Listen to this episode here.
There's this period of time between when we've all agreed we're going to play a game now and when we start "actually playing." We've got to learn the rules, learn the setting, maybe go over safety or characters. Maybe we order the pizza in here, too.
This part of a game is just as much something that can be intentionally designed as gameplay itself, but I don't see much of that in ttrpgs. Meanwhile in larp, workshops to set up a game are standard practice. What do they look like, and what can we learn from them?
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Further Reading
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
Bleed on the Nordic Larp wiki
Playing to Lift, Not Just to Lose by Susanne Vejdemo
The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity by Jonaya Kemper
Space Train Space Heist by Sam Dunnewold
Veins of Corruption, Marc's itchfunding mega-zungeon
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and rinse first before lathering. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co-host today is Marc Majcher
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Right now. You can see a full episode list for the rest of this season, plus the pilot of brand new podcast from me doing audio essays that are somewhere between play report, game review, and personal memoir. The first one's about my experience playing Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast, which uh, really affected me so much I had to go and totally change the format of my show so that I could talk about it.
Anyway, dice explode on Patreon. Thanks for listening.
But now. The larp season continues. Now that we've set a little bit of a baseline with lrp, I'm gonna take us through a few mechanics that kind of walk us through the arc of play, starting today with workshops.
What's a workshop? In board games you might call it the teach. Is the period between when you like sit down to play and the actual meat of the game where you learn the rules, learn about your characters, how they relate to everyone, maybe practice how things work and go over safety so you don't have to do as much of this stuff during play. It's like a prologue before the game starts, you know, a workshop.
A lot of tabletop play does end up with some kind of workshop like you have to learn to play but also the CATS technique or even the idea of a session Zero might qualify. But I think in tabletop we're much less intentional with designing this setup time to fit each individual game rather than just assuming it'll happen. And here today to talk with me about all that is Marc Majcher.
Marc is resident smart guy on Discord across like every server I'm in. He suggested this week's topic and I was mad I hadn't thought of it myself. He's also attended and run a ton of LARPs. He's produced LARPs on stage for an audience. Plus he's got his own games on itch, including Veins of Corruption. A mega-zungeon currently itch funding its way to completion. There's a link to that in the show notes.
And with that, let's get into it. Here is Marc Majcher with workshops.
Mark, thanks for being on Dice Exploder.
Marc: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, such a treat. We are today talking about workshops in LARP, and I'm interested to hear from you what's a workshop when we talk about it in this context.
Marc: Yeah. Workshops are things that we do before a LARP to either, set the stage for the LARP. Set expectations, go over, you know, safety stuff or mechanical stuff.
, and basically just getting people ready to play before just jumping in. , and they last for, you know, a few minutes or a couple of days, depending on the LARP.
Sam: Yeah, can you give me a game or a experience that had a workshop, and exactly what the process was for it.
Marc: So the, the most recent LARP that I did was last fall in October, I think it was we did chaos leagues, Sahara expedition, which meant we flew to Tunisia, we drove out into the Sahara desert and spent a couple of days out there searching for, Artifacts and accidentally summoning, a Elder God.
So yeah, it was, it was an amazing experience. And that is, I mean, all LARPs require some level of safety and explanation stuff, but being an hour away from even the tiniest bit of civilization in a pretty hostile environment with 80 other people definitely requires some setup.
Sam: Yeah!
Marc: So yeah, we the workshops happened before we went out into the desert at a hotel that we were staying at relatively nearby.
And yeah, it was maybe half a day. And. It broke down. We did kind of like the general introduction of the LARP team who the runners were, who you know, was going to be in character, who was going to be out of character people who were jumping in as NPCs, people who were going to be present, but like not in fiction so much.
So we kind of like know who to go to if there are things we need to ask someone about.
Sam: If someone starts dying of heatstroke, yeah.
Marc: Exactly. Yeah. And we had there was two medical tents, one kind of in character and one out of character. So if we needed to go get quote unquote drugs for our character, we would go to the medical tent run by the foreign legion.
If we were having sunstroke or dehydration or a headache or anything else worse, we would go to the actual medical tent staffed by actual medical personnel.
Sam: Yeah.
Marc: And they, they took really great care of us. So they went over like you know, when meals are going to be, how to get water and coffee, importantly how to go to the bathroom in the desert.
The, the answer to that is. Go to the bathroom in the desert. It's the world's largest litter box. So,
Sam: Yeah.
Marc: and you know, general sort of logistical stuff like that, where we're going to be sleeping you know, who we're going to be sleeping with, how we're going to be dividing into departments or whatever.
So just trying to like logistical stuff, how we're going to get to the desert. We're going to be driven out there by some local guides. We're going to be going in groups you know, all that stuff. So there's the logistical part there of who's going where and when we're going and when we're coming back.
