AdventureX 2015: Part 2 – The People
Ian Thomas – Lessons Learned From LARP
Ian Thomas has worked on a number of games, including Frictional Games’ SOMA and the Lego Star Wars series. Whilst he has been involved in the mechanics of these games, his main skill is writing and narrative design. He has applied this skill to other fields as well, including a children’s book about Cthulhu, but his talk focussed on the writing he has done for LARPing (live-action roleplaying) events. For many people this conjures up images of sword and sorcery epics with rubber swords, but the genre goes far beyond that. To illustrate this, Ian talked about a supernatural mystery weekend in which he had been involved.
The story was set in the 1950s and took place at a remote manor house in Exmoor. The two-day event was a supernatural tale, with many ghosts putting in an appearance. Whilst each character started off with their own personal goals, finding the reasons for the hauntings and putting the varied spirits to rest were the main game objectives. Some games would have bombarded participants with reams of detail about the setting and rules to memorise. Ian and his team preferred a more immersive approach. Whilst some practical issues had to be covered by a short rules sheet for the safety of players, the character and setting information was largely supplied differently. Each player received their own sheaf of documents for their assigned character, including newspaper clippings, letters and photographs. These not only brought the characters to life as game world items, but they could be carried around and referred to without breaking immersion. Many players also had blackmail material on others in their bundles, giving them hooks for interaction once on site. One player was also provided a camera – actually a camera phone sealed in an era-appropriate case. The setting had a darkroom this player could take the camera to, where the on-site staff would “develop” and return prints of the pictures. Of course, as these were actually being produced on computer, a little bit of discreet Photoshopping allowed the addition of apparitions to the final pictures.
Getting all the players to feel like their characters was only one aspect. There also had to be strange events to pique their interest and give them things to investigate. As players obviously have free will, such events sometimes had to be constructed in ways that would prevent them from interfering. In one scene, played out in the early hours of the morning, players heard an argument followed by a gunshot. After this a woman brandishing a gun and carrying a baby ran into a first floor room where some of the players were. She moved towards the window, threw the “baby” out and then jumped after it herself. Anyone following would look down from the window to see nothing there. Of course, the woman was a stuntperson, falling onto a pile of boxes that were then swiftly carried out of view. But this would only work if none of the players prevented the woman from jumping in the first place. Two major factors influenced this. One was a simple physical barrier, a cot secured to the floor a little way from the window. Anyone seeing the woman going to jump would have to go around, losing precious time. The other was a mental one, the aforementioned gun. Being immersed in the scenario, the fact that the gun was fake would not immediately occur to players, preventing them from taking action until it was too late. Having decided on these factors to make the stunt work, the two items were then woven into the backstory of the ghost themselves.
This is just a taster of how the story was woven together. To get more detail on this event, and find out more about the group that makes them, have a look at the event website.
Alasdair’s Adventure Quiz
With his comic pirate adventure game Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet nearing publication, you wouldn’t think Alasdair Beckett-King would have time for anything else. Fortunately for us, he was still able to put together a fun quiz of obscure adventuring knowledge. Last year I led Team Hawaiian Shirt to a crushing defeat against the mighty forces of Team Green Pants. Of course, that defeat was clearly not down to my own lack of ability, but rather to facing the astonishing knowledge of Francisco Gonzalez. Having noted this, Alasdair decided to split us into three teams this year. Two teams were based on Nelly Cootalot characters, Nelly herself and the villainous Baron Widebeard. The third consisted solely of Francisco himself. As an ordinary member of Team Widebeard, I feared another defeat could be on its way.
With no captains this time around, the floor was open to anyone to provide answers. To prevent everyone just yelling answers over one another, players had to shout “BUZZ” and be acknowledged by Nelly’s real-world alter ego, Rachel Smith. The quiz rounds included returning favourites from last year, like the odd-one-out round where voice-acting knowledge came in handy. There were also new rounds, such as the lightning round, where we had to identify the lightning flashes from various games. I cursed when I was too slow to get a freeware game in this round. One particularly hilarious round was based on box art. Box art was displayed with the title digitally removed, and it soon became clear that many box designers had not played the game involved. That is unless anyone remembers a barbarian fighting an orc scene from Zork. To finish off, there was a special round constructed to trip up the player who had done so well last year. In the Francisco Gonzalez round, each team was asked questions in turn. Teams Nelly and Widebeard were tasked to name obscure celebrities from brief descriptions, the answer coincidentally turning out to be “Francisco Gonzalez” each time. Meanwhile, poor Francisco’s questions involved knowing facts about other people named Francisco Gonzalez instead, with the obscure nature of their “celebrity” stumping him. His final question was about a detail from a 2004 game from his own Ben Jordan series. After a brief struggle he managed to get a final point with the right answer.
In the end, Team Widebeard stood triumphant! But it wasn’t so much about the winning (though did I mention I was on the winning team?) but more about having a bit of anarchic fun. Those wishing to see if that same sense of humour and fun translates into Alasdair’s rapidly upcoming game should check out the Nelly Cootalot website.
SkyGoblin – Ups and Downs of Being Indie
I could tell you all about SkyGoblin’s experience of bringing The Journey Down to life, which was shared in a fun video presentation to kick off the whole AdventureX event, or I could just let you see it for yourselves.
Conclusion
So that was AdventureX for another year. Once again there wasn’t enough time to see all the games or talks available, but great fun was had by all and it was a pleasure to meet so many enthusiastic adventure gamers. There was even time to fit in a little AdventureX song. The convention keeps on going from strength to strength, with the new venue proving very pleasant. I look forward to more adventuring antics in 2016.
Latest Gaming Articles
All Articles
