I want to directly address the issue of players knowing things they shouldn’t in LARP, and in player-created games in particular. Note that when I talk about “mooks” here, it’s shorthand for secondary characters that are played part-time by a player.
Information hiding
I’ve postulated before that the difference between LARP and improvisational drama is that in LARP you have information hiding (see What’s the difference between improv and roleplaying?). Information hiding is when players (NOT their characters) aren’t aware of all the information that is true in the fictional setting.
In impro, this doesn’t usually happen because each session takes place within earshot of all the players. No information is hidden from anyone. This approach could be used in LARP, but usually isn’t.
In LARP, information is frequently hidden. This allows the players to experience the immersive enjoyment of discovery during a game, as opposed to just their characters experiencing it. Apart from being enjoyable, this discovery process is one of the gamist challenges that players face. They must make decisions based on information that may not be complete, and use their decernment to figure out what the underlying truth of a situation is. The player’s ability to do this will usually affect their ability to achieve their character’s objectives. They are often doing this competitively against other players who are attempting to use misinformation against them, which adds to the challenge.
Information leakage
When players find out stuff their characters don’t know, you get a kind of information leakage. Is the player able to carry on playing their character as ignorant? I see three issues here:
-
The players don’t get the enjoyment of in-character discovery (although they may enjoy the thrill of knowing something OOC that they shouldn’t). This is a loss only to that individual’s enjoyment of the game, although it may have flow-on effects on others, especially if they don’t keep the information to themselves.
-
The gamist challenge of IC information processing has been removed. This can affect the player’s enjoyment if they have a honest approach to solving game challenges, as they may feel unable to play the information game honestly when they already know the truth. If they have a dishonest approach, it can affect other players enjoyment of the information challenge. For example, if one player has an IC secret and is spreading disinformation about it, and another player finds out the secret OOC and actively uses their knowledge to achieve their IC objectives, the player with the broken secret will feel cheated.
-
A player who knows information that their character does not may be tempted to plan out their character’s reactions to finding out that information in advance. I think all pre-planning in LARP is bad (see my Linear is Shit rant for why), so to me this is a bad thing.
Information hiding in player-created larp
So… back on the topic of player-created games. Assuming we want to stop players from knowing things that their characters don’t as much as possible, how do we go about it?
-
Players can only create fictional information (i.e. background and plot) that their character knows the truth about. That way they are not revealing to themselves anything that their character shouldn’t know, which would create an instant information paradox. Players can achieve this easily by self-regulation, although players of characters who are designed to be poorly-informed may find it to be a limitation. E.g. the player of an amnesiac character would hardly be able to create any fictional information at all. Likewise the player of an uneducated prole character might find this restrictive.
-
Players cannot play mooks that know things their primary characters don’t. This is the trickier one. Let’s assume that all player-created fiction will have some “published facts” that all characters may know if they wish to. A player could play any mook that only needs to know these published facts, i.e. a mook with no secrets. This could amount to a large number of mooks. Secondly, the player could play mooks that know their same secrets as their primary character. This may be hard to determine.
-
The mook briefing process has to be secretive and not overheard by other players.
-
What about information that a player discovers while playing a mook, that their primary character does not know? This is unsolvable. Players could attempt to avoid it happening (avoid revealing secrets to mooks, avoid playing mooks that are over-inquisitive about secrets players don’t know) but inevitably there would be some leakage. Efforts to avoid it happening might distort gameplay, which is also not ideal.
-
What about IC information being shared OC between players? Here I think it’s a matter of player culture. Maelstrom has a developed a culture of “find out in play,” and they suggest that players never discuss what their characters have been doing OOC. That’s rather restrictive, but probably the only way of actually containing information leakage in any larp, especially one where most of the secrets are invented and kept by players.
To conclude: I think there would inevitably be more information leakage in a player-created game, but that good design could minimise it. I believe that minimising it is a good idea so that players can enjoy both immersive exploration of the fiction and gamist challenges that revolve around secrets. I think it’s possible to limit leakage enough in a player-created game to keep these enjoyable aspects of the game working most of the time.
