Setting up a World of Darkness LARP is a relatively unique experience. I know when I set up my first one it was quite the adventure. At the time I had been gaming for about nine years with almost all of that time being the person doing the plotting – be that the Dungeon Master, Game Master, Storyteller or any other term you wish to apply. I figured there would not be much difference, only scale. I could not have been more wrong. My first LARP was a disaster. And a lot of the things I preach against now I did then. But that disaster was probably the best teacher I ever had in gaming.

You see, I like running games. And I think live action role-playing, and Mind's Eye Theater in particular, is the height of the role-playing experience. You stop imagining and begin believing as you can see what is happening. The Nosferatu skulking in the shadows is actually skulking in the shadows as you walk over to speak with the new Toreador who arrived. You can sit around a bonfire and swap stories with your pack in a moot. It is remarkable and more complete.

So given how much I loved the experience that is Mind's Eye Theater and how much I enjoy Storytelling for my players, I had to get better or else I wouldn't have an audience the next time I ran a game. After a lot of deconstruction and evaluation of what I did, I quickly learned that I made 90% of my mistakes when I set up the chronicle. I lacked clarity of purpose and unifying structure. My character creation guidelines were pretty much nonexistent and I had no where near the support staff to manage the size of game I ended up having. I did do somethings right, though. I was good to my players. Maybe a little too good but they were happy. The Non-Player Characters I made memorable and flexible enough to fill multiple roles even if I do look back at Sosa and The Fool and wonder what I was thinking when I look at the 6th Generation and 7th Generation lines on their character sheets. But it was this experience that enabled me to begin developing the process I use now to develop all my games. And now I will share it with you. Hopefully you will be able to use this to avoid some of my mistakes and make some that are uniquely your own so you can learn like I did. Now on to it...

1 – Commitment to run a LARP

It may seem painfully obvious step and I bet you are wondering why it is here. And I assure you, it is here for a damn good reason. Running a LARP is a real undertaking. It usually takes me a number of months to get everything in line before I even play a single game. And then I am looking at a good 5 to 15 sessions to get through the first story arch This is a time consuming affair that requires more time than most people are willing to give. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the work it takes to run a game for four players every other week. Now add a zero to that four to get forty. That is not an unusual amount of players for a Live Action Role-playing Game.

Now imagine the logistics that goes into handling that many people. There will be personality conflicts. You will have to find room to house them all on game night. You will need to manage character creation and advancement for all of them. You will also have to handle the between session time for all these characters. Each player represents about 15 to 30 minutes of planning and paperwork per session. That means you, as the head Storyteller, would be looking at between 10 to 20 hrs of work for a 40 player game session before you even show up at game. It is a lot of work. You need to be willing to do it or else your game will suffer.

2 – The Unifying Concept

This is probably the part everyone wants to jump to. You have an idea that you think is just awesome. Great! Write it down in one simple sentence. If that sentence is “I want to run a Camarilla game” throw it out and start over. Much like Clan is not a concept, stating a preferred game system to use is not a concept either.

You really need to think about what you want to do with your game. If you want to tell a story about politics you will need to think of things very differently than if you want to run an action adventure style game. You will also likely make very different choices in which setting you use as different games are suited better to different themes.

And remember, this will be your unifying concept for your game. If any decision that you take would weaken this theme or concept, discard it as you will be weakening what you are wanting to do.

For example, in games that I have run using this idea of Unifying Concept, I have used “deeper layers mean different truths”, “magic” and “making a choice”. All of these concepts resulted in very different games being run that focused on different things.

3 – Developing the Concept

Once you have made a decision about what kind of concepts and themes you want to explore, you now get into the development stage. You need to start to flesh out your ideas more fully. This is where you will make your decisions on what setting will you use, beginning with Vampire, Werewolf, Hunter, Wraith, etc, etc and then more specifically to Camarilla, Technocracy, Seelie Court or something similar. This decision will easily lead you to what books you will be using.

You will also have determined where the game will be physically set in the World of Darkness. I strongly suggest using your home city for a modern game but historical games can easily be set anywhere and at anytime. Even modern games, can be set elsewhere. It just stretches the suspension of disbelief a little more than I enjoy. That being said, if it works for you and your troupe then by all means do so.

Once you have made your general decisions, it is time to write them down. Now is a good time to come up with a name for your chronicle if you haven't done so already. It will give you and your prospective players something to call your game. And, if you choose a name that hints at the type of stories you are going to tell, it will help sell your game and plant the seeds of anticipation.

4 – Taking the Message to the People

This again, may seem a little out of place. It really doesn't look like you have much. But that is not exactly true. You have the equivalent of a movie trailer. So get it out there. Not necessarily to everyone, but to as many people as you know that you would want in your game. If no one says it looks interesting, you can save yourself a lot of hassle and either not proceed or come up with something different. If you get flooded with responses well beyond what you expected, you know you will have to bring on extra people to handle to the load.

