This page contains entries written by members of the Game Team and other people involved in the design and running of OSLRP events. Often originally taken from Facebook and other places, they are written to give more of an understanding of why the game works the way it does, and the intent behind some game elements.

written by Mike Rees in January 2019, between Events 2 & 3

Let’s talk about… GAME DESIGN, ‘FINAL BATTLES’ AND SUNDAYS.

Live roleplay events have been happening in the UK for some time! There have been good ones, bad ones, AMAZING ones and truly terrible ones. There have been games run which have been absolute labours of love and events which have been hastily put together from the ‘larp trope identikit box’. There are things which have been proven to work many times before which you may find elements of in lots of games. Be that the NPC who meets you at the start of the game and asks “You may wonder why I’ve called you all here” or “DEFEND THE RITE” style fights, “collect X Macguffins to stop the world ending” and FINAL BATTLES.

I’ve been involved in running events before where we have, while planning, used the sentences “and that will build up to the final battle”, “how do we make the final battle interesting?”, “they can’t find that object until the final battle”. All valid things to say, but working on the assumption that a fest style larp weekend event will have to have a big fight at the end to resolve all issues. It’s a given in event structure that the event has to build up to an obvious set piece denouement or that the weekend is somehow unsatisfactory. And yes, that’s not *strictly* always a fight at events. It’s sometimes a rite or ritual, some grand summoning or a machine being fixed. It could be laying to rest the ancient bones of a villain or hero, a presentation of awards or crowning of a king. Now, I’m not saying that these are necessarily BAD THINGS or that these are things we don’t want to happen at Orion Sphere. If we are telling stories together we want a beginning, middle and end.

HOWEVER…

What about player agency? What about the actions of players over the weekend? Yes, we design and plan a story – but how can we decide in advance what is going to happen when we don’t know what the players will do? What kind of game the players want to play?

Which is why we made the decision with Orion Sphere to NOT WRITE SUNDAYS. Which is wonderful and terrifying. We set up a sandbox, we populate a world with creatures, often ‘a problem’, we make things to poke and prod and we consider how we structure information being released about ‘the problem’. We create interesting NPC’s which are designed to push and pull the players in certain directions and have definite agendas of their own. Our recurring NPC’s and the shadowy command structures of factions and megacorps also have goals and aims and preferred outcomes which they may try to get the player characters to buy into. But we will not decide what happens at the end of the weekend.

This runs a risk from a plot writing perspective. What happens… if nothing happens? What happens if people just don’t care about what is happening on the planet that they are visiting? What happens if the problem is solved on Saturday afternoon?

The answer to that is… whatever happens… is the right thing. Because the agency is with the players. We won’t change the goalposts or the internal logic of the universe to force people into an ending that we wrote months ago. Even if we spent some time making a cool prop in case they chose to summon the king of the Octopus People. We can use that prop some other time. This approach also rarely leads to a nice, clean event ending. If there are enough threads to a plotline for it to feel real, then without an engineered “solve-everything” solution there will inevitably be some loose ends. Player choices need to have consequences that ripple out into the wider setting, and if people are still interested in following up on those loose ends they should have the opportunity to do so.

At the last event we had a race called the Kulkani. The Kulkani, due to their racial background, were more aggressive when outside under the open sky. They were headstrong and stubborn and believed that the planet that the players were on and all of the technology it contained was theirs by birthright. They were an intrinsically warlike species who would die for their beliefs. They were not a stupid species, they were capable of negotiation under certain circumstances but were designed and briefed to be a hair trigger away from violence at any point. Foolishly, we assumed this design would lead to combat, aggression, bullets and knives in the night and should the players try to take control of the planet – inevitable conflict.

Obviously, it didn’t.

It turned into something, in our opinion, far more interesting. There was assorted political manoeuvring to get this race on side, from the get-go people were not aggressive towards them at all and in the end - THEY GAVE THEM THE PLANET. There was a little more to it than that… but I wouldn’t want to give away some of the sneaky, underhanded shenanigans. But let’s just say… we didn’t expect that. And we designed the game and the agendas and the motivation and encounters… and player agency led to something we didn’t expect.

Cool.

But when we receive feedback from the event we have variations on the comment “I didn’t have anything to do during the final set piece” or “I would have enjoyed more combat”. That is the downside to doing it this way. We were aware that combat focused characters had nothing to shoot at. We were aware that there was no ‘opposition’ to this ending. But… that’s the ending that happened based on everything players did all weekend. And we decided not to undermine that player action and let the ending that happened… happen.

If people wanted the aliens to be more aggressive - they could have been aggressive with them. A sudden but inevitable betrayal would have led to combat – and there were a few tense moments – but no one did. We’re not saying anyone should or shouldn’t do anything… that’s the point. There were lots of potential endings. This was the one we got.

And that leads to the final point: The ‘MAIN PLOT’ doesn’t need to matter. We’d like it to. We’d like you to be engaged with whatever is happening in whatever part of the galaxy you’re in. There will often be a standalone plot at every event based on the locale – this is really friendly to new players or people who can’t make every event. But your character doesn’t NEED to engage with it to have a good time.

Roleplaying with your faction/ rivals, interacting with the megacorps, completing other bounties and missions, finding ways of interacting with the wider universe, raising your status with entities, trading, flying spaceships and… whatever game you choose to make in the sandbox that we have built for you. If the ‘problem’ isn’t resolved, we promise the universe won’t end. When that happens – it’ll be down to player action…