Tag: Featured

Multi-day larps inevitably require a great deal of commitment in time, money and effort. A few hours’ preparation, in good time, can make a huge difference to your experience at the event.

Here are some broad suggestions on how you can prepare for a larp.

Read the Material, Settings and Character Sheet

Read your character sheet, the design document, the casting lists, and other documents sent by the organisers. Make notes and calendar reminders of key deadlines such as payment and responses to casting questionnaires. This keeps track of everything but also helps the game organisers, who do not need to chase you. Join any Facebook group the organisers recommend and watch for announcements.

If the larp provides long and detailed pre-written characters, they can be difficult to remember. Write down some notes in an in-character notebook you can use in game. This is a better alternative to refer to in game than a non-diegetic character sheet.

Finally, some players like to read or watch movies about the setting or relevant subject, for example in a historical game or in a game about a real life situation. The knowledge or emotions from those sources can be brought into the game naturally, through the lens of your character, if appropriate.

Practical Preparations

Book travel and accommodation. Doing this early can save you money. Make sure you have the relevant visas, travel insurance and anything else you would need to travel to the relevant country for the larp. Check in advance any travel from the station or airport to the venue. Sometimes the organisers will provide a coach — be sure to sign up to this in time. If not, reach out of the Facebook group to carpool. Bring comfort snacks, any personal medicines, a hot water bottle, anything that you need to be physically comfortable.

Make Pre-game Connections

If the game relies on you making connections, then engage with the relevant Facebook groups pre-game. First, reach out to the players of specific characters mentioned on your character sheet. Four or five connections are more than enough to get you started. Think of two axes: positive to negative and static vs. dynamic. A static relationship is something that may evolve but is relatively settled. A dynamic relationship is one that is expected to change dramatically during the game. For example, a positive static friendship is a long-lasting friendship. These elements are fluid and can change unexpectedly in game time, but these axes provide a good starting point.

If you are worried you may not have enough relationships but at the same time do not want to stretch yourself too thin and overpromise, you can also make some simple connections for example: we are friends because I help them with their homework. If the two players have chemistry, it can become something more, but if there is not much time or inclination, it can stay as a casual connection.

Some players love to pre-play scenes by play by text or over Facebook. Other players like to write stories about their backgrounds and events that have happened in the past. These can all be useful in finding the emotional connection to the character. However, they can also be quite time-consuming, so it is possible that not every player will be able to engage in this way.

“Finding” the Character

Think of the personality and emotional state of your character. Choose a signature song, archetype or story arc. Consider how the character would react to a certain situation, their belief system, and feelings.

Work on the physicality of your character, their posture, accent, any mannerisms that are distinct from yours. Adopting a few characteristics for your character that are distinct from you as a player can be very interesting and effective in portraying different personas.

Costuming and Props

With costuming, start with the advice given by the designers. It’s easier and less stressful to buy, rent, or create your costumes in advance. Don’t underestimate the power of your friendly fellow larpers — they’ll often be able to provide obscure items, or point you at a place you can get them. Make a costume list which will also help with packing.

Prepare any props. Gather some keepsakes or tools of the trade that identify your character and ground you emotionally. Letters, photographs of your loved ones, a locket, or a wedding ring can all be very emotive props both for you and for others who interact with your character’s personal story.

Pre-Party

If you arrive the night before, perhaps participate in a dinner or drinks with other players. It is always nice to get to meet people out of character and it helps with the pre-game nerves.

Don’t Overdo It

There is such a thing as too much preparation. If you have invested too much time in preparation and preplay you may not meet the expectations that you yourself have placed on the game. Similarly, a game has a finite amount of time and overcommitting to plots and connections may leave you stretched.

Have Fun!

Preparing for a larp can be great fun, especially if you do it in good time. It can help get you in the mood, extend the enjoyment of the larp and prepare you for a great experience!

Being cast in a leadership role is a great opportunity, but it can mean extra responsibility to shape the tone and experience of your play group, both ingame and offgame. As a player, your goal should be to empower everyone to focus on playing their characters and having a great larp. Whether you’re playing a school prefect, a bunker president, or a marine officer, leadership characters are often focal points for ingame information and tasks, and many of the core principles of playing them well remain consistent.

There are many strategies you can use to bring your fellow players together and to create an atmosphere of trust. Let’s look at a few of them:

Before the Larp

Understand what is required of you as a leader — and also what isn’t — both in setup and during runtime. This will help you set your level of engagement, and recognize when you risk being overloaded — and either delegate responsibilities, or change your character if necessary.

