If you were describing what larp is to somewhat in one or two simple sentences, what would you say? Imagine it might be anyone, and you’re trying to actually explain it. Note: your descriptions may be quoted in NZLARPS material for new larpers.
Playing in a LARP is like playing a character in a movie, except you get to write your own script.
(With appropriate expansion based on questions asked after that)
Larp is a costume party with plot. Or make-believe for grownups. Or a play where you threw the script away and the audience is on stage.
It’s kind of like being in a video game, you are the character and you actually act out all your actions
It’s playing make believe, like “Cowboys and Indians”.
It’s the act of getting into an (oftenly self chosen) role, and play it out accordingly. This is done completely on improvisation, and involves multiple players, who do the same.
(Meh, kinda crappyish, but I bet you can use shards of it XD)
Larp is interactive fiction. Like reading a book, except you are acting it out, any type of character, any genre any plot.
LARP in six words, here goes: Fucking awesome. You should do it.
n.b.: Depending on who I’m talking to and the time of year, the last four may be replaced by “Come to Teonn/Chimera/Nexus.”
Not very useful maybe, but hey, that is roughly how I describe it.
This bit was probably said to prevent that sort of answers XD.
You get to be some-one else for a while, take on the personality and abilities (and clothes) of someone from a different era or different world. There are different genres from historical to fantasy to Science Fiction and probably everything in between. Then a group of you (say 10-50, depending on the game) get together and work alongisde each other (sometimes working together, sometimes against each other) under the supervision of a “director” to attempt to achieve a particular goal.
It’s interesting how larp is so hard to define in brief that it’s necessary to compare it to some other fictional medium - movies, books, theatre, make believe, costume parties. Kinda like describing theatre as “like a book where people act out the scenes”. I guess larp is obscure enough that it needs a more familiar reference point.
Make believe is probably the closest analogy. It could be argued that larp is the same as make believe, but with more sophistication and rigidity of fictional frame. Children’s make believe often rambles from one fictional frame to another without division, and seldom contains resolution mechanics.
On the other hand, movies and books are probably more comfortable comparisons for a lot of adults. They’re forms of fiction that are popularly considered more “mature”.
When someone at work asked me about larp the other day, I gave a basic “dressing up and improvising a character” description and he said “so is it structured somehow, or does everyone just do whatever they want?” Great question, one that people probably don’t often think to ask. I dunno how to answer that one quickly either. Larp isn’t structureless like a kid’s game of pretend. But the nature of the structure depends on the larp, in complex ways that are hard to put across without lots of examples (just saying PvE or PvP doesn’t mean a lot to Joe Bloggs). There is a lot of freedom, but you can’t just do anything. I said something like “There’s some structure to hold it together.” I suspect he still has no idea how it works. 
Anyhow, don’t let my rambling prevent more efforts. There are some great soundbites here that may work well for the material we’re working on.
I’ll give the 'is it structured?" question a go =D:
It is structured to fit the ‘world’ that it portreys, and to prevent people from doing things which don’t fit the game. The structure is for the players however, and is not put on the characters that the players are playing, atleast, not noticably. There might be subtle nudges into a certain direction to follow the story, but no “You’re not allowed to do that”.
(Crap, that sucked XD)
Yep, some of the structure is to ensure consistency in the fiction.
Other aspects of the structure are to prevent squabbling about what happens.
But the most important aspect of structure is also the hardest part to describe. It’s the structure that gives players something to do. In an intrigue larp, that structure might be built on the web of relationships and between the characters and character groups. In an adventure larp, that structure is based on the external challenges provided to the players by the GMs and NPCs during the scenario.
A children’s game of pretend can often be conspiciously missing all three kinds of structure. That’s what I mean about larp being more sophisticated.
I still have no idea which sort of structure he was asking about, and quite probably neither does he. It’s much the same question as “how does it work?”.
I’ve got a really short answer =D
Structure = GM.
Yeah, I guess the role of the organiser is to ensure there is structure in the make believe, via rules or characters or setting.