We Need To Talk

I haven’t posted anything in a while. I have things written – quite a few things. I’ve got things I need to get off my chest, things I simply want to write about and things that are just ideas I feel I should throw into the great aether of the internet – they might help someone, or get lost forever, but that’s for others to decide, not me.

Partly, I’ve had a lot a real-life stuff to deal with that hasn’t been great, partly there’s been some relief of not reliving the same memories over and over – why do I torture myself? – and partly it’s been the things that I want to write and talk about that’s been the issue.

Because, in the LARP community, there’s just things you don’t talk about. Not because they’re racist, or homophobic or whatever, not like that. Something, I think, is much darker than that.

LARPers don’t want you to make them look bad.

Why do I say that and not ‘LARPers don’t want you to make LARP look bad’? For the simplest reason of all – LARP is a hobby that one spends a lot of time, money and socialising invested in – as a person only has so much time spare, socialising itself is a capital along with time, meaning that outside of work and some personal issues at home, for many LARPers, their life revolves around LARP.

For LARPers then, any part of the community and its lifestyle is very, very personal. Any slight taken against a game that a LARPer plays at, minor criticism of a game, of a person in the community, of an aspect of the culture gets take too literal, too deep and as ‘offensive’ without really seeing the bigger picture or the intent behind it (see some previous posts about people takign everything to heart!)

I’ve been a bit lucky really the past couple of years – I joined a game system that I wrote an article about, and the game organisers didn’t shun me for it, but the opposite, they embraced it and made minor changes to the game that’s made it visibly better (I will write another article about it) and ask for my opinion at times. In my experience, this isn’t what normally happens at LARP.

I’ll give you an example: look at this article written by LARP Guide member Leah Tardivel (yes, we’re back to looking at this, but they’re one of the few article machines out there that talk openly).

A LARP Guide team member that’s never played the Lorien Trust game system attended and wrote a review on her experience.

The first and third comments on the article are direct attacks. Not justifications, not counter-points (as I countered about ‘That Event is Too Expensive’ – even though my counter was very critical and inflammatory, it didn’t attack), not even ‘yeah, I see what you mean… but...’ or ‘come back and have another go’.

No. Leah was struck with ‘your fault, you didn’t get involved’ and ‘you didn’t use maps’ and ‘well, that’s just your experience’.

First – I’m glad Leah got to experience LT that way, and the snobbish replies afterwards. Leah saying about the difficulties she had, what she perceived of the game and the replies she got were exactly what new players get to large system - particularly those new to LARP.

Leah might be surprised to learn that she criticised the exact areas of the game that I had problems with when I started CP - and she's a CP lover.

Being ‘new’ no-one wants to talk to you much – you get pushed to the edge where you see the crappier costumes. You must find your way around, and there certainly wasn’t a lot of maps handy at CP when I started around 15 years back. Sure, the guide had a map at the back – but if you were new you didn’t have a guide, and not knowing a lot of people, you don’t always want to ask, especially when someone points out that it’s something OOC ‘ruining IC immersion’.

New players struggle to get plot – or indeed, anything or anywhere – new players struggle to find out what’s going on. Of course, this isn’t true for all new players, but the majority, certainly. Many long-term LARPers won’t notice this, however, as, even if they’ve never played CP before, they’ll have friends they can go see and talk to. They’ll set an IC excuse as to why people that have never met before are best friends, so they can hang around their OOC friends without worry.

And those veterans LARPers that do notice these problems know that – at least for them – it won’t last long as they’ll find their own way into the game, know the general steps to take etc. Even though learning this takes years. Unless you have a friend willing to guide you, LARP generally leaves you out in the cold.

And that’s exactly my point. The two commenters didn’t want ‘their’ game looking bad – Leah didn’t realise that the exact things she criticised are also in her game. 

LARP doesn’t want to talk about its problems.

A friend posted on Facebook something about people saying ‘you shouldn’t hold grudges’ and being bullied, and then, of course not wanting to be friends with that person again, because well, you were bullied by them (duh?)

