The Time I Broke A LARP

[Random Goblin]

This was, oh, something like twelve or thirteen years ago, back when I was much younger.

Anyway, some folks were running a LARP at Chattacon (http://www.chattacon.org/) called Legacy. It was a sci-fi thing, set on a space station, with all kinds of groups at odds with each other, you know- the normal stuff.

Anyway, my character was a part of an oppressed underclass called Nulls, reportedly used as food. We were supposed to be activists, in search of Null rights. I got killed at some point by an ambassador's overeager bodyguard who was threatened by my civil disobedience, so I went to get a new character. It was supposed to be another Null, but this time I had a new skill card with the "Demolitions" skill.

"Hey," I asked a GM, "can I make a bomb with this?"

"Sure, why not. It'll take an hour, so you'll have to go out of game, but you'll have a bomb that does, oh, 25 points of damage."

"Okay. When I'm done, can I make another one?"

"I don't see why not."

"Can I make four of them, wire them together, and make one big bomb?"

"Okay, I guess. But, I'd say you'll have tog o out of game for six hours or so."

"No problem."

Six hours later, I have a 100-damage-point-bomb strapped to my chest (an imaginary one in a game, in case the NSA is monitoring this website). I gather together some of the other Nulls, and tell them we're going to rush the Casino.

"The Casino" was in the hotel penthouse, and it wa the main venure for the game. Nulls, being an underclass, were not allowed in. They had in-game security that would check your ID at the door.

About eight of us walked up to the casino door, and the guard stopped us. Most of us simply walked past him while he was amicably checking the first guy's credentials.

"Hey, come back..." he said.

"Just a minute," I replied, totally brushing him off.

I walked up tot he table where the Station Administrator, the Alien Ambassador, the Senator, and the Station Security Chief were all playing cards and discussing important things.

"I need a GM here," I yelled, "because I'm setting off a 100-point bomb."

Nobody knew what to do. By the rules of the game, everyone in the casino was dead. All of the important characters were blown to bits and floating in space.

The Gms conferred, and decided that there would be a time shift of 30 minutes (to be fair, there were rumors floating around that the station was drifting through time mysteriously during the game), but I was free to come back in a half hour.

So I did.

Every entrance to that floor of the hotel was covered by in-character security guards, ready to shoot anyone who walked thorugh. The explanation given? there had been reports of a bomb threat.

I don't know who made the "report," because nobody who knew about the plan left my sight after I told them about it.

The moral of the story? If a LARP player asks you if s/he can build a bomb, the answer is "no."

[Wiseblood]

The moral of the story? If a LARP player asks you if s/he can build a bomb, the answer is "no."

I would actually say that the moral of the story is, "If you don't want someone to blow shit up then don't give them the demolitions skill."

[Jason D]

I knew guys who would join LARPS at conventions, then work specifically to get hold of vital plot items (usually cards) and then slip away to go do something else when no one was looking.

I was astounded when they told me they'd just done this at a Gen Con, to a Star Trek LARP. They'd initially been trading them in at Quark's "bar" for drinks (the organizers did some sort of exchange with the item cards and real soft drinks and snacks), but got annoyed when the organizers kept shuffling the items back into play rather than keeping them gone (which they announced was the consequence for trading items for drinks). So, they traded and haggled and stole to get the item cards back, and then just walked away with them.

I hope that the organizers had made backup cards or planned for the possibility of items going missing.

[Random Goblin]

I knew guys who would join LARPS at conventions, then work specifically to get hold of vital plot items (usually cards) and then slip away to go do something else when no one was looking.

I was astounded when they told me they'd just done this at a Gen Con, to a Star Trek LARP. They'd initially been trading them in at Quark's "bar" for drinks (the organizers did some sort of exchange with the item cards and real soft drinks and snacks), but got annoyed when the organizers kept shuffling the items back into play rather than keeping them gone (which they announced was the consequence for trading items for drinks). So, they traded and haggled and stole to get the item cards back, and then just walked away with them.

I hope that the organizers had made backup cards or planned for the possibility of items going missing.

Now, that's just breaking a game on purpose.

My character was supposed to be a desperate activist/terrorist. And I didn't create the character, the game's organizers did.

[Jadasc]

It sounds like a breakdown in GM communication, if you ask me. "Six hours out of game" is enough time for the GM staff to work out a better response than the one you got.

