Live action role playing is the hybrid child of both table-top role playing games and theatre. We script adventures, construct props, scrounge costumes, and even build set pieces, all in the name of ever more immersive game play. One need look no further than WhiteWolf's "Mind's Eye Theater" system for examples of overt "game-as-interactive-theatre" theory. Despite this growing appreciation of the theatrical elements of what we do, most medium and large sized LARP groups rely almost exclusively on pre-game preparation, game-master intervention, and good old-fashioned suspension-of-disbelief to carry them through key transitions and special effects in game time. When resources permit, these rough edges can be smoothed with the presence of an additional behind-the-scenes person, a stage manager of sorts. What follows is a description of exactly what a stage manager can do to improve a LARP experience and how to do it given the limited resources of most game groups.

What does a stage manager do?
Just as every gaming group has that inveterate schemer who knows how to blunder his/her way into the one aspect of the game that the Keeper/Script writer hasn't anticipated, so every group needs someone quick enough to think of a rapid way to turn that pack of ghouls waiting in ambush into an angry mob of townspeople. Traditionally, this would be the Keeper's job, but when your NPCs are flesh-and-blood people who have to move from point A to point B on cue, rather than stats on a sheet behind a screen, making up those additional NPCs on the spot is a much harder task and can kill game momentum fast. Keepers/storytellers are there to adjudicate action and conflict and any task that makes them suddenly unavailable to players threatens the flow of the game. So too the inevitable problem of The Big Monster at the End of the Game. Let's say your erstwhile heroes have arrived too late to stop the Nasty Ritual but just in time to serve as snacks for the monster that you and your buddy spent a Saturday building. You have a few seconds in which to make that monster appear in a way that actually surprises the players. They want that surprise... they can turn it into fear, and HEY isn't that emotional trickery one of the payoffs in LARPing? So what happens if the guys playing Monster Head and Monster Ass can't hear the cue through all that chicken wire and styrofoam? Your players' rational minds inform them that something has gone wrong and you lose the moment to a lesser experience of simply seeing Bob and Kenny in styrofoam a few beats later. Again, never a problem in table-top play, but if you wanted table-top gaming, you wouldn't be dressed like THAT, now would you?
A stage manager prevents these problems by worrying about two things: props and NPCs. Is every prop in place? Are you sure? What about that bum whose supposed to utter a cryptic clue before dying mysteriously? He's no good if the players can't find him at the right moment. Again, pre-game preparation is vital and even a good stage manager is no substitute, but pre- game planning ALWAYS goes to hell, more or less, once you have inventive, paranoid players involved in your scenario. The stage manager is there to make sure the planned stuff goes off without a hitch when it can, and to improvise behind-the-scenes when your players take the game in totally new directions. How do I do this, you may ask? Here are a few tips and tricks I've learned.

Know your resources
This is the most important condition of stage managing, and the main function of a stage manager. Someone needs to know where everyone and everything is. How many NPCs do I have? Who has to be where and when? Can I use Susie and Larry as cops if a player decides to call the police, or will I have to give them the old "we've already had three prank calls from that house tonight, kid!" routine? Know the script as well as the Keeper does, if not better, because once the game is underway, your Keeper will be concentrating on the players and won't have time to manage the NPCs. Stage managing is a thankless job on the face of it, but there is nothing more fun than sliding that copy of Nameless Cults onto the bookshelf just in time for the players to find it (because they wimped out and didn't threaten the old antique dealer until he gave it up). Know your space. Players will frequently decide to go somewhere you haven't planned for, and you may need to improvise a police station or a morgue or an asylum. I always try to plan at least one "dead space", a room or rooms where NPCs hang out and I can keep my emergency stuff (see below) unless a sudden need arises. PCs get hinky when they have to view a body in what was the study just five minutes before.

Make nice with the NPCs
It almost goes without saying that since some of these people are going to have to spend a lot of time waiting to be prop in someone else's fantasy world, you should go out of your way to let them in on what is happening in the game, funny events, and problems. If you game with a group of friends, you'll probably do this automatically or find yourself spending your weekends alone. If you manage for a larger group or convention games (like I do), you rely on the good will and patience of really helpful people and they should know that they are as important to the game as anyone else in it. Good ways to show this are little after-game curtain calls or de-briefs where gamers and NPCs can compare notes, or some kind of souvenier (I gave my NPCs their security clearance badges from The Phoenix Project one year).
Also, work with your Keeper. If you have a smaller group, the whole NPC/PC division might be hard to manage, in which case someone needs to do some inventive scripting to make the traditional NPC roles into playable roles. It requires careful balancing and character development, particularly within the Cthulhu game world, but some groups have been doing it successfully for years now.

