Preferred play style

Community Larp discussion
#1

Which of these play styles do you like best?

  • Thin roleplaying, emphasis on having fun and laughs (e.g. Skirmish)
  • Light to heavy roleplay, but with OOC humour breaking through fairly often (e.g. Mordavia)
  • Strict adherance to roleplaying, all humour is IC except perhaps during OOC breaks from play

0 voters

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See poll.

I’ve focused on humour because I think LARP, like improv theatre, is inherently funny in an OOC way. The question is whether you prefer to embrace that or try to avoid it affecting play.

Modern settings are an interesting case, because modern humour can be incorporated without breaking character.

#2

I think it’s important to have humor in everything you do in life* and larp is just totally gagging for jokes you’ll never get me at a game where you can’t crack OOC jokes.

  • and when they bury me, I want the grave stone with “I’m not here, I’ve gone to the pub” engraved on it…
#3

Ok, we’ll make you nice funeral on the next upcoming larp.

#4

Given the heavy skew towards having some OOC humour it would be surprising if larps with strict adherance to IC culture, the sort of thing Zanii has mentioned, would attract a big crowd here.

But then, it might be a lot of people’s second favourite style so they might do it for variety.

#5

This is actually a pretty tough question for me.

I really enjoyed what happened at Ravenholme, where being in character was preferred but sometimes we just had to make an out-of-character joke. That said, I consider in-character humour to be very classy, as it demonstrates knowledge of the period as well as intelligence. I think I’d like to try Zannii’s idea at some point, though I’m fairly sure some people are always going to have out-of-character humour pointed in their direction. looks in Vanya’s general direction :slight_smile:

Do any existing LARPs in New Zealand place a strict emphasis on staying in character (on pain of telling off or whatever)? And if so, which ones?

#6

I prefer to be in character 100% of the time, but unfortunately alot of the time this just isn’t possible or practical because evidently not everyone likes this style of play.

That said I am hoping to gradually enforce a standard of remaining healthily in-character for the majority of the time at 2014 games. Being as the setting is only a few years into the future and the major social differences are outlined in the rules, there really is very little excuse to break immersion unless it’s just to be silly. There are still various blanks to fill in in regards to social structure and behavior which I hope over time will write themselves through the players, which would then eliminate the remaining obstacles to properly acting the part.

I prefer this style of roleplaying because I go to live games to really live the story and engage with other characters, which I can’t get from tabletop games. I don’t mind when tongue-in-cheek humor makes its way into the dialogue or encounters but I do get rather irked when I hear people yell about hit points or advantages in the middle of a tense combat sequence.

#7

Well, that’s the eternal trouble. You need to let others know your advantage to make it work, you need to tell them how many points you took off them, and so on. Those are all critical things in combat, and if you don’t pronounce it or pronounce not loud enough - they will not know. In Ravenholme I sometimes had to say “Iron Will” several times before the shadowfiend could get it as they couldn’t hear too well in their hoods - and it was not noisy at all around, so I was just trying to make it sound not very loud. Combats ARE bloody noisy, and one of my first larp impressions was a whole lot of complaining after Mordavia Reckonings that those with Advantages like Righteous and Holy were yelling them right into zombies’ faces, and the zombies were still not getting it, which resulted in player characters getting killed and players totally pissed off.

#8

[quote=“Aiwe”]Well, that’s the eternal trouble. You need to let others know your advantage to make it work, you need to tell them how many points you took off them, and so on. Those are all critical things in combat, and if you don’t pronounce it or pronounce not loud enough - they will not know. In Ravenholme I sometimes had to say “Iron Will” several times before the shadowfiend could get it as they couldn’t hear too well in their hoods - and it was not noisy at all around, so I was just trying to make it sound not very loud. Combats ARE bloody noisy, and one of my first larp impressions was a whole lot of complaining after Mordavia Reckonings that those with Advantages like Righteous and Holy were yelling them right into zombies’ faces, and the zombies were still not getting it, which resulted in player characters getting killed and players totally pissed off.[/quote]I was trying to put those same thoughts into words. Thank you, you did it so much better than I would have. :slight_smile:

There’s really no way around it sometimes. Despite how much GMs or NPCs may be hacked off by it, as a player I wouldn’t want to lose my character simply because they didn’t know about the relevant advantage(s) my character had. And in the heat of combat, I’ve learned that I will tend to yell such things out if I think they’ll help at all.

#9

Oh, I imagine how surprised they were to hear the mute talking :laughing:

#10

[quote=“Aiwe”]Oh, I imagine how surprised they were to hear the mute talking :laughing:[/quote]I can just see it now.

