So you're a Questie, and you've heard some of us talk about something called "Otherworld". And you're wondering what it is, and how it differs from Quest.

On the surface, Otherworld and Quest look a lot alike. People put on costumes and run around the Pomfret 4-H with swords, blowing spell whistles, and whomping monsters.

This is a surface impression. Underneath, the two are completely different. Comparing OW and Quest really is comparing apples and oranges.

Before I Forget

It's "Otherworld". Singular. Not "Otherworlds". I don't know where this misimpression began, but I want to put a stop to it. Singular noun. "Otherworld".

What Otherworld Is

Otherworld is a not-for-profit educational group that uses interactive theatre as its method. It was founded by Kristi Hayes, Jodi Riley, and Dorian Hart after they ran Quest II, Banner of Kings. They were inspired to take this entertainment form and use it for a "higher purpose". They've since brought onto staff a number of folks from the Quest crowd: Jim Vincent, Jen Platt, Eileen McLoughlin, Ken and Chris Reeves, and myself. Like Quest, Otherworld runs weekend-long events at the Pomfret 4-H Camp.

The Goal

The goal of Quest is to entertain.

The goal of Otherworld is to teach. No, not like a classroom; more like Outward Bound. One Otherworld participant, a 50-year-old manager, called it "the best teamwork exercise I've ever seen." OW takes teamwork building and does it through interactive theatre, thus making it fun.

In Otherworld, every single piece of gameplay has a higher purpose -- it's not just something for the PCs to do, or something to entertain them. Every encounter they have is secretly designed to encourage cooperation & get the party working better together, or to get them to tell a story in a convincing way, or to get them thinking about what their personal strengths are, and so on.

Accordingly, Otherworld's gameplay is much more centered on the group. At Quest, you often find an encounter where there's a puzzle to solve or a book to decode, and it's the sort of thing that really only 1 or 2 people can do at once. Otherworld's puzzles are group-oriented.

Who Does It

Otherworld is not a LARP group and make no claims to be one. They're not in competition for participants with Quest or NERO or whoever.

Moreover, they're not going for the gamer crowd the way we are. Quest expects that most of its newbies will have some gaming background, will understand that a "wraith" is different from a "ghoul", that an "orc" is a critter from Tolkien, etc. Otherworld deliberately courts mainstream people as participants and does not ask them to have boned up on fantasy or fantasy gaming conventions. Accordingly, its tone is less "hard-core fantasy" and more "storybook" than Quest is.

Also, Otherworld only courts newbies. You can't be a PC twice. Why? Well, Otherworld spends a year developing a new story, and then runs that story for two years. Even then, when they change stories, they re-use gameplay elements (the ones that worked) so that the gameplay is more and more streamlined and refined as the years go on. It means the quality of events continues to improve, but it also means that once you've done it, you know what to expect.

But this is okay! Because, as noted, Otherworld is not a LARP group. Otherworld is trying to impart an experience to the people who have done it. Quest, by contrast, is trying to build a community of gamers who want to keep coming back, and who want to write and run events of their own.

The Party

Otherworld events have exactly 8 parties of exactly 6 people. Each party has one person of each class (ranger, paladin, rogue, cleric, mage, bard), with the class assigned by the Otherworld staff. Many Questies would find this confining ("how dare the GMs tell me what kind of character I have to play!"), but it's how Otherworld maintains a balance between parties (more on that later). Also, Otherworld's participants are all newbies, so it's not confining to them.

Also consider that you can only do Otherworld once, so it's not like your character's stats matter in the long run. It's not as if you're going to be building up your character with XP.

Who You Play

This is the biggest difference of all: at Quest, you are playing a character, one of your own design.

At Otherworld, you are essentially playing yourself. Yes, you may have a fantasy name, a fantasy-world background, and a costume, but your personality is you. At no point will an Otherworld participant say "My character wouldn't do that". You are not playing a part.

This means that the participants are all... how shall I say this?... not dicks. Nobody robs the Inn. Nobody attacks anybody else. Nobody hoards important information or items. When someone yells, "Quick! Help! The princess has been kidnapped!", nobody digs their heels in and asks how many marks you'll give them if they help.

It's not that the rules prevent people from doing any of these things; it's just that human beings are, for the most part, good and helpful, and so they act good and helpful.

The down side, from the Quest perspective, is that you don't have the broad canvas of character types. It can be very fun and/or cathartic to play someone unlike yourself, but that's not what Otherworld is about.

Remember, Otherworld is trying to teach you something about yourself; this doesn't do any good if you're not actually being yourself. By contrast, Quest is entertainment, and is theatrical; it's fun to play someone who's unlike yourself, and Quest's only real aim is fun.

I should also note that what applies to people also applies to parties: you're not making up your party concept on your own. Each of the 8 parties is mailed their party concept about a month ahead of time.

