The rants of a LARP Staffer
I figured anyone who's played in a LARP (convention style or campground) would appreciate this. I lost my friggin' MIND when I was writing this and had just had my wisdom teeth (all 4) removed..
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The only difference between this past moth and prior months mentally for me is that the pain in my face was keeping me from being able to merely swallow all of the irritating little things I normally have felt have been occuring, and so now that I am capable of identifying them, I am going to do so. These are not necessarily in order of importance.
I'm not going to name names. this is going to sound like full out blame on everyone. But those who see something they've done that I'm bitching about know who you are.
#1. Sleeping schedules
I hope that every single one of you are aware that I make a great sacrifice by staying awake during the 4am-8am "quiet hours" period so that the three of you can sleep with the least chance of interruption.
Now for those who may have forgotten, ALL that 'quiet hours' represents is that there are *certain* buildings which will not be harrassed during those hours by NPC's. That's all. It does not mean that NPC's are not active during this time, it does not mean that PC's are not active during this time. This clarification is not only being made to all of you, but will be made to the players themselves next month with a sheet that they will recieve with their character cards or at sign-in if they're merely NPCing for the weekend.
It may come as a surprise to some of you that I TOO have issues sleeping during the day and with noisy conditions, but you don't hear me bitching and complaining about it and looking for sympathy. I understand, however, that since I'm not one of the people driving home that I am the one who is most likely affordable to be stuck hallucinating 'ghost cars' and the like on the road, the one who it is the least detrimental to to be bursting into tears in the morning or on the way home from lack of sleep, and one of the people who understands and sees when I'm being outrageous and can try to control myself against it. (living with PMS symptoms for 10 years is long enough to be able to detect the signs of this behavior).
I am also going to re-inform you that we people should be sleeping IN GAME as our army characters so military and civilian PC's have access to us if they need us. I know I was a culprit of this this month but I was also quite incapable of sleep in general, I had no bedding, was generally in a sate of mental confusion from the narcotics for most of the time, and was supposed to be non-combat for the weekend. Even with that going on I let the PC's stop Kia from going to bed and had her join in the shrieker fight because Kia would have done it (as much as Patti needed sleep at the time and shouldn' have been fighting with a sore face, on narcotics, and with a swollen and cut right index finger which made it nearly impossible to swing a polearm).
As staff we HAVE to make sacrifices, as much as it sucks sometimes, as tired as we may be sometimes, and as pained for one reason or another as we may be. If we're not willing to hack it, honestly, we shoudn't be here. True, this is a game... for the PLAYERS. For us, it is a brain-child, a responsibility, a job, and most of all, an endeavor we put our money and hearts and efforts and sprits and blood and sweat and tears into to turn a pile of lifeless props, some paper products, some excited roleplayers, and a boyscout campground into a wonderful fantasy world where anything can and should be possible. i don't bust my *** sewing what amounts to over thousands of dollars worth of costume props and the like cause it is "just a game". If I had a choice i'd have bought Anarchy online and be playin' an addictive online MUD. instead i sit and watch Animal Planet and sew costumes that aren't even mine, get paid nada for work-hours, and get nothing out of it but brief moments of satifaction interspersed with long hours of frustration. I do this because I have an obligation to this game and a personal vested interest in watching it succeed.
I can understand people being ill and under the weather mentally or physically. But this has been a recurring issue that has already gone farther back than last month. And I have had enough. I have had enough of being yelled at for waking people up just because they weren't tired enough to fall asleep at 4am. That's not my fault. I'd been awake for over 24 and i don't see a single drop of pity; all i get is a load of whiny bullshit about how tired people are. The longer you guys stay asleep, the longer I have to stay awake until you feel like waking up. I've had enough of people complaining in general to me as if I could change anything that's going on or as if I'm directly responsible for their problems. it's not fair to me, not fair to the players, and I honestly don't want to hear it anymore.
#2. Where is (insert object here)?
Save one exception, I am no one's girlfriend here. I am not your wife. I am not your mom. I am not your nana, your caretaker, or anything synonymous to this. Ultimately, I'm not Mario. It is not my sole responsibility to know where everything is.