And then we went into the mechanics of the game itself, which game wise were pretty light. There were a few things basically there was some. framing things. So they had loudspeakers set up that would play basically a recording from someone in the future who had been on the expedition, kind of going back and describing the descent into madness.
That sort of like broke our trip up into chapters there. And there was a really light mechanic for our they call it the descent into madness. When basically we had a journal and at some point it would say, Hey, grab someone and go out into the desert and have this kind of scene with them.
, the quote unquote madness stuff was taken care of very nicely. I think as opposed to a lot of Cthulhu based stuff you're going to see in a lot of
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Enumerating your sanity is not something I'm a fan of on
Marc: Yeah. Yeah. And so this was nice. It was just like, you know, as a result of these stressors, both in the environment and in your past act accordingly, which was cool. And that was mostly it for mechanical stuff. There was, you know, other things like, you know, these departments are going to be going out in the desert and digging things up and putting things together.
And these people are going to be in charge of logistical stuff and communicating with these people. So Less like game mechanics, I guess. And more just like how the expedition is going to work.
Sam: It sounds like there's a lot of Onboarding, for like practical safety some emotional safety, then there's like learning how the, the like rules of the LARP, the small number that there are, are gonna work, and then also it sounds like there's a getting to know the fiction that you would know as a character going into it, right, like who you are you probably know in advance on a game like that, but you're getting to know the like other people around you, what your relationships are kind of like, that kind of workshopping too, yeah.
Marc: Yeah. had written up some extensive character background stuff that we got months ahead of time. And then part of like, not part of the official workshop, but kind of the first like scene of the game was a little greeting ball or party at the hotel beforehand. So we got to kind of mingle and meet up with characters and stuff there.
So that was, that was cool. And then the safety stuff was really well done. We did an hour and change on that. I think pretty standard LARP safety stuff, the cut and break kind of stuff. Eyes down, you know, basically like we can stop things when we need to. We had keywords to use if we were like, no, for real is because people were, you know, having breakdowns or, you know, having Physical symptoms of whatever's going on in fiction.
And so we had to have a way to, tell both the LARP runners and the other players, like this person's okay. They're just acting
like they're having a heart attack or breakdown.
Sam: Is Mark having a breakdown or is Mark's character having a
breakdown?
Marc: Or do they need to go to the medical tent? And then, you know, same for just like, you know, ex cardi kind of emotional.
Like we don't want to do that right now. Stuff.
Sam: And I've recorded an entire episode on safety tools in LARP that are very similar, I think, to a lot of safety tools in tabletop games. And that'll be, I think, coming out maybe next week even, or shortly after this episode. So if people are curious about that topic keep a lookout for that.
Okay, so kind of laid out here like what is A workshop practically speaking. We've got an example here. We'll probably get to other examples later on but I want to Zero in and really underline on something that I think we've made implicit here and make it explicit, which is As I've been recording this series, I've been reading the Nordic LARP book LARP Design.
And one thing that is in that book is this idea that the LARP begins the first time someone hears about your LARP. That from the minute People start imagining what the LARP is gonna be, they are playing the game, and the experience that you can design has begun, right? Like, there might be the LARP itself in the middle where people are actually doing the thing, but that's the room you have to design in stretches all the way back to that moment and continues long after
the actual LARP is over.
and I don't even know like how to have a conversation about like uh, about this, but like workshops are obviously a huge part of that, but you can back up even before workshops, right, you can think about marketing, you can think about pitching the game, you can think about talking in character long before the game starts, or all these other components, and I'm curious to hear you talk about like, Okay, how do you approach that?
Like, I think game designers in the tabletop space, like people listening to this show, are often thinking about, like, how do you design the game at the table? But, like, what do you even keep in mind when you are thinking about designing the experience outside of the LARP itself?
Marc: Yeah. , the LARP Design book does a great job of going through that, and I think one of the, like, key points they hit is the idea of setting expectations there, right? You go to the website for the Sahara thing, and they're like, this is the big blockbuster thing, it's very expensive, and here's pictures and descriptions of other runs and so you go into that with an expectation of what it's going to be like, or, you know, if you go to the wizard school one or whatever.
As opposed to like, Hey, I'm inviting a half dozen people over to my house to have like a Viking funeral LARP or whatever, or we're going to be sad robots. That's a very different expectation of what the experience is going to be like. You know what the production value is going to be like if any.
And it's. think it's really fascinating how, what the players LARP runners imagine the experience is going to be like, and how that colors the actual experience. I think you can have, like, the exact same experience, but how you're led into it could make it. feel very different in the moment and afterwards when you're thinking about it.
