Supporting our Game

Mathis

Scholar
After reading the comments on the May event and having a number of discussions with Players I feel the need to comment on the NPC situation in our Chapter personally, outside of my role as an Owner. My purpose in making this post is to call attention to an issue I have with our Game and to share how I intend to attempt to address a situation that I find personally disappointing.

Long ago when the grass was greener, the sky was bluer, and the dinosaurs had just died off I started LARPing. In those days, PCing an event earned a Character one Blanket of Experience and the ability to “max out” up to a second Blanket of Experience by “paying their trainer.” This meant that at the end of the event Players would line up and turn their hard earned coin to Logistics in an effort to get the maximum amount of Experience for an event. Not everyone made enough coin in an event to “max out”, it was a flawed system, but it lead to an interesting innovation. Plot Teams began offering a deal where any PC who spent a certain amount of time NPCing during an event got to “max out” for free. This meant more coin in the PCs’ pouches, more Experience for the Players, more NPCs to keep things moving smoothly in Monster Camp, and an all around better Game for all the Players, PC and NPC alike. This worked for a while and then, as they do, things changed.

“Max out” was a bad system and eventually it went away, but when it did there was still a culture in the Game where the PCs saw and reaped the benefits of spending part of their time NPCing. In some cases those benefits were tangible to the PCs, while NPCing their Characters were able to learn useful information or visit special merchants. In other cases, Players were involved in running interesting side Plot that entertained a particular group that was less engaged in the main threads that the Plot Team spun. In any case over time this culture of taking time to NPC has slowly petered out and gotten us to where we are today. I don’t write this to point fingers because I am as at fault as anyone else, I haven’t regularly NPC’d at an event I PC’d in years.

Instead I write this as a call to action. I recently had the opportunity to write a glowing reflection on one of our Players who I feel has a particularly strong impact on the culture of our Game, including the ability to influence other Players in a positive manner. I indicated that I felt all Chapters would benefit from having more of that type of Player and therefore I consider this my personal first step in that direction. We can all comment on the lack of NPCs and come up with suggestions about what can be done about the problem, but the simplest answer to this issue is for PCs to spend some time each event NPCing.

Together we can make our Game better. Different groups can spend different blocks helping out the game. We can coordinate things in advance of events so that Plot knows that it has NPCs and we know when other PCs are busy so that we can plan when important goals will get accomplished. I’m asking you, if you want to improve our Game, to follow this link and sign up for a four hour NPC shift before arriving at the event.

I’m going to post a copy of this list at Logistics,so that anyone who didn’t have the chance to pre-register their NPC shifts has the ability to do so. During PC talk I’m going to invite people to fill in spots in the schedule that are undermanned. I want to change the culture in our Game so that the next time I attend Symposium I can brag to other Chapter Owners that we have enough coverage with NPCs that sometimes our Plot team gets a full five hours of sleep!

I hope that you’ll consider joining me in this effort and I look forward to playing with you all.

 
I already alerted plot team, but the pseudo plan is Moonless Nights NPC friday nights rest of the season. I will be less grumpy if I am not worried about sweating makeup off, npc clothing, and being able to shower afterwards. Our goal is to play together, so rather then having us broken up doing different nights, we are doing this together.
 
I am trying to sign up but my tech slow self cannot... I want to do pictures so it will need to be in daylight :)

Nette
 
Great start to this effort. Thanks for the support.

As an aside, also remember that Plot has indicated that it is looking to avoid the "Big Saturday Night Battle," so you're not missing out by signing up for those later in the day slots.
 
Love the idea Matt, also I love that there isn't some sort of "compensation" for this other than making our game just that much better. If there was exp, coin, "picks" or something else dangling on the other end, I would not have joined in. Though I would have done my traditional 2hr NPC window regardless. I could probably use some sort of reminder, however, as I am extremely unaware of the passage of time at events.
 
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