I lost a friendship around this time last year – because I had dared criticise a friend of a friend. I was explaining to my friend that this guys had recently joined the small parlour LARP I attend, seemingly because he knows I attend it. This guy used to send quite abusive emails and messages on Facebook to me.

At the time, when I pointed it out to people I was told to keep it under wraps – we didn’t want to upset others do we?

This time, it was almost like I was the one abusing my friend – how dare I say such nasty thing about his friend? If you read ‘5 Geek Social Fallacies’, you’ll see why – my friends have to also be friends. No one can not get along.

Another friend I know has recently posted up about the sexual abuse she suffered from someone she met at LARP that has scarred her for life – and how another LARP friend has been bullying her into going to a game where this guy is known to attend.

My friend has spent 6 or 7 posts trying to justify why she doesn’t want to go, and that she shouldn’t put herself in an abusive situation again.

6 posts. At least.

What a loading of utter fucking bollocks!

If she doesn’t want to go, she shouldn’t have to defend herself, or justify herself. It’s her choice! Leave it at that!

LARP doesn’t want to talk about its problems.

“Wait, yes it does! I’ve seen loads of articles about dealing with abuse at LARP!”

Yes, you probably have. I have. Like this one: 19 Truths about Harassment, Missing Stairs, and Safety in Larp Communities.

The article mentions all the things that can happen at LARP – without directly asserting that they do, in fact, happen, except in a round-about ‘it happens in the macrocosm, therefore it happens in the microcosm’ spurious kind of way. It mentions all the bad things that can happen, and the pledges we must pro-actively strive to include to make sure these things don’t happen.

I have a couple of major issues with this article that I’d like to deal with in another article, but mainly, whilst I praise the article for its candour and for being empowering and honest, it doesn’t resolve anything. It doesn’t mean anything. You can pledge all kinds of things you want, but when the worst happens, you’re going to need to know how to make it better.

LARP doesn’t. It sweeps it under the proverbial carpet. ALL LARPs should make the pledges mentioned in this article – and once again, I despair that such things must written out for people – and yet, the community still struggles with the basic principle of policing itself in a humane manner.

LARP doesn’t want to talk about its problems – the community will says that maybe there is some, so it looks like its talking about its problems – but it isn’t.

Recently, another friend of mine was telling me about how his friend at CP is suffering from harassment from another player couple, and how she’s possibly having to move factions because of it. Apparently, not all of it has been by messenger either – some of it has been by constant texts and telephone calls, by threats and even to her face.

What would you do? In a normal, everyday situation? At work? What would you do?

You’d complain to a higher manager, wouldn’t you? You’d go to an employment law adviser, wouldn’t you? You’d save it all up and go to the police, wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t you?

There’s no such recourse in LARP. It’s worse if the person in question has influential friends in nthe LARP community. It’s worse if the person in question is friends with the ref team. It’s worse when they are the referee team.

I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to speak about the messages and grief I used to get from players. I can only imagine the situation this young lady is trapped in, no one to speak to, no way to sort it out other than change her life.

When I said to my friend that maybe what she should do is publish the texts and messages she receives, my friend said “well, no she can’t do that…”

“Why not?”

“She’d get lots of people upset”

Hang on. She’s being abused emotionally and she isn’t allowed to say anything? She isn’t ‘allowed’ to stand up for herself? In the article, it mentions Missing Stairs – players simply avoiding the issue, moving to another location or another game, whatever. Skirting around it.

That’s exactly what this woman is expected to do – but it’s not coming from her. It’s coming from the community. Others are expecting her to not speak out.

LARP doesn’t want to talk about its problems – it knows it has them, but doesn’t want to admit it.

A friend posted another article to me: Remember, The Party is Under No Obligation to Adventure With You. This is accurate and right – though again, I’d like to express more in another article.

The issue here is though – is it’s not being dealt with. It’s pushing it to one side.

