how do others see LARPing interacting with the model? just another medium for exploration, or a totally different paradigm all together?

my initial take is that the differences operate at a Technique level,
so discussion of Creative Agenda and outer boxes should still apply(*) - *but* I have trouble applying the GNS goals to LARP play

(*) although the decision "let's play this tabletop game" is obviously
different to "let's play this LARP"

the fundamental LARP Technique (that you physically represent your character) seems to prioritize Simulationism ("Live The Dream"?) and, to a lesser degree, Narritivism (protagonism is obviously easier, but still needs to be explicitly supported - frex, you could alternatively support Illusionism)

I have what I identify to be a Gamist orientated LARP in the works (development on hold till next year when I have more time) - I'd be interested to hear about thought experiments or actual play that show LARPing within the context of the model, or not fitting at all

kwill wrote: how do others see LARPing interacting with the model? just another medium for exploration, or a totally different paradigm all together?

My experience is limited to one larp, a fantasy-based affair called NERO (around Boston specifically).

It was very heavily focused on having players "do" their actions. We used boffer (foam padded) weapons, and you tended to be as good a fighter as you really were. The rules could give you some extra hit points, or a limited set of critical strikes per day, but this didn't change things too much. I've seen 40 PCs hanging back from 1 monster, who happened to be played by the local weapon-master, like a scene from a samurai movie. Traps were represented by tripwires and electric buzzers, and thieves had to spot and disarm these with tweezers, scissors, etc. Magic was delivered by touch or thrown bird-seed packets; if you missed, you missed. So I'd say it was gamist in the same way as a basketball game, direct competition between players.

Simulationism was also fairly well served. High production value stuff never worked too well (like a dragon played by five separate people...) but on the low end, you can't beat it for immersion. Sitting in the shady corner of the tavern, talking to a furtive guy in a cloak who's slipping a clinking pouch of money into your hand, all while you both keep an eye out for spies or evesdroppers; its a great thrill.

The one thing I can't see working well in a larp (at least this kind) is Narrativism. I think a small group of people could agree on a premise and create story among themselves, but it wouldn't be easy. Larping doesn't seem to offer much chance for director stance. You never know when some innocent soul will wander into your midst and start talking with you about something unrelated. Or when the location will be suddenly overrun with invading goblins in the middle of a tender scene.

I should mention that these events usually had upwards of 120 people, between NPCs and PCs. Smaller games may offer a much different CA mix. Just thought I'd throw my experiences into the data pot. I do think that the GNS divisions still make sense, at least as a framework in which to consider larping. Maybe we could say that larping is a form of role-playing that does not admit Nar (which now that I think about it, I don't think is true), but unless some previously unknown CA were to be available in larps, I would consider it a different medium of role-playing, rather than a separate paradigm.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
I'm currently convinced that this is true, and there actually is no psychological structure in the head of the larper corresponding to the one mr. Edwards abstracts as the list of Character, Setting, Situation, System and Color.

Well, seems that my understanding of the theory failed, as I warned. Let's see if I can salvage something.

kalyptein wrote:

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
I'm currently convinced that this is true, and there actually is no psychological structure in the head of the larper corresponding to the one mr. Edwards abstracts as the list of Character, Setting, Situation, System and Color.

I would tend to disagree with this. Now I have no background in acting, theatre, or art theory, so I approach this exclusively as a table-top gamer. I don't think players, probably not even ones familiar with Forge theory, think too much about about the elements of Exploration during play, they just explore what they want to explore. I'm not sure if you were suggesting that they did in table-top and not in larping. I don't think that these exist as a psychological structure in the sense that they are consciously considered, but I think the same elements to be explored exist in both mediums.

There is a system to be explored in the form of abilities (deal 2x damage...

etc. Character exists in a form very similar to traditional rpgs. Setting and Situation would tend to merge,...

