Plots for New Players

I've spent many nights thinking about plots for larps, and what works for established players and characters doesn't always work well for new players and new characters.

The classic plot in larp is something bad happening that must be fixed. What I'm going to call Stick plot. This can be the Orcs are gathering in the woods, or the Sabbat are invading, or a masquerade breach has brought hunters. Obviously there are embellishments, suprises, etc, but I'm talking basic structure.

In some larps, especially OWOD vampire, where I have the most experience, once players get to a certain level, instead of involving newer players, they will cut them out, because they will be capable of dealing with the problem themselves, and consider the new players to be a risk.

Often STs try to combat this by giving information to new players that the older players need, but new players generally don't know how to leverage their information into being involved in plot, and older players can simply threaten them if they don't give the information over. It's often hard to come up with ways for this information to be given, since influence rumors work better for people with more influence, not those just starting out.

Another method STs will often try to use is to limit plot to newer characters by OOC means, telling older players to ignore it. However stick plots are usually the business of city officers, which tend to be the more experienced players. Thus one way or another, the plots get brought back to the more experienced players, and the new players are often shut out.

There are ways to make such plots work, but it's difficult.

What I have found is that new players need a different type of plot. A Carrot Plot. A plot that gives them good stuff to deal with instead of bad stuff.

There are some things that make this work better. Something that other mor PCs can't easily get or take for themselves works well.

My preference is relationships with NPCs. It's hard for an experienced PC to take away an ally and keep it for themselves. Maybe the Anarchs in the city don't want to deal with anybody but the new Brujah. Maybe there is a gang of street kids that brings info to the Nosferatu. Or the Ventrue political scion has connections to the local Mob Boss. Maybe an NPC gives them access to influence, or the ability to grow influence. Maybe an NPC elder gives them a favor, one that they won't transfer.

This doesn't have to be ongoing. Especially if there are stick plots which require investigations, giving new PCs access precisely because they aren't famous and powerful often makes sense. A toreador neonate will know about the avante garde theater troupes private performance, and can get you in, but the Harpy is too establishment. The city college's wiccan group would be seriously weirded out by the Tremere elder's conversations about the four humors, but his young apprentice can quote buffy at them.

You can also give them other stuff, a bag of unset diamonds, a suitcase full of heroin, a counterfeit printing press, even a magical item that has a limited number of uses or can't be given to others. Give them the loot first, and ask them, "okay, now what do you do?"

If you are going to give them information, blackmail information, haven locations, knowledge of hidden passages in the elysium site, and knowing how to contact a secret society/cult is all great. Stuff which if revealed widely loses it's utility.

Then for new players the story is not inherently about the more experienced player's plot and if they can or can't be part of it, it's about what they do.

On the other hand, older players deserve stick plots. If they are regularly handling stuff, step things up. They've shown they can deal with stuff, and they should be expected to make their own opportunities.

But you give them carrots too. Poisoned carrots. Opportunities that will screw them as much as help them. And if possible you give new players the antitote.

But at the level of experienced players, of people with big sheets, you should set things up so they are competing with each other. Make there not be enough high level influence to go around. Say that something's happened, and there can only be one person with that 5th dot of Police influence, and they'll fight over it, and bring in new players as pawns to do it.

Of course plots don't need to be carrots or sticks for new PCs. Things can just happen that are interesting. One of my favorite plots from the game I ran was a magical music box that when opened forced the PC to rexperience the hours surrounding their embrace from their sire's perspective. In real time it took only a round or two. It would regularly disappear and reappear among the cities Kindred if they tried to lock it away for themselves, even vanishing from other Domains when taken there.

It forced new players to come up with their actual embrace. It served as a possible way for amnesiacs to learn about their Sire. I don't think more then one player figured out that it worked on humans too, showing them their birth from their mother's perspective.