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By Other Means

War is a continuation of politics by other means - Clauswitz

Important note

This is my first offering for a collaboratively written LARP. It might not work. If not, I'm glad to have made the attempt!

I really hope that people will contribute to writing and take ownership. I will take a snapshot of all the documents in this game at some point and then we can playtest it. If you as a collaborative writer want to help with the playtest, you must leave your email address somewhere around here so I can reach you.

If you plan to play in this game, for obvious reasons you shouldn't read it. Please be responsible and do not spoil the fun by reading all the secrets in advance of time.

So, with that in mind, from now on there are

SPOILERS! Players please read no further.

Stuff for debate

LARP, as in LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? - what does 'A' stand for? Julia (Mal's wife) thinks 'Academic' is not something any political party would want to be.
Do we want any characters from the media? I don't think so personally. The convention is a quasi-constitutional one, so I don't think the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? would want the press present.
Faction mechanics. Each faction should have a resource to call upon: the AncunaConferenceOnPoliticalScience ? can get the UN to do things, the GuevarianArmy has soldiers, the CortesOfTheCastilianDelegation ? has money and the RevolutionaryConvention have the threat of a peasant uprising. But how do these things work?
Character mechanics. Quite a possibility of violence in this game. How to moderate?
I've not made the ByOtherMeansConstitution nearly complicated and contradictory enough. It should be almost impossible to read without reading about two alternative meanings into everything. Please can we get some expert obfuscators onto this?
The humour level should be made as clear as possible. This isn't a very serious LARP. The characters are blatant stereotypes. Any way we can introduce ideas from South American form MagicRealism ?? Literary types out there? I'm thinking more Isabel Allende, not Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
What about including a street carnival going on outside at the same time as the congress? I've been thinking about the RevolutionaryConvention vaqueros and the GuevarianDeathSquads as metaphorical elements of carnival, but maybe this has been done to death.

Stuff to be done

Div up this monolithic page into other sections. There's a ByOtherMeansConstitution, for example.
More characters - there are only two army ones, but we need another CortesOfTheCastilianDelegation ? character, another RevolutionaryConvention character and two others from the AncunaConferenceOnPoliticalScience ?.
Deepen the characters. Some, like the GeneralissimoAlessandroNavidad, are pretty detailed. Others, like PedroCuito and VictoriaSantaAnna, are skeletal.

You are allowed to email Mal mailto:mal.morrow@intec.co.za to ask what all this is about.

Introduction

Set in the impoverished South American country RepublicOfGuevaria ? that was recently subject to a coup d'etat led by GeneralissimoAlessandroNavidad.

The LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? meets in the province of Fiorio to consider their next move.

The LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? is an edgy coalition of peasants, nobility and intellectuals with a shared fear of violent insurgent movements in the countryside. Their platform is moderately to extremely right-wing and populist.

The nobility are the accretive remnants of the old Spanish hidalgos with plenty of new blood mixed in. They patronise the Church and supply the political establishment with money. Their organisation in the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? is called the CortesOfTheCastilianDelegation ?.

The peasants are a mass of illiterate and disenfranchised people who have only fear in common with one another. They periodically rise in mobs during peasant revolts, but their effectiveness is blunted by the literate political classes, who fragment them by using racism, bribery and starvation. Their leaders have brought them into the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? via the RevolutionaryConvention.

The intellectuals create the fragile philosophical base for the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?, somehow welding the disparate groups into a whole which staggers on amid insurrection and coup. Because of the intellectuals the party is credible internationally as well as locally. The party is seen in other countries as a haven for the democratic and moderate ideal (whatever the truth). The old AncunaConferenceOnPoliticalScience ? was their initial organisation.

The LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? is strong in all the areas of finance, populism and foreign support, but it has no monopoly on them in the country. It is a provincial party and commands little support in the towns, where the communists and other popular fronts hold sway. They have limited support in areas where the death squads are powerful.

The LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? also has very limited effect on the GuevarianArmy, though the GuevarianArmy has never been so much of an enemy as it has been of the communists. GuevarianArmy officers are aristocrats and soldiers are peasants. This gives the GuevarianArmy a natural affinity for the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?. But the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? does not control the GuevarianArmy. Conversely, the GuevarianArmy commands little respect in the aristocracy, peasantry and universities.

Since the recent coup, GeneralissimoAlessandroNavidad has sought to attract support from the groups who make up the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?. His method is to ask the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? to convene a congress and allow him to address it and seek support.

Of course this is a risky tactic. Not all LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? members support the GuevarianArmy coup. In fact, the RevolutionaryConvention, mostly peasants, wish to overthrow the GuevarianArmy in their turn. In any case the party is beset with factions, each with its own conflicting agenda.

The point of the game is for one faction to emerge that controls three out of four political means of control in the country.