Then again, I don't think that I'd do anything in a one-shot IL game that involved me staying out of game for six hours, and then dying. If I'm not going to play, why play?

[Lost Demiurge]

Friend of mine played in a WoD LARP at Origins a few years back. He and his buddies were a team of Hunters.

They managed to capture a vampire, and started interrogating him. A GM wandered by, and asked what was going on.

They told him, and he said "All right, turn around for a minute." When they turned back, the captive was gone. They asked the GM why, and he said...

...Direct Quote...

"We just threw you guys in as Hunters to keep things interesting. We didn't actually plan for you guys succeeding."

My friend asked for his money back and left, as did the rest of his team.

I remember the group that put on this LARP, and while I'm not sure if they're still around, I will NEVER play in one of their games.

Bastards. Treating players like that... And paying players, too!

[Jackob]

First time I ever LARP'ed Mind's Eye Theater, I was given the role of a Sabbat infiltrator/recruiter. I was the only Sabbat in the game, but I didn't think much of it.

The game took place at the Danish Magic: the Gathering championships, so I'd play Magic during the day and LARP during the evening/night - I'd mainly come for the LARP.

At the debriefing, the people responsible applauded my skill at surviving to the very end, because, as they put it, they hadn't expected my role to last more than an hour or two.

SHEEEESH!

Don't think I have ever intentionally "broken" a LARP, but there was one where I played a bit, shall we say, differently than the others.

It was a LARP where we were all souls of dead people. My character was a viking who'd died during a raid. We were all taken into the play area with our eyes closed and told to kneel and open our eyes when the people in charge told us to. When we did, all the walls had been covered with white paper, soft music was playing, everyne was dressed all in white and candles lit the area.
Everyone was stunned, including me, amazed at how good it looked.
Then I rememberred my character and started shouting about how this was not Valhalla, how I had died in battle and wanted some pork and mead and who was in charge of this mess. I spent 5 minutes charging about, yelling at people and complaining before some of the others calmed me down.
Afterwards, some of the other players told me that at first, they'd cringed at the thought of me being an asshole, but after they'd learned what kind of character I'd had, they realized that I was simply playing it. Good fun.

[Levi]

"We just threw you guys in as Hunters to keep things interesting. We didn't actually plan for you guys succeeding."

Lame.

If they needed him back to keep the game going, they could have easily arranged a ghoul witness and a rescue party.

Hostage negotiations, storming the Hunters hideout, a desperate last stand for the Hunters....

...They had it all right in front of them.

[Random Goblin]

Then again, I don't think that I'd do anything in a one-shot IL game that involved me staying out of game for six hours, and then dying. If I'm not going to play, why play?

It was at a convention, so there was plenty of other stuff to do. And the game went the whole weekend nonstop.

And I was on my second character anyway. If you died, you just got another one (albeit, one not vital to the plot, but an "extra" with which you could still forge your own destiny).

[angelsorayama]

Hmmm.. a group of my friends and I accidentally near-broke a LARP...
We came in as a coterie of Sabbat infiltrators and managed, over the course of a few months, to get the Prince to vaulderie with us. The storytellers inevitably had us crushed by big important powerful npcs.

There is an inate lesson here... if you as a storyteller don't want something to happen in your game... then maybe you ought not let your players anywhere near that thing... ~chuckles~

Or... they should accept the consequences when they do :D

Angel

[Random Goblin]

There is an inate lesson here... if you as a storyteller don't want something to happen in your game... then maybe you ought not let your players anywhere near that thing... ~chuckles~

Or... they should accept the consequences when they do :D

That's my point.

My other point was, it was my only amusing LARP-related anecdote to relate here.

[Samhaine]

Dragon*Con 2004 - The Camarilla's Year of Fire game. A couple of my friends get offered a coterie of Giovanni if they play. We all like to play Giovanni, so they ask if it's cool that they bring a lot of people. Sure.

So we all come in with essentially neonate characters and ghouls. One of us has a few more points in stats in disciplines. It's not a big deal though, since we make maybe half a dozen total challenges in the two days we play. There's probably around 12 of us.

The game takes place on a riverboat gathering of vampires. We hang out and play cards, claiming our own table and generally acting like we own the place and refuse to take shit from anyone. All with horrible mafioso accents. In many larps, if you act like you're a whole group of badasses, people will believe you. The game was full of people playing their permanent camarilla characters, so probably a lot of them could have taken us all out individually.

