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

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

I may have spoken (or written) a little too quickly, or left out some steps.

If you only play larps because you want an enjoyable pastime, huzzah!

I think this does correctly express my motivation for larping.
I don't deny that it's an artform.
My motivation to achieve fun (a concept that is, as britgeekgrrl mentioned, complicated. Ordinarily, I don't *want* to be scared out of my wits) colors my perception of what is good larp and bad larp.
I don't assume that my aesthetic sense is the only one in the world, but it is the only one I've got.
So when I say that Rothko is bad art (to me), I know there will be people so willing to disagree with my judgment that they will pay millions of dollars for one of his paintings.
And the same would go for FMD or GR... despite not even having had the experience, I am pretty sure I would not enjoy them, and so they would be bad larps (to me). I can see there can be utilitarian justifications for larp as well, such as edu-LARP. I might not enjoy a larp that teaches longhand division, but I can still see its utility and it might be good for its intended audience, so I would hesitate to call it bad, just because I wouldn't like it.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Damn it, why is everyone so much more eloquent than I am.

(Fwiw, this. With bells on)

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

Agreed to all. It's just a semantic thing to me. I don't say a larp is "bad" unless it was poorly designed. I will, however, go off on a larp I didn't like, or how I didn't enjoy it.

But yes, we're in agreement except on our terminology, but we understand the differences.

And I feel I have to say again that I don't think I could play GR or FMD. And I doubt I would a good experience doing so.

I think I should post my reflections on my Nordic larp trip soon, as I played what I think you or others would call a "bad" larp that I don't regret at all. It wasn't a bad experience, even though it was about suicide.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

I finally figured out the argument I think we're having here:

You, BritGeeGirl, and, I think, Ian, are saying what larp ought to be, e.g., "it ought to be fun for me given my subjective definition of what fun is."

And I am hung up on stating what larp IS, i.e., "Larp is an ancient global art form separate from tabletop RPGs and theater."

It's the "is vs. ought" debate. I think. Do you?

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

That's certainly part of it. I'm not interested in coming up with a rigid, or even fuzzy, definition of LARP. For someone who is otherwise analytical and academia-adjacaent, I'm really uninterested in LARP as an academic subject, though I'm very interested in creating, experiencing and, most of all, enjoying LARP.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

Right, understood.

I've found, at least for my personal experience, that dipping my toes into larp academia has greatly helped me create, experience, and enjoy larps. I admit that most of the stuff is a slog, and I far prefer to read blueprints and recollections of other larps (the documentation) than the navel-gazing PhD theses. But sometimes there's something in particular that inspires me. Other times it's just the general collection, as I think was the case with STEEDS, which I know was influenced by larp theory.

I consider myself a larp producer and player, not larp theorist. However, I believe that Miles Davis's Kind of Blue wouldn't exist if there wasn't musical theory of modality as a muse.

Birds don't need to understand a whit about aeronautics to fly. But for those of us who aren't creative prodigies, a scientific explanation may provoke a eureka moment.