NPC fighter: Strike down!
Mute fighter with Sure Footing: …! (tries to sign “Sure Footing” while the battle continues)
NPC fighter: Hurry up and fall over, damn it.
Mute fighter with Sure Footing: …!!! (but, but, but…)

:open_mouth:

#11

why is it that combat is drasticly huge in LARP? i mean in comparison to real life. magicaly persuaided cuthulu attacks aside, people are very quick to stab each other.

(before people hit me, this is just a inquiriy, not a compliment or critism.)

#12

Violence is big in the real world, too. Just not so much where we live. Humans have an unfortunate built-in fascination with it.

We’re violent animals. Many animals are.

#13

I think conflict is more interesting than harmony in a game.

#14

I agree with Aiwe and Luciano about this being part of the general problem of larp (so how DO I strike someone down without either making a call or giving them a right good whalloping they’ll yell at me for later?) but there is only one kind of combat call that really grinds my nerves. It’s the “I HIT YOU X MANY TIMES!” call.

Often called by a frustrated PC when the monster they’re fighting refuses to go down and seems rather senseless. Do PCs assume that the NPCs are cheating to keep their beloved character Orc #5 alive? Or that the NPC secretly has it in for this (randomly come-across) player they’re fighting and will do whatever it takes to down them?

The times I’ve NPCed and a PC has called “I HIT YOU X MANY TIMES!” on me, they have not hit me that many times (or some of those have landed on my shield) and the implication that I was a cheater or somehow behaving dishonourably in combat was incredibly unpleasant. The “I HIT YOU X AMOUNT OF TIMES” call is more immersion breaking than the occasional witty quip.

More often than not, the monster has a good reason not to go down.

#15

I second this.

Ryan is right. NZ is an extremely safe place, and don’t also forget about the time - 13th century was much less safe than 21st in most of places anyway.

Even after living in NZ for 4 years I still have this habit: when walking after darkness and passing a company of strangers I’m ready to dash aside and run - just in case they attack me, maybe even with knives. It’s a Russian modern reality, happens all the times on streets of Moscow.

So there is nothing non-realistic in having much combat in larps.

#16

I think my point was entirely misunderstood.

I am not griping about combat or effect calls. Calls are fine and are usually crafted so that they fit into the game’s rhetoric with fairly little intrusion. If I had a problem with people saying “Iron Will” to let someone know that they’ve just been Iron Will’d, I wouldn’t have written the rules around Iron Will so that they required you to say “Iron Will”.

I’m referring to when I hear someone loudly state “we need somebody with lots of hit points” (or worse, stating in an in-character situation exactly how many they have left as I have seen happen many times) or just in general using the actual names of combat calls in situations when they are not being used as combat calls.

Calling “strike down!” to strike someone down is perfectly fine, that’s how it works.
Saying “I have strike down” or “we need someone with strike down” is a situation where the statement could easily be dressed up a little to keep things in theme.

#17

Ryan’s rule of larp mechanics: if there are mechanics in a larp, people will talk about them OOC during play. :wink:

The only sure way I know of stopping people talking OOC about mechanics during larps is to get rid of the mechanics. Tryst had almost no mechanics, and no OOC chat at all.*

This is one of the reasons I’m keen on the locational wound system for larps with combat, as opposed to hit points. “My arm is wounded” is both an in-character and out-of-character statement in a way that comments about hit points can never be. People are still talking OOC about the mechanics (because there are still mechanics) but the words used do not break character because they are synonymous with the relevant IC words.

  • This was also because the players at Tryst were playing themselves in contempory culture, so there hardly any IC/OOC knowledge gap requiring clarification. And no need to go OOC to incorporate contempory humour or interests, to go back to the topic of the poll. It was therefore notable as the only larp I’ve seen where characters playing Playstation was a valid in-character option and suited the scenario.
#18

I thought that you always advocated the hit point system for its simplicity and unobtrusiveness, as opposed to limb- and area-based damage where people had more to keep track of?

#19

Nah, he’s been into developing a simpler combat system for ages. We even playtested it last year. A key reason is to reduce the reliance on people keeping track of their hit points.

As I am sure you are aware, some people seem to take way more hits than they should, but with a simple “1 Hit And You’re Down” system then it’s obvious when someone is cheating.

We tested a system whereby if a blow lands on armour, it is not counted. But if it hits an unarmoured area then you lose use of it. So, a hit to the arm would make you drop your weapon/shield and a hit to the leg puts you on the ground. A hit to the body takes you down completely.

Very cutthroat, and weapon length and armour were major contributors to success.

#20

I like that locational armour system for the same reason. “The weapon hit my armour” is true both IC and OOC as the reason a blow doesn’t wound you.

There is a slight pause in deciding exactly where a blow landed, but it’s something you can do in your head. And it’s no more of a pause than trying to figure out how many hit points you have left.

I think locational damage and locational armour are the most suitable systems for settings where combat is very dangerous and immersion is a high priority.