Nobilis Larp: Torn from Glory
This was amazing. One of the most amazing things about it is that, after the game, the GMs made it available to the players as a free download. The larp files included:
1. The background material
2. The character sheets
These were fairly straightforward and fairly simple, even if they occasionally had a reference to the authors' home game or to the world of Nobilis that wasn't especially relevant to the game.
3. The petitions that each character gets. The petitions in the game included:
a. Petitions for the Estate of War. The Estate of War was up for election every year. Every Noble character had a petition to make him or herself the Power of War for the upcoming year. Not every Noble wanted to run, but all were eligible. The person or entity with the most legal votes would win. The arbiter, Saffron Crawford, Duchess of Death, representative of the Dead of Earth, decided what constituted a legal vote and what other rules were in effect. She also broke ties.
b. Petitions for Rules of Mortal Wars. There were five petitions for how Mortal Wars were to be waged during the next year. These were from groups of Nobles that followed the Codes of Light, Dark, Heaven, Hell, and the Wild. Only one of these petitions could be adopted. The petition with the most legal votes would win. The arbiter, the mortal woman Chen Wen, Representative of the Living of Earth, decided what constituted a legal vote and what other rules were in effect. She also broke ties.
c. Petition for the Rules of the Valde Bellum, the war between the Nobles (Nobilis) and their foes, the Excrucians. The Excrucian Dimachaeri had a petition to end the violent Valde Bellum and replace it with a annual competitive epic poetry reading. The arbiter, the fictional character Elizabeth Bennet decided what constituted a legal vote and what other rules were in effect. She also broke ties.
4. Other Items
5. Plots
This was a fascinating mechanic. Everyone had a number of small plot envelopes. Each envelope contained either a useful piece of information or a plot hook. There were a few types of these.
a. Individual. For example, I had an envelope labeled "Martilia". This meant that I was to give it to Martilia's player at the start of the game.
b. Group. E.g., Noble (one of the Nobilis), Type of Noble (E.g., a follower of a particular code), Non-noble, or Excrucian (an enemy of the Nobilis).
c. Attitude. E.g., Enemy, Friend. Giving a player one of these cued the player in to his or her character's attitude toward the character of the player who'd given the envelope.
The GMs wanted to make sure that everyone started with at least 3, but no more than 4 envelopes. The fact that players gave non-individual envelopes out to whomever they chose meant that the game would be different each time on the plot level. For example, Josh game me an "Enemy" envelope, so Saffron and Joram were predisposed to be hostile to each other. In another game, another player might have given it to, say, Ansel, making Ansel and Joram predisposed towards hostilities.
The GMs handed out characters, answered questions, made sure plots were given out, and offered people trying to generic in the possibility of playing the staff of the PC who was the host of the event. This worked well for all concerned.
Then, they dimmed the lights, leaving sufficient light to see by, and the game began, set on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year.
Nearly immediately, an impassioned discussion on the nature of war began. Lovely.
I was extremely busy, for I played Saffron Crawford, the Duchess of Death, and it was her job to arbitrate the selection of the new Power of War. Death was allied with Secrets, and she would have loved to name Secrets the new Power. Alas, Secrets did not have sufficient support. Sure, Death could declare signatures forgeries and cheat in other ways, but she was unwilling to cheat quite so blatantly.
Saffron announced her criteria for votes. Everyone could sign up to 3 petitions, although they could only sign any petition once. This was to prevent Saffron from getting 29 petitions with one signature each.
Chen Wen gave confusing, contradictory instructions about petitions for the rules of Mortal Wars. I'd thought that I misunderstood, but it turns out that this was deliberate on her part. She was quietly furious at the Nobles for keeping her living in poverty so as to be a better representative of humanity.
Regardless, I was fairly sure that people could sign as many of the petitions. Saffron went to each of the representatives for the various petitions on the rules of Mortal Wars and copied down their positions. She then spent much of her time telling others what the petitions were.
Hell wanted the souls of all who died in war over the next year. This would make Death's life less complicated, as processing all of the dead was very time consuming, but it left a bad taste in her mouth.
