We have an answer to the question: Can the Tribunal be run outside of a con?
Yes.
With no experts physically present, we had 8 players + Facilitator. And it worked beautifully. Hawk was oppressive as hell, mouse was scared, and Peacock was shatteringly loud.
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J. Tuomas Harviainen would probably be interested in your report.
ReplyDeleteand Rachael Storey Burke should be around if this is the main thread - she facilitated, after all.
ReplyDeleteThe really interesting thing for me was the shift in perspective from mouse to Hawk - from fear to superiority (or something like it). As mouse, if Peacock was shouting at me, I'd run away. As Hawk? Yell until he shuts up.
ReplyDeleteThis was my first time facilitating the game, though I cut my teeth playing under Jason Morningstar, Kristin Firth, and Rachel E.S. Walton, so I had great mentors, and got some good tips emailed to me from Jason and Kristin prior to playing.
ReplyDeleteWith me stepping out, that left us with an entirely male player base, which was unique to me because I've lately gotten pretty accustomed to Dexposure events, where sitting down to an all-female table has become not-uncommon for me. I think it's fair to say it got yelly pretty quickly. I've seen it before where it takes the players a little while to find their footing and the game starts out slow; not this time.
Also, I think this was a first-LARP-experience for at least half the group, which is awesome because they all really seemed to like it. We had some fun after-discussion about Nordic / freeform LARPs in general. I may have horrified a few people by describing Fat Man Down. :)
the description of Fat Man Down gave me the heebie jeebies, but that's because Rachael didn't mention the super secret bits. I'm less skeeved out now.
ReplyDeleteTechnically that's the goal of the game.
ReplyDeleteThat isn't the game I'd name-check to get people excited about larp!
ReplyDeleteJason Morningstar Don't worry, she used that after talked about American Jerkform. Then started pushing a game everybody was interested in - The Climb!
ReplyDeleteOH MAN, we should do Out of Dodge at a Thursday game night. YES.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, for my first LARP experience, I had an absolute blast! Thank you all again and you, Rachael Storey Burke for facilitating. In hindsight, I should have played Raven a tad differently instead of parroting Hawk the whole time, but Hawk seemed really convinced that I'd backstab him, so I might've done an OK job after all.
ReplyDeleteI would be down to play again in a heartbeat. It was a great night!
Awesome news, once again. It's SO lovely to hear feedback - positive or negative about that game. Over the dozens of runs about which I know (I lost count around #40), I've never heard of a Raven who parrots someone else. But now that it's mentioned, it sounds perfectly appropriate.
ReplyDeleteTribunal was originally designed for mostly people with no, or next to no, larp experience. Finding out it keeps to work for that purpose across country lines is very nice news. Some people seem to hate the wind-down period that comes after a while (when the first intense conversation dies down; which I view as crucial for the game's realism), but strangely, those tend to be the more experienced larpers, who expect from past experience that a mini-larp sould keep an intense pace.
Also: Fat Man Down, when played with a good group, is just awesome. I love running it. Just make sure that if you do, the author gets to read your reports.
We ended up with most people sticking to the story that Badger and Magpie had been with them the whole time. I know the two times I've played, I ended up defending them, and I do honestly wonder how much we're really able to recreate the experience of an oppressive environment where everyone genuinely fears for their life if they speak up.
ReplyDeleteI believe Peacock tried to throw Magpie under the bus ("We all know he steals"), and Stork straight up walked the party line and said Badger and Magpie were guilty. Everyone else defended them.
Well, I've seen people from very free democracies create both very oppressive-feeling and very non-oppressive runs, and the same with players on varying runs in e.g., Belarus. So it seems to have more to do with each group than the local culture.
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