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Born In the USA*

Picture Description: A panel from the comic series Preacher, depicting the Irish vampire Cassidy performing his impression of his American best friend Jesse Custer’s deep Texan accent. His impression is broad and wildly inaccurate, which Jesse notes in amused disbelief.

Author’s Disclaimer: Before I begin, I want to note that for the purposes of this post I am going to give everyone the maximum benefit of the doubt and assume that the creators of 4th of July have the best intentions for their game being a serious examination of an exploited underclass, and also that the players are good people who are likewise approaching their roles in good faith. If you don’t want to extend that faith, that’s your prerogative, but I try to assume the best of people by default. Here goes.

A couple years ago, a Polish larp called 4th of July made waves for its portrayal of an American trailer park community holding the titular holiday party. The images of Europeans cosplaying poor Americans for a game was novel enough to catch headlines not just in the larp community but even in some mainstream media outlets, and as you can imagine the response here in the States was … mixed. Predictably enough after the initial flutter of activity most strong reactions tended to eventually solidify along the lines of either it being hilarious satire and social commentary, or it was pretend poverty tourism that was punching down in poor taste.

Thanks to a friend, I had a chance to look at the design doc and character list for that original run and suffice to say I came away with some serious concerns. I could see what the organizers were going for, no question, and as I said in the beginning of this post I’m not going to question their motives (beyond a few specific points). The game claims to be about the broken American Dream, and by new gods above and all the old gods that sleep beneath the green green grass there’s certainly more than enough to dive into on that subject. There’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with doing so through the eyes of people who feel that dream has left them behind, either, especially compared to portraying the ruling class that benefits from their labor and their suffering. In theory, at least, the basic concept is sound. Absolutely loaded with social land mines to navigate, to be sure, but not inherently so flawed as to be unthinkable.

I also want to be clear for those who might assume I have some sort of knee-jerk patriotic antipathy toward the game that I am just about the farthest away one can be from that point of view. I also feel that reducing any criticism of the game to nothing more than the hurt feelings of people who paused their chanting of “USA! USA!” to yell vaguely in the direction of Europe is reductive and almost entirely inaccurate, at least in the larp community. While sadly there sure are jingoistic American larp bastards – we know, we know, we hate them too – most of the larp crowd I run with is a bit more cosmopolitan than that, to put it mildly. So rest assured if I have problems with this game it’s not because I think America can do no wrong, nor do I wrap myself in a flag and clutch a bald eagle to sleep at night.

No, after reviewing these documents the main trouble I had with that first run was the characters. (Not the players, the characters.) Many of the write-ups went beyond stereotypical and well into the realm of full-blown caricature, displaying traits that were obviously gleaned more from the sensationalized America of film and television than anything approaching the America known to those of us who actually live here. Which isn’t to say that nothing was based on reality; some characters were fine, and it was clear that at least a few were backed by some degree of research or lived experience. But even allowing for the heightened reality of larp and the natural tendency towards exaggerated portrayals for the purpose of drama, there were concepts that were so fundamentally based on misguided stereotypes or overblown tropes it’s hard to see how the larp could realistically achieve its stated purpose of empathizing with these individuals and trying to understand their world and their view of society.

And that leads to another fundamental problem with this game. If your goal is to examine a class of people and their problems, all the good intentions in the world aren’t worth much without a rigorous foundation. That’s true in academia, it’s true in journalism, and it’s true in larp, at least one that aims to be a serious examination of the subject. Which is not to say that there wasn’t research done, because as noted before some elements of the game showed genuine knowledge of white American poverty culture, though that’s also why it’s puzzling other elements so dramatically missed the mark. As I said before and shall now once more, I have no doubt that everyone participating in this game did so in good faith, and I’m sure many of them really came to understand and empathize with their characters. I am not questioning anyone’s roleplaying ability, and I’m sure the game delivered on being an intense and possibly even cathartic experience for those involved.

No, the problem is that I feel these feelings of empathy and understanding are at least partially based on stereotypes, assumptions, and misinformation, which means it’s less about actually understanding these people and more about feeling like you did. How honest can a connection be if it’s not rooted in truth? And if the stated goal of your game is to make people empathize with a real world group of contemporary people, and try to see the world through their eyes, aren’t you doing everyone a disservice by catering to stereotypes and sensationalism? If you’re going to really dig into an entire class experience, especially one that’s not your own, in a country you don’t live in, you need to really put some serious work in, and while there’s definitely a good faith effort overall it’s just not there. Not to the extent it needed to be for their stated purpose, anyway.

Simply said, if I can look through the write-ups for a larp about modern white American trailer park poverty and I don’t see much mention of issues like oxy, payday loans, boiling water before you can use it, struggling schools, untreated disabilities, food insecurity, utility disruption (or simple absence), loss of traditional careers, child protective services, lack of basic healthcare, or even just how damn expensive it is to be so damn poor, it’s reasonable to wonder how well you actually know your subject. And I think it’s also worth mentioning just how relentlessly this game focuses almost exclusively on the negative aspects of the characters’ lives, with comparatively little attention to positives. Which sounds like it makes sense for a game about the failure of the American Dream, but it’s one that trades actual lived reality for more thematic and dramatic power. It is also a common mistake when people condescend to the poor, this looking at them only in terms of problems and flaws and challenges – that’s exactly how you sensationalize peoples’ lives instead of actually seeing them for who they are.

Yes, larp is about pretending to be other people. No, nobody is expecting a single weekend larp to capture every possible detail about the American experience or the people living it. Even Americans rather famously can’t do that. (We are numerous, varied, and quarrelsome folk.) But at the same time when you’re pretending to represent real world individuals and not sexy vampires or dashing elves, the stakes – and obligations – change significantly. You can’t just hand wave or abstract real world concerns that are essential to your subjects. Especially if according to the design doc itself this game is supposed to be a serious examination of a group that is often overlooked or misunderstood in the media, it naturally should follow that you will make a better attempt to investigate the subject than mass media does. The more steps removed you are from a particular group of people, the more work you need to do to make sure you are actually capturing their world rather than projecting just your own notions of what their world should be onto them.

And, just maybe, the more you should consider whether you’re the ones to be telling their stories at all.

I suppose the challenge comes down to that if you’re a comparatively privileged group of people trying to portray impoverished individuals in another country than your own, you have a lot of heavy lifting to do if you’re going to seriously examine their lives and circumstances. Which the game honestly attempted and I’m sure some people did, but it would be hard to imagine how many of them could when I’m not sure the game set them up well to do that. It believed it did, and it certainly tried, but there are serious issues beyond just the character write-ups. It’s also the way they chose to depict their setting, by which I mean the costuming and overall aesthetics of the game.

Which brings me to the present, and therefore the upcoming second run of 4th of July. This time it’s billed as an international run, modified to be more broadly appealing as opposed to directed solely at the original Polish larp audience. While the creators have taken feedback from the first run of the game, and claim – which I believe – to have gotten sensitivity input from people more familiar with the impoverished white American experience, there remain glaring red flags all over this game that make me feel like they still don’t understand exactly what’s so wrong about their approach, and haven’t learned the right lessons from the first game. To illustrate, let me quote directly from the game’s design document, specifically the “Aesthetics: Flashy American retro” section (excerpted here, formatting mine):

“The game takes place in 2019, during the presidency of Donald Trump. Despite the game’s modern setting, Pristine Park tends to still be visually stuck in the ‘80s and ‘90s, decades remembered very fondly since many inhabitants think of them as the best years of their lives. This trend relates to both clothes and music, as well as interior decorations. Thanks to this treatment, the game world will look like the United States as seen in the stereotypical, nostalgic movies and shows without the necessity of removing the use of modern appliances from the game. Pristine Park’s aesthetic is loud and trashy. The characters of 4th of July feel the need for personal expression, spicing up their lives and showing a bit of luxury which takes the form of bombastic clothes and cheap gadgets. We encourage you to have fun with this theme and to think about how your character would express themselves.“

Are you seeing the issue yet? On the one hand, the game talks repeatedly and I believe sincerely about how it wants to be a serious exploration of real issues affecting people not just in America but around the world, involving intense and in-depth roleplaying by players with fully realized characters. There’s even an excellent section discussing how they want this to be a realistic social drama (their words), but then in the very next section they encourage the embrace of a loud and trashy aesthetic, as well as the emulation of stereotypical movies and TV shows. The designers stand by this decision as a way of clearly defining differences between players and characters as well as making clear distinctions between groups of characters, which is their right, but I still think it’s worth asking if the solution to “we need a way to show the players are clearly in character” should involve embracing stereotype and caricature.

I will say that I had slightly more sympathy for this approach – as a designer who runs games in modern settings, I get the need to have costumes that might not be totally true to life as a way to signal game personas vs the players themselves – until I read even further in the document and made what is frankly a rather unsettling discovery. You see, there’s a Pinterest “inspiration board” included for players to peruse, which you need to know exists but I absolutely will not link to, and it’s full of pictures of real Americans living in poverty as well as sensationalized media representations of same, which …. well, I can see why they think that might be a good idea but at the same time if they can’t realize why it absolutely isn’t I almost don’t know what else to say.

Even a cursory glance at the pictures from the first run of this game shows that the majority of the players more than embraced the loud, trashy, and incredibly stereotypical “look” that they believe is associated with white American poverty. I mean no disrespect to the players and their costuming skills when I say this – they were simply following the brief they were given. But that doesn’t mean the brief isn’t deeply flawed, as outlined above, and therefore by its nature prone to creating ridiculous caricatures rather than the nuanced and realistic individuals it purports to create. I’m sure they exist but I don’t know a single American who saw the full run of pictures from this game and thought “well that looks like a realistic depiction of impoverished white Americans living in a trailer park”, which I want to remind you is the stated goal of the game. Not. One. Literally every American in my large and diverse larp circles thought the pictures were a joke when they first saw them; the only question was whether they thought it was amusing satire or just in very poor taste.

Again, I don’t think anyone necessarily set out to play a caricature; the game documents themselves want people to take this very seriously and really try to invest in their personas. I don’t question the good intentions of the creators or their players – but that’s the heart of the problem with this experience, because when you have good intentions it can be so easy to believe that you’re doing the right thing that you miss obvious signs otherwise. Many of us have probably met an “ally” who by virtue of having a gay friend at work suddenly reckons themselves more of an expert on LGBTQIA+ issues than actual members of the community, and has no problem talking over – or down to – those same people they claim to support, all while patting themselves on the back about how empathetic and understanding they are. And if you dare to tell them that they’re actually being rude or hurtful they get extremely indignant and rattle off all the supposed good they’ve done, instead of simply listening to the people they’re supposed to be supporting and what they actually want, or need, or know.

Because that’s the danger as we move away from fantasy or science-fiction games to get closer and closer to the real world and the people who call it home – we run the risk of assuming we know who they are rather than letting them tell their own stories. As I was writing this post, I tried to flip the concept around and imagine how it would be received if a group of predominantly white Americans rented a housing project tower in New York and ran a $400+ larp aimed at seriously examining modern life among the working poor of London’s East End, then told their players to prepare by watching EastEnders and encouraging them to dress in over the top versions of “chav fashion” and put on Cockney accents. I have to imagine it would be greeted with derision at best and most likely very justifiable outrage as well, no matter how well-intentioned or serious the designers and their players were. After all, it’s not really an examination of the lives of the working poor of East End, because it can’t be – there’s no foundation there to actually know much of anything about the real people at the heart of it. It’s the larp version of poverty tourism. It may not want to be, it may try hard not to be, but it’s hard to argue it’s anything else when it comes right down to it.

I know at this point some people are probably thinking: “Why are you holding this game to such insanely high standards? You can’t really expect a simple larp to pay attention to all these real world details you keep bringing up. It’s a game, it’s make believe. Lighten up!” And I get that, and if the game was satire you’d definitely have a point, but let me remind you that I’m not the one who set the standard. The creators of 4th of July chose to market their game as a serious, realistic drama, one that asks players to really put themselves in the minds and hearts of impoverished white Americans living in a trailer park. Their design doc is full of discussion about just how seriously they want this game to be taken, how they want to really capture the lives of these people. And I believe they meant it, which is exactly why I’m challenging them to actually uphold the standard they set. If they feel these sorts objections about how their game is depicting those lives are unreasonable, to me that says more about what they’re comfortable ignoring in the service of running their game than it does about anything else. Which is their prerogative, sure, but it’s still fair to call them out on it, especially when those call-outs are rooted in desire to portray these lives accurately.

As a side note, while I understand it is apparently due to site availability and simple logistical necessity, I also want to point out the incredibly bad optics, insensitivity, and simple tone deafness of holding this game on the weekend of September 11th. Like many Americans, I have complex feelings about that date – I remember it vividly, and while I was fortunate enough not to be touched by the tragedy directly I know others who lost family or friends. Too many Americans do, and I still feel a sharp pang when I see the towers in old movies or television shows. At the same time, I deeply dislike the jingoistic fetishization of the attacks and the way they were weaponized in our culture wars, not to mention their use as justification for actual wars that cost thousands of lives. All of which goes to say that I’m an American larp designer and I would reschedule rather than run an American Dream game on that date, just like I wouldn’t schedule a game about school violence and bullying on the anniversary of the Parkland shooting. I know others would disagree with that reasoning and that’s their right, but still, given everything already discussed I think it’s really bad taste to run a game like this on that particular anniversary. Especially a game the purports to respect and empathize with real people in a social class that was strongly impacted by those events.

This is also a good time to address the eagle in the room, which is the fact that American cultural imperialism more than justifies making it a target of criticism, satire, and other serious examination. To which I emphatically respond: “Yes, absolutely, do so! But when you do, you should always try to punch up, not down.” Because while I know it tries hard not to be, after reading the design documents and seeing the game pictures and looking over various defenses for it I’ve seen in the larp world, I still can’t escape the feeling that this game is punching down. That there is an inescapable element of pointing and laughing at the poor white trash. I see it in the costumes, I see it in the (mis)use of slang, I see it in the character writeups – I hate to say it but the names alone sound like a Dukes of Hazzard fanfic gone awry, which is even weirder and more out of touch when you realize the game is set in Ohio – and I see it in the design document. There’s a bit of a smirk, a knowing look, a can you believe these people? edge to it all.

I don’t think it’s there on purpose, but I’m not the only one who sees it, and in a very real way that lack of intention makes it worse, not better. Because it means people don’t realize just how offensive and off-base they are. They don’t know what they don’t know, as the saying goes, which would not necessarily be a problem in most larps but is absolutely a big deal when you are portraying real people who are living right now. It would be challenging enough to do this game’s topic and subject matter justice with an American cast; as it is, there are important gaps in cultural knowledge that are plainly evident in the design documents, character write-ups, and pictures from the first run. It’s at the point where it’s clear people genuinely believe they’re doing the topic justice, and truly have no idea just how offensive some of these concepts and portrayals actually are to those folks who know better. And while I understand it, the use of “well we talked to some people who know about poverty and a lot of Americans said it was great” seems a poor defense considering all the evidence stacking up to the contrary.

Or to put it another way, this game has major “I can’t be racist, I have a Black friend” energy.+

And that brings me to the crux of it all. Based on everything I’ve read and seen 4th of July wants to do two mutually exclusive things. They want the game to be considered a serious larp that examines big issues and challenges players to really empathize with and invest in trying to see the world through the eyes of people unlike themselves. At the same time, they also want to players to be loud and trashy and “have fun” with plenty of leopard print and trucker hats and generally dress like members of a Kid Rock cover band let loose in Goodwill. These directions are not compatible, and it not only shows, it matters. Because either these are real people whose world you’re trying hard to understand, or they’re silly caricatures you’re cosplaying for your amusement. You don’t get to have it both ways.

So … which is it?

________________________________________________________

*If you think this title means I’m staunchly pro-America, your culture gap is showing. Or you’re one of many clueless Republican politicians who love the chorus and don’t listen to the rest of the song. Neither is optimal.

+If you don’t immediately know what this expression means and why someone might think it applies here, I humbly submit that you may not know enough to be running a white American poverty game.

