Thread: Text Messaging In Game @ LARP Nights

I just wanted to make sure everyone was informed of the new solution we've come up with for text messaging at LARP events. We'll be providing paper and pens at the front of the store for players to use through the night when texting another character.

Text messages should be written on paper and passed to the person who you're sending the text to. Ideally, this will cut down on the pauses in scenes that occur when someone comes up and wants to "let you know what your phone says when you get time to read it."

Telling another player what a text message says during a scene creates two major problems:

1) It gives the player information that may effect how they decide to react to the scene they are currently in.

2) It forces everyone in a scene to wait on the texter and the reciever while they oocly discuss what is sent between them.

By handling texting with writing notes we accomplish a few things:

1) Players are forced to take time away from their current scene to read a text... and risk insulting their present company or having to spend combat actions to gain the knowledge thusly putting their lives on the line.

2) Players (both the person texting and the person recieving and those who would be forced to wait for the ooc discussion to end) aren't forced to wait on each other, rather they can choose to pocket the note and read it later.

3) Players sending a text message will literally have to take time away from what they are doing to write/text the information adding a bit more realisim to scenes where someone is spliting their attention between talking to others and texting to someone else.

4) In cases where extremely sensative material is being sent and players don't want each other to know oocly who is communicating with whom, the text can be given to a narrator to deliver to other players.

5) Last but not least, there is a written record of what was sent over telephones for STs to use if we ever want to play the role of someone intercepting messages (be it pc or npc)

We hope this little improvement will make your game better!