Bullying, insults, and having a safe and inclusive community

So going back to the original post, I’m aware of some socially exclusionary behaviour going on, and it’s really getting me down. This isn’t about people being abusive or disruptive, and it isn’t at the formal level of people being asked to stay away from an event - that’s stuff that someone could actually talk about and have a chance to defend themselves. What I mean is little casual snubs that are going on - no invite to a social event, or mean spirited gossip behind someone’s back, or someone’s IC choices about helping a character being affected by OOC dislike. And it’s being directed not at abusive individuals, but at socially awkward individuals - death by a thousand cuts stuff.

So what I want to say is: Hey guys, you don’t have to like everybody in the larp community. But you know what? Making a point of saying “Hi X, I really like that thing you did this morning” to someone you don’t get on with helps them out by giving them positive feedback, and helps you out by tweaking the way you think about them. We get to choose the tone of our community. I’d really prefer supportive over backbiting, you know?

Thanks for posting, Stephanie. These are definitely hard issues to even pinpoint, let alone address specifically. It’s also a problem that will affect more socially subdued individuals much more than socially boisterous individuals. I quite agree with your approach - create a positive, inclusive, supportive atmosphere, and in particular be indiscriminate with compliments that affirm a behaviour someone did.

I think as a community we do crave this sort of interaction, but at the moment we usually have to solicit it. ‘Did you see the time I…?’ ‘Look at X that I made!’ etc. Things the socially adept and confident are good at, not so much the subdued or new. The Chimera Wall of Awesome is one way of encouraging people to give praise without solicitation, though I am not sure how successful it is - it takes the interaction out of the praise. Photographs are a great cue for praise. We at times have after-LARPs that include the mutual solicitation and sharing of acknowledged awesome, but our smaller games don’t tend to have them anymore, and our bigger games have outgrown after-LARPs - they tend to be for a subset of the game instead of the majority of attendees. Post-game postings usually include compliments to the most noticeable of our fellow LARPers, but rarely do they include comments on the majority of people we interact with. Again, more subdued or newer players are more likely to get left out of the compliment exchange. One cue for praise that I’m personally really terrible with is receiving praise - I find it awkward to return a compliment when given one out of the blue, but that’s a really good time to do it. Giving compliments takes practice, too, and I have an aversion to not appearing genuine when giving them, which makes practicing compliments harder. I tend to give them only when I know I can deliver them well, but that means I miss loads of opportunities to give compliments, many of which will probably turn out fine anyway, and the process of which will help me get better at giving them.

Oversight (intended or unintended) to social events is harder still, as out-of-character social dynamics play an even larger role in these than for in-character events. I would like to see more official out-of-character social events though, and have been talking to a few people about what sorts of things might be appealing.

Yeah, I get that feeling of awkwardness and not wanting to sound stilted. But on the other hand, if you (er, I mean generic you the reader) embrace the awkwardness and go for it anyway, you’re still a person who just said something nice. And if you choose to make a habit of complimenting, then you turn into a person who naturally notices good things about people and has the balls to say so. Compliments are good for the giver, too, is what I mean.

This was a good thread to start - it gives people a chance to talk about things that are making them unhappy, and there’ve been a lot of very thoughtful replies.

This article seems relevant to this discussion: larping.org/larp-articles/la … the-enemy/

Awesome article, Jackie, thanks! Love the ‘kill them with kindness’ analogy. Indeed, this sort of attitude sounds great for interacting with anyone at LARPs - grab LARP by the short’n’curlies and interact the s*** out of the world; relinquish the realm of the real in exchange for immersion. If you can do it despite an OOC enmity, you can do it for any LARP interaction.

