Uncharted Territory: Role playing in settings/groups that are new to you – Part 1 of 3

Last night I was so tired by the time I went to bed that my eyes were burning.  So, of course, as soon as I got into the horizontal position my brain popped with: “Hi!  I have a great idea for a 3 part series on making characters for and playing in settings that you are unfamiliar with and/or with joining established gaming groups!!”  To which I replied:  “That’s nice.  Can we talk about it in the morning, please?”  To which my brain responded:  “No, no, no!!  We have to talk about it NOW!!!!”

Some nights I hate my brain – or rather its timing.

At any rate, it was a good idea so here we go.  This will mostly be an introductory sort of post with some generalized tips.  The other two posts will be broken down into tips for making short term/one-off/NPC characters in new to you settings and making characters more interesting for longer campaigns.  From my experience, these tips should work equally well for either table top sorts of role playing games (RPGs) or live action role playing games (LARPs).

If you, like me, are a late blooming gamer who was deprived of comics and D&D in your youth – do not despair about making characters for universes you are not familiar with.  If you have good people and good storytellers/GM’s, then it will be fine.  Same applies if you’re not a late blooming gamer but are still new to gaming or the group you are gaming with.  For example, I’m having a great time in the Marvel Game I’m playing.  Most of what I know about Marvel characters come from cartoons or movies I watched growing up while most of the people I’m gaming with have read comics for years, known each other for years, and role played together for years.  It’s not an issue.  I don’t get all the in-jokes and references they make to each other but it’s not generally vital to my role play that I do.  If I’m not sure if it’s something I should know in character, I ask the GM.  If not, we just keep things rolling.  If so, then they give me a brief explanation of what it’s about and then I make notes if need be and we keep going.

The lesson here is that you don’t need to know every in joke or what every reference means to have a good time.  There are people I’ve been friends with for 10 years with whom I share mutual friends they’ve known much longer than me.  They flat out have more history to draw from and because of that they will have inside jokes that I wasn’t a part of – and that’s okay.  The same applies for every gaming group and game I’ve participated in.  It’s not about them trying to exclude people, it’s just a natural effect of a long term friendship/relationship.  Chances are, even if I asked them to explain every joke and reference that I wouldn’t find them as amusing as they did, at least some of the time, because for some things you just have to be there.  For example, I can look back at memories of road trips with friends where we were laughing hysterically at something on the radio but for the life of me I couldn’t explain why it was so hilarious.  If you join a long established game/campaign, you will likely find the same thing applies in character as well as out.  Try not to let it intimidate you and, if you can, try using it to enhance the role play.  You could mention that the characters seem to have some history together and ask them if they are willing to share the story behind the joke/reference (if it were made in character).

Don’t let the lack of experience or knowledge of a given setting hold you back from playing in a game.  Let the GM know you don’t have any prior experience but are interested in trying it out.  I did that for the Marvel game when I was invited and the GM was more than happy to spend time laying out the general setting and he gave me the option of playing a pre-generated character he made or making my own.  One of his characters caught my fancy so I went with her and have fleshed her out and made her my own as time went on.  Surprisingly (to me) I’ve been told he likes how I’m playing her.  I have used the interactions between other characters as a guide for how to fit mine into the group and we have since added another player that was just as unfamiliar with the setting.  We are both having a great time!

I also recommend talking to the storyteller/GM about possibly playing an NPC (non-playing character – or rather – a temporary character whose purpose is to move the plot along or otherwise get plot points out to the established regular players).  This gives you an opportunity to try out the setting, get an idea for how the storyteller/GM works, and see what the group dynamic is like.

Chances are, there are story games conventions in your area or near by.  There is often gaming at sci-fi conventions.  For some of these there are likely pre-generated characters that you can use if you want to join in.  For some, that may be the only option (this sometimes works best in settings where it’s a one-off game at a gaming event).  There is always room to add your own touches to a character.  My experience these days is that gamers are very welcoming to new players – they love to have new players and will be happy to help you get into a game and have fun.  Visiting your local gaming and comic shops is a good way to find out about the events in your area and about local gaming groups.  Ask your friends too.  Maybe some of them, like you, are interested in RPG’s but are not sure where to start or who they might know that shares that interest.  You could start your own small game in a setting you agree on or join an established gaming group together.  A number of the folks I have played table top games with in the past several years have not only known each other for some time, but have more experience in many the settings we’ve played in.  I’ve still had a great time.  In the Girl Game (on hiatus for the summer due to much schedule craziness on all our parts), we have even made up our own settings a couple times.  No one is going to stand over you being a character/setting accuracy Nazi.  If they do – punch them in the junk* and find a better group to play in because gaming is something we do to have fun.

