Mess With Their Heads, Make 'Em Cry vis a vis Duty of Care

Community Larp discussion
#1

So I ran a small larp at Fright Night (co-written by Stephanie, who also crewed and helped run it). What with Fright Night being a horror convention, we made it a horror game and labelled it as such. In game, everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves and there was a lot of ebullient conversation afterwards.

Then, later, one of the players mentioned to me that they’d been having recurring nightmares from it.

I mentioned this on my blog, and the discussion that turned up in the comments seems in-depth enough that I am posting a copy here, because it seems useful to think about it in general.

[quote=“Yours Truly”]One of the players of My Bloody Valentine has revealed the existence of recurring nightmares post game.

I may have to make up a signable disclaimer if there’s another run…[/quote]

[quote=“IdiotSavant”]Ouch. Just ouch.

The Scandanvians use after-game briefings sometimes to help deal with this (there’s an article somewhere on “unfucking” people). But its also definitely good practice to let people know what they might be in for.[/quote]

[quote=“Yours Truly”]Well, the player in question seemed to find it more interesting than unpleasant, and we did advertice Valentine as a stress situation and a horror game. But, odd to think I actually messed with somebody’s head like that.

Can’t find your article with the search terms “larp” and “unfucking people”, but would be interested to read it if you find a link.[/quote]

[quote=“IdiotSavant”]And of course now I can’t find it, despite trawling every KnutPunkt book, a couple of LJs I might have seen it on, and the Nordic Larp Talks. Oh well.

There is some stuff about the issue in M. Meriläinen “It’s Not Just Fun and Games” in Larp Frescos. I believe Steph has a hardcopy of that, since its the same book her article on domestic realism was published in.[/quote]

[quote=“Stephanie”]Interesting article (have been browsing Larp Frescos, but hadn’t gotten to it yet. The thing about ‘extreme roleplaying’ is that it keeps making me think about the Stamford Prison Experiment. I read an essay by one of the psychologists who ran the experiment, and the big takeaway was the degree to which he and his colleagues got caught up in the fiction - they were running a prison, and dammit, a prison is supposed to keep custody of prisoners, so when some of the dissatisfied ‘prisoners’ started talking about a jailbreak, they didn’t sit back and collect data, they panicked and started calling real prisons for help. When other abuses started, they were too tied into what was going on to put it to a halt, it took a visiting third party to point out to them how crazy things had gotten. If you’re going to push people to the extreme, you have an ethical duty to monitor proceedings and make sure they don’t go too far.

As to the how… Interesting question. If I’m running a game where I’m trying to push people emotionally, I do try to also take care of them. Some of that’s straight hygiene - making sure they know they can get out of the game if they need to, can get to toilets and water and stuff (I read an article on Story Games which I now can’t find which talked about the same kind of thing), talking people into the game - and then talking them out of it. In the Bell, there was a definite wake up period to give people the feeling that the game was ritually now complete, and the going round the room getting people to talk about their character after the fact was a deliberate decision to let people vent if they needed to. (Not sure how the attendees felt, but that was what I was trying.) Other times, I’ll try to make people walk in and out of the game space as the start and finish points for the same reason.

There’s something else I’ve been thinking about that’s related. In the big headline games at Chimera and now KapCon, there’s an increasing trend of dark, really personal storylines being written. So stuff like syphilis and rape in people’s backgrounds; in The Gordian Knot, Cat’s character was supposed to ‘remember’ about how her ship had been attacked by pirates and she’d been tortured and had her memory wiped; in Achaean, the casting offers come with warnings about the material: “Please note that the classical background for this game is pretty dark; betrayal, murder, rape, and other horrors are all common features and that’s just the heroes.” The thing is, these aren’t specialty games where everybody who attends knows exactly what they’re in for and explicitly wants to be challenged. These are big open headline events that many people go to as a matter of course, and a number of other people go to as their First Larp Ever. I suppose I’m wondering what the ethics are around these kinds of storylines. What’s the duty of care that the writers have to the players?[/quote]

[quote=“IdiotSavant”]larpwriters have a definte duty of care. Not just a moral obligation to be a decent human being and not fuck people up, but a legal one under OSH legislation. If your game has a real chance of causing mental damage, you need to try and limit that risk.

