Maxicon XII

[essentialsaltes]

Once again I announce: "All hail popepat!" And Mrs. Pope and Minipope. They once again opened up their house for (can it be?) the 12th Maxicon (which is still ongoing, but I moderated my participation to Saturday only... stretching into Sunday).

First up for me was Garrett's Dead Space RPG. I had played the demo, which made me the most knowledgeable about the source material I think. Which is not a problem, since the whole point is to scare the pants off you with the unexpected. It went well: fast-paced, high tension, limited resources, stressful timing deadlines. If there was any problem, it was that the gods of luck smiled on us too much in the final showdown. Good scary fun.

Next up, aaronjv ran The Tribunal, an award-winning LARP created by jiituomas. The 12 players play soldiers in a totalitarian state, faced with a difficult decision: whether to value honesty over expediency. I'm torn about how much I should or shouldn't reveal. One part of me says it doesn't matter since whatever happens is almost entirely the product of the players; the other part says that hearing the rationalizations or bullshit produced by one set of players might affect future players who read about it, and thus color whatever they would ultimately produce. I'll err on the side of caution and step back a bit.
I enjoyed the experience. This is perhaps controversial. Some people (named Aaron) have denigrated the idea that LARP is merely (?) an enjoyable pastime. It is Art with a capital A. I don't have a problem with that, except that in its extreme form Art becomes Pollock and Rothko. You're a rube if you expect to enjoy it, it's Art fer crissakes. Art!
I had my doubts about whether I would enjoy being an ant in a totalitarian army. But I came in to the game with not only an open mind, but a willingness and readiness to do it right. And the other participants probably saw me red-faced and shouting more in those couple hours than in the rest of their experience of me. Anyway, my awesome role-playing (relatively speaking) is beside the point; the point is that I enjoyed the experience. But am I supposed to enjoy my Brussels Sprouts?
My answer is that I don't care. LARP for me is an enjoyable pastime, and as long as I enjoy it I will continue to participate. It may also be Art; it may also be therapy; it may also be escapism; I don't care: Philistine that I am, I'm only interested in doing it if I enjoy it.
Anyway, stepping back in. I liked the way that character names instantly invoked associations that helped to establish character, and aided others in remembering same. I liked the way that the game was essentially entirely created by the players rather than directed from outside. The game relies on the players being willing to play, and I'm glad we had a group up to the challenge.

Following that was an impromptu meeting of the Live Game Labs & other interested parties, wherein we plotted the future of American LARP while simultaneously solving the problem of monetizing LARP and trading juicy gossip.

Comments

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

LARP as entertainment vs. LARP as performance art (and the permutations in between) has been on my mind quite a bit lately, but I'm short on folks who can listen to me burble on about the topic without their eyes glazing over...

Short version: Different games suit different situations. Some days, I just want to dress up and be a bit silly, other days, I want something else... ;)

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

it sounds as though some of these LARPs are what a different crowd would simply call acting exercises or dramatic long-form improvisation, rather than some totally new and never-before-seen art form.

Some would call them that, but they are still larps. The designers call them that, the critics call them that, the participants do. My big argument against the stereotype of larps is that the content of a larp does not define the form of the larp. Just because it's about gang rape doesn't make it a larp.

But I wonder if it's at all useful to continue using a word so broad that it encompasses both boffer-fests and "Fat Man Down".
I talk about briefly in my essay: "Cooler Than You Think: Understanding Live Action Role Playing" (http://www.scribd.com/doc/33955116/Understanding-Live-Action-Role-Playing-LARP-Cooler-Than-You-Think). Other people smarter than me do as well. Personally, I don't like the word "larp", but I have resigned myself to it. Here's why:
it's too entrenched
content does not dictate form, and larp has a form that's different than acting exercises and long form improv
coming up with a different term will be waaaaay too difficult to get others to rally behind

I recommend watching Claus Raasted's recent Nordic Larp Talk on Larpification (http://youtu.be/T25RTNZjG90) (it's short).

I think it is useful to continue using a word that encompasses both boffer-fests and "Fat Man Down" because words like "literature" encompasses both Fifty Shades of Gray and The Great Gatsby. Or words like "music" encompasses Beethoven's 9th, Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" and "My Humps". Or words like "game" encompasses beer pong, tic-tac-toe, and cricket.

As to The Final Girl, which I also played a week or so ago. There's a huge indie game movement going on right now with tabletop and video games. I am trying to introduce them to larp, and vice versa. There are MANY definition of game being batted about right now. It's a hot topic (yay!). One of the most common is Salen and Zimmerman's, from The Rules of Play: "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."

By that definition, why is The Final Girl NOT a game?

Also, what about Train (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/06/24/can-you-make-a-board-game-about-the-holocaust-meet-train/), is that a game?

Are Viola Spolin's games theater, games, or larp?

A broad, nebulous definition is, IMHO, much better than a strict, rigid one. I drove myself nuts with a strict definition of larp when writing my essay, going back and forth with things like paintball or DungeonMaster the play. Once I freed myself of the chains of exactitude, I was able to continue and appreciate things that are larp as well as larp-like. FYI, I have three criteria for determining if something is a larp or not:
1. No audience, all are participants, and all participants have some degree of say in the narrative.
2. Actions are performed, not narrated.
3. All participants must agree on the bubble (or magic circle) within which everything is not necessarily what it really is, including you. This bubble must be continuously maintained via the actions and interactions of the participants.

Lastly, also in my essay, I don't think all larps are games, nor should they be.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

Some people (named Aaron) have denigrated the idea that LARP is merely (?) an enjoyable pastime. It is Art with a capital A. I don't have a problem with that, except that in its extreme form Art becomes Pollock and Rothko. You're a rube if you expect to enjoy it, it's Art fer crissakes. Art!

I think larp as art. I also think that art can be an enjoyable pastime. What I rant against is the idea is that larp is ONLY a hobby, ONLY an enjoyable entertaining pastime. It's that and more. The gravity of a work is, to me, not the measure of it being art or not. Furthermore, there's good art and bad art, good larps and bad larps, but they're still art, they're still larps.

And it doesn't matter what you think of it, you don't have to agree with me, nor should you. If you only play larps because you want an enjoyable pastime, huzzah! There's nothing wrong with that. But if you say that I can't play or run a larp that's more than an enjoyable pastime, or that larp can't be used for something besides entertainment, or that if it is any of those things it's no longer a larp, then I am going to disagree.

Finally, I was very impressed with the quality of the group's role playing, yours included. Yes, I saw you screaming red faced more than I think I ever have. And I saw Christian be MEAN! I was impressed all over.

a link

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

I again encourage y'all to look at this lecture with Tobias Wrigstad, the author of Gang Rape and the first Fat Man Down (first one to play the Fat Man). (http://vimeo.com/10030923)

He is explaining things much better than I can.