At the end of our first day, the riverboat gets sucked into the shadowlands. Now we know why our Necromancy levels were capped. The plot seems to be to get out. There are shadowy "management" figures that are apparently hosting a game. There are specially marked chips floating around; the one who collects them all gets "powers unknown to any vampire before."

Long story short (too late), we find out by clever roleplaying and deduction that management is Ambrogino Giovanni, still trying to become a god. There's going to be a big ritual, and then the person with all the chips will get turned into a powerful spectre in order to catapult Ambrogino to godlike powers.

Did I mention that Ambrogino had been a dick to us? Treated us like we weren't family and even tried to Dominate us. If he had just acted like a Giovanni instead of a Cappadocian, it would have all been cool.

So, out of spite for Ambroginio being a jerk, we decided to spoil his plan. We managed to collect all the special chips and stymie the ritual until after midnight on the last session of the game. There was apparently a Hierarchy gunboat demanding us, and the rest of the game had no problems serving us up, so we took the chips and went outside. The NPCs agreed to let us play one last game of cards.

Meanwhile, we had split up the special chips so none of us had more than three of the 20 or so. We sat around playing cards while the staff kept coming outside and asking us questions over the course of the next hour.
"Aha! Are those the chips on the deck of the ship?" "Nope, just regular chips."
"One of the players has a power that lets him know where the chips are. I don't know what it's called, but I've seen the description." "Do we get a challenge?" "Yeah, sure." "Alright, who are you challenging?" "Um, you" "I relent. I don't know where all the chips are. I have a few in my pocket but I don't know how many, they were just handed to me."
"Which of you has the most chips?" "None of us have more than three or so"

Finally, apparently they went ahead with the ritual inside. Without the chips, it failed, Ambroginio got sucked into hell or something, and everyone got kicked back into the real world.

We heard that, because of us, an important NPC wasn't getting played at the next month's big game. We figured that Ambrogino was supposed to succeed and become a big antagonist for the rest of the Camarilla's end game.

They gave us prizes for best roleplayers, even though we broke their game.

[Jackob]

Always happy to hear about Ambrogino getting screwed. Though the Giovanni is one of my favorite clans, I hate Ambrogino (I even set him up to die in The Red Sign). Well played.

In many larps, if you act like you're a whole group of badasses, people will believe you.

Quoted for serious truth!

[Crayne]

Well, there was the time they designated me and three other players as the Thieves' Guild in our local fantasy LARP. Of course, they didn't give us any subplots to pursue and when we did a little business of our own (robbery, extortion and various other wholesome activities) they were quick to make life very difficult for us.

During all this the main plot was chugging along quite nicely (apparently), but we never noticed it, being too busy not getting caught.

First sad thing that happened is that I managed to steal the local magistrate's belt pouch, took it to an official and opened it. After getting the NPC to witness the takings and verify that it was his pouch, the guy was quick to proclaim it had a spell on it that blew up whoever tried to open it, along with most of the building he was in at that moment. In other words: real fair.

And then we got a subplot that actually made sense. We acquired a clay tablet that seemed to be part of some sort of treasure map. Being enterprising gents, we were quick to hunt down the other two parts, liberating them from two other players who'd come across them during play.

When we tried to puzzle out where the treasure was buried, we found it was not at all a map. It was the solution to the main plot. With which we had had nothing to do. In which we were not at all interested. Not in the slightest. Nada.

So we ransomed the tablets for 15.000 crystals (where 1 crystal was roughly equal to 1 D&D gp.)

The GMs/narrators were not amused. Not in the slightest. Nada.

[Requiem_17_23]

LARP refs / GMs / STs / whatever seem to vary at least as much as tabletop ones - only there tends to be a committee, so it's all magnified, and you often get one lot running a game that another lot wrote.

I firmly hold to the idea that PCs don't break games, GMs allow them to break games. This is doubly true in LARP - give them an inch and they will take a mile - usually a year after you gave them the inch, and have forgotten all about it.

Also, there is the famed 'rabbit in headlights' reaction - PCs see something happen and they just sit and watch despite having the ability to stop it. This is at least twice as bad in LARP because you cannot turn to the offending players and ask them if they're just going to let this happen.

