Election Day Rants, IMA, and Leadership Posts - III - "Modular Structure"
Intercon Mid-Atlantic is coming along. Reg has started to move up a little, which may go with the easing of the financial panic. There is some thought that the likely "blue" election day will settle things more and people will get a little less panicked about spending. If you still want to come, but were locked out of the room block, please contact me directly as we may be able to get you a room.
Election Day - I haven't digressed much about politics this year, because frankly it was a very close horse-race then a foregone conclusion. But a quick early evaluation. To pull off a win, McCain would need to get every solid vote he has, also claim every leaning vote he has, claim every single tossup vote in the country AND claim 18 electoral votes that are currently leaning Obama. I won't say that's impossible, but it would take a significant miracle...the only thing I see that could possible save McCain is a surprise upset in Pennsylvania. That still means he has to carry both Ohio AND Florida, but he could afford to slip in one other place...he could afford to lose
one of GA, VA, NC, MO, and he could afford to lose the Dakotas and Montana.
Today in Leadership, we visit the topic of Modular structure...
During most of the 1990s it was put forward that LARP only worked as a Dictatorship. The theory was that in order for a LARP to run well there had to be one tyrant who controlled everything with an iron fist.
While this isn’t true, it is a product of perception. Small political entities are Despotisms (Primitive Dictatorships). People familiar with the political model of Sid Meier’s
Civilization will recognize this concept. Civ players will also remember that as society gets larger, Despotism is less and less efficient. The capability emerges to support more complex models, and the Despot is a drag, not a help. In a small group a Despot gets things moving quickly. It could be argued that the Continuity Staff is a Despotic Oligarchy, but the effect is the same. In a large group Despotism slows things down because a few people have to oversee everything directly. Civ players could humorously argue whether we are moving to Monarchy or Republicanism but the truth is we have some elements of both. The Production-Company model and the “Marketplace of Ideas” model below aim to keep some of the elements of Despotism that work well. Having someone willing to take responsibility and say “the buck stops here.” But it aims to eliminate the drag of all decisions having to be approved by or blessed by a small cadre of oligarchs.
The advent of the modular structure made it possible to consider a stronger move away from Despotism. Modular. The real origin of the concept is the 1988 LARP event
The Arabian Nights. The designers of that original event, including but not limited to Russell Almond, conceptualized a structure which could support 120 players and dozens of GM writers who had little time or inclination to closely coordinate writing efforts.
Like the Pyramids of the ancient Egyptians, the architecture of,
The Arabian Nights, was vastly ahead of its time and would not be repeated for some time. In LARP terms it would be a decade and a half before the
Arabian Nights model was fully appreciated. One reason for this is that it takes a fairly large Event to need a modular style, and games had tended to stay in the 40-50 range with only a few large events reaching larger sizes.
By 2003 we were seriously looking for models that would support multiple writers as anything but assistants. .
1936: Atlantic Clipper (2002) was our first attempt to heavily integrate writers who were not the core founders into production, and it showed us that there was much to learn. Modules of sorts had existed in TS/Adventure crossover from the time of
Dark Summonings, where the
DS: Dreamlands game presented a modular model. The first two experiments of the current group (
1936/1948/Threads) with the serious modern module structure began in 2004. In September 2005 with
1948: Washington and then in January 2006 with
1948: Shanghai we fully debuted the modular structure similar to that of
Threads. It is interesting to consider that the enormously evolved “bid and grid” system we have in October 2008 was developed in only four years. We have to bear this in mind when we want the system to suddenly change or expect to fix all its problems overnight.
It can be argued that like “Monarchy” and “Republic” in
Civilization, “Bid and Grid” is a stopgap between the ideal (Democracy) and the realizable (Despotism). It is not the best possible system. It has shortcomings. However it is
the best possible system we can operate within our resources. If we are to move beyond, or at least build on top of “Bid and Grid” our core staff needs to reach a higher level of training and personal discipline so that we have a model that not only supports our model, but is capable of training and drawing in new authors without alienating them. Below under “Pros and Cons of the Modular System,” we will explore shortcomings and what we can do to improve the current system.
In the modular system we talk about each Writer’s
Box or
Boxes. The things that are in the Box are things that the Writer has complete control over. A Writer’s Box may be his own personal creations (where they do not interface with others) or tasks he is a Czar, or Custodian of (concepts we’ll explore more below in “A Free Market of Ideas”)
Connectors extend out of the Box. A Writer does not control the connectors coming out of his box. Some connectors are automatic. A Thread may have any internal politics a Writer designs, but its SPEM ratings and gate outlets are connectors that must be checked with others.
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larpwriting) wrote,