Sam: Really interesting. Can you give me an example of what you mean?
Marc: yeah, yeah, yeah. my favorite LARPs that I've played and run a few times is the Tribunal. And it is, you know, 12 people in a room. I've played it at cons, where it's just, you know, a small ballroom or convention room. I've played it on stage.
I've played it at people's houses. And You know, the expectation is like, Hey, we're going to go in and inhabit these characters. And basically the only mechanics are, here's your characters talk for a while and going into it with of that. It's not a blockbuster expectation and it's just a plain room with people with no costumes really, but
the content of the.
LARP play and the relationships and the things that emerge from them are so compelling and strong That everything else kind of fades away. And so going in with those lowered expectations of what it's going to be, really enhances the actual, , hour or two that you're there. And then on the other side you know, talking about The Sahara LARP again fantastic experience all around.
Everyone did an amazing job putting it together and running it. There were. Parts during it and talking with my partner Nick afterwards, who also went you know, there were parts where, you know, we were in the desert for two days and there are times when we're like, Huh. It's just us. Like we're not in character.
Really. We're sitting here on a dune looking at this, you know, amazing landscape and beautiful camp that we have and being like, I don't really feel like I'm LARPing right now.
Sam: Yeah.
Marc: Because there's this huge expectation of, you know, everything's so immaculately designed and every moment is curated and everything's going to be fantastic.
And. it was overall, but there's sometimes when you're just like, huh, I'm just kind of sitting here, not, I don't really know what to do. And I think going into that with the expectation of, this is going to be the best thing ever really.
Sam: So, do you think that was a failure of design on behalf of the organizers there? Or, is that just sort of something that happens in a longer form, LARP like that, kind of inevitably.
Marc: feel like it's got to happen. I mean, I've I've talked like the people there, some were, you know, they LARP on that scale several times a year. And so I've heard stories where, you know, Oh, we were on this spaceship and we like went to sleep in character. And there was never a moment where I wasn't, you know, this sergeant or whatever.
And, That sounds exhausting to me.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Marc: Um, and that's part of like talk about how there's like the plot that you set up beforehand, the story that happens as you play and the narrative you tell afterwards. And I feel like
Sam: yeah.
Marc: of that narrative is definitely colored. By those expectations as well.
Like, Oh, this was a huge setup. So in my mind, I'm remembering, , how intense and immersive it was every second where it's not that I don't believe them. I find that it's just hard for a human brain to maintain that level of being in character for so long. And I think that's just the thing that happens.
So I don't want to say it's a failure of design and having, having written a few LARPs, there were points where I was like, I would do this part a little bit differently, but , I can't fault, , someone putting on a thing for almost a hundred people in another country with.
Sam: Yeah, clearly an incredible and impressive feat to put on essentially any LARP, in my opinion. I mean, we all know how hard it is to get 4 people in a room to play a tabletop RPG. Imagine getting 12 people in a room to play the Tribunal, or 150 to the middle of the Sahara, right? But I, I'm, I think I'm trying to bring it back to workshops of and maybe this is a way to do it. If the goal of a workshop is to kind of get everyone on the same page to like properly set people's expectations and teach people the game like I see the obvious benefits of teaching everyone the game, right? You kind of need to do that to then be able to play the game.
Although I've certainly played games with people who didn't know how the game worked. this is such an obvious question, but what are the benefits of getting everyone on the same page through a workshop? Mm
Marc: the main benefit is everyone in theory is there to play the same game. if you show up to a sad robot LARP and you come with the attitude of like, Oh, we're going to be funny robots, you're not going to have the same experience that everyone else is going to be having.
Your. Probably going to be degrading other people's experiences as well there. And it's the same as any tabletop game, right? If someone's here to hang out with friends, someone's here to, you know, min max their character, someone's here to tell a deep emotional story those people are having different expectations and different experiences, and the game as a whole might feel off,
right?
Sam: and you don't want anyone showing up to play stew pot with the intent of like killing a bunch of orcs,
Marc: exactly. Exactly. And it's the same thing with the LARPs. And I think it's, it's very important in tabletop. I think it's more important in LARPs because there's kind of a, either unsaid or said expectation that once you start, you're playing until the game is over, you're not. taking breaks to go get snacks or talking out of character most of the time.
So getting those expectations set up before we start is really important so that it's harder to course correct. I think during alarm, there are techniques to do so for sure, and you know, it's difficult managing four players, much less a couple of dozen. So if people are not having the experience that you want them to have as a game designer or LARP runner, it's harder to A, find that out in the first place, but then B, correct for it.
Sam: Yeah, it does feel like a lot of LARP safety and a lot of the workshop thing that we are talking about here is built towards Trying to avoid piercing that immersion bubble,
And to pierce it as gently as possible when you need to. And I'm curious to hear There's obviously a value that comes from that sense of immersion.
