Warning: Nightfall Productions Firefly LARPing by darkrose50

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Warning: Nightfall Productions Firefly LARPing

POSTED BY: DARKROSE50
UPDATED: Saturday, September 2, 2006 17:08
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Saturday, August 19, 2006 1:02 PM

A live action role-playing game (LARP) is like a dinner mystery where folks get parts, act in character, and play dress up. This one here is an ongoing Firefly LARP that you need to keep an eye on. GM is geek speak for game master (they help tell, and lead the story).

This was at the world biggest gamer convention in the world, in a 8:00PM to 12:00AM time slot, and no where to be seen were there any hints at all of the ability to pay extra cash American to get special plots, or powerful characters. Such stuff is rare news to me.

“Turn your head and cough” Friday August 11th 8:00 PM LRP00061 ran by Nightfall Productions at GenCon ( http://www.nightfall-gaming.com and click Product Detail).

1. The Firefly LARP was $13.50 per person. I incorrectly figured that there would be some cool props as part of this cost.

2. My wife, friend, and I arrived around 7:30, and began making characters in the hallway (a table with printer, and computer).

3. A Harry Potter game was in progress in the surrounding rooms (connected by the hall we were in). Twenty minutes before the game no one in the game I was playing was in the room (we were all in the hallway making characters). A Nightfall Productions GM approached three fellow LARPers and quite loudly, and rudely demanded that they leave. I was embarrassed, and shocked by the display of discourtesy.

4. Each player selected an archetype, an advantage, and a disadvantage, and then gave there character back to the GMs. The GMs then typed in all our information into there database, printed out new characters, and handed them out. This process took 2 hours.

5. Around 8:00 one GM left to take care of an issue with the GenCon credit card not going though. Two GMs explained rules to us in the mean time.

6. When the GM who went to fix the billing issues returned at 8:30 she explained that they were professionals, who did this for a living. As professionals they need money. You see you can advance your character 3XP per game. But if you give them money, then you can advance them much quicker. She encouraged people to buy experience points to “customize” characters, for example, $20 gets you 75XP. Play in 25 games of there’s, or give up $20, and be at the same spot. I saw many players forking over cash. Players who’s crews needed a doctor, or pilot were buying the skills with American currency to get a balanced party. If only they set it up so that we could make a balanced party, and then create characters . . . but what would be the profit in that.

7. During the two hours we picked out crews. It took no more than 30 minutes to break into crews. Then we had to wait for everyone to get there characters back to design our ships.

8. Once the players had character sheets then we could build our ship with our background points. This took about a half-hour. Everyone had a firefly. Some crews had points to buy other upgrades.

9. Two-and-a-half hours into the game we had our character sheets, and ship sheets.

10. I had fun role-playing, but none of the fun in the first 2.5 hours of the game was made possible by the staff who I paid $13.50 to provide me with fun.

11. During a lengthy combat there was a timestop. About a dozen people were involved in a combat, and about a dozen people were getting onto our ships, or were in our ships. One player was talking about how his wife and her friends dress up as Cobra from GI Joe, and a GM approached us, accused us of cheating, and threatened to strip attribute points. I was highly insulted. This was beyond acceptable behavior. We were never told that we could not talk, and I don’t like being called a cheater. Even if we were told not to talk for a half-hour combat that we were not involved in it would have been super not fun.

12. It would seem that they had around six GMs, but only two of them could make any decisions. The rest were pages to get the two "real" GMs.

13. I was on a ship of 9, and our captain wanted to pay us each 500 credits. This required 30 minutes of game time, to get a GM, and each of the 9 players together so that our sheets could be marked.

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Saturday, August 19, 2006 1:58 PM

CAPTURE

Hi DarkRose,

Wow that sounded like an extra crappy, not fun experience! IT sucks to think that these type of activities are selling out for some quick cash...how lame is that!

I bet if FFF.net banded together to create a LARP it would be a lot different and a lot cooler!

Keep the faith,

Capture

ain't had nothing
twixt my nethers...weren't run on batteries.
Yup...still single...

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Saturday, August 19, 2006 2:23 PM

DARKROSE50

If anyone sets up a game for next year's GenCon I would be in!

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Friday, September 1, 2006 10:09 AM

ISHMAEL

My write-up of the event:

On our way to this event we passed through a Harry Potter LARP. The Harry Potter players had done an amazing job with costuming.

This Firefly game was run similar to a Camarilla LARP but possibly more like an OBIWAN LARP. The Firefly chronicle we played in was started at Origins. Players could use real-world money to increase their character's XP in a style similar to second-life by buying contribution points (CPT). Players could also earn CPT in the way Camarilla players can earn prestige. The storytellers stated up front that they did this professionally. I belive this was the most expensive of the events we attended. We also spent twenty dollars to modify our characters to make them more valuable to potential crews.

Originally Tanya and I were given unconnected characters. We decided to link our characters so we could play together. I used my XP to give my PC the pilot skill and Tanya used hers to increase her smuggling skill. Tanya's PC had companion training. My PC was a mediator who had unknowingly led the Alliance to a fugitive.

My favorite quotes from the entire convention were in this LARP and went something like this:
Mark (my PC): "I can go in, I know how to handle a gun."
Captain Wallace: "You can't, you're not expendable."
Mark: "But you're going in and you're the captain."
Captain Wallace: "And you're the only one that can fly us off of this planet!"

Fairly quickly our characters joined a crew that had four engineers, a modified firefly, and no pilot. Tanya's PC and I agreed to join if we could use the shuttle. Our crew was great. The interactions we had were wonderful. Unfortunately the plot drove our PCs off planet and effectively out of the game. The plot was that reavers were being controlled by Blue Sun (which makes little sense with canon). PCs had brought in a modified dreadnaught. Together the PC dreadnaught, the reavers, the lack of potential profit on the planet (we had also been robbed), and the fact our group started separately extremely rich led us to decide to leave. The head ST was fairly upset with our decision because Tanya's PC had proof from Inara that the reavers were being controlled by Blue Sun. After creating a Cry Baby to send this information our PCs left the system (I also think the distribution of planets in their LARP is contrary to canon). Some players had excellent costumes. The average player's ability to use Firefly speak was far poorer than our previous Firefly LARP. In the end all of the players in our 9 person crew were disappointed with the game.

Tracey: If you can't run, you crawl, and if you can't do that...
Zoë: You find someone to carry you.

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Saturday, September 2, 2006 5:08 PM

DREAMWALKER

That sounds really shiny. I didn't know there were Firefly LARPs (yes, I was a LARPer in Vampire the Masqurade at my college) but I did play the shiny tabletop version of the Serenity RPG. I played a chacter that was the ship's mechanic and sorta similar to Kaylee except a lot more naive (and friends with a drug lord, figure that one out, lol) I wish my school would have done a Firefly LARP, but unfortunately my friends who like Firefly don't like LARP and friends who like to LARP don't want to play anything besides Vampire.

"You're talking to Serenity. And Early...Serenity is very unhappy."

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