You will also need to have a rough idea on the size of your game so you can find an appropriate site to play at. A one bedroom apartment is hardly suitable for a 30 player game while a 8 player game likely couldn't afford to rent out a private room at a bar.

Also, you want mkae sure that people understand what you are trying to do. If you are talking about a deep political game and your prospective players are coming back with how much they are looking forward to killing Sabbat shovel-heads and werewolves there is going to be a problem. And that problem will be yours. Get them on the same page as you now or else there will be some serious issues once game play begins. And the players do out number you.

5 – Staff

Based on you player response, you will have to gage if you have enough staff or not. A lot of times, this has already been dealt with right after the Commitment stage. But if it hasn't been done yet, make sure it is done now. You must make sure you have enough staff to handle all the players you have. White Wolf recommends no more than seven players per ST/Narrator. I would say use the 5:1 to start with just in case more people say yes than you expected when it comes time to get firm commitments from players and get character sheets submitted.

The other thing you need to do, once you have enough staff, is make sure everyone is on the same page on how things are going to work. If Jimmy is going to be handling the police then people need to agree and understand that when people want to deal with the police they have to go see Jimmy. If Mary is the Head Storyteller, Jimmy and Tip need to know that this is not a democracy and what Mary says goes.

6 – The Details

Have you ever heard that the Devil is in the details? You are about to learn why right now. This is the single hardest part of developing a game for me. And I will break it down into the subparts of Conceits of the Game, Mechanics Locations & NPCs, and Background.

A – Conceits of the Game

This is an extremely important step. I considered giving its own section before details but this is definitely one of the Devils so here it is. So what do I mean by “Conceits of the Game”? A “Conceit of the Game” is something that the players and Storytellers must accept for the game to run smoothly and properly and they must be willing not to abuse the conceit.

My favorite example of a “Conceit of the Game” is that the player characters will show up reliably at a specific destination because it is game night. This seems like a no brainer but the number of times that people have made plans involving the killing of player characters because they knew the player wanted to play and it was game night is amazing. To play the game, you have to show up game night. It is simply how it works. So don't ruin the night and the story because you aren't smart enough to figure out any other plan besides waiting at the door and jump the character as they walk through the door. By doing so, it makes the game worse. You being ruining people's fun.

Other conceits that I have used in the past include the perpetual modern times clause when I was running a game that did not move forward in time at the same rate as real time. Irregardless of the number of days, months or years in between sessions in the game world, the technology level was always the exact same as it was on game night in the real of the real world. I have also used the conceit that you will accept that the new PC can find you no matter how secretive your location is.

These things seem so obvious but they really aren't. Write them down and make sure they are circulated.

B – Mechanics

This can be very quick and easy or painfully slow and meticulous depending on what you are doing and which books you are going to use. If it is a simple game that involved no crossovers or, when crossovers occur, the "others" will be built using the rules from the game you have chosen to play then it is really quick and easy. Little to no changes need to be made unless you want them to be. A great example of this would be a Camarilla vampire LARP where you are using the rules as presented in Laws of the Night plus the Revised Clan books, Laws of the Night Guide to the Camarilla, Laws of the Night Guide to the Sabbat, Laws of the Night Guide to the Anarchs, Laws of the Night Storyteller Guide and Dark Epics. Just leave things alone as everything is designed to work together.

An example of a rules nightmare is what I had to do when I ran my magic themed game, Smoke and Mirrors. The game focused on magic as the binding theme with the story being about a coven of sorcerers and psychics being forced into close contact with the Tremere Clan. This meant players could potentially play Sorcerers, Psychics, Tremere Vampires, Ghouls, Ducheski Revnants, Gargoyles or normal mortals. This required me to balance off Laws of the Hunt and Laws of the Night's rules and maintain a power balance between all the different races that was fair to the players. It took a long time but the result was worth it. Even though I had to abandon the game due to illness after only six months, I got to experience one of the three best sessions I had ever had the pleasure to be involved with.

C – Locations & NPCs

I've included these together because they are the exact same thing. They are pieces of background scenery that are meant to make the game more real to the players and the player characters. And the same rules apply to the locations as NPC. Make sure they are finite, rich and breakable.

To make them finite, ensure that each location and NPCs does more than one thing. If you want to have a dark industrial club have it. But make sure that it is also an gathering point in your game for the characters or a mob front or owned by an important NPC who can be contacted there.

For NPCs, make sure one NPC fills multiple roles. There is nothing that says the same NPC can not be an ally to one group of players, antagonist to another, the comic relief at times and the occult mastermind of the city all at once. In fact, that makes that character so much better because if that character is attacked or killed it will reverberate in all kinds of different ways.

Making the locations and NPCs rich is a matter of giving both a personality. If you are playing at the in-game nightclub, turn down the lights and play some loud, driving music that is suitable to the location. Even some plain tables with black cloth, cheap candles and Halloween decorations for wall art can help reinforce the idea that you are at the club even if you are in a community center conference room or a friend's basement. For NPCs, give them hobbies and interests beyond what they do. Give them a look and dress that way EVERY time you play that character so people can quickly identify the clothes with the character. The look doesn't have to be elaborate, just distinctive. These two things will ensure that the character will stick in your players' minds.

