Badass Larp Talk #22: Why You’re Not Having Fun Anymore

One of the most wonderful things about long form/campaign larp is that it offers a chance to become part of a story that spans months or years of play, allowing you to inhabit your role for a length of time that would seem ludicrous to many other styles of gaming. It’s one of the things I love most about larp, this chance to weave stories over a long period of time and watch whole communities of characters mature and develop in the world, and I truly believe it is one of this medium’s most powerful strengths. That said, though, campaign play also brings with it some very real problems of its own, and I’m not even talking about more community-oriented ones like staff changes, out of character feuds, story arc disputes, rules quarrels, site troubles, or other messy circumstances that arise in any group over a long enough period of time.

No, this post is all about four of the most insidious things that many larpers wind up doing to themselves over the course of a long form game. These are ways that even great players sabotage their own fun, typically without realizing or understanding exactly what has happened and why it’s taken the fun out of a game they used to love so much. I’ve seen them happen many times over the years, at games ranging from fantasy boffer larps to White Wolf parlor games and beyond, and I’ll admit I’ve suffered from them myself in the past.

So if you’re playing in a campaign game, take a minute and run down the list. It might just help you steer clear of an obstacle you didn’t even see coming.

1) You’re Going to Every Game (Whether You Feel Like It or Not)

Seriously. Burnout is a major factor in both player and game runner fatigue. Finding a great new game can be a lot like falling in love – you can’t stop talking about them, you can’t stop thinking about all the fun you’ve had, and you definitely can’t wait for the next time. But eventually some of that feeling is bound to fade, and you’re due to start feeling a little bit fatigued. But you keep going to all the events anyway, because now you’re invested in the story and the other characters, plus it’s a chance to see friends you’ve made that it’s hard to see at other times. So you go, even though your heart’s not in it the way it was before, and don’t get me wrong – it’s still fun. But it’s a different kind of fun, because now you’re not going for the game anymore, you’re going because it’s a social expectation of sorts.

Eventually you can find yourself going to game grudgingly, or even dreading the approach of another event, because what was fun now seems more like a chore.And that, my friends, is the biggest red flag of all, because if you don’t heed those feelings, pretty soon you might walk away from game entirely – and all because you didn’t heed the warning your larp brain was sending.

The Fix: If you don’t feel like going, don’t go! Take a break. Sit out a couple of games and let your story batteries recharge. Find a reason for your character to be away for a little while if you like, but regardless, step back. Come back and play when you feel the urge to go and play, as opposed to the urge to go just to see people out of game. (If you miss your game friends, but don’t feel like gaming, arrange a night out or something instead – it’s always fun to see people outside of game anyway.) Trust me, it’ll help. Game runners, I know this sort of fix is trickier for you, but if you ask around it’s often possible to get a limited run “special guest storyteller” or someone similar to step up and handle duties for a game or two while you get some downtime. And it’s wroth it.

2) Your Character’s Story Has Run Its Course (But You’re Still Playing Them)

I know this is tricky, because part of the appeal of a long-running larp is that the story never ends (unless the game goes under). I’ve known people who’ve played the same character at the same game, continuously, for more than a decade. That’s amazing when you think about it, and more power to those folks. If that’s your style and your character, awesome! However, that combination of player interest and character longevity is a rare one, at least in my experience. A lot of larpers I’ve known get dissatisfied with a game after a while but can’t say exactly why, and when they puzzle it out, the answer comes back to the fact that they don’t feel like their character has more stories to tell.

In a nutshell, their character has essentially stagnated – sure there are new stories being told around them, but not through them, if you follow me. The town changes while they stay essentially the same. And so the player gets more and more restless, because there’s none of that wonderful thrill of character growth and exploration you have early on, and so it gets harder and harder to enjoy sessions because you’re now relying solely on external stories and events for fun, instead of also generating a certain level of your own enjoyment through character development.

Think about it this way – have you ever read a series or watched a show where you loved the main character, but after a while it started to feel like the story was going on too long?  Where you wound up wishing that the creator would simply end the series, because either the main character hasn’t changed in too long (becoming boring) or because they have changed so much you don’t even recognize them anymore (tossing out what you liked in the first place)? Most of us have experienced this at one time or another, and yet a lot of larpers wind up doing the exact same thing with their own characters, because they embrace the notion that story doesn’t have to end but miss the follow-up about how sometimes it really should conclude.

