Live Game Labs

(this will be cross posted to LARP Academia, International LARP Academia, LARP Alliance Advisory Council, Live Game Labs, my LJ, and the Wyrd Con group)

Inspired by a heated discussion on the Wyrd Con facebook group, I wanted to throw this question out to y’all:

What is your ideal larp?
In other words, what do you think would most satisfy you in a larp experience?
This could be something you have already participated in, and could be something you designed or played (but say which).
It could be something you’ve read about, or something you are working on. It could be an ideal that’s never attained.
It could be your very first one, but it’s more than just a great moment in a larp, but ideal larp as a whole, where nothing goes wrong.

If you could wish your perfect larp into existence, what would it be like?

I am curious because I would like to know what people seek in larps, or what gives them enjoyment. The facebook discussion was using words like “fun” and “entertainment” a lot, but I feel that those are very subjective terms. I have more than once had the most “fun” in a larp where my character died, for example. But I can see others having a horrible experience if their character dies. I ask not because I want to judge or critique, but because I am genuinely curious. I hope that you will be respectful of others responses. We each have our own desires and dreams, and I am fascinated by the variety of them. I think the larp art form can satisfy everyone, but I’d like to know what can or has satisfied you from a larp.

To get the ball rolling, here’s my response:

My ideal larp, my gold standard, my OPINION (note this is not fact, just opinion) would be one of the Lovecraft larps run by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. I’ve only read about and talked to the GMs about them, never played in one. So in reality, it might not be as cool as it sounds, but to me, they do everything I want in a larp:

total immersion – everything is exactly what it is, including yourself. If the spell is written in Latin, you better know Latin or find someone who does to translate it. There are no character stats or skills. You do what you can do. You have a character, however, but one that is based on your own abilities, a la, if you really can understand Latin, you can play a classics professor. The ultimate goal of this, which occurred in an HPLHS larp was that a player dreamt in character–it was a nightmare, and they woke up screaming. This paralyzed another player, who was so scared they couldn’t move to comfort them, just a few feet away in the next bed.

no deadline – the HPLHS larps didn’t have a set time where the game ends. They just kept going until the characters reached a conclusion (or were killed/driven insane). So a larp could last a weekend, a week, four days, one day and a night, whatever. It moves at the speed of the characters: “Hey, let’s get together tonight and go talk to that crazy old man under the bridge about those strange lights he saw.” There were some controls by the GMs, where a ritual would take place at a certain point, but I’ve never had a larp that wasn’t shackled to a clock somewhere, usually connected to the venue’s rental contract.

no Big Brother GMs – The HPLHS had GMs design larps, but then they remained behind the scenes until the end (or maybe appeared at the beginning). Because everything was 360º involvement, they weren’t there, though they usually had an NPC chaperone for the players, or played an NPC so they could be with the PCs. But I love the idea that there will be times when the PCs really are by themselves in the environment. It’s my belief that any time a player has to talk to a GM, for a rule clarification or more information about something happening in the bubble (or magic circle), the larp’s fiction hiccups. My ideal larp has me meeting the GM(s) at the beginning and then at the post-event wrap up for milkshakes, and other than that, I never interact with them.

high production value – In “Mose Ain’t Dead”, the HPLHS PCs boarded a helicopter and flew out over to the sand dunes of the SoCal desert. This was required so they could get an overhead view of a giant occult symbol drawn in the sand, hundreds of yards across. The chopper lands, the PCs meet with an NPC who hands them a shovel and tells them to start digging in the middle of the symbol. In a shallow grave is a life size withered corpse (a prop, but a very good one). It’s things like that that I would remember forever. The attention to detail, to props and items and artifacts and costumes, etc., are exceptionally high with their larps, and I really desire that. Although I can have a great time in a hotel banquet room doubling as a starship, I’d really like to experience something totally unique and special, made specifically for the narrative, and sells it. I came very close to this in a horror larp that Christian Brown (co-founder of Live Game Labs and GM of Starship Valkyrie) ran years ago at a creepy old house in Hollywood: there was a secret door under a floor rug in the living room. I lifted it up and saw a skeleton clutching some old pages of a journal, the papers ruffling in a slight breeze from the long dirt tunnel that ran under the house. I had to pause for a few seconds just to stare at this spectacle before I reached down to snatch the papers, because I was positive something was going to grab my hand as I did. I was totally in the moment, bleeding between character and player. I want more of this.

small player count, three dimensional characters – I’d rather be interacting intensely with a few characters than diluting my role-playing across many individuals. I want to engage with complex human beings with deep personalities, not a large contingent of stats, levels, or race traits. With high PC counts and timely crises, I think I dehumanize the other PCs to their roles/classes/skill sets. When I played “True Dungeon” at GenCon SoCal, it came to a stress point where I just called the other characters by their classes, i.e., “Get the cleric over here!” or “Mage, cast that detect traps spell over here.” There were only five of us, but still, I am much more interested in role playing with characters than throwing a series of numbers against another series of numbers.

danger – There were chances of injury, either physically or psychically, in some of the HPLHS larps. They were horror scenarios, so that’s to be expected, but one anecdote involves PCs being asked to jump off a second-story roof through a fogged dimensional gate where they couldn’t see the other side. The NPC they were pursuing just leapt through, but they didn’t know what was over there. When the HPLHS were recruiting for a larp they never ran, they asked my friend Mike, in all seriousness, “Do you have a phobia of being buried alive?” to which Mike replied “Not yet.” That was a diversion, they wanted to know if Mike was claustrophobic, because in the game they planned on locking him in the trunk of a car. But up front, there’s that element of “You will not finish this larp unscathed” that is very attractive to me.

Cthulhu genre – I have a preference for the horror genre, and especially the works of H.P. Lovecraft, so these types of larps would be pushing my fan-favorite tropes

Few rules – Larp rules usually bore me. I realize they are necessary, but I wish we would have more realistic ways of simulating something than memorizing a D&D handbook. I’d rather spend the time reading about the character or setting.

larps inspired by mood, tone, atmosphere – The HPLHS met as theater majors in college. They are interested in plays and movies more than gaming. This dramatic sensibility is more important to me than gaming tricks, mechanics, randomizers, puzzles, etc. They came from a drama background, not a D&D background.

I’m not sure if the HPLHS will ever run another larp; though they did run one in Sweden a few years ago as part of a screening of their movie The Call of Cthulhu. I doubt I will ever get to play my ideal larp. However, I have wanted to run something like this, but my location fell through (two different larps, two different locations). But I have another option in mind…

If you know of any larps that you think will satisfy my ideals, please let me know.

What’s your ideal larp?

Aaron

PS-that’s my ideal right now. It might change in a month, a year, a decade.