In the LARP community, this is often the way certain people are ‘dealt’ with. Look on most forums, for example, players will often say cheaters are ‘ignored’ or ‘avoided’. I know one cheat that was ignored so much he became a referee.

LARP doesn’t want to talk about its problems.

But it needs to. And it needs to sort them out.

Alchemy over Essence?

I remember that when I ran Thracia a few players that bought the Alchemy skill complained that it ‘never worked’, was ‘broken’ or was ‘too complicated’.

There were a number of reasons for these complaints – but, the most common was players ignorance and bitching.

Now, I’m not going to blame the players here. A few failings on behalf of the Game Team:

1. Complaints were never dealt with. I wasn't 'allowed' to approach players because then I was “being a bully, telling them what to do” and the other referees dismissed players concerns as “they’re just being stupid”
2. The process should have been presented and described to players. I was told this would lead them to “cheating based on OOC knowledge". I was also told this was a bad idea because “LARP and magic shouldn’t be number crunching” – despite the fact this is exactly what I had been planning with Alchemy; magical maths!
3. I should have described the process in the rulebook – see the above negative comments
4. There needed to be a blog-like post issued which handled the concerns and addressed issues – so there was an official response to worries and people had a frame of reference. I was told it “would only upset everyone. People would moan about it”
5. Players needed official feedback so they could see what they needed to do better – I was told any feedback was “fuel for the bitching fire”
6. Clearer indications of how powerful something was, was needed. I was told that “players prefer being in the dark because then there’s more exploration” – the nature of “game” and “risk” being entirely ignored by the referees

However, players began to neither listened to, nor attempted to understand the rules for Alchemy – which is understandable, as the Game Team had effectively let them down just one too many times.

I remember one player left to play Aftermath because he thought the Game Team was out to get him and was trying to cheat him – when I approached him about it he cited the last 7 times his Alchemy ‘failed’.

The thing was, his Alchemy hadn’t failed on any of those times. They’d done exactly what he requested, exactly what he wanted, each time. What was wrong was he was expecting the Game Team to “you know what I meant” and “be able to get the gist of the way I wanted it”. He was also expecting Alchemy to be like other spell-casting (a ‘point and click’ approach) which it wasn’t. Alchemy was not battle magic; it was a tool and should have been used as such and not twisted to meet his own subjective interpretations we desperately had to guess at.

Alchemy was a process of points. To link two objects via Alchemy was 1 point. From there, the second object could be manipulated through second – it was a ‘sympathetic’ link.

For example, if I had 2 twigs, I could sympathetically link them for 1 point. A further 1 point could be expended for the second twig to empathetically respond to the first when I set the first on fire. The second twig would then also burst aflame.

I could do this from 1 twig to 2 others for a further 1 point – 1 more sympathetic link.

Where it got a little weirder was if the second object wasn’t like the first – say, if the second was a stone. Well, I’d have to expend more points to heat the stone, simply because the twig wasn’t like the stone.

Right?

Well, the first object – the ‘focus’ was given a mark out of 5 by the referee – 1 being “not at all like the target” and 5 being “the same thing as the target”. This was added to the player’s points total.

Then it was divided by 3. This gave the spell a ‘Rank’.

All spells in the game were listed by Rank. The equivalent of Level 1 spells in CP (‘Confusion’, ‘Mend’, ‘Lesser Healing’) were Ranks 1-3. The equivalent of Level 2 spells in CP (‘Greater Healing’, ‘Magic Missile’) were Ranks 5-6.

Following the example above:

• 2 metal armours, linked – 1 point
• 1st armour is like the 2nd (same material, same shape and size) – 5 points
• Total: 6 points
• Divide 3:  Rank 2
• Effect: Equivalent to a Level 1 (Ranks 1-3) spell – i.e. break the first armour = reduce the second armour by 1 point

• 1 twig, 1 stone
• Stone in circle, not like the twig – 1 point
• Total: 2 points
• Divide 3: 0.3, No Rank
• Effect: set light to the twig, nothing happens

The only real thing the players needed to worry about was the wording – players had to tell us what they wanted the spell to do – and this is exactly the same for any other magic, anywhere. The problem was exactly what I just said – the player waved their hands vaguely and used to tell us that “well, I wanna… you know… with…. That…. And them over there…. And… yeah”

Finding him bitching to another game system about our rules not working and putting off potentially new players due to his lack of effort and understanding was… disappointing.

