Minimum aethetic standards in games

[quote=“Scott”]Just a question, have we had a game yet where minimum costuming has been a rule, or where that has been enforced?

I know there are some one offs or some smaller specific games where they have advertised high costuming. Something like the Black Hart of Camelot comes to mind. But then I know when that game was run in Wellington there was a lot of gear loaned around people. But I haven’t heard of anyone told to leave because they didn’t have enough costume in any game.[/quote]

I don’t think it has ever happened. I am saying that I am not in favour of the the suggested standard from the first post. Because it has the potential to be bad.

I’m in favour of encouraging and helping people with their costume. I don’t think any formalised rules are necessary.

[quote=“theotherphoenix”]
It unfortunately doesn’t go without saying that you don’t turn up to a medieval/fantasy larp in shorts and a t-shirt, I’ve seen it happen. [/quote]

I don’t think it has ever happened.[/quote]

this is part of why i rasied the question, in the midst of awesome constructive discussion about community support and how-to guides and gear pools, there are also occasions like these, where no effort is made on the part of PC or GM. unless they r new, this is annoying.

Zanni, I’m afaid I don’t understand what exactly the issue is, your point is unclear. The discussion has highlighted that people do think its unacceptable to turn up with no gear, as per the quote from Kara above. However it also seems that people do not think people should be turned away from events for it either as that is not the sort of community we are.

Extea help is given to new people because they are just that, new. The expectation is that if you enjoy the hobby, then -like any other past time on the planet - you will start investing in the gear you need for it. You wouldn’t play hockey without a proper hockey stick or team uniform, you wouldn’t go rock climbimg wthout proper harnesses, in larping there are also gear ‘requirements’ people expect participants to invest to some degree.

Is there a specific grievance at play, Zanni, where you feel the community has in some way failed to provide a level of suppor in the arena of gear that you would have thought we should? Was someone sent home? Is this really community wide issue, or perhaps there is an event-specifuc miscommunication in expected standards?

Another thought occurred to me on this today. I think that it’s more reasonable to have high expectations for a campaign than for a one-off game. You can also expect more from a game with a common genre than one with non-typical setting too.

There are a couple of one-off games with unusual settings that I’d like to run using nice production values. But ambitions like that are probably not very realistic, practically speaking.

People will put more time/effort/money into costumes they can use a lot, especially if it’s for characters they’re attached to.

That’s not to say you couldn’t run a one-off with a weird setting and ask for good costume. But it’ll probably reduce your potential player base even further.

Clear enough to me: should we do something about participants who make no/minimal effort regarding their costume ? The answer, of course, is to assist them to do better, not punish them. And I think our community is pretty good about doing this, we don’t need a rule of exclusion to deal with this.

This discussion reminds me of Dreams in the Witch House, in which there was a specific requirement to be an experienced/mature larper. This works because we, as a community, have invested significantly in developing larp capacity over the last decade or so, and now we have a community from which we can draw this standard of larper.

The same goes for the concept of high aesthetic standards. If someone wanted to do this in a boutique game (like DitWH is ) then I say “go for it”. But the flipside is that if you require high aesthetic standards of your players, you must provide these in return; a non-trivial consideration.

But for Teonn-scale games ? It ain’t gonna happen, for reasons expounded by Halikaon, theotherphoenix and others. We already have a culture of tolerant costuming excellence (in which excellence is celebrated, yet we also understand when someone cannot afford the massive amounts of money and effort required to create a high-quality costume).

Our culture will naturally foster improved costuming standards, our only challenge is to do this in an inclusive and tolerant fashion. I think Zanni has raised a good point, one that has certainly made me think.

This is why I am confused. I thought that we already have a culture of assistance, not punishment? I’m not aware of any larp that has excluded people based on costuming standards, let alone sent away willing players. Most large events strive to be accessible for all levels of costuming (I design Chimera so that you could get through an entire weekend of larps in a suit if that’s all you own) and there is a very large and very helpful community here of people that will literally lend folk the shirt off their own back to get them to come along to a game. Is this a real and present issue?

Zanni’s original post is asking if we should introduce minimum standards. As in, not letting people into games unless they meet a minimum. The motivation seems to be frustration with the occasional person who doesn’t meet her idea of a minimal costuming effort.

It’s not a complaint about this practice already taking place, it’s asking whether this practice should start being used.

The curious thing is that while many of the replies talk about assistance in preference to hard rules, the majority of votes in the poll are in favour of minimum standards. How do we reconcile this?

In some cases like Idiot and myself, this seems to be in support of GMs having the option to have minimum standards. We support their right to do bar entry to players who aren’t costumed to their published standard, even if I don’t think it’s the best option in a lot of cases. In a way, this isn’t exactly answering Zanni’s question though. I think she’s asking if it should be a common thing we start doing. If that’s the question, then I’d change my answer to “no”. I don’t think it’s the best approach for most larps, especially the big ones.

I suspect a lot of people have interpreted the poll in their own way, perhaps just as the idea that games should publish their minimum costume expectations, but not enforce them. If the poll said “Should most or all larps in NZ have a minimum standard of costume that players must meet to be allowed to play?” I think the result might have been different.

Thanks Ryan, I getcha now.

Yeah, the odd things is that I’m sure I ticked “i would not have them and here is why…” but it shows me as having ticked the other option.

This is me. I think in general, even then, most GMs would ‘encourage’ rather than ‘enforce’. Have enough enthusiasm for the costume-porn aspect of your larp and most players will do their absolute best, within limitations of time and budget. Witness the excitement over Patrick’s costume guides for Crucible.

As much as I’m in favour of decent costuming in larps, I can’t see any of our current crop of gms telling people “bugger off your costume sucks”. So I guess actually, I am a “no”… sorry. Voting fail.