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]

Indeed, my definition of fun might not match someone else's and that's an inescapable fact of the world.

Ditto the purpose of various LARPs - although I think one can be forgiven for using the term in the most common sense of the word. Most gamers, in my experience, aren't thinking of educational events or military exercises when I say "LARP".

That said, I still would regard the extreme LARPs mentioned in The Positive Negative Experience of Extreme Roleplaying* with utmost wariness.

*Yes, I read through the whole thing, so I had more than just the title to go on regarding "Gang Rape". It still struck me as shudderingly unpleasant and potentially unsafe.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

PS-The Nordics are now heavily discussing safety issues in larps. Emotional safety issues. There's an article in one ish of Playground on de-fucking (after the larp), and here's one of the panels at the Solmukohta conference (http://www.solmukohta.org/). I was at the con, but not at this panel.

The Great Player Safety Controversy Panel
Fri 15.00 – Fri 16.30, Auditorium, Panel
Organizers: Johanna Koljonen, Bjarke Pedersen, Jaakko Stenros
Playing close to home, grownup gaming, thin characters, interaction alibis, defucking for bleed… In the last few years the Nordic design community has made giant leaps in game intensity, particularly by systematically steering players towards using personal and painful experiences as in-game intensifiers. New words, phrases and concepts relating to player safety have popped up too, signaling the need for a serious conversation on risks and responsibilities. While the games are very cool, they also throw all of our old ideas of player safety out the window (and reveal that many we used to trust never actually worked at all).
How do these games affect us? To what extent can larpmakers be absolved of responsibility if a player gets broken? Can a player – especially a new player – ever have a realistic idea of what the larp experience will entail? Is it even ethical to invite people with no larp experience to play extreme games?
This panel brings together some of the people giving separate talks on safety and ethics at Solmukohta for a spirited overview of what, if anything, we as a community know about taking care of each other before, during and after larps designed for extreme experiences. A premise of the conversation is that grown-ups should generally speaking be allowed to make dangerous or destructive choices for themselves within the limits of the law. Nobody is looking to outlaw extreme experiences – but we should be able to have a sane conversation about designing parameters around them.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the issue is under discussion.

I must admit that if I want an experience using personal and painful experiences as in-game intensifiers, then I'd just get more serious about being an actor, cos that's almost directly out of the Stanislavsky/Meissner playbook. ;)

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

I must admit that if I want an experience using personal and painful experiences as in-game intensifiers, then I'd just get more serious about being an actor, cos that's almost directly out of the Stanislavsky/Meissner playbook. ;)

But is that what you would tell others? What about larp as therapy?
I know for most people, extreme larp isn't for them. That's fine. Also, most people think larp is fantasy-boffer campaigns, and that's what they want. That's fine. But I want something else, and I can't get it here in SoCal unless I run it myself. That bothers me, so I rant. If I want to use a personal and painful experience as an in-game modifier, I don't want someone telling me to "be an actor."

In my mind, the difference between larp and theater is the audience. The purpose of an actor is to evoke an emotional response in the audience. It doesn't matter if the actor feels that emotion or not (method), it matters if they can get the audience to feel it. If the actor needs to feel that emotion to be able to project it to the audience, so be it, but it's not required. And if I remember my acting classes correctly, the original Stanislavsky method was NOT what became method acting and "channeling your inner pain" into your character.

In larp, I think, it's about the internal, the personal. It's about what YOU, the player are feeling and experiencing, not what you are evoking in others. And that gets back to the "fun" question: I had great fun playing a fire mage fresh out of magic school in a boffer larp. I got drunk celebrating and ended up fireballing all the PCs in the game. They almost killed me. I then spent the next hour bawling (fer reals) in the tavern that I made this huge mistake, that I'm no good, that I hurt innocents, etc. That was fun for me, but PvP isn't fun for others, and they don't like being attacked by another player.

But that shows what larp is all about: it's selfish. It's what *I* wanted to do and explore as a character, not making sure the other players had a good time. It's not the emotions I evoked in the other players, it's the emotions I invoked in myself. That, to me, is how I separate larp and traditional theater.

Another discussion I have had with K is NPC vs PC. Are NPCs just foils for the PCs? Is the purpose of an NPC to evoke in the PCs? (this is the kind of stuff I talk about almost nightly with my wife)

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

But is that what you would tell others? What about larp as therapy?

I wouldn't call that a LARP.

And then, inevitably, we are sucked into arguing about what is and isn't a LARP. I know that you've got your own definition by which, something like a therapeutic exercise does indeed qualify. But that doesn't necessarily match *my* definition. But let's not go there in this format, we'll end up chasing our tails at best and bickering at worst. ;)

(Stanislavsky was about using imagination to create a plausible performance, yes - but Meissner et al wouldn't exist without him and find me an actor that doesn't rely on the techniques of the 20th century pioneers in acting... but I digress. My acting, she is rusty.)

And it seems that I have a more collaborative (maybe not the best word. Interactive? Dependent?) notion of what LARP is, for me - as, in my case, it's about what I do and experience *and* what I invoke in other PCs.

As for NPCs. When I run a game, they are there to help advance the plot, usually by providing information that would be otherwise impossible for the PCs to obtain. In general, though, I try not to use them, because too many players use the 'meta' approach of "Aha! An NPC! They must be important! Therefore, I shall hang around them and hope the plot rubs off on me, regardless of my effort and regardless of whether or not it makes any sense for me to be in that NPC's vicinity in the first place." But that's a rant I'll save for my own journal.

I loved talking this stuff up with my (late) husband, but he tended to roll his eyes a lot. :)

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

general comments:
Your first entry, "Why I larp" is great, because you are following a parallel track to me. We're going in the same direction, and I'm waving at you.

I wish we could have met at last Wyrd Con (or at all). Are you coming down for TriWyrd (June 21-24)?

Finally, I asked a question a while back on my LJ, or FB, I forget...about what someone's dream larp would be. Your comment as to no numerical stats is the same for me. I even ran a tabletop Cal of Cthulhu RPG campaign set in the Dreamlands, and I took the numbers away from the players. They still rolled dice, but all their stats and attributes were in text form. I have that long recap over at my LJ if you care to read. The first part explains that. (http://aaronjv.livejournal.com/533971.html)

I'm basically trying to encourage you to keep going in your exploration of larp. There are others on this path, and we are going somewhere good. :-D

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Alas, no TriWyrd for me unless someone feels like paying my way from San Francisco. (No job, no dole, etc, etc)

*nod* I sensed that we're in the same neighborhood, but we're following different paths. No biggie. There's room enough for all of us.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

Alas, no TriWyrd for me unless someone feels like paying my way from San Francisco. (No job, no dole, etc, etc)

Kickstarter you way down here via running a game there?

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Not possible at this late a date. The airfares would be ridiculously expensive AND there's some lingering social dramuh at my end of the 'net that would have such efforts going over rather poorly.

As it is, I'll be deploying the online begging bowl next week for things like rent and the phone bill, and even *that's* not assured of much success, because of the aforementioned drahmuh. Oh well.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but good luck! I was going to recommend two Bay Area gamers (J Li and John Kim), who are coming down to hitch a ride. Do you know them, by the by?

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

The names don't ring a bell but there are a LOT of gamers around here - and I've been out of the scene for over three years. I'm only just creeping back into it...