FinalHavenLarp.com

Ark for the win!

Ark wrote:its a game

the preceding was not meant to sound mean but to help people GET A GRIP on what there fighting over

Yes, it's a game.

That being said, it's also an investment of time, energy, money, and emotion. You are also dealing with real people, not machines.

When it comes to something with an intellectual and emotional investment, it's not JUST a game, it's something with real value for people, the same as any hobby, any passion. The difference in the overall attitude of the playerbase between this last season and the ones before that do nothing but reinforce this point strongly. There is a certain level of trust required to make that sort of multiple-layer investment and expect people to stick with it.

If that trust is violated, people get upset.

Kalphoenix wrote:.. I offer myself up for public (Or private) lashing .. *wiggles*

I had something important to say, but suddenly lost my train of thought..

*whistles and looks innocent*

Ark wrote:its a game ... no ones in control

you are not in control of other people, you cant be, its imposible, people are going to do thing you dont want them to no matter what, as much as you try to control them its a false sense of reality (in game not rules) and to get upset over something someone else did is childish and pointles

ITS A GAME, this means its suposed to be fun, fun, fun, FUN, its not suposed to be about rules (though they help) its about you enjoying yourself, i have been so tired of rules and ploting and backstabing and 10 people all thinking there smarter than everyone else, its rediculous,

its a game

the preceding was not meant to sound mean but to help people GET A GRIP on what there fighting over

Oh yeah. Now I remember.

Someone IS in control. If you play in MY game you play in MY reality. If you fight the 'physics' of my 'world' you shall be removed from its existance.

I have that Control. And at times.. I AM smarter then everyone else. Its a curse, but Ive learned to live with it.

[quote="Woden
Someone IS in control. If you play in MY game you play in MY reality. If you fight the 'physics' of my 'world' you shall be removed from its existance.

I have that Control. And at times.. I AM smarter then everyone else. Its a curse, but Ive learned to live with it.[/quote]

i count the GM's in my rules exclusion

its a game is a not a reason to cheat, its why you shouldnt

and yes its a big game requiring money and such but the fact remians, if your going to invest that much emotion and money into a character or whatever, and someone who is just haveing fun kills you and you freak out on them about it you need to re think your priorities...its a game

i play on x box live all the time and i have run into people who take games too seriosly, all they do is bitch at other people and the ones who just want to have fun feel bad for playing NOT COOL, if you want to take it super seious fine, but that does not mean others have to and that CANT be enforced

I am still unsure who is fighting over what but I bet bacon is involved somewhere.

Ark is right, it is a game and it shouldn't be about the rules.

But every game has rules. Rules that everyone playing in the game needs to know, be aware of and follow.

When you play Monopoly everyone playing needs to know what rules are being used. If only half the people playing know the rules then the other half are being cheated out of a fair game.

Every rule used in Final Haven needs to be made available for every player. If a player chooses not to read, acknowledge or follow said rules then they are subject to the results of their choice, be it a mechanical disadvantage or removal for cheating.

Final Haven's rule set creates a mechanical system for doing things, unlike a lot of other game systems they do not require the same source for those abilities. That should be the only thing open for player choice.

yup, know the rules, dont cheat, have fun, simple yet somehow harder to know then what goes on in Chris's head

Kalphoenix wrote:I tend to disagree with you on this, IF you mean that it's still cheating if you tell the GMs, they decide it isn't a problem, and you decide to coordinate a strategic action utilizing it with your "buddies."

nope, you misunderstood, sort of. Here's my general rules on cheating via issues/holes:

a. you find an issue, tell no one, and abuse it = Cheating and when caught you used your one freebie.
b. you find an issue, tell the GMs and they don't think it's a problem, and you use it = Cheating but you get off free. (I've done this)
c. you find an issue, tell the GMs and they correct you, and you use it anyway = Cheating and you lose your freebie, or are gone depending on severity.
d. you find an issue, tell your buddies, and you all abuse it = Cheating and you are gone.
e. you find an issue, tell the GMs and they don't think it's a problem, tell your buddies, and you all abuse it = Cheating and you may lose the freebie.
f. you find an issue, tell the GMs and they correct you, tell your buddies, and you all abuse it = Cheating and you are gone.

Now, just because it's cheating doesn't mean it's bad. Take the one I did. That was just to prove the point, but I knew I wasn't playing how it was intended. After doing it, it was decided to allow it for the event and then that was changed.

This excludes people just not counting hits/times/etc or flat out using things that take a huge leap of logic to even come to.


As for myself and playing versus people I know to be cheating, I play more to the letter and usually don't even deal with them at all. That way they don't get the satisfaction and they can't call me on anything.

dier_cire wrote: b. you find an issue, tell the GMs and they don't think it's a problem, and you use it = Cheating but you get off free. (I've done this)
...
e. you find an issue, tell the GMs and they don't think it's a problem, tell your buddies, and you all abuse it = Cheating and you may lose the freebie.