Good example of this was the first big thing I ran as ref of the local fantasy LARP. Four strange creatures, the leader recognisable to the more experienced players as a monster somewhat below a PC in power, walked into the IC bar and ordered everybody out - this was to be a short and easily won fight to introduce these monsters to the party. The PCs looked stunned for a moment, so I repeated the order, with the explanation in a strange foreign accent of "Fire Drill." The six assembled heroes, comprising a balanced party any two of whom were probably capable of defeating the encounter on their own, meekly got up and left, scurrying faster when the monsters started jeering and catcalling. Conclusion? PCs in LARP, unless they are experienced or prepared for what is going to happen, will sit and let things happen as long as their opposition retains the initiative.

This is very exploitable in PvP. :cool:

[Craig Oxbrow]

The game takes place on a riverboat gathering of vampires. We hang out and play cards, claiming our own table and generally acting like we own the place and refuse to take shit from anyone. All with horrible mafioso accents. In many larps, if you act like you're a whole group of badasses, people will believe you.
Ain't that the trut'. (Works in online chat games too.)

[Random Goblin]

Dragon*Con 2004 - The Camarilla's Year of Fire game. A couple of my friends get offered a coterie of Giovanni if they play. We all like to play Giovanni, so they ask if it's cool that they bring a lot of people. Sure.

So we all come in with essentially neonate characters and ghouls. One of us has a few more points in stats in disciplines. It's not a big deal though, since we make maybe half a dozen total challenges in the two days we play. There's probably around 12 of us.

The game takes place on a riverboat gathering of vampires. We hang out and play cards, claiming our own table and generally acting like we own the place and refuse to take shit from anyone. All with horrible mafioso accents. In many larps, if you act like you're a whole group of badasses, people will believe you. The game was full of people playing their permanent camarilla characters, so probably a lot of them could have taken us all out individually.

At the end of our first day, the riverboat gets sucked into the shadowlands. Now we know why our Necromancy levels were capped. The plot seems to be to get out. There are shadowy "management" figures that are apparently hosting a game. There are specially marked chips floating around; the one who collects them all gets "powers unknown to any vampire before."

Long story short (too late), we find out by clever roleplaying and deduction that management is Ambrogino Giovanni, still trying to become a god. There's going to be a big ritual, and then the person with all the chips will get turned into a powerful spectre in order to catapult Ambrogino to godlike powers.

Did I mention that Ambrogino had been a dick to us? Treated us like we weren't family and even tried to Dominate us. If he had just acted like a Giovanni instead of a Cappadocian, it would have all been cool.

So, out of spite for Ambroginio being a jerk, we decided to spoil his plan. We managed to collect all the special chips and stymie the ritual until after midnight on the last session of the game. There was apparently a Hierarchy gunboat demanding us, and the rest of the game had no problems serving us up, so we took the chips and went outside. The NPCs agreed to let us play one last game of cards.

Meanwhile, we had split up the special chips so none of us had more than three of the 20 or so. We sat around playing cards while the staff kept coming outside and asking us questions over the course of the next hour.
"Aha! Are those the chips on the deck of the ship?" "Nope, just regular chips."
"One of the players has a power that lets him know where the chips are. I don't know what it's called, but I've seen the description." "Do we get a challenge?" "Yeah, sure." "Alright, who are you challenging?" "Um, you" "I relent. I don't know where all the chips are. I have a few in my pocket but I don't know how many, they were just handed to me."
"Which of you has the most chips?" "None of us have more than three or so"

Finally, apparently they went ahead with the ritual inside. Without the chips, it failed, Ambroginio got sucked into hell or something, and everyone got kicked back into the real world.

We heard that, because of us, an important NPC wasn't getting played at the next month's big game. We figured that Ambrogino was supposed to succeed and become a big antagonist for the rest of the Camarilla's end game.

They gave us prizes for best roleplayers, even though we broke their game.

Does Louis Puster still run the MET game at Dragon*Con?

[Canis Major]

Originally Posted by Samhaine
In many larps, if you act like you're a whole group of badasses, people will believe you.

Oh so true.