If the larp has pre-game online discussions, be active in the build-up to the larp if you can. You don’t need to be omnipresent, but being visible in discussions, dropping tidbits about how you plan to play your character, and posting from an account that uses a recognisable photo of you can create familiarity and trust.

Take an interest in players who will be playing your subordinates. What do they think your character should know about theirs? What play do they want from the group and from you? What are their boundaries? Answering those questions yourself first can help hesitant players give more useful answers, and demonstrates sincerity in sharing vulnerabilities to help each other play safely.

Expect your play to revolve around your group. When setting up relations, focus on connections within your group that emphasise or undercut your character as a leader, and establish your character’s investment in the success of the group and the people in it. Choose relations outside the group that complement the interactions you want within it, so they provide variety and play opportunities rather than making you inaccessible.

Build your group’s lore and dynamics with your fellow players. Establish shared expectations, like how successful the group is at what it’s supposed to do, or whether the characters are fiercely loyal, cheerfully indifferent, or at each other’s throats. Define known internal and external-facing views and behaviours of your group, and as a leader, embody these views and behaviour. Encourage your group to play off you and your position (even when you’re not present) by either following and strengthening it or going against it — for example, if you establish yourself as a strict by-the-book boss, both followers and rebels can use you to give additional ingame depth to their play.

Try to make your costume recognisable and describable so others can find you in a crowd or ask around for you. Make sure it includes some way to tell the time!

During Workshops

Find a moment to gather your group and bring anyone who wasn’t involved in preplay up to speed. Collectively review the decisions you made before the game and see if they still make sense in person, and are acceptable to players who couldn’t be involved.

Have everyone introduce themselves and describe what they want from this experience, and what they’d like the group to play up about their character.

Ask players if there are any group responsibilities they want to avoid or play on so you know who to delegate which tasks to. Encourage people to come to you in play if they feel their larp would be improved by more involvement in official group tasks.

Check if anyone has any access needs the group can help accommodate to level the playing field and make the group feel safe. If you know the larp’s structure, consider planning times to bring your group together in play, but avoid making these meetups mandatory unless the design requires it.

Work together to ensure other players understand your group and how they can engage with you during the larp.

During Play

Be a hub of activity for your group but avoid micromanagement, which can both prove stressful for you and deny others opportunities to participate. Give others a chance to contribute — they can be tasked to find ball dates, research the macguffin, plan an attack, or serve as a liaison officer to other groups. The leader gets to sign off on the action — responsibility lies with them — but by spreading the work both prevents overburdening individuals and gives all players opportunities for high status play. It also creates more potential for drama.

Your leadership position gives you access to information. Share it with your group as much as possible; share too much rather than too little unless someone specifically asked for play around being uninformed.

Involve your group in decision making — ask for and listen to their opinions. If the ingame culture supports it, consider explicit mechanisms like voting, too. Remember, if they suggest bad ideas it may signal that they’re interested in playing on the consequences.

Play an enthusiastic, larger-than-life version of your character at the start of the larp to give your group a beacon to align around. Use your depiction to illustrate key elements of the character’s role, personality, and how to interact with them.

Project when you speak. Speak louder and slower than normal and pay attention to facing the group you’re talking to.

Use non-verbal play. Take up space! Stand in the middle of the room and don’t back off when someone plays aggressive. Have a straight back, don’t lean against walls, and spread your legs to shoulder-width instead of crossing them. Stand rather still and move calmly. Look straight forward rather than down, and look people in the eye when you talk to them. Gesture with your wrists stiff rather than loose. If you’ve calibrated with other players and you want to convey superiority or dominance, you might even step this up with things like staying seated while people have to stand and report to you, or interrupt and cutting them off when they talk.

Understand your offgame advantages and use them to enhance your presence, but not to be overbearing. If you’re tall, use your height to centre focus when you need it, but make sure you aren’t looming over anyone who’s uncomfortable. If you’re playing in your native language and others aren’t, try giving an inspirational speech, but be mindful of anyone who might not be able to answer back fluently. Calibrate this with your co-players before and during play.

Not all leaders are willing and you can play on reticence, delegating decisions, but at a dramatic moment making a forceful and determined stance.

Not all leaders are competent or sensible. If you go this route, it’s important to negotiate offgame and make sure your co-players will understand what you’re doing. That said, by giving people the wrong tasks to do you can create even more drama: the shy student as master of ceremonies, the blunt soldier forced to be a diplomat, the skilled surgeon required to deal with coughs and colds. Things going wrong or deadlines being missed can create interpersonal play.

