The 14 (or 15?) Rules of LARP

Community Larp discussion
#1

Recently while browsing through different sets of campaign LARP rules, I found this; infinite-gateway.com/the-15-rules-of-larp/

The writer then goes on to explain these strong worded rules in more depth, and it’s a very interesting set of slightly more meta rules. Some of these things are comments I’ve only ever been told by people between games over the course of a year, and not often communicated to me for a specific game or enforced in any way (although I’m not suggesting they should be). There’s a little overlap between the rules, but I admit I like them. I have recreated them in what is hopefully a more explanatory and lighter worded way, as well as reordering them in what I hope is a somewhat related manner.

1. Don’t play a mighty warrior; play a warrior and be mighty.
Saying that you can defeat a horde of goblins single handed is great, until the horde of goblins appears, beats you up, and makes a fool of you. Make sure that you have the real-world skills to back up any claims you make about your character’s skill, unless of course you want to play someone who’s full of themselves.

2. Create your own character.
Your character shouldn’t be a direct rip from a book, movie, or any other media. It’s okay to be inspired by a character, but not to copy it outright.

3. Act like the species you’re playing.
Are you playing an elf / ork / dwarf because you are genuinely interested in portraying an alien mindset, or so you can be a human with pointy ears? Your species doesn’t make your character different from the real-life you, the way you act does. Most importantly; do not try and be overly unique. Fitting with the concept is better than breaking it.

4. You are not your skill set. You are not your equipment.
Your skills / special abilities / mighty items of ULTIMATE DOOM! do not define your character. Who he/she is, what they do and what they want are the things you should concentrate on.

5. Put effort into your kit.
Give your kit a bit of thought and effort rather than just plucking something out of your wardrobe (unless it’s your LARP wardrobe).

6. Your character is not you in fancy dress.
Play a character. Roleplay. That’s what it’s all about.

7. Keep your character background to yourself.
You don’t tell random strangers on the street your life story, why would your character tell other unknown characters about their life story? Keep it to yourself unless someone is actually interested.

8. What’s an “Out-of-character”? Are you ill?
If you’re in an in-character area, and it’s during game time, then be in character. If you want to be out of character for whatever reason then go somewhere else. Talking about OOC stuff while the game is on is only spoiling the enjoyment for those around you.

9. Don’t take the piss.
The GM’s can’t write rules for everything. Use common sense and play within the spirit of the game.

10. Weapons are pretty damn heavy.
Act like it. Just because your phys-rep is made of foam and latex, doesn’t mean that in the game world it isn’t made of dense metal.

11. Being hit hurts.
When someone hits you it hurts. A lot. Act like you’re suffering the injuries that are inflicted on your character.

12. Yea, but you didn’t. Let it go.
You may have missed out on an opportunity, but don’t whine about it. Look for similar opportunities in the future and take advantage of them!

13. They only killed your character. Let it go.
Don’t complain because your fictional persona ceased to exist.

14. You are not, nor ever will be, your last character’s twin/friend/auntie/brother/flatmate.
No reason you come up with will ever be good enough to come back as a related character and continue your previous character’s storyline. Your character died and with it all of your hard work, deal with it. Make a new character and do something different.

I’m curious to hear what other people have to say about this.

#2

#1 is the reason why I have no intention of trying to play a character who is supposed to be half-way competent with a sword, since, y’know, I’m not.

#5 is a major reason why I always crew. I just don’t like doing costuming for myself, so that leads me (along with one or two other reasons) to picking the option where I don’t have to worry about it.

And I thoroughly agree with #9.

#3

Does number 7 also apply to OOC? Then I kinda broke it XD.

#4

Rule 15 definitely does:

15. Find out in play
It’s more fun to discover stuff out about the fictional world of the larp during play, rather than OOC. Don’t spoil players’ surprise by telling them OOC stuff that their character wouldn’t know.

Of course not all larps follow that rule. But personally, I usually prefer larps that do. It’s not just the fun of being surprised, it’s also the challenge. Information is power, and discovering the truth is one of the most useful yet difficult things you can do IC in many larps. I enjoy the problem-solving of figuring out the truth before acting upon it. Being told OOC spoils that challenge.

For the same reason, I’m not a fan of truth spells.

