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.
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!
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.
Badass Larp Talk #32: That Old Ivory Tower
the already larping.
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!Â
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!Â
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 –Â 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:Â “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!Â
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:Â 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!Â
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 – Â 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. Â 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!Â
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. Â 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:Â “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!Â
Terrible Person/Better Person
OK. I’ve started to see some of the sadly inevitable smug pushback on various things related to 2016 and the horrorshow it has been for so many people out there, so let me break down what not to say as people express their grief. I like to call this game Terrible Person/Better Person. Here goes:
Terrible Person: “Oh sure, everyone was sad about David Bowie, but what about Person X? Huh?”
vs.
Better Person: “I’m sorry that losing Bowie hurt so much; I felt the same way when Person X died. What made Bowie so special to you?”
Terrible Person: “Oh sure, everyone’s upset about George Michael, but nobody cared about an earthquake that just killed 1500 people in Country X! Talk about privilege!”
vs.
Better Person: “I know a lot of people are still reeling about George Michael’s death, but if you want to to channel some of that grief into action that will do some good and might make you feel a little better about the world after the shitshow that was 2016, here are some charities that are helping in the wake of the terrible earthquake in Country X.”
Terrible Person: “People are getting so upset about a bunch of celebrities dying, but they didn’t even know these people!”
vs.
Better Person: “It really seems like a lot of people lost their artistic/personal heroes this year. That’s rough, and honestly I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the families of those people to mourn a loved one they share with the world.”
Terrible Person: “Well you know Celebrity X did terrible things when they were younger, and therefore you are a terrible person and condone all the things they did by liking them or expressing any feelings of loss regarding their passing, right?”
vs.
Better Person: “So Celebrity X did some terrible things when they was younger, yes, and it’s important to remember the whole person. That said, someone who was problematic, even harmful, can have had a positive impact on your life, and it’s OK to grieve that.”
(Thanks to Matt McFarland for this one.)
Terrible Person: “You should be glad for all you have! I’ve had X, Y, and Z horrible things happen to me this year, but I’m not bitching!”
vs.
Better Person: “I didn’t realize this year had been so hard for you. I’ve had a pretty rough one myself – want to talk about it?”
Terrible Person: “You know 2016 is just a year, right? A period of time? It doesn’t have motives and it can’t kill anyone. Stop acting like it’s a hitman or something, that’s just stupid.”
vs.
Better Person: “I know there have been rough years before, but it seriously seems like we’ve had a bigger than average run of deaths, tragedies, and disasters in this one. We’d better come together so we make sure 2017 isn’t more of the same.”
When Not to LARP
A really superb checklist. I know waaaaaay too many people who take pride in being “hardcore” about attending larps when they’re sick or broke, perhaps not realizing the rest of us aren’t impressed by adults who don’t know how to take care of themselves (and put others at risk of illness). Fun is fun, I get it – I’ve been that college kid who spent money on larp when I should have allocated it elsewhere – but there’s definitely a limit.
When I was eighteen, any time I couldn’t make a LARP weekend felt like a cardinal sin. I wasn’t able to escape; I wasn’t able to spend time with my friends or do the cool things that they were going to do. I wouldn’t see the story, and I feared the story would move on without me. I did everything in my power to make it to a LARP weekend, and it often put myself in less-than-great real life positions because I felt like I needed to be at game. There were years where I went to 32+ weekend events out of a 52 week year. Of those games, I couldn’t tell you how many I should have considered my self-care before heading to an event.
Don’t get me wrong – LARPing is super, super important to me. But it took me a long time to realize that my body…
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Badass Larp Talk #26 – The Dangers of Chasing Catharsis
This may be a bit of an unpopular idea, but please, hear me out:
Larp isn’t therapy.
One of the things I’ve loved seeing as larp has grown and developed over the years is the notion that this art form can produce real, profoundly emotional moments for players. While some games are specifically designed to elicit such responses, particularly in the Nordic and American freeform traditions, I’ve still seen plenty of these moments develop for players in more traditional parlor or boffer larps too. Sometimes they even happen to players who normally scoff at the idea of having such a cathartic moment as a consequence of donning elf ears and venturing into the forest for the weekend or putting in fangs and haunting a hotel ballroom for a night. There is really no question that larp can induce moments of great emotional release or trigger surprising personal revelations. And just to be clear, that’s not a bad thing at all!
But catharsis isn’t therapy, and it’s dangerous to mistake one for the other.
The example I like to go with is the Dr. Phil show. Wait, trust me, I’m getting there. On the show, it’s not unusual for people to hear some pat wisdom and “tough love” from that bargain basement Professor X, and respond by dramatically breaking down and tearfully acknowledging their mistakes and promising to do better about some dire personal failing. And while I know the show has been accused of staging such moments, I’ll give them the benefit of doubt and say that most of the folks who do so are genuine. After all, it’s a high pressure, highly emotional situation – they’re on television, they’re usually confronted by several loved ones, they’re getting sound bite wisdom from a world famous personality. Everyone around them is urging them to do better, to be better, and to do so now where the whole world can see it. In those circumstances, even a stoic individual would have trouble not giving in to the emotions of the moment, and most of us aren’t nearly so reserved with our feelings (or resistant to group pressure). Dr. Phil provides a moment of catharsis, a quick fix of self-esteem and the sense of being “better” for those involved.
The trouble, as any responsible mental health professional will tell you, is that rush doesn’t last. People feel clarity and warmth and direction – for a moment. If it’s not followed up on soon, however, and in a serious way, it fades and the individual is often worse off than they were before, because now they’re back where they started and they’re also beating themselves up with guilt about failing to change when they had such a golden chance. Except it wasn’t gold, it was straight up pyrite. Personal change – real, lasting change – takes time and effort and support. And if you’re dealing with actual mental disorders or psychological conditions, you really need the guidance of trained experts and possibly medication to make sure you’re actually getting  better and not simply masking your problem or using bad coping mechanisms.
This is what makes larp as therapy a dangerous idea.
Games almost by definition are exactly that kind of short term rush. You have an amazing roleplaying moment, and it releases all kinds of emotions, maybe even nudges you into looking at yourself or the world in a different way. Games are intense, packing a lot of story and substance into a short period of time. Which is great for entertainment, but it’s not what you need if you have a problem that requires real, long term therapy to treat. At best you’re likely to ride a bit of a rollercoaster, up high around game time and then slipping back between sessions before rising high as the next game approaches. At worst, well, you’re learning bad coping mechanisms to say the least. Yes, a game can be “therapeutic” in the sense that it’s stress relief if you’ve had a rough week and need to blow off some steam, but that’s not the sort of therapy we’re talking about here.
I know what you’re probably thinking. If you’ve been a larper for even a little while, you’ve heard the success stories about people who overcame chronic shyness through larp, or who used in-character events as a springboard to solve problems or confront emotional issues they were facing in real life. You might even be one such success story, for that matter, and if so I’m glad things worked out for you! I’ve known such cases in the past myself, and while I’d argue that most of them were not situations where larp replaced the need for treatment of a serious disorder, there’s no question being part of a community and getting together for regular activities with others is good for anyone, just like eating well and exercising is a good idea all around. The support of a larp community and the friends it contains is a powerful thing that can do a lot of good for a person, and is absolutely to be cherished.
But here’s the thing: support is not therapy, just like catharsis is not therapy. Both can help a person who’s going through changes, sure, but they’re not the same and should not be viewed as replacements for such. Actual therapy is often a long, difficult, and sometimes downright emotionally dangerous process. And if that’s the kind of thing you’re using larp to do, instead of being professionally treated, then do everyone around you a favor. Stop larping, and see a therapist. If the therapist believes that larping can help you, hey, that’s great, but it should never substitute for real treatment for a serious condition.
I know that sounds harsh, and I don’t want to sound unsympathetic. Accidents happen, for one thing – a player with a phobia might not know it’s going to come up in game if it hasn’t in the past, for example, and that’s nobody’s fault if it gets triggered during play. I also know therapy can be expensive, though many clinics and practitioners operate on a sliding scale if you can show hardship, and I’d argue that attending a regular larp often isn’t much cheaper when you factor in event costs, costuming, props, gas, food, etc. But at the same time, look at it for from the other side. The staff and players of your local game are not mental health professionals – and if they are, it’s safe to say that you’re not their patient and they’re still not “on duty” when they’re playing – and putting your well-being in their hands is a disservice to everyone. You’re not likely to get the help you need, and they’re not prepared to cope with the complications if things go wrong.