*Okay, maybe visualizing punching them in the junk would be better as there will not be an assault charge involved.  ;-P

Remember when LARPing was Fun??

Twelve years ago, when I started playing in a Vampire LARP, it was run by a non-profit fan club.  Life was simpler then.  One could make a basic character without having to thrash through multiple books AS WELL AS one or more on-line addendum.  The focus was on having fun.  Oh sure – there were clan books and other supplements you could use as well but that will always be the case.  Still, basic character creation was fairly easy.

I’ve generally been very content with the local games and the occasional convention games here and there.  Then there came the big schism between White Wolf (WW) and the non-profit fan club called the Camarilla.  Faced with the might of a large gaming industry who could afford lawyers – the non-profit organization folded.  Was it a perfect organization – oh hell no!  I think it was much better to have a non-profit running and organizing the local games than a gaming company though.  I eventually signed up under the new WW version of the club because I did want to keep gaming with the folks I knew and loved and it became apparent this was the only way it was going to really happen.  Since White Wolf (WW) took over more of the focus has been on making profits.  These two things aren’t mutually exclusive when you have a good balance.  However, there currently isn’t one in my opinion.

Gaming companies should focus on creating good games and game supplements that people will enjoy.  I actually think it’s pretty asinine to expect people to not only purchase your book but then pay you for the privilege of playing your game.  That certainly isn’t the case for any other role playing game I’ve played.  That said, I have been willing to continue to put forth my $20 a year so that those of my friends who enjoy this game and the “global game” aspect of it can continue to do so.  I’ve tried getting into the global game in the past and I just don’t care for it.  This is mostly done via IRC, email lists, and attending various conventions (most of them Camarilla only conventions these days).  This doesn’t work for me for several reasons:

1. I don’t have as much time as I used to for email or IRC (I think I still have MIRC on one of my computers but I’m not positive).
2. I’m not as interested in email or IRC role play as I am in LARP or Table Top role play.  I prefer personal interactions.
3. Invariably there is mostly just a lot of in character screaming at each other and otherwise overly dramatic role play in these forums in my experience – though, to be honest, subtltey seems to be lost on most at in person games as well.
4. I only play twice a month so don’t even get out to other games in this area or state – much less across the nation.   I have too many other interests that draw on my time, money, and attention.

Eight years have passed.  Despite all the promises to the contrary, the gaming club is no better now than it was under the non-profit and some things are far worse in my opinion.  The rules changes and addendum are way out of hand!  At this point it takes me no less than 2 books and going through 2 on-line addendum to make a single basic character for a single venue.  After WW took over I ended up doing yearly re-writes of any Ghoul characters in play (Ghouls for crying out loud!  Not exactly a powerful  kind of character that would imbalance the game) because of rules changes.  There has been a venue change and a re-set of that venue in the last 4-5 years.  My current character in the Requiem Vampire venue has been re-written 4 times since the venue change.  There was the original character creation, then a re-write because of rules changes for Ghouls (which also required me to submit an application for a special approval for her), then the re-write when she was embraced, then the re-write because they made a change in Member Class (MC — where points are given for volunteering in the club which translate to in character goodies which are increased as ones MC level increases over time) awards, and then a re-write because of the partial re-set of the setting.  Hmm… there may have been one more re-write I’m forgetting but you get the idea.  There has been yet another MC based change that I’m supposed to figure into my character sheet but it’s confusing and I just haven’t had the time or patience to sit down and figure it out.

