PvP in LARP

I think alot of people can feel that the Guard is brushing them off, when we dont immediately divulge what we are doing to them at the moment they ask. We are under the same time constraints as other players, we have NPC shift, participate in Mods ect. We are players too, remember.

We honestly want to solve crimes and keep the peace. Naturally some are better at it than others. Me? Total crap in investigations. :blush: However, that being said there is always room for improvement. Segue: recruitment.

Recruitment is pretty sensitive as we regularly have to weed out recruits with less than honorable intent. We are always looking for members, but not always openly. Howeer, if you are interested, when you hear an announcement for a Guard meeting, show up. Alternatively ask a Guardsmen to introduce you to the officers.

As we moved onto Law Enforcement as PvP, it might be important to note, we avoid setting up for pvp as much as anyone. Looking over the rules you may realize minor infractions are taken care of by fines, public ridicule and helping in the kitchen. Hardly sentences that require a lethal resistance to. More major stuff is usually pvp related in the first place. Then, we expect resistance. But with the disparity in power levels in the game Guardsmen cant approach each situation the same way. Its a tough job to be in, when you are contemplating having to arrest a 50th level behemoth who is not known for his love of the law. (Imagine arresting Billiam....) But that is part of the job potentially...

Speaking as someone who has had to at least try to arrest Billiam that can get really interesting. But then Grim has tried to arrest at least one god.

Also, as was previous mentioned re: the guard's competency, we're at the mercy of skill calls like contacts and such a lot of the time, so even when we catch the crook or have a suspect (And we generally do), sometimes they've got enough political protection or other protection to mean they get away with it. That said: sometimes they don't, and the guard does put in legwork enough to nail people who use a bunch of skills at times, simply by talking to enough people and narrowing down the suspect list. And sometimes we just arrest a random criminal until his buddies fess up or give the stuff back, it depends on the circumstances.

As for the recruitment bit, we'll keep working on that, beyond the stuff dave mentioned there's always the issue of people coming and going from the LARP. You gain and lose players as they go through stages in their life, so our group is in a state of flux, and we try not to keep travance as a total armed camp with nothing but yellow and gold.

Mechanical Point... in MMO's, when you die, you lose XP or item durability. Except when PvP occurs. XP (& maybe Item Durability) don't get affected. Can we institute a system in KR in that when you die from NPC or Plot... you lose the life tag. But if you die due to PvP, you don't lose the life tag. This makes the loss or death of a character less painful & crippling.

How would people feel about that?

That leads to a certain difficulty when it comes to "treat NPCs as PCs." With few exceptions, MMO NPCs are definitely distinct from PCs. However, there are many NPCs at LARPs that seem as fleshed out as a PC - look at Gus' Captain Gem.

I get where you're coming from, but I feel like it would weaken the game to do such. Also, the player that died might genuinely not know if it was a PC or NPC that did it. If Chris Zipeto's character kills you, how are you supposed to know if it's an NPC or yet another alt, y'know?

Well, PvP is supposed to be heavily regulated, & much like cabin raiding... a marshal is supposed to be present. So when a PvP action happens, the Marshal can tell you that you don't go through the Phokus like normal & you don't lose the tag. This also should prove it was or was not a PvP death and therefore you died due to a PC killing you. This also leads to a better trail for IG ramifications when the Guard does their CSI tracking thing to find the culprit and handle the IG issue.

One other thing- please PLEASE have an RM. It is so very frustrating when we have skills that SHOULD work (tracking, scrying, etc) that cant because OOG we literally have no idea where we are going and after who.