[Samhaine]

Does Louis Puster still run the MET game at Dragon*Con?
Nope. Liquid Dreams has not run at D*C since Tapestry of Lies in, iirc, 2000. Louis is currently in Florida for film school. He's been planning to run a Paranoia LARP at D*C, but I don't know if he's going to be able to get to it this year. He was, however, the Giovanni that started at somewhat higher than neonate stats mentioned above.

[Random Goblin]

Nope. Liquid Dreams has not run at D*C since Tapestry of Lies in, iirc, 2000. Louis is currently in Florida for film school. He's been planning to run a Paranoia LARP at D*C, but I don't know if he's going to be able to get to it this year. He was, however, the Giovanni that started at somewhat higher than neonate stats mentioned above.

I was best friends with his brother, John, back in high school. My family is still good friends with his family, although I haven't seen Louis since 1998 or so.

[hyphz]

This isn't me personally - it's hearsay of a story I've heard posted somewhere before, possible here. But I think it bears the repeating.

The guy was playing a bartender in a LARP that was taking place in.. well, a bar. Only problem was, the venue obviously wouldn't let him actually stand behind the bar and serve drinks, since he wasn't staff. So they had a main bar, where the staff were OOC and where you could actually drink, and a smaller offshoot bar where the bartender was IC but you couldn't buy anything.

Of course, nobody wanted to bother coming into the smaller bar. So the LARP session went something like this:

Day 1: Sit there doing nothing and talking OOC to a friend.
Day 2: Early on, a vampire comes up to the bar and asks to leave some IC stuff there, so he accepts. He then sits there doing nothing for another couple hours until he calls a GM to say he's bored and wants to leave the game, so his character is going to skip town - taking the items with him. He is told that, if he can walk through the main bar to the hall on the other side, then he's left town. (Bit confusing.) So, he calmly walks straight through and leaves.

Behind him he hears the GM announcing the end of the entire LARP. Apparantly the whole point of the LARP was to get those critical items (the ones the vampire left) and escape with them.

[pawsplay]

I got invited into a boffer game at a Con where we were doing an Amtgard demo. Their game was a fantasy LARP with character cards and quest items and costumes and all that jazz. Amtgard mainly consists of beating each other for hours with boffer weapons, interspersed with the occasional quest, crafts workshop, or drunken orgy.

So there I was, a 1st level character playing for free, as a quest, in a regular IFGS game scaled for, I believe 6-10th level characters. We were in basically a hotel in a pocket dimension off of Hell. First, a vampire killed me with a touch. An NPC took pity on me and resurrected me. My party had mostly wandered off and were dying. At this point, I had an inkling of how things were going to go. So first I attempted to assassinate an NPC fighter, only to be informed he was in magic armor and couldn't be harmed. He sent his skeletons after me.

So I slew them. All of them. Like I said, Amtgard people fight all die. While the combat was different, it wasn't so different that I couldn't adapt. And with two short swords, I found easy ways around the "no machinegunning" rules.

A while later, someone gave me a shock blade or somesuch. Worth +25 to one attack, I think. So I sneaked up on the NPC I met earlier and stabbed him. He laughed, until I said, "shock blade +25" or whatever you say. However, he wasn't quite dead, so he responded in a fit of pique with a fireball. Which, incidentally, I had already avoided by scampering away, causing the other nearby group, who was fighting him, to die.

I eavesdropped, and learned the feast on the feat table was cursed, and convinced several other people to eat it.

At this point, I felt I was ready to do anything. Obviously, where several parties of mid level parties had failed, I, the 1st level newbie, would succeed. So I picked a lock, then navigated a twine labyrinth of deadly energy bars (doing my best impression of a movie cat burglar). I encountered some rats, whom I promtply slew, despite having maybe a third of the hit points they did. Then I met the Guardian, whom I slew, despite having some staggeringly fewer hit points than he did, and running the risk of dying from a single hit.

I came up on another party trying to go through the portal to escape the pocket dimension. They were loading up treasure from a chest. The door was utterly impassable, though, and were trying to learn a way to open it.

I appraised the situation, and determined that the portal would probably bar anyone carrying the treasure. So I took only a magic weapon from the chest, and boldly strode through the exit, and off into the sunset and glory. Meanwhile, rats were killing the party behind me...

Only one other group escaped, and it took them another hour.

[Jedine]

Ok, just remember, this was a LARP we played in at a con, and we knew only three of the other players. We knew nothing at all about anyone else playing.
This becomes important later.