The Fix: I know it’s tough, but sometimes you have to say goodbye, or at least see you later. This doesn’t mean your character has to get killed off, though, or otherwise permanently written out of game. (Assuming you’re allowed multiple characters at the same time, anyway.) But it does mean you need to at least take a good long break from your primary character. Make a new character, preferably one with a totally different way of looking at the world or from a totally different background. Try them out for a while. Sometimes all it takes is a break from a regular role and a change of perspective to re-energize you and make you see your original character in a totally different and exciting way, and you can dive right back in with a fresh sense of purpose. Or sometimes you see that, well, your original character had a great tale, but it’s finished, and so it’s time to write them out and move on. Trust me – it’s better to realize a character’s story is over and end it the way you like than it is to keep on to the point where you’ve worn the concept down to a nub. Game runners, this goes for you too – villains, allies and other familiar faces have arcs just like player characters, and outlasting their time can be just as bad. Learn to guide them to their own finales, and let go when it’s time.

3) You’re Not Investing As Much Emotionally (Yet Expecting the Same Returns)

I’ve talked about this sort of thing before, but it bears repeating – all other things being equal, you get from larp what you put into larp. Period. Early on, this isn’t a problem – like I said, the first sessions of your time at a great larp are a lot like the early days of a great romantic relationship. You’re at the mad infatuation stage, where everything is fireworks and flowers and you can’t help but throw yourself into every session with all you’ve got. Even after that stage cools a bit, most of the time you enter a nice steady state of serious emotional investment – your character has forged ties with others, they’re regularly involved in plots, they know most all of the other faces in town and where they stand, and so on. A good character in a thriving game can exist in that state for months, sometimes years, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Characters are a lot like anyone else, after all – they tend to find a comfortable niche for themselves and settle into it, whether it’s badass assassin or idealistic politician or humble merchant or cheerful adventurer for hire.

But … eventually, for most players, a certain emotional fatigue sets in. Or perhaps complacency would be a better term for it. Combat, which was once a total rush, has become rote – a matter of math and rules instead of mayhem and roleplay. Other characters you used to roleplay with have been written out, killed off, or simply stopped attending – and all these new faces just seem to blend together. Games that once promised exciting installments of your favorite story that you just couldn’t wait to dive into now seem more like “Monster of the Month” episodes and everything feels like you’ve seen it before. (“How many times have we saved the world? Geez, I stopped counting at eleven or so.”) You used to be afraid to walk in the woods at night, or thrilled to duck into that secret back room meeting, but now it just feels so … remote.

Now, I’m not saying this is all necessarily your fault. Maybe the game staff has turned over, and the new stories just aren’t your cup of tea. Maybe the new players aren’t connecting with the game in the same way you do. Or maybe the quality of combat roleplay itself really has declined, and it’s not just you. But let’s assume for a moment that outside factors aren’t the problem – or at least, not all of it. Because larp fatigue is real, and it’s not just due to over attendance or a character outstaying their welcome. It’s also a matter of roleplay discipline, specifically holding yourself to the same standards you did when you started (or perhaps a little later when you hit your groove at the game). It’s easy to forget that larp is a skill that not only takes practice to develop, but also concentration to maintain during play. And if you let that slip, well, naturally things aren’t going to be as fun or exciting or emotional as they used to be, because you’re not there like you used to be, and so you’re going to be frustrated because the same things that used to thrill you won’t anymore. Because they can’t. Consciously or not, you’re not letting them.

The Fix: This problem is often the result of one of the other two problems above, so you might want to check them first. Assuming they’re not the cause, though, the only thing you can do to combat this sense of detachment is to, well, get attached. To characters, to stories, to the relationships in the game’s community, to the drama of the moment. I know that two years into a game it can be difficult to feel the same giddy thrill that you felt the first time you ventured forth into the darkened woods or down into the scary basement, but simply put, you have to try. You have to make the effort to really invest yourself back into your character, to stop taking the meta view of stats and story arcs and who’s doing what with whom outside of game, and really inhabit your role again. Characters can grow up, of course, they can become jaded like anyone else – a warrior seasoned by dozens of battles isn’t likely to have the same reaction to a fight that he did to his first, after all – but you have to draw a clear distinction between the character becoming hardened to their world as opposed to you the player numbing out the experience. Trust me, it’s a seemingly small but absolutely crucial distinction.

