Daemon (UK); thinking as a producer.

Dropped off the van today, there’s a couple of bits to drop off but basically, it’s all packed down.

Me, about 5 months ago.

Daemon (UK) ran in May 2023.

I produced it.

I think Helly Bean of Carcosa Dreams was the first person I heard use the word “Producer” in a larp context, though I’ve not spoken to her much about it. My role as producer of this event was essentially: everything that wasn’t the game itself, was mine. So this isn’t about the game, this is about the experience I had as a producer, and some stuff I need not to forget.

Firstly, then – why? The truth is I’d burned out running All For One. Brilliant team, great event, but by the end of it I was a mess, and only my brilliant co-organisers and a fabulous crew got it over the line. I wanted to run something again, but with less feeling of actual responsibility that “All of it”. I’d played Daemon and had an absolute blast. If you want to know about the game, the sign-up page tells you all about it, the game website is over here. The designer Katrine Wind of Narrators.eu had talked about taking Daemon to Belgium and the US, and she very trustingly agreed when I asked to bring it to the UK. The great thing is – it worked out. I’m not feeling burned out now, and folk have said some lovely things about the event.

It was a great experience full of wonderful and impactful scenes and most importantly deep and intimate play

A player.

Site scouting

I didn’t want to travel far for the event, and the lazy, obvious way to find a glorious place to hire in Norfolk is search the Broads. Daemon is a 28 person game, with 2 player-facing crew, and catering and logistics staff on top. The Sheriff House was the single largest place I could find, but only slept 16.

So I needed more bed space.

A wherry is a kind of river-barge, sometimes converted for pleasure-trips. I can feel very confident that whatever floating vessels other larps have had – no-one has ever had a wherry. They’re specific to Norfolk, England, and there’s only five or six of them in existence. I’d been on a wherry for a leaving do, so I knew you could hire them. This one – Olive – has four tiny cabins, and space in the saloon for another two more to sleep. (She has a five octave yacht piano, because of course.)

That took us to 26 beds.

The plan was for folk to sleep in an evocative space that suited their characters. I thought it’d be cool to sleep on a wherry. The dream was that the presence of a wherry would lead to scenes that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I had no clue how fabulous the scenes players would make using it.

Firstly, the nomad characters had a place in-game that was theirs, whereas in at least one other run – they were always guests in the high status characters’ space. And that turned out to be a significant difference. They had space to plot, a walk away. And then – characters got married, on the boat, by the captain, because of course a boat captain can marry people. Amazing.

Emergent. Location-specific. Storytelling. I love this medium.

I needed six more beds, and decided to offer cheaper places for folk sleeping off-site, the idea being people who lived in Norfolk or could stay with friends, or who’d camp, could get a larp experience like this for less than usual. It was either that or find another site, and I’d fallen for the Sheriff House.

We announced at Knutpunkt 2022 along with the Belgian run produced by Sandy Bailly and got 171 signups. Some were for the UK run, many for Belgium, many for both.

Getting to play a Finnish witch, wander around the beautiful venue barefooted and sleep on a traditional canal boat is something I’ll remember for a long time.

A player…

Matching players to characters

This was the hard bit. We had more players than characters. It’s a great problem to have, but solving it fairly is tricky. Daemon adds an extra little wrinkle – people book in pairs. There isn’t a single perfect way of doing this, particularly when you’re working with pre-written characters.

I dislike ‘fastest finger first’. I don’t think it’s not fair on folk who might not be able have the flexibility in their lives to hit just that moment, and it can split groups up. I don’t like lottery, I don’t like folk who want exactly the experience the larp is offering missing out in favour of those who don’t. Lastly, I spend a lot of time organising and usually there’s a handful of folk I think “This’d be perfect for XX” about, and I don’t want them to miss out either.

For Daemon, we did this. We had a signup form. We asked “Which types(s) of character would you like the human in your pair to be: in multiple choice of status (Former Magisterium person, Low nobility, Nomad, Scholar (natural science), Scholar (psychology), Socialite, Soldier, Witch) – each character is one or more of these.” and “What gender do you want/not want to play/have romantic play with if you want that plot?” Then we asked “What themes do you want/not want to play on during the larp – oppression, romance, self harm, war trauma?” and “What do you want/not want to do during the larp – public speeches, public political debate, experiments in (fictional) science?”

Then we asked some free text questions:

• “What kind of experience are you looking for in this larp? For example, what kinds of scenes would you enjoy playing? A few lines, no more.”
• “From how you perceive the description of the larp, describe your ideal character. A line or two is enough.”
• “Do you have any triggers or specific subjects you definitely don’t want to be part of your character? We’re asking this to help us try and ensure your emotional safety.”
• “Is there something you want to say about the experience that hasn’t been covered above? Now is the time to tell us if there’s something you would prefer not to play on in game, for example. “

So, we had a stack of answers.

