Cuckoo's Nest Wiki

elronova
- Don't make a rod for your own back. Any rules call that involves individually briefing players is probably unworkable. Any concepts so complex that players won't get it from the first brief, not such a good idea. Any creative idea that needs a minimum of 17 dedicated monsters, not going to work. Need £200's worth of props to make it work properly... perhaps rethink your idea.--Daisy

racdel
- Don't make a rod for your own back. Any rules call that involves individually briefing players is probably unworkable. Any concepts so complex that players won't get it from the first brief, not such a good idea. Any creative idea that needs a minimum of 17 dedicated monsters, not going to work. Need £200's worth of props to make it work properly... perhaps rethink your idea.--Daisy

- Accept that you'll get criticism. Hopefully it will be constructive but let's face it, probably not. We are so used to being spoiled with great plot that expectations are extremely high. No matter how great you are, you might not meet these expectations. And even if you do, someone will moan. GMing is not a job for the faint-hearted! If you are going to get either seriously angry or burst into tears if someone criticises your precious baby that you've spent months working on and turned out really well you think and why didn't you just sit around and get pissed and heckle like those bastard players and anyway it was MILES better than that last piece of crap, then perhaps GMing a banquet isn't for you. Instead, sit back, have fun, and try to remember how much effort the writers have put in and thank them, even if you didn't like the event that much.--Daisy

- Accept that you'll get criticism. Hopefully it will be constructive but let's face it, probably not. We are so used to being spoiled with great plot that expectations are extremely high. No matter how great you are, you might not meet these expectations. And even if you do, someone will moan. GMing is not a job for the faint-hearted! If you are going to get either seriously angry or burst into tears if someone criticises your precious baby that you've spent-months working on and turned out really well you think and why didn't you just sit around and get pissed and heckle like those bastard players and anyway it was MILES better than that last piece of crap, then perhaps GMing a banquet isn't for you. Instead, sit back, have fun, and try to remember how much effort the writers have put in and thank them, even if you didn't like the event that much.--Daisy

Thoughts on how to run a banquet without it making you never want to LARP again...

- Have a strict time in and time out - at the summer07 event Stuff Happened(TM) whether you were out of bed or not - made a big impact on getting people ready in time. Ditto for time out, give yourself time to put your feet up, and players time to chat in 'timeish'. It's not your job to organise the players, it's your job to run a good event for the players who are awake! --Daisy
- Appoint rules refs! --Daisy
- I'm not sure we have the numbers to do multiple adventures at the same time (which is a side effect of trying to squeeze in so many linears). Because by the time you've taken out 6 people to PGM, MGM, and Ref, we then don't really have enough to run two simultaneously and runs the risk of players waiting around for a GM to be ready. --Daisy
- Either don't let players organise themselves into groups (despite how good an idea this might seem at the time) or make them suffer the penalties of faffing.--Daisy
- Because creative and organisational skills are both needed in such abundance, make sure your banquet team has a bit of both and isn't all 'ideas men' or 'organisation Nazis'!--Daisy
- Don't have a gigantic (dedicated) monster team. Although it might seem to make things easier on the surface, it's actually just more people to organise whereas players tend to take care of themselves.--Daisy
- Don't make a rod for your own back. Any rules call that involves individually briefing players is probably unworkable. Any concepts so complex that players won't get it from the first brief, not such a good idea. Any creative idea that needs a minimum of 17 dedicated monsters, not going to work. Need £200's worth of props to make it work properly... perhaps rethink your idea.--Daisy
- Accept that you'll get criticism. Hopefully it will be constructive but let's face it, probably not. We are so used to being spoiled with great plot that expectations are extremely high. No matter how great you are, you might not meet these expectations. And even if you do, someone will moan. GMing is not a job for the faint-hearted! If you are going to get either seriously angry or burst into tears if someone criticises your precious-baby-that-you've-spent-months-working-on-and-turned-out-really-well-you-think-and-why-didn't-you-just-sit-around-and-get-pissed-and-heckle-like-those-bastard-players-andanyway-it-was-MILES-better-than-that-last-piece-of-crap, then perhaps GMing a banquet isn't for you. Instead, sit back, have fun, and try to remember how much effort the writers have put in and thank them, even if you didn't like the event that much.--Daisy

Jude
I would suggest trying to avoid the regular "nine-o-clock-monster", particularly at regular freeforms. This tends to involve very little plot in the first half of the evening, until the sudden appearance of an unheralded monster (or sequence of overwhelming events) that demands everyone's immediate attention until it is beaten to death. A sudden change of everyone's attention can be a very exciting thing to roleplay, particularly if foreshadowed or it sparks off more roleplaying, but it can also really piss people off if they think that their plotting, scheming, planning and interaction will always be interrupted and completely irrelevent to the thrust of the evening.

Categories

CategoryOOC | CategoryGMing