The LARP scene in North America can be a little confusing and perhaps even a little daunting. There are so many games out there that most of them go un-noticed unless you know someone who plays or someone who used to play. The LARPs that are played span a wide variety of genres and often a wide range of social or age restrictions.
Are we as elitist as this sounds?
I have come across different discussions over the last week that would hint at the idea that we have evolved as a culture. Whether it’s LARP participants getting frustrated at the endless bad LARP videos on Youtube or the screaming voices of the participants nation wide that cry out for LARPers to take pride in what they are doing.
This description of LARP in the USA was written in 2006 by a LARP participant trying to explain the ways of US LARP to some friends from the UK. If this can be considered an accurate description of what North American LARPing was in 2006 would this be an accurate description of what we are like today?
I know that the LARP companies that I communicate with, both facilitators and suppliers, seem to be of the same mind – they want to experience LARP in a more professional atmosphere. An environment where we take out all the stops and produce something that can’t be considered anything but top notch. And frankly, I commend them.
After all quality gaming is the basic reason why this blog was created.
Does a LARP facilitator have to become more professional in order to provide a better quality LARP? And is this in line with our thoughts as players of yester-year? You be the judge. Write me a little blurb as a comment and I’ll be sure to get back to you.
In so far as what I think… I think I’ll let the industry decide what’s best for it. Certainly the LARP Alliance, Seventh Kingdom IGE and even LARP Solutions Inc. feels that the LARP industry could use a little professional boost now and again.
All the best in your future LARP endeavours,
Kevin Tjia
Popularity: 17% [?]
I feel that larping is evolving. If we consider dagorhir as a starting point, and assume that most experienced larp players will have on average a 7-12 year span of larping, we have about 3-4 generations of rule based larping on our hands. This holds mostly true.
Nero Canada started in 1990 I believe, then shadow rhealms and underworld sprang up, i *think* around 2000? and now, we see raven coming along, the nero canada, and international revision, underowlrd getting rid of their armband system, and undergoing a rules re-write ( i think).
One thing I have noticed, to be a consistent trend, is that the less professional the game is run, the higher degree of character options arise: to at one side of the spectrum, you have player coustomisable prestige classes (you know who you are) and at the other end, you have games like: Nero, raven, and underworld, which have very strictly defined class roles, and conformation to genre conventions.
I think this is a result of less professional games are more like a club, attempting to appease everyone, with an ever expanding set of personalization concepts to make each character “just right”. resulting in, what is in my opinion “everyone is special, thus nobody is”. Ironically, i have found in these games, that there is a very limited amount of character based plot, with few PC’s given meaningful positions of authority,
These larps are nameless. but *you know who you are*
Professional larps, I find, have a story based reward system, as opposed to a build based one. Cool character options comes not though build, but through a quality game and plot environment, and your character’s personality economy is just as important as their build economy. But providing a structure in game and out, professional larps encourage role play, in that players know that positions of authority exist in game, and if they work hard enough, they can achieve them, thus reward isnt based on build, but through in game action, and it is merely the structure it’self that encourages action.
The reason that I point out the in game structure and it’s link to professionalism, in a discussion about game evolution, is to support Mr. Tjia’s claim that we do prefer more professional larps.
Recently, i have seen the more personalised larp systems being to create and form positions of in game authority, and have discussions of a simpler rule base, with less complications of conflicting skills.
Like true evolution, we have seen mutation: the nero canada split into underworld, shadow rhealms, and now: raven
Migration: nero aeon coming into the stage
and paralel evolution: epoch.
and finally we are seeing adaptation, where, in response to market factors, larps are revising, simplifiying seems to be a trend across the board, and in game structure to support in game culture as a rules balancing mechanism is once again becoming popular.
We do like a professional game, we take our fantasy seriously, the story told matters only to us when our means of realting to it is unique. Simplified larps are the unlikey winner in this regard, as we are forced to look at our character not as a unique string of numbers, but as a unique personality, and a world where more than just the sum of those numbers defines the sum of your character.
If we’re all equally special, the story told does not really matter, as no matter what, we would have gotten to where we were regardless of plot effects.
Thats just my two Copper peices on the issue, i hope that was coherent, and I hope I didnt offend, thats how I see the larp situaiton in souther ontario right now.
First and foremost, Kevin, I really did enjoy your thought provoking article. About how larps are evolving and what not. Very good read.
The the commenter ‘Electric-bugaloo’, although you mentioned that you did not hope to offend I fear that your responce may get a little bit of a backlash from some larpers. Specifically of the Epoch-variety, seeing as you singled out Epoch to be an un-professional build-based system.
Personally I like the fact that each larp here in southern Ontario has it’s variety. To me that gives people options, it doesn’t matter what kind of larp you want you’ll be able to find it.
You are right in saying that Epoch is not one of the more ‘professional’ larps out there. I believe that’s specifically due to the fact that Epoch itself is a democracy based non-profit -club-. The players elect a president, vote on rules, decide what is acceptable and what is not. We are not out to make money, everyone who runs it are volunteers. (Thats not to say that other larps are out to ‘make money’.)
I’d just like to clarify that because we are not a class-based game doesn’t mean that ‘everyone is special therefor no one is’. Although I do enjoy some class based games myself, and others, enjoy the ability to create a character with the freedom for them to grow any way you want them too. You may start off with a strict fighter who robs and steals from people, and over time the character can grow and change. Going from being generally ‘evil’ to a good player. Even a healer. the possibilities are endless. (Untill you buy all the skills in the rulebook…then it’s strictly RP)
Hmmm, I don’t want to make this comment come as a backlash to ‘Electric-bugaloo’s comment, as i think that I’d be taking this off topic to Kevin’s origonal post, which I enjoyed.
