Madeline the Edifying (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zdashamber) wrote2006-02-14 11:52 pm
zdashamber) wrote2006-02-14 11:52 pm
Mirror Room larp discussion
A couple Fridays back I played in a Parlor Larp, "The Mirror Room," a sort of larp-in-a-box put out by Shifting Forest and run by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
badgerbag. What we knew going in was: dark/grim game, you're trapped in a room full of mirrors. jhkimrpg wrote up a good thing about it here, and he has a link to some pictures of the action, but there are none of me, so I'm affecting a careless linklessness. ;) You might, of course, want to look at the pictures since badgerbag did a great job setting atmosphere by covering all the walls with tin foil.
I felt terrible for getting there late, since there were like 10 people waiting on me, several of whom I didn't even know. I should've paid more attention to getting out of work exactly at 5... Anyway, I'd asked badgerbag to set me up with some character whose goal didn't involve getting out of the room (I don't care much for frustration). She offered the antagonist, and I was cool with that.
I slunk in and read the character sheet, and was a smidge taken aback, but not for the reason my fellow larpers might expect. My character was a flat-out sociopath. "How canbadgerbag possibly know?" I thought. "She can't possibly know. It's pure chance that this antagonist is a sociopath. She hasn't seen my predilection for sociopathic characters... Unless she's been connecting the dots..."
I'm kidding a bit. About myself, that is; the character was quite a piece of work. I was playing the doctor; on the sheet it emphasized how as a player I had to cause trouble amongst the rest or the larp wouldn't work right. It also stated that one of my goals was "have sex, willing or not." Hm, I thought, considering how I'd work the mechanics of it. Badgerbag took me aside, though, and mentioned she wasn't really keen on rape in the game, and suggested instead child abuse, which was cool with me.
Oo, I just had a splendid evil idea. It's for the Amber campaign, though, so no worries. Just goes to show you, though, evil begets evil.
Anyway, the character was well-set-up to be entertaining, because her other major goal was to never be bored. So I could join in on anything the other characters did, and then cause dissent and factioning whenever I felt like it. Mess with them, let up and be reasonable for a bit... As I skated along the edge of getting them all against me at once, it was trivial to fall into the patterns of an abuser. It amuses me to think of how the character of the know-it-all kid began to think maybe I wasn't entirely crazy, even after I smacked him but good.
It was odd and yet interesting to come up with in-character justifications for why it was right and good that I had floored the know-it-all kid with a backhanded slap. I settled on "children have moral agency, and are accountable for their actions." Which on one hand, I actually believe... The kids who tormented you on the playground, did they not know they were doing wrong? Nonsense. The method of the accounting was where my character went over the line into evil, but I was able through bluster, in the confusion, to fail to grasp that point. Wasn't able to keep the character undamaged enough to continue her reign of terror, though. ;)
I was left with only one trait on the character sheet I could still use, "Thoroughly enjoy anything remotely pleasurable." This is where the joy of GM-player interactions comes in. My character, getting bored, suggests an orgy, but everyone else is too trepidatious. So I went off to have a one-person orgy.
Badgerbag to the rest: "There's just a curtain over the bathroom, so you can pretty much hear everything that's happening... There's some moans."
Me, thinking, Hah, brilliant...
A player to me: "Are you ok?"
Me: "Yes. Yes! YEEESSSS!"
The entire group: . . .
Hee hee hee hee! There is no way I would have thought of faking an orgasm to squick a bunch of gamers without Badgerbag there to fill in parts of the world I hadn't considered, giving me a base to extemporize from.
Enough about me, though. I really liked the way the game went from a moral point of view. The ghosts of the room demanded a hand. Apparently the usual course of action for players is to cut the hand off one of the two NPCs who are unconscious the whole game, the one who looks like a street punk, with bags of drugs on him. No one in our game even suggested that a comatose drug dealer was fair game. Instead one of the players, the guy playing the rabbi, knowingly cut off his own hand to save the rest.
The player of the rabbi,imnotandrei, also wrote up a post about the game, "Last Night I was Emilio Sandoz." Like vvvexation, I think he was the hero. His constant attempts to relate the horror of the situation to his understanding of god and Judaism kept the rest of us in check to some degree. Though I've also got to shout out to cynthia1960, playing an old doubting ex-Chinese communist, who brought a totally secular morality to the game in her quiet attempts to care for the two unconscious NPCs. I felt like due to the actions of players the game was about more than just horror. It was an interesting data point about how a group changes based on the specific personalities in it.
Another neat moral point was when the know-it-all kid was concealing the dagger necessary to kill the suicidal sacrifice victim at the instructions of the ghosts. The kid didn't want to follow any more directions from the crazy ghosts, but as punishment for not following their directions, they lowered the room temperature so far it killed an NPC. My character was of the opinion that the kid had murdered the NPC by withholding aid as surely as if he'd killed her himself. Couldn't argue the point with full force since I was a ghost by then, but hey, it didn't come up much in the game anyway, since it was nearly over and the moral backbone rabbi was greatly distracted.
The game had an arbitrary twist at the end, when anyone who broke a mirror died. I was happy, since it killed the know-it-all kid, but I think he andwhumpdotcom were rightly a bit miffed.
