Revision as of 17:49, 28 August 2009

LARPGASM is a Live Action RPG designed with a Discordian mindset. It is currently in development. Feel free to make notes on this page or the discussion panel.

Game Community: http://larpgasm.ning.com/

Cram found a ning customization community here: http://customize.ning.com/forum/topics/ning-for-a-game

Overall Concept

You create a fictional persona for the game. Your character is a member of the Discordian Society. Some possible character concepts include all sorts of fictional people: subgenii, cthulhu cultists, time travelers. This network of characters becomes the Discordian society that we wished existed. There are conspiracies and alliances and all sorts of bullshit.

There are two components to the game

• a social networking site which serves as the game's organizational backbone, even though the real gameplay happens in 3D.
• going out in the real world and having adventures. this works better if you have a group of people you roll with (called a cabal)

The game is running 24/7/365. You can choose to play whenever you want. You signify that you're "in-game" by wearing an Eye of Eris (a beer can pull-tab that you wear as a necklace).

Everyone belongs to one of several possible factions. The factions are written in a way that alliances and rivalries suggest themselves (sort of like Vampire). For example

• POEE - these are "card carrying" Discordians. They get points or kudos for handing out pope cards
• followers of strife - embrace Eris' war form. they prefer to approach things by stirring the pot
• patchouli discordians - happy hippy fluffy positive energy Discordians
• the LDD - this is the "unallied faction" (sort of like Caitiff in Vampire)

etc etc etc

Game Design

The game is centered around activities. You get together a cabal, a group of people who don't necessarily belong to the same faction. Then you do something with them.

The cool thing is, the more we get people to participate in a fictional functional Discordian society that actually goes out and pranks, the more real it will become. We can make people really paranoid by introducing subtle illuminati influences too.

Principles:

• Optimally, the game is autonomous, requiring absolutely minimal effort from an administrative group.
• The game's content is crowdsourced. The tasks and activities for the game are also crowdsourced. All the missions are written by other players. You will read sermons and follow instructions written by other players. If all the people running the game die of fnord poisoning, the game still goes on.
• gameplay should be fun even if you have no other cool people within 1000 miles of you. This game will give you a stream of wacky things to do by yourself.
• Gameplay is simple, and doesn't require juggling stats or memorizing complex rules. People should be able to participate really easily.
• Some game rules change as the game goes on, like in fluxx or nomic
• Many activities encourage public asshattery. The rule is: pix (or blog posts) or it didn't happen!

Gameplay!

Players submit Adventures (could also be called Quests or Missions) to the website in blog form. If you print it out, it will contain most of the materials you'll need (instructions, links to pdfs of handouts for strangers, mini-game rules, etc)

Adventures can take anywhere from 15 minutes to several days to complete. Some ideas:

• scavenger hunts (ie, photograph these ten random things that you have to get kind of creative to find)
• postergasm sets (put up 20 posters from Volume Aleph)
• a list of instructions
• mailing things to other cabals
• strange journeys

Going on adventures give you the game's main resource, Ballots. Every time you go on an adventure, you get a ballot. Every time a cabal goes on an adventure you wrote, you get a ballot.

Problem: how do we record ballots? The honor system?

Elected Positions

I know that Discordia is non hierarchial. But sometimes Discordians embrace short-term leaders. There are several elected positions that players can run for. There is an election every few weeks. You spend your ballots to vote in these elections.

• The Polyfather / Polymother - the head of POEE. He gets to propose laws which will last for the duration of his term. These are generally activities or requirements that modify the number of ballots you get. For example, "For the duration of my term, I propose that you get an extra ballot if you are drunk during the mission. Pix or it didn't happen."

After a law is proposed, it goes to vote on a forum poll. If it gets at least 75% yesses, it becomes official.

problem: does ning have poll support? Where can we list the current active laws? 

• other elected positions might be able to create different types of rules. More on this later.

• certain factions might have internal elections too.

Current Issues

• how to implement these ideas on ning
• what are factions for? how do they relate to gameplay?

Game Manual, Guides, Tangents

• Character Creation