Which brings up another issue that often gets overlooked as well, but it’s really important to remember: Making other people part of your therapy without their consent is wrong. If you’re trying to confront a lifelong phobia of spiders, for instance, and decide to do so by getting involved in the Unholy Spider Kingdom War at your local fantasy boffer larp – especially without telling anyone about your history – that’s being awfully cavalier with the feelings and enjoyment of your fellow players. They’re not responsible for your therapy, to put it bluntly, and so if you have a breakdown and go catatonic – or start swinging like a berserker as that fear shunts into anger and adrenaline – then you’ve made them responsible for your condition without their consent. Even if you tell them in advance, I’d argue that untrained people can’t really consent to being part of handling a scene involving severe phobia or trauma, simply because they’re not informed enough to know what to do to avoid making it worse.
This also means that games deliberately designed to explore potentially dangerous, emotionally triggering territory need to be overseen closely and with great transparency, for the health and safety of all concerned. Briefings, content advisories, “escape hatch” mechanics for overwhelmed players, and detailed debriefings and “aftercare” should all be standard issue and taken seriously for such games. I’m particularly fond of the growing trend of using simple hand signs to signal other players to slow down, stop, or continue with particular types of scenes, as I feel it is a big step in the right direction. But if you’re not willing to put in that kind of work for an intensely cathartic game, then you’re not simply ready to put on that kind of game, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near players until you remedy the situation. No, it’s not “edgy” or “shocking” to drop players into such extremely taxing and emotionally loaded territory without warning, it’s immature and irresponsible. Full stop.
In the end, a friend had a very good parallel for this whole situation – larp will not get you in shape, though getting out and getting exercise is still nice, and wanting to wear that beautiful heavy plate armor you’ve been dreaming of or fit into that swanky suit you feel will catch the Prince’s eye can certainly be outstanding motivation to eat better and work out more. But trying to get fit solely through larp just isn’t going to work, and attempting to make it happen ignores important realities of exercise and nutrition that will at best leave you frustrated and at worse actively hurt you. Not only that, but it isn’t the job of the staff or your fellow players to be responsible for your fitness regiment during an event.
Mental health is no different. Yes, larp can be a powerful and wonderful thing – it could generate a breakthrough you take back to therapy, for instance, or even inspire you to recognize a problem and seek help in the first place – but beyond that it’s no substitute for trained professional help. Enjoy your catharsis, by all means, but for your own sake and the sake of others around you, don’t mistake it for therapy.
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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!Â
Hack Review: Uncharted 4
So it’s been about a week since I finished Uncharted 4, but I wanted to let it sit as I worked my way through how I felt about it. I want to start off by getting the simple stuff out of the way: the game is great on pretty much every conceivable level, from level design and visuals to gameplay to voice acting. As with previous entries in the series, I routinely stopped just to marvel at my surroundings – or listen to them, or both – and it was just damn impressive.
That said, the story is a bit of a rough one. I don’t mean badly written, though, not at all. I mean because you know going into it that this is Nate’s last adventure – at least so says Naughty Dog, and I believe them – and so there’s an extra level of apprehension to everything because between that and the game’s title you find yourself constantly wondering how the titular thief is and what kind of end they have in mind. I won’t say it makes the game melancholy, as the trademark Uncharted wit and banter is strongly in evidence, but it does add a depth and maturity to the story, as well as an extra sense of risk any time a character is in peril.
Think it like watching the last season of a television show you like, or firing up Mass Effect 3, or how we will all feel picking up the last installment of A Song of Ice and Fire – you’re sad the story is ending, excited to see how it will happen, and more than a little scared because you know all bets are off and literally no character is safe. It’s a thrilling experience, done correctly, but an even more nerve-wracking one too.
I wasn’t precisely surprised how emotional I got at some points during the game – I love the characters and I’m an unabashed fan of the series, so you could say I’m invested – but I was pleased with how well it was handled. They didn’t wring melodrama out of it, and even when some of the characters made boneheaded decisions, I believed it emotionally even if it didn’t quite scan logically. More credit to the seasoned and awesome voice acting crew on this one too, for delivering top notch performances. The addition of a new character can really throw an existing dynamic, but it worked beautifully here. Sam doesn’t feel like a gimmick or a distraction, he feels like part of the crew, and the brother chemistry works beautifully in both the funny parts and the serious ones.
I read a review that commented on how you can see the influence of The Last of Us in some of the pacing and the emotional beats, and I’d agree with that. In particular I can see that in how this game takes time to slow down and explore its environments a bit more, to reward you for taking different paths and trying dialogue options. (Seriously, when you have a chance to explore a house – Nate’s or otherwise – then TAKE IT. Lots of neat little things to pick up for character and backstory.) It’s not the first Uncharted game where I was tempted to go back and replay levels to look for stuff, but it was the first time I would do it for story and exploration more than just picking up missed collectibles.
As for the gameplay and set pieces, well, it’s Uncharted. You know what you’re getting, and you get it here like you have in all the others – crazy chases (the mud flats is an insanely fun level in particular), amazing and also exploding/collapsing environments you have to race out of in cinematic fashion, cool Indiana Jones puzzles to figure out, the works. Combat is jazzed up nicely, with good melee and slick shooting, though I will tell you the enemies are no joke this time around – stealth is much more of an option and I suggest you take it, as even on “normal” the enemies are lethal shots and good at flanking and using grenades and other tricks to flush you out and take you down.
And two words of pure joy: GRAPPLING HOOK!
Now, I’ve heard some folks say that Uncharted 4 felt a little tired in the sense that these amazing action scenes and set pieces are expected by now, which makes them predictable instead of the flat out craziness off the first few games. I can see that point, but I don’t believe the predictability detracts from their excellence in execution. And more than a few of those moments had me scrambling and laughing and saying “holy sh-t!” so I think they pulled them off.
There was also a somewhat controversial decision to not include a particular type of plot element in this installment, which has been found in every other Uncharted game (to greater or lesser degree). I will admit I was mildly disappointed when I realized they weren’t going to go in that direction, if only because I like those sorts of stories and felt they had a good setup here (and did it well in the past), but I also recognize that it might have been one ingredient too many in an already packed story. And given that it was the final installment and plenty of personal and emotional stuff going on with Nate and his family – adopted, married, or actual – it was probably best not to muddy the water any further. I salute their restraint, though I still would have loved to see what they would have done differently if the story wasn’t so big already …
Still without going into spoilers, I will say that the very, very end of the game – the Epilogue, in fact – was a total surprise, in the best sort of way. And definitely a spiritual descendant of The Last of Us, which you’ll understand when you see it. I wasn’t expecting an epilogue in general, and I especially wasn’t expecting the one I got, so I will say that it worked particularly well in those respects. It wasn’t how I expected Uncharted to conclude, or at least Nate’s story, and I think some people might have felt it was a bit underwhelming or anticlimactic, especially given the franchise’s action-packed history.
Not me, though. I liked the quiet meditation of it – when you get to it, EXPLORE. EVERYTHING. – and really enjoyed that they let me take my time to process it. No gimmicks, no cheap jumps or gotcha moments, just … an ending. Maybe not the one we were expecting, no. But perhaps the one we should have been.
Bravo, Uncharted. You earned a great exit, and you got one.
Badass Larp Talk #25: Play the Game You’re At
Have you ever showed up at a baseball game and wondered why no one wanted to toss a football around? Tried to enter your ferret in the Miss Teen USA pageant? Or offered to throw down at a Street Fighter V tournament using your sick Magic: The Gathering deck? Of course not! All of those are ridiculous examples, right?
Except that’s sometimes exactly what happens when people come to larp.
Before I get into it, let me just say that I don’t normally pull the veteran card when it comes to larp. For one thing, logging a long time in a hobby doesn’t automatically make me better at or more insightful with it than someone else. For another, like any art form, larp needs youth and fresh perspectives as much as it needs the proverbial age and guile, so discounting people for having less experience is a fool’s errand. So I’m reluctant to make it a factor as a rule, and yet in this instance I feel that time logged actually has merit. So if you’ll pardon me, here we go.
I’ve been larping for 23 years now, not as long as some of course, but long enough to have seen trends come and go and as well as observe all kinds of play styles, game setups, and group configurations. I’ve done everything from homebrew parlor larps to massive networked boffer larps to Jeep and American freeform games. I’ve been a player and game runner and a rule designer and participated in all kinds of stories across a couple dozen genres. And let me tell you, sooner or later the same person shows up:
AÂ player who attends one game, but tries to make it into another.
I’ve seen this in pretty much every venue and genre you can imagine over the years. There are always players who feel that the game and its setting should bend to what they want to play, rather than trying to create characters that work in the world they’re presented. I addressed some of these when I talked about problem players a while back, but it’s worth mentioning that players who want to bend the game can have very different motivations, which means that understanding them and how to approach them requires knowing exactly what type of player you’re dealing with in the first place.
