larp_musing

A recent announcement about the structure of the forthcoming UK fest larp Empire (that replaces maelstrom)

http://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/wicket/bookmarkable/uk.co.profounddecisions.website.pages.epages.blog.Overview;jsessionid=13by8acaphgpl?0

Tabletop rather than larp, but for general amusement I wanted to put up the link to this for those who haven't seen it.

http://www.dragonraid.net/info

It's a publised 'christian rpg,' interesting as a (bad) example of using rpgs to convey a moral message.

A small extract form their site:

"In addition to the Adventure Master, a typical DragonRaid game has three to six players. Each player is assigned a character called a LightRaider, with particular strengths and weaknesses; these characters then practice working together to fight evil and carry out assignments for The OverLord of Many Names (Jesus). As the Adventure Master describes various situations to the players, the players tell what their characters do; then the Adventure Master describes the consequences of their actions.

For example, in the first adventure (an easy-to-play introduction to the game system) the players meet a troll who wants to give them "gifts" which are really temptations to sin. The three temptations put before the players are gawking at bodies on the beach, buying all the clothes they could ever desire, and going to a music concert where there will be plenty of "pleasure potions" (drugs). The troll asks each person which of the three "gifts" they would like to have.

Just before encountering the troll, the LightRaiders had put Luke 9:23 into their own words and begun learning that every LightRaider must deny himself and follow the OverLord. Now the troll is offering them things which will take them off that course. While the LightRaiders are considering their response, a door behind the troll begins to blaze brighter and brighter with the initials O L M N (OverLord of Many Names) to communicate allegorically that they are not to take any of the troll's offers but rather to proceed through the door (i.e., "follow the OLMN"). Those who act wisely will escape the troll's trap; those who act foolishly, by accepting one of the troll's offers, will suffer the consequences and become "sin enchanted". Since the Raid Team's assignment cannot be accomplished without the whole team, the others must rescue the enchanted character. They accomplish this by giving their fallen team member counsel from the Scriptures until the enchantment is broken.

Every adventure has many such lessons. DragonRaid adventures put the players in decision-making predicaments in order to stimulate Christian growth. The players know that they are being instructed in the Word of God and the Christian Life, but they find it exciting and challenging. Furthermore, the players' responses to challenges in the game help the Adventure Master to discern and deal with areas of weakness in real life.

For example, if a player is likely to fall prey to one of the troll's three temptations in real life, he or she is also likely to say that his or her character accepts the troll's offer. This lets the Adventure Master know where that person is in their own spiritual walk so that the issue can be addressed with prayer and counsel. "

This is an interesting assumption - that a moral weakness by a character indicates a mortal weakness on the part of the player (wthin the paradigm of the writer). That is, there is an implicit presumption of bleed-in.

I was looking at the booking form for a Netherlands larp. It had the following player preferences:

"I enjoy my roleplaying experience the most if I can be a... * Choose one or multiple answers

- Puzzler (I like to solve puzzles, riddles and foremost The Main Plot of the event.)
- Social animal (I want to interact with other characters.)
- Reenactor (I want to perform my part as realistic as possible and I don't care so much as to which storyline surrounds me.)
- Facilitator (I enjoy creating gameplay for other people.)
- Gamer (I...MUST...WIN...THIS...GAME and do far better than any other person present!)
- Loser (I don't mind being on the losing side of the game. Destroy me, I can take it.)
- Conspirator (I want intrigues and I want to snuggle up in dark corners brooding about it and secretly plot and scheme against anyone who is my opponent.)
- Leader (I enjoy being a leader, telling my group what to do and give public speeches.)
- Protagonist (Yes! Spotlight! I am right here! I bask in your undivided attention.)
- Wall flower (I prefer to just watch and stay a bit at the background.)
- Paranoid schizofrenic (Frighten me, scare me, horrify me, I want to trust no one!)
- Victim (I bathe in misery.)
- Sadist (I enjoy destroying lives and happiness whereever I see it.)
- Hero (Here I am to save the day!)
Other: "

Interesting list of recognised preferences. If we treat this as a generic list rather than tailored to the particular larp setting, would you add / remove / change any of them?

A recent post from Matt Pennington, in relation to his new larp 'Empire'

***
"We haven't set the minimum standards for the game yet, we're still working on that, in common with many other elements of the game.

As a hobby we've spent years trying to improve the immersion value of the weapons, moving from gaffa to latex, better techniques and developing an industry of professionals to make them - all to try and get them as close in appearance to actual weapons as possible.