Posted by  |  August 21, 2024 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Starfall Academy: The Year Two Review

Reviewer’s Note: Just as a note, this review assumes that you’ve either read my review of last year’s inaugural game and/or played in a Starfall Academy larp at least once. By which I mean I won’t be going over a lot of the basics about how the game works such as character creation, sects, world lore, classes, saber combat, etc. – I’m going to focus on how the game has evolved and things that have changed/improved in the game’s second year. If you need that foundational info I highly recommend putting a pin in this page and going back to read the year one review first. (I tried to be pretty comprehensive!) I’m also focusing on the perspective of a second year student returning to the game as opposed to a new first year player, as I feel my first review covers the new player experience pretty well.

Spoilers: As with my previous review I have attempted excise all narrative details and otherwise avoid story spoilers, but that said I may accidentally let slip enough details to put plot points together in course of my review. If that happens and it bugs you, I’m sorry. I tried. Also, I suppose if you just played a first year student but don’t want to be spoiled about some of the way second year works and the decisions you’ll be making in 2024, you may want to come back to this review later as that’s the bulk of what I’m covering in this year’s review. YMMV, of course, I’m just giving a heads up.

Review Disclaimer: If it matters for you to know – and fair enough if it does – I am not affiliated with Quest Adventures or Starfall Academy in any way, and did not receive any compensation for this review (or the last one either). I am a fan, sure, but I came by it honestly, no incentives required or provided. 🙂

All set? All set! Then welcome back, Guardian! Let’s get to it!

Elevator Review
No sophomore slump here – while the first year of Starfall Academy set the bar high for an immersive narrative game set in a sci-fantasy school anchored in a rich universe both familiar and novel, the second year still managed to exceed that standard. The school experience deepened and diversified for both returning second year students and new first years alike, with more activities, more combat, more plots to navigate, and of course, a brand new sport so madcap and violent it immediately makes lifelong fans of us all. Staff continues to develop the premise in new and interesting ways, while still delivering an excellent school experience that is at the heart of the game.

Unity & Hope: Player Culture & Overall Game Experience
I’m putting this category first in the review this time because before we talk about anything else I feel it’s important to talk about the overall personality of the game – the soul of Starfall Academy, if you will. Much as I did in last year’s review at a few points I’m going to use another “school larp” for comparison here, namely New World Magischola, as I also experienced the first two years of that larp and saw some interesting parallels here worth mentioning.

Starfall Academy really found its voice this year.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying that last year wasn’t an amazing experience, and I’m definitely not saying that the wonderful staff in any way let us down last year either. Not at all. This might a tricky needle to thread, but please, hear me out. What I’m saying is that for all of the fantastic staff and amazing lore and incredible players who came together to make Starfall Academy come alive last year, like any first year game it was still very much finding itself. What kind of tone would it have? What sort of energy would the different sects display? Would rivalries stay friendly or would some serious in-fighting take hold? How would the mantras go over? What would saber classes really be like? (Can you seriously require gamers to do push ups in June?) And so on. Questions that staff can – and did – try to steer a bit but which no game runner can ever lock down, because emergent play is a huge part of any larp and besides players will always find ways to take stories in directions no one could possibly have anticipated.

After all, for all we put into making our characters in the absence of a previous Starfall experience to draw from or a sense of what the school would be like, characters tended to be more or less similar to traditional Jedi types. Again, I’m not saying people lacked character and originality! Please don’t take it that way. I’m just saying that with Star Wars as our only point of reference up to that point for the type of experience we were entering into, that’s what a lot of people stayed closer to. Not to mention that being a Jedi was the draw in the first place for many folks, which, fair enough, it’s certainly a big one for a game like this even if great pains have been taken to make the setting rich and unique in its own right. So in year one the energy was generally fantastic, but it still had a galaxy far, far away hanging over it.

By comparison, I remember how the first two years of New World Magischola had a similar sort of arc. The first time out, for all the efforts of players and staff alike the only point of reference anyone really has is Hogwarts and so like it or not despite a healthy body of its own lore, that popular influence colored a lot of the roleplaying and expectations for the first year. And that was fine – it’s part of the appeal that made people come in the first place! But when second year rolled around, things changed dramatically because the school had become its own distinct experience, with its own culture and traditions and vibe, and people felt comfortable diving into characters the likes of which you’d never see on Platform 9 & 3/4.

That is precisely what happened at Starfall Academy this year, and I loved it.

With so many second year students returning who could speak to the lore and culture and memorable jokes and crazy adventures of last year and help bring new first year players into the spirit of the game right from the jump, the school positively exploded with personality this year. It helped that as second years, the returning students were allowed to dress with more costume pieces in their sect colors (as compared to first year students who are encouraged to dress mostly in neutral tones since IC they don’t know their sect until after the saber ceremony and so wouldn’t pack particular clothing colors), so any student gathering was awash in colors in a way that made for a great visual parallel to the huge surge of personality going on throughout the game.

It made it vibrant, on every level.

I suppose it sounds like I’m gushing about a fundamentally intangible quality but that’s just it really. It’s so very important for a game to find its own identity; I’ve stopped going to games that were mechanically fine because there was nothing particularly new or interesting about them either. In my year one review I spoke about how much I enjoyed the school spirit and game culture that was already developing, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t still holding my breath at least a little bit until I saw how it evolved in its second year. And it was wonderful to see that I needn’t have worried. It grew into itself and I can only see that improving as it went on. Unity and hope, as it turns out, are exactly the words for this school.

Harmony & Growth: Character Development
Aside from some tweaks to the makeup and prosthetic requirements of some of the playable species, which allowed for some different costuming and presentation choices for returning students, the fundamentals of character design stayed the same. However, second year students quickly learned that they had a big choice ahead of them because come third year they would need to choose another sect as their secondary path (basically their minor, in standard college terms). So while realistically that’s at least a year away in real time as well, assuming that is a third year of Starfall would take place around the same time again in 2024, it definitely added a certain excited energy and a perpetual popular topic of discussion among the second year students for the weekend.

As a design choice the announcement was compelling – giving the second years a chance to think ahead instead of springing it on them to decide by say the end of the weekend really gave us time to incorporate it into our roleplay and think over where we want to go as Starfall continues. Indeed the potential for mixing your main sect with another and what that says about your character’s goals is an interesting one and a great spur for viewing your character as continuously evolving as opposed to simply becoming “more powerful” – a Bellati who takes a Vindori secondary path is going to be a well-rounded combatant but could also be choosing it for the focus on tradition and law enforcement, while a Bellati who takes a Medicari secondary could naturally be aiming for the role of a combat medic … or supplementing their already deadly saber skills with some debilitating Medicari abilities to quite literally take opponents apart. Likewise, a Vindori who takes a Bellati second could be doing so to add some more offensive punch to their strong defense, but they could also have an eye toward being a strategist or military historian. A Venefari pacifist who chooses a Ouiori secondary might be doing so to increase their connection to all living things, and so on.

The only sect that remains unavailable even as a secondary option is the Dominari, as the Supreme Master of the Guardian Order has decreed it is too dangerous to study their abilities even in such a limited form. Rumors abound that there might be hidden paths to learning such abilities … but if anyone learned the truth of such whispers, they’ve kept it to themselves. As well they might.

Overall, second year felt like a nice focusing experience after the broad foundation of the first year, bringing us back to center out thoughts and roleplay on the sect that represents our character’s primary role in the Order, while at the same time not locking us wholly into it since we’re also thinking of our upcoming secondary paths. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about not having classes with each other sect, but as the weekend went on I really enjoyed it – it helped second year stand out as not just another helping of the first while also guiding us to keep thinking of how we’ll fit into the Order.

Tradition and Preservation: Classes and the Campus Experience
Coming back as a second year student, in a mechanical sense character progression remained similar in structure to year one – attend classes and learn some new powers related to the lessons learned, with said powers represented as before by the game’s stylish and super cool power card props. That basic gameplay structure is the same, but the focus shifted sharply from the first year’s liberal arts curriculum – instead of taking classes with every sect, as previously noted in second year classes focused primarily on your own sect. This was a substantial shift from the liberal arts approach of first year that saw everyone taking at least one class with every sect, but it definitely helped underscore that we’re heading into serious training in our chosen sect, especially as there were some impressive powers to master in those classes. Staff definitely wanted to make second year feel different, and succeeded.

Which is not to say that you never saw students from other sects! One of the most interesting twists awaiting year two students was joint classes – while most second year instruction was sect specific, four of the five sects paired off for special classes that spoke to shared traits they had in common. The Bellati and Vindori joined forces to learn specialized combat techniques, for instance, while the Medicari and Ouiori teamed up to tackle special curative powers. (Lacking a sister sect since the Dominari are long gone the Venefari did not have a joint class in this style, but instead delved deeper into their own abilities.) This not only provided some great roleplay but also underscored some of the natural complementary pairings that students could look into for their upcoming choice of secondary, though of course that’s by no means obligatory. Still, it made for some interesting class combinations and definitely got people excited thinking about how different powers might combine.

One huge addition this year was the introduction of player-led extracurricular activities. While there were some great staff-directed extracurricular activities last year – some of which came also returned – this time before game second year players were encouraged to submit ideas for student clubs and associations, with staff faculty members acting as (sometimes nominal) advisors. And the student body responded! Activities ranged from a choral group to a crafting circle to a sort of group therapy session for Guardians grappling with the lives they left behind, and it gave campus life a great boost of energy and individuality to be able to find activities that suited your character and get involved. It also provided a good way for second year students to mingle with other sects since classes were more confined to individual sects than last year. It also meant that players could fine tune to sort of roleplaying experience they were looking for even more than last year, and combined with a class schedule that was a bit looser than last year and provided more time for extracurriculars, these player-driven clubs were a major win all around.

And, of course, there was the glorious madness that is Hammerball.

Starfall Academy got its very own insane in-universe sport with Hammerball, where our beloved Starfall Meteors team went up against local favorites the Hondru Herns in a sport that can best be described as a lightning-fast clash of utterly unnecessary violence (and I mean that as a compliment). There’s more to it than this but I’ll keep it simple here – two teams square off over possession of a heavy ball and try to put it through the opposing team’s goal, only some team members are armed with hammers and can beat opposing players unconscious. It’s objectively insane and so naturally the game was also the high point of Saturday night, with lots of cheering and chants and even a halftime show! What’s not to love?

Knowledge and Truth: The Evolution of Light Powers
As a longtime game designer, I’m always wary of two things when it comes to long-term ongoing games: complexity hike and power creep. Complexity hike is the phenomenon that as games run longer, they tend to become increasingly complex as old rules are revised to deal with unexpected outcomes and new rules come into play to handle situations beyond the scope of the original game. Complexity hike is not inherently bad – games need to evolve to suit the needs of staff and players – but if you’re not careful it can turn what was once a beloved rules light system into a tangled, snarled mess. I wish I wasn’t saying that from experience, but sadly I’ve seen it happen more than once, and it’s a real drag because it transforms the nature of the game experience when it does.

Power creep is another familiar problem with ongoing games, and it refers to the idea that the longer players are part of a game the more powerful their characters become, which requires commensurately stronger enemies to challenge them, which can lead to a vicious loop that can not only desensitize veteran players but also create situations where new players are utterly helpless/useless against threats intended for veterans and wind up feeling like they’ve wasted their time in playing. Since Starfall Academy only runs once per year, I was less worried about this than complexity hike, but it’s still something I’m always mindful of when I get into long-term games. Even in games with a strong rules-light, narrative forward focus such as Starfall, it’s a natural temptation to go bigger and more complex as you go.

Fortunately so far at least I haven’t seen much evidence of any problems along these lines. While we did learn new powers this game, as you might expect, none that I saw steered away from the intuitive, rules light framework the game has established so far. Nothing requires halting gameplay and breaking out measuring tape, for one, and there were some really innovative takes on abilities such as throwing a saber at a target (without actually throwing it of course), which impressed this old larp designer with their efficiency and how well they stick to things that are easily represented in game. If I have a quibble, it’s that some powers need more mechanics added to their in-game call to make it clearer what they do or how long they last. For example, I have a power which can cause a surge of emotion in a target that lasts for five minutes, but the call merely tells them to feel that emotion – I’ve taken to adding the duration to the call anyway for clarity so it’s not a hard fix but it’s something that shows up with a couple of powers. I suspect it may also be a limitation derived from the small amount of space on powers cards, which tracks.

Power development and use also leads to one of the other weekend highlights – prism training and tactics. Just before dinner each day, all of the second year students were called to a lecture on prism training, where they were presented with different scenarios and asked to work out a plan to solve them that best utilizes each member’s capabilities. (These scenarios were things like hostage rescue, siege tactics, etc.) To keep it interesting, prisms were randomized so everyone had to learn to adapt to people they don’t know, since prisms are more fluid and can involve working with Guardians you’ve only just met. It was also a chance for the Bellati to learn some new powers, called Tactics, that allow them to help their prism achieve tactical objectives more easily by regrouping in the heat of battle and adopting offensive or defensive postures as needed. They’re costly but potent, and really help position Bellati as the battlefield command of the Order by giving them excellent mechanics to back up that narrative position. Even if you weren’t Bellati, though, the prism training sessions were a great time to mingle and learn what your classmates can really do.

Passion and Honor: Combat Comes to Starfall
It’s a good thing the Bellati got those tactical abilities, too, because this year’s event featured significantly more combat than last year’s, both in terms of more scripted NPC-led encounters as well as free-roving dangers found around campus. I should add that air quality concerns during the first week kept us inside for significant parts of Friday and Saturday, which curbed some of these combat scenes (or relocated them), so we actually had fewer combat patrols than the second weekend from the accounts I’ve read. So you can take this with a pinch of salt since we didn’t have quite so much action due to wildfire smoke.

As with everything they do, the staff at Starfall go beyond to try to make sure every combat scene has a purpose, whether it’s cleansing a blight taking hold in local farmland, investigating sinister sounds coming from the tunnels under the school (and yes that’s a real thing, there are actual tunnels), or simply trying to determine what is driving dangerous wildlife toward campus. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a complex scene, every combat scene still had an underlying drive beyond just “kill monsters” and I appreciated that. There were also multiple ways to resolve different situations, allowing different sects to try to use their abilities to find solutions, which also made it possible for different groups to reach very different outcomes.

From the look of it it seems like staff is probably going to continue the combat model along these lines in the future – while the occasional “random encounter” will strike out on campus, even those aren’t just random excuses for bloodshed, and most encounters will be more controlled and directed. That allows the staff to play to their narrative and staging strengths by setting up scenarios full of atmosphere and meaning, while still letting groups of Guardians flex their muscles and light their sabers. It’s a solid model for this staff and this player base, and if this year is any indication I am very much looking forward to more of these directed encounters in the future. Something a lot of combat games miss is making sure encounters mean something, and Starfall always delivers on that front.

Don’t get me wrong – while combat was noticeably more prevalent this year, if you’re coming looking for something more like your average boffer larp weekend with nonstop combat and hooks leading groups out on the regular while monsters burst out to menace you all the time, Starfall Academy is definitely not going to be that experience. And I feel it’s important to remember it’s not intended to be. It’s just not calibrated for that level of constant combat and danger, so while I think the expansion of combat patrols and random encounters did a lot for the game in terms of letting characters use their saber skills and their powers in dynamic settings, it’s not supposed to be the same experience as a combat-focused boffer game. Form your expectations accordingly.

Compassion and Life: The People of Starfall
I want to end this review on something that comes back full circle to the first part of the review, if from a slightly different direction; I want to talk a little bit about the people who make this game happen. I mentioned this last year as well, but it bears repeating – the staff of Starfall Academy are some of the kindest, most helpful, most dedicated, most friendly, most talented, and most fiercely inclusive folks I’ve had the pleasure of telling live-action stories with in my 30+ years of doing so. And I want to be clear that I’m not busting out that number to seem like some sort of Wise Infallible Larp Sage; you only have to read my posts for a minute or two to realize I’m nobody special, just another geek who loves costumes. No, I’m only doing it because it’s true and I wanted to give a sense of just how much it means to me to say that, because I’ve been at many wonderful games over the years run by many amazing people, and even so Starfall still lands right up among the top games of the list.