The Commanding Cosplayer
This is a player who has a really cool cosplay, and is less about larping in the setting offered than finding another place to wear it between conventions. The game setting is near enough to the original cosplay source that they feel confident wearing it there, because “close enough,” right? Often they will make a nominal effort at changing some superficial elements, like having a different name than the character, but otherwise they don’t want to change more than they absolutely must, since the costume is what matters. Note that this can apply to people who have excellent historical costumes as easily as cosplayers who base their looks on fiction – I’ve seen Revolutionary War soldiers try to play at fantasy larps in full kit or period-perfect 1920s gangsters arrive at a cyberpunk bar. Having really great costumes can be a boon to any character or any larp, of course, but the Cosplayer is a problem because they want the game to shift to accommodate their aesthetic, rather than the other way around, and can wind up being visually distracting or outright disruptive to the game environment as a result.
The Fanfic Superfan
Sure, this game setting is great, but OMG! You know what it reminds them of! THEIR FAVORITE [BOOK/ANIME/MOVIE/TV SHOW/COMIC SERIES]!!!!111oneoneone This player compares the game to their beloved inspiration whenever possible and immediately tries to figure out how to shoehorn in terminology, backstory, characters, world concepts, or other elements from this source, regardless of whether or not it is a good idea. These are the players who try to turn your local fantasy larp into straight up Game of Thrones, who want to make a Requiem game into a live-action Vampire Diaries fanfic, or can’t seem to so much as see a wand in a setting without endlessly equating everything to Harry Potter. Now, every game has inspirational material behind it and that’s great, but the trouble is that the Fanfic Superfan just can’t let it go and embrace what’s new about the game setting, which does both their inspiration and the larp a disservice.
The Exchange Student
This player brings in a character from another game that they love and want to keep playing, regardless of whether or not the concept really fits the game they’re arriving at now.  Rather than change their backstory or other core concepts, they try to bring their original character elements into the game even if it doesn’t suit the world as presented. An example would be a player who tries to bring a vampire character from a homebrew setting into a Masquerade game, but refuses to use the clans and Disciplines of the new setting, instead trying to get their original clan and powers approved instead. Speaking as someone who’s played variations on the same base character off and on for 16 years now, believe me I understand – but the difference between me and an Exchange Student is that I always reshape and reinterpret him to fit the game world, instead of assuming I can walk in as the same person with the same backstory and capabilities regardless of setting.
The Backseat Designer
This type of player can be a little more subtle than some of the other types, but winds up being far more disruptive if their behavior is not caught early. Simply put, the Backseat Designer thinks they know better than the game runners when it comes to a game’s rules or setting or both, and therefore feels free to introduce their own elements instead. Sometimes they can’t help but comparing the game to some fabled game of their past, and constantly try to reinvent this one until it’s a copy of that one, or it might just be that they can’t help tinkering with what they see. This might be making up an important historical event that never happened in the official game timeline, or it might be choosing to ignore a rule they don’t like (or impose one of their own design instead), but whatever form it takes, the Backseat Designer sees no problem in changing the structure of the game in order to make it what they feel would be “better.” Naturally, while larp is a collaborative exercise, changing major elements like rules or important world history without consulting the game runners is a reciper for confusion at the very least, and serious player discord and event problems at worst.
The Troll
It’s pretty rare in my experience, but sometimes people come with a concept they know doesn’t fit for no other reason than just to mess with the game/see how much game-breaking they can get away with before they get tossed or the game grinds to a halt. The trouble is that a troll can appear to be one of the other types, but while those players generally aren’t trying to deliberately create trouble – they might just be a little confused about the setting, their character, or both – the troll is just there to be as disruptive as possible. Needless to say, if it becomes clear that a player is simply playing a character who doesn’t fit in order to mess with the game, it’s best to toss them out as quickly as possible, and if necessary retcon their actions if they ruined play for others. Giving a supposedly repentant troll a second chance is up to individual game runners, of course, but it is  worth remembering that other players who don’t make such selfish and disruptive decisions are worth giving priority.
So What’s to Be Done?
As evidenced above, there are a lot of motivations that might cause players to try to bend a game to suit their needs rather than adapting their characters to the world they’re offered. Regardless of why they do it, though, it’s important to recognize that this is not acceptable behavior – while larp is a collaborative effort, it is still important to respect the  role of the game designers and the vision they have for the kind of game they want. Some may not care if players freely add or change elements, but many do, and unless a player has been given specific permission to make changes or bring in characters who don’t quite fit the normal setting parameters, they should work with what they’re given rather than spend energy trying to make it into something else.
This may sound harsh, but at its heart it’s actually advice with the best interests of everyone at the game in mind. For instance, if a game designer announces a new larp set in a four-color superheroic world of her own creation, where the players are going to portray old school straightforward superheroes, attending that game is an agreement on the part of the players to take part in that world. Yes, the game designer needs to make it clear what kind of game she’s putting on – if only so the players don’t make inappropriate characters by mistake – but she should not have to then further defend it from players who want to play a different game and so try to make hers into what suits them.
Sure, a player may wish he could have a darker, more modern superhero character. He might think that modeling his character on Rorschach from Watchmen would be the coolest thing ever, or that it would be great to have Infinite Crisis have occurred in this world, or wish he could bring in his wonderful Dark Knight cosplay outfit based on Batman’s iconic battlesuit in The Dark Knight Returns. He might want to have time control as a power, and have a whole rule set worked out for it, even though it’s not on the regular powers list for this game. All of these might be great elements … but not for this game.
This game is not about those things, and trying to make it so is not conductive to group play. Â
Let me be clear – it’s OK to ask game runners questions, or even offer suggestions. Nobody is saying otherwise! However, if the game runners decline to make changes a player desires, it’s the responsibility of that player to accept such a decision and either play the game as presented or leave and find a game that better suits their needs. After all, one of the wonderful parts of being involved in this golden age of larp we have going right now is that there’s certainly no shortage of alternative games available if one doesn’t suit you. Or, for that matter, no shortage of players who’ll likely be interested if you start your own!
But if you go to a game, don’t try to make it something it’s not, or judge it for not meeting expectations it was never intended to fulfill in the first place. Instead, embrace the world and the system you’re offered for what they are, because that’s the vision the designers have in mind. It’ll be less stress and more fun for everyone 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!Â
The Ghosts of New Year’s Eve
I see more ghosts
on New Year’s Eve
than through
all of Halloween.
All Hallow’s Eve
is like a tourist town,
one the living
invade once a year.
The dead enjoy
the attention, sure,
but soon they wish
we’d go away.
No, New Year’s Eve
is far worse haunted,
because they gather
around the lights
and across the gap
of tears and sighs
they watch us plan,
and vow, and live.
You can feel them
best at midnight,
if you try, if you listen –
mouthing our promises,
sad and hungry eyes
reflecting the cycle
of hopes and regrets,
seeing all the mistakes
they would gladly make
again, if only.
Just…
If.
Yes, the dead are close
on New Year’s Eve.
So as you toast, count
the faces in the glass,
and if you see
some you’ve lost,
don’t be sad, or afraid –
just raise your glass
and plan,
and vow,
and live.
Badass Larp Talk #24: What You Pay to Play
It’s an often overlooked game design factor, but truly one of the most important things a larp runner needs to decide on are what the barriers of entry to their game will be like. Or to put it another way, what sort of limits and requirements will they impose on their player base in the name of the game? For the purposes of this post, I’m assuming the game is at least semi-public – entirely private, invitation-only games are a different sort of entity entirely.
What follows is a list of some of the most common barriers of entry that a larp runner should consider when putting a new game together, or which might be worth occasionally re-examining as part of an ongoing game. It’s important to note that there are no “right” answers here, simply decisions and how they potentially impact a game. It’s a series of trade-offs, and ultimately the only correct answers are the ones that allow the game runner to create the experience they
For example, if a game runner wants to have a weekend larp event with $150 tickets that also requires extensive costuming, total immersion roleplay, and significant downtime preparation beforehand, that’s not necessarily “elitist” or “exclusionary” – it’s simply her prerogative for crafting the sort of game she wants. She’s accepting that with those barriers in place she’s going to have a small, dedicated player group in return for delivering an incredibly immersive and detailed experience.
By the same token, a game runner who hosts free bi-weekly games with minimal costuming and roleplay requirements isn’t necessarily creating a “weaker” game – he might simply not be interested in turning people away and just want to run a game for a big, rotating cast. If that’s the experience he’s shooting for, then great!
With that in mind, here are the barriers any larp runner should consider
Money: Sticker ShockÂ
The most obvious barrier to entry is direct cost. A free game potentially attracts anyone who’s even a little curious about what game might be like, while a game that costs $80 or more per session is likely to cut out a lot of low-income players – many high school and college students, as well as fixed income or minimum wage earners – which definitely changes your player base. While the upside of having an expensive game is that it naturally also tends to attract players with more disposable income, which in turn often leads to higher costuming, prop, and makeup standards for the player base, as players who can afford a more expensive session tend to have the money to splash out on fancy gear as well.