Agree with everything but these two. It might not be ETHICAL, but it still isn't cheating.

If the GMs can't/won't tell you it's wrong, even when you point out that you can do 100LPs of damage, who can? Seriously.

If there is any question, JUST TAKE IT OUT. If a player who can potentially use it is telling you it's broken, IT'S BROKEN. Trust me on this.

Regardless of the moniker you want to attach to it, You still know it's wrong and shouldn't be done. Just because a GM doesn't see it doesn't make it right.

As for who can tell you it's wrong, the first person would be yourself. If you know something doesn't feel right, don't do it. If there is any question, JUST DON'T DO IT. You can and should police yourself better than any GM/Marshall. If you must prove a point, just do it somewhere inconsequential.

Thing if it is some people as I stated will not care. As was stated earlier this is a "game" and some people want to win it no matter what even if it means bending said rules.

Back again to that statement, sure it's a game and it's suppose to be fun. We all spend time, energy, money, etc to play. What makes it not fun for me and a waist of money is when you have your core group who follows the rules and then there is that percentage that take it upon themselves to break, bend, tear the rules apart just because they want to "win" or appear to be the biggest bad ass that ever was.

It makes the game just flat out not fun, irritating, and ruins the feel of what Mike, Chris, Todd, Karen, Sam, and the others are trying to do.

That's about all I feel like saying on the subject.

When I came to this game, I had no expectations about what should or should not be present in a LARP system. Aside from a run in Mind’s Eye Theatre I’d never LARPed before and I immediately found the system simple and easy to use. There were holes, unclear wordings and things I didn’t like, but I was immediately impressed by the fact that the GM’s had succeeded where so many of my friends and I had failed over the years. They had developed a system and had created a game that people could enjoy… twice. Many of the issues I had with the Final Haven system were suddenly understandable when I saw how the CARPS system had evolved. I knew the FH system could be better and I offered suggestions as I found things I thought could be improved. Over the years I’ve come to several conclusions that I’m going to list here.

1. There is no such thing as a perfect system.
2. The system can always be improved.
3. Some people don’t need a good system to immerse themselves in the game, but some do – and the better the system is, the more those people can be immersed.
4. The primary effect of the rules is to add some measure of certainty to an uncertain scenario. The desire for certainty is part of the reason why people desire a hard rule set. That same desire for certainty fuels many real-life pursuits, including codified laws, formal religion, and scientific rational actor theory.
5. You cannot write rules that prevent the rules from being broken.
6. As friends and adults, we have to demand a certain amount of maturity from one another in regards to the rules.
7. The system is not governed by a game studio, corporation, or bureaucratic entity. It is governed by my friends, each of whom has put countless hours into the design, implementation and execution of this system for the express purpose of my enjoyment.
8. The people who govern the system have full lives and as many or more demands on their time as I do. Considering there are sometimes weeks that go by where I can barely muster the will to check the boards, I expect they have similar experiences from time to time.
9. The system is a labor of love, and while they have been gracious in their acceptance of criticism, I try to never forget the time, effort and emotion that the GM’s put into its creation. The tone and manner in which one suggests changes and improvement should respect that.
10. Final Haven is a low-cap, fantasy LARP system designed to provide a rich, fair and rewarding roleplaying experience to mature players at all levels of experience. That is the spirit of the rules, and people know damn well when they stray outside of it.

The key dynamic here is that some people are comfortable with “the spirit of the rules” as a blanket cover for uncertainty and some are not. For some things, the spirit of the rules is and should be an easy arbiter of a mechanic’s capability. If I come across something that appears to allow me to do 100LP worth of damage, the spirit of the rules tells me that it’s wrong. If I found some old law that seemed to allow me to kill five people on Tuesdays, I wouldn’t act on it because I know that’s not what the people intended. The spirit of the law is clear there, as is the spirit of the rules.

For things like this, ignoring the spirit of the rules is, in my opinion, being selfish, immature and discourteous. Exploiting a something on a large scale will certainly ruin a scene, confuse and dismay other players, interrupt plots and make life more difficult for everyone involved – just so someone can have more a little more certainty about something that was obvious to begin with. I have no tolerance for this kind of crap. Even if it does “improve the system” in the long run, people are essentially shoving their issues in the face of the GM’s and browbeating them (often at the expense of other people enjoyment) into dealing with something that should have been a non-issue to begin with. In my book, you don’t do that to your friends.

Sometimes, however, the use of a mechanic is vague and the competing interpretations all fall within the spirit of the rules. This is a perfect time to ask for clarification. If clarification is not forthcoming from the GM”s, ask your fellow PC’s. If it’s still unclear, play it the way you believe it was intended – knowing full well about the spirit of the rules – and mention it again from time to time. It will get fixed as soon as the lives, jobs, schedules, families and endurance of our friends who run the game allow them to have both the time and will to do so. If that’s not good enough for you, then I’d suggest you seek another pastime.

Well said my friend. Well said