Everything For Everyone

Quest is "Darwinian fun". GMs put fun stuff out there. Enthusiastic PCs run it and grab it; PCs who are less strong-willed (and this includes most newbies) end up tagging along and catching the leftovers. And if you're a wallflower and just want to watch the whole thing, you pretty much can.

Otherworld is trying to give an experience to everyone who does it, not just the zealous alpha types. Accordingly, its storyline and gameplay are specifically designed to give interesting things to everyone. For instance, each party has arrived at the locale on a specific mission. Over the course of the weekend, each party will pursue its mission, and indeed the eight "party paths" all wind and intertwine in a complex plot tapestry that would make your mind stagger. (I note that Otherworld's 2001 staff packet was 275 pages long.) Each party will have fun, and will have unique adventures.

In addition, there are far fewer "glom" activities. You know how when there's trouble at a Quest event, a bunch of people will run after it? Whoever's in front will be the one doing all the negotiating and finding all the widgets. Well, think about what an imbalance that creates. That imbalance is fine for Quest, which considers such things part of its milieu, but it fails at Otherworld, where they don't want some people to have fun and some people to feel like losers. Accordingly, the plot tends to avoid glom-type activities.

This is also why each party has one member of each class: so that everyone feels like they matter. The classes are all balanced so that they all have a role, and the plot provides them all with their chance to shine. For instance, there might be one an encounter that only the party's bard can solve.

Otherworld also makes a specific point of trying to engage the wallflowers and tone down the alpha-dogs. For instance, there's one NPC who inadvertently causes curses. If the staff notices that one person in Party X is doing all the talking and the other party members look kind of frustrated, the babbler might get a curse of Mute for a half-hour, giving the meeker members of the party a chance to come into their own. A particularly meek-seeming person might get a random boon from another NPC who's handing out boons (I can't explain what the boon is without spoiling it, but suffice it to say it's the sort of thing that pulls you out of your shell.)

From a Quest perspective, Otherworld's techniques can go against Quest's grain. Aiming specific obstacles at a given player because he's out front and center? In Quest eyes, that's the GMs unfairly "singling out" that character. Players at Quest are expected to get boons and rewards only if they have earned them, by completing plots; being given a boon because you're being quiet is seen as an arbitrary GM choice. And you know what? At Quest, these things aren't good ideas. But that's because Quest has different aims. At Otherworld, they work great.

I Wanna Try It!

To be honest, I don't recommend Questies try Otherworld.

For starters, Questies already know the layout of the Pomfret campground. This gives them a tremendous leg up, and for this reason alone, Otherworld doesn't encourage Questies to come, because this removes a whole lot of the joy of discovery and exploration that can form the heart of the Otherworld experience.

Beyond that, Otherworld has had its fair share of gamers in the past, and many of them feel frustrated -- because it can be hard to get out of the mindset that you are trying to "solve" an adventure that the GMs have provided for your "characters". Otherworld's PCs are largely mundanes and gaming newbies, and what makes it wonderful for them is that they've never seen (and usually not even conceived) such a thing. They come into the weekend with no expectations, so they have a grand time.

Questies, by contrast, have wagonloads of expectations. They expect a certain kind of storyline, a certain amount of combat, certain types of gameplay, a certain chance to let their players "affect the outcome" and help "tell the story". Moreover, they have a certain second nature they've acquired, a kind of "Questie biorhythm", about how games flow: Friday night introduction, Saturday morning exploration, Saturday afternoon miniquests, Saturday evening confrontation with the villain, Sunday morning putting it all together, Sunday noon the final battle. Games that defy this pattern often frustrate Questies. (I note that Apocalypse Now had no final battle, and so to compensate, once the game ended, the PCs all beat the hell out of each other for a half hour. They had so grown to expect a final battle that they had to get the "urge to whomp" out of their systems.)

I think it would be hard for Questies to overcome years' and years' worth of acquired habits, to enter Otherworld with the totally clean slate that it works best with.

More importantly, though, I don't think Questies will get as much out of Otherworld as the average Otherworld participant. Most people don't have the opportunity to be immersed in a fantasy setting, to act heroic, to feel the adrenaline thrill of a combat. Part of what makes Otherworld fascinating is the same rush you got at your first LARP event. Questies aren't going to get any special rush out of an Otherworld combat, or in interacting with monsters and gypsies and nobles. That's old hat.

In Conclusion

Now, I realize that I've made a number of points above that might make Otherworld sound "better" than Quest (for instance, "The GMs don't forget to provide stuff for every class to do.") So I originally was going to sit down here and then mention ways that Quest is better than Otherworld. Then I realized I'd be undermining my own thesis: that the two are apples and oranges.

I can't make that point enough: Otherworld is not a LARP group. They're not in competition with Quest, and they're not doing the same thing. A documentary and an action film are both movies, but they have very different aims, and different audiences. So too do Quest and Otherworld.