close quarters anyway, so I don't think it'll be an issue.

What I'm more worried about is rules that capture the feel of Shadowrun, as opposed to trying to emulate them. If I tried to port the SR4.5 rules directly into a larp, I'd fail.

QUOTE
The budget killer. Go to Frys, Spend a thousand bucks on IP cameras and motion detectors. Have fun. Or, if you are better connected than I, use an actual corporate office.

The problem here is that while the characters should be able to bypass those easily, the players couldn't. So, I'd need NPC's in most of those roles, rather than relying on cameras and electronics. I think using text messaging here will work: you text a storyteller that you're using a skill to bypass a challenge, and the storyteller decides if an alarm is triggered, and dispatches NPC's.

QUOTE
The real killer - and the reason I've never done more than noodle an SR LARP - is that the core conceit of SR doesn't translate well to a LARP. With a bunch of resources (time or money), a dozen GMs to run NPCs, guards, etc. and a good location, you could put together a pretty sweet shadowrun...for 5 or 6 players. To make the LARP work on a larger and/or more efficient scale (with more players than GMs), you have to get the players to interact with eachother and have them create their own conflicts and stories. But I've never been able to come up with a good solution to this problem.

Actually, this is easy. I used to go to a LARP that charged $25 for the whole weekend. It was a fantasy larp, and they had a full Plot team, costumes, makeup, cabins in the woods, the works. How they managed it was this: the full time Plot members got in for free. If you wanted to get in at a discount, you could pay only $20, but then you owed the Plot team so many hours of NPC time. Now, that was quite a while ago, and prices have gone up. I'm considering charging $45 for the weekend (less than what NERO charges, I might add) and $5 off if you agree to 5 hours of NPC time.

This way, the fixers, Johnsons, and contacts are handled by the storytelling team; while grunt NPCs and even some Prime Runner enemies are handled by the players as NPC's. The plot team gets to decide who they'll tap for a given situation, so players will get to go on the runs for their team. Players will NPC for other player teams, and that way, there'll be enough warm bodies to handle any situation.
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Runner Smurf
post Jul 22 2011, 01:18 PM
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Guns
QUOTE
I think it can be done, at least with guns. Given safety restrictions, nerf is safer than airsoft, even though airsoft looks better. For initiative enhancers, I was considering going to an "encounter power" mechanic, allowing the player an automatic dodge instead of going first. AR I can't do, but I can do smartlinks: you do more damage. Even if you're physically a bad shot, you'll do more damage when you hit, and under SR4.5 the main benefit of a smartlink is that you hit harder. Long distance shots are a problem, given that I'm leaning towards nerf, even the best nerf guns only go 50 feet or so. However, the venues I'm considering will be close quarters anyway, so I don't think it'll be an issue.

What I'm more worried about is rules that capture the feel of Shadowrun, as opposed to trying to emulate them. If I tried to port the SR4.5 rules directly into a larp, I'd fail.

I think the inability to really do automatic weapons, longer range shots, shotguns, grenades, etc. makes it not worth the trouble. It's mostly a matter of style preference, in the end and how you feel about immersion...so there's not much point belaboring the point one way or the other.

Physical Security Via IP Cameras
QUOTE
The problem here is that while the characters should be able to bypass those easily, the players couldn't. So, I'd need NPC's in most of those roles, rather than relying on cameras and electronics. I think using text messaging here will work: you text a storyteller that you're using a skill to bypass a challenge, and the storyteller decides if an alarm is triggered, and dispatches NPC's.

I think you could make this work pretty easily using IP cameras. Use a skill challenge, and a GM disconnects a given camera feed (or lets the players view it). It's expensive though, and may not worth be doing based on cost alone. Would be nifty though!

The Story Problem
QUOTE
QUOTE
The real killer - and the reason I've never done more than noodle an SR LARP - is that the core conceit of SR doesn't translate well to a LARP. With a bunch of resources (time or money), a dozen GMs to run NPCs, guards, etc. and a good location, you could put together a pretty sweet shadowrun...for 5 or 6 players. To make the LARP work on a larger and/or more efficient scale (with more players than GMs), you have to get the players to interact with eachother and have them create their own conflicts and stories. But I've never been able to come up with a good solution to this problem.

Actually, this is easy. I used to go to a LARP that charged $25 for the whole weekend. It was a fantasy larp, and they had a full Plot team, costumes, makeup, cabins in the woods, the works. How they managed it was this: the full time Plot members got in for free. If you wanted to get in at a discount, you could pay only $20, but then you owed the Plot team so many hours of NPC time. Now, that was quite a while ago, and prices have gone up. I'm considering charging $45 for the weekend (less than what NERO charges, I might add) and $5 off if you agree to 5 hours of NPC time.

