Threehold 2 — the wash up
A couple of weekends ago Jason, Justin and I ran Threehold again in Melbourne for the Caligo Mundi players. Generally I’d say it went pretty well, and it looks like we’ve got a pretty fun little game here.
We didn’t make many changes to the basic game structure. We expanded the character list out to 24. We put all the characters in freeholds this time, since having a couple of independent characters just seemed to make it more difficult for those players to get into the game.
The biggest change we made was to character relationships. Instead of describing each of the character relationships within the freehold, we left the freehold relationships blank and gave each character one constructive and one antagonistic relationship with characters outside their freehold. Then we held facilitated group sessions for each freehold to work out their in-freehold relationships. The goal was for each character to have at least two strong in-freehold relationships (either constructive or antagonistic).
To give the players somewhere to start we used a technique, suggested by one of the writers at the Canberra writers’ lunches, of using a common story or myth to act as a template or archetype for the group’s relationships. So for one freehold we had Knights of the Round Table, another had Macbeth and another had Julius Caesar. The idea was that the archetypal story would offer a range of stereotypical relationships that players could latch on to and understand quickly, but that would also offer depth and nuance. For example, if we say that a relationship is Caesar and Brutus, most people would know what that relationship looks like. You’d expect that one character is a younger protege or adopted child or a powerful and charismatic elder, but that the protege harbors feelings of resentment towards the elder and is plotting a betrayal.
Initially I was worried that the players would use the archetypes to simply play out the given story, rather than make it their own. But it seems this wasn’t much of a risk. I explained in my introduction that the idea was just to use the archetypes as a starting point for inspiration, and most players seem to have run with it pretty well.
Our biggest trouble with the archetype technique was people not being familiar enough with the stories we’d chosen. Very few people were familiar with Julius Caesar, and there were a couple of people unfamiliar with Macbeth. Having a list of suggested relationships for players to choose from seemed to help for the Macbeth group, but the Julius Caesar group basically ignored their archetype entirely. That didn’t seem to do them too much harm, but I’ll change that story out for something better known next time.
Again the workshops ran well and seemed to be entertaining and interactive enough to keep people engaged for the 1.5–2 hours they took. We had a lot more questions this time along the lines of “what happens if someone just refuses to have consequences happen to their character?” My answer was mostly that they’d have a pretty boring game. It felt like it took quite a while to get the basic concepts of consent based play across. Perhaps my explanations were a bit more rushed, or it may just be the group we were playing with had its own hang-ups and issues.
The violence and intimacy mechanics didn’t see as much use as last time. I think that’s probably because this group were more used to avoiding mechanics where-ever possible, so tend to play in a way that quickly deescalates situations where mechanics might be used. That said, I had quite a few women telling me after the game that they felt safer and more confident just having the mechanics there, even if they didn’t use them. Like last time the most positive comments about the mechanics and style came from women, with several telling me they loved the consent mechanics and want to play more games using them. It looks like it’s even prompted one woman to start running a game using similar techniques, so watch this space.
My biggest take away from the game was how fun it was. In a lot of other larps I’ve run I usually see at least one or two players spending significant time wandering or sitting around with not enough to do or otherwise clearly not having a great time. I’ve often tried to compensate for that by adding more action to the game until some players are manically bouncing around the game space like they’re in a pin-ball machine. That hasn’t seemed as much of a problem with this technique. In this game, pretty much everyone seemed to have a genuinely good time. (Speak up if that’s not the case, I genuinely want to know.) There was a slight problem with one character’s powers not matching her core concept well enough, which she found limiting. But even then she was still able to be involved in the game and seemed to have an entertaining time.
Maybe this group didn’t lean into the mechanics as much as the first group, and so maybe they didn’t get as deep an experience out of the game. But it was still a really solidly enjoyable game. I’m looking forward to running it at Pheno.
Photos by me, edited by Natasha Shelvey.