Popular support. This means obtaining the support of the peasantry and revolutionists.
Financial support. This means obtaining the support of the aristocracy.
Foreign support. This means obtaining the support of the academics.
Military support. This means obtaining the support of the GuevarianArmy.

Amidst all these, the Church looks to increase its mandate and ability to affect the future of RepublicOfGuevaria ? and its people. Delegates who are also churchmen (priests) may not vote in elections at the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?, because the Church prohibits explicit involvement in politics. However, the Church encourages political influence, so long as the Catholic agenda is promoted.

The game is structured as a political congress of the party. Player characters are delegates to the congress, acting on behalf of their constituencies. The congress is structured by the party's ByOtherMeansConstitution (a publicly available document which sets the rules for the whole party and how the congress should run). The ByOtherMeansConstitution as a quite tortured and ambiguous document, which is not surprising considering how the party is made up of so many contradictory parts.

There is a ByOtherMeansFormalAgenda for the congress, which will include electing or re-electing party officers such as the chairman, the general secretary and the treasurer. The matter of importance is the recent coup d'etat. This will be discussed from the agenda, and so will the party's response to the GeneralissimoAlessandroNavidad's entreaties. Additional items might come from the floor, according to the debating rules in the constitution. Finally, the ByOtherMeansConstitution might be changed - several factions in the party have specific changes in mind.

The game will encourage delegates to make speeches expressing their points of view. The official means of debating matters is through speeches at congress. Clearly much can also get said and done through 'back room deals', though to adopt any such deals the matter must still at least be in the form of a motion up for debate and vote.

Motives and issues, a consolidated list

Who gets to control the RepublicOfGuevaria ?, and what should be done about the GuevarianArmy coup.
Who gets to control the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?.
The role of the Church.
LiberationTheology ? and OpusDei ?.
The LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? is actually bankrupt - how will this be solved.
The GuevarianDeathSquads - who runs them and what role they could play.
Drugs and GuevarianDrugMoney ?.
The potential for a RevolutionaryConvention popular uprising - possible RevolutionaryConvention rearmament.
The role of ForeignGovernments ? and the United Nations.
Whether the ByOtherMeansConstitution should be changed.
The IncaGold ? - Conquistadors stole it from the Incas, supposedly: what happens to it now.
GuevarianArmyRearmament ?.
What the army might do in politics following the GuevarianArmy coup.
Love and other family affairs.
Class snobbery, class warfare and social movement.

Characters from the GuevarianArmy

The GuevarianArmy has recently taken over the country, but now finds itself in a very exposed position. The UN has imposed armaments sanctions. The national treasury is bankrupt. And the peasants and students are revolting.

The Acting President, GeneralissimoAlessandroNavidad, has asked the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? to convene a Congress so that he might address those who speak for these groups of people. Maybe he can solve these problems at one fell stroke.

Characters from the CortesOfTheCastilianDelegation ?

The CortesOfTheCastilianDelegation ? is the name given to a historic group of colonial noblemen who once travelled to Spain two hundred years ago to present a list of demands. This delegation was the first move in the conflict that led to the independence of what was to become the Republic of Guevaria. In those days the colony was called San Theodore.

The cause of the original Castilian Delegation was a demand by the hidalgos that they be allowed to enslave more Indians and Africans. This part of their mandate the modern Cortes most often chooses to forget.

The formation of the CortesOfTheCastilianDelegation ? indirectly led to the glorious Republic, so the modern hidalgos are proud of its tradition. The Cortes is an informal group which organises itself by seniority and ancient hereditary titles. The aristocratic titles are not recognised by the modern republic, but the hidalgos themselves treat them with reverence.

Characters from the RevolutionaryConvention

The RevolutionaryConvention predates the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? by a few years. It was originally a splinter group from a different revolutionary party. The RevolutionaryConvention joined the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? during the last coup but three when an alliance with the nobility and the academics seemed like a good idea. The LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? is a safe haven for the revolutionaries. Other peasant parties were crushed by one armed faction or another, but the RevolutionaryConvention has survived because of its contacts with those who might otherwise attack it.

The RevolutionaryConvention claims to represent a large part of the peasantry in the RepublicOfGuevaria ?. In the aftermath of the latest coup, the popular mood is ugly. This time the people elected radical revolutionary delegates to this congress of the LARP.

Characters from the AncunaConferenceOnPoliticalScience ?

The Guevarian universities first entered party politics following a particularly uproarious conference on political science held at the University of Ancuna. In the turbulent days before the formation of the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ? during the last coup but three, the academics, university administrators and students could agree on nothing except that the new military government was illegal. They trooped out of the conference hall to find allies. They found the Cortes and the Revolutionary Convention and with them they formed the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?.

Today the AncunaConferenceOnPoliticalScience ? is fossilised in the LiberalAcademicRevolutionaryParty ?. It's still called the Ancuna Conference after all these years because the actual conference never formally ended.

ByOtherMeans