Running a LARP Event - Phase 3 - Execution

The big day is here, are you ready for this? Let’s hit the checklist of things you’re going to need to get through the day.

• Vodka
• Shotgun
• Alibi

Got that all gathered?

Good, Let’s do this thing.

Execution

Gather your minions, your weapons, your potions, and your pungi sticks. It’s time to get real up in this mug.

Handle the Mundane Details

Send one of your most patient yet mentally unstable minions to go and handle the registration. That way the players will already be cowed by your first boss, the deranged sign in. It’s good to keep them afraid as long as you can. Hopefully they’ll wet themselves.

Take the rest of your crew and get them sorted out into what they’ll be doing. Get your combat and safety guys in place quick. They’ll have a flood on their hands soon enough. If you’ve picked well you can forget about them. They’ll get their jobs done. Most combat marshals take enormous pride in what they do. It’s not something that’s easy to achieve, so trust them to get things done the way they need to be done.

It’s your job to focus on the actual running of the event now.

Set up your NPCs

Make sure the conscripts volunteers playing them know what they’re doing and give them an idea of why they’re doing it. Then, if you’ve got a good crop, you can pretty much let them go about doing their thing. Most veteran players that volunteer to NPC will make that NPC their own. They’ll give it life, and the more life they put into that character, the more fun your party will have with less work on your part.  Give them the freedom to do it their way and you’ll be rewarded by it.

Just make sure that you tell them anything you don’t want them to do. These are still players, after all, if they can find a way, even inadvertently, to screw you over, they’re going to. They just don’t realize what you’ve got in mind on the grand scale yet.

Now for the Players

Head back to where the soulless monsters are waiting for you, and if you’ve got the spare time, gird your loins or what have you. Put on the maniacally confident face and make sure they feel that you’re going to burn alive with just the power of your mind. They like that. Remember. Soulless monsters.

Give them a brief rundown of the scenario, or don’t. This is your call. You can either send them in blind and let them fumble around for themselves, or you can give them a bit of direction.

My suggestion is to only send them in blind if you have aggressive NPCs ready to smack them down and give them a reason to go off in search of the dark and dangerous world you’ve prepared for them.

If that’s not on the menu, then you might want to consider giving them a bit of a hook to get them started. The size of your player base will probably have a pretty big effect on what that hook is. The more players you have the less specific you need to be with why they’re out here in the first place.

Give them the freedom to hang themselves.

Remember, someone hiring a group to kill a monster will attract a handful of people, the whisper of gold somewhere in Alaska will attract an army of them.

Blow your horn or raise your arm, whatever it is you do to signal the start of the slaughter and send them off to do their thing.

You’re now ready for Phase 4.