I think a definite and ritualised beginning and ending to the game can help keep things within it. Safewords (incl layered ones like “New Voices in Art”'s brake / cut) are another. But if a game needs safewords, then its probably not for beginners.

WRT the flagships, its a good point, and one that should probably be taken to the wider community on Diatribe. There’s a PR-issue here - is this really the first impression we want to give? - but more importantly there’s an unpleasant chance of people getting material they are seriously uncomfortable with, or which is triggering for them.

Specifically wrt Achaean, while it has that content disclaimer, the questionairre doesn’t have an explicit question about such material. The closest it gets is “how emotionally hardcore are you”? There’s more effort spent on dealing with preferences around romance (which is sensible; it can be a source of bleed) than on making sure people are truly comfortable with portraying or interactign with the nastier parts of Greek mythology. Which is Not Good.[/quote]

[quote=“tog42 (don’t know if this is their Diatribe handle)”]For Achaean, the questionnaire was a modification of the one used the last couple of years. We had a few outside eyes look over it and no one raised any concerns. An explicit question about this type of material would certainly be a good addition for next year.

To be honest it didn’t even occur to us until later that some people might not expect such violence in a LARP based on the classics, as this type of material is so pervasive throughout Greek mythology. Cronus ate his own children to prevent his overthrow; Orpheus unwittingly murdered his father and married his mother; there was no consent when Zeus impregnated Danae as a shower of golden light; you can’t get through a single legend without something of this nature.

We’ll be having a discussion as to how to address these concerns.[/quote]

I apologise for the spelling mistakes I’d made in my comments.

For the record:

  • My Bloody Valentine was advertised as having “Surreal Horror” in it;
  • Food and drink were served with an eye for the player with gluten intolerance (though this happened quite late; am totally putting in a dietary restrictions question in the revised casting questionnaire);
  • Players were briefed and then entered the Game Space at will;
  • “Time Out” calls were discussed before the game, and were stated on the character sheet, though I was not aware of any made during the playthrough;
  • Combat was confined to miming and a playing card resolution mechanic;
  • A GM and a Crew member were in the Game Space at all times;
  • While the characters were confined to the Game Space, the players knew that they could leave at any time if they made a Time Out call;
  • After game, there was a debrief. Debriefs are fun!

I am interested in constructive criticism. Can you think of a way of making the game safer? (Incidentally, I got most of this best practice from Stephanie.)

#2

The only thing I can suggest is making the disclaimers more often in the brief, nice large block letters maybe?

Question: Has the person who raised the issue of these nightmares come accross as if they are blaming you, or just an FYI type statement?
It can be a hard question to answer, but if they mentioned it afterwards as in "man, that horror larp has really gotten to me, i’ve had some nightmares that have me waking up and freaking out"
or “Thanks to you and your horror larp, i can’t sleep anymore, im having constant nightmares and wake up in cold sweats almost everynight. Why would you do something like that?”

Honestly, theres only so much you can say/do/reiterate when it comes to advising people what to expect and that the LARP is not going to be all fluffy bunnies and unicorns.
Role playing, in my brief experience is about letting immaginations run wild.
With R18 games that are explictly set for dark, horror, thriller atmospheres, you can’t forsee all the outcomes, but putting the onus on the players to make their own decision on whether they want to play.

#3

As someone who played it, I think the safety structure you used for MBV was good. I think you may have just hit one of someone’s squicks (and one which while its not really traditional horror, I can well understand being squicked by). Unfortunately, the easily-spoiled nature of the game makes it difficult to warn people about that content in advance.

#4

[quote=“TazzyD”]Question: Has the person who raised the issue of these nightmares come accross as if they are blaming you, or just an FYI type statement? [/quote]I think from what Cat said that it was raised more as a point of interest than a ‘blaming Cat’ kind of thing. (Apologies if I misunderstood.)