The downside to a high cost barrier, of course, is that it simply rules out a lot of the larp demographic right off the bat, and may also force out existing players who suffer a financial setback later on.  On the other hand, free or low-cost games cast a wide net, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on the local player base.
Time: It’s Money Too
Another barrier of entry is time investment, both in terms of session frequency, session length, and any downtime needs as well. A game that’s played for a few hours one night every other month and requires minimal downtime participation is a lot more accessible to working parents and busy professionals, for example, while a monthly game that requires a full weekend (like many boffer larps) and/or has extensive downtime roleplay demands is going to naturally cater to students, couples without children, and other players with more free time on their hands. Games that demand a lot of time investment, whether at session or in downtime or both, do tend to encourage in-depth roleplaying and backstory creation if only due to the sheer amount of time players spend playing and developing their characters. By contrast, a lower barrier makes it easier for players to stay involved at all levels of involvement.
The downside, of course, is that players who can’t invest so much time either feel left out o the important action, or are actually relegated to second-class characters simply because they cannot follow every forum discussion or Facebook post. In an age when even modest larps spawn multiple Facebook groups, private messaging threads, and official forum posts to follow, this barrier should not to be underestimated!
Costuming: You Must Be This Rad to Ride this Ride
Time and money are both important barriers to consider, but another very important one is the costuming barrier. (To save space, for the purposes of this article “costuming” is being defined as the overall use of costumes, makeup, and props to portray a character.) This is not necessarily linked to the ticket price of a game, though it certainly can be, as even games with “cheap” tickets become considerably less affordable if the costume barrier is set high. On its own, though, it’s what standards a player is expected to uphold in terms of appearing to be part of the game world on just a purely visual level. A high standard helps create an incredibly immersive experience for everyone, and can be crucial for creating an intense roleplaying environment and keeping people in character. By contrast, a low barrier encourages new and casual players, as well as requires far less setup and prep to make players ready to start0.
Costuming standards are an extremely sensitive barrier in the larp world, however, as there’s often a thin line between expecting players to meet certain standards and having garb Nazis shaming players for not being up to snuff. Few things drive off new and potential players than feeling like they’re being mocked or excluded just because they don’t have the coolest costume on site, and even veteran players can get into destructive “cooler than thou” cycles over what is “acceptable” costuming.
No matter where the barrier is set here, game runners should watch carefully for signs of costume policing, garb shaming, or makeup snobbery and stamp them out whenever possible. If a player isn’t meeting the game’s requirements, mocking them never helps – but offering advice and assistance just might earn a dedicated player for years to come.
Roleplaying:Â Who Do You Think You Are?
How important is it for players to stay in character? How seriously is roleplaying to be taken? How immersive is the experience going to be? Simple questions, but deceptively challenging ones. Most games have a rule about staying in character, of course, aside from perhaps a designated out of character zone or to (briefly) address rules or safety concerns. That’s the absolute minimum barrier, though, and most games unofficially add levels to this requirement over time – not just discouraging players dropping character, but actively expecting them to roleplay in certain ways such as playing to fail, taking defeat seriously, respecting in-game authorities, etc. A high barrier insists on serious, in-depth roleplaying, while a low one doesn’t mind if players are a bit more casual or their characters less fully-realized.
Games with a high standard for roleplaying expectations can be as intimidating as they are engaging, however, and if they don’t take care to offer advice and assistance to players who aren’t used to such acting requirements they’re bound to turn away a lot of potential players who simply don’t feel good enough to play. By the same token, a game with a low standard can be frustrating for players who enjoy more in-depth roleplay if they feel too many other characters just aren’t “serious” or that their scenes are constantly interrupted with out of game chatter.
Lore: There Will Be A Test
Another less commonly considered barrier of entry is what might be called a “lore requirement” – how much in-game knowledge you expect players to have in order to function properly and roleplay in the game world. Games with a high lore barrier tend to have complex world histories and years of accumulated play experiences that reward players with immersive environments and in-depth environments for engaging with their stories, while games with a low lore barrier are much more welcoming to new and casual players, requiring far less explanation and setup for players to get up and running. Consider how much world lore you need to absorb to properly play a highly political Game of Thrones larp, for example, versus how much you need to play neophyte mortal vampire hunters in a World of Darkness game.
The downside to a low lore requirement is that it can feel a little too “episodic” at times – if the game doesn’t acquire much history and backstory as it goes it can seem like a sitcom where everything resets between stories. On the other hand, games with a high lore barrier can be seriously intimidating, like trying to start in the middle of the fourth book in a nine book cycle or picking up a comic series with forty years of continuity references behind it.
Moving the Bar
Last but not certainly not least, changing existing barriers is subject worth mentioning is changing barriers down the line, because if it’s not handled right it can lead to serious player discontent. Raising a barrier presents the most obvious problems, of course – if a game’s ticket price jumps from $35 to $65 there’s likely to be a lot of anger and dismay, for example. Even if players understand the necessity of an increase, it may not prevent some players from needing to drop out due to lack of funds. Likewise, if elf players are used to just wearing ear tips to signal their species, telling them that they now need to do full wigs, face paint, and French accents is likely to call up a storm of complaints.
Lowering barriers may not seem like quite as much of a problem, but it carries difficulties of its own, especially if the existing player base feels like the game is being “watered down” or that their investment in the game is being devalued. After all, if playing an elder vampire used to require writing a 10 page backstory, and now it requires a single page, the players who went through that effort are going to be justifiably upset – and may take it out on newer players who didn’t have a say in the change.
When raising or lowering a barrier, there are a few things that can be done to make the process easier on everyone. The first is to be as upfront and transparent about the change as possible – let players know what is happening and why, and be ready to answer questions and address concerns. The second is to give players lead time when making a change – while this isn’t always possible, the more time in advance the players have to process the change, the less likely it is to upset them or even cause them to leave the game.
Lastly, it’s usually worth considering compensating players who met the original barrier, especially if it’s now being lowered. Going back to the elder vampire example, giving players of existing elders who wrote the 10 page backstories some perks or advantages is certainly fair, and a good way to show that their effort was appreciated even as the new standard is being implemented. Even a small gesture can go a long way to mollifying players, which is worth it to keep the game going and fun for everyone.
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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!Â
In Defense of Railroading Your Players
I never thought I’d say this, but sometimes it’s good to have a story on rails.
In case you might have missed it, this past week’s release of The Order: 1886 has generated a fair amount of controversy. Two of the most common objections are regarding the game’s duration, as well as the fact that it is a story “on rails” as opposed to a sandbox world of open exploration. The game’s developer, Ready At Dawn, even came out to respond to critics on the first charge, defending the game’s shorter than average runtime as being what the story required.
And I have to say, I agree. I think both objections are junk.
Let me preface my defense with a caveat – I am playing, but have not yet finished The Order, mostly due to a lot of deadlines floating around and also a deliberate decision to savor it a bit and play it in small pieces. To which some more cynical reviewers would probably respond by saying that if I played it but haven’t finished it, I must not have done more than sit through the opening credits. There has been serious howling about the fact that the game runs around 10 hours, and how this constitutes a “ripoff” for a game costing $60. A ripoff? Really? Let’s do some simple math.
$60 for 10 hours of entertainment is $6/hour.
$12 for 2 hours of entertainment (going rate for a movie ticket, not including snacks or 3D funny business) is $6/hour.
So, in effect, you are paying about the same for the game experience as you would for a theatrical movie experience. (Except, you know, it’s longer, interactive, and you don’t have to deal with the meathead in the row in front of you texting “omg channing tatum looks like legolas! more like jupiter GAYscending lol #YOLO” the entire time.) Where is the ripoff in that, exactly? Yet longer playtime is consistently touted as a good thing, with games bragging about 40 or 60 or even the occasional insane 100+ hours of playtime. Don’t get me wrong, I get that having a ton of time to bash around in a game world can be a lot of fun. I did every side mission in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series because I loved those worlds and those characters and wanted to squeeze as much out of them as I could.
But there’s also the question of how much of a game’s playtime is gripping story or involving action (or both), and how much of it is simply busywork? I consider Mass Effect 2 one of the finest games ever made, and yet I know my personal playtime was inflated by at least a couple of hours spent firing probes and collecting materials. I spent a lot of time playing watch_dogs, but only a fraction of that time was on the main story – the rest was all side missions, secondary objectives, and the odd collectible. A writing professor of mine once said “there is no greater tragedy than a novel that should have been a short story” and it’s a lesson I think the gaming industry – and its fans – need to remember. Adding playtime is only a good thing if it enhances enjoyment. Otherwise you’re just creating busywork, and unless it all ties in neatly and powerfully you might in fact actually hurt the story you’re trying to tell by throwing off its pacing and drowning it in distractions.