Like, I've experienced it, when you are sort of in character without breaking a scene for a long period of time. It almost feels like a long take in a movie, where the tension just, like, keeps building up. You just kind of, like, keep going deeper. Like, not having that break ratchets things up. And I see why people value it that way.
But, like, from your perspective, like, why and how do people value it?
Marc: Yeah. I think it's, it's difficult to talk about immersion because sometimes people are not talking about the same thing.
Sam: Yeah, So let's actually start there. Like what is a version for you?
Marc: Yeah, I think often when people talk about immersion, they are talking about Like I don't want my character to do things that they don't know about in the world. Like, I don't want my character to worry about, you know, hero points or luck or story beats or whatever.
Like, they're just in the world. And I think that is not usually what I mean when I'm talking about immersion. What I'm talking about when I'm talking about immersion is that, you know, I feel immersed in the experience. Like, you're saying, I as a player am kind of, Feeling and behaving and acting and talking as this character. it's so interesting because, you know, clearly, especially at tabletop, you know, we're sitting there at a table looking at other people across the table or on screens or whatever. So there's, there's that end of the spectrum to, you know, we are in a 360 designed environment.
We're all, you know, in costume and props, we're talking with, you know, accents or with the jargon or whatever. and I think it's easier to get that immersion from that. I think that the design experience can definitely help that kind of immersion with , different aspects, but the immersion itself happens, in your brain. I've definitely had, , both, , at a gaming table and on stage and, , in LARPs that, you know, were not huge designs. Like deep, deep, deep, like I'm this character and I'm doing the thing.
And it's, I don't want to say like, you know, it's a skill issue. Like you have to practice to do it, but you know, we, we play games that have fun. Also, you can get better at playing games. Just like you can get better at being an actor and embodying a character. through practice. And some people are not into that necessarily.
And that's awesome. That's totally great. People play games for different reasons, but I think with, with practice, it's easier to slip into a character and easily slip out for a moment and be like, okay, I'm super immersed in this character and we're having this really intense scene. Oh, something happened.
I can pop out for a second, be me for a minute. We can talk about stuff and then dive immediately back in. Just from, you know, practice doing, character stuff and mask work and all that sort of trance state mumbo jumbo. That's great.
Sam: well, I do think that there's like a design skill here too, right? Where like, I've been to immersive theater productions where the idea is, Oh, right now you are like, Actually in an art museum looking at some art,
Or like, I went through like a Crime and Punishment adaptation for theater that took place in a warehouse with a bunch of people running around, right? And they were like, trying to do the 360 immersion, like, sleep no more kind of thing. And I felt way more immersed in like a conference room at Big Bad Con pretending to be a robot because the design of the experience was better
Marc: And I think that also kind of speaks to the, expectations thing, because you know, I've been to sleep number a bunch of times and stuff like that. And sometimes setting that expectation of we're having these high production values and it's immersive not always, but sometimes it makes it feels like, Oh, I am going to a show to watch this thing, even though everything around me is perfect.
Like there's a detachment of like, oh yeah, there's an interesting performance. I'm watching.
Sam: Yeah, but that's the magic of it. It's that I'm in this cool museum looking around, right? Like,
Marc: Yeah. And that's another, like another way to talk about immersion. Like, do I feel like the environment is real? Not necessarily. do I feel like I'm a character in the I'm
Sam: This episode of Dice Exploder is brought to you by Extra Ordinary A TT RPG about found family, trauma and kids with strange powers. It's Animorphs, Percy Jackson, X-Men or stranger Things if all those kids were psychic. And it's all baked into a role play Heavy, gM full game using the diceless Belonging Outside Belonging System. I myself am writing an Animorphs and Battlestar Galactica inspired play set for this game. So go check it out. The Kickstarter launches March 10th, or you can get a free Quickstart on Itch right now. Extra Ordinary coming to Kickstarter, March 10th.
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I want to come back to Workshops and immersion
Marc: Yeah. so talking about workshops, creating immersion and not the best way
Early on I was. Doing some LARP stuff on stage. I did the tribunal a couple of times, and then I did a a LARP series at a theater in Austin, Hideout where I produced, you know, four short LARPs on stage one a week. It was the tribunal juggernaut, previous occupants, and then I wrote one for the, the fourth one science fiction one but the tribunal everyone was excited about cause they'd seen, you know, cool dramatic pictures and stuff from before and all that.
And so the way that I usually done stuff was we kind of like everyone has a, you know, half page character and they get a chance to sit down and read them before. And I have people go through exercises like, Oh, all the characters are named after animals. So there's stork and dog and elk and peacock. And so everyone kind of like does some.