First – we took the 5 pairings that included folk I didn’t want to miss out, and matched them to the characters best matched to their preferences. Sadly, one of them specified a set of character styles, themes and made free text comments which meant there just wasn’t a character for the human player. That meant they didn’t get a role, which was a real shame, but there it is.

Then – we randomly chose 5 pairs, and matched them to the roles that best fit what they wanted to play.

Then – we compared the 5 pairs of roles we had left to all the players we had left, and matched the players whose preferences were the best fit to those roles.

Lastly – we gave each daemon player three animal forms to choose from.

The aim was to get a set of players who genuinely wanted to play their particular characters, in this particular game. It’s not a process I’d use where characters weren’t pre-written but I think we did mostly ok. The sad thing was breaking the news to folk who really wanted to play and didn’t. Specifically, the ones who felt they’d failed some sort of test. They hadn’t. We just didn’t have roles they wanted to play.

You may notice I’ve not used the word ‘Casting’ in this. Someone only pointed out how bad a choice of word that was in Facebook months later – it implies competition for roles based on ability. That didn’t even enter into our thinking and I won’t use that word again. I grant you, I had folk in mind, and most of them got to play – but this is my hobby, and I think that’s ok. About a third of the folk on the event, I’d not met before. Next time, I’ll say “Matchmaking” – a suggestion from someone in the same thread and that’s a much better reflection of what we did. I’ll also use less free text in the same situation again. Someone said it felt like an exam, and I could have worked harder on that.

One of my favourite things about the magic circle of larp is how easy it actually is to establish the new rules of normalcy. One of the core ideas of the game is two people playing the same character, and being a single unit of human and daemon became natural within hours after arriving at the venue. You always had someone to share your thoughts with, someone to portray different aspects of yourself. And being the only witch and therefore not bound by the same distance as humans and their daemons, being the only person in a discussion without a daemon next to me always really made me feel like the outsider that I was.

A player

Retro.

We have retros a lot at work, to write down what we learned, what we were proud of, and try do better next time. After we’d frothed about the game, Katrine and I felt the following.

What would I do again?

Strict demarcation (…of game vs production responsibility. Don’t all take responsibilty for everything.)
Handle dietary requirements like a marvellous jigsaw puzzle rather than an awkward hurdle.
The menu worked.
Boat – wedding!
Would do a rerun again.
Substitute list – was a triumph. (We had six folk who’d kindly offered to keep the weekend free just in case someone dropped out. Two of them ended up playing the event for free, due to absolutly last minute dropouts, one of them ended up coming on less than 3 hours notice. I wouldn’t consider running a game like this without a list like this again.)
Start on the Saturday, finish on Sunday (To make travel less of a stress.)
Hit budget! (Although, I used a stack of contingency on things I could have foreseen and spent less fixing.)
A detailed schedule!
A decent form for practical details!

What would I do less?

Catering worked too hard – we needed one more, both t make it easier doing what we did, and to allow us space to do the extras which make a game sing.
Katrine needed one more in game.
Location – dining room too small, hard to see, backs to each other.
Hard to communicate when the in-game cooking was loud!
Free text in the signup form – we didn’t need as much, and I’ll work harder on the questions next time.
Neglect wine purchasing

What would I never do again?

I’d need to do better with cheap tickets, and target them better.
Have a crew of two – maybe use the subs?
Call it “casting.”

Postcript.

These are just here for me, unless anyone finds anything useful in there…

The lists of “Things to bring”…

got breadboards
got tea urn
got Overhead projector
got charcoal, bags of
got firelighters, pack
got breadknives
got condiment trolley
got acetates
got candles
got ohp pens
got 3 sleeping bags
got 4 pillows
got tables
got chairs
got bowls from mums
got hire stuff
got towels
got trifle bowls

handblender
knives
random kitchen gear

cakes
crates out of the house
Tablecloths

Cheeze
Mince
Mint
limes
assorted spices
Icing sugar

The weekend shopping list…

1 Dijon mustard, large pot
300 dried porcini mushroom, g
36 Eggs.
2000 frozen mixed red fruit, g
2 gf bread, per loaf sliced
1 gf oatcakes, mebbe
6 gf pastries
2000 good ready-made custard, ml
4000 greek yoghurt, ml
150 hard cheeze, g
350 light brown sugar, g
1 lime and mint cordial, bottle
2 Maldon salt, pack
120 maple syrup, ml
4000 Mixed summer berries, or similar, g
2 mustard, pot large
5 Olive oil, l
4 Orange juice, l
1 Pack of vegan stock, it’ll be Marigold
2 peas, kg
1 pickled onions, jar
to spec Preserves, 4 pots
4 Pricey sourdough
700 pudding rice, g
1 sherry, bottle
3 soda water, lt
1 Tea, box of bags
30 trifle sponges
50 truffle oil, ml
9 vegan butter, pack
1500 vegan cream cheese
500 vegan cream, ml
2 vegan feta, pack
1600 vegan yoghurt, ml
500 whipping cream
5 white bean, cans
1 white wine vinegar, bottle
Flowers