RE: Different LARP rules just to consider

[Lyle H Janney <lhjanney@adpc.purdue.edu>]

*rubs stomach*  BuuuurrrrrrrrrrP!

Oh, I knew I shouldn't have thrown all those spells last combat.
You guys go on without me; I'm going to wait until the sugar buzz
wears off a bit and then figure out how I'm going to finish these
jelly beans, uh, 'bandage these wounds', from those arrows I took.
*under breath* jeez, I _hate_ strawberry!

Seriously, though, Kris, the idea has merit but I think it comes a 
little late for use this year; I'm sure Dan has already started his 
massive print runs of point cards, by now.  Or at the very least, it 
would take too long to finalize the mechanics of the new system.

May I suggest that instead of jelly beans (too expensive and a 
pain to deal with if it is rainy or just plain wet) we'd use beads (I
know a LARP that does this).  In fact, I have the basic rules right 
here.  Perhaps we should all get together with Dan so we can 
playtest this idea, maybe this spring, before we actually use it in
a live-action for newbies (a smart thing to do, no?).

Lyle

-----Original Message-----
From:	Kris Ames [SMTP:kris@cioe.com]
Sent:	Thursday, October 15, 1998 2:19 PM
To:	gmlist@cioe.com
Subject:	Different LARP rules just to consider

Okay..This is just an idea..something to bounce off people and see what
they would think.

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A couple of us were bouncing around some ideas at lunch yesterday and I
thought they might be worth your perusal. The idea was how to make live
action mechanics play more like AQ instead of so different.  


Each person gets their own color coded bag of jelly beans (there are so
many flavors now and you can buy them by the flavor at the mall).  These
jelly beans would represent DP.  Maybe gummy bears could represent spell
units (also color coded if necessary).  The color coding stops any
potential cheating or mix ups since John the mage's DP could be lime
jelly beans and Jill the warrior's DP could be cinnamon etc.

Combat.  Actually done in rounds and if necessary a stop watch is pulled
out by a moderator to adjudicate actions other than straight spell
casting or attacking.  Attacking is done by rock paper scissors.  Weapon
skill translates into additional attacks.  Damage is the average damage
of the weapon.  Damage is modified by two things 1.  Joe the warrior who
has a really high Mod gets X extra points to any damage he does 2. Jill
the defender in plate gets X points subtracted from damage.  These
variables are set by the Adventure coordinator when they hand out the
character cards for the evening.

All spells are the same (obviously the moderator just states the effect
and moves people, things, hands out damage etc. accordingly).  To help
said moderators they should have a big stick (5' or so tall) with a 30'
string knotted at the 10', 20',  30' mark.  This can be used to determine
radius of spell effects or even help in the straight line lightening bolt
(moderator plants stick at caster's location walks straight out using
string toward termination point and any one who can touch the string is
hit).  Saving throws are done by guess the number I am thinking between 1
and 100 (the number of dice for save determines how close to the number
you need to be to actually save 1 die means within 50, 2 dice within 35,
3 dice within 20,  4 dice within 15, 5 dice within 10 or whatever).


Skill rolls for things like pick pocket could go the same way as saving
throws.  If they succeed, the moderator would just go get said pick
pocketed item from the player (at an opportune time) and casually slip it
to the one who succeeded.  Otherwise the player has to try and pick their
pocket (hence get caught and face the consequences).

Moderators and nomads and priests of Isis could be given generic DP jelly
beans to represent artificial healing.

The players could even take some of the work off of Dan by drawing up a
rate X character a head of time and turning it in with their entrance fee
(concept:  Each person pays a $5-7 entrance fee to pay for jelly beans
etc.  All who pay PLAY.  Obviously moderators don't get charged.) 1 week
a head of time for Dan to translate into damage modifiers, multiple
attacks, etc.  On the day of play, then Dan as usual could hand out two
cards per person (one character and other one goals with XP point values
next to them and also on the card any extra information or stuff they
have at their disposal).

All games would need at least 2 pure mechanic moderators and one
moderator/actor.  The nice thing is that moderators could even adjudicate
things like following motivation or achieving goals.  I.E. if Jill the
warrior whacks hobo the defenseless peasant and her motivation is
charity, the moderator can deduct XP.

Okay, I am done.. I sit prepared for the flaming..


-Kris