As inspired by some thoughts that have been posted on facebook today, this is the Diatribe location for the discussion about casting in LARPs. Do you think that GMs should have certain people in mind to play characters before the game is even written? Is it a good idea to cast blind? How should casting be run so that those who desire central roles get them on occasion? What are ‘filler’ characters, anyway?
Let the free and civil exchange of ideas begin.
Answering the last one first: I don’t write “filler” characters or “central” roles. One of my core principles for larps is that “everyone’s a star” - meaning that everyone should get roughly the same amount of plot, and that plot should matter deeply enough to them that they can feel central to their own story (and that their story matters / is interesting). In practice, it doesn’t always work out that way - there’s always one or two characters who I feel aren’t up to the level of the others. But its what I aspire to.
As for the rest: I don’t have people in mind for particular roles when I’m writing because I write a long time in advance, before I have made any commitment to running; I have no idea when a game will run, let alone who will be playing it, as I am writing (I also run a lot of games written by other people, who by definition won’t know my local group). I cast on a strict redline / preference / FCFS basis (meaning: I exclude people from roles based on their redlines, and then assign on either preference juggling or first come, first served). I leave it up to players to judge what they will or won’t enjoy. So the way to get the role you want is a) not to contraindicate it; and b) say you want it. If lots of people also want it (e.g. Dance and the Dawn - everyone wants to be the deviant or the production model), then its either a matter of looking to see whether I can satisfy second preferences, or its out with the random number generators.
As a player, I tend to seek roles based on ease of costuming, and give unhelpful answers to questionaires (“just give me anything”). Possibly I benefit from a lack of redlines, or a stated willingness to go the full Nazi if the GMs want me to.
I can’t really comment on most of this, since I think the only time I have done casting for a LARP was for a run of A Serpent of Ash, but I from what I’ve witness/experienced, I think that writing characters for particular players is a very bad idea. It seems to me that often what happens is that those characters/players end up as the stars of the game (perhaps because they get a lot more effort lavished on them), and everyone else is just there as set-dressing for them. And since the people being written for are normally the writer’s friends, it can be a poor reflection on that writer. I’m not saying that this happens every time, or that every writer falls into this trap, or that anyone does this consciously, but I think writing for someone in particular predisposes someone towards this without their even realising it.
Of course, if for some reason a writer knows who will be attending before they write the game, and can write a character specifically for each attendee, then this isn’t an issue.
I am, regrettably, guilty of doing so in the past. I think that it is a form of favouritism, and I have seen the characters in the same larps that aren’t written with anyone in mind suffer from a lack of thought in their writing. Therefore, I think it’s a negative thing because it has a negative effect on other characters written for the same larp.
I think knowing who you’re casting into certain roles is important, as you may know a person well enough to make the call as to which role they’re likely to enjoy more. However, I think it’s always important to pay attention to, and cast based on, the questionnaire answers participants submit. Sometimes a person you know well will be looking for a role that steps outside their comfort zone, and casting based on what you know of that person rather than their questionnaire answers won’t necessarily give them what they’re asking for.
As Idiot has said; if you write all characters as the protagonists of their own stories, then you won’t have a problem of different people having different levels of involvement. This does, however, prevent the writing of certain story types and social dynamics if everyone is intended to be a protagonist with near-equal influence and agency.
Really what should happen in any larp is that the potential participants are told of the social dynamic in the setting, if it varies from “everyone’s equal”, so that they know what to expect, and therefore have their expectations met. In this way you can mitigate hurt feelings be aligning expectations with the characters and roles you’ve written.
Based solely on my experience and discussions with others, a Filler Character is a character that is written to bulk out the numbers of the larp, usually written for large theatre style larps in which the attendance is uncertain. These characters are usually not very central or pivotal or influential to the other characters in the larp. This is because the lack of an influential or pivotal character has a profound effect on the roleplay of other characters and participants, and the effect of that absence is usually detrimental to the experience of those participants whose characters are intended to interact with the missing character.
It is worth noting that a Filler Character is different by definition to a Furniture Character, but that Filler Characters are often Furniture Characters. A Furniture Character exists to bring flavour to the setting; i.e. being the furniture in the room, thus the name. Furniture Characters in a theatre style larp often have minimal agency, so as not to disrupt the actions and intentions of the more fleshed out and whole characters in the larp. The term is also used to describe a character that is given to a player who was expecting a character with a lot of agency and social connections, and ended up with exactly the opposite, and consequently not much to do in the larp based on their given character sheet.
One could also consider NPCs in a campaign to be, technically, furniture characters, but they differ from the above definition in that NPCs in a campaign will often have agency and influence on par with, and quite often greater than, that of the PCs.