4) You Don’t Like the Game Anymore (But You’re Still Playing)

At first glance, this may sound a lot like #1, but there’s a fundamental difference – #1 assumes that you still like the game and want to keep playing, you just need to ease off on the play schedule a bit so you don’t burn out. But this is different. This is all about A) realizing that the game you loved isn’t the game you’re playing anymore, and B) you don’t enjoy what it’s become. There are a lot of reasons why this might come to pass. Maybe the rules have undergone major revisions, and you can’t stand the new mechanics. (Many larpers can’t even read the words “final edition of the rulebook” without uttering an involuntary bitter laugh.) Perhaps the game’s storyline has changed the world in a way you fundamentally disagree with, so much so that it seriously interferes with your enjoyment – I once played in a very traditional fantasy boffer game that decided without warning to add aliens and laser guns, for instance. Or maybe the staff has experienced significant turnover, and you don’t like the way the new crowd is running things compared to how the game was managed before. Sometimes it’s not any of those, but just the fact that one day you look around and realize the crowd you started playing with is almost if not entirely gone, and you don’t really connect with all these new players the same way.

Whatever the reason, it boils down to the fact that you just don’t like the game anymore.

And that can be really, really hard to accept. After all, larp is a big time investment, and more often than not a big monetary one as well. A lot of us wind up spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars making costumes, building props, perfecting makeup schemes and so on, not to mention the costs of “incidentals” like gas money, event food, and other miscellaneous supplies. It’s hard to look at how much you’ve put into a game and think that you might just have to walk away from it, no matter what the reason might be. And so you fight it and hang on, even as the game becomes less and less something you enjoy and more and more a collection of flaws and frustrations you can’t stop noticing, because the alternative is not going and that’s just not acceptable. Nobody likes to think that they’ve “wasted” all that time and money, even though it wasn’t really wasted if it has already given you hours of amazing stories.

On top of that, there’s the personal dimension too. You make friends at game, sometimes start romantic relationships or even get married to people you meet there. The gamers in a long form larp often create a community that’s something between a group of close friends and a rather kooky extended family, simply because as the game goes on even the most antisocial player spends months or years at a time in the company of the same people. We’re human beings – we can’t help but connect to people we know for that long, especially when we hear them talk about their lives, celebrate their victories and comfort them through the hard times. Since it is the common experience that brought you together with these other people, realizing that the game isn’t for you anymore can feel like a betrayal of sorts, like you’re letting them down somehow. Even if you don’t consciously realize it, concern over whether or not leaving the game will mean losing the friends you’ve made there can keep you in a game long after you would have stopped playing otherwise.

One clue that you might be sliding toward this state of mind, if you haven’t reached it already, is reviewing your after-action conversations and looking at the ratio of jokes and fun anecdotes to snarky comments and complaints. If you’re spending more time complaining about a game session than laughing and telling cool stories about parts you enjoyed, you might have a problem that you need to consider. Now, every game will have a bad session, or maybe just one that was good overall but you personally didn’t enjoy so much, so a negative after-action session here and there isn’t a problem. However, if you look back and realize that most or all of your post-game reports have turned primarily negative, you’re almost certainly headed in this direction. And that means you either have to re-evaluate what you enjoy about the game, or make a couple of hard choices.

The Fix: There are really only two options here: talk about making changes, or pack up and move on to a different game. There’s nothing wrong with trying to bring your concerns to the attention of the staff and/or your fellow players – after all, given the time frame of long form games, sometimes change is so gradual that other people don’t notice, and will correct the shift if it’s brought to their attention. If you’re going this route, try to be as constructive as possible. Don’t just wax on about “the good ol’ days” of the game or dump on how bad or wrong you think it is now; neither tactic will earn you any points. Just talk as politely as possible about what you think needs changing, and why. Offer suggestions – not mandates, suggestions – about how this might be done, and be ready to discuss it rather than get huffy and defensive if others have different ideas. Games are communities, after all, and it might be that the desires of the community have changed, and made the game fun when you began playing isn’t what makes it fun for the players now.

Which brings us to the other option, namely leaving the game. Obviously this isn’t ideal for most people, but at the same time remember the very first principle of gaming – games are supposed to be fun. If you’re not having fun, why put yourself through it? And for that matter, if you’re not having fun, why spoil the fun for others by hanging around in a game you can’t enjoy anymore? Again, politeness is key. As tempting as it might be, try to resist the urge to burn bridges, and don’t go out in blaze of petty spite and sour grapes. Even if you don’t care for the people there anymore, it’s not worth tarnishing your own memories of the game to leave it on a sour note. Just bow out, remember the good times, and focus on keeping ties with those players you still want to see outside of game. It’s better for everyone in the long run that way.

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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!