by Danara Alexandrei | Jan 25, 2020 | LARP Running, LARPs
I’ve noticed a lot of LARP startups here in the Pacific Northwest, and with a brand new LARP-dedicated host site opening up, people are getting even more excited as 2020 comes down upon us. Here are some nifty ideas you might incorporate into your LARP Design that can help–from communication to running
It’s a bug, not a feature!
If you have to change the rules on someone negatively mid game or mid negotiation, you should reward them in proportion with the change you’re implementing. This discourages a staff member from making frivolous changes or not considering the impact, but also eases the discomfort and hurt of having something you invested in shift dramatically out from under you. Also, it reframes the conversation to feel like the player is helping you find issues you’ve not yet addressed, acknowledging the emotional effort.
The story is the First Priority.
Make sure you have the setting laid out in a way that everyone can get immersed and know what they are doing. Curious players will want to know ‘day in the life of’ kind of questions, and how your mechanics help them approach the setting as a whole. A big setting with a large world is great, but make sure you can take on that kind of task–it’s more important that the players understand your setting than it is for your setting to expand the whole world. If you want to focus on one culture in a whole social structure, then make sure that culture is fully expounded upon for the players to sink their teeth into. A good setting allows for players to get good ideas and make your game come to life.
Mechanics, Good or Bad, should support your story.
I’ve seen LARPs run on what I’d consider terrible mechanical bones. Turns out, if a player enjoys your game, they’ll stick around regardless of jumping your mechanics, but what I’ve seen drive players out of a game fast is expectations being unmet. If you tell a story about a class of monster hunters, make sure you take the time to make their mechanics feel like what you said the setting supported. Even if they are bad mechanics, your players chose that class for the flavor, and having their expectations shift can drive a wedge between you and the people you are trying to run a game for.
It’s okay to run some Betas.
Beta games are great ways to test your system, and a tested system is more steeled against the rigors of running it. Your system doesn’t need to just appeal to players–you need to be able to run it. A beta event will tell you if it’s going to rip your left arm off to do so. A lot of LARPs suffer from mechanics bloat that overextend their staff, and an overextended staff loses patience and burns out, like a beautiful star falling from Heaven. it’s not good for you or your players if you break yourself over some mechanics, and testing them in a few full-run, full-immersion games is the best way to test that out, and also tell your players ‘everything can change, so don’t get comfortable yet!‘
by Danara Alexandrei | Jan 25, 2020 | LARP Civics, LARPs
Bigotry in our LARP is inevitable in many forms, but sexism is one of the more pervasive things that we deal with. As a female presenting human being, I exhaustively deal with microaggressions of this sort every day. A lot of LARP runners hope to minimize this by writing into their setting that it’s egalitarian or that sexism hasn’t ever existed, but in this one person’s humble opinion, that approach isn’t the only good approach.
Now I must stress the opinion part. Every human being is going to have a different take on how microaggressions and more serious aggressions affect us.
I’ve played in plenty of LARPs that both acknowledged and featured sexism and many who insisted it wasn’t a part of the setting at all, and I found in the latter that I personally felt less heard. Let me explain why. Sexism, whether we like it or not, exists in our day to day lives. Male and male presenting transfolk (non-binary. A trans male is just a male.) have certain privileges in society that females and femme-presenting transfolk do not. I personally enjoy rising above that challenge in a fantasy setting, but think there should be avenues for females to ignore those aggressions built in. You should have a matriarchal society somewhere in your setting, for example, or a matriarchal group.
What breaks down for me when you say that your world is egalitarian is that your players, by nature of their society, are not egalitarian. They just aren’t–it’s not that they do not try, but they will, unfortunately, frequently slip up. By acknowledging sexism in your setting, you give us a voice where others would silence us. Taking this very real issue and putting it on the fantasy palate, acknowledging it, forces the players on both sides to know it is real. In a society that frequently claims that a woman’s voice is hysterical, telling a woman she is not experiencing sexism because this world doesn’t have it, when you cannot truly remove it from the play sphere, is often extremely alienating.
“We must strive for the best version of ourselves,” I can hear you say. That’s noble, and I’m not saying that my opinion is every woman’s opinion. What I can tell you is that in a world that takes my oppression and pretends it does not exist in any meaningful way just because it’s uncomfortable for you to grapple with, I feel incredibly silenced. Some others will feel freed, and so I am not saying it is wrong, but I am saying that if you think you are taking the moral high ground, you are not thinking about the issue with nuance.
Opting to remove a horrible experience from discussion and the roleplay of the world is not a moral win in any circumstance. It’s perhaps an easier stance, and a more comfortable one, but it has its own consequences and fallout–and the victims are often the ones put underfoot. This applies to many topics that are uncomfortable in our society.
by Danara Alexandrei | Jan 24, 2020 | LARP Civics, LARPs, Newcomers
LARPing is, at its core, a whole bunch of geeks getting together in one space to do something they love.
