Article:
LARP Plot Tips: Points of Presentation

I was really impressed with some plot I've seen in our local chapters in NERO International. This plot-line is being run by one of my friends and this is his first real attempt at running serious plot at a LARP game. One of the things that impressed me the most about his plot was his ability to get everyone involved. When I asked Tim about how he got so many players to care about the plot, he explained to me that he used a trick that's quite common in creative writing - Points of Presentation.

Points of Presentation (PoP) are one of the components that can be used when flowcharting. When writing a story, you use these PoP to identify ways for critical information or background to become available to the reader (or in this case, the players). I, for one, have run a fair amount of plot in my days, and I'd be the first to admit that getting information out to players is one of my weaknesses, and I know I'm not the only one.

Rather than give you a list of bullet points, I'm just going to go through the work that Tim had put into getting the word of his plotline out to people.

In order to make sure as many people were involved in his plot as possible, he used seven major Points of Presentation. These points went from specific targets (players who are in the military or have elemental masters) to more general avenues (players near a body of water). To add to this, he ended up telling the players in an OOG way that he was running a plotline that would be very cool, and anyone who was interested in being involved, to send him an email including all the points that their characters qualified for. He had scheduled a timeline when each group would start receiving information, and did his best to bring those people together in their email chains, at least when it was applicable.

He showed me the emails he'd received about the plotline, and I was absolutely shocked. There were more than 60 people deeply involved and about 13-14 emails strings going on at one time, before the plot was even kicked off at an event. Despite his best efforts to answer all the emails, people were actually getting upset that he couldn't answer them fast enough - they are that into his plot!