In the Pacific Northwest, we have an abundance of LARPs. They span the setting spectrum to catch the attention of whomever wants to immerse themselves in the great unknown. From Science Fiction to Fantasy, we have your choice, but all the LARPs I have gone to so far seem to overlook a very important feature in their staff: a communications manager.
Running a LARP is a nightmare. Trust me, I’ve helped with several and been close to people who have done more. It’s an exhausting job with no thanks, and frequently no pay. For that reason, I fully encourage patience and compassion for every runner of a LARP. They are working to create a fun environment for you without much in the way of compensation. Like running a social website or an event that doesn’t bring in an actual salary, it’s a labor of love, but as a player, there are some expectations that I think should be prioritized a little higher than they currently are.
Community management is a skill, and one that almost no LARP runner I’ve met has. Sorry, guys. You are all passionate geeks with the best of intentions, but your ability to communicate in a way that isn’t obfuscated, discouraging, or downright alienating is hit and miss. Your lack of expertise is not helped along by the exhaustion and frustration of running a LARP–you get tired, you get burnt out, and you snap.
A communications manager is a person on your staff whose primary purpose is to interface with your player community. Their job isn’t actually to do a lot of work behind the scenes (unless they want to!), but to manage your responses to emails, your facebooks, your forums or reddits. They take the information you all discuss and tell them and they answer the questions the player asks; they talk to you about whether it’s a good idea to post that scathing critique of your player base’s mistakes right in the middle of the hype train, or if you should wait a few weeks. They know how to put their finger on the pulse of the game and use surgical accuracy to make sure it doesn’t die of bitter miscommunication over little things. You’re frustrated with that power player? The Communications manager knows how not to show it, and how to put the critique of a certain type of play in terms that don’t carry your personal bias.
You’re not bad for having personal biases! Everybody has them. But if you respond to a player in the heat of the moment and tell them you think they are a cheater? Over half of the time, you’ll regret the decision, and it will do you no favors. A communications manager helps you choose when it’s time to actually make an accusation, because it’s something you want to follow up on, rather than alienating players because you got tired that day.
You’d probably think this is obvious, but I’ve been to a lot of Pacific Northwest LARPs and a primary breakdown of joy in the game seems to come from communications between staff and players. If you don’t have the skills for that part of the job, then don’t force yourself to try while you’re already breaking your back for your player base–find someone who can help with that skillset. Sometimes you can’t manage that, but, I think that a lot of LARPs don’t care to even try, and that hurts them over time.