When I finished watch_dogs, in fact, I was left feeling like the sandbox nature of the game seriously harmed the story at the heart of the game. It’s supposed to a tightly-wound neo-noir tale of revenge, but giving the player a chance to drive all over (a very beautifully rendered) Chicago on a whim dilutes the essential drama and pacing of the story. It’s hard to take the unfolding events seriously when I get a plot update like “do this job or your nephew dies” but can cheerfully spend the next few hours driving around shooting gang members and participating in street racing with no impact at all on the main story. I felt like a terrible uncle, sure, but there was no penalty at all. A lack of urgency means a lack of tension, and a lack of tension means events feel flat or disjointed, and that makes a story that could have been a tight, compelling thriller wanders off into a series of weird, disconnected events.
To put it simply, if you try to take a 10 hour story and turn it into a 30 hour story, you’re not doing anyone any favors – not the creators, not the players, nobody.
Which is where the rails discussion comes in. One of the other major complaints about The Order is that “it’s on rails”, meaning that the player has no choice but to follow the path laid out for them by the developers. Or to put it another way, there is only one way to go through the story – the player cannot choose to go other places or do other things. Look, once again, there is no question that sandbox games can be totally awesome. I’ve played my share and loved them … when it suits the nature of the game. Having an entire world to explore and interact with can add an amazing feeling of freedom to a game, as well as fit in countless side activities to flesh out more of the setting (there’s that playtime bump again). But like a lot of design elements, opening a game up into a sandbox experience is a trade off – when players can go anywhere on the map, you lose the tighter narrative control that comes with putting a story “on rails.”
I mean, this is obvious from the textures and assets elements on up. If The Order was a sandbox game, you’d have to detail a huge playable area of London (among other locales), as well as fill it with reasons to go out exploring. That’s a ton of content that isn’t necessarily focused on or related to the main story. Sure, that trade-off is worth it to some, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only viable way to approach the design. I loved bombing around Revolutionary Paris in Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and it was absolutely gorgeous and stacked to the gills with side content, but that doesn’t mean every game wants to invent several types of side missions, collectibles, and other activities just to justify their open world experience.
There’s also the matter that the best games “on rails” make those rails as invisible as possible – you follow the story as it’s laid out because it’s a fun, compelling plot. The Last of Us is absolutely on rails in the strictest possible sense, and it’s still one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced in gaming. I never once bemoaned the lack of an open world map, because it meant that the levels and encounters I was going through were carefully calculated for maximum narrative and gameplay impact – something you can’t do nearly as neatly or cleanly in a sandbox environment. There are great sandbox games, and great games on rails, but they are distinct styles of telling a story, and we need to stop stigmatizing one simply because it tends to have shorter playtimes. Especially considering how much complaining I hear about how pointless a lot of side content feels in so-called longer games – it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t approach to criticism.
As a lifelong tabletop gamer and larper, believe me when I say that my first response to the notion that a game is “on rails” is usually to recoil – one of the things I enjoy most about playing rpgs in those formats is the fact that there’s room for tremendous player creativity. Even so, I also recognize that some types of experiences – especially short convention games or other one shot formats – are best put on some kind of rails, because otherwise you have a bunch of players puttering around for a few hours hoping to bump into a cool plot. Sometimes putting players on track is not only useful, but necessary to convey the story you want, as well as lead them to certain carefully crafted and utterly unforgettable moments.
It’s ludicrous and more than a little confusing to try to say games like The Order don’t measure up because they aren’t meeting some absurd, arbitrary standards of playtime and player freedom. That’s finding a game lacking because it’s not the game you thought it should be, which is always going to be an impossible standard. If you want to criticize what is there, great – and there have been reviews that focused on what they saw as weaknesses in the finished product. That’s cool, and necessary. We just need to approach a game on its own merits, instead of applying consumer metrics that area increasingly pushing games to adopt sandbox models and multiplayer elements whether they make any sense or not, just to keep playtimes up to what gamers consider “acceptable” levels.
In the end, I’d rather have a tightly crafted 10 hour story than a bloated 30 hour mess.
But it seems like I’m more in the minority with every release.
Player’s Toolbox: The Three-Sentence Character
Justin speaks wisdom, as usual. Why write a book most people will never read when you can do so much more in three bold sentences?
I’ve spent many years of my career expanding characters into prose-length works, establishing elaborate backgrounds for them and giving them extensive histories. Because those books are intended for commercial sale, those characters are designed to have broad appeal. Somewhere in those 2,500-4,000 words is a hook almost anyone can use in a chronicle. Whether your setting involves attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion or a vampire coup in Chicago, you should be able to grab a character published for your game of choice, find an engaging hook, and fit it into your campaign. It might require a little fine-tuning, but that’s okay – fine-tuning is less cumbersome than whole-cloth world- and character-building, and that’s what published source material is all about. You trade a couple bucks and save several hours of campaign engineering. As well, hobby games draw on a variety of loquacious literary traditions, so it’s…
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Hack Review: Absentia
So this movie has been in my queue for over a year, based on strong recommendations by the terrible minds behind the wonderful site Final Girl Support Group, and I finally got around to watching it. Short version? Don’t wait as long as I did, folks.
The premise is simple: A woman whose husband has been missing for seven years is about to have him declared dead (“in absentia”), and her prodigal younger sister shows up to help her move on with her life. A lot of creeping weirdness ensues, and this whole disappearance angle might not be exactly what you think.
The movie was shot on a very modest budget but wisely uses that to its advantage for the most part, employing low-key practical effects and the power of suggestion as well as a smart score to sell the scares and the growing sense of unease (and unreality). When they do employ some CG, it’s kept to flashes and corner-of-your-eye moments for the most part, and used well in that regard.
The leads are convincing – no schlocky B-movie stuff going on here – as is the supporting cast. The lone exception is Gum-Chewing Cop, who evidently studied at the Caruso School of Police Cliches and is visibly Acting! when he’s onscreen. But the movie easily survives that little disruption and the occasional bit of stilted dialogue, with the actors selling even the weaker lines throughout the film. If they’d cut one line about atoms – you’ll know it when you hear it – I don’t think I would have outright winced at a single bit of dialogue. Which is not something you say for every low budget film.
Absentia is a thoughtful, meditative sort of movie on the whole. While there are some (very good) jumps and scares, none of them are cheap stingers, and for the most part it’s a slow burn sort of film. If you’re looking for quick pacing and escalation to an over the top sort of finale, this one isn’t for you. But if you’re looking for a lingering, unsettling sort of experience, I highly recommend it.
And good luck using a pedestrian tunnel for a long, long time after this movie.
Gamer Bonus: This is pretty much what the new World of Darkness is like, I think. Profoundly disturbing horrors in the midst of utterly mundane surroundings.
Badass Larp Talk #23: 5 Ways to Give Better Game Feedback
One of the amazing things about larp is that players are often in direct contact with the people responsible for the rules of the game, not to mention the setting. Even if you’re playing with an established system like Mind’s Eye Theatre or Cthulhu Live, many games still have a thriving culture of house rules and homebrew errata. Which means that the average player potentially has much more input into the rules for the game than in any other form of gaming, especially in the social media age where many game designers are friends with their players on places like Facebook and Twitter.
Of course, as Uncle Ben – the comic one, not the rice one – once said, with great power comes great responsibility. And frankly, in my experience a lot of gamers come across as a bit insensitive when giving rules feedback and proposing system changes, which can make the experience a lot less pleasant for everyone. So in the interest of helping players and designers alike, here are some quick guidelines to giving great larp rules feedback:
1 – Be Polite! (Seriously!)
Not because game designers and event runners are delicate flowers, but because if you want them to take your input seriously, you need to talk to them like they’re human beings. Before you click send, look over what you’ve written and make sure it isn’t insulting or obnoxious. And no, comments like “I’m just being honest” don’t justify being brutal in your critique. I’ve been edited by professionals for years, and I’ve had manuscripts absolutely savaged by editors who nevertheless were never any less than friendly and polite while they took my work apart down to the molecular level.
Gut Check:Â Would I be mad if I got this from someone else? Is my tone clear and respectful?
2 –Â Is It Really Better, Or Just Better For You?
One of the most common types of game feedback is what might generously be called “innocently self-serving” – players who claim to be proposing changes that will make the game better for everyone, but which would in practice benefit the player (and sometimes their friends) more than anything else. To be fair, a lot of times players don’t even realize this is what they’re doing, and that’s OK. Their perspective is based on their character, after all, so even well-intentioned players may put forward suggestions that are actually highly self-serving without realizing it. All the same, before you write in with a rules change, stop and as yourself if it’s something the game needs, or just something you need?
Gut Check: How much does the game as a whole benefit from this suggestion?