In addition to all that, I have local storytellers who want me to submit game reports (they mostly never read), down-time actions (they mostly never do anything with), haven write-ups (they have never put into a database and even though they are planning to now they want different information so more editing was needed anyway) that may or may not ever be used in game to do anything actually entertaining for the players.  There are Excel spreadsheets created to help one keep all the math straight.  Problem is that when there is a new change and/or a new supplemental book released, a new Excel sheet has to be created and there isn’t a way to import your old data into the new sheet so you have to re-write it again.  Then they want you to put your character information into an on-line database which, of course, won’t import the information from the Excel spreadsheet (though the newest versions now have added a tab that translates the information into a text only format that you can copy and paste into the database – which is an improvement).  Oh and they’d like you to also put some of your character information in a non-user friendly Wiki format for which there is little or no actual helpful user guide.  There is a separate form that you use to record and track your MC points.  They made a standard “National Format” for it some years back that they now want everyone to use.  Despite conforming to this format you can still expect to lose a significant amount of MC points every time you have to get it reviewed for going up to the next level.  The MC points are referred to as “Prestige.”  On my latest review – they removed most of my less than 50 National Prestige (which I hardly have the opportunity to get for a variety of reasons I won’t get into here and now) because back when I started, twelve years ago, there was not as much documentation being recorded in on-line forums, much less in databases.  Sometimes only the various officers would ever see or get the documentation and if they didn’t happen to keep the email — you are screwed.

When there is a challenge (currently done using 10 cards or 1 D10 dice), we sometimes have to consult a book (or two) and/or a storyteller to determine the result – because it’s hard to say what with all the supplemental books and addendum.

What does this all add up to?

A hell of a lot of administrative thrash on top of the yearly membership fee I pay to PLAY A GAME BASED ON THE GAMING BOOKS THAT WHITE WOLF PUBLISHES THAT I BUY!!!

There is nothing practical in this.  It makes no sense.  People wonder why we can’t get more people to play.  Name one other gaming company who does this.  Seriously.  I can’t think of any and I can’t think of why you would.  I can understand game company’s that run MMO games charging a subscription fee because there are servers to pay for and such.  Beyond paying a fee to play, though, did you note how much administrative thrash I mentioned above?  That’s not including the regular logging and spending of experience points one does.  Most of what I mentioned is extra arbitrary administrative crap that has to be done because of constant rules changes that are made because, instead of focusing on the business of writing good games and rule books or dealing with the players who abuse rules (because they will ALWAYS find a loophole – just the same as there will ALWAYS be bugs in a new computer program written), they make the rest of us suffer through a constant amount of thrash with the threat of de-sanctioning your character always looming over your head as the price of non-compliance.  We also just got a call to help our current storyteller put together a time-line for all the major events that happened in our gave over the last 4+ years because now it’s suddenly required by the upper level storytellers for some reason.

Just remember – we do this for fun…??

I feel like this game is run by OCD control freaks who have no other social life what-so-ever.

By comparison, I have two table top games I play in once a month currently.  In the Girl Game our character creation is pretty swift because we only deal with a handful of traits, generally one disadvantageous trait, a general description and maybe some character history.  We play with 2 D6 dice.  I’m also in a (mostly) weekly Marvel based table top game for which I’m playing a pre-generated character (my choice since I only recently started reading comics), where the GM has to sometimes prod me to accept gifts and determine if I believe my character is able to do something not specifically noted on the character sheet but within the realm of possibility given her skill set.  We use 2 D10 dice for the game.  There is a sheet the GM consults that helps determine a result based on our role + the level we have for a certain skill.  He ultimately decides what the result is based on what is best for the game.  If someone is being a problem player or otherwise not meshing with the group they are asked to leave the gaming group – because we do this for fun.

In a recent conversation with a fellow Camarilla friend of mine, said she stopped using the Excel sheets and now just keeps her character information in the on-line database.  The problem with that is that the database isn’t always available and functioning.  It is primarily run and maintained by volunteers who have other jobs and can only really deal with any issues that come up after work during their spare time.  The database where they keep the “Ordeals” tests (Ordeals are club and storytelling rules knowledge tests one can do to gain more MC points) and test results just had a catastrophic crash where a bunch of data was lost.  This does not inspire a lot of confidence in me and I would not want to rely on it.  I appreciate that the volunteers are doing the best they can with it but, really, WW should have had their own servers and their own dedicated (read paid) staff running these things if they wanted to be in charge of all this.

