Communist NZ LARP

I have been playing around in my head with the idea of an alternative history New Zealand LARP for a while, and now I thought I would make it public and see what you guys think of it.

the basic idea is that America was right: Communism spead all over the world in accordance with the “Domino theory”. It spread to New Zealand and the Communist Party of New Zealand won the General elections in 1978. Since then the government has run pretty well really. After winning two decades of elections the Communist Government decided that we didn’t need any more elections.

That was 7 years ago. Now, the world is changing. In Canada their government was overthrown, France is well on its way to overcoming the communists. Will New Zealand be next?

The Game is set at a stage where anti-communist groups have been on the rise and the public and government are starting to get uneasy. The government decides to do a crack down on the uprising. Many groups have been rounded up around the country to be made an example of. The Communists plan to guilt the communists out of their uprising by picking from the public at random, mainly from problem areas. As a player you would a part of one of these groups, selected at random from the general public to be executed. but you are an anti-communist? you Decide.

The game starts with the players being offloaded from a truck and taken into their camp, where they will be executed on live TV on Sunday evening while the masses of New Zealand eat their dinner and shake their heads.

The Game would be one weekend long Starting early Saturday morning (prefibly before sunrise is this was feasable in real life) and run until Sunday afternoon. The players would be about 12 or so in numbers hopefully, with 5 or 6 NPC’s who would be the guards. The game would be mostly non combat, however I did have some ideas of secret communist weapons being used (i.e a device which makes a loud noise that knocks everyone in the room “unconscious”. These would take ammo rings (little gambling token things) of up to about 5. The players would not know how to reload these, only the guards could do that. Of course, they players would have to be pretty deious to get one of these weapons anyway.)

So: What do you all think of the idea? Would you be keen to get involved? suggestions? comments? Criticisms?

It sounds like a nifty plot that could be fairly easily executed. Can you explain the gameplay a bit more?

It would be worth having a look at The Gulag Archipeligo. It covers detainments and executions during the soviet communist reign, written by a real prisoner of the gulags.

People were arrested on “solid information”, which basically means that someone close to them had dobbed them in. Then once arrested, they were threatened with torture and death unless they dob other people in as “counter-revolutionaries.” Many people finger-pointed innocents in the hopes of avoiding pain. It was a campaign of fear and paranoia that put everyone at risk of arrest regardless of their actual opinions or actions. It’s estimated that up to 1/4 of the soviet population may have died in these camps, far more than died in the Nazi holocaust.

I guess what I’m getting at is that to be more relevant your concept could be based more on real tactics of the communist era, some of which are still practised in modern-day China. The inmates could have been put at risk by testimonies of their own friends and family, and may be threated with dire consequences if they don’t point the finger at each other. Some of them might be real dissidents, while others may not. The atmosphere could be extremely paranoid.

There’s also the interesting question of the nature of the guards and torturers - these situations bring out the worst in people who might behave morally in other environments. Check out the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment as a well-documented example of this effect.

I’m interested in the concept, would play if it looked like it was going to be well done. If it was mostly for humour I’d be less inclined.

“The line that divides good and evil splits the heart of every human being” ~ Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

It would definatly be a serious game, not humourus at all.

The German Movie “The Experiment” was kind of an insparation for the guards. This movie is based on the Stanford Prison incident. Hopefully it would not come to anything like this, GM’s would stop anything remotly like this.

The idea of the finger pointing thing would be good, and more real, however it becomes kind of hard to finger point at people when there is a very limited amount of people to point the finger at: we can’t go pick up the players friends and bring them into the game, they wouldn’t play. However if some finger pointing went on at each other, that would fantastic. I was thinking of doing a colour coded groups thing and if we could get competition between different colours, that would be fantastic.

of Course, I will look into Communist stuff as a basis for the game. I want it to be believable, rather than players saying “But thats not what communists do!” and fealing let down about it not being accurate. However, I don’t want it being an exact replica of history, thats not so fun to make and become more of a re-enactment. Who’s to really know what communisim would be like in New Zealand?

Sounds good. I agree that historical accuracy is fairlyirrelevant, my suggestions were just for atmosphere and thoughts on psychological grounding for a scenario like that. As in, roughly what is a totalitarian regime typically like? Taking a few pointers from history can make it feel much more real.

I suspect that the Auckland LARP community may need to work towards this kind of project, getting the hang of a few less harsh socially-oriented games first. Right now it’s all heroic fantasy and machiavellian politics, which is all empowering stuff. The closest stuff in terms of a more disempowering environment is probably Raoul’s Cthulhu-style game (because of the whole “victims of the supernatural” feel), but that’s not up there with actually playing a prisoner for a whole game. The Metahuman Traffic scenario might be a step up that ladder, and get people interested in more social character-driven games.