I am a big believer in writing the characters with no specific player in mind, because that adds to the replayability of the game or dealing with issues when you don’t have that player in that role. In saying that though when you write characters and plot I find it helps to put yourself and other players you know (who may never play that role) in to that characters head and think of how they will react to different things. That allows you to try and tweak things as you write. Now if you have all ready cast the game before you have finished writing characters you can tweak characters depending on what you know the player likes and doesn’t like. The same if you have specific requests from the player.
When casting, I do my best not to play favourites, I mix up the order in which I cast, or specifically go earliest questionnaire response to latest. I like questionnaire’s as you get feedback from the players, BUT they take time, the questions can be too specific or too broad (and you only realise this once they are out there) and sometimes the answers you get aren’t helpful. ** One thing we once talked about was doing a questionnaire after a big game and asking players how closely did the character the player had match their questionnaire answers, and did they enjoy that.
This year I was involved in casting 2 games and neither had any roles that were filled before we did the questionnaire. The first Roadhouse Blues we didn’t give character choices. We just cast off things specifically asked for in the questionnaire and matched them up with some archetypes we had. The second game we did the questionnaire and then did my preferred method of sending 2 - 3 character options to each player, generally a variety of characters based off what they answered or we know they might enjoy. This is a MUCH slower process though as you need players to pick characters before you can offer those out again. The other issue is that first offer can usually only be a 1-2 sentence description so as not give away too much about different characters, that can limit how interesting a character might sound. BUT I find this has been what players have appreciated the most, having a choice depending on what mood they are in, and this has lead to some players trying characters they might otherwise not have considered.
Filler characters - I have also heard this described as light characters, where GMs have said people have said they want to come along and hang out with their friends and don’t want anything too much to do. I admit I hate these characters, because at the end of the day even if the player asked for that, it’s too easy for them to get bored and then have a bad time or be disruptive. I TRY to write every character as interesting, to have more goals than they can possibly achieve, so that way the player can choose what they want to follow up on. Having active and passive goals. Try and make every character crunchy, and then if the player wants to avoid stuff then it’s up to them (just as a writer/GM have multiple ways for plots to get into and be resolved in a game). In the flagship we had ‘optional’ characters, these were the last characters being written but purely because the least effort had gone into them at that point due to time and inspiration, they were either fleshed out fully written and completed or cut from the roster and all plots folded into other characters. This meant we turned away players, but we preferred that then sending out a character who had no serious plots/relationships. I have also seen games where they have optional players for games/or a list of characters you can pull first if you don’t get the numbers, these generally aren’t the weakest characters, but the ones with no romance plots, or have something that is critical to another character, or maybe are pulled as an entire linked group. When writing you can never be 100% sure how many players you will get. In saying this though, I know there are plenty of games where there are MAIN characters which are needed for the game.
Side note, another interesting thing we did with this flagship (and I think we can get away with because it is Wellington), is wrote the game with about 20 - 25% male characters, 20 - 25% female and 50- 60% gender neutral. That meant that anyone could have any character. But even these gender neutral characters had relationships. When we cast the character we could either tweak what relationships/romances they had, or we left them in place and had multiple same sex relationships.
All of this stuff about casting and plot though can be blown out of the water as soon as the game starts. It can be impacted by players attitude, energy levels, mental state or even OOC relationships going into a game. I know personally I have gone in to games really low on energy and it’s been a struggle. Or when the game starts, it’s amazing what players will come up with and throw at the game or other characters that the GMs may not be able to anticipate (both fantastic and bad). So end of the day we all do our best to have fun, make the game enjoyable for ourselves and others, realise the games work through a lot of hard work from writers, GMs, set dressers and especially the players, and do our best to not be a dick.
I have probably been a little guilty of the writing characters tailored players, but only because I’m a last minute person, and therefore have usually cast and sent our small blurbs before having completed all the characters. So then I have made sure that the finished character aligned with the players questionnaire. I too try and make sure that there are no filler characters. Sometimes it is hard, as with Robin Hood (there’s obviously some central characters in the original story). Actually on an interesting side note, much of the casting decisions in Robin Hood were mad around whether or not someone had archery experience. There are 4 key roles that I always try to put the best archers into, and so it actually plays a crucial part in casting that particular larp.
Personally I prefer the idea of anyone can play any character (I’m intending to experiment with taking this to its limits for a game for Chimera), particularly because as Scot said it means the game is easily re-playable.
Things get a little more difficult when you are drawing off a pre-existing setting or settings. If you just have to have Fezzik, Brienne of Tarth, and Garry Kasparov for your game, casting players who can vaguely resemble/pull them off might be important, but ideally there should be several players or potential players who can play the role, rather than one and only one person. As Prema mentioned, OOC abilities are sometimes important - Garry Kasparov should probably be played by someone who knows a little bit about chess.