In particular, I came to my second year of Starfall in kind of a bad place – I won’t go into all of it, just suffice it to say that on top of my awful trip anxiety making me dread the journey almost to the point of bailing, I also came to game still recovering from a torn meniscus some weeks back. My character is a pacifist, so missing out on saber fighting wasn’t too bad for me (though I still wish I could have used it at least once or twice, because SABER), but I was faced with a lot of challenges just getting around. I needed a knee brace and a walking stick, sure, but I also needed time to rest and ice my knee and wait for meds to kick in, as well as a ground floor room (since none of the dorms have elevators). I worried about how much of game I’d actually be able to see and participate in. So before I left, I reached out to Starfall‘s staff account and sort of word vomited a whole bunch of concerns. Not my best moment, but anxiety disorders don’t care if we put our best foot forward.

I needn’t have worried.

Even before game I got personal responses from Alex, one of the game’s creators, that provided great answers to my concerns and sincere encouragement to help me get to game. I never doubted that everyone, and I mean everyone, at Starfall Academy had my back. Not just my friends and fellow players but the staff as well. Especially the staff, who made a point to discreetly but constantly check on me, see how I was doing, if my knee was OK, had I had meds lately, did I need to rest for a while, and so on. (Special thanks to Erica the player concierge and most worthy keeper of the Iron Throne for never, ever failing to check on me whenever I walked by.) Staff made accommodations for me easily and immediately, often without my needing to ask, and even though I know from experience that being staff at a game like this is nonstop running around juggling flaming chainsaws the staff always gave me their full attention and never made me feel rushed or like I was a hassle.

If there’s a single moment that epitomizes the genuine care the staff displays for their players despite the rigors of game, it came on Friday night when Casey, a senior staff member who plays one of the main face NPCs and whose time is therefore very much at a premium every minute of the weekend, took time out to be OOC and literally give me an arm to lean on so I could join my fellow Guardians walking out to a more distant encounter I otherwise could not have managed to see. No hesitation, no complaint, I didn’t even have to ask – he simply saw I’d need help and so he did. He probably could have gotten another NPC or even a player to help out, but he did it himself because he was there and it needed doing, and I think that says everything you need to know about Starfall Academy.

There are a lot of great games out there, make no mistake. But if you’re going to invest your time in a long-term, narratively-driven experience, you’d do well to put your time and stories in the hands of people who genuinely care about both of those things and more importantly who care about you as a person. It matters. More than mechanics, more than props, more than costumes, more than puzzles, more than plots, more than anything, it matters.

It’s why with any luck I’ll see you there next semester.

Go in the Light, Guardians.

Posted by  |  July 12, 2023 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Starfall Academy: The No Spoilers Review

After almost three years without attending any in-person larp events, this summer I somehow managed to schedule back to back blockbuster larps just two weeks apart. (What could possibly go wrong?) My Drachenfest bags had scarcely been unpacked before they were filled to bursting once more, this time with everything I needed to travel to a mysterious academy on a far-off planet. There I hoped to prove myself worthy of joining an ancient order of mystical protectors doing their best to hold together a struggling galaxy in the wake of a terrible civil war. It was time to make the jump to lightspeed and find my destiny at Starfall Academy!

In a similar spirit of my Drachenfest review, I’m going to be doing a bit of an overview as well as relating my experiences and reacting to different parts of the game – the game is big and complex enough to warrant it, I feel, plus as a designer it’s often difficult for me to separate my reactions to things like rules and mechanics from the roleplaying aspects of stories and character interactions. Which means this review will probably be pretty long so, you know, make some popcorn and get comfy. I’ve divided the review into sections so if I’m getting too design nerdy or feels heavy you can feel free to skip to another part you’re more curious about, I won’t be offended.

I also want to make it clear that I am going to be doing my best to make this a spoiler-free review; I will discuss certain foundational plot and setting elements, as well as talk about story beats in a general sense. I will do my best to avoid more specific things such as certain secrets that were revealed during the weekend or the outcome of particular plot points. I ask that anyone inclined to share and/or comment on this review please respect the spoiler-free premise, for others if not for yourself.

I want to give a brief disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Quest Productions, I did not receive a free ticket or any special perks from them, and they had no input when it came to writing this review. (Though naturally I may edit the review at their request in the event I have reported a factual error about the game.) I attended the second of the event’s two runs, and I have been made aware that certain rules and plot elements were adjusted between events, so those who attended the first run may see differences in the way things worked at my event.

Last but not least, I also want to make it clear that any speculation I put forward in this review about how things might work at future events – as well as the existence of future events in general for that matter – is just that, my personal speculation. While I certainly hope to see more classes at Starfall Academy, that is entirely up to the staff, and if there are future events staff may of course decide to do things in entirely different ways than I imagine. That is 100% their prerogative and as a game runner and designer myself I fully support whatever direction they decide to take on any/all of these choices. So please take any such passages with a big handful of proverbial salt.

Elevator Review
An emotionally engaging, highly immersive weekend spent in a cleverly realized sci-fantasy world. Starfall Academy features strong writing, top notch game staff, and clean, innovative game design that takes the classic “unusual school larp” format to the next level. The setting basics and game mechanics are easy to pick up and the game leverages the school setting itself in clever ways that make the experience extremely friendly to larp newcomers, while veteran larpers and boffer fighters will still find plenty of action, intrigue, and personal drama to enjoy. There is also an absolute treasure trove of richly detailed, highly original lore for curious players of all backgrounds to dive into if they desire, which makes the concept of coming back year after year to rise from initiate all the way to master even more enticing.

Should I Play?
If you enjoy the idea of taking fascinating classes in everything from philosophy to alien zoology to galactic history to saber fighting, don’t mind staying in a college dorm room for a few nights, and are attracted to playing a character who has been whisked away from their old life to begin training as part of an ancient order of powerful but morally conflicted individuals tasked with holding a struggling galaxy together, then welcome home! You’re really going to enjoy it here. Of course a love for particular group of mystic warrior-monks in a popular sci-fantasy universe certainly doesn’t hurt, but the game is set in a totally different universe so it’s absolutely not necessary to be a fan of that other setting to enjoy this one. The potential to attend year after year and rise through the ranks is also well worth exploring and combined with excellent event value gives a natural reason for players to keep coming back.

No, I Mean, Should *I* Play, Specifically?
I mean, I dunno? If I don’t know you it’s hard to say, but I suppose you could write me in the comments or privately and I’ll talk to you about your personal tastes. 

A Word about That Other Universe
By now you’ve probably noticed that I’ve refrained from mentioning a certain sci-fantasy universe and its iconic mystic warriors by name. That’s intentional, but not entirely for the reason you might think. Sure, part of me doesn’t want to deal with showing up on Disney’s radar, but more importantly the more I learned about Starfall Academy the more I felt like I would be doing it a disservice to constantly compare it to Lucas’ creation. Because while you’d be right to say that Starfall Academy draws on that world for inspiration and I believe it will absolutely scratch the itch for those people who have always wanted to play a Jedi in training – there, I said it, but it’s the one and only time I will – there’s so much more to the experience than saying that might imply. Staff has clearly put in a ton of work and love to bring this world to life, and I feel that deserves its own recognition rather than constantly reducing it to a comparison.

To put it plainly, Starfall Academy is not that other universe with the serial numbers filed off just enough that they don’t get sued – it is a rich, detailed universe that deserves to be considered and explored in its own right. Comparing the two is a bit like saying Babylon 5 is basically the same as Deep Space Nine just because both are set on space stations, or that there’s no need for Dune because Foundation already exists. Just because you have similar subject matter, or one was inspired in part by another, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the newcomer to shine brightly on its own merits.

Oh, and before anyone’s hackles go up – I’m not saying that Starfall Academy is better than the universe that helped inspire it, or anything of the sort. To each their own; I happen to love both! Ultimately what I’m saying is that while there are some interesting comparisons to be made, it’s definitely worth considering the setting on its own merits, rather than always viewing through a comparative lens. Like any great homage, it does honor to its inspiration while becoming worthy art in its own right.

Game Premise
At risk of doing a disservice to that same excellent world-building, for the sake of brevity – and for letting players uncover some of the many mysteries on their own if they would like to peruse the game’s extensive online Archives – I will go with the basic broad strokes of the setting here. Long ago, a collection of sentient species came together after some rocky moments and formed an Empire that spans the known galaxy. The bedrock of this government is the Guardian Order – an organization of individuals known as Radiants who display special powers thanks to their connection to a cosmic force called the Light. For centuries the Guardians have steered the Empire, and while there were some conflicts and turmoil for the most part it was a time of great harmony and growth across the galaxy.

Just over two decades ago, however, one sect of the Order known as the Dominari fell to Shadow, their darker natures taking them over en masse. They rebelled against the Empire, crowning their own ruler (now known as the “false Empress”) and corrupting many Guardians from other sects to their cause. The resulting civil war was brief but incredibly bloody, causing immeasurable devastation and loss of life before the so-called Dominari Rebellion was finally put down. The few surviving Dominari seemingly vanished deep into the uncharted regions of the galaxy, leaving the Order to try to mend a wounded galaxy while still grappling with the aftermath of such grand betrayal among its own members. Not to mention the fact that the trust of the average Imperial citizen for the Order has been badly damaged by the conflict, and to this day many have not regained their former regard for Radiants.

Players enter this universe as students at Starfall Academy, a training center for new Radiants located in the heart of former Dominari territory. The academy was actually taken over during the Dominari Rebellion and was the site of some terrible atrocities; only after a long, fierce debate among senior members of the Order has it finally been re-opened, in the hopes of healing some of those old wounds and making it a shining example of unity and hope for a battered galaxy. It is not the only training academy for Radiants in the galaxy, but it may be the most significant one for what it represents if this re-opening works … or the impact it will have if it fails.

Harmony and Growth: Character Creation

Character creation in Starfall Academy is entirely narrative – you don’t have stats or skills as such, and you don’t receive any Light powers or abilities until you attend classes (more on that in a bit). With no mechanics to dig through, players are free to focus entirely on developing character concepts, costumes, makeup, and backstories. There are a number of different playable species, ranging from good old Humans to the partially cybernetic Vyx to the plant-based Shumi and plenty more besides. Aside from Humans all other species require a level of makeup and/or prosthetics, some quite elaborate, which creates a nicely varied and exotic visual environment in play. The site is very clear about the makeup and costuming requirements for each species, and even grades them based on the complexity and cost involved in playing a particular species so players know what they’re getting into. Where possible links to suitable prosthetics and makeup are provided as well, which is nice, and each species also comes with a good body of lore to help players get into the right mindset.

Since this was the first year of Starfall Academy all players created initiates, the very first rank in the Guardian Order. (Future years might allow new players to create more advanced students as well as initiates, and of course current players can carry existing characters over from year to year as well.) Initiates are individuals who have only recently had their Spark moment – the first time they manifest Light powers, which often happens in a traumatic or dangerous situation – and have been brought to the academy for training. (Note: The Guardian Order is authorized to bring new Radiants against their will if they must, as untrained Radiants are a danger to everyone around them, so you can play a reluctant student if you like.) A Spark moment can happen at any age, so the student body of Starfall Academy has a wide range of age, species, and backgrounds, which was also welcome – as a middle-aged larper it was nice to not have to pretend to be a teenager!

After species and concept, the biggest choice a player can potentially make is which sect of the Guardian Order their character will belong to after initiation – while players can specifically request a certain sect if they have their heart set on one in particular, they are encouraged to leave the decision up to staff after answering a detailed survey designed to see which sect is best suited for their character. (I believe you can also hedge your bet by saying “any sect but X” if you’re fine with not picking your sect but really don’t want a certain one.) In my experience most players trusted the survey to sort them into a sect; while they had an idea where they might wind up based on their survey answers, they didn’t know for sure what sect they were in until they saw the color when ignited their saber for the first time. The drama of that moment left more than a few choked up; I knew which sect I would be in and I still got teary-eyed. The sects themselves offer a variety of ways to engage with the Starfall Academy experience and the power of the Light, not to mention cater to various playstyles (sect/saber color provided):

Bellati – Passionate masters of crystal saber fighting, the frontline fighters of the Order. (Purple)
Vindori – Historians and skilled protectors, these leaders are keepers of tradition. (Gold)
Ouiori – Masters of the wild, capable of controlling plants and animals. (Green)
Medicari – Renowned healers who also use their skills to defend the helpless. (Silver/White)
Venefari – Seers and prophets, these pacifist mystics seek profound revelations. (Blue)

I should note that at least this year there was a special option for players who wanted to play a “true pacifist”, that is, a character who had absolutely no saber classes. (While the Bellati and Vindori receive the most combat training, all orders get at least some saber instruction unless you pick this option.) As a true pacifist you were assigned the Venefari sect by default and received special classes in place of saber training; I was one of three people who chose this option in my run and while I don’t want to say what our special class was (in part because spoilers and also because I don’t know if it will be the same in the future), suffice it to say that staff certainly went the extra mile to make sure we didn’t feel as if we were an afterthought or had a lesser game experience than those with saber training.

Tradition and Preservation: Classes and the Campus Experience
As a real-life college professor, a veteran of several small-scale one-shot school larps, and a professor for two runs of the New World Magischola larp, at this point I feel pretty confident in saying that there is a fine art to creating a good school larp experience. You need to create classes that are interesting and create the right atmosphere for the setting – in this case, ones that really make people feel like they’re attending class in a sci-fantasy universe – while also respecting the fact that players have come to roleplay and enjoy a game, not just sit passively through hours of instruction. You need enough classes in a day for it to feel like a school experience, while also not overloading players with so many classes it feels like there’s no time to do anything else (or just test their patience sitting through hours and hours of classes). You have to take it seriously enough to create a proper student/teacher dynamic instead of having a room full of peers, but not lean so much on that dynamic that you accidentally stifle potential roleplay (especially from players who are looking to portray troublemakers and class clown types). Last but certainly not least, the classes need to be fairly interactive so that players have a chance to roleplay and express their character in class if they desire, which with all due respect to all concerned is not a teaching style every professional instructor can pull off in real life, much less staff members at a larp.

Fortunately, classes were an area where Starfall Academy‘s superb staff really shined. The classes were varied and interesting (and at under an hour each they had enough time to be compelling but not so much they dragged): history class had interesting slides for a visual component but also included discussions that drew students into the ethics and implications of various historical events; one first aid class featured surprise interruptions by local villagers in good injury makeup seeking help from the Guardians; philosophy class was a chance to catch your breath, center yourself, and question the nuances and complexities of some of the “big picture” questions surrounding the Guardians and their mission. All of the courses were enjoyable and the instructors clearly relished their roles and their lessons, but for visual impact alone zoology was a particular standout, featuring interactions with local wildlife that showcased some excellent costuming and makeup, and of course student favorite creature Teddy. (There are no short explanations for Teddy, just know that to a one every student who met Teddy would die for them.) You got a strong sense of the character of each instructor as well, but not so much that they took the air out of the room – staff did an excellent job at passing the spotlight around in class.

Starfall Academy classes also featured an interesting game mechanic that was one of those “why didn’t I think of this” moments as a gamer designer when I encountered it – attending class was also how you learned powers as a Guardian. During most – though not all – of your classes, by the end you would earn a card with a power on it, related to the topic of the class. These cards explain everything you need to know about the power OOC – what verbal call to use, how many hands it takes (and what gesture to make), what its effects are, how long it takes/what it costs to use, etc. – and by giving them out in class, staff gave players a concrete incentive to attend class and participate. Which sounds utterly obvious and logical, and yet is not a mechanic I’ve encountered before in any of the school larps I attended; in other games players already had their powers and classes were sort of a formality of the setting. If you missed a Starfall class where a power was taught, you could approach the instructor later to ask if they would teach it to you individually, but you’d better be prepared to explain why you were absent! Naturally, if you missed for an out of game reason such as a personal emergency or feeling unwell, there was a mechanic in place so that by telling your instructor that you were absent for OOC reasons you would simply be treated as if you had attended and your character would not be questioned or punished.

Students have three designated meal times – the cafeteria staff were great and seemed to enjoy our weirdness – and staff also provides a snack table with water and little things to tide you over. There are also blocks of free time, one right after lunch, another before dinner, and one more afterward, and the faculty offer electives that give you extra time to mingle and roleplay with them outside of class. These ranged from additional saber instruction to tea time to trivia contests, and of course students were free to devise their own activities and amusements during free periods as well. Free time was also when many plot events occurred, especially in the afternoon and evening, and even though sometimes classes were interrupted staff did a good job making sure no matter what was going on mealtimes were not disrupted (not every larp does that, which I think is a terrible notion for many reasons). Game events ended at midnight each night; while you certainly could stay in character and hang out, staff would not be running plot, and it was a good way to encourage people to try to get a reasonable amount of rest.

