Running an Event - Phase 1: Planning

Okay, you’ve chugged a few pots of coffee, six cans of supersized LiquiCrack Energy Drink and have become one with the universe due to the speed with which your atoms are vibrating.

Now is the time to begin what is ultimately the futile task of planning a LARP event. So, grab you trusty notebook and get ready to pull all of your hair out in frustration, because, friends, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and from here on out, it only gets more and more painful with fewer and fewer thanks.

Actually, this is the easy part.

Plan to Succeed

The more you have planned out, the better off you’re going to be when your players decide they hate you. Which is the only explanation for what they are going to do to you at your event. They’re going to figure out what you had in mind for them to do. They’re going to see exactly what you’ve got ready and realize how many days of thought you must have poured into it, and then they are going to go off and do something completely different.

Later, at the post event, they’ll poke you with sticks.

It’s inevitable.

But, you can fight their evil machinations by planning ahead for everything. Or conversely you can skip all of this and go straight to phase 4: Abandonment.

I like to mix up the two.

Planning pretty much comes down to a formula, answer these questions and you’ll be ready to handle anything those evil bastards we call players can throw at you.

1) What Type of Event is This?

There are as many different types of events as there are games, but they basically fall into a handful of categories:

1. Killing Things – Usually PCs vs NPCs. Like, you know, “KILL DE DAGRON!”
2. Killing Each Other – PCs Vs PCs. The easiest for you, because, face it, they’re all doing your bidding now!
3. Eating Things – The HARDEST event for the person in charge. You have to make sure every little minutia is covered, and we’re going to ignore this event type and come back to it when we can concentrate on it in depth. I mean, it might need it’s own series. I might need help writing it.
4. Drinking – Basically this event is an excuse to party together with your LARP friends. Often combined with the Eating Things Event, but not always. This even requires you to think of enough things to keep everyone entertained until they get tired and start fires. Eventually all players start fires.

Since Killing Each Other is pretty easy to do, just sit around and count who dies win, generally, and Eating Things is so impossible that I prefer to push these events off onto a professional event planner, we’ll focus on what we need to plan for Killing Things events.

You can pretty much just play any games you want at a drinking event. Or, if you’re players have been really horrible to you in their sadistic cruelty this year, find chores for them to do. Gathering Firewood and digging latrines are on their level. Manual Labor, always.

2) What Are We Going to Kill?

Killing things of course is really just a broad analogy for dealing with NPCs. I prefer to come up with a reason for the NPCs to be around and let the players decide what they want to do with them.

If the decide to ignore them, I smite them with Undead or Elementals, then I cackle as they die horribly.

If that doesn’t work…. DAAAAGROOOOON!

For our example, we’ll throw a couple of NPCs out there as, oh, a Goblin named Shiney Rock and his owner a Troll named Eats Shiney Rocks.

For poops and giggles we’ll throw in a wizened old man we shall call the Pot Stirrer.

3) Why are We Killing it?

We need a reason for NPCs to hang around. So, We’ll assume that Eats Shiney Rocks is hungry and Shiney Rock is trying to find something else for him to eat. We’ll also give Shiney Rock and actual Shiney Rock. I’m going to call it a sunstone.

You can have your own McGuffin of course, but it’s always a good idea to give the players something to fight over. They won’t care what it is because they don’t have emotions. They only feel evil.

Of course, Pot Stirrer also wants the sunstone. Why? So he can perform a purposely vague ritual.

I’ll leave it up to you what the ritual does, but I’d recommend summoning one of the following:

• Zombies
• Elementals
• DAGRONS!
• Piles of Gold  Don’t use Piles of Gold

4) Contingency Plans!

Bad things happen. When your players are involved they are guaranteed to happen repeatedly. You think I am telling you to have contingency plans in case your party gets killed off by monsters.

NO! Don’t think like that.

Kill those jerks dead. The Deader they get the less work you have to come up with for the next event because your NPCs are already wondering around needing to be killed in revenge.

No, the contingency plans you need are incase the party kills off all your NPCs for no reason other than because they’re murderous dicks.

I already suggested Zombies and Elementals, right?

You should probably come up with some other things to keep in your box. You don’t want to get stale.

A good idea is to find one of your players and get him to turn on the others. This not only keeps them entertained but sets up further “Kill Each Other” events and less work for you.

It is very easy to get them to turn on each other. They are evil by nature, you know.

5) What Do I need?

This is the last step in the planning phase: Make a list of everything you need for the event. In the above mentioned event example it basically breaks down to 3 NPCs and a shiney rock.

Make sure your list is comprehensive. You want more things on it than you could possible ever need.

This is because you are going to leave a bunch of important things at home and end up improvising props.

This is inevitable and we’ll cover it in the Abandonment phase in a couple of weeks.

For now, have a little fun and get ready for the slaughter.

If you’ve planned right, it will be theirs, and they deserve it. If you have failed, you will only have to survive long enough to drink the pain away at the post revel.

See you next week when we cover Phase 2: Preparation!