*** gave every single one of us eyes, and a precious few of us brains. When I am busy briefing NPC's, or working on an encounter to go out, I can not and WILL NOT be able to make time to stop what I'm doing to look for a belt, a shirt, or some other random piece of equipment, or rules, or sit and explain something you should know already.
I do not have time during the course of the game to go through the literal TON of props we own and organize them all in a way that everyone can find anything. And a few of you know just HOW MANY TIMES I have asked, begged, and pleaded for someone to bring me up to conklin between events to do this. And no one EVER feels like it. So you tell me what that looks like when it comes to responsibility to this game. LAW doesn't just happen during the first weekend of the month. It happens all the time.
I almost find it pathetic that the only people willing to help me in this aren't even on Staff. In two more weekends it will most likely be myself, little Kate, and Zoran doing something that we, staff, should have done between April and May.
#3. "Oops, I didn't know that."
Read the rulebook. every single one of us has a rulebook. Read it. I am not gong to sit there and play story-time and read the rulebook for everyone. It's sad when I'm not even the one who wrote the spells and skils and I'm the one correcting people. I'm very tired of holding people's hands. sometimes I ask Mario when he is present and available quicker than a rulebook is, and a lot of people do this. But I AM TIRED of getting yelled at when there's a rule mis-call and I get the lame-*** defensive excuse, "well, I didn't know, cause no one told me". Every single one of us has had plenty of opportunity to 'know'. Some of the PC's know the rulebook better than we do, and that's just a **** shame and a blatant example of just how much we give a **** about this game.
#3a. "No one told me..."
It is no one's responsibility to tell you what needs to get done over and over and over again - and ESCPECIALLY not mine. We've been doing this for four months now, and beta-testing this sort of thing for years. the NPC weapons need to be INSPECTED every month, and PASSED or FAILED. If a costume prop is ripped or damaged, it has to be SET ASIDE for repairs or for discard. If something isn't set-up in the plot flow-sheet it has to be improvised to refer to Mario to find it. A report of the weekend in your viewpoint should be WRITTEN DOWN and submitted for PLOT CONTINUITY. I have TOLD you people this. Everyone AGREED TO DO THIS. So where the hell are the WEEKEND REVIEWS? I've got plot data since the beta-test in January - but from MY view point only. This **** is important so we don't have plot-holes, or piecemeal research when PC's start using the skill, or divination skills, etc., and it is also important for when people start screaming at me and BLAMING ME beause they don't "know what the hell is going on with plot", like this is MY fault. again. I am NOT MARIO AND I AM NOT HOLDING ANYONE'S HAND. I'm not the only one running this game and dealing directly with plot, so why is there this assumption that I'm the only one who knows what's going on and that it's my responsibility to let everyone else know what's up? there are TONS of things I don't know about Thybe, Markhan, and the other groups in the game-world. I manage to learn about it anyway. Is it cause, maybe, I'm the only one who's gone through the TROUBLE to be asking every one of you so I can find out? I have offered the sheets I have written up and I STILL hear this crap. Did anyone bother to read them, or is that next on the priority list behind the rulebook? If you want to know, ASK. Do NOT ***** at me randomly becasue NO ONE TOLD YOU. The fact that you didn't ask leads to the assumptions that you a) know already or b) don't care. And I don't have the time to check which reason it is. again. ISPOON-FEED NO ONE. YOU ARE NOT BABIES.
#5. Objectivity
I am beginning to detect some hyper-subjective crap that is remiscient of other LARPs - stuff we SWORE up and down would be avoided in LAW. Our characters are, ultimately, NPC's. We should have no real vested interest in any of the NPC's we play. We should not care, OOG, what the PC's think about them. We should not care if they live or die in an OOG frame of mind. Any one of us can lose any character we play for any reason plot throws along, in the game OR between months. in fact, I might be trashing Silverlocke soemtime soon, despite the fact that I like her and she's a kick-*** character because it is going to open up a lot of things and give the Potato Gang an easier time of their job - the minute Silverlocke catches wind of it, wolf-eye troops will be brought in specifically to deal with them and that's the end of it - it would be better handled as a PC issue, not NPC's beating NPC's.
