The Drake Objective - Retrospective

What is this?

This will be a look back on the above LARP.  We will look back at the game from both a story and financial standpoint, go over the feedback form and then maybe look to the future a little.  Please note that in the text TGP refers to the 2022 LARP “The Goodman Protocol” and TDO refers to the recently run “The Drake Objective”.

Background

When I originally started writing the game that would become “The Goodman Protocol” back in October 2018, it was initially designed as a stand-alone game.  Realistically, I didn’t want to write another series of games that might never finish after the way Season 2 of Goldrush (LARP in the Firefly universe) had ended back in 2016.  I’d wanted, for a while, to write a game in the High Frontier universe that would be about more than the eponymous xenomorphs.  I’d been interested in the Lore design of the “Engineers” featured in Prometheus for a while.  It was that film and a throwaway line in the 1998 film Sphere are what helped form and shape the initial foundation of the game (that and an episode of “Star Cops” would also contribute certain plot points).

Despite all the issues in the runup, during and after The Goodman Protocol, it seems many players really connected with what happened and were keen to see where the story went next (people seem surprised when I say that I have no good memories of that LARP).  Writing for what would become TDO really started around July 2023 after it was agreed that the game would run in the already booked July slot the following year.  Some of you may remember that the game was in jeopardy for a few weeks during September/October last year and my only comment on that is “where there’s hobbies, there’s politics” but ’m happy that a compromise was reached which meant that the game could run.

I’d always known TDO would end with the cliffhanger: “Mr Weyland wants to meet you” but how to get there took rather longer.  The idea of another first contact team came about relatively early on, and it seemed to make sense in the greater telling of the story.  Another source of inspiration was the Star Trek Voyager two-parter, “Equinox”.  This is where they find another Federation Starship crew doing some very questionable un-Federation like things.  This was the starting point from which sprung the Monchino, its mission and ultimately where it went wrong for them and how they ended up where they did.  An early idea was that the player team would find the Monchino crew having their own encounter with an Engineer but this didn’t really work from various points and was soon rewritten.

We had two main concerns going into the game, Friday Night and Saturday morning

That first concern boiled down to the fact I (and the other GMs) had all been at games that started incredibly late on Friday night due to people arriving late because of Friday night traffic, being unable to get away from work and so on. Also, even though we didn’t have any structured feedback for TGP some of the informal feedback we did get was that key parts of the plot hadn’t filtered through to everybody.  So, this was a chance to have a relatively stress-free IC event that could introduce incoming characters as well as remind everyone what came before.  

The second concern was that we were doing a bait-and-switch on the Saturday morning, the mission you were briefed for on the Friday night wasn’t going to be the mission you were ultimately going on (although remember the name KOI-2626 though, it might come up in the future). Nobody likes being misled, the payoff must be worth it.

A physical appearance from the “Engineer” was never really on the cards in TDO once we’d decided the Monchino crew had killed ‘theirs’. We only have the one costume and that was needed as a corpse, but we wanted their presence to be ‘felt’ and that was done via the communication system that we introduced during the Dropzone game “Extraction”.  This was there to continue the ‘conversation’ with them and also to give the characters another method to seek help after planetfall. There are some rules we’ve laid down for the Engineers’ capabilities as we are conscious of the fact that we are approaching Clarke’s Third Law in some ways with what they can do. 

Fun fact: The Extraction game at Dropzone was to have been the Friday night part of TDO as originally written but we felt we needed a ‘mid-quel’ part to the game to serve as a bridge between TGP and then TDO.  Otherwise, we were concerned that there would have been too long a gap between parts.

The “Working Joes” went through several iterations as my original plan had been to use blank face masks over a balaclava of some kind but apparently it would be f***ing July!  We found the masks on AliExpress and they fulfilled my requirement of not being able to see the eyes of the person wearing it.  I did have a vague worry that they looked too much like the humanoid robots from the Disney film, “The Black Hole”, but based on feedback received immediately after the game they were effective in their portrayal.  In fact, it would be those masks is what would lead me to drop in a couple of Easter Eggs related to that film.

