Introduction:

Swords of Orlandia III is a live-action game that took place exclusively at Anime Festival Orlando 10 this past summer. Over the course of the weekend, Hundreds of people played for either the evil Shadowfowl or the less evil Anarchs to see who would control Orlandia once and for all. Players would participate in quests(both solo and as a party), compete against each other in carnival-inspired games, and solve secret runic messages that gave away information about the war going on between evil Emperor Corvax Corvidious and the fallen Prince Horus. There were real messages and fake ones and the side with the most real ones solved would win the final battle.

For those wondering, it was the Anarchs.

While this was going on, players earned experience points in the form of dice that they could use to PVP Battle, buy anime-inspired items to give them extra help in battles, and increase their level and rank. Not only that, we also experimented with letting some of the more trusted and experienced players achieve the special rank of lieutenant and giving out quests themselves. There were a lot of gameplay mechanics that were added to the third iteration of the game. It kept things fresh, but at the same time it made the game a little more complicated than it needed to be.

The original Swords of Orlandia game was created by Peter Stolmeier, who has been doing his own interactive game shows at Anime Festival Orlando for many years as the loveable Wheldon Smiley. He asked me and others in the now-dead Consortium to help out with the second game which debuted quests, competitive challenge games, and having costumed game characters for players to interact with. Late last year, Peter became more focused on finishing up his final year of college and asked me to take over the game design for Swords of Orlandia III.

I wrote a “Game Masters’ Guide” for those involved with the game’s design, story writing, and managing the game that weekend. During the many months leading up to that weekend I met with people from the Anime Festival Orlando staff, my students in the Propeller Anime Club, and whatever was left of the Consortium to get as many good ideas for the game as possible and bring it all together for a final design. It was a fun, yet challenging process and many lessons were learned.

What went right:

1.) Dedicated Game Staff
Here, I am referring to those who worked in running the Swords of Orlandia III game in and around the Raven’s Roost Tavern, the central hub at AFO for those who were playing the game. I assembled those I trusted in the local anime community to do a good job along with my Propeller Anime Club students(who never fail me) to help me with keeping things running smoothly. A lot of us were in medieval-inspired costume and entertained players throughout the weekend.

Game staff winding down at closing ceremonies. It was an epic weekend!

Including myself, there were twelve hardcore badasses that kept the game running all weekend and we did our absolute best to make sure those who wanted to play the game could and had something to do.

There were times where we were overwhelmed with many players at the same time and we could have used some more help. Fortunately, the game staff was up to the challenge of giving players quests and guiding them on their adventure.

2.) How to Play Panels
On the Friday and Saturday of the convention, Peter, decked out in his game show host attire, had a couple of the characters of Swords of Orlandia III come in and explain the rules of the game as well as the story in his game show theater. This was the best approach to helping players understand how to play the game. We taught the game by having players try out quests, PVP, and challenges while giving out items that they could use in the game.

An Anarch general and a Shadowfowl general from the game staff were the characters that came in to explain the rules of the game and would take time to go back into character and rally their players for battle with chants and yelling. There was a lot of energy from the crowd in the Friday game, which was great because that kept the momentum of the game going throughout the weekend.

We had many methods of trying to get players to learn the game; demonstrating it was the most effective. This is usually how I learn many table top games.

3.) Players got used to new game mechanics… eventually
If players went to the “How to Play” panels then they knew the story of Orlandia and how to play the game. They could also refer to the convention guide for the game’s rules. Funny thing is, most players of the game and convention goers in general didn’t read the convention guide let alone the separate 70+ page mini-novel that contained the game’s story. Har har.

For most of the weekend, I was wondering if the game information even got published in the guide and when I finally got the time to read one(which was after the convention’s closing ceremonies), I saw the rules I wrote for the guide right in there. They weren’t even hard too find!

So for the first day, we had to pretty much spend a lot of time teaching people how to play the game personally. By Saturday, nobody had problems playing the game and everyone was beginning to progress nicely in the game. Many even maxed out to level three of their rank and we started to award lieutenant scrolls to the more hardcore and trustworthy players.

4.) Game Characters with Personality
Almost every member of the game staff created their own game character with their own back-story, personality, and goals for Swords of Orlandia III. We were a lively bunch that kept players entertained. We formed mobs, led marches, and got many people to join the game. We would get on stage and rally troops and we would send players on quests and challenges to represent our respective armies.