This way, the fixers, Johnsons, and contacts are handled by the storytelling team; while grunt NPCs and even some Prime Runner enemies are handled by the players as NPC's. The plot team gets to decide who they'll tap for a given situation, so players will get to go on the runs for their team. Players will NPC for other player teams, and that way, there'll be enough warm bodies to handle any situation.

Clever, and workable. Heck, I've played in a LARP like that (it was a bit pricier) and it worked really well for that kind of LARP. The problem is that the ratio of runners to "support" is wonky for SR - almost definitionally to SR, you have a small team going up against a larger organization. In a fantasy or (o)WoD LARP you have factions of players in conflict with each other, with NPCs occasionally stirring the pot or providing external threats. Cthulhu-style LARPs can do the same, and even if the primary story driver is an NPC threat, it's generally a bad-ass NPC threat that you don't need forty people to NPC. While in an SR story you could rely on players occasionally stepping into NPC/guard roles, you'd end up with a lot of people spending a lot of their time out-of-character.

About the only thing I think you could make work is having a bunch of players doing counter-runner (counter intel) jobs, trying to stop the runner team. However, counter-intel work is fairly dull.
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nezumi
post Jul 22 2011, 01:49 PM
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Disposable players.

Live ammunition?
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squee_nabob
post Jul 22 2011, 03:47 PM
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I liked the card system used at Origins. It had some flaws that need to be fixed, but I’ll bet you a person with 22 dice at shooting people is better than I am (especially at ranges beyond 30ft). I like the idea of interfacing LARPing with table top. Going to a “this isn’t Shadowrun, but a Shadowrun Setting LARP” would be a dealbreaker for me.

As far as “man, not looking like your character breaks immersion”: How do you represent some of the equipment? I’ve seen people wear FFA, PPP, Riot Gear, or Milspec Armor, and that’s not trivial to replicate. I regularly rig from a rigger cocoon modded to a Hussar. There is no description of a Hussar in WAR!. What does it look like? How do I represent this? I have a Doberman with a super squirt as well, should I bring a dog around?

I’d default to requiring more imagination than less.
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Mardrax
post Jul 22 2011, 04:30 PM
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On the immersion topic: a LARP I frequent has a couple of little people playing halflings of some sort. And a friend of mine brings her two wolfdogs along as animal companions occasionally.

Sure, it's doable. Not very practical though. Then again, who plays a dwarf? And Doberman drones aren't dogs ;p
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Neurosis
post Jul 22 2011, 06:56 PM
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Speaking as someone who has been informally running an on-going science fiction campaign LARP in an original setting with nonetheless striking similarities to SR, I do feel that there is a LOT for me to weigh in on here. As far as I know, SM while not that close to SR is still is the closest thing to an ongoing SR LARP that has been run continuously here in the US for over half a decade. My LARP is extremely atypical and guerilla-style, so all of the following may seem very odd to those of you used to the production values of NERO/Amtgard, but here goes.

QUOTE
Setting: I'm definitely not going to do this at a con. Cons really frown on live boffer combat. This would need to run on the NERO model: a weekend event somewhere relatively secluded from mundane eyes. I've seen how other games handle this: they usually rent out boy scout camps. It won't look right for Shadowrun, since they're in the woods; but maybe an old warehouse or something?


How Systems Malfunction handles it is that we do not have the budget to rent out boy scout camps, so we play in public parks. That probably sounds kind of lame, so let me clarify:

We specifically select public parks which have incredible set pieces and where we won't be bothered. Like one has a massive 300' tall dam and waterfall that we can play on top of un hastled, another is located on the ruins of a Rockefeller estate along the Hudson river, a third one, my favorite, is located in a wooded area near an abandoned railroad bridge and tunnel with extensive ruined buildings in the woods which we can actually enter.

The best part, though, is definitely that it it is free. We do full weekend events, but players do not (for obvious legal and safety reasons) camp overnight; they sleep in their own beds or hotel rooms after finishing the first day before returning for the second.

Of course we're also running games with WAY less people than NERO or Amtgard. If I had that many players, I'd probably rent a campsite, just because I feel like 10-15 people in costumes with nerf guns and boffers running around the less-visible areas of a large public park is much less likely to draw negative attention than 60-80 such people.

QUOTE
But the primary question I have is the rules. How do I rejigger the rules to approximate the Shadowrun setting? I can get the look of certain things: instead of cybereyes, you wear mirrorshades. But what about smartlinks? If we go live combat, no rule will actually make a player shoot straighter. I was thinking that smartlinks could add damage instead, so when they hit, they hit harder.

