What can possibly turn you away from a larp?

Community Larp discussion
#1

If you are playing a larp and things don’t go too well for you, so you feel bad about what is going on and start wishing you didn’t play the kind of character you are playing, or chose to do something else on that day/weekend, or just feel overall so bad you wanna hide under the table and cry - what are the things and situations that make you feel that way?

Examples: not getting enough attention and feeling neglected; GMs introduced plotline that ruined some personal things of your character; something in the plot makes you horribly uncomfortable; you suddenly realise you have no idea how to play the kind of character you made; another player is ruining the game for you; etc.

Also, how you deal with it to make yourself comfortable again? (Please note I am after answers of what you actually do, not the politically correct meaningless advise on how things are supposed to be resolved. So far the main answer from frustrated players that I personally have seen is “I quit this larp and go do something else” - but I would really love to know of alternatives, especially if they work well)

Obviously no need to mention the larp and exact situation, a generalised description is good.
The reason for the query is to come up with ways of coping with certain kinds of stress (and hopefully by ways other than just quitting things that you otherwise like doing). Just a few phrases from couple of people in the last few days were really helpful and supporting for me. It’s possible such things might be helpful to others as well.

Thank you.

#2

I’d suggest if you aren’t enjoying playing a character for whatever reason, the best solution would be to create a new character. Ideally one that lets you avoid whatever it was that was preventing you from enjoying the game.

It’s probably not realistic to ask someone else to change the way they’re playing their character if that’s what’s upsetting you, chances are even if they’re willing it probably won’t last.

I think generally if it’s a story based problem, rather than a problem with another player you could talk to the GM’s. Every GM I’ve met in NZ wants their players to enjoy themselves, and would be willing to listen to your concerns and make suggestions. Worst comes to the worst you can make a new character that hopefully avoids that storyline.

Generally a new character solves a lot, but not all problems.

#3

I personally have found the number one thing that drives players away from Live Role Play is the actions of other players. The two main groups that cause these problems are :

Power players. These people have ultimately decided that no one else in the game really matters and the other people are only there to let them show everyone how great they are. One player power will drive off 20-50 players before they give up.

LARP snobs. These are less prevalent than they used to be. They usually think that LARP is an art and only for serious players. As a rule they will belittle anyone that spends less than $1,000 on their costume and gear. They are wearisome and if allowed to get away with it will drive off up to 90% of all players.

If you can get rid of these two groups, then enjoyment of the game by the majority of players will suddenly increase dramatically. If you figure out how to do this, then please let me know.

#4

Almost all the LARP’s I’ve really been turned away from were white wolf LARP’s. I love the system as a tabletop game, but I haven’t found a live game I enjoyed.

Some reasons I don’t like games:

Far too complex rule systems that turn every aspect of being a person into a statistic that I felt I had to somehow roleplay to. E.g. if I have high “manipulation” stats then I feel I have to somehow roleplay being good at manipulating people (much easier to do if it just comes naturally based on the situation). Avoiding systems which have stats for things that I can just do helps (I don’t need a stat to tell me I can talk to people).

Feeling pressure to ‘level up’ to a desired state. White wolf games are bad for this, but I have encountered this at many games with xp requirements for reaching a power level I want (e.g. xp needed for me to be able to wield a large shield, weapon, and the armour I want, which I can’t do from the character creation points given). I find it a rather tedious process. Unlike a tabletop game, I don’t LARP frequently enough for this to be fun for me. I would much prefer to turn up and play whatever I feel like, be it a peasant or a powerful figure. I am now starting to aim for character concepts which can be achieved by the character creation process, but when there is a huge gap between what is initially available and what is potentially available, I still feel the pressure to cheery pick from the potentially available options even though I don’t like the process of getting there.

Lack of plot. This is a big one. If the game revolves around only a limited range of plot and then lets it be up to the players to create any additional plot, this can be rather difficult. Creating your own plot requires buy-in from other players or help of game masters. Also, if you don’t happen to be in the “in-group” that gets access to the main plot, the rest of the game can feel quite empty and unsatisfying, unless there is plenty of other things to do. Games where there is a wide variety of plot (and only limited railroading) are preferred.

Poor character making decisions. Some of the least fun characters I’ve played were either written by or from the imaginations of other players. A rule of thumb I now try to work with is keep the idea mine, and go through a few ideas before settling on something. An exception is when I get given characters by the GM’s - that’s fine, its a different style of game to generate your own character games. In this case, the characters given are usually made to fit right into the setting and have plot already laid out for them.

#5

[quote=“Alista”]
LARP snobs. These are less prevalent than they used to be. They usually think that LARP is an art and only for serious players. As a rule they will belittle anyone that spends less than $1,000 on their costume and gear. They are wearisome and if allowed to get away with it will drive off up to 90% of all players. [/quote]

I’ve yet to meet one of these. I’ve not seen them in Hamilton or Auckland.

#6

When I create a character for a campaign game I try to leave it very much open in terms of what the character direction is. I like to get in with group of people I think I can role play with but if things aren’t working out, I’ll make the character evolve into something different. I find these evolutions to be the best way to make the character more fun to play.

One of the other things I try to look for in games is kind of the idea of “character epiphanies”; sudden in character life changing realizations that cause my character to change direction and grow as a character. I never know what these will be going into a game but when the occasion for one arises, I like to take the character in boots and all.

