At the start of the year I decided to branch out and look
for a new LARP. I’d been away from the scene for a year and a half or so – but I’d
also lost a lot of people I thought were friends.
I’m socially awkward, afraid of new situations and people,
nervous about, well, just about any social interaction – I find ordering in a restaurant,
shop or simply buying tickets at a booth really hard work.
Which is weird, because I role-play confident, usually rich
or sycophantic, often religious or scientific – and commonly either outspoken
or extremely paranoid. I guess that playing a character allows me to open up
and say and do things I normally can’t – it’s like if it happens to my
character, it’s not happening to me.
Many LARPers experience this kind of dissonance. As their
character they’re able explore personalities, traits and social situations they
wouldn’t otherwise. I think it’s one of the most wonderful and profound things
about LARP – it often creates a greater kind of empathy with situations in
real-life that we wouldn’t otherwise understand, and even in heavy-combat
games, makes us more aware of our own reality.
I can exactly see why LARPers seem a weird bunch – or slightly
insane – in this regard. We often disassociate ourselves from our characters. Though
a character’s personality is often based on our own to degree – overly emphasising
personality characteristics or projecting the opposite – it’s common to refer
to the character in the third person. This is because what we do ‘as our
character’ should not be a reflection on ourselves. We’re not our character, no
matter how much we may seem like them.
I think I was quite brave at the start of the year – to approach
a new game, and, after being welcomed very warmly – attend a game with no one I
knew, completely alien, middle of the unknown in Kent with no way back… I was
scared. Wouldn’t you be? I was nervous as hell.
Every LARP has a social
aspect, to a degree. I agree, it’s probably not suited for every LARP to have a
mechanic for it, but I do feel every LARP should develop the social aspect –
and not just because IC brings OOC together (cool story, bro!) but because of
exactly those kinds of interactions that develop that we don’t get in real
life.
I have played a few LARPs and experienced a mixture of
situational role-playing techniques. The greatest disappointment to me was the
lack of social depth in a great many of them – from larger scale fest-sized to
even small games like Alrune and Dragon Lore. Without the social comment
element the game is losing out and is by its very definition, stunted. It’s a
halted growth, an ever-larp-tionary dead-end. It might sound unfair – but there
it is. I feel really sorry for players in these systems that never get to experience
these systems.
I’m glad to say that this is the thing Camarilla Invictus
gets right. It’s exactly the social aspect of the game – the open interaction
and deliberation too (and, by LARPers being mature! Shock!) – that has brought
the players together in very meaningful ways. They’ve got a strong bond between
them – and they’re very empathic and inclusive too.
CI gets right what other LARPs I’ve played simply don’t. I’m
not going to say it’s no through hard work because I know running a game is a
lot harder than it appears (I’ve heard this appearance as being like a duck –
calm on the surface, all kinds of motion to stay afloat underneath). But I do
believe the approach CI uses – one that I was trying to get going in my LARP I
was running years ago – is easily translatable to other games.
I honestly think in other games, either don’t know how to do
it; are stuck in a rut; don’t want to explore those avenues because it’s ‘not
what the ref team want’; due to lack of compassion for certain types of players
(I know there’s a lack of compassion for non-combatants in a lot of the games I
played); or simply they don’t care.
Cl does what every game should do. After monstering the
mid-year combat-based Linear game for CI, I can happily vouch that CI does it
right – the Linear had combat, puzzles, mental interactions, role-playing all
in good measure. Why is this important? Because it means it includes everyone –
every person has a part to play and the game isn’t dominated by some over
others – whereas in the games I’ve played in the past, referees seem to focus
on combat, thinking that “hitting stuff is plot” and usually disparaging other
interactions. Even my own ref team did this – they could see the ‘puzzle’
aspect for advancing games, but definitely weren’t interested in most other
forms of interaction. Non-combatants in these games are left at the borders of
the game – it’s happened to me, and certainly happened to the players in my
game when I stepped down from actively overseeing the game.
Combat is not plot. Monsters
aren’t plot. War is not plot. Just to make the point drive home: politics is
not plot. Social scale is not plot. Role-playing is not plot.
What’s plot?
The interactions between
players formed of all of these things. A little of this and that, and the other
– and oh! That too! That’s plot.
I’ll take you through the last game, and you can see what I
mean.
The game started off in a comparatively relaxing way –
swapping rumours (omg! Gossip! Brilliant mechanic!... ahem…). I’d just got
round to talking business with a friend when – BANG!- a chair gets knocked over
and a long-term Court member has brought claws and fangs to bear on another long-term
Court member. There’s proverbial blood all over the place, people are shouting
and screaming and I’m running like a bitch to the other end of the hall.
The attacker is hauled in front of the Court’s Council and
we wait their verdict. We’re then called to stand witness to his trial. Perhaps
he’d done some wrong things in the past, and pissed off the wrong people. But,
he’d been a friend to a lot of people too.
The character was executed with everyone watching.
First, I got shivers. I remembered – “this can happen to me
too”. I could feel my character shutting everything off, trying to feel no
emotion. Inside I’m getting upset, and I’m realising my character is trying to
stop himself being scared. Then I shivered again – the atmosphere hit a feel low,
and I realise everyone else is feeling much the same thing. My character’s then
getting angry – and this is where I’m going to sound mad – and I can feel the
heat from it.
We took a breather – I think most of us needed it.
What happened there is called ‘bleed’ – it’s where IC
emotion spills over into Real Life. It affects the player and it can cut as
sharp as a knife, burn like a fire, or wound like a punch. It’s the most
powerful thing any LARP can do, because it reaches inside and pushes all those
little buttons you think you’ve locked away.
Partly it’s like watching an emotional film and you feel
yourself crying or drawn into it. But, you have to realise you’re in the film,
so another part of you is like a participant in it too.
I was a participant in that trail and execution – and it was
horrifying.
Most players reacted in a similar way to those suffering grief
– some cried, others went quiet; some began to get reasonable and to explain
the reasons behind it happening.
Because, in a way, they did. They’d got to know the
character, judge his mannerisms and moods. He was, in a very real sense, a
friend – and they’d just lost him. I was reacting in a similar way.
It sounds like a bad thing – what with the crying and pain.
But it’s not.
The wonderful thing about LARP is that even when this bleed
happens, it’s blunted – we know it doesn’t affect us in an absolute direct way,
even though it feels like it does.
This kind of thing – is exactly the winning element with any
LARP – that, as a tool, LARP can be used to encourage bonds of friendship, love and trust to grow
between players; it can foster new experiences and build personality, character
and personal philosophy; it allows formative development of a person’s
psychology; it brings the shy like me out of their shells; it shares a common
emotion between people that then share an experience together; it builds and
encourages development as a person.
In the same way sports bring people together for similar
reasons, LARP is a journey within – but it reaches places no sport reaches, for
you’re an active part of the tale.
So, that was the game I took part in at the weekend. And
leading from that, I’m still shocked that the ‘social’ parts of games are
ignored or looked down upon – particularly, as I said, but the ‘combat only’
lot – I’m still shocked that CI is referred to as ‘only a social’ game, often
with the attachment ‘so therefore it must be boring’.
Boring?
Fuck no.