Since Social Contract underlies pretty much any cooperative human activity, I think the Model Formerly Known as GNS works very well through all its levels. At the level of technique there will probably be a strong divergence into table-top vs larp technique, but Technique and Ephemera will still exist as levels.

kalyptein wrote:
The one thing I can't see working well in a larp (at least this kind) is Narrativism. I think a small group of people could agree on a premise and create story among themselves, but it wouldn't be easy. Larping doesn't seem to offer much chance for director stance. You never know when some innocent soul will wander into your midst and start talking with you about something unrelated. Or when the location will be suddenly overrun with invading goblins in the middle of a tender scene.

I should mention that these events usually had upwards of 120 people, between NPCs and PCs. Smaller games may offer a much different CA mix. Just thought I'd throw my experiences into the data pot. I do think that the GNS divisions still make sense, at least as a framework in which to consider larping. Maybe we could say that larping is a form of role-playing that does not admit Nar (which now that I think about it, I don't think is true), but unless some previously unknown CA were to be available in larps, I would consider it a different medium of role-playing, rather than a separate paradigm.

Hi there,

No one's going to like this answer ...

I see LARPing, relative to role-playing, very much like nightclubbing is to dancing.

One might dance at a nightclub. One might do so strictly as a subordinate sub-topic of some other social goal, such as getting drunk or getting laid or whatever. Or one might dance as an end of its own, which to be sure exists in the social contract of the situation, but can then be discussed as dance.

Insert role-playing for dancing and LARPing for the clubbing in the above paragraph, and you got my view, bang on.

Now, insofar as we're talking about the role-playing per se, insofar as it's occurring within the context of the LARP, then I think the model applies to it in full.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
I see LARPing, relative to role-playing, very much like nightclubbing is to dancing.

Hi there,

Actually, my above post constitutes pretty much the entire depth of my understanding about the issue. Which is not to dismiss it, but rather to say, I'm now pretty much an audience member for this thread, and taking notes, rather than much of a resource.

Anyone's insights about the questions you raise, Eero, will be greatly appreciated by me.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
I see LARPing, relative to role-playing, very much like nightclubbing is to dancing.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
That's very insightful, this's why I honor the man!

I am very glad that Ron underlines his limited insight in the issue. Eero; please honor Ron for such honesty, and not for "insights" which is nothing but misguided attitude (prejudice).

The "paradigm" of roleplaying games is interaction (the setting of the game will grow together with the actions of the participants, at some level, making them co-creators of the fictional universe). I'm simplifying this point, to get to the gore, so please bear with me.

Live action roleplaying, computer roleplaying (roleplaying that is, not tactical simulations like Baldurs Gate, not everything stated as "RPG" at the box is in fact a roleplaying game), text-based roleplaying and dialogue-based roleplaying (tabletop) all have this in common. It's their paradigm, and set them apart from other forms, like film, theater, literature and storytelling.

So we may consider all of these roleplaying games to be different versions of roleplaying. That is the easy part.

As for possibilities within each type, I can not evaluate computer and text-based RPGs. I've participated in a handful of MailRPs, and have tested some RPGs on the computer (true RPGs, one computer based, and several web-based), but my first experience has been with Tabletops and LARPs, both as a gamewright and participant. So I will address these in the following.

Tabletops:
- You all know that the field is broad in this kind of RPGs, with a great variety of methods, settings and genres. That is especially true for the indie-scene; the modern games of today, many of them testing the known limits of the form. What is more: tabletop roleplaying games vary very much in goals, from loony-toony comedy, to horror and social drama.

LARPs:
I suspect the LARP-scene in the US to be quite different from the Nordic scene. It may be that the arguments presented here is coloured by how larps are made/used/considered in the US: I will base my arguments on the Nordic scene, which I know firsthand and quite well.

The Nordic larp-scene has seen an upsurge of original and experimental LARPs through the nineties, and has seen elements and experiences from these LARPs, seeping into most arrangements of today. The form as we knew it back when I started larping (fantasy, and quite GM-ridden), has changed into something quite unpredictable and wide in its range of possible methods, settings and genres. What is more; modern day larps vary as much as anything in dramatic goals, from burlesque comedy set to the Orient Express (and played out aboard a train), to the realistic 1944-conflict between German soldiers and Norwegian civilians in a small village on the Norwegian coast (played out on location), and further on to arrangements like a surreal one man larp inside a toilet (a single player, and ten insidious "game masters").