It was at a small-ish, first year convention in Florida. A fairly well known LARP group was putting on the game, but a lot of new to LARP people were playing. There were about 35 - 40 people involved, all told.

One of the ST's was married to the main ST. (Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!) She had the stereotypical LARPer char - gangrel something-or-other (primogen? Harpy? Archon? can't remember anymore.) with tons of mascara, fishnets, corset, cape and high heeled boots. So in other words, Gangrel lesbianninjastripper from hell.

Do I even need to mention she really wasn't the body type to wear this sort of thing? And is it called Vampire; the Masquerade for any reason, or should it be called Vampire; Hey! Lookit me, I'm teh sexay! (/rhetorical question)?

So, off we go. The husby and I are playing Sabbat infiltrators. I'm a Tzimisce tattoo artist and he's my Caitiff bodyguard. He also has a level or three of thaumaturgy and he's a diablarist. (These are pre-gen chars, by the way. We picked manilla envelopes at random.)

The first scene is a big party. Everybody mingle, meet and greet kind of thing. Miss Gangrel stripper comes over and noses about some, then decides evasive answers aren't her cup of tea, so she pointedly asks "What clan are you?"

Now, I want to point out, we're Sabbat infiltrators. This is not a hobby for us, it's what we do. We lie. I claim Toreador, husby tries to charm her and change subject. She informs him that he has to tell her, and that I have to tell her the truth, and I quote here:

"Because I'm going to seduce it from you both. I have four challenges in the seduction skill."

Ah, ok. So being as we don't know much better (though by now my fingernails are screaming for her blood) she gets us to both admit what we are. She then swaggers off to continue her night.

Husby and I find one of the other STs and ask if this is by the rules, being seduced into basically committing suicide. Other ST says, "No, I'll deal with it," and then tells her she can't do that, she has to forget that info, don't pass it on, etc...
Of course, by now, she's told half the people there. And they're told to forget it as well, but now there's quite a bit of meta-gaming going on.

So husby and I are grousing about how this is a fine kettle of fish, when someone who hadn't heard the whole "Watch those two - they're Sabbat." rumor comes up and engages us in conversation, regarding who's doing what and do we know anyone else here, etc...

Now, the stated rules of the game are "You are considered IN CHARACTER unless you specify otherwise." Otherwise was indicated by crossing your fingers in front of your chest and not talking to anyone a lot. So, in character, husby says, "I don't know about anyone else here, but THAT WOMAN " here pointing at Gangrel Sexaybeast - "is one hella sexy monster."
New player, perhaps sensing the final confirmation about gamer grrls being oh so hot, leans in closer, and says, "Man what?" (Ok, not really, but he should have said it.)
"Oh, yeah," I say, smiling and nodding, "Her and me and him went down that alley a few minutes ago and she does this thing with her tongue..."

*****RADIO EDIT************

Five minutes later, some more people have come over to find out what the Gangrel can do, they're eavesdropping, so we lay it on thicker and heavier. After all, she tried to seduce us into committing suicide? That's gonna take way more than a piece of paper with "Do You Liek Me? Mark Yes or nO." written on it.
But we make it obvious that we're IN CHARACTER. There are referances to "Wow, I didn't know you could DO that with protean!" ""Did you ever think mist form could be so warm and wet?" "Amazing what other things can be pumped up by spending blood."

Yes, we were being assholes. But she was a cheating ST who was trying to bend the rules on two new LARPers. So we figured she'd blush a bit and maybe get mad.

Oh, and just to add in, it was about 3 am, adult game, no one under 18 allowed to play. So we weren't being ignorant in front of the pokemon players.

What happened was, her husband the head ST hears the chatter.
And goes off on her, because he thinks she's actually done something with us.
And why does he think that?
Because she's done it before!
Like, the last game they were in.
And several games before that.
And I guess, pretty much every opportunity she got, she'd just go off with one, two, three, many other people and play strip crisco twister until dawn.
*sigh* And all we got was this lousy t-shirt!

[aprogressivist]

I never did manage to break a LARP, but I do have a funny tale or two to tell.

When I as around 16ish, one of my school friends got us invited to a fantasy DnD-based LARP someplace in Belgium. I decided to play a cowardly illusionist named "Rincevent", based pretty thinly on Rincewind the wizard.

