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LARP Plot Tips: Inverted Modules

Jack the rogue has been pursuing his personal mission for months. He's made a number of contacts to get him behind enemy lines and now he needs to sneak into the bandit camp and discover the plans of the dastardly Simon. He's waiting for nightfall hidden from sight, when he'll start snooping around looking for documents about what they're scheming, avoiding as many patrols as possible.

Modules like this would be relatively easy to run in a table-top game, but the logistics behind setting up a camp of NPCs for one player are overwhelming. For this reason, many plot teams will just play out this part on paper. But there's a better way to run this module and others like it.  We call them Inverted Modules.

An Inverted module is when you send a PC down into town as an NPC to retrieve an item of some sort. The twist is that, while they have all the skills and items their character has, they are dressed up and appear as an NPC that is hostile with the PCs. This means they have to sneak around the town avoiding PCs to meet their goal. So instead of taking all your NPCs and giving a weak town simulation or running something on pen and paper, you can use the PCs to entertain each other. It's a win-win situation.

Here are a few things to remember when running inverted modules.

For obvious reasons, it's not appropriate to send a PC down to steal or kill other players, as this forces PvP on the game. We always simulate the goals with ribbons tied to various trees/structures around the camp. Players would either sneak down and pull ribbons off of the various locations or they would tie new ribbons around locations to simulate setting traps. The ribbons are completely out-of-game so the other players should just ignore them. Alternatively, you could send down an NPC with an item who the rest of the town knows and who will be protected. Use your creativity to best simulate the plot line you're running without trying to kill PCs.

If the player on the module is killed in town, it doesn't automatically mean their character died. It may only mean that the character is captured, and may be interrogated or tortured for more information. Use your best judgement to decide their fate.  This is an opportunity to evolve the plot into something more, perhaps with the rest of the town receiving a ransom note for the captured character.