There was a nordic larp set in a refugee transfer centre, called Europa. Might make an interesting comparison:

weltschmerz.laiv.org/europa/

It’d be worth thinking carefully about briefings and debriefings. It’s important to consider the feelings of the participants when you’re having them play characters who are in harsh situations.

I saw some reality TV show with Brits doing SAS training. The “interogation” they did just met the conditions of the Geneva convention.

I’d be willing to put people through the ringers to see how they stand up to a military style interogation if they want to.

You’ll want to set aside a whole weekend for the game and probably a couple of days afterwards to recover - and we can probably write off any kind of friendship we might currently have as well…

Have any of you guy’s read “Smith’s Dream” by C.K. Stead. It’s set in NZ in the 70’s under a Muldoonish-type politician who went the other way - claimed that NZ was threatened by communists to get American support. So of course, communist groups created themselves to try to topple him.

For something like what Ian is suggesting, I’d recommend having an OOC referee at all time supervising so that they can stop things if they start to get out of hand. At Europa one of the players got so depressed that she tried to commit suicide.

Steph

I read it at school.

Watched Sleeping Dogs as well :smiley:

Had 1984 as compulsory reading the year following.

[quote=“Stephanie”]
For something like what Ian is suggesting, I’d recommend having an OOC referee at all time supervising so that they can stop things if they start to get out of hand. At Europa one of the players got so depressed that she tried to commit suicide.

Steph[/quote]

This has always been something definate for the idea. There Guards would have to be very mature and would be very briefed to not do anything that was really bad in any way. My hope is that the players will mainly decide how events would run by their actions. There would also be some word that could be said as a kind of code word for if things were getting too ruff for you. This would probably be on desplay on posters in every room and encouraged not to be abused.

You don’t need to be physically rough to mentally wreck someone.

Sleep deprivation, continious loud white noise (they call it music these days), starvation, bombarding all the senses.

As Bernard Shaw wrote in Sharpe’s Rifles. “They all give in on the third day…”

I believe that her character got that depressed, not the player. Still, I think she did wade into the sea in some chilly northern European country, which is pretty extreme.

I’d be against sleep deprivation etc. That’s real torture, you might as well be pulling out fingernails in terms of the effect it can have.

oh God yes, Sleep deprevation etc is way too far. I’m talking about a LARP, not an experiment. The emphasis is on the fact that its a game, and its more about character development rather than messing with the player minds.

[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]I believe that her character got that depressed, not the player. Still, I think she did wade into the sea in some chilly northern European country, which is pretty extreme. [/quote]At that point, does it really matter whether it’s the player or the character in control? She was still physically in the sea in the middle of winter.

Also, for me the scariest thing about the Stanford Prison experiment that you quoted was that the organisers got locked into the prison guard mentality. It took a neutral third party to put a stop after things had gotten out of hand, (and only one person out of what, 60 observers had the nous to say anything like “Stop”).

Steph

There would be nothing guaranteed to destroy the immersion more than than guards stopping every five minutes and saying “Time out - are you okay with all this?”

In the BBC SAS Thing they had a doctor who said to all the prisoners. “I am a doctor, I cannot be faked. I will be talking to you every so often to see if you are okay, if you can’t hold a conversation, I will pull you out.”

There is always one wet blanket! :smiley:

Slightly off topic - there is some program on TV at them moment about people trying out disabilities for a day. For example, putting on opaque contact lenses and pretending to be blind. I haven’t really watched it but the shorts looked interesting…

It’s estimated that up to 1/4 of the soviet population may have died in these camps, far more than died in the Nazi holocaust.

Most authorities agree that it was more like 1/200 of the USSR’s population. A little over 1 million, compared with the 12 million that died in the Holocaust. In order for it to be 1/4 about 50 million people would have had to die. I think it’s safe to say that that didn’t happen.

I’m going by hazy recollections from The Gulag Archipelago. It’s possible that the author or my memory was exaggerating.

But I’ve always had the impression that it was massively underestimated, and personally I don’t have any trouble imagining 50 million being killed. I remember the author definitely stating it was far more than in the Holocaust. Again, he may have been wrong. But also, he was there. Maybe that was the number he said was imprisoned?

EDIT:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

That sounds like around 2.6 million documented deaths, which roughly bears up what you said. But I wonder what proportion would be documentable?

And while the numbers are being flung about… 20 Million Soviet losses when Germany invaded.

Ian, can I move this to “Game ideas”?

You prick! This was my idea we talked about the day before last Mordavia. I’ll let you have it, but I’m going to get you back one day.

yep, good plan.

yep.