I don’t want to spoil how all the classes were taught, as some of them featured elements and techniques that for maximum enjoyment I feel are best encountered for the first time without prior knowledge, but I will say this – I participated in several classes and heard about several more that made excellent use of props and staging to really give players the feel of wielding the mystical powers of the Light. These weren’t necessarily fancy razzle-dazzle methods so much as they were the result of clever staff who clearly put a lot of time and heart into thinking about things like “how could I make it really look like students were practicing telekinesis” or “what can we do to give the feel of hands-on medical training without making anyone pass out in the process” and it really showed. Kudos to staff for not taking the obvious shortcuts and instead really making each class shine. And to my fellow Venefari, if you see Yasha please tell them that I miss them very much, and can’t wait to train with them again soon.

Knowledge and Truth: Wielding the Light

Now that you know how Light powers are learned, it’s worth a moment to talk about how they operate. Starfall Academy keeps to a very simple, efficient system for the powers of the Light, relying on gestures and verbal cues rather than complex mechanics. (Though of course we were initiates and learning the basics of being Guardians; no doubt things might get a little more intricate as one rises in rank.) You call out a verbal cue to alert the target of your power to its use – or to make others around you aware of a power you are using on yourself – then make a specific gesture with one or both hands. Shield Self requires crossing your arms across your chest and keeping them there for the duration of the power, for example, while Push is a two-handed pushing gesture with palms out toward the target. If a power requires further clarification, you can add that to the verbal cue; for example, you can tell the target of Minor Manipulation that the effect only lasts five minutes, especially if you may not be there when it would end. That’s all there is to it – a verbal cue, a gesture, et voilà! You’re wielding the Light, Guardian.

As a fan of fast, simple systems with minimal chatter to disrupt roleplaying, this was right up my alley. While of course everyone is entitled to their own take on what they find fun in larp, I’ve played in a lot of action larps where “spellcasting” often involved things like stopping play to measure distances, taking targets aside OOC to explain complex mechanics, or other systems that felt intrusive to free-flowing gameplay. (Again, that’s my preference, YMMV.) So I was relieved to see that the powers of the Light were generally very simple and easy to understand both for the user and any potential targets; most required little to no explanation even if you hadn’t seen them in action before, and those few occasions where I saw players ask for clarification it was resolved swiftly and with minimal gameplay disruption. We learned a number of powers this event, so there was a decent amount to keep track of in your head, but I found that you could generally separate them into situational categories – powers that aided in combat, healing powers, powers that helped you investigate the setting, etc. – which helped avoid feeling overwhelmed.

As noted previously, each power you learn is represented by a very cool-looking, easily readable card that you can carry with you for reference. Their small size makes them easy to carry as well as allows you to consult them on the sly without breaking game/attracting too much attention – you can just slip a card from your pocket and glance at it rather than whipping out a character sheet, unfolding it, searching for the relevant text, etc. Card size and design might seem an odd thing to go on about, but making sure your players can carry what they need to know is an important and often overlooked part of game design, so having small, easy to consult cards that can be stashed somewhere in just about any costume is a real blessing. Plus, did I mention they look cool? Because they really do, and that makes you feel cool by association when you take them out. It’s a small thing but it’s a nice design detail and I appreciate it.

Almost all Light powers cost Focus Points (FP) to use, which can be replenished entirely with 10 minutes of meditation. As initiates every character had 4 FP, and it was my understanding that with each additional year of training we would add roughly the same amount (though this may change). Perhaps unsurprisingly considering we were learning basic powers this weekend, every power that had a cost to use was only 1 FP. However, it should be noted that using a power from outside your sect cost double, so as a Venefari if I wanted to use the Vindori power Shield Self, it would cost 2 FP instead. On top of that, if the power requires a hand gesture and your relevant arm is injured, the cost doubled again, so if I tried to use Shield Self (a two hand gesture) with an injured arm it would cost 4 FP. (Cost only doubles once due to injury, so if both my arms were injured it would still cost 4 FP, not 8.) Remembering those cost increases is about as complex as Light powers get.

Focus Points are visually represented by bead carriers, displaying one bead per point; Guardians create a basic bead carrier during one of their classes on day one, though players are encouraged to customize these bead carriers later on if they like so long as they meet certain basic requirements. Like a lot of things about Starfall Academy, I appreciated the fact that this small but important costume piece was crafted during as part of a class lesson, as it made it feel much less like an OOC element and more of a personal expression. My character was prone to touching his beads when he was worried or upset, almost like prayer beads, and I saw similar habits with other Guardians as well, which made them feel like part of your character. I look forward to seeing what people do with them next year, how they continue to customize and personalize them. And without getting into spoiler territory, it’s worth paying attention to the bead colors on display – most Guardians have beads in either their sect color or neutral tones (black, brown, etc.), but occasionally you might see someone sporting a color that seems out of place, and chances are real good it’s not there by accident …

Compassion and Life: Do All Guardians Have to Fight? Can My Character Die?
While training and fighting with crystal sabers is certainly a draw for a lot of players, I know that boffer combat of any kind can be intimidating or off-putting to others, especially those who have never done it. Let me be clear – not wanting to fight/not being comfortable with boffer combat is absolutely not a barrier to enjoying the Starfall Academy experience. I should know, given that I played a “true pacifist” character who didn’t have any saber classes at all and I still had a great time! Let me explain a bit about how saber fighting works and hopefully that will clear things up.

First off, you don’t need to bring a weapon – everyone gets a crystal saber as part of the price of the game. (I can’t say for sure but don’t anticipate this will change for future events, even for returning players, as it’s important all players have the same gear for safety reasons.) It’s yours to keep, and while you’re at the event you also get a soft foam sleeve – referred to in-universe as a “dampener” – that you put on the saber to make it a boffer weapon, i.e., safe for combat striking other players. Aside from posing for personal pictures, you are required to keep the dampener on in order to avoid accidents. For safety reasons you are not allowed to use sabers other than the one you are issued, so do not bring any “illumination swords” you might have laying around at home.

While everyone has a crystal saber, as noted previously your character’s sect within the Order determines how much of your class experience will revolve around crystal saber training, so you can influence how much time is spent on this activity with your sect choice. For example, as the most militant sect the Bellati spend almost half their day in saber classes (and learn the most techniques and tricks related to saber fighting), while at the other end of the spectrum you can find the pacifists of the Venefari sect, who have just a couple of saber classes. Even the total pacifists still have sabers and can use them – I drew mine during a few scary incidents and even struck down a battle droid with it when my back was against the wall – they just have no extra training or ability with it.

Boffer fans take note, however, that at least for this first year there were very few unexpected combat encounters – for the most part players had to opt-in to combat situations. (There were a few surprise combat scenes involving NPC nefariousness but they were the exception, not the rule.) If you didn’t want to fight wolves with Doctor Vray, for example, you could just choose not to go on that trip; it wasn’t as though wolves would attack out of nowhere and force players to defend themselves spontaneously. It also wasn’t like many boffer larps where random combat encounters were frequent and could happen at any time, or where players could wander off into the woods and expect to find NPCs to battle. This might change in future years, but for this run at least that was how the game operated. So if you’re looking for a more freeform adventure and fighting game this isn’t it, or at least it wasn’t this year anyway. That said, the combat encounters we did have were good and often quite challenging, probably because they were planned and structured carefully (and at base even higher ranking characters are very fragile).

I should also point out that all players learned at least one or two purely defensive powers that could help you avoid combat or keep you from getting hit – the Vindori teach how to shield yourself from all harm for a short time, which is good for weathering a bad situation while waiting for help to arrive, the Ouiori learn to hide from sight near trees, the Venefari pacifists learn how to push enemies away from them without causing harm, etc. Likewise, while characters are easy to injure and even incapacitate with just a few weapon strikes, for this year at least death was not really on the table unless a player really wanted that outcome for their character (to my knowledge, none did). At worst you were rendered incapacitated for a time and needed medical attention from a knight or a master (as initiates could not heal the worst bodily injuries). This level of deadliness may change in the future, but for this year it felt appropriate that things were less lethal given that these characters were just starting out. I certainly didn’t feel that combat was any less tense because of it – after all, just because we couldn’t die didn’t mean we couldn’t fail!

Oh, one last combat related thing: in a nice little touch, the reason it’s called a crystal saber is because in-universe the blade is made of a special crystal and it exists at all times like a regular sword; the blade doesn’t vanish when deactivated as some similar weapons do in other universes. So you don’t have to pretend it’s just a hilt when it’s not active, there’s always a blade there. When you channel your Light into it – that is, turn on the weapon prop – the crystal glows with the color of your sect and the weapon becomes infused with power, making it much more dangerous and able to cut through most targets with ease. You can still use the saber when it’s not infused with Light, however, it just does less damage – it’s essentially a club instead of a blade. So you’re not helpless if the button isn’t working or you forgot to recharge the blade battery overnight. I found this an elegant solution to a common problem with larping similar weapons in other settings, and a nice extra bit of lore flavor as well.

Passion and Honor: OK, So If I Do Fight, What’s It Like? How Complex Is It?

Saber fighting itself is lightest touch with minimal damage rules to remember – first hit to a limb makes it hard to use (and makes Light powers cost more if they require using that limb), second hit to a limb renders it useless, any additional hits to that limb are considered torso hits, etc. Two torso hits and you’re down. Armor simply adds extra hits before a location is compromised. Head and groin strikes are forbidden, as are thrusts, and hand shots do not count. In addition to lightest touch limiting the force involved, sabers require both hands on the weapon and all strikes should be made at a reasonable tempo – no high speed flailing permitted. Due to these guidelines, safety equipment such as gloves or helmets is not required for game, and anyone who fights in a way that hurts people or is otherwise unsafe will be benched or even removed from the event. In a profoundly cool upgrade of the normal boffer larp experience, the saber classes are taught by actual ludosport professionals who teach and compete in this sort of fantasy saber fighting for a living. It’s one of my favorite design elements about the game, honestly – Starfall Academy is a boffer game that has actual fight professionals train its players in proper fighting and combat safety as part of the in-character game experience.

So if you’re thinking “well I want to play a badass Bellati warrior or stoic Vindori defender, but I’ve never done boffer fighting before, can I still make play a character like that” then don’t worry – that’s what your saber instructors are there for! They’ll do their best to make you a capable fighter, and their best is pretty damn good. On my run there were quite a few brand new larpers who had never held a boffer weapon before but became pretty dang dangerous initiates by the end of the event. (As a true pacifist character I didn’t see what saber classes were like, but heard nothing but praise and a certain amount of healthy awe for the instructors.) My advice is that while you don’t need to come in with a lot of fight experience, if any, if you intend to play a fighter type and/or take lots of saber classes you should do your best to be ready in other ways – make sure your costume allows good mobility and helps avoid overheating, stretch before class, hydrate often, etc. Your instructors and fellow saber students will help you with the rest.

While the game is vigorously inclusive and will do their best to accommodate everyone in the roles they desire – and I should note that when the temperature hit dangerous heat levels one day all outdoor classes were adjusted accordingly – saber classes are still active physical activity and so you should be prepared for what that entails. If you have concerns about how your particular physical limitations might impact your ability to play a more fight-focused character, I would urge you to talk to staff in advance when character creation rolls around to see what can be done. They’re pretty cool and communicative that way.

As a final note for curious combat types, neither players nor NPCs had ranged weapons that I saw at this run of Starfall Academy, and as noted previously those Light powers that work at range such as Venefari telekinesis used verbal cues combined with hand gestures – no throwing birdseed packets or firing foam darts or other boffer larp mainstays. That does not mean future runs might not include enemies blazing away with Nerf blasters or Guardians throwing bean bags to represent shooting lightning from their fingers, mind you, but for this year at least staff kept things very simple and close range, which made combat much easier to navigate. Now this is just me speculating, but I have a feeling that even if they do start to add more ranged conflict and powers to the mix they will stay to this sort of simple format and have most such exchanges resolved with simple pointing and verbal calls rather than tossing around bean bags and the like. I suppose we’ll see next year!

Unity and Hope: Player Culture and Final Impressions

Now that I’ve talked probably way too much about the individual elements of the game – character creation, classes, Light powers, saber combat, etc. – I want to sort of bring it all together by discussing that intangible but absolutely vital element, the culture of the game. By which I mean something like a cross between school spirit and esprit de corps, or perhaps you could call it the overall vibe that you get interacting with people throughout the experience. I have played in many wonderful game environments over the years, and I will say it right here: the culture of Starfall Academy ranks among the best I’ve encountered, full stop.

Even if you didn’t see the hundreds of pages of lore they’ve written or the costumes they’ve made or the props they’ve built or the care they’ve taken crafting their characters, it’s obvious within minutes of interacting with them that the staff loves this world and is excited to bring you into it to experience it with them. Even when staff members naturally became the focus of attention, as could be expected when portraying professors at a school game, they did their best to turn it around and invite responses and interactions with students, or at least let the student body voice their reactions even as they engaged in a scripted scene. As a long time game runner myself I know that behind the scenes big games often consist of running around putting out fires all weekend, but I never once saw that stress bleed through to the players – staff never let their problem become my problem, never took out a setback on a player, and that’s damn impressive for a game of this size and complexity. I wasn’t surprised, exactly, because they seemed like excellent humans, but still. Seriously. I tip my cap to them. That’s a hell of a feat.

It was also an incredibly friendly and inclusive environment, with special care taken to make sure elements like player pronouns were properly addressed and that LGBTQIA+ experiences and expressions were welcome and normal as part of the Starfall Academy universe. I’ve heard quite a few players also express the fact that it was a game where they never felt sexualized and where they were comfortable trusting each other even early in the weekend, which is likely due in no small part to the emphasis on consent and raising each other up that starts in pre-game workshops and continues throughout the event. Staff made it very clear that any sort of “but I’m just playing my character/I’m sorry you can’t take a joke” creepy larper jackassery would not be tolerated, and I also appreciated their strong stance on things like “you are not allowed to think the space fascists were right” that can potentially lead to ugly OOC issues. The Guardian Order is not without its moral and ethical problems – in fact, staff was clear that a good deal of Starfall Academy involves letting players wrestle with questions without easy answers (if any) – but they also drew a bright line to make sure fascist apologists and other hatemongers would not be welcome in or out of character.

Perhaps the best expression of the culture that Starfall Academy is going for – and in my opinion at least, achieved with flying colors – is the concept of prisms, and that’s why even though I love it so much I saved it for this final section. Although players are organized into different sects, unlike many other school larps these groups are not adversarial or in competition with each other; while there might be pranks and some friendly rivalry, there are no “house points” or trophies to win. Instead, emphasis is placed on cooperation and teamwork between sects. Because unlike the mystic space knights of that other universe, who tend to be lone wolves or at most a mentor/student pair, Guardians form teams of five or six called prisms, so named because they represent the blending of different colors/aspects of the Light to form a cohesive whole. No Guardian acting alone is as strong as a prism working together.

Watching characters find friends and allies and form their prisms was a wonderful part of the weekend; even some of those Guardians who didn’t find a prism easily on their own still found that a prism hastily cobbled together in a crisis could be an unlikely source of friendship and camaraderie. And maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve wanted to wield a glowing blade since I was five years old, but it was a beautiful sight to watch a prism ignite their sabers and face down a challenge together, watch each other’s backs, use their powers to complement each other, and just be the heroes that their galaxy deserved.

Thank you for letting me raise my saber and finally realize a childhood dream, Starfall Academy.

Go in the Light!

Posted by  |  June 30, 2022 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Drachenfest US: The Review

So I recently had the pleasure of attending Drachenfest: Origins, the first game of what will hopefully become an annual event here in the States. (This game is also colloquially known as Drachenfest US to differentiate it from the original German game.) In constructing this review I will also be doing a bit of an overview as the game is large and multi-faceted, and I wanted to make sure to give it ample context for proper understanding. That’s a polite way of saying this review is also pretty long, so, you know, get comfy. Before I go further, it should be noted that this review refers only to Drachenfest: Origins, and so its rules and other game elements discussed here may differ from those found in the original Drachenfest game as it is played in Germany. For brevity’s sake, however, for the purpose of this review I will simply refer to this event as Drachenfest.