A couple of personal examples of these were:

When I was playing Han I felt as a player that the Legitimate Seafarers were too strong as a group. As a player, it doesn’t suit me to play in a large strong organised group because it’s a bit like playing a game computer game on “easy”. I needed a way to get out of the group that fitted with my character. I saw Kate coming out of a meeting with all the nobility looking like she’d had the life sucked out of her. This allowed me to have an in-character epiphany that “The magistrate was a vampire who was killing my captain”. It allowed me to dial up the heat a bit in the game.

Similarly when I started playing Oasis he was originally a very innocent pure character. He didn’t smoke, drink or eat meat and he was completely chaste. He was walking with his family explaining how he was happy he was in his bachelor life style when with perfect story book timing they passed Cinder’s camp site just as she was bending over to pick something up wearing a sexy red leather skirt. The situation and timing was such that there really wasn’t any way to not role play being struck by cupid’s arrow and so I my character took a very sharp turn and evolved into someone different.

I feel that characters should change and grow as you play them. I’ve never had an event in a game make me regret playing the character I was playing; but I’ve had many events change who that character is.

#7

At a community level, I pretty much agree with that. I think that in the first instance players will be turned on or off to the hobby mostly by the actions of other players during their first games.

Yeah I agree, munchkin players can be a bit of a problem. There is the occassional Special Snowflake that I try to avoid during a game. Fortunately the games in Auckland are getting large enough now that it’s easy to avoid people you don’t share a gaming style with. I probably interacted with fewer than half the people that actually turned up to the last Teonn game and I would have had some good role playing with well over 50 people.

We’re really lucky to have an incorporated society that maintains about 20 cubic meters of costumes and weapons that are available to new players, GMs and games at no cost. We also have lots of generous people who lend gear to new players or sew them costumes to help them get started. It’s obviously working really well because pretty much every game and convention is bigger than the last one.

But I completely agree that if we had these hypothetical larp snobs that would be really terrible.

#8

“Hypothetical” being the key word. I’ve found our actual larpers to be universally helpful in helping people to look good. They’ll lend stuff, they’ll make stuff, they’ll show you how to make it, they’ll do your makeup at the last minute. Every year at Chimera I see people roped into games at short notice being kitted out in fantastic gear in five minutes. Contra Alista, its a very friendly and helpful community.

#9

Although Alista’s example is hyperbolic, I can see how some larpers could seem snobbish to others. People have different styles and expectations, and sometimes they clash.

Some people have a fairly casual “just for fun” approach, being happy with minimal costume and often socialising and joking out of character. Put several larpers like this together in a light-hearted game and they’ll be happy as Larry.

Some other people take a more serious approach to larp, preferring more involved costume and staying in character as much as possible, and enjoying games that deal with serious themes.

Those are generalisations, and plenty of people are somewhere in the middle, or with aspects of each, and there are lots of other considerations. But generally, the “serious” people may sometimes seem snobbish to the “casual” people.

I’m more in the latter “serious” camp, although my own costumes seldom live up to my standards. :wink: I don’t resent casual players at all, I think it takes all kinds and all approaches are valid. But it can lead to issues when these different approaches to play collide.

Specifically, and to answer Lucy’s question, the thing that usually annoys me in larp is when people drop out of character when I want to roleplay with them. If that happens a lot, it really drains my interest in playing and makes me unhappy.

My approach is to move on and roleplay with someone else, if possible. However, that can be tricky at a pregen larp where the person dropping out of character is written as someone important to my character.

These days as a player in someone else’s game I tend not to say “can we please stay in character” to other players, because I don’t want to force my preferred play style on them. That could spoil their game, and make me seem snobbish.

As a GM though, I am comfortable lettings players know that I’d like them to stay in character in my game. If the players don’t want that, they can play another more casual game.

#10

Thank you for sharing, guys :slight_smile:

#11

There’s very little that puts me off a game when I’m actually playing it - often I’m quite content to make my own fun, but I appreciate that I have a bit of a reputation with the 33AR GMs in this regard. I’m one of the players that will often be quite happy wandering the campground in character by myself for a few hours at a time, and to their credit they’ve usually strapped a walkie-talkie to my wrist and let me get on with it. On occasion, I do find that I have wound up in situations in pre-written games where through the random happenstance of plot I have absolutely no way of succeeding, and no particular reason to stay in that situation (aside from other players relying on me for their plot). That’s tough, and there’s very little that can be done except to tough it out, as I have real issues with eating up the GMs’ time because I’m not having fun. This is not to say that’s a bad thing, just that I have personal issues with doing it.

What often turns me off games, however, is the weird things that happen beforehand. Sudden changes in date or time, after I’ve taken time off work (I am fortunate to work in an industry where I can decide what days I want to work, but this is less helpful when the game gets moved from a Saturday to a Friday, say). Infighting or personal politics which, while sometimes unavoidable, make immersion more difficult for me. A sudden realisation that this game bears little resemblance to what it was advertised as. A character offer that doesn’t hit any of my hot issues. It takes a few of these at once to stop me from playing a game, but it does make me pause for a moment before I get excited at the prospect.

#12

Yeah, that will do it for me. My view is that every character needs a time to shine, and often there are players/characters who hog the limelight. You know, the one who wants to be at the middle of every plot, solving every problem, delivering every speech.

The other thing that I’ve found really difficult in LARPs, stuff that has made game unenjoyable (is that a word?) for me, is not having enough connections to other characters. And quality connections. Connections give you someone to run to when you neeed help, or get you roped into someon elses plot when they come to you for help.

Anyway, just my 2c.

Jon

#13

I agree with this as well, and its something that I’ve been working on for upcoming larps as well. It gets really hard when you have very little connection to other characters in the game.

#14

On a sort of related note:

larping.org/larping-with-the-enemy/