While everyone else is off doing Plot, I spend most of the time lurking around "base" where it's nice and safe. That is, until they decide to run plots in our base and turn the basement of the building where our stuff was into a vampire crypt.

We become aware of this when a damsel in distress begins shouting: "Help! Help!" from one of the basement windows.

We all sit around looking useless, staring at each other with a "You go deal with it!" expression. After about half an hour of this poor maiden crying for rescue from the evil bloodsuckers, the GMs eventually get pissed off and start asking us our character sheets. Anyone Good got knocked down to Neutral, while I sat there gloating that I didn't have to go get into trouble. :D

[Zounds!]

Not so much 'the LARP I broke' as 'the LARP that broke itself'. We were a generic bunch of fantasy mercenaries, hired by John Q. NPC to find the men who killed his wife, or something. The NPC who hired us was also accompanying us, helping us out with fights and so on, as we slaughtered our merry way through a series of nonsensical encounters. Finally, we find the guys who we're looking for, and the GMs explain to us that they're standing on the other side of a BIG GLOWING MAGICAL WARD OF DEATH. Unfortunately, the guy playing the NPC - the man who hired us, remember - clearly wasn't listening, because the moment Time In was called he strode forward to demand answers from them.

The GMs then looked at each other, rather embarassed, and told the NPC - who was being played by another GM - that he'd touched the ward, and exploded on contact. We now had no boss, no hope of getting paid, and no reason to continue the mission, let alone risk suffering Outrageous Explosion-Based Death. So we turned round and went home.

Anyway, this game was supposed to be the lead-in to all sorts of political intrigue and whatnot, with the dead NPC as a major participant. I imagine much rewriting went on afterwards.

[PeterAmthor]

Once upon a time I used to help run a MET LARP. Me and two other guys were in charge of the game and would work up the plots etc.

Now somebody on this thread has already stated that it's not players who break a larp its the GMs that allow them to do it. Or something like that. This is so true. I would think over anything that was asked looking for what trouble it could bring later. The other storytellers.... well they would just go 'sure why not!'. So I ended up playing fire control a couple games in and by the forth game that's all I do all night. Players suddenly having missle launchers, ancient artifacts, ungodly amounts of cash and military support.

Glad that's over. Never going to run a LARP again after that.

As a player I would use other players to break things as much as possible. Simply by talking them into things and their inability to follow clan belief and such. Being the eleventh gen Ventrue with a ninth gen gangrel bodygaurd and a tenth level brujah 'torpedo' with stong ties with the Tremere has advantages. Of course that's part of playing the badass as somebody has said. Acting like you have power and control can put you in positions where you can actually attain it.

[Redfeild]

The moral of the story? If a LARP player asks you if s/he can build a bomb, the answer is "no."

Have a simular story.

Me and another guy were playing anarchs in a Laws of the Night game. The plan was that one guy would go into the Cam only primogen meeting he had got 'invited' to. His back pack was filled with explosives he had gathered over weeks of gaming. When the bomb went off, the two of us would move in and kill as many toper primogen as we could for the anarch cause.

Once the GM figgured out what we were up two he fixed it so that the blast radius would be equill to the distance the two of us stood. In other words, if we were across town the blast would some how take us out so we could not kill off the presious Cam hirarchy. Everyone in the building went into topor and so did the two of us.

Durring the confusion, the cam failed to check our credintials! We were just kindred that happened to be at the wronge place at the wronge time. From there the two of us tried to build a resistance movment from withen. It was tough because the cammies managed to kill off ALL the anarchs in a weaks time but some how missed the two of us.

So weaks go by with litttle forward momentum. At some point my partner suddenly dissappeard. This is a VERY commen occerance in the old game. People would just drop off the earth and no one would even investigate. So my guy searches for his partner and never finds him. Finally he decides it was the fault of the Ventrue prince. But the prince (or should I say the player) consistantly ignored me. Finaly I did the one thing that would get his attention. I yell from 20 feet away 'physical challange!'. He says, 'OK. What type of gun are you using?'. I say, 'Moltove Coctail.'.

We had been playing the gray book. Back then we had beast traits. His beast trait was to frezy from fire. I got his attention but the story teller had to reset the scene for a different out come.

Moral of the story is simple. Explosives wreck carefully orcrestraited story lines. Had either succeded, the game would have been way different. Over the years, explosives skills as well as explosives have been band from play.

