A talk from the Larpwriter Summer school on “Playing it safe”, addressing physical, social, and community safety in larp (long: 1hr 12 mins):
youtube.com/watch?v=1qnzGnz5 … r_embedded
The physical stuff is the basics: make sure people can eat and sleep and shit, make sure they don’t get eaten by bears, make sure combat is safe, and that they don’t get arrested or shot during the game.
The social stuff is about psychological effects like bleed, and social effects such as bullying (or other dangerous themes). It talks about “risky” areas - “close to home” characters, strong themes such as cruelty or intense love stories, games with unclear fictional boundaries, games that implictly break play contracts - but also that you can get the same effects in many games (especially around breaking player trust). They recommend transparency, pre-game workshops to establish out-of-game relationships, having a clear game start and end to establish boundaries, an OOC-area so people can step out if they need to, safewords, and post-game de-roling and debriefing. They also talk about the danger of “false safety” - that you need a culture where it is OK to use these safewords or step out, rather than social pressure to continue with something you are uncomfortable with.
Community safety is about taking care of the larp community: think about how your game will be perceived, by society, by neighbours, by the media, by random people finding game material on the internet. Obvious steps are warning signs (“Larp in progress! Beware men in tights!”), talking to the neighbours, being careful about what material goes on the web (e.g. photos of people dressed as Nazis). They also suggest not making provocotive games just to provoke.
Well worth watching.