As for the Matrix, I was going to go text messaging for that. Little unfair if the player doesn't have an unlimited text plan, but we could do a skill-use system: the more you buy a skill, the more times per event you can use it. So, if you want to bypass a maglock, you text the GM that you're using your lockpicking skill. They check the rating of the lock against your skill, and tell you if you can proceed or not.


I hate to toot my own horn, but my LARP (again, click through the appropriate links on my blog, it's called Systems Malfunction) models all of this.

Every player gets a certain number of 'Evades' per day based on Quickness (1-6) which let them call 'Evade' after being hit (in real time) to negate the damage of non-Aimed attacks that physically hit them in life. Characters with wired reflexes get proportionally more evades, say Quickness x 2 for a decent level. Characters that are Move-By-Wired to the gills can get Evades per hour instead of per day, or even per minute, but that's an extreme edge case.

What cybered skills like Smartlink do is let players 'Aim' attacks (on a one count). You say 'Aim' before the attack and then the damage can't be evaded.

Cyberarm on the other hand just adds more damage. : ) Cyberlegs, on the other hand, let you call a 'Cut' in the game to 'Jump' say 25 feet or fall as many as 50 feet (move to a higher or lower area while the game is 'paused') without taking damage, a certain number of times per day.

Locks have simple ratings written write on the tags. If your Nanotech Lockpick skill equals or exceeds the rating, you can pick it on a 3-count. It's honor system, but so essentially is everything in a larp.

All of these are overly simplified versions of the rules in my LARP, with some SR terminology thrown in.

QUOTE
I have no idea what to do about astral space, honestly. I was probably going to ignore it and spirit summoning for now. Maybe bound spirits can provide services, like adding damage to a spell (Aid Sorcery). Just carry a card and mark it off when used.


If you have enough people playing as Cast (NPCs, whatever you want to call them) then spirits and other summonable mooks are no problem. If you're shorthanded, it becomes a problem; people want to play their PCs or necessary NPCs, not someone's Force 4 Air Elemental.

I think the whole carry a card and mark it off thing's probably too cumbersome too. My game has tons and tons of times per day skills and abilities which people track mentally without too much trouble.

No answers for you about Projection. There's simply no way to handle it that's not clumsy--which doesn't stop games I've written from trying.

QUOTE
Metahumans
I think this one is fairly easily solved: don't allow trolls or dwarves, unless the player is unduly huge or small. "I am a dwarf" signs or the like break immersion pretty easily


You come from an astonishingly different background in LARPing than I do. My game is a costumes optional game with very little makeup and sparing use of props. Our immersion really does not derive at all from physical special effects--SFX are always lacking in quality anyway, to say nothing of comfort or convenience. Our immersion derives purely from roleplaying and storytelling, which we mostly excel at.

Frequently a character with no special costume or makeup will be playing an eight foot tall blue alien. There's not even a sign, the character just narrates their description when first encountered and again if necessary and that's that; maybe a small indicate costume change (like a different coat, an armor vest, etc.). There is no issue of 'breaking immersion'. The players believe. We're all using our imagination anyway, so there's no reason to be afraid to rely on it more.

I'm always confused by people who focus on costumes and makeup and props so much. Then again, everyone has their priorities. : )

QUOTE
Matrix
Easy to do. One staffer runs the systems - the decker player interacts via text message commands, with the GM rolling the dice. You could even go the extra step of setting up wifi routers and web sites, but it's really just a question of how much time and money you are willing to flush up front. With ubiquitous smart phones, you could do some basic stuff using skeleton web pages and files. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could build an iPhone or Android app (depending on who has what) that would basically implement a subset of the hacking rules. But that would be a fairly significant investment.


But at that point it's really more a tabletop than a LARP. And besides, having presumably never run a game that makes heavy use of sell phones, you have no idea how annoying it is to get all of the players to always bring a charged, working cell phone to the game without losing the phone, losing signal, forgetting their charger and running out of battery on the second day, etcetera.

QUOTE
Physical Security
The budget killer. Go to Frys, Spend a thousand bucks on IP cameras and motion detectors. Have fun. Or, if you are better connected than I, use an actual corporate office.


lol.

QUOTE
Story - The Real Stumbling Block
The real killer - and the reason I've never done more than noodle an SR LARP - is that the core conceit of SR doesn't translate well to a LARP. With a bunch of resources (time or money), a dozen GMs to run NPCs, guards, etc. and a good location, you could put together a pretty sweet shadowrun...for 5 or 6 players. To make the LARP work on a larger and/or more efficient scale (with more players than GMs), you have to get the players to interact with eachother and have them create their own conflicts and stories. But I've never been able to come up with a good solution to this problem.