Conclusion:
Consider my description of these two versions of roleplaying games. The similarities of the two fields is not construed by me. They are indeed parallell in development, althoough the larp-field is developing much faster than the tabletop-field. Larps in the Nordic countries has done in ten years, what tabletops worldwide has done in thirty. This is not due to some superiority of form, just due to some significant differences in the gameframe of larps and tabletops. Larps are setting and arrangement-based, while tabletops are setting and system-based. The arrangement-focus of larps make way for new methods in each new arrangement. The importance of having a resolution-system in tabletops, and knowing it, make both designers and players spend more time on it, and makes for a slower development of new systems.

The first and most important of the insights to be found in the many different larps in the Nordic scene, is that live action roleplaying is a form of roleplaying game in its own right, and must strive to fill its own boots, not to be some "shadow" of tabletop RPGs. This insight is important, and stressed by many Nordic larp-wrights, but still it is not an all-dividing cleft between tabletops and live action. The "cleft" has many natural bridges.

The variety and possibilities within both these forms of RPGs, are only just begun to surface. I expect that the same is true for computer RPGs. When it come to text-based RPGs, I am in doubt if they can evolve significantly further than today, but I would be glad to be proven wrong.

However: all of these forms still remains true RPGs. They are based on the same principles; immersion in character, interaction, co-creation of the fictional universe (once again I am simplifying, the finer points may be debated).

The GNS-model:
As for the significance of the GNS-model, when applied to other forms of RPgs than the tabletop one; I hold it that the model was not written on RPGs in general, and as such are taylored to dissect and understand tabletop RPgs in specific.

Still; in my experience there is significant parallells/similarities/common ground between the forms, and this may make it worth the while to study the model for gamewrights in computer games and larps too. They may find insights there that has been overlooked in their own theoretical work. I also suspect that many of the insights presented in the GNS-model, is directly transferrable from the tabletop form to other forms of roleplaying games.

Let us look at the different versions of RPGs as young puppies of the same litter. Even though they are different, we may expect them to grow up together. To vye for supremacy in the litter is only natural, but each puppy will still grow up to become a dog in its own right. The different versions of RPGs may have much to learn from eachother, and they will at least challenge eachother to new heights. Let us be as playful as young puppies!

Let us consider all the forms I have mentioned here to be true roleplaying games. Such a stance will broaden our view, it will make way for possible synergies of form, and it is certain to strenghten the theoretical foundation of RPGs as a whole.

By the way:

I have met Mike Pohjola, and he seemed to be a young man of sound mind, quite knowledgeable with respect to larps (and from what others have told me; a great designer of them).

His knowledge in tabletop RPGs, and his skills as a designer of these, may be quite different. It is no wonder that his feats in this field may be under average. I have a similar personal experience; only the other way around; my arrangements of larps have all been disastrous, but I'm a great designer of tabletop RPGs.

Mike has probably done a bad tabletop RPG, and has grown a wiser man. Do not make it into a disaster. Congratulate him, and pray that it will happen to you too...

My LARP experience is limited to the scene in Palo Alto and Mountain View, CA from 2002 to 2003.

WITHIN THAT SCENE, across three-and-a-half larps, the GNS theory and lexicon apply beautifully. No paradigm shifts, analogies, or new vocabulary are needed to apply the Theory to it. (I cannot stress strongly enough that this analysis is purely of this particular LARP scene.)

The social contract isn't articulated beyond simply "We're here to play a XYZ (Vampire, Unknown Armies, whatever) LARP! Make your character according to the GM-provided system, and within the GM-provided setting, show up, and play!" There are unspoken social guidelines, such as The GM's Aren't Supposed To Play Favorites, and Don't Bring Out-Of-Character Grudges Into It, and players get very self-righteous and angry very quickly when they perceive that these unwritten rules are being broken. Having so many (20-40) players in the game means that perceived violations happen pretty darn frequently, but this isn't really unique to the LARP format; I've seen tabletop games with five people die due to the same sort of dysfunctional behaviors.

