Aurora Horizon design notes #4: The magic and the dip

I’m at that point in writing Aurora Horizon where I’ve written all the plots (in their own separate Word documents) and I’m now copying the text into the blank character template.

And it’s magical.

The process

Here’s what I do:

1. Make a copy of my blank character sheet template. (Or, just as likely, take the last character I did and just delete all the old stuff.)
2. Change the filename, title and footers to the new character.
3. Copy the opening paragraphs that introduce the character and set the scene for everything that follows. (Although I deviated from this point, as noted below.)
4. Go into each plot document and copy the relevant text (in this case, plot background, other people information and/or goals). As I do this, I colour the original text in the plot document purple, so I know I’ve copied it.
5. Rearrange the text so it’s in an order that makes sense to the character. So the “important” background is covered first, with incidental bits coming later. I put the list of other characters (Other People) in cast list order. Goals are ordered roughly in line with the background, so the goals that I think are most important to the character are first.
6. Read through the whole character and make sure it flows properly, editing and correcting as I do.

It’s amazing; each character is finished as soon as you’re done (and it only takes 15-20 minutes or so).

And because the work of writing the plots was done sometime in the past, it feels like the characters are popping out, fully formed, with barely any effort.

And suddenly, before you know it, you have a freeform larp virtually ready to run.

The dip

I haven’t found Aurora Horizon an easy freeform to write.

Many projects go through a challenging phase, a dip. Writing a freeform larp can be no different.

And I hit a dip with writing Aurora Horizon, which is probably the biggest dip I’ve had when writing any of these larps.

I think that maybe because Aurora Horizon has been a difficult freeform for me to write. I’ve not written an exploratory game before, so much of this is new to me. There are things I have ideas for, and some that I can’t figure out how to do. 

(As an example, I wanted to have some kind of memory overlay plot going on, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it justice. So I’ve canned it, which is a bit of a shame. And at one point I had a dead co-pilot, but I dropped that sub-plot as well.)

And there will be exposition dumps that I can’t see a way of avoiding.

Pushing through the dip

What I do know is that my process for writing freeforms works.

I knew I needed to “simply” push through the dip. Keep following the process. Write a plot. Then another one. Then another one.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have deviated from the process as much as I did. Before I start writing plots, I usually write the opening paragraph for each character so that I know something about them and how they fit into the game.

But I didn’t do that, mainly because I was struggling to figure out how to make the memory-loss-overlay plot work. So instead, to give me a boost, I wrote an easy plot first (stuff about exploring Callisto). And once I did that, things started to flow. And once things started flowing, I didn’t want to go back.

But as a result, I juggled character stuff with mission stuff, and invented the mechanics for exploring the alien ship as I went along. And I didn’t write those character introductions until after all the plots had been done, which wasn’t ideal.

Do the easy stuff first

Which brings me to a useful tip that helps me get through dips: do the easy stuff first. 

Doing the easy stuff first means I get in some early wins and start seeing progress. And with a little momentum, the trickier stuff won’t seem so daunting.

So I put the memory stuff on the back burner, and returned to it at the end. (It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but I’ll save that idea for another time.)

Online contingencies

I do have an idea for online contingencies, though.

I’ve struggled with online contingency envelopes because I haven’t worked out how to do them so players don’t read them before the game. 

But I’ve realised that I can give them a Word document with the text covered by black highlight, so it looks like it’s been censored. That way, they can only read it if they remove the black highlight, which they would have to do deliberately. 

And for those players who like to open their contingency envelopes before the game, it doesn’t stop them from reading them in advance.

It seems like such a simple solution that I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to think of it.

(The one catch is if a player doesn’t have MS Word, but I can do the same with a Google Doc if necessary.)

The light at the end of the tunnel

At this point, I can also sense that the game is almost finished. After the characters, I have a few handouts to compile and a timetable to flesh out – but that’s about it.

Then I will need to think about arranging its first run…

Aurora Horizon design notes

You can see other parts of my design notes here:

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 (this one) – Part 5