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This review contains no spoilers.
Substance
MCNASC is a LARP for 10 primary characters, plus 3 characters for a non-required tertiary plot. There are 4 additional characters that are suitable for "dead" players to use as a replacement character, or to use for latecomers or significant others. This makes the LARP have a minimum of 10 players, and a max of 17. There is also what I call a "bystander" template that can also be use by semi-participants like significant others.
The book suggests 2 gamemasters, which is probably about right.
The book also suggests that the game can be played in about 4 hours, making it suitable for a dinner party. I suspect that it actually requires a bit longer, as there probably should be at least a half-an-hour for instructions and startup, and half-an-hour for denouement. The game itself probably could be stretched to 6 hours with a full cast of characters, but there is probably not enough material for characters to play for 8 hours.
The setting for the plot is a small house, which can be someone's home, but a large room should work fine. A number of "virtual" locations can be useful if you don't have a house, including an office, cars, and various drop boxes for the players to send secret messages to each other.
The basic public plot is that it is time again for the monthly meeting of the "New Age Society", which consists of a number of California-stereotype flaky psychics and metaphysical wannabes.
The group has been together for a number of years, but just in the last few months a few members have been robbed, and in the last month several have been killed!
The book opens with 12 pages of GM information, including changes from the standard "Rules to Live By" rules in this LARP and a checklist of items that you'll need for the run (basically all common office supplies except for colored dots required by the "Rule to Live By" damage system.) Another checklist in included of how you should distribute items and info to players (this is very helpful, as it would be easy to make a mistake).
The GM guide continues with a list of events that should happen during the beginning, middle, and end of the game, various special item mechanics, and quick "true" character summaries for all the characters in the LARP. The GM section concludes with a very helpful casting list, which includes suggestions like "give this to someone willing to get into people's faces" and "this character is unlikable, make sure that the player isn't easily offended", etc.
The next 3 pages are the Welcome invitation, which is suitable for sending to your players in advance, and some rules notes for players.
Most of the rest of the book is character bios. Each of the primary characters typically has 4 pages of bio, at least 2 pages of history "You were born...", a page of what the player should know about other characters, and a page of character statistics and possessions. The more minor characters have 2 pages each.
Most of the characters in this LARP require someone with decent roleplaying or acting experience to play effectively. Most are flamboyant (in many different ways) and all have aspects that are not "nice" that need to be played for the game to work. Thus I recommend this LARP to a more experienced LARP troupe, as many new LARPers will not be able to carry off most of these roles.
At the end of the book are 8 pages of item cards, ~10 per page for a total of 87 items. This is the only part of the book that MUST be photocopied, as the items are back to back to each other.
Substance Summary: Overall I liked the this LARP. It is not a pure "freeform" LARP, as there is prop discovery, secret revelations, and outside circumstances that can help the players drive the plot forward, but it is not an overly complex LARP. It is not a simple "murder mystery" plot either. The characters are well drawn (though harder then average to play) and interesting.
The biggest shortcoming of the LARP is that it requires the "Rules to Live By" game system to play. There is a 6-page summary of the "Rules to Live By" game system in The Book of LARP, which I reviewed last week, which should have been included with this book.
Personally, I'd not use the the standard "Rules to Live By" system with this LARP as I'm not a big fan of dice-based LARP systems, so instead I'd probably just use the optional "Finger Fling" rules offered by that system, which is simpler.
I also would have appreciated more notes from play-testing. The game is apparently at least 10 years old by the time this book was released, and some advice based on how some of those earlier games were played out would have been useful. Some advice on how to modify the LARP for your own needs would also have been nice.
I have some minor quibbles with the plot device of "switched briefcases" -- it is an old and tired LARP standby. However, this is an older LARP, so who knows, it might have been the first to use this plot device.
Overall I give this LARP a rating of Substance: 4 Meaty.
Style
The book is 6" x 9" (i.e. slightly larger then a trade paperback) has 88 pages, and is saddle-stitched and stapled, presumably so that it can easily be disassembled for use in the LARP.
The cover is beautiful, with an Art Deco logo and graphic surrounding a classy color photo of a table set for a party, with some tarot cards set about for mood.
The individual character sections are well laid out, each with artwork representing the character. Three nitpicks: In long LARP character summaries, I wish that important points, like names, were in bold, it makes them easier to spot later when you need them. Also, some of the graphics representing the characters contain information that should not get out to the other players, for instance, one character is carrying a blade that no one should know about. This means that this artwork is not useful for a player to show another player what they look like in the game. Last, some of the artwork has text wrapped on both sides of it, making it hard (imagine graphic here) to read.
The font and layout are readable (though I suggest to everyone not to photo-reduce pages; instead print originals to the smaller size, your fonts will look better and be more readable), the editing of the book appears to be well done (though I am not a grammarian), and I found no obvious inconsistencies when reading the LARP (which is easy to make a mistake on as there are so many cross-references).
My biggest problem with the book is the size. 6" x 9" when unfolded is slightly larger then 8-1/2" x 11", which means that you can't photocopy the book easily (for which permission has been granted). Instead you have to cut all the pages in half. The book appears to be reduced down from 8-1/2" x 11", which would have been a much better format for the LARP book itself.
Style Summary: A quality book, with minor imperfections such as size. Overall, I have to say the book is Style 4: Classy and Well Done