Don’t force players into tasks they’re uncomfortable with or are unable to complete. In larps, we mostly want to play on character drama and the experience of being competent. Make sure that players are set up to succeed when they want to perform competence, and that players who want to show incompetence can communicate this clearly in play. Remember to delegate tasks that need competence to players with the skills required, and pair up other players who want to try out those experiences with them as mentors. The characters may be seasoned marines, but the players probably aren’t.

Avoid “make-work” with no dramatic value. It bores players and can undermine the sense of importance of assigned tasks. Having someone cook for three hours or fill paperwork that would be necessary in real life but doesn’t play into plot or drama may be practical, but rarely makes for fun play.

Match play to players and ensure they’re prepared for the culture of the organization they’re supposed to play. If you adopt a rigid military structure and leadership style, players with little actual experience of it may not react as expected, and you’ll need to make allowances.

Create memorable moments. Leaders are often busy during larps and the temptation is to limit play to your immediate circle. However, interaction with a leader can add a lot to the immersion and atmosphere for the player of a subordinate. Try to have at least one meaningful, personal interaction with every subordinate — seek a subordinate’s personal advice, pat the rookie on the shoulder for an accomplishment and say how proud you are, have a clash with the maverick of the group. If you’re leading too many characters to make this possible, enlist peers and your direct subordinates to spread the load, but still try to reach out when you can.

Play up those around you and share the spotlight. Remember to use the information you gathered before the game to make sure you give players the kind of interaction they need to support their portrayal. For example, always ask for the opinion of an “expert” before making a related decision or reprimand the person playing the lazy worker. You have a lot of influence on how these players’ larps may turn out.

After the game

Prepare to be active in post-game support and care. As a prominent figure in many players’ larps, it’s likely your character will be a focus of discussions and feedback afterwards. This can be emotionally taxing if it’s negative, but highly rewarding when it’s positive. Remember to keep sharing the spotlight and reflecting it back to the people you played with — you’re peers again now. The amount of feedback will vary wildly; after some larps you may get none, and after others an overwhelming amount. The more prominent and dramatic the role, the more you’re likely to hear from other players. You may be called upon to support your co-players, but make sure you’re looking after your own needs and welfare too, either with co-players or with the safety team.

Magic items are (often small everyday) items used by the player to help them animate a character during play and to evoke the character afterwards. Through this article we want to help players understand the power a magic item can have during gameplay, and how to choose and prepare a magic item for their character, as well as how to distinguish everyday use from in-character use. Note that when we talk here of “magic items”, we mean a technique for using a prop in any genre of larp, not an in-character magic item in a fantasy larp.

We will also touch upon the possibilities for using a magic item during or after debriefing either to consciously distance themselves from their character or to invoke in-game feelings after the larp is over.

Choosing and Preparing Your Item

Most larps use props and costumes to some extent, but magic items are ones you as a player choose to imbue with special significance and connection to your character. The best choice is usually a personally distinct item that you can carry with you while playing, so you can access it as needed. It could be part of the costume, a tool, or a personal memento. What really matters is that you can find a way to make it a symbolic part of the character’s history or everyday life: a particular piece of jewelry, a letter from a loved one, or a sonic screwdriver would all be good choices.

Sometimes it happens naturally, during play, that an otherwise insignificant prop becomes magical through repeated interactions, but you can also consciously make one as preparation for the larp. It works well in concert with finding the costume and physical mannerisms for the character. When you try out costumes, a certain accessory might really nail the character as you see it or a prop lets you do a certain thing that is perfect for what you want to express. When you start feeling the bond between item and character, include the item in various preparations for your character. Wear the item when trying out body language, hold it when pondering the dilemmas the character will be facing, or just daydreaming your way into the role. You’ll soon find the object beginning to be inextricably intertwined with the character.

Using Your Item During Play

The magic in the item can be used in several ways during play. It always functions as a passive reminder of your character that can help you maintain immersion. It works wonderfully as a catalyst to push you deeper into your character when you’re having a hard time immersing.

It is also a great tool to give physical expression to the inner life of your character. Playing with your wedding ring when you have marriage trouble or scrunching up your hat when nervous can be great examples of communicating your feelings while focused on your inner life. It doesn’t even have to be a specific situation, a magic item could be the thing your character always takes out when there’s nothing going on. Re-reading the letter, winding up the pocket watch, or whittling with the pocket knife can make beautiful in-character moments when nothing else is going on.

After the Larp

Putting down or taking off a magic item can be an excellent way to sharpen the divide between being in your character and returning to yourself. If the item is always with the character, then not having it makes it easier to be yourself instead.