But it’s worth reading that Larp Frescos article (will find a link when I get home, but there’s a free PDF on Lulu). It’s a bit wordy, but it specifically cites some games where there were players who were disturbed in a negative way after a gaming experience: both in games that were labelled as such in the advertising material, and ones where the dark material was presented as a surprise to the players.

[quote]With R18 games that are explictly set for dark, horror, thriller atmospheres, you can’t forsee all the outcomes, but putting the onus on the players to make their own decision on whether they want to play.[/quote]I’d like to enter another point for discussion. Nightmare Circle was specifically written to be a horror game that messed with people’s heads. So was/is Dreams in the Witch House and Cat’s My Bloody Valentine. I’m cool with that. People know what they’re in for, the GMs can monitor things, particularly with a smaller player base.

Things like the headline larps at Chimera and Kapcon? They’re implied to be all things to all people. You could make the same case for the Big Fantasy Larp that happens to be running at a given time, Teonn right now, St Wolfgangs before that. These are the games that draw a big general audience, with the social expectation that if you go to any larp, these are the ones you’ll go to; that if you want to attend this big convention and like larping, you’ll go to this game as part of it. And the material is getting darker and grittier. Rape, torture, depression, self-mutilation, cannibalism… a selection of these have turned up at the last two Chimera headliners, and Teonn. We know from Nick’s comments in the post about casting offers that a selection of these are going to turn up in Achaean as well. And it doesn’t necessarily say that on the tin - not in the main advertising material, not in casting questionnaires, so there’s less ability for the GMs to fit these plotlines to people who’ll appreciate them rather than being seriously screwed up. These are also the games where there’s the least ability to look out for people it’s not working out for. They’re big, chaotic, diffuse - there being too much stuff going on to keep track of is considered a feature. I already see the occasional person sitting on the edges of a large game looking unhappy, for no better reason than they’re new and they don’t know how to go about handling the game. I’d rather not have the “Are you alright” conversation because someone’s not coping with material that they had no reason to expect they’d be encountering.

At the last Teonn game I attended, I was told half an hour in by a GM that I was now seriously depressed. I found out the hard way that players aren’t interested in talking to sad NPCs, so it was a pretty lonely game. Also… depression is an issue that I’ve struggled with my whole life, so all up it was a pretty negative experience. In hindsight, I wish I’d walked out early, but I didn’t because, I dunno, the social contract that you’ll keep participating in the game you’ve signed up to? Too hard to get to the exit from where I was? That was, coincidentally, where people were having to in-character volunteer to have their eyes gouged out and their fingernails drawn, or discard their characters permanently. So, anyway. Did the GMs have a duty of care to me or the other players? Was my bad experience a reasonable casualty of the larping format? Was labelling a game as ‘dark’ enough, or should there have been more explicit warnings about what the content was going to be? Should the game have been conducted differently given the material the GMs wanted to introduce? Teonn is overall considered to be a big success by many people, and this isn’t an attempt to diss the campaign as a whole - I’ve heard too many people speak highly of it. But my experience is an example of how things can go badly.

#5

I think some of these issues can be sorted by questionaires (at least of pre-gen games). I know in the past two chimera flagships we tried to get the questionaire to encompass all that the game did and casted accordingly, but I’m sure that they can be improved upon each time. Think the question about previous experience is just as vital as themes comfortable with, because even though the games include darker themes, I would be inclined to cast newer players in the lighter, ‘fun’ roles, unless they have expressed an interest in the darker themes. Of course this isn’t necessarily a fool proof system, and doesn’t work for games like teonn.

#6

Witchhouse clearly falls in this category. I really liked how when signing up for that game it was VERY clear it was an adult game of horror that would play on your fears.

In this case (from my perspective, please ST’s correct me if I am mistaken) it appears the ST’s looked at each player and then carefully managed the levels of horror based on a range of factors including what the player had posted on forums related to the topic, knowing the player and careful judgement erring on the side of caution. This is I suspect only a possibility for smaller games and significantly easier with experienced long term LARPers.

That said concerns were raised in the forums later regarding seeking help if you experienced any issues post-game and ensuring that people have the comfort to express when things get too much and to get out of the situation without negative feeling.