In general, interesting. Larps seem to be mostly for those who can have fun just hanging around as a character, or who can create a plot with their character; but this one ended up with a not-bad story to watch, too.
badgerbag. What we knew going in was: dark/grim game, you're trapped in a room full of mirrors. jhkimrpg wrote up a good thing about it here, and he has a link to some pictures of the action, but there are none of me, so I'm affecting a careless linklessness. ;) You might, of course, want to look at the pictures since badgerbag did a great job setting atmosphere by covering all the walls with tin foil.I felt terrible for getting there late, since there were like 10 people waiting on me, several of whom I didn't even know. I should've paid more attention to getting out of work exactly at 5... Anyway, I'd asked badgerbag to set me up with some character whose goal didn't involve getting out of the room (I don't care much for frustration). She offered the antagonist, and I was cool with that.
I slunk in and read the character sheet, and was a smidge taken aback, but not for the reason my fellow larpers might expect. My character was a flat-out sociopath. "How can
badgerbag possibly know?" I thought. "She can't possibly know. It's pure chance that this antagonist is a sociopath. She hasn't seen my predilection for sociopathic characters... Unless she's been connecting the dots..."I'm kidding a bit. About myself, that is; the character was quite a piece of work. I was playing the doctor; on the sheet it emphasized how as a player I had to cause trouble amongst the rest or the larp wouldn't work right. It also stated that one of my goals was "have sex, willing or not." Hm, I thought, considering how I'd work the mechanics of it. Badgerbag took me aside, though, and mentioned she wasn't really keen on rape in the game, and suggested instead child abuse, which was cool with me.
Oo, I just had a splendid evil idea. It's for the Amber campaign, though, so no worries. Just goes to show you, though, evil begets evil.
Anyway, the character was well-set-up to be entertaining, because her other major goal was to never be bored. So I could join in on anything the other characters did, and then cause dissent and factioning whenever I felt like it. Mess with them, let up and be reasonable for a bit... As I skated along the edge of getting them all against me at once, it was trivial to fall into the patterns of an abuser. It amuses me to think of how the character of the know-it-all kid began to think maybe I wasn't entirely crazy, even after I smacked him but good.
It was odd and yet interesting to come up with in-character justifications for why it was right and good that I had floored the know-it-all kid with a backhanded slap. I settled on "children have moral agency, and are accountable for their actions." Which on one hand, I actually believe... The kids who tormented you on the playground, did they not know they were doing wrong? Nonsense. The method of the accounting was where my character went over the line into evil, but I was able through bluster, in the confusion, to fail to grasp that point. Wasn't able to keep the character undamaged enough to continue her reign of terror, though. ;)
I was left with only one trait on the character sheet I could still use, "Thoroughly enjoy anything remotely pleasurable." This is where the joy of GM-player interactions comes in. My character, getting bored, suggests an orgy, but everyone else is too trepidatious. So I went off to have a one-person orgy.
Badgerbag to the rest: "There's just a curtain over the bathroom, so you can pretty much hear everything that's happening... There's some moans."
Me, thinking, Hah, brilliant...
A player to me: "Are you ok?"
Me: "Yes. Yes! YEEESSSS!"
The entire group: . . .
Hee hee hee hee! There is no way I would have thought of faking an orgasm to squick a bunch of gamers without Badgerbag there to fill in parts of the world I hadn't considered, giving me a base to extemporize from.
Enough about me, though. I really liked the way the game went from a moral point of view. The ghosts of the room demanded a hand. Apparently the usual course of action for players is to cut the hand off one of the two NPCs who are unconscious the whole game, the one who looks like a street punk, with bags of drugs on him. No one in our game even suggested that a comatose drug dealer was fair game. Instead one of the players, the guy playing the rabbi, knowingly cut off his own hand to save the rest.
The player of the rabbi,
imnotandrei, also wrote up a post about the game, "Last Night I was Emilio Sandoz." Like vvvexation, I think he was the hero. His constant attempts to relate the horror of the situation to his understanding of god and Judaism kept the rest of us in check to some degree. Though I've also got to shout out to cynthia1960, playing an old doubting ex-Chinese communist, who brought a totally secular morality to the game in her quiet attempts to care for the two unconscious NPCs. I felt like due to the actions of players the game was about more than just horror. It was an interesting data point about how a group changes based on the specific personalities in it.Another neat moral point was when the know-it-all kid was concealing the dagger necessary to kill the suicidal sacrifice victim at the instructions of the ghosts. The kid didn't want to follow any more directions from the crazy ghosts, but as punishment for not following their directions, they lowered the room temperature so far it killed an NPC. My character was of the opinion that the kid had murdered the NPC by withholding aid as surely as if he'd killed her himself. Couldn't argue the point with full force since I was a ghost by then, but hey, it didn't come up much in the game anyway, since it was nearly over and the moral backbone rabbi was greatly distracted.
The game had an arbitrary twist at the end, when anyone who broke a mirror died. I was happy, since it killed the know-it-all kid, but I think he and
whumpdotcom were rightly a bit miffed. In general, interesting. Larps seem to be mostly for those who can have fun just hanging around as a character, or who can create a plot with their character; but this one ended up with a not-bad story to watch, too.