Tents, Lammies and more

Welcome to my world.

Ian, Harry, Matt and Vince have all spent time and energy talking to you about the concepts behind the game, so someone (i.e. me) has the pleasure of blogging about tents, trust, rubber bands and grey sacks.

Settle down. This might take a while?

Tents

First I shall muse on tents. Since event 2 of Maelstrom, we’ve divided IC and OOC camping. Odyssey takes this a little further, and tightened up the rules for the sorts of tents that can be used where. We’re going to require all tents in the IC area - whether player or trader - to look IC both inside and out. This means no dome tents, whether dressed or not. It’d be unfair to demand this without helping out those who don’t have their own group tents, tho. So, we are going to put up 2 or 3 large IC tents in each nation camp. What we can’t do is dress them all. So, if you have banners, drapes and props that will improve their look then please bring them along.

Lammies

An early design choice for Odyssey was "No lammies on items". In the early days of fest LRP lammies were developed as a solution to replace referees - and effectively grant individual players the ability to act with confidence and ’prove’ they have the right to act in a particular way with respect to the rules. However, in the relatively low-fantasy world of Odyssey that’s not so important so often. Where it is, on the way in to the arena, on the way to quests we have refs to check the special powers and affects your characters can call. You will still have a character card, and for some characters some other paperwork, but we trying our hardest to minimise the amount of OOC logistics that’s visible on the field.

The "No lammies" choice did mean we couldn’t provide game with an economy served by a wide variety of items, we couldn’t have a lot of skills requiring a specific sort of item to use, etc. etc. But Profound Decisions already runs a game in that style, and it’s important to us Odyssey is different in style as well as setting from Maelstrom. Many of the things we love about Maelstrom we consciously decided not to do at Odyssey. From a commercial point of view, it’d be foolish for PD to run two games competing for exactly the same sort of player.

There’s a bit of extra trust here. Sometimes another player won’t be able to prove they can make that call or RESIST that affect. We’re asking players to take this little extra trust to heart and see if we can’t put the lammies back in their box where we don’t need them. In other systems you can’t prove you’ve just cast a spell, this is pretty much the same. Plus let’s not forget it’ll make the game look that little bit better too.

Weapons check

Next up is weapon checking. The weapon check focus of the event will be the arena. Our team will be based there before and during the event - so do go there and ask if you need their services.

If you come to the arena for a battle then you will be asked if you have had your weapons checked already - anyone who has not will have to be seen before they enter. If this means you miss your time then that’s on you - so get them checked in advance. In addition to this the weapons checker will pick some random weapons for spot checks.

A similar scheme should be working on quests - but again don’t rely on it as if you miss your chance to go because you’re delayed with a safety check that you could have done earlier it’s tough luck.

We’ll be using rubber bands to provide a discrete record of weapons that remain safe. Of course, safe weapons can still be used unsafely. Just like in every LRP game, it’s down to individual players to make sure they’re fighting safely. If you don’t know what this means, ask another player, or a weapon checker, or at GOD and someone will help you learn.

Referees

Different systems have different ways of treating referees. I’ve been to games where referees are characters, who will behave in all ways IC until given a secret sign or handshake; I’ve seen referees in a range of colours and hats - but at Odyssey our referees will mainly be wearing distinctive IC costumes. We’ll have one hanging in GOD for you to see at the event.

There is a simple reason for this. It’s so they blend into the background environment when they’re not needed, rather than stand out visually all the time. They are not characters. They are not the agents or spies of the gods, nor will they betray your plans to other characters. They are there IC, but I will be explicit - there is no need for you to worry about their presence, or exclude them from secret meetings. They are referees - just in low-visibility outfits...

IC staff

There will be a range of NPCs, as you might expect of a game with a heavy story element. The majority of NPCs you might will be hard to distinguish from other player characters - they’ll have personalities, motivations, goals and beliefs. They are the tools of our Story team.

