Writing Children of the Stars (part 4 – running it)

With Children of the Stars finished (see here), it was time to run it.

Picking a date and casting

With five returning characters, I first emailed the players of those characters with a couple of potential dates to see when they were available.

With the date settled, I then emailed everyone who had played previously.

The hardest bit is waiting for players to sign up. Three days later, I had eight people; a couple of days after that, I posted notices on the uk-freeforms mailing list and Facebook remote larps group.

With a little over a week to go, I had 11 players – two short.

Who to drop?

With only 11 players, I looked at characters that might be dropped. I identified two – it wouldn’t be ideal if they were dropped, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

My options included:

• Finding two more players – that would be my favourite, but no guarantee of success. (I was running out of places to advertise it.)
• Give parts of the character to someone else – one character had information I wanted them to convey, so if I didn’t use that character, I would give it to someone else.

Let another player play two characters – one player volunteered to do that. If I do this, I’ll suggest that he plays his original character for the first scene but then plays both for the second scene (the additional character cannot attend the first scene).

Casting

My approach to casting was:

• First, those who had played before. They had agreed to play the characters from earlier episodes, so they were easy.
• Second, those who said “no” to lots of characters. For those players unwilling to play several characters, I cast them next (before those characters were taken).
• Then I cast the flexible players – those players who trust me and don’t mind playing any character are a godsend!

Finally, I double-checked the comments that players had left to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently miscast anyone.

Discord and Kumospace

Then I sent out the characters along with the Discord and Kumospace instructions. 

Disaster on the day

Unfortunately, things didn’t go that smoothly for play.

Although I’d written the game for 13 players, I had only 12 on the day. One player had kindly volunteered to play two characters, but unfortunately, he caught Covid and wasn’t well enough to play. So when it came to playing the game, I played his character and GM-ing the game. I don’t think I did either particularly well.

Then we had another technical challenge. While Discord was working fine, two players had problems with Kumospace. One was workable (it kept logging her out every few minutes ) but one player couldn’t get Kumospace working at all.

So I found running Children of the Stars very stressful. But from what I saw, most players enjoyed the game. I just need to remember that when I think about my experience!

During the game

So during the game, my attention was split. I was trying to play the missing characters and have an overview as the GM.

I’m not sure I did either well.

Luckily, those players who didn’t experience technical difficulties seemed to enjoy the game.

However, my sense of satisfaction was tainted by the challenges of the day.

Learning

A few points to consider for next time:

• Using both Discord and Kumospace may have been a bit much. I think Discord wasn’t needed for this game – I could have created different floors for Kumospace (or separate rooms on the same floor).
• It needed a little longer. In-person, this would be a three-hour game (but I’m hesitant to spend three hours online as I find that very tiring).
• I need to look at the structure – decisions I thought could be made at the end of the game needed to be made during it, but I didn’t spot that until we were running.
• I liked the two-part structure I created and may do that again.

Feedback and Epilogues

I asked for feedback following The Roswell Incident and All Flesh is Grass, and I did the same for Children of the Stars. Some players completed the form promptly, while others dragged their heels.

I used the feedback to create an epilogue for the game, which consisted of news about the big announcements and what the characters did after the freeform. This time there were big changes, and the game history is veering away from real history – aliens are among us!

Next game

The day after the game, my mind was already full of ideas for the next one, tentatively called Messages from Callisto.

Hopefully, it won’t take me six months to write!