Why would we do all that if deep down we didn't feel it made the game better? Why do people spend money on weapons, costume, armour, masks, props? We could just pretend to be orcs with a dab of green snazz on our nose, we could use karrimat in gaffa for armour and make costume from a curtain with a whole in the top for our head. We don't do these things because they damage the immersion of the game - no matter how good our imaginations.

Everyone has a different tolerance level for these things. Some LRPers don't care about immersion all that much, some do. Most of us find some elements irritate more than others. I hate cigarettes, I can just never see them as IC, but that's partly because I hate them in real life. But every non-setting appropriate element damages my immersion to some degree.

Some of the damage is not fixable. I'm not playing in a LRP game with real steel swords and real steel sword injuries, thank you very much. That's a bit of authenticity too far for me personally. Effectively there are times when authenticity collides with safety - or with personal comfort or practicality. Authentic shoes good - modern waterproof socks - also good. My immersion is usually not improved by feeling cold and wet and miserable.

Likewise there are trade-offs around the best way to improve immersion. We have to eat, so a butane gas cylinder is an effective practical way to cook at an event. Of course it could be replaced with a beautiful aufentik 12th century cooking gas-burner or whatever, but that costs time and money. Should the time and money be spent on that - or is better spent on costume, props for the camp, better IC shoes?

Different people will put the trade-offs in different places, different people will put in different amounts of effort, because they care more or less and have more or less time, money and skills, as well as having a different judgement on what bits are important.

To me the point is that we can all do better with reducing the impact of immersion breaking items in the game. PD are trying to put emphasis on immersion in our games, so we're encouraging all our players to agree to do what they can to get the best costume and props they can and to minimize the visibility of immersion-breaking items where they can. A butane cylinder to cook on is fine - but keep it out of sight as best you can, don't put it in the centre of a beautiful IC camp. A cool box is a sensible way to store your food at a warm event - can you cover it with a blanket?

A great LRP event is a combination of ambition - and practicality. We all strive to produce the very best event we can, but that ambition should be tempered by what is realistic to achieve so that we can apportion our efforts wisely to get the best overall effect for everyone.

But it's wise to avoid confusing "This is easy for me to do" with "This is easy for everyone to do". The answer is always easy when you know it, but what is challenging for some may be easier for others. Saying "this is easier than it looks, here are a load of ways to make it work on a tight budget and save you money" is great. Saying "this is easy" can make people respond negatively. They feel excluded if it doesn't seem easy to them rather than encouraged to think "Hey I could do that".

Yes, yes we do need to replace all of our camping gear. We should all be striving to get the possible kit to make the best possible game. Do we need to do it for the first event? Of course not. For the fifth event? No. There is no schedule or routine, each of us has a varied amount of disposable income that we want to dedicate to the hobby. Many will want new costume, weapons and camp dressing for the first event. It would not be a good to turn up in your frock coat and musket for our medieval game and say "I spent my costume budget on this aufentik cooking pot"

Everyone has to set their own priorities, central dictat only works well in North Korea missile tests. But what I hope we Empire can have is a general groundswell of ambition to make this the most extraordinary LRP game that anyone has ever been involved with. And that requires us all to want to improve our kit - not just for the first event - but for every event.

Nobody should be held to account for what is bluntly an unimportant non-game item - but it would be cool if every one of us wanted to do the best we could. Instead of being defensive about the things we haven't done - we should be positive about the things we have done and just say "Yeah, that gas burner is OOC, so I keep it out of sight in my tent. It's on my list to sort one day - after I have bought a beautiful IC tent and decked out my war elephant with a proper IC howdah".It's down to PD to get the best possible site to run the games on. It's down to the players to get the best possible kit they can to play the game with.

The fact that things are not perfect, that nothing is perfect, is the basis that we can *all* take to think "What can I improve for next time" - not a justification for saying "really - does it matter - it's just a game".

Yes, it's *easy* to be a kit nazi. You just need a good sneer and better costume than the player next to you. It's much harder to get a really positive community spirit developing around "Lets all help each other to have the best possible kit we can".

Which is why whenever the issue comes up I tend to post very long and lengthy responses... Because I think this issue, more than any other single issue, is the most challenging aspect of Empire. It's the make-or-break point for the game. If we get this right, we'll have an awesome game and everything else will just be icing on the cake.

