Major Concepts
This App encourages a two-phase approach to LARP development, where you start out with "design" and then gradually get into "writing". Creating a game is more than simply writing Character sheets -- a good game often takes a lot of thought and design, and this tries to help you manage that.
You don't have to do the Design phase -- you can just dive in and starts writing Character sheets -- but if you're still thinking the game through, try these tools.
Designing
The "design" phase is a sort of structured note-taking. It mainly involves a couple types of Things:
- Archetypes: an "archetype" is a nugget of Character -- not a fully-fleshed person, just an idea. An Archetype might describe a particular sort of personality (Angry Sailor), or a character trait that might be interesting to explore (Grief-Stricken), or one member of a multi-player Plot (Spy-Catcher). An Archetype can be involved in any number of Plots, as seems appropriate. A given Archetype can apply to a number of eventual Characters, and are often stand-ins for what become Factions, such as "Brotherhood Insider" or "Board Member".
- Plots: a "plot" describes something that's going on in the story, involving one or more of the Archetypes -- "Love Triangle", or "The Missing Briefcase", or "Approaching Armada". You don't have to spell out the plots like this, but it often makes it easier to keep track of what's going on.
The idea here is to make it as easy as possible to brainstorm wildly, putting down lots of Archetypes and Plots that might get into the game. (Personally, I like to start with at least three times as many Archetypes as the planned number of Characters.) Usually, you'll find that some just don't fit, and that's okay -- it's usually best to find yourself with more potential material than you can use. You can always copy it to the next game, and maybe it'll work better there. (Many Archetypes and Plots are pretty universal, and work well in a variety of genres.)
Writing
At some point, you decide that have enough raw material, and want to start fleshing it out. This isn't necessarily a hard change -- I often keep adding Archetypes well into the Writing process. But at this point, you start focusing on different types:
- Characters: a "character" is just what you usually think it is -- the Character Sheet you're eventually going to give to a player. It usually has a real name, like "Seamus O'Malley", or "Sylvia Morgan", or "Throg". I usually build my Characters by "mixing down" from Archetypes: I'll take several Archetypes that seem to work well together, and start writing a Character Sheet based on them.
- Factions: a "faction" is an alliance that a specific group of Characters belong to -- "Secret Sorority", or "Corporate Board", or "Hunting Party". In practice, Factions tend to get their own specialized Bluesheets for the game.
- Plots are just as important for Characters as for Archetypes. It's common to start building a Plot by linking to it from some Archetypes, and later link to it from the Characters that those Archetypes get mixed into.
- Items: an "item" generally means a typical Item Card, either in the possession of a Character at the beginning of the game or somewhere else.
- Bluesheets: a "bluesheet" (so named simply because it is traditional to print them on blue paper) is a sort of Character Sheet that is shared amongst a bunch of Characters, with some common information. It is common for a Bluesheet to correspond to a Faction, but there is nothing requiring that.