System-wise, the mechanics (usually the umpteenth generation revision of the local homebrew system) have invariably been gamist/simulationist, with great stock put in "balancing" the various powers and abilities. Combat is often very crunchy.

The players come to the game with their own creative agendas, just like in any tabletop game. The rhetoric promotes Simulationist play, with a heavy emphasis on Actor stance and a lot of lip service given to "character fidelity". Invariably, some of these "character actor" players find that the game mechanics do a pretty good job of deprotagonizing their characters, expecially relative to the "combat monster" Gamist players. In my opinion, the "combat monster" players, though universally derided by self-proclaimed "serious roleplayers", are primarily interested in protagonizing their characters - classic gamist motivations, really.

Aside from mechanical effectiveness, "Plot" is a primary form of currency; "Plot" roughly translates to "Time spent actively roleplaying". The absence of "Plot" is "Sitting around waiting for something to happen." Plot takes several forms; there's GM-Plot, which is interaction-time with NPC's and the ongoing GM-controlled illusionist "story". There's also "Player-Plot", which is when the primary motivators for the roleplaying-time is derived from player-driven behaviors. This is most often simulationist in origin, as in "My guy hates your guy for stealing the McGuffin from him last week; now I'm out to undermine your position. Occasionally, more narrativist concerns come in, usually via limited use of Author stance - "I think that a conflict between the Romeos and the Capulets would be cool, so I'm going to have my guy stir up unprovoked trouble." Narrativist player-plot often falls flat when the intended "target" isn't interested in these kind of externally motivated events.

The GMs have their own differing priorities; some are content to dole out "plot" to the players who are most likely to be responsive to it, thus creating a situation where groups of players with well-aligned creative agendas go off and have a grand time, leaving other players to hang around the designated in-game gathering point and complain. Other GMs try to involve as many players as possible, but the CA gulfs make this tricky. Still other GMs see it as their mission to make players "happy", usually by satisfying their CA's one in-game scene at a time. So, that might include a narrative-oriented scene with player A, and a gamist-oriented challenge with player B… In the long run, when the GM attempts to reconcile all these different scenes and events into their illusionist metaplot, things get really incoherent really fast.

In short, it's Incoherent Sim/Gam Writ Large, with no shared Creative Agenda and a very messy social contract, and it plays out about how you'd expect. The theory applies beautifully, both to articulate why the parts that work well did indeed work, and also why the unsatisfying parts were unsatisfying.

Tomas HVM wrote: Ron Edwards wrote:
I see LARPing, relative to role-playing, very much like nightclubbing is to dancing.
Eero Tuovinen wrote:
That's very insightful, this's why I honor the man!

I am very glad that Ron underlines his limited insight in the issue. Eero; please honor Ron for such honesty, and not for "insights" which is nothing but misguided attitude (prejudice).

The "paradigm" of roleplaying games is interaction (the setting of the game will grow together with the actions of the participants, at some level, making them co-creators of the fictional universe). I'm simplifying this point, to get to the gore, so please bear with me.

Conclusion:
Consider my description of these two versions of roleplaying games. The similarities of the two fields is not construed by me. They are indeed parallell in development, althoough the larp-field is developing much faster than the tabletop-field. Larps in the Nordic countries has done in ten years, what tabletops worldwide has done in thirty. This is not due to some superiority of form, just due to some significant differences in the gameframe of larps and tabletops. Larps are setting and arrangement-based, while tabletops are setting and system-based. The arrangement-focus of larps make way for new methods in each new arrangement. The importance of having a resolution-system in tabletops, and knowing it, make both designers and players spend more time on it, and makes for a slower development of new systems.