Age of Essence is a LARP that has spell-casting rules developed from the Alchemy rules from Thracia. Luke Still, the creator of Age of Essence was a Thracia player – one that for 3 years described my game as “the best system he has ever played”.

I remember talking to him about possibly changing Alchemy so it was a system of beads of ‘crystallised magic’ that could be drawn from a variety of sources.

We discussed a player possibly being able to draw only from certain materials to start, and as they progressed, the skill expanded to allow drawing magic from other sources. The idea became that crystallised magic – a things “essence” – were exchangeable and tradeable by Alchemists, who then used the beads to fuel Alchemy.

The beads would be a physical reminder of the power you’re using. I was also suggesting that herbal and crafting material cards have numbers on them which would also be their value for affecting the Alchemy. The rules would otherwise be the same.

I then also had the idea of having all the beads as white, and introducing red and blue beads to the mix – red was ‘corrupted’ essence and blue was ‘crystal faith’. If you drew a number of red or blue this became a secondary effect to the Alchemy – the number drawn being the Rank, rather than divisible by 3. This would be the inherently unstable nature of Alchemy – red meaning the caster possibly suffers the blow-back event.

Luke developed this idea onto the colours being from ‘elements’ and Alchemy becoming spell-casting.

I see Luke has since developed a system from this that allows for some interesting spells, and interesting magic – it works, and that’s good. I do think it’s a bit DnD, and lacks the investigative, explorative and dangerous (read: exciting) nature of what I had in mind, however. Its is also, unfortunately, ridiculously complicated to the point that I'm not sure how playable it actually is in practice - seen by the numerous changes that have occurred to it, and still are occurring.

I also think that his dividing it into ‘Lawful’ and ‘Chaos’ was developed from my idea of the red and blue beads somehow creating additional effects, which along with the way Thracia was set up (like LT) with ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ alliances, strengthened to  imply that sides were ‘good’ and ‘evil’, like any good’ol fashioned RPG. It's not my taste, and it's way too restrictive for the clever uses that could be gained from a more neutral perspective, but if that's the way it's working for him, cool.

Maybe one day I’ll get to play around with my original idea and see how well it worked or didn’t. I’m pretty confident it’d work quite well, and I reckon it’d be fun where the beads could else be used – Rituals? Forged into armour and weapons?

Anyway, I’m glad someone got some good use out of it and that it’s going well.

When LARP Goes Right: The Catharsis of Generous Play

I’ve been musing for a while on what to write, not merely because I have so much I want to talk about, get out of my system (the vile I have for bad attitudes burns – and as we all know, it can come out in horrific ways; I want to use this blog as a way of exorcising it), praise, bemoan and rejoice at.

To be honest, I sometimes feel that no one would want to hear my thoughts in any case, as my posts and thoughts tend to be of a critical nature – I feel I must point out that this I think is just my nature; I’m an analyser. Some people don’t start or do anything for fear of failure or success. I, on the other hand, tend to do and then look back and be critical. I’m as highly critical of myself as I am of others.

So people tend to see this as a bad thing as I’m “always moaning” or “never happy” or “think that other people are stupid” – all of which are as far from the truth as possible. If anything, the biggest reason behind my social anxiety is self-criticism. It’s as much my problem as it is yours.

The thing is, I see it as a positive thing. Without feedback, without criticism, we do not improve. We don’t grow and change. If it weren’t for a dramatic change in circumstance, we would never change. I have always been, and will always be, open to criticism and debate, open to changing my mind and seeing another perspective – as someone that places an emphasis on science in life, on evidence and logic, there can be nothing grander than emulating scientific thought, constantly re-evaluating and determining a new resolution if the evidence or logic shows me as wrong.