Breakable is so very important. Players will feel powerless if they can not effect the world. If they want to burn down the club, let them try. If they should succeed, let them. Same goes for killing off NPCs. If they are smart enough, strong enough or lucky enough do not cheat them of their win. That doesn't mean it should be easy and that there should not be consequences for their actions but let the player characters take the actions. They may full well understand that their actions will have serious repercussions and that maybe part of the fun and part of their story.

D – Background

Not much needs to be said here but it does need to be done. A background for the game is pretty much the exact same thing as a background for a character. It is the story of your setting up to the very first session. It lays the ground work and is a really good opportunity for you to reinforce your some of your themes and introduce some of your major players before play starts.

7 – Player Recruitment

This is another critical aspect of any game. You need players. And for a LARP, you will ideally have more players than your average Table Top game. Getting players really depends on whether you want to run an invite only game or an open game. With an invite only game, all you need to do now is send out the invites and get people to RSVP. You can include your game data with the invite or just give people a general overview and provide the full details if they are interested.

If you are looking to run an open game, it is a different approach. Begin with an email to your friends like you would for an invite game or a table top game. But also, start getting the general message out. Putting up noticeable and attractive fliers in game stores is an excellent source of advertising. If you are part of forum, like this one, advertise there. White Wolf has a game directory. Though clunky and a little out of date, people do use it. So should you. If you have any colleges or universities, approach the gaming clubs and consider taking an advertisement out in the school papers. A website is another good tool. To cheat, do web searches as often as possible for you game site to drive it up in search results. And if you have the money, invest in a domain with the same name your game. Just make sure, no matter how you advertise, that you include a contact email address or time and location so people can find you and learn more.

8 – Character Creation

While the details maybe the most difficult and frustrating, character creation will be the longest. You have to provide your prospective players with all of your rules changes, books being used for rules and source material as well as the details about the world you have created, like notable non-player characters, locations and game background. Players will inevitably take longer than you expect to get back to you, try to do something that you expressly said no to and submit characters that are not really appropriate to your game. Some will say yes to playing and then back out while others will say no only to change their mind at the last possible second. It is enough to drive a sane Storyteller to drink. Luckily no sane person does this so you can't use Storytelling a LARP as an excuse for your drinking.

Now is the time to be flexible and diplomatic. Engage your players in discourse and do some compromising. From this point on, this is no longer your game. You share it with the players and they have the right to get what they want out of the game as much as you want so long as what they want doesn't make the game less fun for everyone else involved. The process will take time and patience but it is the best time that can be spent as this is where you will begin forging you bond and reputation with your players.

9 – Revisions and Finalization

This is a fairly simple step that must not be over looked. Once you have all your player characters submitted and approved you will want to look over your game notes and make any changes based on what your players have given you. Do what you can to weave them into the back story so there is a sense on continuity to your game before a single session is even played.

Also, now is the time to finalize how you are going to communicate with players. You will need to have your game forum set up or email lists ready to go now. It will be very important as this will be where and how people will keep in touch. Make sure you get your game location(s) confirmed and booked. You will have a very good idea at your final numbers so you accurately know how much space you will need. Ensure that you live within your means when selecting sites. If people have agree to chip in a few bucks to help cover the site, make sure you don't over spend. Underspending is fine, since that money can be funneled back in different ways.

In the case of money, make sure you are not violating any of White Wolf's rules when it comes to collecting money. At one time there was a proposed Licensing Agreement and, according to my understanding, it is to be revised come early 2006. If that is the case, check the agreement to ensure everything is on the up and up. You don't need to be sued over your hobby. It would be bad.

10 – Game On!

The last step in this process is session one. I'm not going to plot out a session for you but there are a few things to keep in mind. People really don't know their characters let alone other people's characters. Keep the first session light so they can get use to the characters. Also, make sure you introduce the major NPCs that everyone knows about. If you are running a Sabbat LARP and you have NPC Bishops, make sure all those Bishops are there so the players can actually meet them and learn their names.

Something I like to do for the first session is make it some kind of community celebration. An anniversary of a great victory, a funeral for a lost friend, a high ritual. Something that everyone can relate to right off the bat. It will give you and your players a structure and a quasi-script to work with. Especially if you educated them out of game about what was going to happen so they would be prepared for it when they arrived.

So there you have it. A 10 Step process to help you get your MET LARP ideas of the ground. If you follow this, there isn't anything terribly major you will miss. But don't necessarily follow it linearly. Sometimes you will be working on a few different things at once. And that is a good thing. Just make sure once you are done you have hit each and everyone of these steps in your own way.

Good luck with your game. As I said earlier, running a Live Action Role-playing game is one of the most difficult things to do in gaming. But it is so rewarding that it is worth every ounce of sweat, pain and aggravation.