At the last International Camarilla Convention, late last year, WW said they were going to give the club back to the players.  I guess they figured out they were never going to make a lot of money running the club.  Great.  Thanks, I guess.  We still have to pay $20 a year to play, of course.  They also have recently brought back the Old World of Darkness (OWoD) games (which will run in addition to the current games) no doubt hoping to win back players who stopped playing when that setting was retired.  Great.  I’ve long since sold most of those books due to space limitations.

Many local players have been excited by both the addition of a new game called Geist (sin eaters – generally replacing what used to be the Wraith game in the OWoD), as well as bringing back the OWoD vampire settings.  There was a local Camarilla convention here in April.  I’ve been unemployed for a year so didn’t really have to money to go to the convention.  I considered day tripping but then I realized there was another issue – I didn’t really have any interest.  I’ve spent some considerable time thinking about this and contemplating where my apathy is coming from.  It boils down to the fact that I have a lot more things going on in my life now than I did 12 years ago – more things drawing on my time and attention.  I have drifted away from some of the LARPing friends I had and others have drifted away from the Camarilla or moved away, etc.  Add to that, I’m only playing 1 Requiem and 1 Lost game a month which means that often I don’t make the games that the folks I’m close to do.  I’ve tried thinking about what I can do to make my current characters more interesting to play and I’m not having a lot of success there either.  One idea that a friend and I hatched up, for example, was dependent on us both being at the same game – which hasn’t been happening much lately.  In fact, though she plays the sire of my character, last year most of the year went by without us managing to be at the same game at the same time.

There’s more to it than that.

I’m having more fun with the other groups I game with and playing the other games I play.  I’m having less time, energy, motivation, and inspiration for the WW games.  I’m not really interested in OWoD Vampire, even though it would allow me to bring back a character I never really got to explore and put a lot of work into creating, because I feel very much like I’ve been there and done that.  There’s that saying about you can’t go home again and I wonder if people are really going to be into it in a few months when the shiny has worn off and the realize that walking on their old stomping grounds isn’t actually going to bring back their “glory days.”  The only OWoD setting that I might have interest in is Sabbat but I just haven’t got any enthusiasm for it.

I decided it might be best to step away from LARP gaming for a few months.  I like to LARP in general.  I like to create costumes and go be someone else for awhile.  In LARP one can sink into the character one is playing more than in Table Top games but it is also more time consuming and draining for me.  I’m hoping a little distance will help me get my enthusiasm and inspiration back.  I’ve considered that maybe depression from long term unemployment and the looming fact that I will soon run out of benefits is a factor.  More than that, though, is that this “game” is more work than I think it should or needs to be.  I can easily spend half a day or more thrashing with character sheets and prestige logs.  A month ago I was just trying to find which Lost supplements gave more info on the Goblin Markets so that I could better create an NPC market stall for our local game (as requested by the new storyteller).  The lack of indexes in the (5 or so) supplement books I skimmed made this way harder than it needed to be.  I finally just gave up and just wrote up my idea anyway.

When gaming companies and organizations make it so complicated to play in the game that one has to plan to devote hours to doing out of game maintenance, they are shooting themselves in the foot.  There are way too many other options out there now.  While I will miss the people I game with in the Camarilla when I’m taking my break, I also feel the need to break out of the tunnel vision that they are the only LARP option.  I’ve been surprised at how many RPG books and settings exist when I go to my friend’s comic shop, The Dreaming, and look on his shelves.  Since I’m not really into the “Global Game” aspect of the LARP I’ve been participating, perhaps I would be better off looking for a local troupe game or another table top game in another setting I’m interested in.  What I don’t want is a game that feels like a job and causes more stress and that’s how the Camarilla games feel to me these days.

Gentler Sex My Ass – the LARP Version

Maybe it’s the old age and treachery thing but I have been surprising/horrifying storytellers since I started gaming 12 years ago.  The first thing that stands out in my memory is when I came up with my first character concept on my own.  I start with a general idea and then create a history for her.  There is often research involved and I generally end with costuming choices – either from my own closet or trips to Value Village and such.  I get irritated when cheese mongers use the blanket excuse that we are playing in the “World of Darkness” to explain and excuse any all sorts of random cheesy violence without any real thought or consideration actually going into it.  They explain this in that condescending, long suffering sort of way that conveys that, clearly, they don’t expect a frail, withering flower of a girl like me to understand.

Oh really?