For this reason, yes, I do point out flaws where I see them and they affect me, friends, family – even people I don’t know when I see racism, homophobia, misogyny. Without this, how will things get better?

But this month, we’re going to move away from the gloom – into the realms of what goes right.

My local LARP is Player versus Player. I get the impression most players wouldn’t want PvP (especially in the UK?) as LARP has a seriously bad reputation for back-stabbing, bitching, griefing and down-right abusiveness. There’s a reason for that – because it does happen, A LOT, and LARP as a whole tends to neglect its responsibility to eliminate these things. I mean, com’on – even Empire has decidedly moved away from at least physical PvP

Worse, I would say LARP as a community specifically enables such behaviour and to a degree encourages it. I will happily present my thoughts to people that would argue otherwise or wish to hear my reasoning. I will also happily suggest ways this situation may be changed – I might not be totally right on all my ideas, but I know none of them are wrong.

I found this post a while ago by Mirror’s Song: In defence of PvP at larp

I’m thinking it’s a bit ridiculous that PvP needs to be defended, on three grounds:

• If you don’t like PvP, don’t play it
• PvP can be fun – the problem is therefore decidedly NOT PvP that is the problem, but the way people approach it
• Remember, play to have fun – no matter whether you PvP, PvE or anything else, if you focus on the fun, why would it turn nasty? If you’re not playing to have fun and bring fun to others, you don’t deserve to be playing in the first place

I can totally understand why some people get upset with In Character conflict at a LARP, and I can also get that some people feel upset when their character dies and the one person they thought would help them, won’t – or worse (shock! Horror!) is the person behind it!

The problem is that the person being upset knew they were walking into a PvP situation, and didn’t get any fun out of it. Why? Did they want to win and got upset about being wrong? Maybe they suffered a set-back they thought was unfair?

These issues need to be talked to with the referees, who need to give a clear, concise response – preferably in writing so that when questioned they can show others: “see? This is what happened”. It’s especially true for referees and game organisers – because then, if they’re wrong, you can point out to them where they went wrong and why, and they can then respond to it properly and maturely.

As you see, this also links back to my earlier paragraphs about criticism and feedback.

The biggest problem with any game, I think, is when the goals and aims of players to organisers, organisers to players and players to players don’t match (not necessarily ‘disagree’) – are you creating stories, or gunning for achievements?

I think this needs to be stated by the game organisers as a guideline: creating stories means weakening someone rather than outright destroying them as this weaves interesting drama. Gunning for achievement would require you to destroy them, so they don’t overtake you again.

I think for my local LARP the first instance is better, even preferable because there’ always a way back, if you want it. You just have to be willing to fight hard enough – that and the drama is fun! People pointed out to me on my 3^rd game or so that when another player kills your character it can be quite fun because it creates a story that is emotional. Last time I talked PvP I mentioned the execution.

One player mentioned to me that’s is actually more fun when you get killed by a friend. This is brilliantly true – you walk over to them, shake their hand and say “well done, mate. Nice one. Glad it was you” and that it’s been a good game of chess between you because you wove a drama together.

Your IC should never affect your OOC – so why the hell does PvP need to be “defended?”

At the last game I saw proof of it: two characters got so angry at one another there was shouting, bloodshed and one stormed away in anger. That player later approached his rival and said “excellent, dude, loved it. Good role-play”.

The thing is, the player that was telling me it’s better to die from a friend? Yeah, he used to play at the LARP I used to run.

I remember that once, his character was possessed by a powerful spirit that made his say vile things to the other characters – verbal violence as his brief was “short of actually harming them”. I remember that a few players got really pissed at him for this – they were taking IC to OOC – even my referees were saying he was showing his “true colours” by his behaviour. I defended him, stating the IC =/= OOC principle; eventually I gave up arguing, and he was later asked not to return after numerous incidents where grew increasingly agitated at the game, me and my refs.