When you are completely done playing the character, the magic item can serve as the focus of a ritual to leave the character behind. Depending on your relationship to the character, this can be a more or less destructive endeavour. Destroying the item that symbolizes the character can ward off some negative bleed effects, while other characters need a more tender approach in order to lay them to rest.

If instead, you want to retain the connection to the character, a magical item can serve as a reminder of how it felt to be that person, long after playing the larp. Us humans have an uncanny ability to recall feelings, given the right sensory input. That can be tapped into and used to bring back a character for a new larp or a nostalgic moment, or possibly to evoke positive traits from the character, useful for specific situations, e.g. courage to handle an everyday conflict or confidence to meet a new person on a date.

Building a character, bringing the persona to life, and taking control of any emotional residue isn’t necessarily hard, but with a tool as a magic item, it can be easier to keep a mindful process.

Listening connects players and creates shared spaces. Listening is crucial for diving into stories, moods and fictional worlds. Listening is a key skill in larp, but are we aware of that? How good are we at listening? Can we learn it and improve it?

In larps we usually give importance to speech abilities and visuals, but listening can shape the rhythm and space of a live experience. We will present an interdisciplinary approach drawing from music and sound studies theory: we will also propose exercises and practical solutions. Listening is a matter of respect and empathy. It is an interface for co-creation: if we all learn how to use it, maybe we will achieve new forms of negotiation.

Listening as an Embodied Tool

Your listening is unique: no one listens like you. Your listening is linked to your body and your experiences. It is individual and unique, like your fingerprint or your voice. Since listening is not tangible, this aspect is often forgotten. However, it is important to keep this in mind as you read the rest of this text. Each technique and exercise will test your way of listening in a different way and produce different outcomes. These are

not prescriptive exercises. Some will be very useful, others will not. You may already use some of these techniques. Everyone larps in different ways, everyone learns according to their own rhythm and their own interest. Each listener, each soul, is different and beautiful.

Listening — A Different Awareness

Listening is physical, like having blond hair or dark eyes. Understanding this, we can learn to use it as a tool to portray a character. Just as we change our appearance, our posture, or our way of speaking, we can try to change the way we listen. This does not require previous training, but it is necessary to be more aware, or perhaps aware in a different way toward what surrounds us. We propose two pre-larp exercises and three techniques for in-game use.

Exercises

1. Listen to the Space

If possible, visit the location before the larp. Walk in silence and listen to it. Every room has its own voice. Figure out what spot your character will like the best, where they will spend most of their time. Connect your character to the location by deep listening to it. Experience that with fresh ears. Then try to break down the soundscapes. Use your mind like an audio mixer, breaking down what you hear, as a producer isolates sounds and instruments when working on a song. This place will be your house. Know its inner voice.

2. Listen to the Time

Prepare yourself by listening to the sound of the setting. Will it be historical? Listen to the era’s music and songs. Become familiar with the historical soundscape and what was around back then. Usually this is only done when our character is somehow connected to the music (musician, singer, etc.), but remember that we are all music lovers. We all have songs we are attached to and that speak to us. Let your characters have some too. The same applies also to dystopian/non-realistic settings: every world has it own sounds. Listen to soundtracks of movies or games that are set in the same or similar world. Use this music while reading or preparing your character. Listen to it again just before the game, to better get into your character’s shoes and start your larp with a boost of immersion.

Techniques

1. Shape your own Soundscape

Each character has their own soundscape. You can build it as you would any physical affectation. Do they live in a silent world? A noisy one? If you have your own house or private space in the game, make it sound like your character. For example, if you are a priest, surround yourself with silence. Let your environment speak for you.

2. Filters and Listening Positions

Listening can be an instrument of power. You can use it to exclude other people or silence them, or conversely to rebel or impose yourself. When we listen we always use filters, which can come from our cultures, privileges, beliefs, expectations, intentions. Each of these values filters the attention we pay when we talk to someone. In a larp these filters can be reworked and combined in many ways. Not listening to someone or to certain sounds is a powerful way of building relationships. Changing those filters generates new listening positions, the attitudes that place us, through sound, in the world and the social order.

If you play a mystical character maybe you may never listen to all that is said by ordinary people. Or your traumatized character can react strongly to sounds connected to their trauma.

3. Limit Verbocentrism

In the most larps, we talk a lot. Words are used to express concepts and feelings and to achieve goals. Try to listen more and talk a little less. What are the other players expressing, or asking for? How are they right now? Listening in this way becomes a vehicle for inclusion and hopefully a contribution to an ingame safe space.