Financials

As I’ve said elsewhere, the second document you create after writing your LARP is the budget spreadsheet!  The player cost for TDO was £80, this was £10 increase on the cost for The Goodman Protocol back in 2020.  Somewhat controversially (certainly in other LARP circles) we also charge crew a nominal fee as well, this was £10 (the same as back in 2020).  So, the balance sheet looks something like this: -

Income: 

Players x 17                    £1360
Crew x 13 £130
Total £1490

Expenditure:

Site                                 £1100
Props & Sundries £341.81
Total £1441.81

Balance:         £48.19

The highest expenditure was the site cost which it is for practically every LARP.  This would consume a shade under 75% of the total income of the game.  The LARP was initially budgeted for 18-20 players which would have given us between £1440 to £1600 (there is a general rule where you try and keep 10% of the overall budget for contingencies).  As you can also see we were only one player booking away from making a loss that the GMs would have to bear and that booking came only in the last few weeks before the LARP.

The next highest cost was £80 for the new Costaguanero patches and nametapes we needed for those players coming into the game but weren’t on TGP.  These were a late purchase as we didn’t really have the budget for them (and were scrambling around to see how many of the old ones we had) until we got a couple of late player bookings in the month before.  In an ideal world I’d have liked to have got some Monchino patches professionally made as well and if we’d had one more player booking, we probably could have but it was not to be. In the end our NPC crew stepped up and DIYed some great looking patches.

For a long time, we were in negative numbers finance wise.  Player bookings, after an initial surge on the announcement, then only trickled in over the next few months.  This would eventually plateau out until a push was made after Dropzone 2024.  We had one early player dropout from the game which we could easily work around then sadly a last-minute illness that nothing could be done about.

Booking Fees will be higher next time as the site hire will has already increased for 2025.  One comment I will make is that if people out there want games like this to happen then the earlier you can support them makes more chances of them continuing.

Feedback

We conducted a relatively comprehensive feedback campaign for both players and crew trying to get some more feedback on where things went wrong or didn’t work as well as we hoped and what the overall feeling was towards the game.  We certainly tried some new things with TDO and there had been some apprehension going into the game about them.  Below we will summarise some of the points made between both groups.  

We had responses from 9 players from a potential 17 and 6 crew from a potential 13 which is a nice solid rough 50% of attendees. So, we consider the answers to be representative of overall sentiment. 

All responses were anonymous and any quoted comments are a direct copy from what was submitted in the form, nothing has been changed.

Player Feedback

The Practical Information document was something I think we improved on over the one for The Goodman Protocol.  This will be the template for any such documents going forward and I would hope for similar documentation from other games.  We did get one comment on the practical (and realistically it applies to the final as well): -

• A wee bit more on the location and where we were meant to go on arrival and after arriving. I kind of got to the car park and didn’t know what was next. And more guidance on camping - like could i bring a caravan.

Cost is something we will be touching on later, but the majority thought it was about right.

 Our first real point of contention.  While most thought the system is okay, we did get some interesting feedback such as the following: -

• i have started to think that a unified rule set that covers all uklta games would be advantageous to the whole hobby. in my mind it wuold cover all skills for all games and reffs could choise which skills are used in their games. this would mean that plays would know how a skill is used in any and all games that that skill is used in

So, in essence, GURPS Laser-Tag, I’m not conceptually opposed to such a thing and would be interested in a discussion.  I’m not convinced a universal system would work in given the nature of games run under the UKLTA banner, how do you ensure that everyone “buys into it”.  There also seems be to a movement in the wider LARP sphere towards more “rules lite” systems where the focus moves away from character stats and more to character story and that does hold some interest for me.  We also got the below comments: -

• Character growth between missions needs sorting and I do think that the contacts skill needs work when other players can block you from using it. Maybe alter that so you can have a free named contact in your backstory and give those points back.
• Nah - I felt I had total freedom on char creation.
• I think a more flowchart type approach might help some players think about what they are creating in a more structured fashion

Character advancement has never really featured in many of my games as I’ve always wanted players to focus on their characters and not on a spreadsheet tallying points.  Another thing I’m keen on is that every character must feel their worth or what’s the point of a starting character with their skills if someone who’s played every game can do it better and faster?  I’m not opposed to character advancement but with stuff like active downtimes then everybody needs to buy into it as I don’t want players to feel disadvantaged if they don’t partake.  Having said that I’m not opposed to story rewards for downtime which is something I am looking at for the future.

