I know that I touched upon this a little yesterday with my War At The Office post but that got me thinking “what are the boundaries of LARP? And when it is really LARPing?”
I have been known to occasionally participate in a rugged game of paintball but I don’t really consider it a live action role playing game. There is no real characterization other than me trying my best to do something I don’t normally do – in this case assault bunkers, avoid speedy projectiles that ‘kill’ me, and doing my best to look cooler than everyone else while I do it.
But I would argue that you don’t have to be pretending to be someone else in order for it to be considered role playing. What if the game was designed on the concept of you going forward in time and forced to fight for your survival? Sort of a reverse Terminator scenario.
I might believe that participation in a live action role playing game would require a set of rules but there are many LARPs across the world that have no rules what so ever known as “free form LARP.” There are many other games that have mastered the idea of a single page of rules which basically say “don’t do dumb and everyone will be ok.” On that basis I can’t say that one must be following a rule set in order to be participating in a LARP.
Do you have to have more than one participant to be LARPing? If you are all by yourself and you happen to be skulking through the woods as you ’sneak up on a band of rebels” are you LARPing or just crazy? Now, I’m not saying that I’ve done this or anything….
I’m not sure that there are any substantial, measurable qualifications to say that someone is participating in a live action role playing scene. If you are playing paintball and you recognize that you are just being shot with paint pellets, and that your mission is to capture the flag then I’d say it was just a war game.
However if you are playing that same game and you are acting as if it was real, even if you are ‘playing’ yourself, then I think you have crossed the line into role playing. The live action part speaks for itself. Even in Hollywood any time an actor is physically going through the motions of the scene then it is dubbed ‘live action.’
This being the case then what is the difference between LARPing and acting? Personally I don’t see any… but I don’t consider myself to be an ‘actor.’
Be sure to set me straight on the topic – comments are welcome.
All the best in your future LARP endeavours,
Kevin Tjia
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