In the interest of full disclosure, while I have some friendships among the staff and players – something of an inevitability in the close knit larp community of the Northeast – I am not affiliated with the Drachenfest US event in any way and I did not receive any discounts or comped materials when I attended, nor did I receive any compensation for writing this review. Last but not least, this review is of course based on my point of view, and so I might be mistaken about certain details where I did not have access to the bigger picture. I have tried to make sure this review does not contain any rules errors or misrepresent events that occurred at game, but even so, feel free to take my account with a handful of salt if you feel it’s necessary.

Elevator Review
A dramatic, often intense game full of spectacle, featuring varying ways to engage with the story and a strong emphasis on community play. Drachenfest delivers on its premise of a rules light, roleplaying centered, gently multiversal high fantasy setting with lots of combat, ritual, and intrigue, ably balanced with plenty of relaxing socializing and community carousing. As it is a fundamentally competitive game, some players may be turned off or become frustrated if their faction is losing, but the game tries very hard to give people multiple paths to enjoy the play experience outside of the competition itself.

Should I Play?
Provided you are comfortable with camping, are cool with seeking out and engaging in various kinds of roleplaying, and enjoy latex/boffer combat (or at least don’t mind enduring/avoiding it at regular intervals), then yes! Absolutely. It’s a rich, immersive spectacle well worth the modest ticket cost for the great entertainment value you get. No question.

No, I Mean, Should *I* Play, Specifically?
I mean, I dunno? If I don’t know you it’s hard to say, but I suppose you could write me in the comments or privately and I’ll talk to you about your personal tastes. 🙂

Game Premise
Five primordial dragons, siblings who each personify a different aspect of existence, come together once per year and create a special realm to vie with each other for dominance in a competition known as the Drachenfest. The dragons are Silver (order), Blue (freedom), Red (conquest), Green (nature), and Shadow (the void). Each dragon summons champions from across various realms in the fantasy multiverse to form their “team”, who then compete on their behalf to obtain dragon eggs, which are used for scoring the competition. (Despite the name they are not eggs containing actual baby dragons, merely a scoring device.) There is another faction, a neutral – or more accurately, mercenary – group of merchants and trainers known as the Bazaar who set up shop at the festival to cater to the champions, teach them advanced skills and techniques, and sometimes even sell their IC services to a faction that can meet their price. However, they are not directly part of the competition and do not score points. While the game’s numerous OOC vendors are part of this faction by default, players may apply for a spot in this faction as well, though these openings are limited and you must pitch staff a suitable intriguing concept to get one, ideally one that features excellent costuming and props as well as adds a lot of roleplay value.

Players may create characters from almost any fictional fantasy world – or one of their own devising! – subject to two rules: 1) you can’t play an existing fictional character, so for example you can be a Witcher but not Geralt of Rivia; 2) your costuming/tech level should fit into a vaguely medieval/Renaissance larp look. This means things like no personal firearms (cannons exist but are very limited); no sci-fantasy such as Jedi or Warhammer 40K psykers; and no modern/urban fantasy along the lines of the Dresden Files or Percy Jackson. The game also frowns on cultural appropriation in costuming and actively disallows painting your skin the color of real world races/ethnicities, so you know, don’t do that. And I mean that in general sense, not just for Drachenfest.

Other than that, though, you can be from most anywhere – I met characters from Ravenloft, Terra D’Ange, Sigil, Rokugan, Krynn, Golarion, Hyrule, Westeros, Middle Earth, and plenty of others. It was, in a word, awesome. How you feel about being called to this place can be part of your roleplay as well – some people made a big deal of it, others acted as though it was a dream, some mostly ignored it, etc. It is as much a factor as you wish to make it, though it is assumed that having answered the call you are a willing participant in the competition on some level; while you can grumble about being “abducted” or express confusion as to where you are and how you got here, ultimately players are encouraged to lean into the contest and their chosen faction (more on that later).

Review: Giving players this much latitude sounds like it could be a disaster in terms of clashing styles and cultures but in practice it actually worked really well – players didn’t have to learn tons of new lore since they’ve been brought to a strange new world, but instead they could bring favorite characters or come from favorite worlds, making them immediately invested. There were a lot of truly great costuming, makeup, and props on display. I was concerned that some players would skirt the line of what was appropriate or spend a lot of time winking at the proverbial camera trying to get across where they were from, but I needn’t have worried; there was only one character I met who felt like they were constantly forcing their origin reference, and even then it was just a little annoying and not game-breaking. The staff may have to contend with joke characters or people trying to slip pre-existing fictional characters into the mix, but I have the feeling it’s not going to be much of an issue due to the cost of the event – dropping a couple hundred dollars to play a silly reference for a few hours before staff forces you to change your character or leave isn’t something I think most are willing to do. It’s worth noting that while you can play most anything within those guidelines, the game asks for as much WYSIWYG as possible when designing characters. So if you want to be a dragonkin, for instance, you have to represent that with makeup and costuming – you can’t just narrate “you see I’m actually a dragon person” or something like that.

Character Creation
One way all of this works is that character creation is very simple – no matter what world you come from or what capabilities you had there, the dragons make sure to level the playing field for the contest. With that in mind, everyone starts with 2 Health Points and the ability to wear armor and use any one handed weapon. Then you pick two skills or capabilities from the same two groups of choices as everyone else. (You can pick twice from one group or one from each, your call.) Aside from some starting coins and item cards, that’s pretty much it.

The first group of possible choices mostly have to do with your role in battle (or how you stay out of it), as a lot – but definitely not all! – of the competition involves camps battling each other and champions fighting duels and other martial contests. Your choices here can do things like add to your base Health or let you use two handed weapons, shields, fight Florentine, etc. It’s also worth mentioning that players are encouraged to justify their powers as they see fit in terms of roleplaying – a character with the Warden role can negate a single spell effect tossed at them, but whether that’s because of warding amulets, rigorous magical discipline, proficient counterspelling, natural immunity of some kind, or something else entirely is up to the player.

Your next group of role choices to pick from are among learning crafting/repair skills, medical training, and casting spells. You can dabble or specialize – picking a category once gives you partial access to what it can do, while picking it twice gives you pretty much all of it. For example, in the Crafter section there are a total of four crafting avenues, and each time you select Crafter as a choice you pick two of them. As with other choices, while all players follow the same game mechanics for things like casting spells, exactly how those powers manifest is up to the player – innate gifts, enchanted items, rigorous training, etc.

In the end for my two choices I selected one level of Healer and opted for its Surgery training aspect so I could do field medicine to restore Health in battle; my other choice went into one level of Spellcaster, which let me pick five spells from their list of 12 spells.

That’s it. Aside from getting cards for your weapons and armor and your starting coins, that’s character creation.

Note that this is by no means all that characters can do, but other things are locked behind role-playing and guild membership. For instance at base the Alchemist role only gives you the ability to make healing poultices, but if you join the Alchemist Guild in-game and train with them you can potentially learn to make other things like poisons, healing potions, antidotes, etc. Likewise, training with the Warrior’s Guild can teach you advanced combat abilities like knockbacks and shield breaking that aren’t available to those outside the guild. So there’s plenty to learn and do in game, giving players a natural incentive to explore the setting and rewarding those who put in the time and roleplaying for doing so.

Review: Everyone starts equal, and if you want any extra fancy cool stuff, you have to really engage in the game and its roleplaying. Simple, effective, elegant. Which I think is pretty great as it means even the most ardent powergamers looking for advantages to help win the contest must dive into character and invest time in roleplaying and training. It can be a little tough for players like me who are more in and out but that’s my issue, not the game. Also, by design most of the things you can learn from this advanced training are lateral choices, not just straight up better than what’s commonly available, so there’s a tradeoff of some kind involved. It balances nicely. Especially because while you can theoretically join multiple guilds, the time investment involved in training with them and maintaining membership becomes increasingly demanding the more guilds you join, so in practice you have to carefully consider where you want to focus and learn more advanced stuff.

If all that sounds imposing, however, consider by contrast that I didn’t join a guild or learn anything extra during the weekend, and I still didn’t feel cheated or outgunned. I might feel differently if I play the same character for three or four years and don’t learn extra things while others do, but that’s a different issue.

Combat & Spellcasting
Drachenfest subscribes to lightest touch, dramatic combat – act out injuries, exaggerate swings, etc. Larp archery can be performed with professionally made, padded larp arrows. No thrusting attacks are permitted since latex weapons are heavily preferred and thrusting with such weapons can present a real safety risk for neck and eye shots. Real metal or leather – or realistic looking fakes – are required for armor, so plastic or aluminum chainmail is fine but not fabric with a chainmail print. Characters have low, low numbers for Health and armor and healing is very slow, so if you don’t want to get dropped quickly in combat you need to be cautious, lucky, or pretty darn good. (I opted for lucky!) First Aid requires Healer training and 5 minutes to stabilize a downed character, and on top of that receiving First Aid is a prerequisite for getting Health back via surgery or even basic healing magic. Unlike many fantasy games, in other words, you can’t just zap people back up from dying to totally fine in a few seconds.

Combat is very deliberately a rock-paper-scissors affair – arrows bypass armor, shields block arrows, and spells affect shields. Two handed weapons do the same damage as one handed ones, but are the only player weapons that can destroy siege weapons or harm large summoned creatures like elementals that camps can conjure up for an extra edge in combat, so even though they don’t do more damage there’s a reason to use them apart from extra reach. Of course, standing around holding a single big weapon – or two vicious small ones – means that you have no defense against arrows, and so we’re back at the rock-paper-scissors again. It’s a simple but very effective circle that ensures no one combat loadout can totally dominate all situations; each one has a counter that a coordinated and diverse group can use to overcome.

Spellcasting is very simple – 15 seconds of loud, clearly mystic verbalization, then most spells simply require you to point at a target and name the effect. At base the only thrown spell is Orb of Power, which is effective if it hits a shield and bypasses armor to do major damage directly to Health. The balance is that once you cast a spell, any spell, you are magically exhausted and cannot cast again for 5 minutes. (You can fight or move normally, just no spells.) In addition if you are hit while verbalizing you are still exhausted even though the spell doesn’t go off. Ouch. Like a lot of things, the Mage’s Guild can potentially teach you new spells and tricks, such as raising undead or cutting down spell exhaustion time.

Review: For the most part the combat I saw went very smoothly, especially for a first game – the low numbers and simplicity of spells and weapons makes things easy to track, there are no numbers and few calls cluttering the air, and people generally did a good job taking hits, roleplaying pain and injury, and otherwise avoiding just running forward and flailing. There’s always going to be some rhino hiding, players cheesing spells, players getting excited and swinging too hard/too fast, of course, and I saw some of that for sure. I also heard talk here and there that certain players had to be cautioned or even benched for certain combats due to violating the fighting guidelines. By and large, though, people leaned into the fighting style the game is after. The fact that refs are required to be present for almost all combats helps too (more on that soon).

Camp Life
Each dragon has a camp where their followers gather, and dragons often appear there in person as an avatar (great makeup!). Avatars are there to add roleplaying, guide players when they need a hand, assist rituals, or spur action if players look bored or frustrated, but they very definitely do not call all the shots. Players elect a camp council to decide their strategy and make decisions. This council has roles to fill, such as Warlord, Diplomat, Spymaster, Champion, etc. How to pick these people and how they do their jobs once chosen is left up to the players – our camp, Green, favored large meetings where everyone had a chance to speak before our councilors made their final decisions, but other camps could adopt any system that worked for them.

Camps also host the camp’s banner, which other camps can attempt to capture for points in the contest (and where any banners you capture are displayed to be won back), as well as the dragon shrine where eggs are brought to tally points scored. (These two things are always near the entrance, you can’t hide eggs or your banner.) There are also areas like the garden for herbalism and the alchemy lab, plus anything players add. We had some wicked good grillers in our camp, for instance, so there was always food cooking. Our avatar had a lounge and people were often there roleplaying with her and each other, which provided a nice place to rest and re-center in character.

Of course, you are not by any means bound to your camp and can wander around as you like, make friends in other camps, visit the Bazaar or the tavern, take a dip in the lake, cast rituals in the Great Ritual Circle, etc. Diplomacy and intrigue are essential parts of the game as well, and alliances both verbal and written are absolutely crucial. Our strong alliances with Silver and Red helped us stave off attacks or win back our banner when we lost, which was especially key after we betrayed Blue in a big way early on.

Review: As you can imagine, what camp life is like will vary wildly depending on the players and characters involved, though the thematic nature of each dragon means that characters summoned to their faction tend to have similar interests, motivations, and/or personalities, which helps people find common ground. (The avatar also acts as a touchstone to facilitate play.) I did worry a bit that having a council of players with important roles would create a “cool kids” problem where some people get to do all the cool stuff and everyone else just gets pulled along behind them. I suppose that could happen, but for this game and my Green camp at least people were very cool about delegating, getting other players involved and keeping them informed, etc.

There is also an element of “you get out what you put into it” to camp life, as there is with most larps. If you don’t roleplay a lot with people, don’t get involved in camp business, don’t check in often, don’t do rituals, etc, well, yeah, you may feel disconnected from game, but that’s on you at that point. It’s important to remember that between the Drachenfest itself, guild business, and camp politics/roleplay, players can easily have plenty to keep them busy even if they arrived with no specific agenda in mind!

The Contest
It is assumed that no matter where they’re from or how they feel about being called to the Drachenfest realm, now that they are here all characters are invested in helping their faction win the contest; otherwise they wouldn’t have been chosen or answered the call. (If you want to play a truly neutral or mercenary character, apply for one of the Bazaar spots.) While I suppose technically you could try to deliberately betray or undermine your camp, it’s generally disallowed in the interest of keeping the game fun and fair and to avoid a metagame problem such as players joining to deliberately sabotage a faction on behalf of friends in a rival camp. There’s enough to worry about with other factions, they don’t want camp members to actively worry about their own people! You also cannot switch camps during play, so you can’t trash a faction and then swap to the winning team.

That said, the simplest way to score points is to capture an enemy banner and bring it back to your camp. (You also score points for every banner you keep in your camp overnight, as judged around 9 AM.) As it’s unlikely your enemy will simply hand over their banner without a fight, however, you need to declare a siege. Each camp has dedicated OOC game refs who are onsite pretty much nonstop, so you go to them and tell them you are preparing a siege, then they alert the rival camp’s OOC refs that a siege is incoming. This is done in part to simulate that armies gathering is hard to miss, but also because the enemy ref can actually veto a siege or any other sort of raid/PVP if they feel their camp is demoralized and/or has been kicked around a lot recently. No one likes being repeatedly stomped into the ground, after all, and even though it’s a contest it should still be fun for players.

Camp attacks involve clearing defenders from the defending camp’s courtyard (a taped off area inside each camp’s gate entrance) – if you can clear that ground of defenders and keep it clear for a short time, boom, the banner is yours. You can only attack a camp through the gate into the courtyard; you cannot circle around through the woods or take another path. It’s main gate or nothing. If this sounds stifling, I hear you, but in practice I found it actually isn’t as limiting as it sounds – having a clear victory condition and refs on hand to judge it avoids a lot of sticky questions or arguing about when a banner is captured. Also, confining the conflict mostly to the courtyard means that if your camp is attacked but you don’t want to fight, you can just move away from the courtyard and attackers will ignore you.

Of course, members of the elusive and nefarious Thieves Guild can learn ways to sneak into camps through other entrances and do things like sabotage alchemy labs, burn herb gardens, damage a camp’s weapons/armor, etc, but even then faction banners and any dragon eggs a faction had earned absolutely cannot be stolen – those prizes must either be won in battle or given freely. This also means that camps don’t have to post guards 24/7 since they don’t have to worry about sneak thieves grabbing them. Which is appreciated because few players want to stay up all night for the chance to stopping a robbery, maybe.