You know, movement stuff and walking around and they transform into an animal and come back and all that kind of stuff. And that, that's worked out great. During this run at the theater I had some other logistical stuff to take care of producing that. And so I had a friend of mine help run the workshop.
And he was a Marine. And he's like, it's a cool if I like kind of break them a little bit before they go on because it's a, you know, dystopian you know, militaristic, horrible setting. And so I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure. Go ahead. You know, and he had them, you know, running around and yelling at them and doing pushups and It looked miserable.
The show was great. Everyone said that they had a great time, but you know, improvisers everyone's always having a great time, even if they're not. Right. And so. I could tell that was not a great decision. I talked to some folks afterwards and they were having some bleed issues. Like, Oh, like I felt like I was really immersed in that character, but then afterwards, like I felt really bad about these things that I did through my character or, you know, had some like emotional hangover from, you know, Being in that, like being thrown into that intense situation being in it and then, you know, kind of like, okay, it shows over, everyone go home.
Because we didn't do a post workshop. We didn't do a like debrief thing. Everyone shows over, let go. God debriefs really are sort of like, at least as important as
Sam: workshops themselves. Yeah. D rolling and all that stuff. and that was, you know,
Marc: one of the first ones I ran and I did a bad job.
Sam: yeah. I mean, let's talk about that a little bit. Like what is deroling, like what might you do in a debrief or a, a post show
Marc: Yeah, yeah. And that can be the, you know, the debrief afterwards at the post workshop can be anything from just like a very short ritual, like, Hey, we're just going to like dust off and shake it off. And we're not like anymore, let's go to, you know, talking about, you know Talking about your experience, kind of doing some work to be like, I was this character and I'm going to talk about my real life some more.
And then kind of contextualize the experience and you know, if there were some things we need to unpack or, you know, express during that part just like a more gentle, calm down.
Sam: I don't know that I've ever played a LARP that didn't afterwards come with a sort of like, okay, let's do a little book club about
the game that we just played because it's such an emotionally raw medium so
much of the time. And even when it's not, it's usually like very fun.
I want to like share a bunch of stories of what happened kind of
medium that people really want to like start talking about it right away. A really common one I've seen for derolling is just like, Okay, if I had my, like, character name tag on, I'm gonna just, like, take it off and put it aside, and then say one way I'm not like my character.
And, you know, you might do a lot more, you might even do less than that, depending on the LARP, but I, that has always seemed like a good place to start, to just sort of put some emotional distance
between yourself and the game that just
Marc: Like here's something I'm taking from the experience, here's something I'm leaving behind.
All that great stuff.
Sam: we also we're just laying out a lot of basics here today, but you mentioned bleed as a concept, and I know what bleed is, but tell the people listening what bleed is, because this is also something that I think basically anyone familiar with tabletop games is going to be familiar with,
Marc: Yeah.
Sam: know the word for.
Marc: Bleed is the concept that even though you're playing a character, you are still a person and you know, you are going to bring some stuff from yourself over into your character. And similarly, you're going to bring some stuff from your character back to yourself
after the game.
And you know, it's not a bad thing. I think people, people can talk about it like, Oh, like, This is a great thing because I had so much bleed or like, oh, I had so much bleed and this was bad. Like, it's just a, it's just a thing. I don't think there's any value or moral judgment about it,
Sam: I have experienced both positive and negative bleed.
Yeah.
Marc: I think most of the time people talk about bleed in the post sense, like, oh, I had this intense experience with my character and it's affected me this way. I think it's also important to be aware of what you're bringing in from, from yourself that's going to affect your play as a character.
But yeah, just, just something to be aware of.
Sam: Yeah, and just to put an even more specific example on it, I've heard bleed in and bleed out to describe the directionality of it, right? So bleed in is like. Sam is in love with Mark, and now Sam's character is in love with Mark. And Bleed Out is Sam's character is in love with Mark's character.
And now Sam maybe has some feelings for Mark that we need to like, work on, or like, set aside and move away from. you're absolutely right. I think that there are a lot of conversations around Bleed that, have a moral judgment about it being good or bad in one way or another.
And I think that that's really, really bad way of
thinking about it, that it is sort of a thing that happens.
It's,
it's an effect. bleed is something that happens. It can be a really positive experience. It can be a really negative experience.
It's certainly a high octane experience a lot of the time. Right? And so I think one of the reasons that we want extensive safety tools and stuff is for exactly this. Like, this is one of the things that is most likely to make you unsafe in a lARP, in my experience.
Marc: yeah. And it's not even like deep emotional, like, oh, we're in love with each other or we hate each other or I'm traumatized. I've had experiences where, you know, the LARP was just a fun, great, goofy time. And we are all just having a good time. you know, come together at a con, play, have a great time and leave.