I totally understand his position in this, and I admit I failed him: I should have argued more on his behalf and put my voice to his, giving him a chance to speak out. To be honest, my game should have ended there – my referees were clearly corrupt enough to spoil the game for people they didn’t like. People, that, professionally speaking, they shouldn’t have opinions over.

I’ve heard before that people say that LARP can be cathartic and healing for the soul. In 12 years of gaming I cannot say that is true. But I can say I experienced it at my local game at the last day event.

Before, LARP for me was CP, once LT and a couple of others. Those LARPs are competitive, achievement-based games – PvP in these games can certainly be aggressive, harsh, and players can easily get upset with it because it can be quite cold and uncaring. My referees and other players came from such games, too – it’s easy to see why they didn’t feel comfortable with PvP in my game.

It’s also because of this that I’ve come to realise I’ve never been too comfortable at LARP; it’s always been competitive, and the back-stabbing and bitching just made it worse. Competition can be great, but it only takes a bitch to make it unfair and miserable.

I finally understood the healing at the last game. You know there’s others out to get you, you know there’s conflict and schemes – but you also know you have friends.

I realised my character has friends IC with character played by people that I don’t speak to often OOC. I realised that OOC I have friends that support by brattish ways IC (I’m sure Michael will forgive me at some point!) and I realised I have friends that I could argue with, be annoyed at, kill and betray IC and we’d still be friends afterwards OOC. This sense helped be relax a great deal: I realised I have friends – on either IC and OOC sides – specifically because we help each other to have fun through telling stories. Friends that see the drama (say it in your campest voice!) of IC, not the bitching of OOC, friends that want everyone – me, you, themselves – to have fun, and not purely out to “do one better” and “screw over the other guy” in the process.

This, then, is the catharsis.

One of the biggest problems in any RPG game played in a group is when there’s a conflict on the perception on the nature of the game, or where goals conflict. This is, sometimes, down to a certain player or group of players having different goals from others, creating conflict – mostly caused because that player is trying to “get one over” on others, to “screw the other guy over” – it’s easy to see how this bleeds from IC to OOC.

It’s partly because the group members don’t listen to one another, treat each other with respect. And don’t say “respect is earned, not given”. Bollocks. We all deserve a certain amount of respect, because we’re all people, with feelings and emotions all that jazz.

But it’s mainly because there’s a difference of opinion on sharing fun – when the goal is less or more than simply about being fun.

But isn’t that what we play games for? To have fun?

When that’s the case, catharsis begins.

Even in PvP.

The Importance of Being Vile

Though I have only recently been to a new LARP for the first time in two years, already the shit comes out of the woodwork.

LARP can have a tendency to bring out the worst in some people, and in general, can be abusive and even downright torturous. I want to explain why in another article, and also in another article why I say this - my particular experiences in specific.

A guy I know goes to a local LARP. He runs his own - this may be what's behind this particular crap, but I suspect that he's not the only one suffering this way and it's just a convenient 'excuse' for certain behaviour (though from my experiences, this is a 'good excuse' for all manner of shit) - but he has been playing at this particular LARP for over a decade.

He said he had a very bad time, and, after the day he went to, would rate the day as less than 0/10 (he'd read one of my previous reviews). That's.... worrisome.... to say the least.

What could give someone such a low opinion of a LARP?

Is it the low safety standards? The poor set up? The crap rules and rulings of the referees?

In actuality, when it comes to LARP, experience is much more like a game of DnD table top - it is the 'experience' itself that is rated. Look at the reason so many LARPS do well even though they have crap rules (Heroquest anyone...?) or a crap setting (Alrune?) or even lack of plot (Curious Pastimes?) - players go to meet friends, catch up, relax, have a holiday as well as play. Experience of a LARP is more-or-less the standard by which it's success and provision is rated by a great number of people.

It's very easy for the experience to become sour and bitter - even with great rules, good rulings, and good safety. I know because it happened to me. The reason experience turns sour is the same reason why I wanted to set up my own LARP in the first place - and the reason my LARP went downhill so quickly.