#5

There are different opinions about this. I think so, because its hard to not know something about a character once you’ve been told it, and it reduces the ability to ask the appropriate questions about it. Its hard to ask yourself - would my character have figured that ‘x’ is really ‘y’? I always prefer to ask & reveal stuff only in character.

However if some other player knows there is an important (secretive) issue about you, they may subtly manouvre the outcome of an encounter, ask leading questions etc, so that you are put in a dramatic situation where the opportunity of the secret may come out, which greats tensions and drama and cool larp stuff.

cross post with Ryan, who kind of says the same thing

#6

I think you have to tell someone, but not everyone :wink:

#7

Heh, Well, luckily I didn’t tell everything, just the basic concept >.> And it’ll take a while until I can actually implement the character, or even finish him. So hopefully people will have forgotten most about it =D.

#8

There are 60 players at the game, that’s a lot of character info floating around. It’s a pretty fair assumption that most people won’t remember much of what you wrote here before we met your character. :smiley: But you can always delete it now, if you’re worried.

#9

It was “censored” a long time ago =D.

#10

I strongly disagree with #7 for one-off LARPs. You don’t go announcing your secrets, but my first rule of LARP secrets is to make sure that someone knows. If it doesn’t come out, it’s pointless information.

In a campaign LARP you can usually be a little more subtle about how the info gets out, but it should get out somehow. You don’t go announcing stuff to characters who are complete strangers, but when you’re creating your own plot, you need to be a bit pro-active and not expect that people will necessarily be interested in your secrets unless you work at making them interested. Dropping little hints into conversations and the like can help to get people wanting to know more about whatever it is you’re skirting around.

#11

Yeah, people don’t even remember the game rules which they are supposed to learn for the sake of roleplaying, so probably nothing to worry about :mrgreen:
I personally though feel uncomfortable when there are posts appearing with detailed character description and “what do you think?” question, or even just saying “this is my character, you’ll meet him in the game”. It somehow feels weird. One thing is to tell everyone a concept of “I’m coming as El Fish lord with a little personal army of bodyguards, see you at the game”, and a different thing is to give a whole lot of details about the said El Fish which people aren’t supposed to know so I feel very unsure of what to do with this info (I usually skip it :unamused: ).

I second this. Discussing your new character in process of generation with a friend or two is good and helpful, especially if you plan to have connected characters with them. You can discuss even with bigger group if you all come as a crowd of people who already know each other. But giving public access to that stuff… I’m just uncomfortable seeing that :blush:

Ah, but little hints are not OOC! I completely agree they are necessary, I could have much more fun in my last Wolfgang game if I was more hint-proactive.

#12

Also disagree. You shouldn’t come back as the dead character’s twin exactly, but if you created a really grand background and there’s room to play all manner of other characters that you fleshed out and play their stories, I don’t see it as a problem. I don’t think you should try to tack a new character on to the story of your dead PC, but the above ‘rule’ is pretty limiting to the creatively minded.

#13

I think the key phrase is and continue your previous character’s storyline. If the new character has a different plot arc, I can see that working.

#14

[quote=“Tetrajak”]Recently while browsing through different sets of campaign LARP rules, I found this; infinite-gateway.com/the-15-rules-of-larp/

The writer then goes on to explain these strong worded rules in more depth, and it’s a very interesting set of slightly more meta rules. Some of these things are comments I’ve only ever been told by people between games over the course of a year, and not often communicated to me for a specific game or enforced in any way (although I’m not suggesting they should be). There’s a little overlap between the rules, but I admit I like them. I have recreated them in what is hopefully a more explanatory and lighter worded way, as well as reordering them in what I hope is a somewhat related manner.

1. Don’t play a mighty warrior; play a warrior and be mighty.
Saying that you can defeat a horde of goblins single handed is great, until the horde of goblins appears, beats you up, and makes a fool of you. Make sure that you have the real-world skills to back up any claims you make about your character’s skill, unless of course you want to play someone who’s full of themselves.

2. Create your own character.
Your character shouldn’t be a direct rip from a book, movie, or any other media. It’s okay to be inspired by a character, but not to copy it outright.

3. Act like the species you’re playing.
Are you playing an elf / ork / dwarf because you are genuinely interested in portraying an alien mindset, or so you can be a human with pointy ears? Your species doesn’t make your character different from the real-life you, the way you act does. Most importantly; do not try and be overly unique. Fitting with the concept is better than breaking it.

