A Serpent of Ash: (nearly) simultaneous larping on both sides of The Pond

[Thomas B.]

On Friday night, Feb 29th, players at Intercon H in Chelmsford, USA and players in Lausanne, Switzerland played translated versions of J. Tuomas Harviainen's Tuhkakäärme, aka A Serpent of Ash for anglophones and Un serpent de cendre for francophones.

Interestingly, these were the first runs in those countries, when the game has already been run in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the UK and Italy.

So what's the game about?
A larp about the dark side of religion: What happens when former cult members meet again? What has been left unsaid? A discourse-oriented game for 6-12 players

What makes it so special?
There's basically no system: no investigation or combat rules, no paper clues, very succinct character sheets, and no way to discover what actually happened if players just don't want to reveal stuff. And it's made to last around 90 minutes.

But is it any good?
Yes! The Swiss players were warned beforehand about the minimalistic approach and still found it a bit strange but also liberating in a way: they just concentrated on the roleplaying.

Ideally, I'd like players of both games to comment on their experience and others to ask questions etc. The timing was a coincidence but a fun one

[Pythonite]

My initial notes and observations from running A Serpent of Ash at Intercon H in Chelmsford, MA, USA can be seen on my blog here.

From what I've hear so far, it sounds like Thomas's run had more movement, while mine was more confined to the initial chair circle. While I don't think either of these paths is more correct, I'm interested in what anyone thinks led to these paths being taken.

More later,
Eric

[Thomas B.]

Originally Posted by Pythonite

While I don't think either of these paths is more correct, I'm interested in what anyone thinks led to these paths being taken.

Overall, most of the game happened around the table (which also had the food and drinks, so big magnet right there ). Basically people left the table first to comfort others, when they were revealing sad things about what happened to them. Finally I let the people know that there were only 15 minutes left and all hell broke loose!

When one of the characters went to jump through the window (the player actually climbed on the windowsill), others reacted.

When a character left after a shouting match, some ran after him (they actually chased each other into the street, the "prey" hid, and the chasers came back IC, then the prey came back OOC).

When a character got pills out and started popping them massively, others reacted, and at that point the whole thing was whirlwind, shouting left and right, crying in corners etc.

[Pythonite]

Sorry for the delay -- got distracted by other things.

I think all of that makes a lot of sense, and it occurs to me that my thoughts on how American's would interpret the material might have been a little narrow-minded. At the same time, though, I can't help but wonder how much my style as a director affected the outcome. I've stated elsewhere that I think my introductory speech was necessary to enable the players to feel comfortable inhabiting the world of A Serpent of Ash, but at the same time I keep thinking that that at the same time I constrained behavior by giving it. The same goes for my decisions to leave the event space often enough to ensure that players couldn't fall back on me; staying might have empowered them to do to things that were more melodramatic since I was there as an ultimate authority to resolve conflict.

I suppose to an extent I'm probably overly fixating on my own roll in things, but I think it's an interesting conversation point outside of being something that feeds my ego.

All of that said there was definitely still an action-reaction dynamic in play during the Intercon H run, just more subdued than what you saw. Will be interesting to see how else it can turn out, since I think I have at least one run of it in the future .

[Thomas B.]

Originally Posted by Pythonite

I've stated elsewhere that I think my introductory speech was necessary to enable the players to feel comfortable inhabiting the world of A Serpent of Ash, but at the same time I keep thinking that that at the same time I constrained behavior by giving it.

Well, considering we're larpers, not scientists studying larp, I think it's more important that you gave your speech so that players were briefed and could fully enjoy the game as they knew what type of gameplay to expect. I wrote a page-long disclaimer just for that purpose (this was not a con setting, so people who signed up only signed up for the game, so that made it all the more important that they knew what to expect).

The same goes for my decisions to leave the event space often enough to ensure that players couldn't fall back on me; staying might have empowered them to do to things that were more melodramatic since I was there as an ultimate authority to resolve conflict.

I was really happily surprised on how well they managed to ignore me. I stayed in there, took photos and just enjoyed it. They never asked me anything and I only jumped in when a player climbed on the windowsill. This was a rather high-second floor so I walked closer to him, pulled a META to ask people not to touch him and just describe with META was they were doing. Tension was very high at the time and I'd rather break suspension of disbelief for a moment than have a player die on me

Do post about the rerun, and it'd be cool if you could get some players over to this thread. Some of my players posted on the Swiss RPG.net but they're not too keen on posting in English.

[Mike Young]

During some of the first runs of Humans vs. Monsters: Diplomacy, I had to deliberately leave the room because the players kept looking at me for confirmation instead of talking to each other. This was run at the same convention as ASoA, albeit several years prior, so it may be a local thing.

[Thomas B.]

Originally Posted by Mike Young

This was run at the same convention as ASoA, albeit several years prior, so it may be a local thing.

Indeed, when I compare my larp experiences on both side of the Pond, French and Swiss larpers interacted less often with the organizers, for various reasons:

-OOC comments/actions are in general frowned upon as they break suspension of disbelief, so yelling "ST!" like I often saw in the US is just considered lame and ruining everyone's fun

-rules were in general much simpler than in the US, so there was less stuff to memorize, so everyone knows the rules and there's no real rulebook anyway

-arguing about rules amongst players is considered about as lame as yelling "ST!" so very often people just roll with it and don't mind, or bitch about it later, but they usually try really hard not to break the moment. In case of obvious, immediate cheating about important stuff, like a player just refusing that their character dies, they'll usually bitch on the spot though, but again will try to handle thing quietly without calling outsiders

In my past larps, most of the player-ST interactions revolved around giving clues or asking questions about possible bugs in the character sheet ("have I met that guy before or not?") or managing the effects of supernatural powers like ("In 10 seconds clutch your belly and start to agonize on the floor").

As ASoA had no clues, minimalist character sheets, and no supernatural powers, players just didn't feel the need to go to me. And several actually stressed out how much they liked the whole "let's ignore the organizer, he's useless anyway" thing.

[Ryan Paddy]

Originally Posted by Pythonite

All of that said there was definitely still an action-reaction dynamic in play during the Intercon H run, just more subdued than what you saw. Will be interesting to see how else it can turn out, since I think I have at least one run of it in the future .

Would you recommend it for running at larp conventions? We're setting a convention up here in New Zealand.

[Jiituomas]

Originally Posted by Ryan Paddy

Would you recommend it for running at larp conventions? We're setting a convention up here in New Zealand.

I originally wrote it as a convention game, and out of the current 13 runs that I know of, 7 have been at conventions. The best run I've witnessed was with a completely random player base at ModCon, in Italy. According to GM reports, the biggest problems (though nothing major) have been witnessed at con runs as well.

Running ASoA, or a similar larp, at a con has the good side of really surprising the players with its playing style, as most tend to be used to very different sort of larps, and the same as a bad side as well. (At Conpulsion, in Edinburgh, some players signed up expecting "Nordic larp" to mean a larp about vikings...)

I'd naturally love seeing a NZ run of it.

[Pythonite]

Originally Posted by Thomas B.

Well, considering we're larpers, not scientists studying larp, I think it's more important that you gave your speech so that players were briefed and could fully enjoy the game as they knew what type of gameplay to expect.

I'd actually prefer to be both and deal with the potential conflict of interest when it arises.

More seriously, I actually did send a note about this thread to the players in my run, but it seems that none of them have taken me up on the offer. Too bad, really.