All that said, camps may earn dragon eggs via many other means than raw fighting – eggs can be exchanged as part of a diplomatic pact, for example, or earned by completing challenging quests from the avatars or certain members of the Bazaar. I was told that the winning camp this year, Red, came back from an early deficit in part by having members aggressively seek out and complete such quests. Likewise, a member of Green earned a dragon egg for winning the semi-OOC garb competition at the Bazaar, and we won another for having NPCs judge our camp as having the best looking in-game garden (we covered it in props and decorated it extensively because, well, nature is sort of our thing).

Then, of course, there’s the War. On Saturday afternoon all five armies gathered and fought as one of the final acts of the contest, with the goal of capturing enemy avatars and taking them off the field. This is where alliances really pay off, because having no friends in a five-way fight is a good way to get stomped to paste really quickly by folks that do. As it was, weekend allies Green, Silver and Red all agreed to fight the rival Blue and Shadow alliance, and when they were defeated Red asked us (Green) to stand down while they fought Silver because Silver had broken a treaty with them and they wanted revenge. After Red dispatched Silver, we finally took them down in a hard fight. Points are awarded based on order of defeat, potentially turning the tide in close scoring.

It was 2+ hours of almost continuous, intense fighting and no small amount of roleplay (keeping/breaking alliances especially). It was tense and exhausting and awesome, with an incredibly small number of stoppages of play for a huge battle (and most of those very early on).

Review: As the heart of a competitive game, point scoring has to feel fair, logical, and consistent, or everything falls apart in a hurry. I’m happy to report it was all of those things. One interesting wrinkle is that dragon eggs are currency as well as points – some of the most powerful rituals require spending them, for example, and offering an egg as payment is a powerful inducement to cement a potential treaty or make amends for a misunderstanding or betrayal. I enjoyed this because it adds a level of risk/reward – spend or give away too many eggs and you’ll fall short in the competition, but don’t spend/offer any and you might lose because you don’t have allies and your rivals are strong enough to raid you repeatedly and/or beat you in the War.

As for the regulation of violence, requiring players to run most violence by refs first for approval and have them present to do it is a great choice. While yes you can get mugged by a small group if you’re out on your own, and you don’t need a ref for friendly duels and sparring and the like, requiring refs to be present for most physical conflict means that people by and large feel free to move around camp without feeling they need to be in large groups for safety or the like. It’s nice because free fire PVP zones tend to turn games into armed camps of paranoid cliques, but there was really none of that here and it was welcome and conducive to roleplaying.

When it comes to how the OOC coordination of combat worked, for the most part the battles I saw seemed to go fairly smoothly, especially considering it was a first event and it’s no small matter to coordinate multiple camps trying to wage war on each other. There were definitely times when things seemed to get scrambled and it took the refs a while to work things out, but only time did it go seriously wrong that I saw (more on that later). During the War there were several stoppages of play that turned out to be called in error, but again, those seemed to be based on player misunderstanding more than anything else – for example, many of us have been conditioned for years to stop play when we hear “HOLD!” called loudly, but that is a totally permissable term at Drachenfest (“Time out” serves that function instead). So we had several pauses that turned out to be players hearing something like “Hold the line!” and years of instinct reflexively kicking in to make them pause play. Not a huge concern overall – as someone who has run large events in the past, though not on this scale, it’s inevitable that communication and logistics will have issues, especially on a first run. From what I saw, the infrastructure was solid and should only become moreso overall with experience in future years.

Death & Character Loss
Ah yes, that. While characters are easy to drop, they generally take deliberate action to kill. If you’re left on the ground you can try to crawl back to safety after a few minutes. Enemies have to take a moment to specifically act to kill you, and generally most camps avoid this if possible because it tends to set off a chain reaction of retaliatory murder. (And since healing is slow, many times you don’t need to kill your enemies to achieve your goal – you can claim a banner while they’re all on the ground being tended by medics.) If the worst comes to pass and you are slain, you go to a place called the Limbus, which is located near the Shadow camp (fittingly enough).

There a special, dedicated team runs you through an experience that is between a visionquest and a Harrowing from Wraith: The Oblivion – if you succeed, you return to life at your camp’s shrine, with no knowledge of five minutes before your death. (You also cannot fight or cast for a time due to resurrection exhaustion, so people can’t simply recycle right back into action.) If you fail you lose your character, but you can make a new character and join a different camp to return to play.

Review: I didn’t die during the weekend, so I can’t speak to the Limbus experience directly. However, to a person everyone I spoke to who went through it said it was amazing. More than one said it was one of it not the best part of the weekend, and described it as amazing and intense. So there’s that.

The Long Game
Drachenfest is intended to be an ongoing annual event, with characters potentially being called time and again to take part in the competition on behalf of their chosen faction. (Or possibly switching factions between runs due to major roleplaying events during an event!) This means that players are also encouraged to take the long view and plan things like multi-year alliances between camps, as well as dive ever deeper into guild discoveries and secrets. Established characters will never become fundamentally better than newcomers to the point where the game separates into different strata – especially since there’s no guarantee anyone will return from the Limbus! – but after attending several festivals you’ll find seasoned veterans will have more and varied tricks, not to mention friends and favors to back them up. Dangerous, for sure, but not insurmountable by any means.

Review: As the first game here in the US, naturally there was no long game at work when we arrived, but I could already see the seeds of such multi-year planning taking root. Literally, in the case of Green camp – after the War we performed a long, emotional ritual designed to create a divination tree that would bloom in later years and offer roleplaying opportunities for future Green camp members, and possibly help defend the camp too (think Whomping Willow crossed with the Oracle at Delphi). Likewise, while both sides did their best to mend fences after a rocky weekend, I’m pretty sure Blue and Green will regard each other warily for at least another festival or two, and as this year’s winner Red will almost certainly have a target on their back when the Drachenfest reconvenes next year. Being the camp of conquest and honor, I’m sure they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Concluding Thoughts

This was an extremely impressive and ambitious first run, and on the whole a very entertaining and successful one. Yes, Drachenfest has been a huge success for years in Germany, but that by no means guaranteed it would work well here. Fortunately I think this run laid a strong foundation for an American offshoot to find its footing. The biggest problem I personally encountered was a failed attempt at a siege, but that apparently turned out to be the result of one or more players violating the honor code and lying about crucial OOC information. So as frustrating as it was I obviously can’t hold that against the game, especially since staff did their best to remedy the situation despite bad faith by some players. I try never to hold those sorts of problems against a game, especially since they seemed isolated and far between, and while I’m sure it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea it certainly seems like there is plenty of enthusiasm even among factions that didn’t come out on top.

I think the best way I can sum up my feelings is simply this: I can’t wait to go back next year.

Stray Thoughts

  • You do not need to be a fighter to enjoy the game. I played as a non-combatant, I did not have any offensive spells, I did not even bring a weapon. I was a vulture and a healer during battles and still had a blast.
  • If you don’t fight you still need to figure out what you will do if a battle breaks out near you, even if it is just “walk away” or “surrender” or “die and go to Limbus.” Due to the ref oversight required there aren’t many if any spontaneous mass battles but you can get mugged walking around at night or accidentally walk into a situation as it kicks off (I arrived at Green camp on Saturday morning literally 15 seconds ahead of an attack by another camp).
  • “Can I play in a different camp than my friends? Like, if I’m in Red but they’re in Blue, will that mean we don’t see each other?” Short answer: No, with a but. There’s nothing that prevents you from hanging out with people from other camps – especially at the Bazaar – but depending on the politics of the weekend you may find yourself facing off against your friends in battle, and there may be times when you are not permitted to be in another faction’s camp (such as council meetings or when planning battles). Likewise, if your friends are in a rival camp, others in your own group might look at you with a little suspicion and ask you to prove your loyalty. My advice? Talk to your friends before game and make sure everyone is ready to lean into it, and just enjoy the drama and roleplaying opportunities that come with being part of different factions.
  • Drachenfest issues cool metal currency, and it is yours to keep. The rulebook literally states that these metal coins are player keepsakes. You can spend them or give them away however you want, but they cannot be stolen, and no magic or skill can compel you to give them up. If you are dropped in combat enemies can take all your item cards – weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, etc – but they cannot take your festival coins. Though the rulebook does recommend “tipping” your killer a coin or two if it was a fun roleplaying experience. 😂
  • Non-com spectators are permitted at the big War on Saturday afternoon. Bring a chair and snacks. Especially water.

Posted by  |  June 16, 2022 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Badass Larp Talk #32: That Old Ivory Tower

So let me put forward something of a controversial premise: The best chance larp has to keep evolving as an artform, as a medium, will not be catering to existing larpers but continuing to find an audience of people who do not consider themselves larpers when they encounter it.
I’m not saying that those of us already in the field can’t innovate. Of course we can. If you don’t believe me, play some Golden Cobras, go to a festival, read your trade pubs. There are plenty of cool ideas, and the past decade or so has seen some tremendous leaps we should be proud of, collectively.
But I’m an academic by vocation too, and that means I recognize a closed intellectual loop when I see one. And let me tell you, my friends and neighbors of this imaginary neighborhood, there are Signs of that particular affliction all around us if you but know how to spot them. We don’t have a true ivory tower of larp, at least not yet, but between you and me there’s a big ol’ pile of white-washed brick and a lot of mortar mixed already.
One reason academics get a bad rap with other people, after all, is because they can fall into the habit of talking exclusively to other academics, until their world shrinks to that little circuit. Once you’re inside a loop like that, it can be all to easy to forget that you’re only communicating with a small slice of the population, and mistake discussions you have with each other for Great Big Theory Talks that encompass an entire field when it’s actually just a handful of experts trading opinions.
With that in mind, here’s the associated uncomfortable truth: The vast majority of larpers do not attend academic larp conferences or read academic larp publications, nor are they likely to do so in any significant numbers in the future. So if you’re only aiming your ideas at that audience, you’re not reaching roughly 99% of the larp population. You may wish this wasn’t so – I know I do, at times – but it’s the plain truth, and an important one to remember if you want to balance the theoretical and practical experiences of larp.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying people shouldn’t study larp in an academic sense, or even that it’s a bad idea for experts to have conversations with each other that aren’t open to the general public. Like I said, I’m an academic – I recognize the value of study and debate. It’s healthy for a field, but only if balanced with the realization that it does not speak for the field entire. You have to come up for air sometimes, is what I’m saying. To paraphrase my boy Hume, now and then you need to put aside the philosophy and play pool with your friends. 🙂
This is where I get concerned with the state of larp, a bit. We’ve reached the point where we’ve got people really studying the field and digging into theory, not to mention designers pushing the boundaries of what the medium can do (or should do). WHICH IS COOL. But we also have to take care that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that only the intellectual and avant garde aspects of the medium matter. They do, they absolutely do, but they are still only pieces of the whole, and not especially large pieces either.
Which brings me back to the original point. One thing I’ve said for a while now is that larp is still small as mediums go mostly because we larpers keep it that way, and I don’t exactly mean that as a compliment. We spend an awful lot of time preaching to the choir, as it were, and while I understand the importance of satisfying the audience you’ve got, sometimes it feels like any large moves to bring the medium to a wider audience are greeted with eye-rolling derision. Things like “that’s not real larp” or “non-larpers take too much effort to teach” or “anything commercial can’t be True Larp” or “if it has [insert highly subjective requirement] then it’s not technically a larp” or a dozen other such nitpicky and dismissive utterances.
I know, I know. You don’t do that. You’re probably right about that, too. Most of us aren’t those people. But they are out there, and they can be awful loud. If you don’t believe me, try going to a larp community space and publicly suggesting that it’s OK to run a larp as a honest to goodness business instead of a passion project, or that interactive theater could offer a bridge to bringing larp to more people, or praise a depiction of larp on film, or simply declare that you’re starting a brand new game of any type. Chances are pretty good you’ll have some folks only too happy to tell you how wrong you are for liking or wanting any of those things.
People like that can’t truly stop progress, but they can sure as hell make it a lot more annoying. And more importantly, they can drive people away, when we always benefit from more places at the table. Larp, like love, is not a pie. Fun is not zero sum, and art sure as hell isn’t either. The more people who experience larp, and the more ways they experience it, the better and stronger all larp becomes. We shouldn’t ignore a deeper study of it, but we shouldn’t trick ourselves into thinking that’s the only part worth discussing, and we definitely shouldn’t stop looking at ways to fit more people into this medium. It’s bigger on the inside, I promise.
In the end, it’s important to remember that there is no one thing called larp. Larp is a lot of moving pieces. It’s players and designers, it’s game runners and event staff, it’s campaigns and chronicles and and conventions and one-shots, it’s parlor and boffer and freeform and playground and blockbuster and therapeutic and a dozen other styles and subsets. It’s that game you can’t stop playing and that game you can’t stand, it’s rulebooks you can fit in a text message and rulebooks you could derail a train with, it’s name tag elves and six hours of orc makeup, and so much more.
The only thing larp shouldn’t be is just for us,

the already larping.

 

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Badass LARP Talk is a semi-regular advice series for gamers who enjoy being other people as a hobby. Like what you read? Click on the BLT or Badass LARP Talk tag on this entry to find others in the series, follow me on Twitter @WriterPete, or subscribe to the blog for future updates! 

Posted by  |  November 6, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Badass Larp Talk #31: Art, Ownership, Evolution

Art that is walled off, dies.

This may seem like a weird and rather harsh sentiment to kick off a post in this normally sunny blog, but bear with me, I’ll explain. I was recently involved in a discussion about larp and cultural exchange where I was told, explicitly and with no apparent irony, that certain groups were “not allowed” to use rules and design principles developed by a particular group, because they did not respect the originating group’s design culture and overall artistic mission. Essentially, the argument went, these ideas had been developed by artists who didn’t want them used for commercial purposes, and that by doing so, these other groups were “destroying” the original art form.

So, let me unpack the few truths and many errors in this philosophy.

Let’s start with the truths. First of all, as an English professor with a historicist take on literature, I happen to agree with the notion that it’s important to understand the culture that created a particular work of art, and especially the context for an entire art form or movement. Art does not exist in a vacuum, after all – it is the work of living artists and as such reflects the zeitgeist they create in, not to mention various personal quirks, interests, passions, and foibles. If you think an art form is great enough to adopt and/or imitate, it seems reasonable to expect that it’s great enough to research a bit too, especially if you have more than just a passing interest in it. No one says you have to drop everything and research the origins of EDM if you like one song, for example but if you plan on playing it at parties professionally or even making the music yourself, you might want to look into its roots, movements, etc.

This leads to another truth in that statement – when you understand a culture, you also can recognize areas that may not translate (literally or figuratively) very well to your own. For example, the innovative Ars amandi method developed in Europe for incorporating non-sexual touch as a way of expressing sexual and physical intimacy in larp does not always play well with American legal and social mores, which are often extremely touch averse. (I know, it’s pretty messed up that Americans are cool about hitting each other with foam swords and yelling “DECAPITATE” but not that someone might consensually touch their forearms with their bare hands to indicate romantic closeness. Damn Puritans, still fucking everything up.) It’s not that Americans are incapable of learning and properly applying the method, it’s just that doing so will take some extra adjustment and consideration for both players and facilitators because it’s far outside the larp norms of this particular gaming culture. So, again, research is your friend in a situation like this.

Those are two very good and important items, but that’s about where the applicable truths run out, because now we run into questions of ownership.

Nobody owns art forms, not in the macro sense. While individual artists should be credited for their creations and their specific work not plagiarized – and yes, that has happened in the larp discussion before, and no, it’s not OK to just take design philosophies and pass them off as your own – in the larger sense art doesn’t belong to anyone, at least not in a prohibitive context. Art belongs to everyone who participates in it, for better or worse. Attempting to gatekeep it and tell people “you can’t do that” is bound for failure, because that’s just not how art works. Sometimes we wish art could be locked down a bit, if only to make sure that artists receive their due – looking at you, white American musicians who stole rock ‘n roll, got rich, and largely didn’t give any credit to the African American blues and early rock artists who actually started the genre – but sadly it’s just not the case, even when it maybe might be better that way. We can and should try to do better than those early days of rock’n’roll, for the record, but still, art doesn’t like to stay in boxes and it definitely doesn’t like to be fenced in.

Art goes where it goes, and by and large we’re all better for it.

