More Larpercalia planning-musing: pinch-hitters and more

[breakinglight11]

Wow, thanks to everyone who weighed in on the Festival issues I was discussing. Your input is very useful and much appreciated.

The thing causing the most discussion, it seems, is the "pinch-hitter signup list," as we'll call it. To reiterate, this idea refers to having a signup list for attendees to commit to be hanging out in consuite during a given time slot ready to jump in and fill a last-minute player drop. This would be in the interest of giving GMs the fastest and best possible information on who they can get to step in. I wanted to expand on some of the excellent points you guys brought up and see if we can plan things so as to take them into account.

First, there's the issue that not every larper who agrees to be on the pinch-hitter list will necessarily be interested in playing every game. I'd know I count among them. I'll usually jump in if they're desperate, just so that my fellow larpers don't have a bad time, but not every game speaks to every larper. But frankly, I see no problem in going to the consuite and generally addressing the pinch hitter list with "X Game needs someone. Who's up?" and allowing them the option to say no. I guess this runs into a problem if the list is short, or if no one wants to play a particular game, but we're going to have this problem whether we have a list or not. Having the list will at least increase the chances of securing someone quickly who is willing, even if it's not automatic. 

So, the point: Pinch-hitters would maintain the option to turn down a game if it doesn't interest them.

The biggest concern people have seems to be whether or not knowing that someone can fill in and prevent the ruining of the larp will encourage people to blow off games. As several of you pointed out, there is a possibility that people might feel less guilty about punking out if they know that the game will probably still run without them and they won't be responsible for ruining anyone else's good time. Even when you can get a replacement, it's not always an ideal solution; it's a pain for GMs to get someone up to speed quickly enough to play, and talk about knocking over the carefully-constructed house of cards that is casting a game.

So this is definitely a concern. But I am of the opinion that optimizing our ability to patch holes in casts is going to have a larger positive effect on runtimes than an increased number of blow-offs is going to have a negative effect. First of all, I believe that if an increase does occur, it will not be huge. In general, people sign up for larps because they want to larp. It's not like larping is a video game you can turn on in your own home anytime you want to play. It takes a lot of people deciding to come together and go to the effort of putting on the game. If you don't take the relatively rare opportunities that arise (such as the fabulous one offered by Festival) you... never get to larp. The people that don't care about getting to larp do not usually sign up. Second, I believe that the ability to restore a game to a full cast is the real priority. 

My conclusion: A possibly increased number of last-minute drops is an acceptable risk because having the ability to replace four dropped players is better than having only one drop that you can't fill.

I wonder if it might be useful to make it clear that by blowing off games, people will be let down. I like to think that it is fairly well-established larp ettiquette that because of the dependence on the collaborative effort to make larps work, one only drops a larp at the last minute in a legitimate emergency, and one makes sure to inform the GMs of said dropped game so they can try to find replacements. Of course, the fact that my player who didn't show up last weekend never contacted me at all, and when I tried to call her, her phone was turned off, would put lie to the supposed universality of that notion.

Also, I think I may place a ban on games longer than four hours going on the schedule next year. The fact that they claim so many people for more than one slot makes any game running across from it suffer. This is nothing against School of Young Women, which by all accounts is a very good game and was much enjoyed this past weekend, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that of the four games running opposite of it, only one of them (Alice) managed to get a full complement of players. It may have just been because School is so large at forty players; that's an awful lot to have nipped out. I might consider a longer game if it is significantly smaller than that, but at the moment I am inclined to stick with four-hours and less.

Again, I welcome your input and opinions.

Comments

re: running against SFYW

[laura47.livejournal.com]

actually, "London" filled in the end. It was <1 week before the con, but we did fill and run just fine.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Excellent thoughts; I just wanted to make sure that one concern was covered, and it seems to be!

One thing that just came to mind while reading your post, though, on the same topic: "...it's a pain for GMs to get someone up to speed quickly enough to play, and talk about knocking over the carefully-constructed house of cards that is casting a game." If GMs can cast and get sheets out earlier (which involves signups earlier, which involves bids earlier, etc etc) there's more guilt surrounding drops. "I just got this sheet today, so someone else taking it over today would be starting from the same place" = less guilt.

[desireearmfeldt]

I'd say it doesn't hurt to explicitly mention things like "it lets down GMs and players when a player drops out, so try not to do it unless you're sick/have an emergency" etc. etc. There's always a range of experience (and social cluefulness) in a group of 100+ players, so it seems like this is one strategy to help reinforce the punting-is-bad norm. :)

I think the idea of adjusting number of available player-slots for the different time-slots, based on past signup patterns, is a good one. If it is known that Saturday night usually draws 20 more players than Saturday morning, why not plan ahead for it?