Not only that, there were established storyline characters with strong personalities that would perform a cut scene in main events each evening to remind the players what they were fighting for in the war. This part was handled by a story team separate from the design team. I met with them occasionally to make sure our game worked with their story.

Shadowfowl and Anarachs square off on stage in AFO’s main events ballroom.

Most notable was the charisma exhibited by the actors of Prince Hesperus and Corvax Corvidous. They not had rehearsed lines and actions, but they even did some improve during their performances and worked the audience of these events well. Hell, there were big giant crowds of Shadowfowl players who would march through the halls yelling “Hail the Emperor” to let the convention goers know who was running Orlandia with an iron fist.

The best part had to have definitely been when one of the convention guests, Rueben Langdon(voice and motion capture actor of Dante from Devil May Cry) took over the role for King Horus for the final cut scene when the original actor couldn’t and electrified the crowd. He was able to fit into the costume and his presence was supremely amazing. It was extremely cool of him to do that on such short notice.

5.) Emergent Gameplay: The Bob Mob
Despite the game having many rules and elements, it is still flexible enough for players to make their own fun. The best example of this was the boss battles. Members of the volunteer staff approached me and asked if they could be game bosses for players to battle to get big rewards and prestige. I thought the idea was pretty cool and let them do it.

The concept grew to a much grander scope as boss battles became live action raids like similar to an MMO. Rules were even devised based on how many people were in the raid and what their class was. Participating generals and lieutenants added bonuses to their side in these battles. The side with the highest score one the battle.

The stakes for these raids were high and after many battles, tales of ”The Bob Mob” and their leader Bob grew. Bob was called the strongest boss in all of Orlandia so before the game ended my character, Gamelon Umfraville, challenged him to PVP and destroyed his sorry ass in a game of Twister on the tavern’s stage and I made him hail the emperor three times! Strongest boss in the game? I think not. I only lost once in PVP the whole weekend and it was to a young boy who was a lieutenant in my Shadowfowl army anyways, making it totally not count as a loss in the first place.

Uh… what were we talking about again?

What went wrong

1.) The AFO dice was cool… maybe a little too cool
Instead of using coins like we did in the first two Swords games, we instead used dice as our experience and PVP element. In the story, the Emperor melted all the coins of Orlandia into dice and made that the only currency in Orlandia. It was Peter’s idea and I loved it and wanted to keep it as I took over the game design. He proposed that players would roll dice and one side would have the AFO logo(the winning side, obviously) and that the players would love them. And they did; perhaps, a little too much.

From Peter’s blog. Lot’s of freakin’ pretty dice!

The dice were custom-made and turned out way cooler than we had imagined. We knew a case would come up where people wanted to collect dice for themselves. I had tried to devise many methods to encourage players to turn in dice regularly. Things like buying items to use in battle, paying to partake in quests needed to level up, and wagering dice in challenges with players. I would be lying if I said those elements solved the problem; it only slowed down the inevitable. 3,000 dice were ordered for the game – less than 100 remained by the time the game was over.

Luckily, it was AFO 10 and we could just say they were collectables and a “thank you” to the fans for supporting the convention this past decade.

In all seriousness, the main aspect of your game’s economy should not be the most desired aspect of the game. Even when players horde gold in MMOs, they plan to use it for something eventually and not keep it. In the feedback panel for the game, some players admitted that they would rather keep the AFO dice than spend it to level up or risk losing it in PVP. We decided afterwards to scale down to desirability of the next game’s currency so that players will use it to play the game more.

2.) Trying to be too different leads to over complication
We added many new concepts to Swords of Orlandia III. Dice rolling was the new PVP mechanic and the form of currency and experience. Players could buy epic weapons and epic mounts to buff their dice score in PVP. We had quests that involved game characters helping out. There was a lieutenant class for trustworthy level three players that we liked that allowed them to show leadership and give out quests. There were even Orlandia special events we held in the Raven’s Roost Tavern. Most of all, we tried to tie into the game’s story by having players help their side win by translating runic messages.

All of these new features were an attempt to make the game more interesting than last year’s. Last year, the more hardcore players complained that there was not enough content in the game which no longer became an issue with these new features. I also wanted to differentiate the third game from the others. Swords of Orlandia II was successful but I didn’t want to simply rehash it. However, there were so many new features that it could overwhelm someone who has never played the Orlandia games before and even veteran players had to adapt to new features and rules.