The first and most important of the insights to be found in the many different larps in the Nordic scene, is that live action roleplaying is a form of roleplaying game in its own right, and must strive to fill its own boots, not to be some "shadow" of tabletop RPGs. This insight is important, and stressed by many Nordic larp-wrights, but still it is not an all-dividing cleft between tabletops and live action. The "cleft" has many natural bridges.

The GNS-model:
As for the significance of the GNS-model, when applied to other forms of RPgs than the tabletop one; I hold it that the model was not written on RPGs in general, and as such are taylored to dissect and understand tabletop RPgs in specific.

Let us look at the different versions of RPGs as young puppies of the same litter. Even though they are different, we may expect them to grow up together. To vye for supremacy in the litter is only natural, but each puppy will still grow up to become a dog in its own right. The different versions of RPGs may have much to learn from eachother, and they will at least challenge eachother to new heights. Let us be as playful as young puppies!

Let us consider all the forms I have mentioned here to be true roleplaying games. Such a stance will broaden our view, it will make way for possible synergies of form, and it is certain to strenghten the theoretical foundation of RPGs as a whole.

First off, I'd like to point out the importance, in this discussion, of taking into consideration not only the great differences in larp-tradition between the nordic countries and the US, but also internally in scandinavia, and even within each country. The differences exist on many levels, but for the topic at hand the closeness of ties to tabletop gaming is primarily of interest. (I must also point out that I am writing out of my knowledge of the norwegian larp-scene, which is the only one I am familiar with from personal experience.)

Larp has arisen out of tabletop gaming, as far as we know. It has met and exchanged ideas with dramatic arts and historical reenactment, and grown and evolved on its own. Still, the ties to tabletop-rpg remains, at least historically. Some larp traditions, such as the finnish and to an even greater degree, the american, seems to remain close to their tabletop roots. Others, such as the norwegian one, have nearly cut those ties alltogether. There is a growing trend in norway of identifying larp as an adult form of "rollelek" which is a term for childrens make-believe games with characters. It might be that larp as practised in norway has come full circle, ending up closer to the actual roots of role-playing itself: the urge to play make-believe games.

Dogma'99 (by Lars Wingård and Eirik Fatland) defines larp as "a meeting between people who, through their roles, relate to each other in a fictional world." If you add a clause about physicality, to draw the line against tabletop-rpg, this is a working definition, in that it includes only the bare necessities of larping. It is of course the physicality that separates larp from tabletop, in that it does away with much of the need for system (time and space are present in persona), and as it limits what you can do as a player. For instance fighting and magic usually looks very silly, and you can't sail across the sea. I would however also point out that size does matter. A larp with only five players is very close to a tabletop game, and the division runs only along the lines of physicality. A larp of 30 players, or 80 or 250, is something quite different, and it makes totally different demands on organization. Still, it is a form of roleplaying, although it might be closer to the motivational roots of the activity.

The GNS-model (as proposed by Ron Edwards) should therefore to some degree apply to larp. Actually, a cousin of it, called "the Threefold Model" (by Petter Bøckmann) has been utilised for some time by larpers in Norway. I personally think that a modified version Edwards GNS-model would prove fruitful for larp as a form (I have actually been toying with the idea of writing one). However, the essential point here is modified.

I will try to sketch out some modifications that are necessary, in my opinion, to adapt the GNS-model for larp.

Firstly, I think the concept of Exploration has to be renamed Experience in the larp version. Larp is not about exploring a collectively imagined space, but about experiencing a shared physical illusion created by consensus. These are similar, but not identical, as exploration demands a much greater degree of activity on the part of the player. It is possible, although not necessarily interesting, to experience a larp rather passively. This is because the illusion exists in the physical space shared by the participants, not in a shared imagined space.

This slightly changes the nature of the different GNS-goals. The narrativist goal is the experience of participation in the story of the larp. The simulationist goal is the experience of immersion, usually in character (due to the influence of the Turku-school) but concievably also in situation or mood. The gamist goal is the the experience of competition, usually against other players.