I think all in all it is a tricky area but good clear two-way communication and appropriate levels of maturity and trust go a long way to make games like this work.

Roll on the next Witchhouse!

#7

[quote=“TazzyD”]

Question: Has the person who raised the issue of these nightmares come accross as if they are blaming you, or just an FYI type statement? [/quote]

… They thanked me again for the great game, and mentioned that they were recommending it to their friends. So I think that this time I messed with their head in a good way. :smiling_imp:

#8

(off topic) I feel like I need to defend Orpheus’ honour here. To the best of my knowledge he did no such thing.(/off topic)

I think you took all reasonable precautions. In the end it’s hard to know what people will react to.

#9

This has been an interesting topic to read through, thanks for bringing it up. It was only recently that I came across the concept of “trigger warnings” usually in relation to sexual abuse situations. For the Gordian Knot I did approach a couple of the players with those sorts of warnings. I must admit I didn’t think of it for Cat and the torture scenes. Perhaps its from my viewpoint that no-one in real life gets tortured, so that it wouldn’t be a trigger point for them. I see now that my viewpoint is too narrow. For the Gordian Knot we were also being compunded in that these were hidden memories, which was one of the hooks of the game, so we didn’t want to talk too much about the details to the players beforehand.
Regarding the pre-game questionnaires, we had plot themes such as action, comedy etc. We realised afterwards that we also needed a category of Angst. When we were writing it, the opposite of comedy became Angst, which may not necessarily be what people were after.
I personally dislike the large games with too many people to talk to and navigate around, and I think most people have agreed that 100+ people is too many for a pre-gen/one space game like the Gordian Knot was. Also I enjoy emotional angst and dislike comedy, which as you point out, may not be appropriate for games being put out to general populace. Not sure how I ended up writing the flagship game. :frowning:
Teonn is advertised as Dark Fantasy, and when I suggested bringing my kids, the GMs did ask me to consider whether it was appropriate considering the potential dark matter. And we did discuss it before making our decision.
I think perhaps Combat is easiest to create in a larp game, and then followed by Angst / negative emotional tweaking. Like real life - easier to frown than to smile. :wink:

#10

[quote]I think perhaps Combat is easiest to create in a larp game, and then followed by Angst / negative emotional tweaking. Like real life - easier to frown than to smile. :wink:
[/quote]

We like to create intense emotions in a game. It’s just that it’s so much easier to create frustration, boredom, and unease than feelings of serenity and joy.

Hmmm, “Create a feeling of joy” seems like an interesting writing goal for my next game. (It is a wedding, after all.)

#11

I actually dislike this question in casting questionnaires, precisely because of the inclination you profess here. I personally prefer the lighter ‘fun’ roles as I have a whole lot of nasty little triggers related to my personal experiences. For me, larping is escapism and should be fun; real life has enough depression and horror. Unfortunately, I have felt that ‘previous roleplaying experience’ has landed me with darker and more serious characters than I really want to play, to the extent that I’ve sometimes seriously considered responding ‘complete newbie’ to that question and seeing if anyone noticed.

#12

[quote=“Lady Prema”]Of course this isn’t necessarily a fool proof system, and doesn’t work for games like teonn.[/quote]Based on your experiences running Refuge and The Gordian Knot, are there things that you make a point of doing in games with darker material that you wouldn’t bother with in a lighter game? When the game is actually running, I mean, rather than prescreening in the casting.

[quote=“Hannah”]I personally dislike the large games with too many people to talk to and navigate around, and I think most people have agreed that 100+ people is too many for a pre-gen/one space game like the Gordian Knot was. Also I enjoy emotional angst and dislike comedy, which as you point out, may not be appropriate for games being put out to general populace. Not sure how I ended up writing the flagship game.[/quote]I think you and your co-writers did a pretty heroic job with the game, with extra kudos for picking up a game where the original writers had had to bow out.