That’s where the idea of “you can’t use these rules” really runs off the rails. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that every member of an entire creative community agrees with the notions that 1) their design principles are being misused, and 2) that the solution is that others outside their group should not use them.  That’s a tall order for agreement, given the often contrary nature of creatives, but it’s certainly not impossible, so let’s go with it. Let me be clear – it’s not that such a community can’t be upset if they believe things they created are being used in ways they find run counter to their design ideals. They certainly can be, and expressing that is natural – it’s another reason I think people should research new ideas and movements when they encounter them. No, where it breaks down is the “can’t” part of that response.

On a basic level, well, telling a creative community – any creative community – that they can’t do something pretty much guarantees a bunch of them will, if only just to spite you. Artists are funny that way.  But even beyond a basic, knee-jerk reaction, it’s actually really important that they do so, because otherwise you set some pretty dangerous precedents for art – namely, that a particular style or genre of art “belongs” to a specific group of artists, and furthermore that those artists have the right and authority to exclude others from practicing the same type of art they create.

As an experiment, imagine that Picasso, on creating cubism – yes art history folks, I know it’s more complex than that and that actually helps my case, but bear with me here – told everyone that they were free to enjoy cubist art. However, they could not create any themselves unless they too lived in Paris at the same time he did and shared his cultural and philosophical context. It would not only be monumentally egotistical to say so, but such a declaration would be bound to failure from the start.

Now, would it be fair to say that understanding the origins of cubism and especially Picasso’s take on it would require understanding their specific cultural context? Absolutely. Should you maybe look into the origins of the movement and its principles if you intend to apply it to your own work? I’d strongly recommend it, if only to give credit where it’s due and make sure you’re not making mistakes that have already been addressed. But do you need to share all those exact to apply the techniques of cubism to your own art? No. And that’s where the idea of ownership of larp concepts breaks down.

Let’s say I coined a design term – call it “playground larp.” I define it as larps which avoid both simulationist realism and narrativist abstraction, instead using simple games and child-like activities to resolve conflicts and dictate outcomes in the story. As an example of a pioneering playground larp, I cite Brennan Taylor’s ongoing Bulldogs! sci-fi larps, which use activities like tossing rubber balls at stacks of Solo cups to simulate knocking down enemy shields and keeping a ball bearing in the center of a painted circle on an unpredictably tilting frisbee to determine if a ship avoids dangerous asteroid collisions. I acknowledge that neither Brennan nor I invented the use of such activities in larp, but write a design manifesto which centers these elements in ways that have not been previously explored, and outlines a new vision for playground larp as an expanding movement. I present this at larp conferences and publish it in larp journals, and I make it clear that I believe playground larp should never be run for profit, as that diminishes the essential DIY nature and childlike wonder of the experience.

With all that said, can I tell people that they cannot create playground larps unless they’re from the same background as Brennan and me, and share our design principles? No. Those ideas are out there now, ricocheting in pinball fashion throughout the larp community, and I cannot control them even if I wanted to. Even if a few years later I see a huge blockbuster larp that heavily incorporates playground design principles – it’s set at a carnival, and so lots of situations are actually resolved by playing various carnival games – and charging $1500/head, I can’t say to them “you can’t do that.” I may wish they wouldn’t, because it’s not what I had in mind when I wrote up the playground design manifesto, but that’s as far as it goes.

This also touches on another important problem with the ownership issue – the folly of tracing origins as a gatekeeping method. As previously noted, art is not created in a vacuum, and larp is certainly no exception. Attempting to claim ownership of a part of it because you “created” it only leads to others to say that without their work, you could have never created yours, and so you actually owe them. Whereupon yet another person steps up and says that their contribution to the field is even older and therefore both of those people owe them, and so on, and so on, and so on. I’m not saying that nobody has original ideas, mind you. Going back to Picasso, I can certainly give him credit for helping invent a new style of painting. However, if he claimed that other painters could not use his ideas to inspire their own techniques, I’d call foul. Trying to establish that sort of ownership authority in art world gets ugly and reductivist, fast, and anyway it misses the entire point of art.

As Steve-o wisely put it in SLC Punk, when discussing the ongoing European/American argument about who “started” punk rock: “Was it the Sex Pistols in England? The Ramones and the Velvet Undergound in New York? ‘Sex Pistols!’ ‘Ramones!’ Ahhhhh! WHO CARES WHO STARTED IT?!?! IT’S MUSIC.” The idea being that enjoying it is way, way more important than quibbling over ownership.

There’s also the problem of asserting ownership in that it assumes there are “correct” and “incorrect” ways to apply artistic techniques, which is rarely if ever true. (Appropriate is an important question, as is appropriation, but those are matters for another time.) Mainly because this sort of outlook assumes that, once created, a design principle or rules system must remain in its original state or it is being “corrupted” somehow. Which is also a very limited and frankly very unhealthy view of art. Is Dada a “corruption” of cubism, for example, because it arose in response to those techniques? Or is it simply part of the ongoing discussion that is art?

I’ll just say it: There are no platonic artistic forms.

So let’s be clear: It is important to research and understand where the art that inspires you comes from, because art exists in part as a response to its environment, and also because some elements may not be easy to translate into other settings due to their origins in a specific context. It can also be important to think about who makes the art that you love, because their perspective can have a profound impact on understanding their work; even if you ultimately do not agree with them as artists or even as individuals, you at least can do so from a position of knowledge. And simply put, it is important to give people their due credit for blazing trails and changing perspectives – we already have far too many historical examples of artists being ignored, glossed over, and otherwise marginalized by other artists, especially when it comes to commercial success. Don’t add to that list if you can help it.

That said, it is equally important to understand that art is not a gated community, and that telling people “you can’t” is rather correctly doomed to fail as a result. Once art is out there, it is out there, and others will use it, adapt it, reject it, and otherwise create in response to it as they see fit. You may, of course, keep as true to your own original community and ideals as you like, and that’s fine. You cannot, however, expect the rest of the artists in your medium to adhere to those same standards simply because you do, and even if you could, the result would weaken the medium, not strengthen it. Art is not a ship in a bottle, it’s a ship at sea, and while you can plot courses and hold that wheel tight you still never know exactly how those winds will blow or precisely where those currents will carry you.

In conclusion: Players, game runners – do your homework, give credit. Designers – understand that once your work is out there, you can’t dictate how it’s used. And most importantly, because it often gets forgotten in this debate, everyone –

Have fun.

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Badass LARP Talk is a semi-regular advice series for gamers who enjoy being other people as a hobby. Like what you read? Click on the BLT or Badass LARP Talk tag on this entry to find others in the series, follow me on Twitter @WriterPete, or subscribe to the blog for future updates! 

 

 

 

Posted by  |  October 7, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Badass Larp Talk #30: Hard to Swallow Pills, Player Edition

OK, players, we’ve got to talk.

Let’s start with a basic but essential truth: Our hobby is changing. Hell, our medium is changing – for one thing, it can legitimately be called a medium now! This is in most ways a really great thing, because not only does it mean people outside of LARP are starting to recognize that we create some amazing experiences, but it also means that larp runners and designers are pushing the limits of what we can do and expect. Which is awesome! There’s really never been a better time to be a larper, and it’s getting better all the time.

That said, though, there are some things that aren’t so great, and that we need to change in order to keep up with what’s going on in our hobby. We’ve got some bad habits, you see, and we need to hold ourselves accountable

Big Damn Disclaimer: Let me be very clear. This is not a “vaguepost” about any particular larps, or players for that matter. I am absolutely certain that your larp may be totally different than what’s presented here, and that’s OK. I’m speaking in broad strokes about problems and trends I’ve noticed in the scene, and that means your individual experience may vary. If it does, and in a good way, hey, awesome! But before you run to the comments to say “NOT MY LARP” please understand that I never intended it to be about your specific game. We cool? Good.

1 – We Seriously Underpay for Larp
According to my admittedly unscientific research of looking up a bunch of larp sites, talking to larpers, and having played a variety of larps over a long period of time, the average weekend boffer larp in the US costs between $40-$60. I know that’s no small chunk of change for a lot of players and I respect that – I was a threadbare college larper too, and I know a lot of working poor who must scrape to find the funds too – but at the same time, think about what that level of entertainment would cost in almost any other form. Two days and two nights at a campground, with nearly/entirely 24/7 entertainment provided (and sometimes basic meals), including expectations for exciting battles, interesting plots, and dramatic roleplay, in addition to theatrical level makeup, costuming, props, etc.? With dozens of friends and cast members? That’s not a deal, my friends, that’s a steal.

I know that can be hard to accept if finding even that amount of money is hard for you, and once again, I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m just saying that as it grows up, we need to seriously evaluate what our hobby is worth to us, because in many games we’re still paying the prices that were set when it was a small bunch of friends just trying to cover the costs of renting a campground and making simple costumes, except now the game hosts 100+ people and the expectations are rising higher and higher when it comes to costuming and makeup and spectacle.

If boffer larp has a problem with pricing, by the way, parlor larp may be even worse, if a bit quieter about it. I mean, let’s start with the simplest question – does your local parlor game even charge money? If it does, does that money go beyond covering the cost of renting the play space and/or putting out food and drink for the players? Do you compensate the game runners for the extra time they spend writing plots, making props and costumes, answering messages on Facebook, running scenes on Discord, etc.?

If not, why not?

Now, before you object, I’m not necessarily talking about a small “for the love of it” game run by friends for friends – I’m mostly addressing public-facing games that run for larger groups, typically in rented spaces like community halls, VFW posts, college lounges, etc. Though it’s worth noting that it’s not a bad idea to check in on your friends running your small parlor game and see if there’s a way you can help them out, because I’ve known a lot of people who poured hundreds if not thousands of dollars into their friendly little parlor games but never thought to ask for anything for fear of sounding greedy.

Essentially, we need to confront the fact that on the whole our expectations for what game should be keep rising, but not our desire to pay more for it, and sooner or later one of those factors is going to give. Either we recognize that we’re not paying enough to support the sort of high-end experience we’re after (and scale our expectations accordingly), or we accept that we need to pay more in order to have one. Even if it’s not a discussion that applies to every single larp, it’s still one the community should be having as a whole.

2. We Need to Talk about Boundaries More
Social media can be a wonderful tool for larps – it helps game runners publicize events, players organize groups, makers share feedback and inspiration for game materials, and plenty of other lovely and helpful things. Not to mention that it’s brought players and creators closer together than ever before, able to interact with each other in real time. Which is amazing … but also part of the problem.

Quite simply, all too often we overtax our game runners and designers by not giving them nearly enough downtime where they don’t have to think or talk about game-related things. I’m not saying that we do it on purpose – a lot of the time staff may not even recognize it’s an issue until they hit the burnout stage – but it’s still far too common. We need to take a step back and recognize that just because we can doesn’t mean we should, especially when it comes to social media.

Look, I get it. One major part of larp – that goes almost completely missed by those outside of it, but that’s another blog post – is the fact that it creates communities. People who come to game can make friends, find romance, share passions outside of game, do job networking, and otherwise do all the things that humans do when you put us in one place. It’s exciting and generally awesome, no question.

The problem isn’t that people use games to make friends and connect with others. That’s fine. It’s when they don’t move beyond game in those connections, and it becomes all they ever want to talk about, even when other people aren’t interested in doing so. This is especially true when talking to game runners. It’s great that they created a world you enjoy playing in, and it’s cool that you guys can be friends. But may I recommend running through this small checklist every now and again, regarding other players in general and especially game runners and larp designers you know:

  • Do I respond to their posts that aren’t about game by making them game-related?
  • Do I know anything about them apart from their connection to game?
  • Do I only message them about game through approved channels?

I’m not saying answering “No” to one of these is automatically awful, but if you find yourself answering no consistently, you may want to broaden your connection with these folks. If you have larp in common, after all, chances are you may have other interests as well – video games, fantasy novels, woodworking, competitive dance, you name it. And if you don’t, well, maybe you need to gauge how often you talk about game stuff, flip it around and see if you think it would be excessive if someone you didn’t know too well was always talking about the one thing you both have in common.

World of Warcraft actually captured this one pretty well in one of their loading screen messages of all things. They wrote:  “It’s fun to visit Azeroth with your friends, but make sure to go outside Azeroth with them too!” In other words, game is great, game is definitely a shared interest – but try not to make it your only one.

3. We Need to Stop Pushing Divisive Narratives
There is no one size fits all, unified field theory of larp. Not every game will click for every player, and that’s OK. There are always more games out there. And yet we tend to fall into some pretty nasty, cliquish camps with very little provocation, and thanks to polarizing effects of social media, it only gets worse over time. What do I mean by camps? Well, here are just a few of the divisions I see popping up over and over again:

  • Euro larpers vs American larpers
  • Stick jocks vs emotional roleplayers
  • Bleed is creepy vs Bleed is amazing
  • Loving or hating blockbuster larps
  • Boffer larps vs parlor larps
  • Nordic larp is the One True Way vs Nordic larp is for hippie space communists
  • Larp is Art vs. Larp is just entertainment

I’m not saying we can’t have passionate feelings about some of these things, and I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t discuss them and explore these topics and why people feel the way they do. There’s a lot of potentially interesting and useful material at the heart of these discussions! We just need to remember that at least with these topics, it’s important to resist the notion of objectively right/wrong answers. Just because I like hitting people with plumbing supplies and you like hours of deep personal roleplay doesn’t mean we’re opposed to each other, or that one of us is correct and the other is incorrect. And yet, all too often it comes back to those sorts of knee-jerk distinctions.

Larp is a spectrum, and understanding that is essential. We can all find things we like, as well as things we don’t like, and that’s not only OK, it’s good! It means we have a dynamic and evolving medium on our hands, and that can only mean good things over time. But it also means we have to take extra care to avoid the temptation to confuse “I don’t like this” for “this is bad/wrong” as all that does is spark looping, unproductive arguments and set our community back.

We’re better than that, so let’s go out and prove it.

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Badass LARP Talk is a semi-regular advice series for gamers who enjoy being other people as a hobby. Like what you read? Click on the BLT or Badass LARP Talk tag on this entry to find others in the series, follow me on Twitter @WriterPete, or subscribe to the blog for future updates! 

 

Posted by  |  August 14, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Badass Larp Talk #29: Business or Pleasure?

So, larp has a little bit of a business problem.

Don’t get me wrong – on the whole I love how our medium is growing and evolving. When I started larping back in 1993, I don’t think in my wildest fantasies I conceived of events on the scale of the many blockbuster games that take place on a regular basis around the world these days. The idea of a larp – a larp! – being able to rent a castle or a battleship or acres of campground and put on a spectacle was something to daydream about, a full-on Barenaked Ladies “If I Had a Million Dollars” lottery win sort of fantasy, not a practical reality. And yes, I know even back then there were some games that were already putting on big events like those I’m talking about, but what can I say, the internet was still young and the community was not nearly as global and interconnected as it is now. My apologies to those who were breaking that ground and I just didn’t know it back then.

Hell, I remember when my local boffer game hit 100 attendees for the first time back in 2001 and we all went crazy with how huge that was; now I think 100 attendees is the figure many games have for hurricane weekends (“Cat 4? Pah! Fetch me my wind pants, papa needs his XP!”). It’s kind of amazing how quickly the exceptional becomes mundane, when you think about it. But I digress – this isn’t a post about being a (in this case literal) graybeard larper. That’s coming soon, but not quite yet. No, this post is about the problematic phase many larps find themselves in these days, specifically, the nebulous realm of “more than a hobby, not quite a profession” and the problems it poses.

Make no mistake about it – there are people who make a living running larps these days, particularly in Europe and North America. And while these professional larp runners may not be making golden cocaine money – yet* – they’re also not the quasi full-timers the field used to have either. By which I mean those who could do it “full-time” only because they had trust funds and/or still lived at home and didn’t pay for rent or groceries. I’m not disrespecting such individuals, just to be clear, but also pointing out that they weren’t self-sustaining as far as business models go – they didn’t pay enough for their owners to live on them without outside help. Now, though, we have a list of people who do exactly that, and the list is growing all the time.

Likewise, with a few notable exceptions the standards of larp production have been steadily climbing over the years. I’ve seen it with my own eyes – even smaller games regularly use makeup, props, and other stagecraft on ordinary scenes and mods that would have been considered the pinnacle of the art form years ago. Even humble games often have budgets dedicated to such things these days, as opposed to the catch-as-catch-can approach of years past where spectacle was pretty limited and usually reserved for Major Plot Moments a couple of times per year.  It’s a pretty amazing evolution and I love watching it continue.