I got news for them – I understand much more than many of them do.  The very first background/history I wrote for the first character concept I created entirely on my own got the following response from the 20-something storyteller in charge of backgrounds at the time:  “It’s kind of icky.”

In a nutshell:  Her parents had been killed in a car crash, her foster father locked her in a basement room, beat her, and was a pedophile, she bided her time until she was able to escape the situation, she became a prostitute because she was not hung up about the sex thing and she was underage.  She used that to secure a place to live as well (she was freelance).  She was working the airport and came to the attention of a vampire.  He embraced her, took her to Amsterdam, and made her one of his working girls to get info & gossip.   One day he screwed up and got himself killed and the other vamps told her to get the fuck out of town because they didn’t want to deal with a young, ignorant vamp and had no real reason to kill her.  She returned to Seattle to start over – the end.

That was one of the nicer backgrounds I’ve done.  Seriously.  One of the later characters that I created and, sadly, didn’t really get to play had a sire who contrived to have her picked up and severely tortured in Inquisition proceedings as part of her indoctrination and training to be a follower of Lilith.  This went on for days – with her would-be sire feeding her bits of blood to keep her alive.  She was finally left, broken, on “The Wheel”.  Some hours later her sire took her off the wheel, took her home, and then embraced her.  By the time I was bringing her into play she fully believed she needed to look for other disciples, gain their trust, and bring them to the truth in a similar manner for their own good and growth.  She was not evil in an expected way – she fully believed she was doing what was best.  I did a fair amount of research into interrogation methods used during the Inquisitions (there were actually many).   Again, I horrified the storytellers who read the character history.

My current character had the most traumatic and violent circumstances to her embrace that I have ever heard or experienced in game before.   She was jumped by a gang of Belial’s Brood vampires where she had been a key character in thwarting them from using a machine to change history, again (long story).  They tortured her for hours because the leader wanted to completely break her before embracing her.  This included beating the crap out of her and the use of the power nightmare to make her believe and experience the feeling of having her foot cut off, being on fire, and worms crawling into her eyes. This was the brain child of another woman – who also plays one of the best low humanity, barely contained, will kick your ever-loving ass (a point proven in several games now), violent characters I’ve ever role played with.  This character showed up unexpectedly and came to her rescue – except that the leader pulled my character on top of him as a shield when her charcter was about to deliver a death blow – so she very nearly cut my character’s head clean off – which is why she had to embrace her.  She buried her in a hole in a wooded park and fed my character congealed animal blood when she woke.  There’s much more to the story but those are the basics surrounding her embrace.  Conversations between sire and childe have often involved my character exhorting her sire to please not put severed fingers in her pockets.  One set her sire gave her happened to be what was left of her own mortal fingers accidentally severed the night of her embrace – a defensive wound.

My fellow girl gamers and I have done far worse things to our own and each others characters than many of the storytellers in our games.  We are at times delighted and horrified with what we’ve done.  I like to keep track of it in an In Character (IC) journal on Live Journal.  It’s friends only as much of the information there is not stuff other players/characters would necessarily know.  There was a storyline about her dead lover from a previous existence (long story) being stuck in between time periods.  My character’s choices for resolving the issue and ending the pain her lover was experiencing was to either A) Kill a mortal and condemn their soul so that her lover could take over their body or B) do a ritual to put her lover to rest (which, incidentally, involved Native American spirits literally consuming her after she was made manifest in this time period).  This was also the brainchild of the same woman storyteller who narrated her embrace.  I love her brain!

Talk to the girls you game with about their characters and their backgrounds and what “World of Darkness” means to them.  The answers just might surprise you.  If you want violence with an actual story behind it, consider asking the girl gamers for their ideas.  You might find that we have just the deliciously evil ideas you were looking for.

Character Concepts I’m Tired of Seeing at LARP Games

First let me start with the clarifications and disclaimers that the more hysterical reactionary readers will likely ignore anyway but I’m giving it a shot regardless:

The following game concepts generally have one thing in common that make them bad: a complete lack of any research or background. I give new players a few months to fill in the blanks – particularly if they are new to gaming in general and/or were throwing together a character to try out the local game, play at a convention, etc. I expect more from more experienced players. That doesn’t mean you, the player, needs to be an expert on everything your character is (this is for FUN after all), but you should at least do enough research to be able to make some interesting conversation at a game. For instance, I made a character that was skilled at various forms of fortune telling. I read about these forms, had the fortune telling “equipment” (if you will) on me, but was not skilled at fortune telling. The main thing was to be able to talk the talk enough to be interesting and to not make those who are skilled sprain their eyeballs rolling them.