A thing to think about, that you start to bring up re: School for Young Women... Would life be easier if Festival games tended towards the smaller cast sizes? (I'm not sure what the answer to that question is -- it didn't seem to necessarily be the larger games that had more trouble filling this year, from my non-systematic observation of the signups page over time.)

[londo.livejournal.com]

I think you're overdoing the pinch-hitter thing. An explicit "hang around in the con suite if you want to do stuff last-minute" should do the trick, especially if the 'Suite is loaded with pickup tabletop games and such.

Over-regulating helpfulness encourages people to spend less time being helpful.

[offside7.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize we were talking about people committing to hang out in the con suite. I thought it was more along the lines of a white board where people could write their names under time slots, and try to be on in the con suite area if they can, and if not, maybe put up a phone number or something.

I don't think the length of School was an issue- I think it's more about the number of players.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

i would be less inclined towards this if it required staying int he con suite as well.

Of course, for me, the obvious question is whether to try and implement something like this at Intercon...

[ultimatepsi.livejournal.com]

I think you have thought this though well. Though the commenters have good points as well.

[acousticshadow2.livejournal.com]

I agree with the concept that the number of players in Young Women's rather than the run time might have been an issue. Also it might be helpful to try and ask for/have smaller games run opposite to a 4 hour larp. Maybe something like 10 bad larps, strangers on a bus, etc something with a very small cast number would be more appropriate. There are a lot of great game writers out there that could think up a few small larps between now and next festival. Just a thought…

Also, on the idea of sign ups for dropping game, I agree with the suggestion of having a white board in the con suite. People can write their names and maybe cell phone numbers on the white board if they are available to fill a time slot? I think if it was over organized it might turn people off a bit or they might not be willing to wait around “in case” a game needs to be filling when they could run off to grab some food, etc. A white board with a way to be contacted would mean they could allow their location to be liquid and if something comes up they can come back.

Game dropping: As a person who did drop a game last minute because of serious attack of the spoiled desserts in [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s fridge I know that I made every effort to have people let the GM know as soon as possible. Most people in the larping community understand the etiquette of game dropping. I think it would be more important to let new larpers know protocol. I don’t know all the circumstances, but it could be that the people who are dropping aren’t aware that what they did has a serious effect on other people’s enjoyment of the game. I was aware that there were a lot of new larpers at Festival. I know there were in Alice at least. Maybe an “all person E-mail” saying something to the effect of “If you are going to be late or have an emergency that will not allow you to attend your game, please contact your GM as soon as possible so that they can find a replacement for you.”

Just my musings…

[ninja-report.livejournal.com]

It would probably also be good to have a way to get in touch with the GMs in case of such an emergency. For a few of my games, I know I would have needed to phone chain in an emergency because I didn't have a way of directly contacting the GMs (other than e-mail from casting questionnaires, which people probably won't be checking when they're trying to start a game). I guess it's more of a GMs-being-willing-to-give-out-personal-info, but it would probably be easier for everyone (esp. newer larpers) to not have to activate phone chaining madness.

[darkoni]

Festival is a different venue than Intercon in that it has a third of the player base, and it's mostly local people, who have also gone to Intercon. When School ran at Intercon, it had very little effect on other games. It still sucked people out for two slots, so it had an effect, but less of one.

For Festival, it had a larger impact, but every slot had games that didn't fill. Saturday morning and afternoon were the hardest to fill. For the morning, I think it had to do with people waking up. For the afternoon, I think Redemption would have had a hard time filling, no matter what. The game had run twice this year already, once at Brandeis. I think the potential player pool for that game was much smaller.

I think Carry On was the one that suffered.

On Sunday, Pop Diva never filled. They ended up cutting characters after signups didn't occur and calling it full.

If you want to institute a ban on longer games, I would make it for games that cover more than one slot and not just over four hours. I think it is possible to run five or six hour games on Friday night or Sunday. It doesn't cover two slots, but still can run longer. We ran Story Wars at Intercon as a Friday night six hour game, specifically so it wouldn't take two slots.

I like playing in games, so the less slots it takes up, the more games I get to play.

I would like to try and run something for next year, but I'm not sure what. When gower and I write games, we start at around 30 players and then add more as we get ideas during the writing process. I'm not sure if the games we write are just too large for Festival.

[darkoni]

Actually, now that I've given it a little more thought, the afternoon and evening slots of Saturday were actually fairly stable. Saturday morning and Friday evening both had games that never got enough to run, possibly due to too many choices. When those games died, then other games filled.

I am generally in favor of games that don't run across two slots, as a general rule, but I don't think it had as much to do with games not filling as you think it did.