4. You are not your skill set. You are not your equipment.
Your skills / special abilities / mighty items of ULTIMATE DOOM! do not define your character. Who he/she is, what they do and what they want are the things you should concentrate on.

5. Put effort into your kit.
Give your kit a bit of thought and effort rather than just plucking something out of your wardrobe (unless it’s your LARP wardrobe).

6. Your character is not you in fancy dress.
Play a character. Roleplay. That’s what it’s all about.

7. Keep your character background to yourself.
You don’t tell random strangers on the street your life story, why would your character tell other unknown characters about their life story? Keep it to yourself unless someone is actually interested.

8. What’s an “Out-of-character”? Are you ill?
If you’re in an in-character area, and it’s during game time, then be in character. If you want to be out of character for whatever reason then go somewhere else. Talking about OOC stuff while the game is on is only spoiling the enjoyment for those around you.

9. Don’t take the piss.
The GM’s can’t write rules for everything. Use common sense and play within the spirit of the game.

10. Weapons are pretty damn heavy.
Act like it. Just because your phys-rep is made of foam and latex, doesn’t mean that in the game world it isn’t made of dense metal.

11. Being hit hurts.
When someone hits you it hurts. A lot. Act like you’re suffering the injuries that are inflicted on your character.

12. Yea, but you didn’t. Let it go.
You may have missed out on an opportunity, but don’t whine about it. Look for similar opportunities in the future and take advantage of them!

13. They only killed your character. Let it go.
Don’t complain because your fictional persona ceased to exist.

14. You are not, nor ever will be, your last character’s twin/friend/auntie/brother/flatmate.
No reason you come up with will ever be good enough to come back as a related character and continue your previous character’s storyline. Your character died and with it all of your hard work, deal with it. Make a new character and do something different.

I’m curious to hear what other people have to say about this.[/quote]

Rule number 9 is incorrectly numbered and should be rule number 7.

#15

Only if enough people knew about larp rules that had rule number 7 consistently as number 7. I reordered them on purpose in an attempt to give them some sort of flow from one to the next.

#16

Only if enough people knew about larp rules that had rule number 7 consistently as number 7. I reordered them on purpose in an attempt to give them some sort of flow from one to the next.[/quote]There’s a UK tradition that does, I think.

#17

Only if enough people knew about larp rules that had rule number 7 consistently as number 7. I reordered them on purpose in an attempt to give them some sort of flow from one to the next.[/quote]There’s a UK tradition that does, I think.[/quote]

Yes, there is.

On another note, I probably should have said that these rules pertain more to campaign games than one-off theatreform.

#18

You realise, don’t you, that you’re ALL wrong?

There are only 15 hard and fast rules of LARP, and they are these:

1: You do not talk about NZLARPs.

2: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT NZLARPs.

3: Never get involved in a boffer combat in Asia.

4: Never go in against a Sicilian when character death is on the line!

5: If there are pirates in the game, there must be booze.

6: If there is no booze, there must be a volcano.

7: It is OK if your LARP wardrobe is bigger than your work wardrobe.

8: The day will come when you look at items in your LARP wardrobe on a Monday morning and think “…I could get away with that…”

9: It is OK to know someone only by their character name. It is not OK to yell out ‘Hey, King Leodegrance!’ to attract their attention at a social gathering.

10: Skinny dipping is not a pre-requisite of the Saturday night on a weekend LARP gathering… but it’s probably going to happen. Accept it.

11: It is OK to write fanfic about your character…it is not OK to post it online or send it to the other people involved.

12: Unless they ask you to. And even then- editing is your friend.

13: If you’re at an outdoor game and you’re not covered in mud and/or dirt, you’re doing something wrong.

14: Every rule of LARP can and should be broken in certain circumstances, depending on the rule…

15: …Except the one about booze.

#19

I bought most of my suit jackets for various LARPs (The Great Exhibition, Refuge, and various others). Due to this, a good portion of my work wardrobe IS my LARP wardrobe.

#20

Bah rules. Keep up with the times, now there are only guidelines… no culpability for the authority if they prove to be wrong that way… (yes, I have been to no less than 3 H&S courses in the last 3 weeks)