Keep in mind:  I’ve played some of these concepts and I’ve seen some played well, but the vast majority of these characters I’ve interacted with were poorly researched and thought out and about as interesting to role play with as a stump. Think of this more as guidelines for how not to role play these character concepts.

Geisha (usually played by Daeva or Toreador if playing in the Old World of Darkness – OWoD – setting)

Hi, I have this neat Geisha outfit that I bought/made/had made and so I’m playing a Geisha character. I haven’t done any research though so, really, I’m just playing dress up and hoping you’ll be so impressed with my outfit that you’ll overlook the fact that I haven’t read so much as ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, much less done any actual research about them.

Tips: Read at least one non-fiction book about Geishas that has good reviews. Know what time period your character needed to be living in to be trained as a Geisha and what skills/talents they would be expected to know at that time. Think about when they were turned as a vampire and why they continue to dress as/be a Geisha. What mannerisms would Geishas exhibit. What kinds of things can you find out to tell people that they might not know about Geishas from bad movies/fiction books? You know, things you can talk about at a game.

Vampire Whore/Madam/Pimp (played by same as above)

Same as the Geisha in that no actual research has been done – beyond bad stereotypes found in equally bad movies (and maybe not even that). Basically the player is dressing in their idea of vampire sexy or like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch(Google it). They have not thought out how their character feeds, keeps a client base, keep from being arrested, dealing with their workers being picked up (in the case of being a Madam/Pimp), thought about how they deal with their workers during the day – much less during the summer when it does not get dark out until 10pm. They haven’t put much or any thought into why they are a sex worker or when they started being a sex worker and why. Really, they are just dressing slutty and hoping that their fellow gamers will be too transfixed by their cleavage to notice their character is a one dimensional stereotype. Sadly, this strategy works more often that you would think.

Tips: At the very least you need to think out when/why you became a sex worker and why you continue to be a sex worker. Here’s a hint: if your character kills all or even most of your clients you are doing it wrong. The occasional abusive bastard – sure – but it would be noticeably odd for you to not have many/any repeat customers. Here’s hint #2: Everyone wants to be a “high priced” hooker/madam but it is more worthwhile for the tabloids or a police sting operation to go after you than one of the average street walkers. Look how long the Green River Killer went on before being caught…

Side Note: The first character concept I created on my own was a vampire whore.  There was a history for how she came to be a street walker (as a human), why she was embraced, why her sire was not in the picture and why she had come to the city.  I could tell you her reasoning for being a common street walker.  I could tell you how she survived without a haven until she had one.  I could tell you how she stayed out of trouble.  She was young by vampire standards but not many knew that and she was a powerful person in her domain because she had “more influence than God” via the game mechanics.  I’m sure some members of my family would be alarmed and horrified to see the number of books I have on Prostitution & Sex work on my book shelves – along with various other odd titles I have for character research which include books on making booby traps, disguising oneself, changing identities, various fortune telling books, books on Goddess religions and etc).

Biker Brujah (OWoD)

He’s loud. He’s obnoxious. HE ONLY SPEAKS IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!!!ELEVINTY!!!!!111 He smells (because you know, real men don’t wash or some shit like that). He has a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle. He’s about a subtle as a bulldozer over eggshells. That’s right he’s the Brujah biker – party of one… *sigh*

Tips: Know more about what motorcycle your character plays other than “Harley”. There are lots of different models of Harley Davidson motorcycles and they’ve been around for a lot of years now. When did you get it? What does it look like? Do you fix it or do you have someone else fix it? If someone else – who? Where? Are parts hard to get for that model? When did you join the gang? Where’s the rest of your gang? Either have a good story about what happened to them or consider getting other local players to make biker game characters to play with you.

Grunge Wearing Gangrel

All I’m asking is that you have more to your character concept besides the fact they wear flannel or camo shirts.

Tips: Back story – get some.