And even though there's not like a lot of intense emotionality there, there's the feeling like, Oh, we're best friends now because we had this great time. And I've seen things like not go great because of that, because that wasn't talked about. Like we weren't, we're not best friends. We just played a game together.
Sam: Yeah,
Yeah. Okay, so, workshop, bleed debriefs, , and like, we've talked about immersion here as like a concept and what it is, but I wanna maybe come back to and underline like, when immersion is good, why is it good? And what do you love about it? And when immersion is bad, or like, the goal of seeking immersion when can that lead to trouble?
Marc: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great. I think that goes back to why we play games at all,
Marc: And speaking just for myself, like part of the reason I play games is to experience something that I'm not going to experience in my real life. Like at the core level of it either, you know, whether it's a board game and I'm thinking, tactically in a way that I'm not used to thinking or a LARP or a role playing game where I'm inhabiting a character and seeing the world, you know, from their viewpoint and experiencing it from their, from their viewpoint.
Just to be not myself for a little bit. That makes sense. And so immersion, like the way that I like to talk about immersion, where you know, we are feeling as if we are the character to some extent. It is a very useful tool to do that. I talked about mask work a little bit before and I feel like at best like putting on this mask and you are almost a passenger.
Like this character is doing stuff and you know, you have control of your facilities and you are in control of the situation. But you are to some extent, like this happens a lot when I'm, uh. Running a role playing game, the tabletop game and, an NPC, needs to do a monologue or a player throws a twist and, and mark brain kind of shuts off a little bit and goes away and the character speaks.
And I'm just like, wow, yeah, that's interesting, but wow, I didn't think about that just like Letting things happen that you yourself wouldn't necessarily make happen consciously, even though it is you, it's, it's so hard to talk about. Cause it feels, I feel crazy.
Cause like, oh, and there's I don't know if they talk about it in the book, but there's a concept of like I think they call it like meta immersion where it's like, you are, you're fully immersed and you are experiencing and acting through this character, but you are aware of the process.
Even like, Oh, we've practiced this process before these techniques, like you're fully aware that you've allowed this other thing to control your words and actions for a little bit. If something happened, like you can step in and be like, we're done here. But. Allowing yourself to sort of surrender and give up that control to something that is already inside you is like one of the, one of the best experiences in the world for me when, when playing stuff like that.
Sam: it does feel like a maybe darker side of immersion Might come from or I've even seen come from people valuing their own experience of what you just described at the expense of other people and other people's experiences, right?
Like I think about, this concept from L RRP playing to lift which is about going out there and trying to, you know, see what. Mark is trying to get out of the game and like play to help support that right and if we all are doing that if We're all being a little bit selfless Then like people are giving you gifts all the time in the game too and like everyone's game becomes better out of it And I fully believe that and see that and in some ways I feel like it can be to do that while also being fully immersed
Marc: sure. For sure. Yeah. And I think they, they call that a, they call it meta
immersion or no intermersion where you're, you're aware of everyone else's stuff too, while you're
Sam: Yeah, yeah, but I also think like, a tale older than the hobby itself, is Well, that's just what my character
would do, Right.
That like, people using the idea of immersion as an excuse for shitty behavior, and I, I think also like Practicing that kind of meta immersion that you were talking about is absolutely a skill. And there is a point where you might get to immersion while losing a lot of self awareness, and then you stop looking for safety
stuff as much, right?
Like you,
Can end up in a difficult spot. And I think some people, when they really value the immersion, number one, like, that's shitty. Like, quickly.
Marc: Yeah. And that comes back to like we were talking about, just like being a good adult person where like, like even if, you know, I'm, I'm in this character and I'm doing some stuff and I say some things that actually hit someone. And you know, whether we have the ability to grab our safety tools at the time it, it's happened.
And so we can either, you know, in the moment or afterwards be like, they might say something or you can be like, Oh, You know, I saw that expression cross your face when I said that. I know that was you and not your character. And like, you let's talk about it. I mess up or was that a thing that is cool or is it not cool? And how can we repair that? Yeah. So it's Yeah. It's definitely a skill and it's there's the weird line between like that sort of masking stuff and like the idea of like immersion as kayfabe wrestling term where like we're pretending that all this stuff is real, but everyone knows that it's not.
like We know for sure that we are putting on this show and we are acting up There's commitment to it, but there's not that sort of like passenger feeling like when you're doing that we can like play this heightened version of ourselves.