In an attempt to make the game bigger and unique than the previous iterations, the game became more complicated than it needed to be. I tried to hard to appeal to the hardcore players with many of these features but didn’t take new and casual players into consideration.

3.) Overuse of sending players to AFO events as quests
So the original point of this game was to get players to feel like they are playing a game by enjoying all aspects of the convention. Going to main events, meeting guests, and attending panels were the generic quests we gave out to players. In the better conditions of these quests, we could have time to find out what players liked and send them on “spy missions” to these events and report to us their findings for dice and other items. However, we ended up using this quest as a crutch when we would get overwhelmed by many players at the same time.

During the feedback panel, I wanted to defend the idea that the real point of Swords of Orlandia is to get people to enjoy the convention like it was a game. Before I could do that, a player of the game had something to say that made me think from their perspective better. He told us that he didn’t want to go to events for quests because he came in to the tavern because he didn’t want to go to the convention events in the first place. This feedback certainly noted as we craft next year’s game.

4.) New system for leveling up was confusing
Sometimes you should not mess with a good thing that works. Leveling up was one of those things. In the first two games, players earned experience through various means and then spent a specified amount at the town census to reach their next level. It was nice and easy and should have remained unchanged for the third game.

I got worried about dice shortages preventing players from leveling up. I tried to counter this method by with leveling up being handled through a special quest. Once players visited their generals enough times and completed some tasks, we would offer to send them on a quest to prove their worth to their army and increase their level by succeeding. They would be charged dice to do this quest either way. This risk of losing dice(that would become rare) with a possibility of no payoff(due to failure of the quest) made some players hesitant to want to level up.

Lesson learned, moving back to the old ways.

5.) Communicating with game and AFO staff
As far as staff communication goes, I only let a small group of AFO staff know all the information about the game prior to the convention’s weekend. Anyone involved in running the game, working on the storyline, or running the convention would be updated on the game’s plans.

I thought they would be the only ones who needed to know what was going on with the game but others(like the head of volunteers) should have been well-informed as well. There were also conflicts in the schedule that caused certain people and equipment to not be available for the game when I had hoped.

Anime Festival Orlando is a big convention and there is a lot more going on besides the game. This makes it hard for the head staff to keep track of everything. I am glad that they offer us who work on the game a tremendous amount of support. Luckily, next year’s game team will have the Director of Events on board so that communication will become more solid.

Communication could have been improved with more clear, quicker, and concise documentation. While all of the collected Swords of Orlandia III were printed into a 70+ mini-novel, the “Game Masters’ Guide” I wrote was even bigger. It contained everything about the game. EVERYHING! It was supposed to be used as a reference and cover everything from gameplay to storyline to tavern events.

More of this would have helped get the game rules across.

In more recent research on how to improve this, I discovered that some game companies keep their documentation of game rules separate from documentation covering all other aspects of the game. This will be in effect for future designs. Not only that, instead of explaining things in paragraphs, I plan to be more concise with bullet points, flow charts, and visuals. This may get many points of the game across better.

I could probably write more about this; however, that would make things seem more severe than they already were. The game was successful, but better communication amongst all parties would have improved the game’s quality and management.

Conclusion:

Working on Sword of Orlandia III and running the game at AFO was a blast! There were definitely some lessons learned that we can use for next year. We need to work on better delivery method of the game and story to the players and even the non-game staff of AFO. We also need to simplify the game rules so that the game is easier to jump into for new and casual players. By simplifying the game, documentation of the game should also become easier to read and understand.

In addition, the storyline during the convention needs to be more flexible so that the game’s progress can affect it like the storyline affects the game. This will connect the two better and improve the experience for the players. Most importantly, the currency can’t be the coolest thing about the game!

I am really happy with how Swords of Orlandia III turned out. The live-action game has become of a staple of AFO and has helped get the convention a stronger identity in a state where there is at least one anime convention occurring every month. Together, we succeeded in creating an interactive experience that no other anime convention in the area – no, the country – has.

Making a live action game and running it is a lot of hard work. Many people were involved with the design, story, production, and management of the game and it turned out very well, despite some problems. We now know what those problems are and many of them have already been addressed for next year’s game. I can’t tell you what will happen next year, but rest assured the lessons learned from this year will result in a better game at AFO 11.

Until then, look up to the skies!