It has been my experience that mentioning ‘live action role playing’ or ‘LARP’ in today’s world will get you a variety of facial expressions from any given social crowd around you. Those who participate in LARP games will often know exactly what you are talking about while others, even those in social circles close to live gaming such as online gaming, will be completely oblivious.
If most people have participated in live action role playing in their lives then why don’t they know what it is? Let me repeat myself just to be clear – most of us have participated in live action role playing at some part in our lives.
Have you ever been asked to ‘play yourself’ at work while your boss pretends to be an angry customer to see how you respond? How about getting into a flight simulator at the local video game center to see how you do as an ace pilot? Ever play games with your children such as ‘tea time’ or ’school?’ All of these are forms of live action role playing.
To put it plainly live action role playing occurs whenever someone imagines them self in a scenario that they are not actually in and then acts out the part.
It can be as simple as putting yourself into an imaginary situation or as complicated as imaging that you are someone else on another planet with a mission from Star Command.
I believe that most people are introduced to LARP in a variety of indirect ways which is why they don’t associate their actions as live role playing. When you are at work you are ‘doing an exercise in customer service’ and when you are playing with your children you are ‘playing a game.’
Occasionally companies will call it role playing but in my experience they have strayed from the term; probably because it always solicited groans from those being forced to participate.
In my experience the term ‘role playing’ is almost universally met with hesitation, uncertainty, and sometimes disgust unless it is used in presence of those who have already established themselves as role players of a particular game genre.
Could this be because corporations have placed countless of employees in front of their peers in an exercise that most consider embarrassing?
Whether or not they remember the experience as a positive or negative one everyone involved is still playing a live role in an imaginary situation. That puts them well within the boundary of a live role player.
Kevin Tjia
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