And I think there's that subtle distinction of, you know. Between like, we're playing this super hard, but there's, there's a emotional or personal distance to it versus I'm immersed in this thing and I'm more of a passenger and I need, need to be more aware of what I need to take the control back to make sure everyone's
Sam: Cool. so we've covered a ton here really quickly. feel like this has been an episode full of like introducing concepts More than it has been sort of deconstructing those a great maybe workshop for the the little larp series that I'm show but like I want to make sure we spend some time coming back to like, okay, I How might you bring these kinds of concepts to a tabletop RPG?
What would be the benefits of, like, an RPG workshop? What would an RPG workshop look like? Because it be different. Every LARP workshop is different. You know, what would a tabletop workshop look like? And also, like, are tabletop games already doing workshops?
Like, what is the equivalent in the tabletop side of things?
Marc: Yeah.
call them workshops and I think that, you know, whether that's to our detriment or not is up for debate. But I think we do have some things that exist in that space already and we have, you know, there's session zero, which. is, to align people's expectations, hopefully to get everyone on the same page, whether it's through character creation or world building or whatever.
We have tools like CATS, where we go over the, you know, concept, aim, tone, and setting going into a game. And that's like a, a briefer, like shotgun approach to that. And. Some games include that, know, in the text of the game like Brindlewood Bay and the Between and those games have I think is one of the best text innovations has like a, here's the script to follow when you're running your first session.
Like go through this, make sure you're saying this, do CATS, do safety, take a break, do
this. it's almost like a little mini workshop. that said, I think we could be more explicit about it.
and don't really see that as much. There, there's some little like motions towards it back with some forged stuff, I think.
But I haven't really seen a lot aside from those things.
Sam: Yeah. And so first I would say that I think the entire process of character creation is a workshop, right? And that the best form of character creation in my experience is not just sort of let's get all the numbers in the right place and not just let's sort of like conceptualize Who these people might be but also thinking about like how are they gonna relate to each other like establishing relationships?
Maybe thinking about long term arcs for those characters all that kind of setup work that is gonna make play better
Marc: Yeah. Who are we together? Not individually.
Sam: And then I also feel like in the tabletop scene at large, we have a lot of these, like, components of workshops.
Like, even the Brindlewood Bay, like, cats style stuff that you're talking about, I think is good and a step in the right direction. But I think that we are really not doing the Designing of the experience overall, right? We're sort of throwing little bits and pieces in there up front because people have learned that like, oh, yeah It's like helpful to make sure you tell people what the X card is It's helpful that people know what the game is excited about it before they sit down to but like really thinking about The design of the game begins the first time someone hears about the like all the way through when we're getting to in character or in our case, just like sitting down and actually like doing the procedures in the game, There is so much more room to make that session zero and pre session zero and like session 0. 5, like all of that more cohesive, more streamlined, more like working together and pointing in the right direction and done in the right order and all of these other things not doing and that people could really think about.
Marc: There, there's an interesting bit I just reread the LARP design book when you mentioned it. So I just blasted through it. There's a bit they talk about. with some of the pre stuff where people will get on a discord or mailing list and kind of like do in character play before the larp starts.
I saw some of that. We did a like a, a mega game of beam Saber where we had, you know, five different crews running in same world and stuff. And, you know, we all kind of like made our characters and then. There was a lag time before production started a couple months, and so a lot of people were kind of like, you know, talking about their characters and fantasizing what their arcs and stuff would be and kind of doing a little role playing and stuff, and I think one of the points that was brought up there is that's super fun and great for the people who are doing it.
A lot of people will not do that. And then when the game starts, there's like a little gear grinding when the people who have
already done a lot of preplay don't mesh well with people who just like jumped in and like, cool, you know, this is my third game this week. What are we doing?
And so like making that kind of thing more explicit, like from the, the GM or game runner, whatever, saying like, Oh, we are definitely going to do this.
Or, you know, on the other side, like, know, don't talk about your character backgrounds until we get into play. We'll do that in play and sort of like getting everyone on the same page there. Also the concept of warmups, right. Before we do a show we do warmups a lot of times and most of the time and I think that was going to help a lot with, you know, every game has different needs and requirements and it's hard to jump into certain kinds of games.
If you're not like already super invested in just listening to, most recent RTFM podcast,
where one of the hosts is talking about how they don't like heavy scene based role playing stuff sometimes, because it's hard for them to just be like, go role play and be anything.
And I've definitely seen that with a lot of other people in various other games. I think. If that is part of the expectation of playing the game, there should maybe be some sort of, you know, improvising or role playing warm up or on ramp or something. So you're not just like coming in from work or from dinner and expected to be an elf
immediately.
Sam: We're doing a whole episode in this series about scene framing
also, Look forward to that. And I also feel like I want to do a whole episode on this book I read called The Art of Gathering, which is just about how to throw a party, basically. It's this, like, professional event organizer who has run events for United Nations style people, right?