Remember the immortal words of Bill Shankley - "Some people believe LRP is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that".

LRP is hobby, it's just a game - none of it really matters. And it's profoundly important to keep that clear in our minds, at the point where people are upset and angry and shouting at each other over some trivia. But if we say "It's just a game, it doesn't matter" then we lose our passion for life. Would artists say "It's just art, it doesn't matter"? I suspect most would not.

"If we want our games to be awesome, we must be awesome to our games" - The Sphinx, Mystery Men."
****

What struck me strongly is the use of the term 'immersion' to refer to physical props. This is something that came up in my research as one of the ways the term is used, but it's interesting to see such a clear example of it here.

After finding out how the dates of different events meshed, I've decided on my next travel plans. It's another 3 point trip to get the most out of travelling.

5/6 fly to tampere via helsinki
6-8/6 DIGRA, academio conference on digital games. I figure attending this will strengthen my hand for phd applications (since I'll need to include digital games to some extent).
8/6 fly to Stockholm (still need to be book this, as I'm co-ordinating with someone else doing both events)
8/6-13/6 Little Loving Larp, about the 1980s gay scene / aids.
13/6 fly home

I got back yesterday from my big trip to fastaval (danish national convention, mainly 'semi-live' games), the roleplaying in games academic conference and solmokota (knudepunkt in finland).

Some highlights:
- I play 6 different scenarios at fastaval. Higlights were Metropolis (based on the classic film), love story (an emotional hardcore game for me about relationship counselling gone wrong, which used my own 'ars fruti' mechanic) and my girl's sparrow (an r-rated game).
- My heart's blood scenario had 4 runs at fastaval (I GM'ed 2 myself). Feedback is been pretty positive, and I'm inspired to write another literary scenario (possibly the scottish play) over the year.
- Given it was my first every academic conference, I was reasonably with how the role-playing conference went. I wasn't as out of my depth as I thought I would be.
- Highlights from SK included the panel discussion on psychological safety in larp (partly a backlash about the 'let's all play close to home and be mean to each other' strand of play that's been developing on the nordic scene) and the workshop on how to run pre-larp workshops.

Where I am with various projects:

- Dissertation. My tutor tells me I'm on for a pass with merit currently, but could bring it up to a distinction. I have about 6 weeks to do so.

- PhD Applications. I've applied to the OU, and had a discussion with a tutor at Bristol Uni. A lot of places have deadlines around the 17th, so I need to have another look for back up plans over the next week.

- Academic conference. My submission to present a 5000 extract from my dissertation at a conference in april got accepted. I have until march 19th to put this together; this has been a big plus point when selling myself to phd supervisors.

- Trip. All 3 flights, hotels and uk trains booked. Need to book for the actual events when they open later this month.

- Fastaval Scenario. It's pretty much done. Deadline is the 15th, so I will try and get another pass over it. Also, I have a bit more work but not much to do on formatting for a print-on-demand book (with a certain other scenario not by me in), which I'll be bringing a small number of copies of in April.

- I've been asked to do some proofreading this month for a foreign larp book.

Busy times, but it's all going pretty well.

Maelstrom, the second biggest UK larp (1100+ players) is ending this year. The company PD are developing a new fantasy larp called 'Empire.' Here is a post from Matt Pennington (the company owner and main organiser), which wnet up on fB recently.

***
"At the end of the day I'm only really interested in running LRP games I can be proud of, LRP games where I can think "I've achieved something here". For me, that increasingly means looking at ways to raise the immersion level - of what PD do for the game and of what the players do for the game. The challenge is that I only directly control one of those things. And the sting in the tail is that I do this for a living, so I have to make the event commercially successful = selling lots of tickets.

I think there are lots of parts to the solution. One part is for PD to continue to try to improve what we do. We've put an art department together for the game, to try to design the look and feel, the visual aesthetics for every nation. We've a meeting next weekend in Preston for the set-design team for Empire - to finalize sets for the game, allocate budgets and start some of the work to build the sets needed for the game. That's part of the solution.

Another part is in setting clear minimum standards and sticking to them. It seems odd to me that pubs can have a no jeans and no trainers policy and make it work, yet that is seen as controversial in LRP... How many people have ever seen anyone actually harmed by an LRP weapon? Yet we spend thousands of hours checking every weapon for safety, but nobody checks the weapons to rule out a bright gold and purple bat'leth... We have odd values in our hobby. I'm keen to work out the ideal minimum standards for the game that strikes the right balance between accessibility and immersion and between commercial success and artistic integrity.

