3. The Needs and Constraints Imposed by a LARP Environment

3.1. Art

Obviously your average Nightfall player is not a world-class standard artist. Hence it is very hard to even attempt to make any sort of judgements about the characters' talent etc. Hence it's hard to use this as a measure of prestige. In fact, at present, artistic ability appears to be of only peripheral importance to the Toreador in the game.

3.2. Parties

There are numerous problems with trying to use attendance at/invitation to parties as part of a system for regulating prestige.

Theoretically your average Toreador party would contain a select few Toreador, a fair number of artists of various sorts whom the host is patronising, a fair number of beautiful people/socialites who hang out with the art scene and maybe a few select kindred from other clans. The guests will hang about discussing art, gossiping and being beautiful. Toreador do not have clan meetings they rely on the gossiping that goes on at other events to relay any information, on the whole though, they find kindred politics uninteresting.

In Nightfall, people are going to want to "play Nightfall", i.e. scheme and well... things. They will want a fair number of players/ "important" NPCs around and they will not really want to discuss things which they could discuss in the pub with their mates anyway, if they were so inclined (maybe I'm doing Nightfall players a disservice here, but I have a feeling that the sort of gathering I describe in the last paragraph will not provide an enjoyable regular roleplaying event (OK maybe the odd one-off, but not every month)). I'm also not convinced that enough people can be found to play the NPCs required on a regular basis to hold such events.

The principal problem is going to be that people will want to hold Toreador balls whose social composition is all the Toreador, several other player characters and maybe a couple of NPCs. In fact, on the whole, most players will probably want to come/expect to be asked to Toreador balls and may, quite rightly, feel that their roleplaying opportunities are being curtailed just because they happen to have chosen to play a character who isn't a beautiful person.

A subsiduary problem, linked to the difficulty of "judging" art will be that hosts will probably invite anyone who feels like it to perform/display rather than being selective.

Secondly, as people are playing "Nightfall" they will want to be involved in the large scale politics/plot (with a few notable exceptions) and as a result will probably want to be more reliably informed about events and have a chance to discuss them more openly than would be possible in meetings where a large number of non-clan members/mortals are present.

3.3. Politics

It should be obvious that politics and hence Status has its part to play in prestige, since politicians woo and are wooed by the rich and famous. In Nightfall politics, well vampyre politics anyway, is likely to be even more influential since it is a more integral part of the game than being beautiful.