3 –Â Is It A Necessary Change?
I’m not saying little things don’t matter – most games are really a collection of little things, when you think about it – but it’s important to take a step back and think about how necessary your proposed change really is for the game. Is it a problem that’s seriously impacting gameplay in a major way? Or is it a minor irritation or small grace note that you just want to see tweaked? If it’s not a huge problem, it’s OK to say that up front – acknowledging that it’s not a major concern often makes it more likely to be considered, if only because you’re not claiming it is a crucial make-or-break element.
Gut Check:Â How high priority is this? Have I addressed that in my comments?
4 – Know the Right Time & Place
As mentioned previously, a lot of game designers and event runners are in direct contact with their player base on a daily basis, whether it’s through official game forums, Facebook pages, personal blogs, or other forms of social media. That’s good in a lot of ways, but it’s important to remember that game designers need time away from game too. One big cause of designer fatigue I’ve seen is when designers can’t seem to get away from the game. You start seeing it when posts on their personal Facebook that have nothing to do with game still get a lot of players responding with game terms and jokes, for example, or when the designer is out having drinks at a bar and people keep bringing up game when they are trying to talk about other topics, that sort of thing. There’s nothing wrong with using the game as a starting point for a friendship, but if you’re in someone’s personal zone, it’s probably also welcome to talk about other things too. And if a designer has asked to keep game comments to certain times and places, respect that!
Gut Check:Â Is this a good time to bring this up? Is this the right place to do so?
5 – Accept That You Can Have A Great Idea (And It Still Might Not Be What They Want)
This is a tough one, make no mistake. Sometimes you might have what feels like an absolutely killer idea – for a new rule, a new power, a new setting element, whatever – and you think it will add a ton to the game as a whole. You might even tell other players about it and find they react similarly, and so you send it to the designer and hang back waiting for it to get approved. And then the word comes down that they’re not going to use it. You don’t know what to do – all you can see is how wonderful and perfect the idea is, and how good it would be for the game. So why won’t they use it?
There are a number of possible answers: Maybe they already have something similar in mind they just haven’t used yet. Maybe it actually conflicts with an upcoming plot development. And maybe, just maybe they like it as much as you do … but it still doesn’t fit what they want for their game. Because it is still their game, after all. Look at it this way – if you were in a band, you probably wouldn’t make changes to your songs, even if the person suggesting it knew something about music and was a really big fan. By the same token, it’s easy to forget that a game designer is an artist too, and might like their game the way it is just because it’s how they want it. And that’s their right.
Gut Check:Â Am I OK with the notion that this idea might not be used?
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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!Â
Hardcore Truth: How Fans Ruin Their Own Fun
Don’t be a hardcore fan, be a big one.
Why not? Hardcore fans almost always end up ruining their enjoyment of what they profess to adore, while “merely” big fans go on their merry way, still finding new things to enjoy and explore about what they love for years at a time. Today’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer release has given me ample evidence of this notion, because while we big fans of Star Wars are debating the pros and cons of what we’ve seen (and what’s been left out), the hardcore fan response has been pretty much the same. It’s either a rapturous, no-room-for-discussion “IT IS STAR WARS SO IT WILL BE AMAZING ALL WHO DOUBT IT ARE WRONG”, or more often a close-minded rejection of the very notion that anything could possibly be as good as the sainted Holy Trinity, usually accompanied by some tired lens flare jokes and the obligatory “stop ruining my childhood” screed. Which highlights an important difference in how you, as a fan, approach what you love:
Being a big fan is a statement of enjoyment; being a hardcore one is a statement of identity.
The difference, as any psychologist will tell you, is pretty immense. If you enjoy something, but it doesn’t define how you see yourself as an individual, then that enjoyment is capable of expanding and changing over time as you find new examples of what you like and new ways to enjoy it. It doesn’t mean you automatically find every new thing in your fandom wonderful and great – I’m a big fan of Star Wars, for example, and still didn’t enjoy all the movies, let alone all the novels, games, and other tie-ins – but you are able to put the negative experiences in perspective with the positive ones.
To put it another way, I’m a big fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, for example, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admit when they’ve played a bad game (or season), or that I’ve decided the 1997 team was the single best Eagles team ever+ and that no current or future Eagles team could possibly be better. A big fan takes it as it comes, enjoying some things and not others, but always with an overall appreciation of what they love in mind. They recognize that Godfather III doesn’t “ruin” Godfather I & II, and that when you think about it, the very notion that it could is pretty absurd.
By contrast, when you’re hardcore to the point that you tag something as being part of your identity, whether it’s your Star Wars fandom or your love of a sports team or whatever, you become very resistant to the idea of anything about that subject changing. Because changing it now changes you, and as a rule, human beings are highly resistant to making alterations to our sense of identity. So a hardcore fan inevitably draws inward, becoming either fanatically positive about their fandom to the point of blindness and instant (often harsh) rebuke of the very notion that it could be in any way bad, or bitter and resentful about any new material to come after whatever arbitrary point they’ve decided was the “height” of what they love. They become gatekeepers, protecting “their” fandom from everyone they see as harmful to it, including other fans and even creators if they feel they have strayed from the “true” nature of the fandom.
As you can imagine, neither perspective is ultimately very conducive to continued enjoyment of what a fan claims to love, because either way you’re locked into a perspective that ultimately stifles your ability to appreciate the subject of your affection. You either won’t ever critique it and can’t accept the notion that others will, or you’ll ruthlessly critique every possible aspect of new material to the point where you’re incapable of enjoying any of it. Instead of a source of enjoyment in your life, your fandom becomes a subject to obsess over in a negative way, either because it requires you to block out and shut down any criticism you come across or because any news about it prompts a bitter tirade about how it’s been going downhill since whatever time you decided it had reached a suitable zenith.
No matter what, the hardcore fan always loses.
One particularly relevant case in point is the familiar “stop ruining my childhood” refrain that has been heard in a lot of fandoms but seems to hold a special place in the hearts of certain hardcore Star Wars fans. This is like complaining that, because they built a 7-11 where your own playground used to be, your cherished memories of playing in that park as a kid are now ruined forever. Stop and think about that a moment, because it’s both silly and a little terrifying to have that kind of view of your own identity, your own personal timeline.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you have to like that they built the 7-11, much less that Lucas inserted a bunch of pointless crap no one asked for in his classic films. As I said before, being a big fan doesn’t mean you can’t critique or respond negatively to things in your fandom, any more than you can’t feel a sense of loss to see something you cherished replaced by something coldly commercial. Those are perfectly normal and logical reactions, but they’re still placed within a context, a perspective – I don’t like that there’s a 7-11 there now, or that the re-releases now have pointlessly awful Jabba the Hutt CGI, but it won’t stop me from enjoying telling stories about playing in the park with my friends, or remembering all the many times I watched the original movies and had a blast.
What I’m saying is that if those sorts of things really do retroactively ruin your past – as in actually make you incapable of feeling any or all of the happiness you used to feel when you recollected those times from your past – you need to take a big step back and really separate your identity from your fandom. Because you’re clearly locked in a relationship with it that is bad for both of you. Seriously. Think about it.
Big fans? Always. Let’s spread our love of Star Wars – or Game of Thrones, or Doctor Who, or whatever else – to others and enjoy the ups and downs of following a creative property over the years.
Hardcore fans, though? Let’s let that notion go.
+Said no one ever, including me, so calm down everyone.
Hack Review – Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
I am become Bro-shiva, destroyer of dudes.
OK, well, that’s probably putting a bit much of a spin on it. Especially considering how much I suck at multiplayer (more on that in a bit). But on the recommendation of a former student, I started playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare at midnight last night. And so far I’m having a hell of a lot of fun.
Understand, I’m not anything approaching a regular Call of Duty fan. Before last night, the last Call of Duty game I played was Call of Duty 2, which was released in 2005. So it’s been almost a decade since I played a game in this franchise – it was still about World War II when I left, to give a sense of perspective – and while I’m no stranger to FPS games, I generally prefer to play them on PC as opposed to a console. I’ve gotten used to console play over the last couple of years, but still find the mouse and keyboard a lot better for quick reactions. So I came very reluctantly to the decision to dive into Advanced Warfare, if only because while I thought it would be a nice spectacle on the PS4, I also thought I’d be spending most of my time lying down in a rapidly cooling puddle of blood as my poor controller skills got me killed. Repeatedly.
Suffice it to say that I’m very happy I changed my mind.
You see, I’m a military sci-fi fan. I’ve taught a course on the genre before. I read Starship Troopers several times a year, I go through the whole Old Man’s War series at least once annually, and regularly re-examine Ender’s Game. I love the breezy weirdness of Forever War and the boots in the mud grit of the Gaunt’s Ghosts books, the stark technology of Armor and the all-too-familiar modern media echoes of Embedded. And while it’s by no means the first game to mine near-future sci-fi for military purposes, it does it well and with enthusiasm. It’s far enough out there to be different and interesting, without going so far from the recognizable that it’s hard to feel a sense of visceral connection.
