nordiclarpyearbook2015

A success with a lot of room
for improvement
Fairweather Manor went well - at some
points extraordinarily well. Many people
had amazing experiences (their words, not
ours), the documentation looks fantastic,
and it was a pleasure to run.
Still, there were a lot of things that went
less well than we’d hoped, and some things
that just didn’t work at all. Placing people
at 10-person tables to make sure they
have dinner conversation with more than
just the 5 people around them - which is
what would happen at a normal long table
- doesn’t work when there’s so much noise
in the room that you can only hear what the
two people next to you are saying. Having
a cook character when you can’t cook the
food anyway is less than optimal. Not having
maps of the castle for servants was just
a silly oversight.
The vintage car was a big hit. (Photo: John-Paul Bichard)
But here’s where our design philosophy of
rerunnable larps really pays off. One of the
nice things about having a very experienced
cast of players, as we did, is that their feedback
is usually quite qualified. Since we’re
running more FM events in the future, this
means we can “just” (no “just” about it!)
sift through the feedback we’ve gotten and
make changes accordingly. Of course, it’s
still a ton of work - just the character rewriting
will take a lot of person-hours, but
it’s a more clear path.
We’re very proud to have created the sandbox
that the players made come alive, and
we’re even more happy that we get to do it
again in April 2016 - this time with a lot of
valuable lessons learned and a lot of both
minor and major fixes.
g
Gentlemen enjoying a quiet read. (Photo: John-Paul Bichard)
To me, that’s maybe the most important
lesson of Fairweather Manor: That larps
like this can function well as stand-alone
one-shots, but that they work a lot better
when there’s room to refine and learn as
you go along. And I’m REALLY looking
forward to going back in April.
To wrap things up, I’ll end with a quote
from a participant that says everything
we’d hoped it would say.
“Saw an episode of Downton last night
(S02E01). Holy shit, we really, REALLY
nailed the Downton feeling. I could really
see that now. Utterly impressed! Awesome
work, everybody.”
- Swedish player, 30
CREDITS: Agata Swistak, Agnieszka Linka
Hawryluk-Boruta, Akinomaja Borysiewicz,
Alexander Tukaj, Beata Ploch,
Charles Bo Nielsen, Claus Raasted,
Dracan Dembinski, Ida Pawłowicz, Janina
Wicher, Krzysztof “Ciastek” Szczęch,
Krzysztof “Iryt” Kraus, Maciek Nitka,
Mikołaj Wicher, Nadina Wiórkiewicz,
Szymon Boruta
DATE: November 5-8, 2015
LOCATION: Zamek Moszna, Poland
DURATION: 4 days
PARTICIPANTS: 140
BUDGET: 40,000 €
PARTICIPATION FEE: 290 €
j
GAME MECHANICS: Gossip mechanic,
“Very good, sir. The other servants will
do it.”
WEBSITE: fmlarp.com
ARTICLE FRONT PAGE:
Staff standing by; always dignified and
ready to serve.
(Photo: John-Paul Bichard)
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