Still, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened. Besides a breach in the maskerade.

[Redfeild]

Behind him he hears the GM announcing the end of the entire LARP. Apparantly the whole point of the LARP was to get those critical items (the ones the vampire left) and escape with them.

I did not think anyone could actualy 'win' a game of vampire. :D

[Requiem_17_23]

Nonono. Surely you allow them to *attempt* to build a bomb (warning them that the chances of success are low), and then observe their bomb making, and then tell them that they should summon a ref when they wish to set it off.

And then make the bomb fizzle entertainingly, for large collections of explosives do not reliably work in your setting.

[Samhaine]

Moral of the story is simple. Explosives wreck carefully orcrestraited story lines. Had either succeded, the game would have been way different. Over the years, explosives skills as well as explosives have been band from play.
The problem may be less the explosives, and more the careful orchestration. My general theory is that if your plotlines aren't resilient enough to adjust to an explosion, you may not be giving the players enough freedom. Responsible players can be trusted with using explosives in an entertaining fashion; it's just the idiots you have to watch out for, and those will usually get their characters killed off before they can wreak much havoc with explosives anyway.

I ran a Changeling game where one of the Nockers had been stockpiling chimerical gunpowder for months. Every game, I'd give him a few more item cards, and had worked out a simple system for the blast radius if he set off several at once. He was a very entertaining and mature player, and I expected him not to use the explosives out of pique.

Another good player had been given a dauntain bent on destroying the freehold. He convinced the Nocker to give him the explosives. He stashed them under the freehold and was preparing to set them off, but managed to get killed in an unrelated roleplaying exchange before he had the chance.

Afterwards, he said to me, "I guess it's a good thing that I got killed before I set those explosives off. I dunno what you guys would have done!" I told him, "the explosives would have gone off, the freehold would have been blown up, several PCs would probably have died, and everyone would have had to deal with the consequences." "Really?" "Yep."

It's fair to notify other PCs that explosives are a possibility that their enemies can use against them, and enforce realistic limitations on acquiring them, but I dislike arbitrary limitations on PC actions because the staff isn't prepared to adjust to them. If explosive use is really going to wreck storylines, it's far better to have an in-game mechanism to notify influential characters that someone is buying up a lot of explosives, I feel, than it is to just have explosives banned or, even worse, fail to work believably.

[coeli]

Ain't that the trut'. (Works in online chat games too.)
I once scared the living daylights out of the player of a much more powerful character (my character's greatest enemy, in fact) by being unfailingly polite and pleasant to him. He spent half his time sending his network of spies and assassins to locate my network of spies and assassins, getting increasingly nervous with each failure.

Of course, I had no such network.

[Crayne]

...but I dislike arbitrary limitations on PC actions because the staff isn't prepared to adjust to them.

I'm with him. The longrunning (10+ years) oWoD Vampire LARP I helped create was plagued by storytellers and narrators that did not understand this. Players' plots to overthrow NPC primogen and other players were thwarted simply because the staff were not prepared to adjust their plots to players' machinations, nor willing.

[xReubenx]

You can't place all the blame at the feet of the GM/DM/ST/Nerdy bloke with all the books.

Sure, the people running the games need to be able to adapt and stay flexible, but many of these stories involve the players messing up the games (not always accidentally) rather than the GM(s) letting things get out of control.

Don't get me wrong, it can be great fun when a plot goes pair-shaped, but you can't go out of you way to mess up the game and then complain that the organizer(s) is incompetent when the game gets messed up.

Well, I guess you can, but makes you a bit of a t**t.

[DariusSolluman]

I'm with him. The longrunning (10+ years) oWoD Vampire LARP I helped create was plagued by storytellers and narrators that did not understand this. Players' plots to overthrow NPC primogen and other players were thwarted simply because the staff were not prepared to adjust their plots to players' machinations, nor willing.

The counter arguement to this is, players have to not take actions that are either long term or short term suicidal. As plans are predicated on rational actors, not actors that have no care towards preventing self-destruction.

Using explosives generally falls in the 'long term suicidal' category.

I don't mind some arbitrary limitations, as long as they're mentioned up front. Even 'NPCs X Y and Z are invincible. They won't die during the course of the night. Fighting them is suicide.' I hate when that is the case, but the STs deny it.