The Dark wanted to encourage genocides, and wanted a death toll of no fewer than two million. This would make Death's life more complicated, but she wasn't about to admit that she couldn't handle her job. Indeed, when Joram (Poison) snidely asked about that, she not only told him that of course she could, but she also referred to a secret love affair he was having with Anne (Decay) in such a way that he understood her, but no one else did. Love is forbidden to the Nobilis. Saffron knew Joram's secret because of the Enemy envelope that Josh had given me at the beginning of the game.
Heaven felt that War was too powerful an estate for any one Noble to hold, and it wanted a council of five Nobles, one of whom would be the chairman. This struck Death as absurd. It was the only petition she did not sign.
Light wanted humane war. It called for an end to genocide for the next year. While the Light might dearly like to end war altogether, in theory, in practice, this would be disastrous. It would threaten the Estate of War, and if War itself were destroyed, the Excrucians would gain a great victory.
The Wyld's petition was left blank for the representative to fill in as she saw fit. She wrote that war should be more fun, with casinos, gambling, impromptu fighting, and luck. Or at least, that's what my notes indicate -- the actual petition was much wordier and very funny.
The Light's petition won, it having been the only one submitted on time. This was because someone had cheated, I think -- in character, not out of character. Someone else tried going back in time to deliver the other petitions, but didn't have all of them, or possibly had a secret agenda. The results were unchanged.
One of the "Enemy" plots I got handed was "You have kidnapped Chung Wen's daughter." It explained that this was to make sure that my character had leverage to ensure that the correct petition for how Mortal War was waged got passed. I tried to hint subtly to Chung Wen that, so long as Heaven did not win, Saffron would see that Chung Wen was reunited with her daughter. I think I was too subtle.
However, as Heaven did not win, Saffron released the daughter, and the mother was overjoyed to see her. Only, then there was some kind of timeline oddity, and later on, the mother rejected the daughter, except that I think this was an older version of the mother. I'm not quite sure.
I later learned that Secrets had originally kidnapped the daughter, and that Death (or whoever wound up with that plot) took her from wherever Secrets had stashed her. I would have liked to know that in character, as I gave incorrect information to the players, being convinced I knew more than I did.
As for the Excrucians, Dimachaeri explained that he feared that if the Valde Bellum, the war between the Nobilis and the Excrucians, continued, it would destroy everything, something he wished to avoid. Saffron was concerned about this, and wanted proof of this claim -- or disproof.
During all this time, Ansel and Joram wanted to speak privately with Saffron. Joram wanted to know what Saffron wanted in return for remaining silent about the love between himself and Anne. Saffron asked for his help proving or disproving Dimachaeri's claim, and perhaps made other vague requests. In truth, she didn't want anything in particular. She had only alluded to the forbidden love for two reasons. Out of character, it's best if information flows in larps, and I had been handed an opportunity to let Joram know that Saffron knew. In character, Saffron was annoyed at Joram for implying that she was not up to handling her job, and she wanted to slap him down.
When I explained this to Josh after the game, he was delighted, having had no idea that Joram was closer to the mark than he knew. Joram's domain of Poison also included poisoned words. I think that by the end of the game, he had learned about a linguistic virus, or something like that, and was considering expanding his realm. Jorune started the game knowing that some people knew about his forbidden love. He wanted to find out who, so that he could buy them off.
Saffron wanted vengeance on Ansel for some unspecified betrayal (i.e., the character sheet didn't say exactly what he'd done). She was not unwilling to speak with him, as he requested, but it took a while before they had a free moment at the same time. By then, I had caused a bit of confusion for another player, Amy.
Casey (via email to the list set up after the game): I was told by the plot devices to help out Ansel because one of the characters "had a grudge on him". As it turns out, the character had no interest in killing him at all.
I explained that this was complicated. Saffron did indeed have a grudge. In general, I try not to lie in larps. It's usually a bad idea, except when it's essential. I also try to get information out to everyone, because this makes _everyone's_ game better. But, by the time Amy found me, Saffron had talked to the Excrucian Vivian. She also had a grudge against Ansel, and she suggested that the two women work together. Saffron really didn't want to advertise that she was working with an Excrucian, so she lied.
I didn't realize that this killed one of Amy's plots. I might have handled things differently if I had. And then, when Saffron met with Ansel, they came to an agreement. As I explained in email,
-- -- --
Priorities shift a lot during larps, and different players emphasize different elements of the same pc. When we write larps, one thing we try to do is make sure there's Enough Plot even if your direst enemy decides to ignore you, your lover says, "Yeah, whatever, we're in love," the mcguffin you want somehow vanishes (it's somewhere, but you've gotten frustrated not finding it)...