I just feel the need to ’stand up’ for my game and it’s lovely role players.
And to remind people that Epoch changes yearly. New excecutives running the game, new artistic directors running plot. Many new characters.
So, unless ‘Electric-bugaloo’ has been out to Epoch in the last while, than I think the comment could potentially be ‘out dated.’ 
Once again, I too am not out to hurt feelings. Just showin a little pride here!
Good article Kevin.
It’s gettin people talkin!
Sincerely,
Kristen Balmer
President of Epoch Toronto
I agree with your opinion that professionalism must be present in any larp, but to say that a larp that is run as a club isn’t as good is completely bogus.
You’ve given good comments to pretty much every larp in southern ontario except for EPOCH. In fact, while you haven’t directly said anything negative directly about EPOCH, you’ve certainly implied that there is something flawed with it.
I say that our club actually works much better than most other larps simply because we are a club. All of our members have their say as to how our game runs and works. We elect our executives, and our executives can change from year to year so that it’s not always one single person running the whole show. And we don’t elect them based on how much we like or dislike the person. They have their plan each year for how they see the year going, what changes they want to make and plans they want to implement, and they get a chance to state their credentials to show why they should be in charge for the year.
This system has worked very well since I’ve started EPOCH, and every year the execs have been nothing but professional in the way they run the game. The rangers that we rent our site from have been great to us, and vice versa. We’ve been nothing but welcoming to new players, and in fact EPOCH has been the most newbie-friendly compared to a lot of other larps in southern ontario.
You are right that EPOCH is a club that appeases everyone (yes, we do indeed know who we are), but our rules do not change too much. We do debate sometimes about how certain skills work and how they can be improved, but we don’t make changes unless every member agrees to the change. The only additional rules we’ve added in the past few years is a new race available to play to all players.
Our rules system is skill-based rather than class based and allows you to customize your character to do the things you want, as well as a variety of skills to make your character a bit more realistic. But what defines your character is it’s personality, history, and other character traits that have nothing to do with the rule system. To say that “Everyone is special therefore no one is special” is completely without merit and incorrect.
Many of the antagonist groups at EPOCH have come directly from the character histories of other players. Character based plot is actually very common, it just might not be very obvious at first. And as for PC’s given positions of authority, you need to understand that the game takes place in a frontier town where there is no authority. The PC population has to make do with what seems to appear to be an anarchy. In actual truth, many of the characters get along well, and while there’s no formal way of dealing with issues, there’s also no OOG-enforced system of authority run by the players.
The quality of our game’s role play, plot, and environment have been the best I’ve ever seen. We have our player base to thank for that, as they’ve put in a lot of their own time and money to make EPOCH what it is today.
EPOCH is a non-profit club that democratically elects it’s executives from it’s player base. That should never suggest that we have no professionalism in how we run our larp.
I can think of one really big example of a “professional” larp that has been run as a business, and is currently being run into the ground. NERO Canada.
NERO Canada was the first larp I played. It is a terribly run game that only caters to a half a dozen or so players, all of which are personal friends of their head of plot or a member of their corporate team. All other players are either alienated or are simply seen as a source of income so that six snooty larpers can have minions.
The first big reason NERO Canada is on life support is very simple: They do not want new players. And it’s not that their corporate team doesn’t want new players, it’s the half dozen elitists that shun them. And lets face it, as long as they don’t accept these newer players into the game there’s nothing their corporate team can do to get those new players to return for a second event.
The players that have PC’s in IG authority positions use the their powers only to bully players around that they do not like. The game caters specifically to them, and anyone else that wants to get in on their plot are told to go away. And you cannot go against them in any way. Even refusing to do something will get your character killed and exiled, thus making your character unplayable. All the effort of gathering up a really nice costume, writing a good character history, and all other planning goes down the tubes simply because of some dick with a leather crown doesn’t like you as a person.
The second big reason is that none of the money that NERO Canada makes goes back into the club. Sure it covers the cost of things like site rental and insurance, but in the end someone is getting paid. At EPOCH, any money that the club makes goes back into the club for prop and weapon repairs, new props and costuming, etc. I know that if I bought something extra for a character at NERO Canada, such as a spirit stone, the money I put in will probably end up in the g-string of a stripper at a titty bar in Hamilton.
I know I’ve gone off topic quite a bit with this, as this is more of a response to a comment made rather than a comment about whether or not larping is evolving. I will say this about it: yes it is. EPOCH is an example of one that is constantly evolving. NERO Canada is an example of one that is not.
Thanks for your comments Electric, Kristen and Dave.
To address your comments on a wider scale, I think that LARP participants put a lot into their characters, their costumes and ultimately their game.
Each player appreciates LARP in a different way. For some of us it’s a fun platform for entertainment as long as there is a business model involved that we can understand and appreciate. For others its the group functions that make it more like a club.
But no matter what parts of the game you like I think it is important to ask “What does it mean for a LARP to evolve?”
Does a LARP game evolve because its rules change? Or is it only considered evolution if there are fundamental policy changes to the game?
From a lose scientific point of view evolution describes the changes that something undergoes to help it adapt to the needs of environment and other factors to assist in its surival.
I propose that if a LARP is surviving as a business or a club then that particular part of its evolution has probably already occurred. What new form of evolution has your LARP gone through to ensure its continued existance?
Kevin
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