Even if that is the case, with this sort of cultural issue cropping up in the biggest current-running campaign - a game which does draw players (if not usually crew, because… well, for various reasons some of which may be better than others, people don’t travel the length of the island to crew, much) from other cities - it could easily become an entrenched cultural issue in the entire community, especially as new members are brought in, learn the culture as it is, and begin to pass it on to even newer members.[/quote]

I agree to some extent that this could turn into quite a big thing if left unchecked. My observation, though, is that this probably isn’t to do with location, but with size of game. In smaller games, there’s a greater chance that you’ll see the same NPC again, or at least the same crew member. If you want to interact with a particular NPC again, it’s often easier to get that message through to the crew or GMs. In a larger game, this is practically impossible - last Crucible weekend I had a total of about forty-five seconds of direct interaction with GMs, and with so many faces, it’s difficult to tell who that really awesome crew member was.

Because of the size of our larger games, I sometimes find myself treating everyone, both PCs and NPCs, as not worth interacting with. Too many faces; too much effort; the three people I want to talk to right now are hidden by the other hundred. I think, if this antagonism between players and crew is something we want to combat as a community, we can’t do it in our larger games. Trying to sway people who are already entrenched in their characters and their player mindset is difficult. That sort of thing can happen best through forums like this, smaller games, and pre-game briefings.

Interesting observation. I definitely think that it can be changed, even in our larger games, but I agree that wider means of approaching the issue are important. Larger games usually just mean more organization, more reliable lines of communication, and delegation are needed. Perhaps a repository of NPC’s that were a ‘hit’ with players (or even just had a four second conversation), including the name of the crew member, the NPC, the PC(s), and the encounter (one line as a prompt). That way GM’s or crew organizers can use this for on-the-fly plot or to tie into larger scenes, and reward player interaction with crew with more roleplaying opportunities.

As for PC interactions with PC’s, that I think some of this is a world and setting design issue, and to some extent a game design issue. We aren’t cosplayers - we don’t as a rule consider our games to be hang out in awesome clothes chit-chatting about the weather (there is nothing wrong with this, its just a different way of playing dress-up to ours). To get PC’s to interact with PC’s, there needs to be a reason, such as sourcing or sharing information, competition for or sharing of resources, helping each other with goals, social conflict, combining to fight off a mutual threat, fealty or duty, legal or moral disagreements, etc etc. This can be achieved simply through setting information, and our player base are getting quite good at creating action by themselves (particularly if that is the expectation from the outset). All this applies regardless of game size. I would argue that size of game only really becomes a problem when size of playing area gets too large for reliable contact with people. For example, at some of our much larger Chimera flagships, PC’s managed to interact with each other relatively well, as most people anyone needed to get in contact with were only a few minutes of hunting away at most (unless they are actively avoiding you).

Oh, I think it can be changed in our larger games, but not during the gameplay itself, is what I meant to say. In-play, it becomes easy to justify actions as ‘I was just playing the character’. In the weekend just been, I took a few actions that could probably have been seen as OOC antagonistic; if someone approached me now and told me, my response would be ‘Yes, that probably felt out of line, not my intention but sorry anyway’. If someone had approached me immediately afterwards, though, I probably would have become more entrenched in my position.

Ah right, fair enough. I guess with smaller games, the in-group/out-group dynamic is often confined to Players and Crew as two distinct groups. In small theatreform games everyone is in the in-group unless the game is explicitly structured to have multiple groups in direct competition. In larger games, the possible groups splinter into several Player groups plus the Crew (and in even larger games, the Crew likely splinter into groups too). With on-going games, those groups start to become entrenched OOC too, particularly as some of the Player groups are often created from OOC in-groups to begin with.

Looking back on my Crucible experiences, if there’s anything I regret and would do over the most is only engage with PVP with people I know. That’s a pretty good way to make sure you know people’s OOC weak spots and avoid them when coming into conflict with them.

But not everyone can rely on this, and sometimes only engaging with people you know ooc can mean that newer people become isolated. I think widening the sphere of interaction can counteract ‘in-crowd exclusion’.

Relevant on the PvP issue:

real-life-lucanite.tumblr.com/po … er-hate-in

Awesome link, thanks!