IRC Conversation with Sami

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The following conversation took place between me, Nat Budin (nbudin) and Sami Genstein (RigelWork) on April 7, 2008. I had mentioned Brandon Brylawski's criticisms of "The Last Seder" to her and she offered some feedback on how we might alleviate that sort of concerns. I have taken the liberty of logging it down here so as to not forget Sami's suggestions. I've snipped out bits that diverted into side-topics.

RigelWork: IMO, the heart of Brnadon's criticism was that the atmosphere of the game -- an important thing to Brandon and an especially important thing in a game that's so psychological and rules-light -- kept getting broken by the transitions.
RigelWork: His extrapolations on what this /meant/ I don't agree with, but I think that's what his critique boiled down to.
nbudin: Yeah.

snip

RigelWork: There are a /lot/ of players who, in the vacuum of knowing how to behave, will drop character. This happened during the run, and I think other people (including me) were dragged along.
RigelWork: Games which strongly set atmosphere have ways to work around this. Usually it has to do with how GMs address moments of breaking character before game, and how they handle it during.
12:10
nbudin: OK...
RigelWork: I think simply explaining the mechanic to some degree would help. Especially by explaining that while there is some transition time and sorting out that has to happen out of character between transitions, the time that passes in-character is effectively nonexistent and that during that time, players should be talking to NO ONE but a GM, and then only quietly.
nbudin: Yeah, that might help.
RigelWork: If I'd been a GM, I likely would have explained that there are going to be regular transitions between the seder room and another room that happen instananeously, and say, "While I realize there's the temptation to slip out of character during these times, please don't. Stay silent until we tell you to begin the scene. If you need to talk to a GM, please pull one of us aside and speak quietly. We want to maintain as much of the atmosphere
RigelWork: We did this a bit during Tempus Frangit. We had a clear cue for transitions, and asked people to read their new information in silence. We also placed them, and made a clear cue between scene start and scene end.
RigelWork: And while we were a little frantic at times and did it less well than we could have, I think we had the distinctly right idea.
12:15
RigelWork: One thing you may find useful is to place peoples' new blurbs on a particular chair and lead people to their seat rather than just hand it to them. It makes for less ambiguity, leading to less breaking character, and it's not like all the players will be smart enough (unlike Ariel) to base their character seating on the read of their character.
nbudin: Hmm, yeah, that might work.
nbudin: I definitely agree that we should encourage silence during the breaks.
nbudin: And I think that making the breaks shorter will help with that anyhow.
12:20
nbudin: I'll have to think about the seating thing - it may be better to have them pick it up from the same place every time (to keep things short) but to have the card tell them what seat to use.
RigelWork: Sure.
RigelWork: I was mostly thinking that some GM OCO advising beforehand will do as much if not more than changing the environment.
RigelWork: Oop, OOC.
RigelWork: But you may have to be pretty, "Seriously, guys," about it.
RigelWork: Like, in a courteous way, but a firm way.
nbudin: Yeah.

snip

RigelWork: Perhaps suggesting people freeze once the story is announced by Chris and follow the GMs in silence?
nbudin: Yeah.
RigelWork: I think the freezing part really helped reinforce sustaining the mood despite OOC change.
nbudin: I think we meant for that to come across but never stated it outright, which was a big mistake.
RigelWork: Yeah, LARPers are kittens. Explicitly stating is always better.
nbudin: Anyway, this is all really good feedback, and I'm going to pass it along to the other GMs.
nbudin: Thanks!
RigelWork: No worries. I gave some of this feedback verbally to the GMs at the time, but reinforcing is always good.

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