Make command decisions
If you know your script, you know what events are essential to good game play and which events can be bypassed or changed. Unlike table-top games, your players can't simply throw the entire game out the window or that trashes all your work...and most experienced gamers are good at being aware of boundaries without letting it ruin their character play, but you can't rely on that to carry you through. If you spent all Saturday building Shub-Niggurath, by God they are going to SEE Shub-Niggurath. A good part of that imperative is the Keeper's responsibility...she may have to rule a spell ineffective, for example, but you have to be prepared to make the physical element available...such as that copy of Nameless Cults I mentioned above. A real-life example of necessary vs. important: My players found themselves trying to unravel a disaster at a military research facility, one that would re-occur if they did not act in time, complete with Big Monster. Two items were hidden (but findable with minimal work) on the base, a security video tape of the earlier incident (a brilliant piece of special effects work by late video wunderkind Jay Palmer) and a LAW rocket launcher (the genuine article...a beautiful prop). Neither were ESSENTIAL to game play, butGODhow we wanted the players to find them!! The Keeper could have pointed them in the right direction. I could have re-located the props after it was obvious they wouldn't find them. Neither of us did, and the players didn't see those props until after they had died horribly at the hands of a Dimensional Shambler. A judgement call for us, BUT the ultimate direction of the game was not altered by our decision. Had either prop been necessary to keep them on the base during the remainder of the game, I would have gladly moved the props.

Keep a Low Profile
Just as the Keeper/Storyteller should maintain a low-key presence, so the stage manager should do the same. I wear black utilitarian clothes and soft-soled shoes, and keep out of sight as much as possible. You should be spending most of your time checking on your NPCs (bring `em something to drink, it's hot in that ghoul mask) and making sure they don't wander off from boredom or double-checking props and costumes. That's your leisure time activities. Always be at a cue a few minutes before time, make the cue/event happen, watch to make sure no problems occur, fix any problems that crop up as quickly and quietly as possible, then get you and any dead NPCs out of the way (unless they have to lie there until the cops arrive). Like I said, not a job for those who love the spotlight, but when everyone is raving about the experience later, you know who made it come off without a snag.
One good suggestion for maintaining a low profile while staying in contact with your Keeper is to get a set of walkie-talkies or radios. We have used these in the past and find it makes coordinating things like ambushes much easier and much more surprising, plus it gives your Keeper a means of warning about changes to the script in time for you to do something about them.

Be Prepared
Always have extra masks, extra makeup, and extra bits of costume around. Some suggestions include: --shoulder boards, guns and badges, to improvise police officers
--stocking caps, dark jackets, halloween fangs and witches' nails, for that last minute ghoul or undead.
--fake blood, plastic knives, ropes and assorted tools of mayhem, for when you have to kill off that annoying investigator who won't stay in character.
--extra mythos tomes can hold useful spells for players who can translate and didn't manage to unravel your more subtle puzzles (but be careful of introducing these into game play too early as they tend to throw the game off balance or turn it into a struggle for ownership of the powerful book).
-- extra characters, really the province of the Keeper, but unwritten rule number 1 is trust only yourself to get the important stuff done...Keepers tend to be artsy freaks with their heads in their...um...rulebooks. ;>
-- pen and paper and any assorted forms you think might be appropriate, since some goober always asks to see a bill of sale or a medical report that you didn't anticipate writing up.
--duct tape, scissors, and a staple gun will solve any problem, but are great for last minute repairs (I don't recommend hot glue guns or anything that has to be plugged in to work).
-- generic black robes are great for unexpected priests or cultists.
-- bedsheets dyed with RIT dyes dark and yuckky colors and some white. I've used dyed sheets to make last minute amorphic shambling horrors and white sheets to wrap dead bodies, drape altars, or create hospital rooms.
Don't try to be last-minute propmaster and don't let the rest of the group designate you builder of all things, maker of all props, but DO be prepared for emergencies. Also, know the game rules. If the party splits, you may have to serve as an ad hoc Keeper to resolve a combat or skill test, and you'd look pretty stupid thumbing through the rule book.

Break the Rules
The best games of all (from the point of view of the stage manager) are the ones that seem on the edge of falling apart but keep moving and have people talking about them for a year afterwards. To do this, to have this kind of fun (and not learn to hate stage managing) you have to know when to break every single rule I've suggested. Keep a low profile? I've stage-managed while in a major NPC role before and it worked; playing chief scientist let me run around as much as I needed to and be as erratic as I had to be. Make command decisions? Always be ready to let the players dictate odd turns of event if you suspect you can produce the outcomes you probably can. As far as I'm concerned, there is only one sacred rule here: have fun doing it.
Finally, stay in touch with your Keeper. She has final say on the game events, but both of you need to know what's going on with the other or the game will fall apart quickly. Again, I can't recommend walkie-talkies enough (they saved our collective butts at the last Magnum Opus Convention game with players scattered all over a hotel). Chances are if you can't come up with a solution to a problem your Keeper can, or vice-versa, and it's all worth it when that last player dies or drops gibbering to the floor.
(David Salmon stage manages Cthulhu Live convention games, scripts them, plays himself when he's allowed to, and does molecular neurobiology at Vanderbilt University in his spare time.)