The negative connotations of the phrase “placing blame” are not conducive to cooperative problem resolution, so I wouldn’t use it if I had a choice. Within the context of Eric’s discussion, problem resolution needs to be cooperative to be truly successful.

“This discussion is more useful for us, as LARP writers and GMs, than it is for players. After all, we can’t assign textbooks of LARP theory as required reading before playing our games.”

You’re just not mean enough… . Seriously, though, even if most of the people who read this are writer/GMs, it could be directly useful to players who will never read it… as you noted, you feel that you’ve come away from this with some ideas and perhaps greater clarity on some things you already knew, and players will benefit thereby.

I certainly expect to benefit as a player from both having read what others have said here, and from having to write down my thoughts on what might have been the root of my dissatisfaction with an otherwise good LARP that I enjoyed participating in.

Isn’t stating the cause of a problem the same as placing blame? This discussion is more useful for us, as LARP writers and GMs, than it is for players. After all, we can’t assign textbooks of LARP theory as required reading before playing our games.

This discussion has already helped me get a better sense of how to understrand and address a problem if a player complains that they “don’t have enough plot.” I can focus more clearly and have a few questions in mind that I would use to figure out exactly what the player wants.

Understanding and stating what might be wrong could look like assigning blame, when all you are actually trying to do is to state your understanding of the cause of a problem clearly. My intent above was *not* to assign blame for the problem I experienced, but to explain how I *think* the problem came about.

An important aspect of communication between player and GM must certainly be to avoid the use of pejorative language, and also to avoid the *assumption* of pejorative intent. Escalation into blame-casting or blame-avoidance can only impede actual critical evaluation and problem resolution, and escalation can start on either side of the discussion.

A player should obviously NOT state their understanding of their problem in the form of an attack… by the same logic, though, it’s important for the GM to avoid *seeing* a player’s critical evaluation of a problem as a pejorative attack on the GM’s work.

The effect of action on the world is the driving motion of plot. But it’s not just that people want to have an effect; often they want a direction. They want to have something to do that leads toward some climax. Hence why I broke “plot” aka action down into the literary compontnts of subject, object, effect of s on o, relevance, and audience. People who want more “plot” may be seeking an effect of their action on an object; but they may also be looking for some action that is relevant to some larger story, or they may have a relevant story in mind and just be looking for an object to act on, or they may have everything they need and just not realize it.

Those who protest that they don’t have enough plot generally mean that their actions aren’t having an effect they can see — which isn’t the same as having no effect at all, if you catch my meaning.

Or that they don’t know what actions to take that would be relevant to any story, even if they would be relevant to the world. Or a lot of things, really.

This is an excellent point. In many cases people are looking for feedback but there can be many reasons they don’t get that. For instance, the character may have done something in game that got a lot of attention from a group of players but was only discussed amongst them and not even the staff are aware of it. There was a strong roleplaying effect but it is invisible to the player in question. Another possibility is that the effect is slow in coming to fruition and the player does not see that.

Even if you were to assume that LARP was running under a consumer model (which I don’t think is apt) this would not be an extreme ideology. If you call a tech support line and have a poor understanding of your problem then you’ll have to jump through half a dozen scripts and possibly a few agents as they try to guide you into better defining your problem. If you have a better understanding of your problem (and get an agent who’s not a complete moron) then you can skip the initial steps and get right to solving your problem. The same applies in LARP, and is actually compounded by the general lack of time that GMs have.

@Richard: I think a lot of what I say to Jon above also applies here. I’m much less interested in assigning blame to anyone for issues than I am in coming up with the most expedient method to resolve them, and I think the best solutions require an involved player (and GM) to be successful.

Re: jealousy / envy: I think everything you say is true, although I don’t think that negates the power of jealousy to be a very real catalyst. I consider myself to be a relatively mature LARPer and I know that I’m still prone to falling into a jealousy trap on occasion, which is ultimately why I thought it was worth bringing up here.

Re: TSFL: I’m not a TSFL writer, so I don’t have too much to contribute in this regard, though I will note that I think that it’s even particularly important to bring an issue you’re having to a GM’s attention if you’re in an event where you receive a character sheet since there’s some pressure to play a character as the writer intended that can make a confusing sheet particularly debilitating (Unless the intent of the sheet is actually to confuse you). Unless an event has been run before in the past there’s always a (disturbingly high) chance that your sheet was written hours (or minutes) before the event by someone who was three sheets to the wind. Most writers will realize that their sheets may not be perfect and should be happy to help you make sense of yours (and help correct the sheet for the future as well).

I *have* seen a particularly egregious case of GM favoritism, where (in essence) a GM used a LARP setting to give his RPG campaign players a lot of straw men to mow down like new grass. As you can imagine, I don’t expect to be playing any LARPs run by this GM again.

“Plot” – I’d have to opine that “plot” is more than adequate terminology. “Plot” is direction, “action” is pursuit of direction. “Plot” is what the writer/GM presents to the players, and action (which may result in new plot elements) is what the players give back to the writer/GMs, and to each other.

While I acknowledge that some problems with plot should be examined with the idea that perhaps the player needs to reach out more, or try more, some problems may be rooted in production values and writing style. Better proofreading and cross-referencing of character material can obviously prevent a wide variety of problems. Clarity of expression and purpose are also very important…

I suffered some frustration during my first TSFL event… much later, I realized that some of the root causes of that frustration came from the narrative style the character sheet appeared in.

It should be understood that I love that style of character sheet in some ways. It allowed the writer/GM to expound at length on the recent history of the character (issues pertinent to the time period just before the setting of the LARP), it was entertaining to read, it was informative in many ways. In spite of that, I can think of two ways that it failed…

First, the GM should have recapitulated the goals that were implicit in the text as a bullet list, in order to bring them into sharper relief. If there was an expectation on the part of the writer/GM that some plot directions should be obvious from the text, they should have *made* them obvious.

Secondly – on the subject of clarity of purpose – I’m pretty certain in retrospect that the writer/GM should have created a handful of *specific* objects of interest for the character to pursue, rather than saying “there are a lot of opportunities open to you”. For a campaign LARP, that might have been sufficient; the player has a long time to investigate those opportunities, decide which ones to pursue, and prepare for them. In a single-weekend event, it puts a considerable burden on the character to do a LOT in a little time. Focus on more specific targets would very likely have prevented the frustration that I experienced, without making any unrealistic representations that they would be *easy* to achieve.

Still, I’d agree that the player should examine themselves before either looking outward for solutions or just deciding that there isn’t anything they can do. There’s always opportunity to improve the quality of your experience by trying different things, and if nothing else you might be able to help someone else with their game and (particularly in a campaign setting) create future opportunities for interesting play.