* Players as NPCS? Having some players play the guards or the contacts or the Johnson doesn't work as being a guard is boring, and the Johnson is only involved at the start and the end.
* Multiple SR teams going after the same objective or have competing objectives? Chaos will ensue (which is good), but timing issues would become killer. It would pretty much always reduce to a team deathmatch scenario in the end.
* Teams running after each other? See above - it would fairly quickly reduce to a slaughterfest.
* Turn the focus of the game away from a shadowrun? Kind of loses the point.

About the only option that I can see making any sense is to have 3 or 4 teams essentially doing variants of the same run at the same time so that you essentially recycle your staffing assets. One team's Johnson is another team's NPC. Have the runs they are doing take place in multiple stages, with the order of stages differing for each. It increases your up-front prep costs and staffing needs a bit, but I think you could make it work.

Mind you, I'm insane enough that I think it'd be fun to do the whole 2-staffers per player ratio, but you'd need a lot of staffers. For about $50k, you could make a really kick-ass game


My game somehow manages to do all of this stuff, especially the stuff in bold, with 12 players on a good day, 4 of which are staffers, and a budget of approximately $0.00. Everyone has fun. Of course, my game is NOT a shadowrun game and hence, for these purposes, does in fact lose the point. But I'm just pointing out that with imagination, cooperative and wonderful players (my ideal LARPer is a polymath who is a professional mathematician capable of flawlessly calculating mental arithmetic, a classically trained shakespearian actor, and a physically fit athlete and fencer, with the social skills to charmingly disarm any normal people freaked out by what we're doing...but then again I'm a dreamer), and dedicated staff, running a fun scifi LARP with lots of PvP conflict and factional intrigue does not require as much time/money/resources/people as you think. At least, IMHO.

QUOTE
Given safety restrictions, nerf is safer than airsoft, even though airsoft looks better.


Looking better can be a problem if you're in a place where real people could mistake them for real guns! And some awesome shit can be done with nerf gun customization. I can find some images/links if you're curious.

QUOTE
Actually, this is easy. I used to go to a LARP that charged $25 for the whole weekend. It was a fantasy larp, and they had a full Plot team, costumes, makeup, cabins in the woods, the works. How they managed it was this: the full time Plot members got in for free. If you wanted to get in at a discount, you could pay only $20, but then you owed the Plot team so many hours of NPC time. Now, that was quite a while ago, and prices have gone up. I'm considering charging $45 for the weekend (less than what NERO charges, I might add) and $5 off if you agree to 5 hours of NPC time.


My game's currently $30 a weekend, and everyone pitches in a couple hours of NPCing. NPCing nets SP (read: Karma) awards as well, at a minimum of one point per hour. We also offer huge SP bonuses and small discounts for being a new player/bringing a new player.

QUOTE
I think the inability to really do automatic weapons, longer range shots, shotguns, grenades, etc. makes it not worth the touble. It's mostly a matter of style preference, in the end and how you feel about immersion...so there's not much point belaboring the point one way or the other.


In all seriousness, we do all of this fine with spackets and gestures. We feel incredibly strongly about immersion...it's just not based for us on the things it seems to be based on with you. For us immersion is fully based on staying in character and speaking and acting as such at all times, not on expensive and cumbersome props and costumes.

***

Of course, the REAL answer for what to do if you want to play a Shadowrun LARP is simple:

Move to Germany. Because those guys are spending 10s of thousnads of bucks on LARPs with massive staffs, props, costumes, makeup, and all the gimmicks, gadgets, and production values you want. Of course in places like Germany and Norway, LARPing is practically the national sport, and those places also LOVE SR TO A FAULT....a reasonably fair generalization, as I think every dumpshocker knows. Whenever I see a 'look at this holy shit awesome shadowrun LARP' video, it almost always comes from that corner of the world.
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Cain
post Jul 24 2011, 09:10 AM
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QUOTE (squee_nabob @ Jul 22 2011, 07:47 AM) *
I liked the card system used at Origins. It had some flaws that need to be fixed, but I’ll bet you a person with 22 dice at shooting people is better than I am (especially at ranges beyond 30ft). I like the idea of interfacing LARPing with table top. Going to a “this isn’t Shadowrun, but a Shadowrun Setting LARP” would be a dealbreaker for me.

