Event Structure

Is this how your events are structured?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 77.8%

  • No

    Votes: 2 22.2%
  • Total voters
    9
Muir

Muir

Elite
As I've mostly played the Midwest, with the occasional run to one of the coasts for a big event, I'm curious how this works for other people. How are your events structured?

The usual setup I see here looks like this:

Friday Night:
Players start showing up at site open, help unload monster camp and move into the PC living spaces.
Logistics starts once site's been open an hour or two.
Game On around 8/10pm depending on when site opens.
PC Talk.
Friday Night Opening Fight : A town mod to introduce the main thrust of the weekend's plot.
Friday Night Mods : Followups on the opening mod, or pre-planned stuff that was setup in downtime and needs to happen before the rest of the event.
PC's and NPCs start tapping out around 2-3 am and heading to bed.

Saturday:
Early Mod: If NPCs are up and players have something requested, may run a short mod before breakfast.
Breakfast 8-10 am depending on the day.
Mods: Usually smaller group mods, 4-8 people each running several simultaneously depending on staffing, runs out to lunch.
Lunch: 1pmish, mods usually wind down to give the NPCs a break, plot NPCs pop into the tavern to set up afternoon mods.
Mods: Same as before lunch.
Dinner: 6pm. Plot NPCs out to do any last minute setup for the Saturday Night Fight.
Remem/Logistics at dinner.
Last minute mods/PCs gear up for Saturday Night Fight.
Saturday Night Fight : Town mod, often 4+ hours, usually runs until well past midnight. Expectation that most of the PCs are going to burn their full boat worth of daily abilities.

Sunday:
Late Night Mods: Small group stuff for whoever's awake, with whatever NPCs are still motivated to run around after the big fight. Runs until silly o'clock.
Packet Mod: As soon as the sun's up, whoever is motivated between PCs and NPCs walks the site for dropped items and packets from the Saturday night fight.
PCs up and packing out by 10am, responsible for cleaning their areas and helping with the shared ones.
Offsite by noon.

Does that look familiar to anyone else?
 
We usually have a Sunday fight, either the ending for the weekend, or to setup the next plot. But yeah, this is the general framework.
 
Yeah, I think that one depends on how late Saturday goes, and how early people have to be off-site. I'm getting old and have a long drive post-event, so I rarely get up to mod.
 
markusdark said:
Once ran a larp without a big battle mod Saturday Night. The players didn't know how to deal with it. Kept watches up all night because they knew there HAD to be a big battle coming.
Click to expand...
That's hilarious.
 
I loath town mods. I have for quite some time. In place of those mods I have been working on ways to involve all players but with different module or adventure variations. Lately we are mastering a "round robin" concept. We introduced this style back in Labor Day in which a threat happens (an invading army is near, and they sent a vanguard force to cause chaos in the town), and the plot team has created 6 encounters throughout the town. Players are encouraged to split into 6 even groups, and then report to the various encounters. Every 5 minutes they stop their encounter and move to the next one until all 6 encounters are complete.

These encounters include:
Save my baby!
Assault the unit of soldiers!
There is someone dead in that house!
The raiders locked townsfolk in that barn!
Help put out the fire!
And "The Scout is in Danger!"

Not only do multiple people get to feel like heroes (instead of the few) but it was just a lot of fun!

We are still tweaking it though. We will see how it improves over the next few games.
 
Back when we moved down to California, I would get up on Sunday, grab whoever else was awake (usually low level characters) and go wake up a plot person to run some trouble for us... They started planning for it, even nicknamed the mods after me or so I heard.

I just liked making sure everyone had at least some fun and maybe left on a high note.
 
Honestly, this doesn't even look close to what I am used to. I am used to a MUCH more packed schedule. Just for "town fights" alone, I am used to:

Friday night opening fight
Friday night late fight
Saturday morning
Saturday early afternoon
Saturday pre-logistics
Saturday night
Saturday night late (if NPCs and PCs are still awake)
Sunday finale

Mods are usually spread throughout the day and night, with an average of 10 - 15 total. There are also a variety of scheduled roleplay encounters and crunchies throughout the weekend. I still have copies of events that I helped run back in the day. Almost every one has a schedule that takes more than a full page to list every encounter (and then about 60 pages of full descriptions).

-MS
 
Yeah, mods are the key to a successful event for us. We have 4 mod runners every hour, with about 50 mods written at all times. We run with...

...lair cards
...guild specific mods
...the mercenary/bounty board
...standard hook and pull mods
...overarching plot mods
...self contained encounter cards
...political encounters
...escape room encounters
...and so many others...

We actually had a complaint from an out of chapter player who said we had TOO much content. I dont think that is a problem, especially as we are a game that prides itself as a living, breathing world. Just because you are a fighter, doesnt mean you will be invited to all the modules ever. Sometimes the Mercenary Guild has other missions that take them away from killing the barons evil brother. Etc.

We had the idea of a player telling a grand story of their exploits, only to hear another players story and being like "wait you fought a basilisk this weekend? Where was i???"
 
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