Here are some pictures we took while running this event.
Inspired by the fact that our one live action event (Queensday) was so much fun, we decided to run another one. This time, however, we made it a one round event. The action took place in the capital city of a land that had just been given independence from a larger empire. The nobles had gathered together to choose a King. Only two of the characters were actually eligible to become King - the rest were hoping to be named to various high positions, such as Court Wizard or Warlord. A few of the female characters even wanted to become Queen. For the first hour or so the two competitors for the crown tried to strike deals with the other players, forging alliances and doing their best to convince everyone that they should be King. The two would-be Kings had different strengths - one had plenty of land, the other lots of money. Eventually the players all voted on who they thought should be King. After a brief coronation for the winner the rest of the event featured the King and his newly appointed court dealing with matters of state (including negotiations with visiting dignitaries, played by the KORG folks) while those not in court got to go adventuring and such. Some of those who were not in court were also approached by NPCs asking them to support them with the King and his minions. Basically it was several hours of politics, deal making, and occasional back stabbing as each character tried to reach their goals. Some characters wanted money, some wanted honor, others titles to raise them from their lowborn status. When the NPCs were stirred in it was enough to keep everyone plenty busy.
When live action role playing games work, they're tremendous fun for the game masters and the players. The ideal is to make it so that the players can interact with one another without needing a GM. That breaks the fundamental rule of traditional role playing games - that everything goes through the GM. It won't work for things like combat, in general, because in those situations you need a referee to make some calls. But when the players are striving to convince one another that they'd make a great Prime Minister, or that they should all vote for one particular player to be King, no GM is needed. In Call to the Crown we tried to give everyone lots of goals and stuff to do, so that everyone would stay occupied even if they weren't in the court. All in all it went pretty well, and only a few players got bored because they were out of things to do.