#6. Pulling one's weight
As I have stated earlier, I have sewn a ****-ton of stuff for the LARP. I also do costume repairs, started editing the rulebook, (got someone else to help me with this (Andrea)), deal with PC character histories, write racial packets, create land-backgrounds for certain places, write random people encounters(not cards - "small plot" stuff), compiled NPC name-lists, clean and handle and re-stock makeup and appliances, edit, write up, and update the area notes, try to keep an eye on the kitchen supplies for low stock/replaement items needed, answer questions online for PC's, and do my best to be available to the PC's at all times for any reason.
Who asked me to do all of this stuff, one may ask? No one. Lesse. Wonder how I knew all of this **** needed to get done? I have just as much experience running a LARP as the rest of you. I have just as much experience in playing a boffer-LARP as most of you. is it genius? did some divine voice tell me this stuff needed to get done? No. I just didn't wait around to be spoon-fed jobs. I bothered asking once, and when i didn't get an answer I took things that needed to get done and made them my responsibility. In short, I gave a **** about the quality of what we're doing, and knew what needed to get done so things would be of a decent quality. Every single one of you is capable of knowing this stuff, and to be honest, I don't have the time to pick up one more job.
#7. Patti is being a psycho-***** hard-***!
I am doing this for a reason. every single one of us, in one form or another, has dealt with plot mis-communiation, getting fucked over at a LARP, having promises broken, watching people being irresponsible, and every single one of these things has constructed in one form or another our opinion of a LARP we have played in. Do you want our payers to form the kinds of opinions we have had of other LARPs? do you want to the ONLY thing keeping a player in LAW being "I like my character" or "some of the people are cool"? the trick is to be angelic, hard-working, sympathetic to the players, and KEEPING OUR FRIGGIN' BITCHY MOUTHS SHUT while we're there. We have to martyr ourselves for one weekend a month so that not only can people say "the LARP is cool" "The rules are cool" "the people are cool" "I like my character" etc, but also, "the staff busts their *** for us". That is perhaps the ONE THING that lets people let every other transgression that happens in a LARP slide. Let me put it this way. The PC's are SO impressed that I stay up all night so that a staff member is up and alert 24 hours a day that I can basically do little to no wrong in their eyes no matter what. The whole manhunt-and-capture at 5:30am Sunday morning this past month after the murder when I let them all get 3 hours sleep before starting that madness(and thus avoid the early morning downpour to boot) made them think I was a goddess incarnate. Just think about that for a minute. there can be no such mindset as "**** the players". **** the characters over if they screw up and do something stupid, yes. But the players, them you want to keep happy. If they die, let it be for a reason. if they're in a trap, make sure there's an out. Make sure that every puzzle can be solved in more than one way. Make sure they stay the heroes.
We have a good crew who are - for the most part - excited, dedicated, hopeful, and who have PLACED THEIR FAITH IN US. Betraying that is bullshit and wrong.
If you people need checklists to tell you what has to be done, fine, I'll do that. I'll go through the whole drawing-up of make charts, set-up and breakdown charts, closing checklists, and everythig else, and treat you all like 16 year old hourlies working at lttle caesars. But I don;t think a single one of you would appreciate that. all I'm asking is that people use your brains, start to give a **** again, and realize the gravity of what we're doing when we're running a LARP. As staff the LARP is NOT PLAY TIME. If we have fun, that's great. But ultimately, it is a lot of work. People burn out. It happens. We have to avoid burn-out by staying as anally organized as possible so we're not overburdened, overwhelmed, and starting to get the "I don't give a **** about this" mentality. Cause the game can NOT afford it - not from a single one of us. and if it starts to happen, you may as well walk and not waste anyone's time with half-*** work, or at least ADMIT tht you can't do it,or do't feel like it, or whatever. I'm tired of putting my faith in people who say they're going to do soemtihng and then ebing stuck dissapointed and behind the eight-ball when it's not finished.
Frith-Rae BridgeSol