 

This produced some quite varied opinions, with a solid vote for the Facebook status quo but many respondents would consider using Discord as a potential solution, which seems to be rapidly becoming the platform of choice for LARP discussion.

We did get the following comments about the final briefing: -

• It’s a lot of information to absorb - it’s not about it being there as much as it is about getting the players to retain it (me especially.
• It was pretty good. Just a bit more on the location would have been good.

The location comments have been noted!  The “lot of information” comment wasn’t one I was expecting (normally people complain that stuff has been missed). 

I’m quite pleased to see that people seem to be onboard with these as ideas and concepts.

 

But it seems that we’ve still got some distance to go with people following it through but overall, I will be carrying on with this. 

This produced some interesting comments: -

• Although I didn't necessarily use all my skills, I could have done so have no problems with this.
• Contacts,
• I was consciously trying to let other players do the skills stuff - part of my interpretation of play to lift
• Some players blatantly were plot hoarding, which is fine but is a thing. I had a chance to use all my skills which was nice and a bit fortuitous.

Contacts is on odd skill in that it really isn’t a skill, I think this is one area that does need work in the High Frontier Player Book and is something I will look at on my next project also. With the setup of TDO where the characters were isolated it was even harder than usual to make Contacts work for people, but it was used as a big catalyst for one player and the story post-Downfall.

The plot hoarding comment is disappointing and not really something we want to see; it was because of a similar comment from TGP that we did Friday night the way we did to try and bring everyone up to speed on the plotlines so everyone started with the same IC knowledge.

 

 Apologies for the crowded graph, but this section of the survey responses broadly supports our decision to throw in lots of rarely used ‘technical’ or ‘puzzle’ elements to our game, whether as partners to skill checks or to increase immersion. They generally worked well for the people who used them and didn’t obstruct those who didn’t, which is what we’d hoped for.

It comes as no surprise that MU|TH|UR is the big winner here, it’s been almost unanimously praised since we called Time Out, but there was one interesting comment about it: -

• Mother was fantastic, however those with hearing issues were actively disadvantaged.
  I loved it but could we have everything repeated twice, and could we have transcripts? Maybe you could register as needing the transcripts pre game?

We have already talked about what form it will take in the future and the idea of adding screens, where practical, with the text of the messages has already been discussed to address the accessibility issues.

It may surprise you to learn that this prop was not originally planned in this form, this was a ‘nice-to-have’ floating around on our props list that Nick R only really started working on roughly 10 days out from the LARP.  It went from an idea for a solution to proof of concept to functional prop in days and whilst there were teething issues (it didn’t always trigger the PMR reliably for example) the fact we could control it with Telegram from our phones was an absolute game changer for me.

The QR codes weren’t universally liked, but it’s also the first time we’ve actively used them, and we’ll learn from it.

Given the broad success of the various things we used at TDO it is likely that some or all of them will be seen again at future events.

 

 Back on TGP, some of the feedback we got in the aftermath was that it was felt that there wasn’t enough combat (we’ve got a great system, why not use it?). We were very conscious of this going into TDO and by the above I think we got it pretty much spot on with the Neo-Bears, Working Joes and then Mercenary forces.  One comment we had was: -

• I thought that you got the balance of combat to not really spot on. We were down to our last few pills and it felt like a last stand so that worked really well.

 

Again, I’m relatively happy that we got this relatively right.

 

We knew structuring Friday Night the way we did was going to be a potential risk and it appears to have had a mixed but mostly positive response.  I’m not conceptually opposed to doing something like it again, but it wouldn’t be in quite the same way if we did.  This was also a response to feedback that we got from the previous games that key plot points had not worked their way to all players. Which I think is something to think about when also looking at the previous poll results regarding if everyone engaged in play-to-lift or not.  One comment we had about Friday night was this: -

• I didn't enjoy the Friday night. While I felt it was important to get people up to speed, it did feel like a waste of a whole session. I think something should have actively happened to make it feel more like the start of the larp. The briefing could have been condensed and we could have done the drop at night for example which would have been very atmospheric.