[quote=“tog42”]For Achaean, the questionnaire was a modification of the one used the last couple of years. We had a few outside eyes look over it and no one raised any concerns. An explicit question about this type of material would certainly be a good addition for next year.[/quote]The Achaean questionnaire uses a lot of content, word for word, from the one we originally used for Sanctuary, which had as some of its recurring themes: crossdressing, transgender characters, infertility, lots of romance including non-hetero, tragedy and madness. So we had a lot of questions about gender/romance issues, because that can be a touchpoint with some people, but in hindsight, I think we should have asked more about madness, because there was this one guy who reported being an emotional wreck by the end, and had to be looked after post-game by one of the people he’d been roleplaying with. Except, that wasn’t a character I’d expected that to happen with, so I dunno, there are limits to how much you can predict before the game?

#13

Most of my larp nightmares are about trying to run a game and it going horribly wrong. I think of these as “warning dreams”, teaching me to put the effort in to make sure they don’t come true. But…

The one thing that has disturbed me from actually playing a game is quite surprising to me. I played a large fantasy game in the UK, one that is largely about PC interaction and where combat and death tend to be rarer. Another character who I felt responsible for had disappeared, aside from some incriminating body parts. I started an investigation, doing the rounds of various camps - some aligned with my faction, some not, but it was hard to tell which was which. It was late at night when I got into a friendly conversation with a camp guard about my missing comrade, and he had some useful suggestions. As we spoke he suggested we step away from the glare of the oil lamps. We stepped into a shadier area, and then without warning he went from chatting to suddenly butchering me. I still don’t know what his character’s reason was, but the alarming part was how completely taken in by his friendliness I had been.

For a few months after, I would sometimes be drifting off to sleep at night and then wake up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding, thinking of that encounter. I was also a little more distrustful of people, suspecting their motivations, and was wary of strangers. The reason I find this surprising is that it was “just larp combat”. But somehow, it also became a “warning simulation” for me, teaching me that it’s possible to be too trustful, that my judgement of character can be wrong, and that things can go wrong very suddenly when you’re not fully alert.

So, it’s not just the obvious themes that can disturb, it’s often interactions that the organisers could never have predicted.

#14

I actually dislike this question in casting questionnaires, precisely because of the inclination you profess here. I personally prefer the lighter ‘fun’ roles as I have a whole lot of nasty little triggers related to my personal experiences. For me, larping is escapism and should be fun; real life has enough depression and horror. Unfortunately, I have felt that ‘previous roleplaying experience’ has landed me with darker and more serious characters than I really want to play, to the extent that I’ve sometimes seriously considered responding ‘complete newbie’ to that question and seeing if anyone noticed.[/quote]

Agreed. I have always been drawn to the darker characters/storylines. If I had been handed light fun characters at the start I might not have continued. I don’t really think there is much of a connection between experience larping and what people are comfortable playing.

[quote=“Stephanie”]
So we had a lot of questions about gender/romance issues, because that can be a touchpoint with some people, but in hindsight, I think we should have asked more about madness, because there was this one guy who reported being an emotional wreck by the end, and had to be looked after post-game by one of the people he’d been roleplaying with. Except, that wasn’t a character I’d expected that to happen with, so I dunno, there are limits to how much you can predict before the game?[/quote]

I can think of at least a handful of characters who should probably have come with warnings in that game. Sometimes it’s really hard to pick it until you see how people interpret the characters. :blush:

#15

It’s almost impossible to know what the vagaries of any given mind are going to throw up.

I do think that fair warning should be given about possible content so people can make an informed choice. The movie rating system seems like a reasonable model if such a rating specification is needed. Kapcon uses such a rating system.

The breadth of the audience needs to be considered as well. I would expect that for the huge flagship LARPs that the rating be generally brought down to a PG 13 or so, bearing in mind that sometimes younger players are present. Although a reasonable alternative would be to simply say that no one under XX may play in the LARP due to mature content. But again, fair warning can be given.

It’s the unexpected interactions that you can’t write for. And that’s where there should be the explicit statement that it is acceptable to call a time out, or leave the area or whatever. No one will think any less of you.

Otherwise I can imagine a self imposed pressure to not “break immersion”. All of this requires a certain amount of self awareness…

Personally, I really enjoy emotional connection in a LARP. That’s what I’m seeking. So far the dark stuff hasn’t thrown anything up for me. But I suspect that I can just re-engage my disbelief a bit too easily, plus I’m probably lacking triggers in my past. Bu that’s just me.