The Corner Brooder

This is a character that sits in the corner or leaned up against a post or something and looks angry. That’s it. This is often played by someone who then complains that no one interacted with them at the game.  I’ve got news for you:   If my character doesn’t know you and no one introduces her to you, she’s not going to approach you if you look cranky unless she has a job that makes it her business to know who everyone is, because your character might well be stronger and kick my character’s ass for bothering you.

Tips: Make sure there is someone at the game who knows your character and who he might be interested in talking to. Otherwise, when you get bored of standing there looking pissy, please feel free to put on a neutral look and come join in some conversation happening in game or something.

The Terminally Shy

If you look like it makes you really uncomfortable to talk to people, they usually either avoid you or they will decide to mess with your character by getting up close and in their space. You do not get to whine about being ignored or getting picked on if you play this concept in a room full of predator characters.

Tips: If you want to play a shy character then team up with a more outgoing character. Have at least one topic that your character is excited about and will bring her out of her shell. For bonus points – have your character be well able to kick ass and take names if people harass her too much. It’s not that you are helpless – you just don’t like crowds maybe…

I’m an Expert/Important Figure in (insert religion of choice or profession of choice here)

I know fuck-all about this religion/profession but I’m an industry leader all the same. Hell, I don’t even know any jargon or terms that are common with it but – hey – my sheet here says I have 4 dots in it so just work with me on this – okay?

Tips: It’s LARP – Live Action Role Play. 99% of the game is TALKING to other players. Please have something interesting/informative to say about your character, how they got into their religion/profession, and how they got to whatever position they obtained, etc. The higher up the ladder the more you should know. At least know enough to fake it (because, really, I’ve worked for CEO’s who couldn’t find their fucking email application after they minimized it so how hard can it be??).

Ravnos/Gypsy/Rom

Please do the world a favor and don’t use the OWoD books or ‘Bury Me Standing’ as a guide to how to play a Gypsy/Rom. There are a fair bit of more reliable and respected (by actual Romany) resources out there – most of which can be checked out from the library. If you just can’t stand reading non-fiction, at least read ‘Mulengro’ by Charles DeLint. Know how they are thought of and treated in Europe. Consider that you might pretend that you are not of that clan. Consider playing the character with some subtlety (Google it).

Last (for now) but certainly not least:  I’m a Teddy Bear Carrying Malkavian/Crazy Person

I’m a complete idiot AND batshit insane. I’m too fucked up to really be able to function on my own and have not put any thought to how I live and get by – much less how I manage to not be institutionalized and a walking breach of the Masquerade. The other predators in the room don’t exercise Darwin’s Law on me why?

Tips: It’s far more interesting and terrifying to find out someone you thought really had their shit together is actually completely insane. That would be the subtlety thing again. If you must insist on playing a character with “Multiple Personality Disorder” at the very least take the time to Google that and learn what that designation has been changed to. Also, people with multiple personalities not only go to great lengths to hide the fact they have them from others, I have yet to meet someone with this condition that was not aware of the other personalities. For the love of humanity – do some research and stop regurgitating bad Made for TV stereotypes into the game!

Side Note: I am responsible for a vampire Brownie troupe showing up at a game at Norwescon some years back.  We made these as one-off characters because we had come up with Brownie outfits and thought it would be fun.  The player that ended up portraying their “father” had the hardest time and I owed him BIG after that.  We had an explanation for how this happened (that would be background), why each character had the quirks they had, why we were at the convention (everyone would just think we were in costume!), and we had made merit badges based on the vampire laws – in child speak.  We were offered safe passage and asylum by the Prince of Bellingham at the time – because we were clearly able to function in vampire society despite the fact that we were children.  One of us was played by a man over 6ft tall with goatee.  I have the pictures to prove it.  Yes I did know I’m twisted and wrong, why do you ask?

Do you see a pattern here?  Most of the issues with these character concepts stem from a lack of thought, research and depth.  The biggest difference between table top and Live Action games is that in LARP most of what goes on in a given game is character driven.  More specifically, character conversation driven.  There are plot seeds dropped here and there but we spend a far greater portion of the game sitting or standing around socializing in character.  You don’t need to be a scholar or be a great speaker to make the game enjoyable but you should know about your character and at least something about what they are supposed to be good at.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and energy either.  In the internet age many things can be found with a bit of browsing. 