That's the devil's alternative right there but given how hopelessly low most standards currently are in LRP (with the exception pretty much of Dumnoni and a few similar) I think any improvement over our current minimum will be an improvement, provided it is suitably enforced. Having the balls to say "no - you can't wear trainers - of any colour" is vital, otherwise the rule is useless.

The most important element for me is in making the community the solution. I'm interested in creating resources for the game that players can contribute to (e.g. a wiki) in terms of links for supplies of decent costume and armour. Links to patterns and material suppliers and simple explanations of how to make basic costume. I'm interested in seeing photographs of the best costume put up on the website - perhaps with the invitation for the player (and that player *only*) to criticize their costume and talk about what they'd like to do to improve it when they get the money / time. Some of the set designers want to create material so that people can see how to build effective sets at events, so we get more "cool" and less "garden fence panel".

In addition I'm interested in finding ways to work with the community to improve the game directly, having open days on site to work on sets, on costume for monsters, on props for camps. I want to look at budgets from PD for nations, so that nations can purchase materials and build their own gates, command tents, dressing, camp props and so on. Look at providing on-site storage so that players can keep communal or heavy or bulky kit on site.

We need to inculcate the value that the game should be about continuous improvement for everyone, PD and players. We need to make "high immersion" a common objective and we need to make it a practical possibility for as many attendees as possible. I think all of those things are actually vastly more important than simply working out whether white trainers are banned or all trainers are banned, although that is important too."
***
Something that stood out for me (because it came up in my research) is how 'immersion' here is used to refer to the physical 'realism.' In this post, that's all it seems to mean. This is pretty seperate to the Pohjola meaning of immersion as 'becoming a character.'

I swapped a couple of messages with Matt P about this. I suggested that rather than the 'faction camp' (I believe empire is planning to have 5 factions) model, build a more open play area - a fantasy town (like various fantasy town larps that exist in various countries). Walled camps seperate players from interacting. He replied

"I'm not convinced by the open town model, because of the nature of the game we're trying to build, namely a very intense political game where factionalization is important. I think the model you're laying out strongly supports a game set-up where players are fundamentally cooperating. In my experience the more you can do to build barriers between players the better - and physical segregation is a powerful tool in achieving that."

To my mind, the flaw in this is the assumption that in an open town, players (I read that to mean player character) are cooperating. People don't always cooperate in a town. In the post-apoc larp duskland, we had a nasty refugeee camp / town where the strong brutally exploited the weak.

As he says, his design agenda is to build barriers between player (characters) - to construct reasons for conflict. My thoughts on that are doing it in a crude faction-based way doesn't make interesting conflict. He might mean characters fight because they are on different teams. It doesn't promote good deep character interaction.

Also, it encourages people to make characters that fight (politically and probably literally) against each other. In Duskland for example the 'victims' are played by players who have chosen to play those roles because they want that experience (they still had a worker's revolution late in the larp, but they wanted to play out being the oppressed masses). Thre was conflict and combat, but it wasn't intended to be 'X sides of comparable power opposing each other.'

Thoughts?

US talk on edu-larp in school:
https://gameful.adobeconnect.com/_a1107948438/p7tudd6stz0/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

Introduction to Nordic larp:
http://petterkarlsson.se/2012/01/19/why-we-play-an-introduction-to-nordic-larp/

Also, Time article about a US larp in 1941:
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=IUoEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q&f=false

Most of my writing efforts lately have been going on my larp dissertation, currently now titled "Identities at play: An Ethnographic study of the psychological experience of recreational role-players creating and being recreated by fictional identities."

I submit a draft for feedback at the end of this week, and the final version at the end of March. This is one reason why this LJ has been quiet.

Beyond that, I thought I'd post up my plans for the big larp trip in April.

3/4 : fly to denmark
4-8/4 : fastaval in Denmark (official release of my Heart's Blood scenario)
9/4 : fly to Finland
10-11/4 : Role-Playing in Games Seminar (academic conference), Tampere, Finland
12-15/4 : Solmukohta, near Helsinki, Finland
15/4, late : fly home.

Aside from the dissertation, in the next few weeks I need to:
- finish the fixes to Heart's Blood, and format for publication.
- consider if I'm going to present anything at the other conferences. In theory I'd like to present my masters dissertation, but not sure if I've got the time to prepare it.
- book flights, event tickets, etc.