The writing, while investing heavily in some of the expected military tropes of the genre, is engaging when called for and knows better than to take itself entirely too seriously when it needs to be an action movie, which I appreciated. (It also doesn’t hurt that Private Mitchell is voiced by Troy Baker, who has so much character and pathos in his voice he could read half-finished Mad Libs and make them sound like the Gettysburg Address.) Kevin Spacey is exactly what you’d hope for in his role as President Frank Underwood Atlas CEO Jonathan Irons, bringing just the right amount of sly paternal affection to his megalomaniacal scheming. While I can see where some of the criticism of his character comes from, most of that stems from the lines he’s given as opposed to his performance; in his defense it always sounds like Spacey’s invested and enjoying himself, even when he’s given some over the top crazy ranting to do. I’ll take that over phoned-in celebrity voice work any time.
Here comes the caveat: I haven’t played the multiplayer. “But Pete! That’s what Call of Duty is all about!” comes the response from someone who apparently thinks yelling comments at a screen is better than typing them. All I can say is that multiplayer – especially PvP multiplayer – just isn’t a draw for me. I’ve never really been a huge fan of it in games, with the noted exception of the cheerfully addictive insanity of Team Fortress 2, and even if I was, recently a few rounds of PvP in Destiny taught me a valuable lesson:
I cannot compete with the Call of Duty generation.
Well, not on a console, anyway. Let it be known that I was so bad that I received my first-ever PS4 hate mail from a player on that first PvPÂ team – out of our team score of 5325 points for the round, I’d managed to contribute a whole 170 points. (Not that this justifies sending a hate mail, because really, but I just wanted to emphasize that I was truly terrible.)Â Even though I improved to merely awful after a few rounds, I simply haven’t honed the fast-scoping, forever-headshotting, running-and-gunning reflexes of those who’ve been playing competitive multiplayer for hundreds on hundreds of hours. What’s more, I don’t really feel like putting in the time to catch up. I respect the talent and I’ve watched gameplay videos of pro Call of Duty players with real admiration for the skills on display, but it’s just not for me. So my apologies, but if you’re looking for a review of the multiplayer, this ain’t the place.
That said, hopefully it says something pretty strong about the game that I’m really enjoying it despite the fact that I’m ignoring the main reason a lot of players pick it up in the first place. I’m enjoying the story mode, as heretical as it might be, and while the price tag might be a little steep for most folks if that’s all they’re going to get out of it, for anyone who enjoys the story and some multiplayer action I’m pretty confident Advanced Warfare will deliver some solid entertainment bang for their buck.
Now if I could just figure out which stick controls the camera and which one controls the dude, I’d really be in business.
Hack out.
The Impostor
I feel like a fraud. Always have, and sometimes I suspect I always will.
Nobody likes to hear artists complain, but I’m sorry folks, this one won’t stay caged. I’ve wanted to be a writer almost as far back as I can remember, ever since my family praised a ghost story I wrote when I was little, ever since a friend of mine almost offhandedly said “This is good, you should write more” and unknowingly gave me permission to share my stuff with my friends. To step up and be that artistic writer guy, which is not an inconsiderable risk in the wolf-haunted woods known as middle school, especially for a chubby gamer kid.Â
So with family and friends behind me, I wrote, pretty much all the time. With the boundless optimism and heedless ambition of the very young I decided I wanted to write games, I wanted to write stories, I wanted to write novels, I wanted to write articles in the paper, I wanted to be able to reach up on a shelf and pull down paper with my words on it and share it with anyone who’d stand still long enough.Â
I have done all of these things, some of them several times over, even won a few awards here and there in the process, and yet the vast majority of the time it still feels like I haven’t done anything at all. And I’m far from alone in this. A lot of the other artists I know feel the same way, even if they can’t quite put it in words. Hell, I know it’s not just artists that feel this way, really. I know it can strike anyone, so please don’t take this as a dismissal of anyone who feels these same feelings about their own field – business, athletics, academics, parenthood, you name it. I sympathize, I truly do. If I focus on artists it’s because that’s how I relate to these feelings, not because I don’t think anyone else falls prey to them. Â
So what does it feel like? It’s like running a race and watching the finish line creep along ahead of you, always out of reach, but also looking over your shoulder and seeing nothing of the race you’ve run so far. Which leaves you running in limbo, neither capable of reaching the satisfaction of finishing nor able to at least look back and be proud of how far you’ve come. I know that might sound a bit like ambition, and I think they can certainly have some things in common, perhaps even spur each other on at times, but in the end they’re not at all the same. At the core of ambition is inspiration, a dream of what you can accomplish, can become, but at the core of impostor feelings there’s only a frustrating desolation. Because any time you try to look over what you’ve done, a conversation remarkably like this one plays out in your head:Â
I wrote a story!
It’s not published, though, is it?
I’m going to be in an anthology!
Yeah, well, how’s that unfinished novel?
I wrote a novel!
Fine, but it was work for hire, not your own original work.
I wrote my own novel from scratch!
Oh, and look how all those agents are just dying to represent you.
I’m going to self-publish!
Have fun getting lost in the crush on Amazon. By the way, ever finish that original game you wanted to write?
I … I don’t feel so good.
There you go.
And so on. Sometimes, just for variety, that mocking voice will take a different tactic, just so you can’t ever be prepared for it. All those accomplishments you stubbornly insist on claiming become dumb luck, favors from friends, cynical maneuvering that happens to favor you for the moment, even a sort of conspiracy if the voice really feels like running wild that night. Anything but something you deserve, something you worked for, and just as quickly dismissed as soon as possible. Â
Allow me to give another example of the kind of tricks impostor feelings can play on your mind. Not that long ago, I was talking about game writing with some folks at a convention, and somebody said rather wistfully that they hoped to see something of theirs in print some day. I agreed, and another person in the conversation looked at me funny and said, “Haven’t you already been published?” I hesitated, embarrassed, and finally said something to the effect that I hadn’t published a game entirely of my own design. The others looked at me like I was being a bit of a bastard, and I can imagine why – that must have sounded like the worst sort of patronizing false modesty. A “humblebrag” to use the very apt new term, designed to call attention to my publishing resume by pretending to forget about it. Â
But the thing was, when I answered, I wasn’t pretending. I really, sincerely didn’t feel like I’d written anything that qualified. Hell, at that instant I didn’t feel like I’d written anything at all. I was being absolutely genuine in my sympathy with the person who wished they could be published, because all the game books I’d worked on in the past didn’t count, because nothing I’ve done in the past counts, not for long. I answered honestly in that moment, because that voice in my brain says those books are old and irrelevant, and so I don’t even add them in my tally unless I stop and think about it.
That’s what it’s like to feel like an impostor at what you do. Not only can it poison your own sense of accomplishment, it can also make you seem like a jerk to others, which of course only makes you feel worse about yourself, and even less deserving of any sense of accomplishment. I don’t know why the human mind loves vicious cycles so much, but sometimes it seems like it was designed for little else, I have to admit. Â Â
Let me be clear, though – I’m not asking for sympathy here, exactly. And I’m definitely not asking for people to prop me up, sing my praises, or anything like that. Most of the time I get through these feelings on my own, and when I can’t, I am lucky enough to have a wife, family, and friends who know how to pick me up and shout down that voice for a good long while. And that’s a kind of luck I’ll happily own up to, nagging whispers be damned. I’m not always OK, but I’m always alright, and for that I count my blessings most every day.Â
No, the reason I’m writing this is for anyone out there who knows that voice, who feels like a fraud sometimes, and thinks it might just be them. That those feelings of being a fraud, being forever unable to cherish accomplishments or just take credit for your own well-earned competence in your field, are unique to you. They’re not. Don’t let them drag you down, don’t listen to the doubt and uncertainty – and if you can’t handle them on your own, that’s OK too. Nobody can do it all the time. Reach out and find some help, because trust me, you can do it. Because you deserve it. Because you’re not an impostor.
You’re incredible. Â
If Sports Articles were Written Like LARP Articles
Football’s Final Solution to American Colonial History
A Native American Team, A Team of Colonists. What Could Go Wrong?
To be fair, the players knew there would be violence. Everything leading up to the game had warned them of loud noises, flashing lights, and of course, brutal conflict with the enemy. Bill Belichick, the leader or “Head Coach” of the New English Patriots – a football faction devoted to defending the Boston area against its rivals – had warned players repeatedly that “the other team will be out for blood. They will seek to dominate you.” In a pre-game ritual with notable similarities to a prayer circle, Belichick gathered his armored players and reminded them that their whole lives had been leading up to that moment, and that nothing else mattered to the Patriots now – not family, not friends, nothing but destroying their opponents.