One of the most amusing characters I interacted with in the past was a woman playing a super model with 4 or 5 dots in the Sexy trait and a fair amount of fame.  On the surface this might have made me roll my eyes but she was connected to another character who introduced her around and she did things like create mock portfolios to show people her “latest work” – so she had something to talk about at game.  You’d be amazed how much little things like that can add to the enjoyment of the game and role play in general.   Give it a try.  The results might surprise you.

Editorial comment from the Geek Girl What Rules:  Word.

An introduction of sorts

Please welcome Tammy to the Geek Girls Rule! family as well.  She’s my resident LARP expert, having been LARPing for more than a decade.

Hi!

I’m Tammy and I was asked to blog here to represent Live Action Role Play (LARP). I’m also a late blooming gamer. I wanted to game but as a teenager all the people I knew who played D&D were the kind that didn’t want girls in their game as anything but arm candy – and as the fat girl I didn’t qualify for that. I was very much a tomboy and often considered “one of the boys” but that didn’t translate to D&D. So I was all “fine then – I don’t want to play your stupid game!”

Long story short – I didn’t start doing LARP until I was nearly 31 and recently divorced. Yep, the crazy time. I was looking to make up for lost time and do the things I always wanted to do and the ex didn’t. I briefly dated a guy that was into LARP and he introduced me to it. I joined the Camarilla almost exactly 12 years ago. It was still a non-profit fan club at the time.

Yes, I know some of you hate the Cam and I’ve heard the the stories and even experienced some of the bad. I came in after much of the epic stupidity had passed.  At this point, many of the problem children have been gone from the club for years. Get over it. Really, because I fail to think of any group or organization that doesn’t have it’s jerks.  It’s likely the current local Camarilla game does not resemble your memories.

Now, when I was introduced to the Camarilla I didn’t have a great time at first. The player that brought me into the game wasn’t popular. We broke up after about a month and I did the unexpected – I didn’t leave. I struggled though. Part of the problem is that the player that introduced me had previously brought a string of girlfriends to the game who disappeared in short order after their break-ups, so  people expected me to leave. That doesn’t completely excuse people for their behavior towards me though.

Frankly, I was stonewalled. I tried playing for a couple more months but I wasn’t getting anywhere, particularly in Seattle. Players would metagame – claiming their character wouldn’t talk to mine because of her age, etc. They gave me bogus reasons why their character would know details about my character and I didn’t know enough about the rules at the time to call them on their BS. I was also quite a bit more shy than I am now.

Eventually, I got frustrated and I took a 6 month hiatus until a friend I knew from another social circle joined the club. I scrapped the character created when I first joined and made a new one that was more suitable to my inexperience with the game and the rules and was easier for me to RP. I left the chapter I was in and moved my character to another domain (which later merged back with Seattle) and started over. I had a much better time from then on and have kept up with it.

One of the things that bothers me is that even though I’ve been doing this for twelve years, guys tend to assume I don’t know how to use my character creation points to full advantage and are often offering to help me with that. I smile and hand them my sheet and try hard not to smirk when they can’t really find anything wrong with it. They may question some of my choices but when I explain them they understand.

Now, admittedly, I’m more of a role player than a rule player.  I don’t read all the supplemental gaming books related to the games I play in.  I have neither the time nor the inclination.  I will read the ones that are pertinent to characters I want to play and places I want to take them.  I make well rounded characters and I *do* know how to min/max my points.  When creating a new character, it’s typical for me to do 2 drafts – one is me thinking about my character and what powers and abilities I want her to have (and have the points for) and then I do a second run through to make sure I’m making the most of my points.  I make characters based on the story I want to tell with them.  If you’re a power gamer you’re just not going to get that.

Several years back I had a character who was killed during a game.  It has been an intense scene that caused 2 other characters to lose humanity points.  I’d cried a little – but it had to do with being in the character mindset and the intensity of what had happened, not so much that I was upset about losing the character.  I could have avoided going to the game and cheesed her out of the situation.  I chose not to.  When another player asked me what was up and I told him my character had just been killed, he offered to help me make a stronger, harder to kill character next time.  The thing is, because of the character’s history and the story she was telling, I had relented all the challenges.  Had he asked me for more details about what happened I would have told him and he would have understood.  Instead, he assumed I’d just made a weak character, and not on purpose…