As far as “man, not looking like your character breaks immersion”: How do you represent some of the equipment? I’ve seen people wear FFA, PPP, Riot Gear, or Milspec Armor, and that’s not trivial to replicate. I regularly rig from a rigger cocoon modded to a Hussar. There is no description of a Hussar in WAR!. What does it look like? How do I represent this? I have a Doberman with a super squirt as well, should I bring a dog around?

I’d default to requiring more imagination than less.

I haven't been to Origins in years, so I wouldn't know. What I do know is that a card exchange system really breaks immersion: you still have to walk up to someone and hand them a card that says: "Hi, you've just been shot from half a mile away." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Looking like your character isn't hard. You can find most of what you need at Spencers or Hot Topic for the "street" look, and the rest you can pick up at an acting supply store. Armor clothing is easy: you just wear your normal clothing, and you get a tag that says it's armored. Heavy armor is harder, but running around looking like Master Chief is a bad idea in Shadowrun anyways, so that won't be much of an issue. If you want a riot shield, you can do what the SCA does: cut apart a pickle barrel and carve it into the right shape. I don't know what I'm going to do about vehicles (yet), but spirit services could be handled as encounter powers. Drones and actual spirits could be handled as NPC's.
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Xahn Borealis
post Jul 24 2011, 11:54 AM
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Quick question, what's a spacket?
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Saint Hallow
post Jul 24 2011, 12:30 PM
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I play at a LARP in NJ that has boffer combat, & 1 of the local conventions (called DEXCON) has allowed boffer combat in the hotels they used. So it's possible to have them. The hotel allows the use of large meeting/dining/banquet rooms for the con to have it's players run around & mock-fight in. As for an SR larp, many folks covered ideas & facets to it all ready, but I'd like to toss in my .02 cents...

1. Location: Use camp sites on weekends (like most fantasy larps rent out locations) or paintball ranges on weekends.

2. Weapons: NERF guns when modded can look great (steampunk NERF larps exists) & airsoft when proper protection is worn. The rules staff/referees would need to keep a close watch during the airsoft battles.

3. Cyberware: Initiative boosters/wired reflexes should offer a periodic defense (like a Dodge). Dermal plate/ortho just allows you to take more hits (or adds hitpoints/body points). Muscle enhancers add melee damage. Headgear (aka hacking/rigging) allows the PC to hack computers. For rigging, the PC must provide there own RC controlled car/helicopter & must control the thing themselves as they go through an obstacle course laid out by the game. (Asking a PC to bring in their own RC may seem prohibitive, but it's the same as a PC providing their own costuming and weapon(s). If you wanna play a rigger, gotta outfit yourself accordingly).

4. Races: Make-up, make-up, make-up. Elves wear ears. Dwarves wear beards (even the female dwarves), Orks wear tusks & exposed skin must be colored green. Trolls must wear tusks, exposed skin is colored yellow, & wear a prosthetic horn(s).

5. Hacking: Only PC's with the hacking cyberwear & skills are allowed to attempt this. The mechanic for this is an old game-boy or some handheld gaming device that plays tetris or minesweeper or some kind of puzzle game. The hacker must acheive a minimum score on a certain level of difficulty within a time frame to have been considered successful.

6. Rigging: PC must provide own RC vehicle & only PC's with the rigging cyberware + skills can attempt this. Referee sets up an obstacle course & the PC must pilot their RC around/through it within a certain time to considered to have beaten it. Success means their drone has done it's job. As for vehicle combat or doing the "getaway"... not sure how to cover that yet.

7. Magic: Verbal components & spell packets, just like most fantasy/boffer larps. Spirits are summoned NPC's (or volunteer PC's) whoa re given stat cards.

8. Gear: Melee weapons are latex/boffer weapons like most fantasy LARPs use. Ranged are boffer/NERF/airsoft. All weapons must be made to look IG (in game). Armor is paintball padding or BMX bike armor or whatever "looks like armor". Each piece of armor has a point value that stops up to a certain amount of damage. Commlinks can be toy cellphones or real walkie-talkies with earpieces if the players wanna splurge on that kinda stuff. Cybereyes/limbs/obvious cyberware is a make-up prosthetic. Eyes are tinted googles or sunglasses. Ears are hearing aids/large earrings. Limbs are exposed skin colored in silver or metallic make-up.
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Saint Hallow
post Jul 24 2011, 03:44 PM
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Addendum: Ammo: If you use NERF darts (which is my preferred way), you can color code the darts to represent different forms of ammo. Red tape = EX Explosive. Green tape = Gel. Etc...

Cyberwear (smartgun systems): adds bonus damage to your range weapon attacks if they hit.
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