Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games by Lizzie Stark
Over the last few months I’ve seen this book become a topic of conversation on the international larp scene, with reviews showing up on various websites and an article on the BBC. So, I cracked and bought it. The book is an attempt to explain larp to mundanes, driven by the author’s experiences in her local larp community (centred on the DEXCON / Dreamation / Double Exposure conventions in New Jersey, and a local fantasy boffer larp) and at Knudepunkt 2011 in Denmark
The early chapters of the book feel very much like a paste-up job, with disjointed articles on the history of larp, closeted larpers, sexism in larp and its use in the military and business world alternating with interview-based pieces on her local larp community or author-centric pieces on her personal experience. Many of the latter two types are written in a fairly obnoxious “American journalist” style, which pays obsessive attention to personal appearance (both for colour, and as evidence that you really did talk to this person. See, I can describe their hair!) which is a bit off-putting. Later on, the book becomes a more coherent narrative: she goes back to DEXCON, plays in an ongoing fantasy larp (Knight Realms: like Teonn, but commercial and with a 400-page rulebook), runs her own larp with her friends, and raids Knudepunkt. She goes into a lot of detail in the latter sections about the sleep deprivation and foreignness and resulting change in her mental state, and comes out of it an eager convert to Nordic larping, completely unaware that it reads like she’s cultfucked herself.
(This is not a criticism of Nordic larp, or of Knudepunkt (both of which I follow eagerly from afar), more a comment on the parallels between convention sleep deprivation and cult brainwashing techniques. So remember, get enough sleep at Chimera, or you may find yourself rolling around in flour in your underwear)
What’s interesting about the book is what it tells me about Stark’s local larp community. And what it tells me is that many of their games suck by NZ standards. Her first larp, a long-running campaign called “Avatar”, is more of a “tabletop standing-up” style, complete with people in T-shirts making time-out signs to give the physical descriptions they couldn’t be bothered costuming for. Later, when she returns to DEXCON 2011, she plays a pair of games where she has no engagement with the storyline at all; in one she spends four hours wandering around as a stoner asking the vampires and faeries for drugs, getting high, then going back and doing it again - essentially someone else’s short, colour NPC role. I’m surprised she put up with that for as long as she did, and the scary thing is that she quit only halfway through the game. A core problem here seems to be that these games were essentially campaign games run at a con, complete with character generation at the door; great for long-standing participants who are already involved in ongoing plotlines, but not a good starting point for new players. And it makes me wonder how many people in her area try larp and give up because their gateway offerings are not really suitable.
Finally, 10 chapters in, she finds a game which doesn’t suck: a Cthulhu Live scenario with detailed, pre-written characters, loads of plot, proper rules briefings, a post-game debrief, and special effects. Apparently these games are full at every DEXCON, and given what Stark has described of the competing offerings, I can see why. Later on, she tries a Nordic “framework game” - Dance Affair’s In Fair Verona, which uses a 2-day workshop to effectively create the characters, their plot arc and their relationships, as well as teach the basics of the Tango dancing used to resolve conflicts - and finds that to her liking as well. Apparently she is now planning to run the Nordic Mad About The Boy in the US.
If anyone wants to borrow the book, I can bring it to Confusion or Chimera. Otherwise, its only NZ$20 (with free postage) on book depository.