#16

With Refuge, as I recall, we debated a long time about the possible inclusion of rape and slavery/racism as two particularly touchy areas for a lot of people. In the end, I think we mentioned all three specifically in the ‘are you comfortable with these themes’ bit of the questionnaire.
I wasn’t personally involved in the casting, but as far as I’m aware we did not give characters with those backgrounds to people who didn’t specifically indicate they were ok with it.
Our motivation was mostly to stay true to the background (as a straight up western) and provide some great character motivations for players who were up for that sort of thing.

I think in general for games whose overall theme is dark or who have a lot of triggering content, warnings and after-care etc as discussed here are all appropriate. For games that have only a few characters with those themes, a good, detailed questionnaire-type process (or else a good knowldge of all your players - unfortunately not always possible) is probably sufficient.

Regarding the Achaen - aside from a few classics scholars I imagine most people’s idea of Greek mythology comes from movies and cartoons which tend to gloss over the incest, rape, cannibalism, wanton torture etc. And even those who do know the background won’t know without being told how closely the writers are sticking to the source material or what the tone of the game is. I was also surprised when I got the first Achaen email that they were intending to take it in that direction - I sort of assumed it would be all dashing heroes slaying monsters and beautiful maidens swanning around in chitons peeling grapes, or something.

#17

I was thinking that the crewing side of a campaign larp is a bit like these pre-written larps, in that people are handed a character to go and interact witht he players with, and the crew members may not have total liberty with the NPC background, and have some of these issues.
Perhaps when crew sign up for a game there could be an explicit question asked of them (along with the allergies and food requirements), listing the possible trigger points such as rape/abuse, torture, depression, betrayal of trust etc, and checking that they’re OK to do so. I don’t mean to make this about more paperwork for the GM team, but if they are aware of the handful of names, gives them a chance of remembering it during the game.
I think that this could give the crew members time to think about those issues, so that if they are asked during a game by someone to play that sort of character that they not comfortable with, that they can legitimately say “No.” Without having to go into the details of why they’re saying no, which kind of defeats the point of avoiding the situation.
Not that I’m saying that this doesn’t happen - its been a while since I crewed a game, just that there are often newcomers crewing, who might be shy of standing up and going against the flow of peer pressure.

#18

There will indeed be dashing heroes and beautiful maidens swanning (not sure about the grapes) with thrilling heroics and true love but the great thing about the classics is that those things exists right alongside the darker material.

For what would become Achaean, we said from the outset we were offering a LARP based on the Greek classics. I’m certainly no classics scholar (I may get the names of Orpheus and Oedipus backwards on occasion :blush:) but I’m familiar enough with the material that stripping out the darker elements would make it feel generic and sanitised to me. While we don’t feel bound by the specifics, the tone of those myths has been an important inspiration for us. So much as you said for Refuge, our motivation is to stay true to the genre.

That said, most of the darker material is only there as background motivation for the characters. In the epics, emotions and actions are heightened. When you are wronged you don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself; you grab a sword and exact bloody vengeance.

Using the movie classification system we’d be pitching this at about M or R16 and wouldn’t be accepting any players under 18.

#19

There will indeed be dashing heroes and beautiful maidens swanning (not sure about the grapes) with thrilling heroics and true love but the great thing about the classics is that those things exists right alongside the darker material.

For what would become Achaean, we said from the outset we were offering a LARP based on the Greek classics. I’m certainly no classics scholar (I may get the names of Orpheus and Oedipus backwards on occasion :blush:) but I’m familiar enough with the material that stripping out the darker elements would make it feel generic and sanitised to me. While we don’t feel bound by the specifics, the tone of those myths has been an important inspiration for us. So much as you said for Refuge, our motivation is to stay true to the genre.

That said, most of the darker material is only there as background motivation for the characters. In the epics, emotions and actions are heightened. When you are wronged you don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself; you grab a sword and exact bloody vengeance.