This is why I'm on the "there isn't too much plot" side of the argument.
With 20-20 hindsight, I've a few ideas of what I would have done in your place with that plot, but there's no way you or I would have figured them out Saturday night.
-- -- --
There had been much discussion after the game about whether there had been "too much plot" and whether the game should have been longer, say spread over two evenings. At Origins, where there is so much to do, I really don't want to have to commit to a two night event. I would, now that I know I like the way the GMs write their games, play in a 6 or even 8 hour larp, if it started no earlier than, say, 4 pm and allowed for players to either run to the food court and back as needed or to take an actual dinner break. Heck, with a meal break allowed, I could see a noon to 8 pm run, maybe even a 10 am to 8 pm run.
But, on the whole, I think the four hour slot worked, and if that meant things were a little rushed, I still maintain that this is better than having a number of people feeling bored or restless.
In any case, Ansel finally got his private meeting with Saffron and proceeded to beg for his life, in a pretty classy way. Of course, that's my out of character assessment. In character, Saffron probably considered him a disgusting toad for trying to suck up to her. When he said that he couldn't survive both her and Vivian, she noted that he might have considered this before betraying them.
He acknowledged this point and asked if there were anything he could do to earn Saffron's forgiveness. As it happened, the thing she most wanted at that point was information: Was the valde bellum really unraveling reality, as Dimachaeri claimed? This was more important than vengeance, so she told Ansel that if he could get her an answer and proof of that answer, she would forgive him. He complimented her on giving him a difficult and worthy task.
Although his petition did not pass (to no one's surprise -- that he got any signatures was a little surprising) -- Saffron decided that he wanted to stay in touch with Dimachaeri, as she thought he was sincere about the destruction of reality, and she suggested they might consider falling in love. Death liked bold, aggressive people, and was cynical enough to be more comfortable with people she didn't trust to begin with. Her back history was convoluted, involving parental betrayals and time travel.
From what I've read of the character sheets, Dimachaeri probably would have betrayed her, and even if the player thought he was telling the truth in some sense, Dimachaeri's goal was to destroy the estate of War. He unleashed his power on Hope, when Hope spoke against him, pointing out that Hope did not have the hope of peace, and was therefore betraying his own estate. Hope, interestingly enough, followed the Code of Hell.
Ansel joined the Excrucians, convincing Vivian that whatever unspecified thing he'd done to her had been done out of love. I think he fed her an NPC child Noble, on condition that she keep him safe, which, being a weird mythical being, she could do simply by not digesting him.
Meanwhile, Death had to name the new Power of War. She had a deadline for when she was to receive petitions, and, on counting the votes, realized that Hope would win. After checking with her allies and sources of information to make sure that there was no reason on her part to object, she pronounced him the new War.
Alas, the IRS decided to meddle, and asked for a count of the votes, specifying who had voted where, challenging the Excrucians' right to vote, and generally making things muddier. When the dust settled, Saffron agreed that the actual winner was not Hope, but Flight. The GMs decided that, as Hope had been named War before midnight and Flight had been named War after midnight, there were now two Wars, and things were far more snarled that in the Excrucians' wildest dreams. Complicating matters further, Hope was possibly falling in love with Flight.
Ironically, the two Wars meant that things had moved one step closer to a committee, the IRS's preferred model of War, as the IRS represented Heaven.
Someone: We should not ask the IRS, but Justice!
Justice: Justice stands behind the IRS.
And, at that line, the entire room broke into laughter, saying that this explained a lot.
Other things that happened in the game included entertainment, provided by the host, who was Etiquette, and his staff of helpers. During the entertainment, Poison and Decay held hands, as they were in love, and as they got a mechanical benefit from doing so. No one noticed. Most people were watching the entertainment. Saffron was tallying votes.
One other thing that never quite came up: Charles Holly, aka Buddy Holly, should have died 50 years earlier than he did. Now a Noble, he felt that Saffron was continually rubbing in the fact that he owed her a debt. My character sheet said that the "debt" he owed me was kind of a joke between the two of them. Ah, little did she know!