Corruption

I love that word. Makes it sound more dramatic than it is. Insidious, certainly. Vile, yes. It's a fantasy word that brings to mind sickness, plague and blood magic. In my experience it's most definitely a sickness.

But, as with religion and politics, corruption isn't as dramatic as it is in fantasy books, and it's something much darker and menacing.

Before we go further, I'd like you to do something for me. It'll only take 10 minutes at most.

Look up 'LARP review' on Google. Better yet, do it in a Private window, that way your results won't be filtered by the search engine based on your preferences.

Done?

What did you find? Let me tell you, and you can see what I mean.

No LARP system has a star rating on any site. They don't have feedback forms or review forms on their own sites. You can't find star ratings anywhere, in fact. There are indeed 'reviews', however. They all read like 'I'm going to be coming back to this game' and ratings are skewed high, the review having nothing bad to say and not even being critical or holding any evidence or reasoning.

Here's some reasons why:

•  LARP is an insular society - it's also very bratty, more so than almost any other hobby I know. Piss one person off and you piss of their friends (why? they have nothing to do with it!) and possibly the system (as if that's something to do with them as well?!?). I was worried about my last review simply because I had negative things in my opinion which has caused me to be ostracised from a group before.

There was a high amount of bitching even in my small game. One woman was banned because of it - telling everyone that I "wouldn't allow her to play what she wanted" as if that wasn't fair. First off, what she wanted to play was a highly restricted DPC, and secondly, it was awarded to the creator of said DPC ahead of her. Simple tough luck. But spreading malicious rumours was exactly the method she used to try to get me to give it to her - I even caught her doing it! When I confronted her, I asked her why. Her reply? "I didn't want you to be upset that I had an issue with the game". My game team later banned her, not necessarily because of the rumours, but because of the treatment of our good nature - the assumption she'd created.

I remember I once had an artist/photographer at my LARP. She also attended another LARP at the time. When I saw here work I was amazed; "Would you do some photos/drawings for my game?" I asked. Not entirely for my benefit - I believe LARP should be a creative release and a foundation for building confidence and skills in one's works. She told me that the other game didn't like her doing drawings or photos or their game and that's why she'd never raised it with me before. I could only reply thinking about her, trying to get her realise her potential: "It's such as shame - you're being wasted. You have real talent and it should be used"

That became the start of a major 'fuck you' tantrum. From a 26 year old woman. Jesus, the sniping I heard (from her) behind my back. You see, she'd got upset at the fact I'd 'offended' the game she played and loved. How? What? Huh? Ok, even if I did 'offend' the game why is that her problem?

• I've spoken to many people before about these kinds of experiences. Many times I've heard of people excluded from a group for raising issues, criticising the ref team or similar.

LARP in general, does its best to control these issues. Mostly, it ends up as whining and complaints - mostly also because many see differences in rules or system concepts as 'subjective' and therefore open to interpretation - when in fact, many things (head hits?) can be ruled objectively.

• More than that, few LARPers will actually confront issues within a system. There is a certain amount of fear, I feel, that were one to critique the game that referees would take it personally and ban you, or 'spam' you with attacks or lower your character's abilities. The amount of bitching and behind-the-scenes- badmouthing is breath-taking - an aspect some more long-term LARPers deride as 'yet more whining', but yet must contain a grain of truth otherwise the scale of the bitching wouldn't exist.

It's bullying. Whether from referees or from players, it doesn't matter. It's cruel, it's twisted, it's demeaning and it's just plain wrong. This kind of thing damages mentalities - and no, before you say something, not everyone can 'get over it' or 'man up'. Fuck you for thinking so.

Corruption doesn't stop there. I hear this particularly bad system this guy has a problem with has many layers, so ingrained that players have threatened to leave if the game changes. if this doesn't highlight the amount of bullying that goes on, I don't know what does. You shouldn't have to kowtow to players wishes - or anyone's for that matter. "Do it, because I say so". Um... No.

If you've got an issue, if there's something to say, you should say it.

And you shouldn't be afraid to do so.