Making Casting Surveys that Don’t Suck
(Because a lot of them are a total slog)
So you wrote a LARP, you have players lined up to play it, and now you have to figure out who plays what character.
You’ve probably filled out some god-awful casting surveys in your time as a LARPer. You don’t want to contribute to this problem, you really don’t. Now, how do you make a casting survey that’s actually good?
Always ask hard limits and trigger topics. This is #1. Players will put up with a good amount of divergence between their survey preferences and casting… but being hit with an unexpected trigger can really set them back mentally for a potentially long stretch of time. This isn’t a casting preference, it’s a need.
For games with unavoidable, common trigger topics baked into the game, you may want to have a question listing these elements and asking players if they’re uncomfortable with any of them. That way, if they say they’re not comfortable with the content, you can reach out to them to tell them you’re concerned that the game may not be a good fit for them.
This is always awkward and never fun. But it’s better than somebody having a breakdown mid-game because they encountered something they’re not comfortable engaging with and can’t avoid in the game, and now it’s too late.
If running a game with pre-gendered characters, ask players what types of pronouns they’d be willing to have for their character.
These can be different from their OOC pronouns!
Ask if people want to play characters in leadership positions or positions of authority. This ideally should always be opt-in. Not everyone is comfortable playing a leadership character, and your game will struggle if you have a reluctant leader.
Ask if people are comfortable with playing openly antagonistic characters. Especially if this involves perpetrating bigotry, even if it’s fictional, in-universe bigotry. Expect these roles to be harder to fill.
Ask if people are comfortable playing a character with a big, gamechanging secret.
Obviously, some games are based around secrets, and by signing up for those games, players can be seen as automatically opting into secrecy and reveals, but for games that are not secret-based, this is a good axis to ask about.
Ask if people are comfortable being betrayed. Some people really don’t do well with betrayal. Hitting somebody with an unexpected betrayal plot can really ruin their gameplay.
Again, this is sometimes baked into a game as a whole, and maybe don’t play “Betrayal and Secrecy: The Game” if you don’t want betrayal or secrecy. This is why signposting content and gameplay types is so important.
Ask what tropes people enjoy playing the most. This can be open-answer or checking different boxes… but this is definitely super helpful to have!
If you have people rank things from 1-5, please explain what the numbers mean! Does 1 mean “I actively don’t want to play this and will be upset if it’s on my sheet” or does it mean “I am apathetic to its existence”?
Make any “forced-choice” questions between two different variables actually have opposite things on each end of the spectrum. Don’t make people pick between purple and banana.
More pages =/= better. People like one-page surveys. Even if they’re long.
If you must have multiple pages, having a way people can read/access the whole thing and noodle on their answers for later pages is helpful!
You can save a Google Form as a PDF by going to the 3-dot menu and printing it, and then reuploading as a Google Doc PDF.
If you have people rank character concepts, please make them no more than 2 sentences each. People don’t want to scroll through pages and pages of character descriptions and remember which ones they liked. This really works best for games with very small character lists, not larger games, due to the sheer amount of content you’d expect players to get through just to fill out a casting survey.
I have dropped games before for having this be their casting method.
And I’ll fucking do it again.
If you have people rank or list factions/groups they’re interested in, please make the faction list easy to find and quick to read. Nobody wants to dig through 2 emails and 4 Google Docs just to figure out what you’re trying to ask.
Best practice is to just list the faction descriptions right there in the question. Keep it short, just tell them the basics of what they need to know, and plop it in the survey directly.
Questions that are worded in ways that set the tone or vibe can be fun!
This is totally optional but I think it makes surveys more fun to get through. Have them say how their Jellicle Cat would meow, ask them what music they’d like to hear if they were feeding as a vampire, etc.
And there we go! Happy casting!