In hindsight I can sympathise with that viewpoint, as previously mentioned, originally the Friday Night was going to be the rescue of the Scientists that happened back at Dropzone 2023 during the “Extraction” game.

We could potentially have structured it better and we will endeavour to have more ‘time in’ play to go with the ‘time-ish’ section if this experiment is repeated.

 

I know we have had issues in the past with the military/science teams almost alternating in terms of action, when the military are busy the science team is not and vice versa, and I think we definitely ran into that issue again on TDO.  There was a lull on Saturday afternoon after “Downfall” happened and the Working Joes turned on the players. We had left the flow of the game deliberately open for us to react to events at that point and I feel we pulled some good ideas out the bag to get it back up to speed in the evening.  We got this comment that seems to support this: -

• i want to qunity my reasoning about combat and game pace. As a marine player i noticed that when combat breaks out marines and science are doing something at the same time . But when science are working on puzzles marines are on watch and this amount of watch time is normally dependent on how fast science is able to solve the puzzle this in turn has a direct relationship to the pace of the game from a soldiers perspective. This being said the only way i can see this being different is if the science was being done in a remote location with the marines on the move more i concede that this is a big problem to run and for this genre of game. I will say this game had a pretty good balance and in conclusion, great job guys keep up the great work i do want to be on the next game.

Another comment made was: -

• From my perspective… this was an excellently-run game/event. The “extras”, such as active props and set dressing, interactive elements, and particularly the Live interactions via comms / MUTHUR, even though I was a passive observer to these aspects, materially increased my immersion / Suspension of Disbelief.
• I NEVER had long enough inactivity to get bored- toward the end, frankly, I was glad of the rest! The pacing of Monster/Mobs attacks felt pretty good- intervals for medicing seemed to dovetail well with plot/ patrolling!
• Having GM/Refs tightly embedded with the player team, I felt, helped a lot with keeping events running fluidly.

 

Again, after the feedback from TGP regarding combat and some other issues, I’m relatively happy with this stat.

I think this speaks for itself.  You can never please everybody, 100% satisfaction is never going to happen.  We did get a comment on this question: -

• The game was very much enhanced by the player interactions. The main NPCs were brilliant and the willingness for the character backstory to significant affect my game play was excellent.

 

So even those players who responded to this form and commented slightly less positively (I’m loathed to use the word ‘negative’) are still keen to play on and I view that as a good sign that TDO worked as a game.

 

I know cost of games is often a talking point and you will have seen how we spent the money in the previous financial section.  I don’t know what the cost of The Weyland Factor will be, but I would imagine at this stage (with the increased site costs as well) to be in area of £100+ but we will only ever charge what we feel we need to run the game.  With it being the final chapter in the “Gods and Monsters” series then the chance for player drop off is increased so do we charge more to cover that potential shortfall?

We also asked if you could give a 1 sentence review of the game: -

• Engaging, great and hit the mark
• Best of this series of games yet.
• Challenging
• The weekend was a great sucess, there were challenging problems to solve, twists in the plot and some seriously hard enemies to deal with, so every type of player was accommodated.
• This set of games will test you in the best possible way
• Complex and thought provoking
• Thank you for putting this on! Congratulations on the game, and depending on when it's run of course I'll be there for the next.
• As a new player I thought it was great - engaging, thrilling, suspenseful and exciting

Crew Feedback

 

I refer you to my previous comments but overall, I’m happy with this.

We also asked the question about charging to crew for these games and got these following responses: -

• You need the charge to at least guarantee some financial incentive to attend. You could always reflect this with mementos - much like the GM team got the Moschino ships logos ... perhaps a reduction off playing further games in the installment if you attend and participate ?
• We are a small hobby and sometimes that nominal sum can add up to make sure GMs are able to effectively run the game
• Do what you need to what works for you.
• Keep the charge means there is a small commitment

All very valid comments, the one about ‘mementos’ certainly hit home and that is something we will be thinking about.

