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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. : )
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.