However, there is a down side to all this as well, and one big part of it is the fact that while many larps have gone from enthusiastic hobbies and passion projects to full-fledged businesses, the compensation for those involved in making these events possible has not always kept up with what would be expected of a similar business of the same size in a different industry. Or to put it another way, it’s still too common in this industry to see games call themselves “businesses” when it suits them or sounds impressive but then hide behind “it’s just a hobby” when it comes time to compensate their staff.

Before I get too into this, I’m not saying that the monthly Vampire game you run in your friend Jessica’s creepy basement needs to provide comprehensive dental for all loyal Camarilla members**, or that the Backyardia boffer larp that you run at your stepdad’s place has to make matching contributions to your goblins’ 401k plan. I’m going to call games like that “non-profits” for a few reasons:  one, they don’t make money; two, I doodled in business class and didn’t learn proper uses for terms; three, I can’t hear tax lawyers vomiting blood through a computer screen anyway. Anyway, games like that aren’t the problem – though they can become one if they get bigger but never change their attitude.

To put it bluntly, relying on unpaid volunteers to staff vital operating positions when you’re running a for-profit business is dubiously ethical at best and possibly illegal besides – no, really – and yet that’s still the model for many ongoing games across America and in parts of Europe. (And no, paying people in experience points or other game perks doesn’t count.) It might be a fine model when you’re all just having fun together and nobody’s turning a profit, but as soon as you start making money on a level beyond the game simply sustaining itself, the right thing to do is compensate the people who make it possible to run that business. Because that’s what you are at that point, after all – a business.

What’s strange to me is that if you put this idea in the context of almost any other business, people agree without reservation. For instance, if your friend started a little farm stand you might not mind helping him haul produce and put up signs for free, but if he started making a full-time living out of it and still expected you to work for nothing, you’d probably be pissed, and rightly so. Yet if you mention this notion in the context of larp, well, I’ll just put it politely and say it doesn’t go over well. Western culture already has a problem with paying artists – see the trope of the starving artist, or how many books and movies tout the message that making any money on your art is “selling out” and how “real” artists do it for the sheer love of creating – and larp is no exception. The way some people come down on the merest notion of compensation you’d think that asking games to pay creative or logistical staff was the same as killing happy young couples just to see if their kids turn out to be Batmen.***

Let me be clear here: I’m not saying that the second you start making some real money on a larp you need to start paying everyone on staff $30k/year with benefits. Nor that doing a four hour shift as a series of hapless peasants and repeatedly murdered orcs should mean that you take home a fat roll of cash at the end of the weekend. That said, though, pretending there’s no intermediate step between unpaid volunteer and full-time salary is horseshit. I know several ongoing games that pay their writers for every scene or module they write, for example, or give a stipend to their logistics staff every weekend, or both. A few games I know of actually do pay regular salaries to their staff members, and I’m happy to say the trend is becoming more common. But it needs to continue, and perhaps more importantly, it needs to be encouraged.

Update: As noted by the inimitable Shoshana Kessock – go ahead, try and nimit her – another difficulty faced by larp runners that factors into the compensation scenario is larp pricing, which traditionally has been very low for the amount of entertainment delivered. This stems from the fact that many larps began as hobbies and passion projects and thus charged only what they needed to keep going, but then face a sticky problem as they grow. If they charge more, they face accusations of greed and possibly losing players due to higher pricing. If they don’t raise prices, however, they eventually run into the problem where the expense of entertaining larger numbers of players outstrips the money coming in, and the game either folds or the staff is forced to pay for the shortfall, neither of which is desirable or tenable. So along with deciding what sort of compensation is fair, it is important to note that the price of games may need to increase as well, or players begin scaling back the sort of perks and production values they expect for their dollars if it doesn’t.

It might seem that I’m really picking on larp runners so far, and there’s some truth to that since they’re the ones holding the purse strings in this situation, but let’s also be frank – this is still brand new territory for everyone involved. So while it’s OK to ask for-profit games and full-time larp runners to compensate their staff, please bear in mind and cut them some slack if they’re making an effort. We don’t exactly have decades of business models and comparisons to fall back on here, so even the folks trying hard to be fair and compensate their people are still very much figuring it out by trial and error. Mistakes will be made, even by the well-intentioned, so please don’t whip out your pitchforks just because the writing staff at your favorite game is currently making $50/mod and you think they should be making $65. This is new territory, so rather than attacking, we should be working together to come up with fair pay scales and compensation models. That’s what ultimately will be best for everyone.

Some of you out there, if anyone’s actually reading this – and if so, hi mom, hi dad, I’m so glad you both could make it – are probably also wondering about what all this means for larp influencers too. Quick explainer: if you’re not familiar with the term, larp influencers are famous bloggers, YouTube hosts, and other well-known personalities in the community that larp companies increasingly rely on to build audience and spread word of mouth about their games. Influencers are especially key when it comes to the world of big budget blockbuster larps, where anything less than nearly full attendance and/or glowing reviews can potentially represent a serious financial disaster for the company, and so securing a high profile endorsement can mean the difference between starting a franchise or folding in failure.

I could write a whole article about the problems surrounding how larps treat larp influencers, and I probably will later on, rest assured. For now though I’m going to stick close to the points I’ve been making, if any, and say simply asking a larp influencer to hype your game is no different than another business hiring an advertising agency to raise customer awareness or signing a celebrity to promote its products, and by that I mean you pay them for doing it. Especially if you want them to really go all-in and do things like make larp trailers, sizzle reels, or other marketing tools for you. You wouldn’t expect Don Draper to light cigarette one without offering him a paycheck first; you shouldn’t ask anyone to spend time and money promoting your larp for free either. Especially if you’re coming to them because of their fame and expertise.

In the end, I totally get that even many “for profit” games don’t net a whole lot of cash, especially after you consider their overhead in terms of renting locations, buying props and costuming, etc. But if you’re making more than petty cash amounts of money from your game, and especially if it’s enough for you to live on full-time, it’s time to acknowledge that you are a business and structure it accordingly, including compensating your employees. It’s not just the legal thing to do, but the right one too. Yes, it can be messy and tedious and complicated, and you might need to hire a business planner and/or tax attorney and do other sorts of less fun “adult” stuff, but guess what? If you want to call yourself a business, if you want to put your name and/or the name of your game out there in the larp world as one to watch, this is the price of admission.

Or rather, it should be.

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* By “yet” I just mean that nobody’s making Bezos money for larp quite at this point, not that I assume all larp runners will buy cocaine plated in gold when they do.

** The Sabbat “dental plan” is, unsurprisingly, to randomly murder humans and wear their teeth on necklaces, so we’re not counting them for this example.

*** I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but no, not it doesn’t. Quit it.

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Badass LARP Talk is a semi-regular advice series for gamers who enjoy being other people as a hobby. Like what you read? Click on the BLT or Badass LARP Talk tag on this entry to find others in the series, follow me on Twitter @WriterPete, or subscribe to the blog for future updates! 

Posted by  |  July 19, 2018 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Badass Larp Talk #28: Triage

Since I know this may be a little controversial to some, let me begin by stating the following clearly and for the record:

I have nothing against the concept of bleed in larps.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, here’s a quick definition –  it refers to when events at game provoke emotional responses that carry over (or “bleed”) into life outside of the game, typically in an intense, disturbing, or emotional manner. I use disturbing in the sense of something unsettling or unusual, by the way, not necessarily as a negative term connoting the unpleasant or bizarre (though it could be those too). Bleed is most often used in connection with strong, lingering emotional responses, though it can also be used to refer to moments that inspire a great deal of introspection and examination.

Bleed can be deliberately induced, such as when players intentionally confront topics or emotions they have already identified as pertinent to them in real life, such as a player with abandonment issues creating a character who displays an exaggerated version of that problem as a way of exploring those feelings. Bleed can also be accidental, such as when events at game unexpectedly prompt a player to examine real world feelings or concerns after game is off. A character might really lose their temper at game, for instance, and the player find the experience so unexpectedly intense and lingering that they realize they have some issues with anger they hadn’t previously recognized.

I’ve done both in my time, for the record, and they’re interesting experiences. I have particularly enjoyed it when I’m surprised by my own emotions – it’s one of the things that makes larp so magical, at least to me, that the stories we tell can sneak up on us like that and make us feel things we never expected.  So to be clear, bleed can definitely be part of larp! I’m not questioning that. Truly, I’m not. No, the part of my post that is perhaps controversial to some is simply this:

Bleed is not the highest form of larp experience.

The reason I say this is because in some of the larp communities I’m part of, I’ve seen an small but steadily rising number of people discuss bleed as sort of the apotheosis of larp. In their comments, there’s a sense that if a game doesn’t induce some sort of bleed it must not be particularly good or engaging, or sometimes even that a player must not be into their character enough. I’ve even seen arguments break out between players when one person claims to be feeling bleed and another isn’t, as if the latter person wasn’t trying somehow. While I wouldn’t call this a major problem for the larp community by any means, it does strike me as an unfortunate trend, because it ultimately reduces larp to a sort of perpetual quest for increasingly difficult to attain experiences.

In many ways, the idea of “bleed is best” is a classic case of mistaking “this is my favorite thing” for “this is the best thing for everyone” which is pretty common in geek circles. (Well, common to human beings in general, really.) And it’s OK to like something, or even have it be your favorite thing – just remember that it’s also OK that not everyone shares your favorite thing too. Bleed can be wonderful, but making people feel like they’re not playing correctly if they don’t feel it/don’t want to pursue it is just not cool. Likewise, generating/feeling bleed is not synonymous with great roleplay or immersive character experience – plenty of really superb roleplayers don’t look for or often experience bleed as part of their play experience.

Even at the same larp, everybody plays for their own reasons and has their own definition of what makes a good game. That definition can change session to session or character to character too! For example, I know some boffer players who keep a roster that includes a “feels” character they bring out when they want deep story and emotional roleplay, a “beatstick” they play when they want to really run around and throw down with bad guys, and a “casual” character who’s a little bit of both but more laid back than either extreme. All at the same game!

I guess this might seem a little long-winded for such a simple message, but I feel like it’s one that’s always worth remembering. It’s good that the larp community has recognized the concept of bleed and begun seriously examining it as part of participant experience (or even a design goal). At the same time, it’s also important to recognize that bleed is not a universal measure of successful larp, or a great participant experience, or especially someone’s roleplaying ability.

It’s just another element of the amazing medium we are exploring together.

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Badass LARP Talk is a semi-regular advice series for gamers who enjoy being other people as a hobby. Like what you read? Click on the BLT or Badass LARP Talk tag on this entry to find others in the series, follow me on Twitter @WriterPete, or subscribe to the blog for future updates! 

Posted by  |  August 28, 2017 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Badass Larp Talk #27: “Don’t I Know You?”

In this installment, I’m going to look at very specific but very useful larping technique: faking shared experiences, also known as “winging the backstory” or simply instant history.  What do I mean by all those strange terms? Well, here goes!

Shared experiences are moments in the past that were shared with another character (or several characters), but which hadn’t actually been agreed upon or developed until the moment they were suggested. This is what makes them different from spontaneously generating your own backstory when it doesn’t involve others, as that doesn’t require anyone’s approval but your own. Essentially you’re suggesting shared backstory on the fly, and seeing how the other person feels about it.

This might seem rude, but if done right it’s not only polite and creative but can be a great way to reinforce character bonds and create a sense of history in a hurry. Skilled and cooperative players can spin elaborate moments out of almost nothing, and there are a few key tips to pulling it off without a hitch:

Tip #1: Offer, with a Way Out
Example: “Hey, weren’t you there when we chased that banshee across campus?”
This is a good example of an offer with a way out. You’re suggesting a shared experience – chasing a banshee across campus – but with “weren’t you there” you’re still giving them an easy out if they don’t want to have that incident in their backstory (“no, I wasn’t there”). The easiest way to do this is to frame these offers as questions of one kind or another, rather than stating them as facts, because that implies a level of uncertainty or latitude that allows the other player to answer more freely. It also takes a bit of the sting out of the fact that you may be catching them off-guard with the suggestion of part of their backstory they never considered.

The essence of the idea is that you’re doing two things at once – proposing a previously unknown character connection, while also offering the other party a chance to decline if they don’t feel it’s appropriate for their character. Suggest, but leave the door open too. It may sound complicated, but with a little practice it becomes second nature.

Tip #2: Use Weasel Words
Example: “I believe it started when I stole that cursed book out of the library, remember?”
Weasel words are words that in this context allow both parties some wiggle room: some, maybe, many, mostly, probably, believe, feel, seems, apparently, remember, etc. In the example, “I believe” is a lot more of a weasel phrase than using something stronger like “I know” – while technically both could still be wrong, “believe” is a lot more personal sounding than knowing. Also, the inclusion of the word “remember” and phrasing the memory as a question once again allows for the other player to back out if they like.

When you’re offering a shared experience, try to keep it relatively fuzzy, so that everyone involved has a chance to add details or alter things they don’t like. Remember, even though you’re proposing it, it still involves other players, which means they get to have a say in what you’re creating together!

Tip #3: Help with Leading Questions
Example: “Wait, were you in on it, or one of the ones who narc’d us out?”
If the other player seems to be struggling, help them out by asking leading questions that might give them a better idea of possible ways to resolve the situation. This doesn’t mean leading them right into being forced to be on your side or divulge sensitive information about themselves – we’re not in a courtroom here. Instead, leading questions allow you to help a floundering player by giving them possible solutions in the guise of asking for more details about the memory or experience you just conjured up.

The important thing to remember is to only do this if it seems necessary to help someone else out, or if they are in agreement and need a hand fleshing out the situation with you. If they’re not interested (see below), don’t keep piling on in hopes of making them moreso, but be willing to accept that it didn’t work and move on.

Tip #4: It’s OK to “No, But”
Example: “No, I wasn’t in on it, and I didn’t narc you out … but I sure remember how the Chancellor freaked out!”
Most of the time in the world of improv acting, you’re taught to “yes, and” and larp is no exception – it’s generally better to agree with someone and build on it than decline an effort at shared world-building. However, when you’re suggesting a shared moment to someone (or having one offered to you), it’s a time when “no, but” is perfectly acceptable. After all, while you may consider it an innocent offer, it might contradict something in the other person’s backstory or go against how they feel their character would act, possibly in ways you never expected.

The important part of understanding “no, but” is that when it happens, it means the other person is still trying to play with you – if they weren’t, that would be a flat no and end of discussion. A “no, but” means that while the idea doesn’t work for them as stated, they’re still interested in following that general line of play, and offering an alternative way to stay involved.

Tip #5: Respect the Hard No
Example: “No, I don’t remember anything about a banshee or a stolen book.”
Sometimes another player won’t be interested in a shared experience and they’re not willing to “no, but” the situation to being one they like more. It might be it just seems to far-fetched or out of character an experience for them to accept, or they might have a detailed backstory they like that just doesn’t have room for it. Maybe it even touches on some entirely OOC element they don’t want to bring up, much less explain in the moment. Regardless, sometimes players will give you a hard no, and that’s their right. This is the other reason phrasing shared experiences as questions and using weasel words is useful – it allows you to back away from the idea without damaging continuity or creating awkward situations where something might or might not have happened.

Example: “No banshee? Oh man, was I hitting the hallucinogenic potions that night? Sorry, my mistake.”

It’s important to remember that while a hard “no” might seem like bad roleplaying at a glance (at least compared to “yes, and” or “no, but” techniques), it’s entirely possible that the stance is driven by factors that you can’t know and that the other player does not feel comfortable discussing. So give everyone the benefit of the doubt and don’t get huffy if you get a flat no, just assume they have a good reason, and just back off the idea. You can always try it with someone else, or find another way to reach the roleplaying moment you’re looking for!

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Badass LARP Talk is a semi-regular advice series for gamers who enjoy being other people as a hobby. Like what you read? Click on the BLT or Badass LARP Talk tag on this entry to find others in the series, follow me on Twitter @WriterPete, or subscribe to the blog for future updates! 

 

Posted by  |  June 11, 2017 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

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