 

Again, some diverse opinions but again 50% in favour of Discord but interestingly, no love for Facebook.

 

The crew seem more split on our Nordic LARP ideas than the players.

 As I’ve said elsewhere, the crew briefing was the longest document that was written for the LARP, but it was still lacking in some areas as correctly identified here: -

• Should have been explained about Joe's being not being very active in first part of the game

Valid point, we should have made this clearer than we did.  We also got the following comment: -

• If Joe's or something similar are used again maybe give them some duties like cleaning or farming activities maybe even have Joe's do shifts?

All valid points and this will inform our writing in the future, I don’t think we were sure how the Joes would work (maybe if they would) and I’m very happy with the player feedback on them (and the crew should pat themselves on the back as well!). If the Working Joes do return then we will take all of the above suggestions on board.

 

I know we had the crew standing around for extended periods on both TGP and TDO but their insight is always valuable and always welcome.  

• Sometimes worth chatting to crew as they may hear things gms may miss

We certainly tried to but at the same time the GMs are often busy but if any crew or NPC has an issue or something they think we should know then please tell a GM about it.

We also got the following feedback: -

• Just "Thanks!" I had an excellent time and the amount of effort you guys put in was impressive and appreciated. :)
• I really had a great time and saw lots of really nice moments where players were "playing to lift" and encouraging our new players to get involved too. The "newbies" seemed to get involved well and enjoy themselves thoroughly and that is always something fantastic to see. I don't know how you all felt about it but I hope you feel it was a success and are keen to run the next installment. I for one would love to crew for you again and see what happens next!
• I absolutely loved the character I was given and felt that the GMs had faith that I could roll with it and bring it to life. I thought the story was perfect and led the players to understand the meaning of the "Gods and Monstersaspect very well.
• I had a fantastic time and felt there was enough plot for everyone to get stuck into. Yes there were times when crew had to wait around but that's the nature of crewing and player faffage and why crew places are cheaper than player spots.

Conclusions

After all that I think I have the following: -

• The Drake Objective worked as a game from both the standpoint of the players, crew and GMs.  Speaking as a GM, I’m hoping I’ve now exorcised those ghosts that have made TGP such a painful set of memories.
• There appears to be a want for the next game in the series.
• Start thinking about creating those Discord logins as I think this will be the platform of choice in the future.  There is already a UKLTA server there that was created some time ago and you can find that here: https://discord.gg/PhTTKdc4jF 
• Even though more people voted for it than I thought, I will say I am unlikely to run a game via WhatsApp, there are both technical and personal reasons why not.  Maybe if the platform matures, I may revisit this.
• The Player cost will increase, the increased costs of the Grange are dictating that.  I can’t say what to yet, but they will go up.

The Future

A surprising meeting sets off a desperate race with the prize being the greatest secret in the universe.  You may have implemented The Goodman Protocol, you may be on the brink of achieving The Drake Objective, but it’s always dangerous to forget about: The Weyland Factor

Final Word

I will admit to being in quite the spiral of depression in the time after I got back from Odysseus to when The Drake Objective started (this was less than two weeks).  You may know I’ve had a difficult relationship with the hobby recently and that coupled with the memories of The Goodman Protocol were weighing heavily.  Yet, I think this was one of the most well prepared LARPs I’ve been part of.  There were issues but no LARP runs smoothly, and I feel we responded to those issues and came out the other side well.  I think the results of our feedback survey confirm that we did well also.  I find myself now in a much better place now we are on the other side than I have in some years (maybe even since the end of the first Goldrush campaign back in 2015).

I will say that initial writing has begun on the last part of the Gods & Monsters campaign.  We have set ourselves a high bar to live up to with this and I’m hoping to do one or two things differently as we have done with the campaign already.  Looking back at The Drake Objective I’m incredibly happy at what we did so I would like to thank the players, crew and my fellow GMs one more time for supporting this venture.

James Bloodworth
Lead GM, High Frontier: Gods & Monsters