System is not so much of an issue in larp, as such, because those larps utilizing resolution systems are in fact playing "tabletop" when those systems are utilized, in that they move play from a shared illusion in a physical space, to a shared imagined space. The lines are fluid, of course, as in most closely related phenomenons. Still, it is primarily the parts of the GNS model that concerns why the game is played and the implications of the different motivations for play that are relevant to larping, not the otherwise exellent thoughts on structuring game systems.

Best regards,

Erling Rognli

Eero Tuovinen wrote: You certainly can say that larping is a similar and equal form, but that's a long way of from any analytical position on the matter.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: I don't know why, but those roleplayers who mainly larp seem to need the merit of tabletop on their side.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Anyway, this isn't the issue of the thread, the same as Mike's game isn't. Technically, the "psalm of the larper" you go through in your post isn't either, but let's take a look at that to clear up what we are actually talking about, shall we?

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Therein it is stated that all forms of roleplaying (interaction) are similar and equally important and prestigious.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: ... Like the above piece about roleplaying being defined by interaction. Edwards, for example, seems to disagree (Exploration), and overall it's not nearly so self-evident that you could just state it without considering the ramifications.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: After all, to be an useful definition, the above should conceivably differentiate what is commonly understood as roleplaying from what isn't, otherwise it's a definition for something else.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Completely apart from the discussion, this is one spurious analysis. I'd be glad to discuss it in another thread.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: The thing we've been talking about has been if the relation of larping to roleplaying is that they are subsets of one or the other or if their relation is just a family resemblance.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: ... let's keep these nordic-peculiar arguments about the relative merits of the forms off-line for now. I for one don't really want to have this same conversation in the Forge, and I imagine this isn't the first time for Thomas either.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: For those who aren't used to the unique mix of artistic intellectualism especially prevalent in the nordic countries this might be hard to understand, but there seems to be a tendency for conversations to formalize to some kind of rituals between cliques. I for one have personally actually had this very same conversation two or three times, where an avid larper sermons me about how larping is an equal but different form and I try to timidly ask questions like "Why?" and "How?" meanwhile wondering if I ever ejaculated anything to the contrary.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Anyway, to recapitulate: it seems that from a purely empiristic viewpoint people see the GSN model applying to larping quite well. Is this because the substructure of a larp is actually the same as in a tabletop game, or because these people are used to using the model and therefore see it's distinctions facilely even where they aren't warranted?

Erling Rognli wrote: It might be that larp as practised in norway has come full circle, ending up closer to the actual roots of role-playing itself: the urge to play make-believe games.

Hohum, it's probably better to stop while we are ahead, assuming nobody else has a fresh viewpoint. I call it as I see it, and I see that this discussion isn't going anywhere. Apparently we have grossly different perspective on what we are talking about, in what sense, and in which social context. I repeat that I'm familiar with the acerbic continental intellectualism and it's style of discourse. I just don't want to have that kind of conversation here, as I imagine that it would just seem terribly rude and pointless to others reading the forum.

It's a clear sign of a dead conversation when both participants take turns writing essentially that "you aren't staying with the issue, you aren't even looking at what I said". If I really misunderstood what you wrote, then you equally understood hardly a word of my missive; I just tried to convey that a) I've heard this line of conversation one too many times and b) it isn't even pertinent to the topic at hand, because everybody agrees that larping is a prestigious and independent form.

So let's both desist from this until someone else steps in for some guidance on the direction? And sorry about the name, I was dimly aware of it when writing, but didn't think that an anglised form would hurt. Mea culpa all the more.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Completely apart from the discussion, this is one spurious analysis. I'd be glad to discuss it in another thread.

Whoa. I miss a day, and look what happens.

I'm going to suggest that the core concepts of the three creative agendae central to the Edwards theory apply to all forms of role playing, and to most other forms of social interactive entertainment (e.g., games). I'm not a LARPer, and have only known a few, but I've read quite a bit about the experiences and seen a lot of similarities between it, traditional roleplaying, MUD/MUSH/MMORPG play, and other forms.