Using the movie classification system we’d be pitching this at about M or R16 and wouldn’t be accepting any players under 18.[/quote]

I, for one, am very glad you went this route. Disney Greek mythology is unappealing and soulless. I’d much rather the Larp kept the heart of the source material alive, even if artistic licence is applied to specifics. As it should be, really. Myths are kept alive by retelling them.

Though, Orpheus is one of my favourite myths and any retelling that has him killing his father and marrying his mother might be going a bit far. :smiling_imp:

#20

[quote=“Adrexia”]
I, for one, am very glad you went this route. Disney Greek mythology is unappealing and soulless. I’d much rather the Larp kept the heart of the source material alive, even if artistic licence is applied to specifics. As it should be, really. Myths are kept alive by retelling them.[/quote]

This. I’m no classics scholar (haven’t done a classics paper since first year of my Bachelors) but I’ve loved the myths since I was a kid and the twisted mess of relationships and strange ancient greek morality are part of what make them them.

I disagree. GMs are game masters, not babysitters. In a larp the size of something like Teonn, this would be a logistical nightmare, unless there was a GM whose job was specifically to cross reference the NPC roles with a database of people’s triggers, phobias and personal issues. I really think it’s as simple as the fact that larp participants need to be mature enough to know their limits and personal triggers and to politely and without fuss decline any roles or situations that they feel would be detrimental to their sense of comfort or mental wellbeing. Our community is not such where an action like this would be ridiculed, but I think the onus is on the participant (whether crew or player), not the GM, to monitor their comfort levels.

Sometimes, I think even the participant is surprised about their comfort levels. I know I’ve been larping situations where I’ve unexpectedly, even to myself, come out more rattled or disturbed then I thought I would. Sometimes pushing boundaries is how you find out that they’re there. In cases like that, I’ve dealt with it by giving it a lot of thought and talking to someone I trust - sometimes the outcome is that I decide to avoid that kind if situation in larping in the future, other times I’ve decided that having thought about it I’d be okay next time. At the first Witch House game, I walked out of a conversation with another player because even hearing about happened to them apparently sailed straight past my boundaries. There was no drama and no fuss, I just got up and went somewhere else.

I think the pitch for a game is important. I go out of my way to play in games that push emotional boundaries (I was a diehard Nightmare Circle fan, am a diehard Dreams in the Witch House fan, loved Jackie’s Project Sparrow game at Kapcon last year, and Cat’s My Bloody Valentine game sounds like something I’d like to play too) but I do find that if I turn up to a game expecting an M rating and being whacked with an R18 game, it affects me more than if I’d gone in expecting an R18 game. That Teonn day game that Stephanie mentioned earlier was a bit like that - I wasn’t expecting it to be that level of brutal so it shook me much more than it would have if the same events had happened at Nightmare Circle or Witch House. So I think even a general indication of maturity/harshness/boundary pushing is good, it doesn’t need to be a specific list of “Warning: This game contains…” because I think some themes can be handled in a huge variety of ways that don’t necessarily indicate the emotional intensity of the situation. For example, murder: playing a heroic fantasy game where you’re the good guys cutting swathes through bad guys is completely different in emotional intensity to arranging in cold blood to cut the throat of a well rounded humanised character. Technically both situations are ‘murder’ but happy heroic fantasy can be as low as G (we’ve run games like that for kids) or as high as R18 (Witch House). Similarly, something that happens “off stage” is different to “on stage” (to use an extreme example, a character backstory that involves rape is a completely different kettle of fish to a rape occuring during the action of a larp). I think the vast majority of discomfort and dissatisfaction after a larp comes from a discrepancy between what the players expected and what the GMs delivered.

In conclusion: At a larp, like at all other times, I am responsible for my own mental health and happiness. One of the reasons I feel mentally safest at Witch House, more so than any other larp, is because everyone has gone into it fully empowered to make their own decisions. I know that my boundaries will be pushed, but I can walk away at any stage. I am with other mature players who are equally prepared to look after their own (dis)comfort and that I won’t be judged in any way for walking away from a situation that makes me unhappy. In fact, people will appreciate it if I take charge of my own comfort instead of putting it in the hands of the GM and getting upset when they get it wrong.