And that's what makes casting such an entertaining problem

[jducoeur]

Player A wants to work with Player B. Player C wants to work with Player B. Players A and C are explicit that they should be kept away from each other. Verrrry special...

Comments

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Just asking:

Do you do yourself a disservice by allowing people to make these kinds of requests, or is it just part of LARP etiquette.

I certainly understand the concept, and I know there are many reasons that people do not want to interact specifically with others.

It just seems as though it makes the GM's job harder.

Seems reasonable to me

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Requests of the form "I can't play with X" seem reasonable to me; the players are saying that, if they have to choose between playing with X and not playing, they'll choose not to play. That's their right, and it's probably a favor to Justin for them to say it in advance, so he doesn't have to iterate.

[queenortart.livejournal.com]

There are some people who just shouldn't be pushed together. In every group there are people that other people can't interact with because of rl issues, or because they have really pissed each other off in the past.

It makes for a better game usually if you avoid the wangst of putting these people together!

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do understand this, and again, I have been to one LARP convention.

It seems to be there must be varying degrees of "I don't want to play with this person."

In some cases, it might not be a big deal if you had to. (say a husband and wife who want o be in the same game).

In some cases, as pointed out earlier, it might be a deal-breaker. (I would prefer to not play at all if I have to play oopposite my ex-wife who dumped me for a cute GM via e-mail during a con).

Just thinking out loud.

[queenortart.livejournal.com]

From my own POV

There are people I will not for example do romance with because a) they suck b) I have no chemistry with them c) I loathe and despise them

There are people I do not want to hang my entire game off, but if they happen to be around the same bit of the game the world will not come to an end. There are people I will run away screaming from. There are people who are my good friends in real life who I just don't mesh with in game.

It is etiquette to ask, and avoids the gnashing of teeth when your players discover that they are expected to be married to a person they would willingly shove under a bus, or are best buddies with someone they wished they had actually managed to poison!

I have about half a dozen people on my 'avoid like the plague' list. I don't think any of them will be at Intercon :)

[jducoeur]

Absolutely. And just to drive home how subjective it all is, I believe that everyone who was on someone's "please avoid" list was on at least one other person's "please cast me with" list...

[jducoeur]

Oh, absolutely. But most players are pretty good about making clear whether it's a minor issue or a major one. (Indeed, most don't bother to write it down if it's genuinely minor.) And if two people *both* say that they don't want to work with each other, that's usually a loud warning bell, which should be heeded...

[jducoeur]

It has its plusses and minuses. It does make the casting job harder, but can make for a better game. When a group of people know that they play well together, putting them somewhat together in the story can help that area of the story gel more quickly, which often improves things all around. And if a couple of people really don't get along, it's *enormously* important to know that, because nothing can destroy a plot more quickly than having two players who dislike each other cast in positions where they need to work closely together. (This is why I actually put more weight on the "who would you prefer not to work with?" question.)

Which, really, makes it much like everything else on the casting form: useful information that may improve the game if I can work it in. Like everything else, I sometimes have to ignore it (as in the above case, where the best fit turned out to be having all three players in fairly separate plots), but it's helpful when I can make use of it.

Remember, my main goal here is a successful game. I'm trying to make a sort of artistic statement, and the better the casting, the more likely that is to succeed. Happy players make for a better game...

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that I would much rather not work with the people I don't like than work with the people I do. If that made any sense.

[jducoeur]

Yep, and that's generally the rule I follow...

Logic puzzles

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a job for Prolog! :-)

Re: Logic puzzles

[jducoeur]

Which will quickly and concisely tell me that the system is insoluble, yes...

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

If both A & C are explicit about not playing with each other, then I'd have neither of them play with B, unless you need one of them to play with B, in which case I'd either take the obvious one or flip a coin. If only one of them makes the claim, then I'd have the other play with B, unless the other way is a better story choice.

[jducoeur]

I'm not hard-and-fast on the matter -- in a case like this, I'm willing to have one pair "win" if that fits the casting otherwise, and cast the odd person somewhere else. (Flipping a coin really isn't an option, since all things are really never equal in this situation.)

But in the actual case at hand, there weren't any really natural pairings anyway, so the easiest thing to do was to simply cast all three into their otherwise-best fits, which wound up with all of them in separate parts of the game...

[keshwyn]

I am reminded of the time when you and hungrytiger warned me, "OK, you said you didn't want to be cast with A and B, but really, your questionairre matched one character perfectly and you are cast opposite A and B -- but you should feel absolutely free to try and kill them if they piss you off."

And I was -just fine- with that. :)

[laurion]

Oops. I know my preference is lend more weight to the 'avoid' list than to the 'work with' list, if only because running counter to one can lead to a really bad game, whereas the other is less likely to make things go boom.

[jducoeur]

Yes, just so. (And no worries -- you weren't the case in question...)

[cellio]

Sounds like Player B gets to make the choice to me, as the one player here who hasn't added any demands to the mix. Or, neither A nor C gets to play with B.

[jducoeur]

As it happens, they all wound up in separate parts of the plot. I prefer not to ask the players directly about stuff like this: the psychodrama potential is high...