Unfortunately, that comes with a lot of logistical issues. Not everyone wants the same thing from a LARP, and it’s a game of compromise and care for your fellow humans. Here’s a few suggestions on how to be your best self at LARP, and help others have a great time.
Know what you want and what you need.
As you are prepared to compromise, you have to make sure you are aware of your boundaries. A lot of people will be falling into roles and enjoying a setting to its fullest that may have themes that you don’t care for. Make sure you know where the line is so you can get out before you’re actually hurt. These guys are your friends, some of them, but a lot of them are strangers. Nobody wants to accidentally hurt you, but nobody here is psychic either. If you have a hard line against a topic that will come up in game, make a plan for how you will personally avoid it. If you can’t figure out a good way to avoid a hard line for you, don’t put yourself in that situation. If you can’t stand feudalism and will get upset whenever it comes up, don’t join a feudal game. If you just sorta don’t care for it, join and make plans for how to not participate in it as much as you can.
Don’t blame others for you not having fun.
Other people can’t make you have fun. Only you can. While sometimes missing stairs are a thing, most times, another LARPer accidentally getting in the way of your fun is just that–an accident. Not everyone knows what is fun for you, but you do! You can’t force yourself to always have fun, and sometimes things just won’t work out, but I can tell you that even in the crummiest most boring of games, if you desire to have fun, you can have it. This isn’t saying you can’t discuss how to fix issues, or address a certain player’s fun being opposite your own, but blaming another human being who is not targeting you for taking your fun away isn’t the way to fix your game–it’s a crab pot mentality, where you are trying to spread your misery.
Be Considerate.
Be willing to listen if someone else says something isn’t working for them. If something you are doing is intrinsically unhelpful and stressful for them, try and work it out. Don’t force yourself to bend over backwards to the point that you can’t have fun, but be cautious and courteous. If that person doesn’t like being bullied in character and your character is just a bully, implement the old forum strategy: try not to run into them. When your fun and their fun is completely opposite one another, it’s best to give them space if you can’t add positives to their game. You’ll find there are a lot of players who love strife and conflict–it’s better when it’s done with someone you are comfortable with and it’s entirely in character.
by Danara Alexandrei | Jan 24, 2020 | LARP Running, LARPs, Logistics
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.
by Danara Alexandrei | Jan 24, 2020 | Costume and Props, LARPs, Newcomers, Vendors
Or where to Buy your New LARP gear
There are lots of different options for getting your LARP costumes and gear: thrifting, home-making, borrowing. Sometimes, we don’t have the time to muss around, though, and we just want some quality base layers and gear for our costume that take as little energy as possible. Let me introduce you to some of my favorite LARP shopping avenues–not just for their content, but also, many times, for their service and policies!
For the girl who needs a fantasy medieval dress among us, especially the gorgeously fat girl, there’s HolyClothing.com . This company has an inclusive attitude toward all sizes and genders and is constantly increasing their styles and options, plus the quality is to die for. Going up to 5x in size, most of their dresses are light and airy and good for wearing in the summer or being a base layer for the winter, and they are all hand-dyed fabric that’s easy to wash. The styles range from medieval fantasy to just general enjoyment, and the embroidery on their dresses is really eye catching. If I had anything negative to say about Holy Clothing, it’d be only that their clothes are usually one single color, and definitely need some accessories to pop properly–but, really, that’s as much a boon as a bane. After all, if you need a base layer, having several different colors can be distracting. My experience with buying a surcote with them is that the surcote is extremely thin, so don’t get it to keep warm, but I’ve yet to try out their coat.
Next on the list is Verillas. Known for their utilikilts, Verillas has a surprisingly wide selection on their site of things that range from belts and boots all the way to some really well-priced tunics which are perfect for LARP. I have enjoyed endlessly their Warrior Shorts, too. Verillas supports the LGBTQ+ community, as well, and sells a wide range of pride kilts, which, while not for LARP necessarily, can be a fine addition to your wardrobe. I’m sad to say that Verillas does not really cater to the more robust crowd, though it sometimes tries, and their return policy is only for ‘credit’ at the store, which is unfortunate if they don’t have anything in your size and you tried to buy something of their largest size in hopes it would fit. I’ve never been let down by Verillas’ quality, though, and their customer service is kind and efficient.
Finally, do you want some quality LARP weaponry to go with your new, smashing outfit? Of course you do, and you should look no further than Calimacil. While I understand they are a little pricier than other companies for your first weapon of foam war, I can say the swords here are much sturdier than their competitors, and the new foam makes them light and soft–that’s not even mentioning how beautiful they are! When I first joined LARP, I went through a sword a game because when they’d hit another player’s sword, they’d snap. I’m fully aware this is a problem for me, primarily, and that shouldn’t have been the case–if you don’t swing like an actual sword-fighter–I pulled back before touching anyone’s body, it was when other swords impacted mine–you should have no problem. But, if you’re just worried about having to buy one again in a year or so, Calimacil’s swords hold up for 5+ years, and require no latex care.