However there are some roles that aren’t like that. They’re logistical NPCs, the functionaries of the Game team and they’re bar staff, arena staff, and world forge staff. IC, these will be the minions of King Minos who have been cursed with immortality by the Fates to keep the Annual running smoothly. OOC, they’re necessary because one of the questions Odyssey tries to answer is "what do I do at the event?" They should be pretty obvious, and they’ll be introducing themselves. Our logistical NPCs run the structured game events that help everyone have an impact on the world and provide everyone with plenty of clearly-signposted stuff to do at the event. Thus they have a mix of OOC function and IC role: a characterisation as well as game or logistic-related tasks. You can interact with them; if you plan on buying a drink, or taking part in the arena, or the world forge you’ll need to. You can avoid everything they do; they won’t be offended, they’ll just assume you’re so busy with your own game and the Story team’s work you don’t have time for what they’re doing. You can kill them; but not permanently, they’ll just wander back onto the field and carry on doing their IC and OOC job of making the Game elements of the system run.

Still with me? Well done...

Simon W.

A game’s gotta have a vision and my vision for Odyssey was a world you could believe in. I’ve been reading about some of the amazing games being created in Scandanavia and talking to players who have gone to them. British LRP has a very different feel, we have a strong emphasis on having fun, but I was inspired by the scale of their ambition in trying to create a living breathing world, one in which everything you could see and touch was exactly the way it should be. My goal was to make Odyssey a game world which could be equally immersive.

I find it interesting that immersion is not a goal shared by everyone. Some live roleplayers are more interested in the characters or the action of the game and are not that bothered by the sets or costumes. If I can imagine that your sword is three foot of high quality steel and that fellow with his face painted green is actually an orc, why can’t I simply pretend everything else as well? It’s a reasonable viewpoint, but it’s not the viewpoint that underlies Odyssey as a game. Odyssey is based on the opposite position - that as a player I want to have to use my imagination as little as possible. That the point of doing this live, rather than round a table-top, is so that we can create the world as something I can see and touch, not just imagine. If that’s how you like to play, then Odyssey is aimed directly at you.

Creating a game that would be as immersive as possible presented a lot of challenges. Lammies had to go for a start. It’s not just that they look shit, it’s the essential problem of swapping lammies on and off phys-reps, of going to GOD to hand in the phys-reps when you’ve just stolen something. Lammies enable gameplay but they break immersion - so they had to go.

Refs also had to go. Well alright, you can’t run a game without refs, but no more people in yellow hi-vis pretending not to be there. Our refs are characters in the game world, albeit mindless so that you don’t need to worry about them being present during your secret meeting, but still physically part of the game world.

Other more subtle consequences followed. 24 hour time-in and no more yellow arm bands. If you’re not IC, then please don’t go in the IC area. If you want to go OOC, then leave the IC area by IC means first. There are no races in Odyssey, everyone is human. The game world includes centaurs, minotaurs and all member of fantastic creatures, but players are restricted to playing humans. That was a difficult choice for me, because playing something non-human is one of the things I love about LRP, but it was essential if we were to try and create a game world where we could ensure that everything looked as believable as possibe. We will eventually add in encounters with some of the incredible creatures of classical mythology but we won’t do it until we have the budget to make the end result look near perfect.

The game will put a heavy burden of responsibility on participants. As Simon explains, we aren’t going to allow plastic tents in the IC field at Odyssey. The rule book lays out the high standards required for armour and shields. We know from talking to players that a lot of players are spending a lot of time and money to meet the challenge of making their characters and their group look awesome. We’re doing everything we can to raise our game as well. Some things will be familiar to people who play Maelstrom, metal coins for money, IC tents put out for players to use, wooden benches instead of hay bales to sit on. But as well as that a lot of time and money has been spent designing and building sets that we will need for the first game like the restaurant, the world forge and of course the arena.

Will Odyssey suffer from the same problems that afflict games like Dumnoni Chronicles with their reputation for kit standards? We certainly hope so! Setting high standards does alienate some players, they can’t afford it, can’t achieve it or it’s not their kind of game. Odyssey, like Maelstrom, is not trying to be a game for everyone. But if you want to play a LRP game that will look stunning, where everything is as believable as we can safely make it, where the real world has been banished out of sight and out of mind, then we’ve done everything we can to make Odyssey the perfect game for you.

Matt Pennington