Like really important people and like what one of the chapters is like Do not be chill, do not bring your chillest self to my party like you want to be really clear about what your event is about And then you want to only invite people that are on board for
that event. And like, if that means excluding someone that everyone at this event is gonna love and gonna feel weird that you have excluded, Tough. And, and in that, I'm thinking about it right here in that sense of like, You know, I bet that beam saber game goes a lot better if you're very explicit up front that like, You're expected to come do the Discord roleplaying in advance,
right?
And if you don't, we're gonna kick you the fuck out, like, and that's, and we love you And we want to play other games with you and like you don't want to do the thing that we all want to do
and like We're it's we're gonna have a better time when we're all on the same
Marc: Yeah. Not every game is for everyone.
Sam: Yeah, exactly
I wanna maybe close out here by shouting out , one of the pieces of design I am most proud of having done in a tabletop
game. Yeah, Space Train Space Heist. So, this is my, like, very silly game about space robbing a space train, right? But, my favorite part of this was at the very top of this game, I have a little workshop., this is a very goofy game, it's a GM less game, and I have always had this experience in GM less games where some players show up and they have a really tough time accepting consequences for their characters.
They, like, a certain kind of person, Really wants their character to not get in trouble and or does not feel like they have permission to Narrate other people's characters getting in trouble, right? And I was also inspired by Remember going to Gen Con back in the like early aughts and seeing the Legend of the Five Rings people And before every one of their tournaments they would stand up it'd be like a hundred people at a time would all like stand up and do this like Like call and response like shout through the event hall that was somehow related to the game.
I thought that was so hilarious And so, I wanted to design this game where, like like, let's get people comfortable with doing consequences, and let's also, like, be a little silly in front of whoever we are playing around. I imagined, like, doing this thing at the Games On Demand table at Gen Con, where you'd be doing this weird little workshop, and everyone at the nearby tables would be like, what the hell is going on over there?
But the
like getting comfortable with that is like part of the thing that I want you to do in the workshop, right? And so the way it functions is you read out this the following statements are not always true But they are always true while playing space train space heist Before playing go around the circle and take turns speaking these truths aloud after each statement is read Everyone should respond with THIS I BELIEVE So you get like, is right and good to be kind to my fellow players.
This I believe. Great. And you know, you're walking down through like, Um, You know what's fun? Doing something absolutely heckin Lung headed in pursuit of a preposterously lofty goal. You know what else is fun? Heaping well deserved consequences onto my friends After they've done something absolutely Heckin lung headed in pursuit of a preposterously lofty goal.
And so forth. And then I ended it with just Hi yah! And so people have to like do that silly thing, right? And like, you know, you're like chuckling over there already
and it like this thing is like really really it's fucking perfect I've watched people do this while I was not playing and it really just Immediately takes people from like what's this like silly thing that we're gonna do to like I'm in I'm in on this silly thing And that's the power of a good workshop I think like this is I think a great example of something people could be putting in more tabletop games
Marc: hundred percent. Yeah.
Sam: Mark, any final words on workshops, or what you want people to take away?
Marc: Just do them. Um, Yeah. so people who are listening to this obviously have some interest in LARP because it's part of a series about LARP stuff. I think for a long time and still partly, there's been some stigma attached to LARPing, even from rolepalyers. And I get over that LARP has so many amazing tools that we can bring into our games and vice versa.
And, you know, not only LARP, but, you know theater stuff or board games or immersive theater or community organizing, look outside of role playing games figure out ways to use the things that you learn from outside role playing games to get people more into your games and everyone's going to have a great time.
Sam: Yeah. I can't believe I didn't ask you more about being in the fucking desert, and what that was about. Okay, that's another whole episode, we'll
Marc: Yeah,
Sam: one with Caro Murphy.
Marc: amazing. It was great.
Sam: thanks so much for having been on Dice Exploder,
Marc: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was great.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
All right, fellow students. Today's homework assignment is straight down the middle. Go take an RPG that doesn't have any guidelines for how you start playing it and write a workshop for it. Or, you know what, maybe a lot of games don't wanna workshop. Just think about that first time player experience, what you would want out of it, and how to design that experience to be the best it can be.
Thanks again to Marc for being here. You can find them on Blue Sky at Marc Majcher. That's M-A-J-C-H-E-R. They've got actual plays on YouTube at Cool Games on Itch, including veins of corruption. A Meguey engine currently itch funding.
As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dice Splitter, or on the Dice splitter discord. You can support the show on Patreon. Patreon, Patreon, Patreon, who my games are at es Stonewall Itch io. Our logo is designed by Spore. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray.
Chris Greenbrier edited this episode. Thank you, Chris. And our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy Travis Tesser. And thanks as always to you for listening. See you next time.