Even if their opponents were the Redskin Clan of Washington, D.C., champions of Native America. Â
Tom Brady, 37, originally from San Mateo, California, was one of the Patriots players who had traveled to New Orleans to participate in this year’s Super Bowl, a grand tournament of football that features the two best factions, or “teams”, in the Nationwide Football League. The game is a carefully designed mixture of absurdities: two teams take the field at a time and try to control a ball (which is actually more of an oval), and attempt to aggressively push back the enemy team until they reach the End Zone, an area that signals the defeat of the other team. With each trip to the End Zone, a team “scores” – adds numbers to a complicated electronic board overlooking the field – a variable amount of points, depending on how they reached the scoring area. The game is intensely violent, with frequent strong physical contact between players, but a referee is on hand to keep more extreme violence from breaking out, and players wear helmets and protective armor, or “pads”, in order to minimize damage. At the end of the game, the team that inflicted more End Zone damage to their opponent is declared the winner, regardless of penalties or overall performance, making football a game where the end – or End Zone – certainly justifies the means. Â
In this league, 32 team factions compete in weekly battles, or “games”, around the country, as they attempt to accumulate the highest number of victories. Aside from the Patriots and the Redskin teams, some others include the Iggles of Philadelphia, represented by a giant bald eagle, and the Cowboys, a Texas faction the boasts almost religious devotion among its followers, who identity themselves by wearing prominent blue stars on their clothing. Players themselves divide into units, or “lines”, such as the Offense Line, which handles more aggressive play; the Defensive Line, which attempts to block access to the team’s End Zone; and the Specialty Team, which handles situations such as returning enemy kicks and “punting”, an act that sends the game ball high into the air to render an opposing player helpless to an oncoming charge.
“I knew it would be rough,” said Brady, a smiling brunette with movie star good looks who works in advertising during the off-season and who was raised Catholic but has since left the religion due to its conflict with football’s holy day of Sunday. “But I had no idea what was really about to happen. We’re playing as Patriots, and we had to go out there – in front of the whole world, for the biggest game of the year – and ‘destroy’ the Redskins? I didn’t think it would go that far. I really didn’t.” As a Quarter Back, Brady acts as his team’s offensive general, using a complex language of codes and maneuvers that he must memorize before every week’s battle to tell is teammates which offensive maneuvers they have to use in order to reach the enemy’s End Zone. “Then [Coach Belichick] kept stressing that we had to demolish their Red Zone defense, and I caught myself thinking – is he really saying ‘Red Zone’ about the Redskins? I didn’t expect it to go to a racial level like that.” The young man shook his head, adding that it still gave him nightmares to think about re-creating genocide as sport.
Nationwide Football League hierarch Roger Gooddell disagreed with the characterization of the Super Bowl as a racial metaphor. “You have to understand these things in context,” he stressed, wiping his brow guiltily as he made his denials. “Football is just a game. If players and fans want to take other messages away from it, that’s their business. We’re here to have fun and promote the sport.” When asked about the inescapable connection between the teams battling on the field and the parallels to American history and Native American genocide, Gooddell refused to comment.
==================================== Â Â Â
OK, that’s about as much of that as I can stand.Â
Let me just say that this was posted in response to this article, which was written about the infamous “Coney Island” Dystopia Rising module that ran back at Dexcon 14. In the interest of full disclosure, while I was a player in the game at the time, I did not participate in the module myself. However, as someone who can claim close friendship with both the staff of Dystopia Rising as well as a number of its players, not to mention someone who helped write the live-action rulebook and some setting materials, I can tell you that my blood pressure went up steadily as I read it.
Simply put, the article is written with so many easily-corrected errors that I find it hard to take it seriously, and the sad part is, that’s the sort of standard I’ve seen time and again with reporting about LARP. Nobody seems to care if you get your facts right, when getting your facts straight is, oh, I don’t know, the entire point of journalism. It would be one thing if this article ran right after the event – that still doesn’t really excuse it, because journalism, but I could see if you got a game term slightly wrong, or if you presented a core concept of the game a little off because it hadn’t been explained to you properly at the time you participated. It’s still not right, but at least I could see it. I’m no stranger to deadlines.Â
Oh yeah, and actually going out to cover events and gather material firsthand helps too. Especially if you’re going to report on something as potentially explosive as what some might call making a game out of the Holocaust. Just a thought.Â
But I digress.
The thing is, Dexcon typically happens over the Fourth of July weekend. But the Dexcon referred to in this piece was held in 2011 – so we’re already at three years and counting, not exactly a good start for factual accuracy (especially when the correspondent didn’t personally attend the event in the first place.) It’s plain that some research was done after the fact, including seeking out players and experts for quotes and opinions. Which means there has been more than enough time to get the game information right too. And yet judging from the number of errors in the article regarding the game world, player characters involved, and the mechanics of the game itself, that wasn’t considered a priority. Which is baffling, because if you wrote a sports article the same way – just tossing around incorrect game terms, team names, player positions and so on – you’d be laughed out of sports journalism. But apparently it’s OK to do it with geeks and their silly games, because who cares but the geeks, right?Â
Now, you might say – and with some fairness – that the purpose of the article was to talk about the game as a representation of disturbing material in general and the Holocaust in particular, and therefore the game terms aren’t important because the real focus is the social issue at hand. Trust me, I get you on that. I understand there’s a bigger picture at work here. But that doesn’t mean you get to slack on the basic task of getting the facts straight, because journalism for one, and because you never know if getting a fact wrong might also change the story. Even if you think “who can possibly care if one ‘strain’ in an imaginary world sees itself as better than others” you still have a responsibility to report it correctly, because it might actually matter in terms of creating the game experience you’re reporting on. Plenty of topics are complicated to cover and tough for outsiders to decipher – but communicating them clearly and correctly is part of your responsibility as a journalist when you take on that story. You can’t just pick the parts of the story you like or more easily understand and get them correct, then hand-wave the other stuff. As the great Lester Freamon once wisely noted, “All the pieces matter.”Â
To go back to the football analogy I kicked off with – see what I did there? – if you are writing an article about the very real controversy concerning the Redskins team name, you still have to get the football details right. Even if the main thrust of your piece is about the deeper issues of racism and cultural appropriation involved in the dialogue, and you hardly spend any time discussing the game at all, you still can’t make up player positions, misspell team titles, or screw up your identification of people involved and their roles in the situation. Why not? Because journalism is supposed to care about all of the facts, not just the ones you think are most relevant to your position. When you don’t care to get those things right, it shows you care less about the facts than you do about how you’re trying to fit them together, and that’s a bad sign in a journalist.Â
If you don’t want to discuss game play or mechanics, fine I guess, just leave them out.
Don’t skim them and get the details wrong. Â
I do give the author some credit for going out and talking to some players as well as larp authorities before going to press. That’s more than we’ve gotten in some articles in the past. And I do think there was an honest question raised at the heart of this article – what does it mean to represent a real life horror such as the Holocaust in a roleplaying game? A lot of games include some pretty dark material, and maybe it’s a good thing to stop and check every once in a while, to see that players are OK and make sure what is presented is handled responsibly. And yet the lack of attention to details in this article makes it hard to see it as a piece that really tried to understand Dystopia Rising or its players, but rather went for a slightly more sensationalist route, and in so doing missed a chance to really try to understand all the aspects of the story.
Which is a genuine shame. Â
Back in 1997, the legendary horror gaming company White Wolf published a supplement for their Wraith game line entitled Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah, which was specifically centered on how the infamous concentration camps appeared in the dark and twisted afterlife world of the game. When it was announced, an anti-defamation organization threatened possible legal action for what they saw as a trivializing of the Holocaust. The author, my longtime friend and mentor Rich Dansky, responded by inviting their representatives to come see how the material in the book was presented as well as how it was handled in play. They showed the representatives an early copy of the book, then let them watch him run a game session using the material. They came away convinced that it did not trivialize the Holocaust or exploit it for cheap entertainment, but rather helped hammer home the grim loss and terrifying horror of the situation in a way that readers and players would not easily forget. It’s an example I wish more people followed when it comes to looking at games and wondering if they’re handling difficult material responsibly.  Â
That is how to responsibly handle a situation like this, on all sides.Â
In the end, you can debate the elements included in the module, and you can decide for yourself whether you think it’s appropriate for games to tackle subjects like the Holocaust. That’s fine, and as LARP changes and grows as an art form, I’d argue it might even be necessary. I just wouldn’t use this particular article as your starting point, because if it can’t be bothered to report the game accurately, what are the odds you’re getting the real picture?
OK. I’m done. If anyone needs me, I’ll be at home, rooting for the Iggles.
Positively Woodworthian 