Conclusions

These techniques are not universal and they only work in the right context. It may not be easy, since it’s based on an impalpable material and because listening can take place only when there is connection and mutual understanding. It works if we mean listening, and larp, as a way of being connected to the world.

So, you’ve been given a predesigned character that you’re going to be playing in a larp. You read the character sheet. “Yes,” you think to yourself , “this sounds kind of like a person. I can see where they fit into the larp setting and the designer’s overall scheme. I can see how they are intended to behave and present themselves.” But! Maybe it feels a bit thin and schematic? Maybe the designer has thought hard about how this character contributes to the larp, but hasn’t had time to think quite so hard about what it will be like to actually play them for a weekend? Maybe they are lacking in the sort of interest that turns a character from a space-filler into someone memorable?

This is where inner tension comes in. Think of the character sheet, as presented to you, as showing the outer layer of the character — how they appear to the rest of the world, how they engage with the larp environment by default. But then within that, there will be another person — or maybe more than one — which may inform behaviour, decisions, actions, etc. in a way that’s not obvious and predictable from looking at the outward nature of the character. And maybe there will be interesting tensions between the outer persona and the inner person, that will generate play for yourself and for your co-players.

This technique is a shortcut. You may be happier with a detailed psychological exploration of your character to unfold its inner workings in depth. But not everyone works that way; and sometimes even if you do, you might end up in similar places.

What is Inner Tension?

Let’s take an example from the most familiar generic fantasy setting: your character is a tavernkeeper. This is an easy stereotype to play: the tropes of a tavernkeeper include bonhomie, tolerance up to a point, the capability of violence, and so on. But what will make your tavernkeeper different from any other? Perhaps, back when they were a kid, they really wanted to be a paladin when they grew up. And perhaps that ‘inner paladin’ is still present. This will affect things like how they deal with bad behaviour in the tavern. It may mean that they address some clients with more respect than others. It may mean that they don’t cooperate with the local thieves’ guild — or perhaps they do, as part of a plan to expose them? Perhaps they have a set of rules, rituals, and dogmas that they adhere to, to the annoyance or amusement of their regulars.

This is a process of analysis, rather than exploration — which means it can be used on short notice. When someone in the tavern starts reminiscing about their time on crusade, you as a player immediately know how to respond — you’d love to go on a crusade, if it wasn’t for the responsibility of this tavern — and people will see how the tavernkeeper’s eyes will light up.

If you have a more ‘method’ approach to characterization, the same technique can still work. Robert de Niro famously said (Levy 2014) that, when preparing to play the character of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, he thought of the drivers as hermit crabs, each scuttling around the city in their own shell. Perhaps your tavernkeeper’s internal identity might be a hermit crab? They’ve decorated and pimped the tavern to express their personality. Within it, they feel safe — armoured, at home, and confident. Outside the tavern, they might feel naked — exposed. They might stick to walls and corners, and be nervous about being approached closely. Hermit crabs are always on the lookout for bigger shells, so that they can grow — is the tavernkeeper keen to expand, asking for word of larger properties that might be coming vacant? Maybe they are grabby, and when they take money, they unconsciously shape their fingers into claws?

Added Depth

When asked to make an unexpected decision or choice, players tend to react in a rather binary way — “What do you want to drink?” will often be met with, either the obvious thing or the same thing that the player themselves would drink, or else the opposite. But thinking about the hermit crab: perhaps when in their own tavern, they drink like a monarch, the best wine in the house. But when elsewhere, perhaps they are too wary to drink anything but water — or anything at all.

A character can have multiple inner tensions. Another approach is to use a composite of people who you know in real life. Perhaps, instead of a paladin or a hermit crab, the way the tavernkeeper presents themselves physically is driven by Person A inside; perhaps the way they behave socially is driven by Person B; etc. So, perhaps the friend from whom you have drawn Person A gets up early in the morning, so as to fit in a lengthy preparation routine. How will that feel for the character, when you do it at the larp? Why do they feel the need to do this? How does it interact with the other aspects of their life as a tavernkeeper? Not having these answers given to you in a prescriptive way, in a deep character description or in a shallow one that you have made deep yourself by exploring it, can be liberating. Real people don’t always have rational explorations for how they do things, and don’t always have answers to questions — a lot of the time, they just act out of habit or instinct. A character who is too strongly guided by purpose or whose reactions have been fully reasoned out often won’t feel as real.

Tension within the character is what produces interesting play — for you, and for those around you. Thinking about internal identities can be a way to quickly and easily generate internal tension. It can enable you to respond realistically to unexpected situations and to ensure that your characters are memorably different from one another, different from other similar characters, and different from yourself.