I'm going to oversimplify those three creative agendae, because to some degree having them too simple and then clarifying them is easier than starting too strict and broadening them. Understand that these simplifications may admit some errors in their application, but that they're close enough to give the flavor. Also, I always speak of creative agendae in terms of player motivations; Ron always speaks in terms of observed player conduct. We actually do agree on this subject, but it requires a rather careful delineation of exactly what "motive" means.

If you play the game in order to test your skill or show your ability to others, to meet the challenge or otherwise shine for your superior ability, you're playing gamist.

If you play the game to explore moral, ethical, religious, legal, or personal issues of the sort that would or could be the center of a great work of literature or a morality play, seeking to create a story about how people were impacted by their choices in these terms, you are probably playing narrativist.

If you are most interested in the experience of being here, of that great intellectual exercise of being someone somewhere, walking in someone else's shoes for a while, seeing things that don't exist or going places you can't go or imagining what it would be like if you or the world was different than it is, that's simulationism.

So the question is, why do people play LARPs?

The obvious answer, and the same answer that applies to all social games, is that we play these games as an excuse to get together and interact with each other--it gives us something to do while we socialize. However, this is an inadequate answer, because it leaves us with the question still in front of us: why do people play these games, as opposed to something else? We could as easily (or more easily) socialize in the bowling alley or at the card table or playing pinball or eating cake and ice cream or drinking cocktails. Why do we play these games? What is their appeal, beyond getting us together?

The answer almost always is one of those three things: we play because we want to show off, or examine moral issues, or experience another world (simplified, again).

If there is some other appeal to LARPs that isn't really essentially one of these, I haven't heard anyone identify it. Those mentioned here seem mostly to be gamist and simulationist; I have heard of one LARP in which there were strong narrativist influences (and I think I agree that sheer numbers make narrativist play more difficult, but small LARP groups could pull it off easily.

As an aside, I think there was a bit of a reaction from some of us old-time "real" rpg players against LARP when it first started to emerge. In the late seventies and early eighties one of the charges raised by critics of RPGs (particularly among conservative Christians in the US) was that players physically acted out what their characters did, notably in casting spells. The answer to this universally was that the critics were idiots because they had no idea of what actually happened at the table--players did not act out what their characters did, but merely described it. Suddenly there was a group of gamers out there who were making the charges true--they were physically acting out whatever their characters did, and making the job of defending RPGs against these charges tougher. Apart from the reaction of "why do you need that?" on our part, there was also this other aspect of, "you're going to get us all in trouble". The immediate reaction was to ghettoize LARP as something abberant that was not representative of "real" role playing, and thus to maintain the defense that the critics were just factually mistaken about this. I'm sure I said more than once that real roleplaying games did not involve acting out the parts; I apologize for any offense that may have caused to LARPers, who certainly are real role players.

In Erling's excellent post (and by the way, welcome to The Forge), he wrote: I think the concept of Exploration has to be renamed Experience in the larp version. Larp is not about exploring a collectively imagined space, but about experiencing a shared physical illusion created by consensus. These are similar, but not identical, as exploration demands a much greater degree of activity on the part of the player.

I quite agree that larp and verbal roleplaying* are closely related, and that the lines are blurry. Still, there are differences that warrant modification of theory, to make it relevant for larp, at least in the form it exists in Norway. As I pointed out, the american larp-culture, or at least my impression of it, and the norwegian tradition are rather different. It seems to me that american larps very often are verbal roleplaying games made physical.

[digression]
Physical in the american sense, that is. In Norway we are quite amazed by the percieved timidness of american larp. Larp concepts such as "Minds Eye Theatre", and its use of paper/rock/scissors is used as sort of a joke among norwegian larpers, as is the to us ridiculous "NO touching!!!" rule and the use of cards to represent props.
[/digression]

The way I see it, american larp simply hasn't realized its potential and remains, as I claimed in my last post, very close to its verbal roots. This might make the GNS-model as described by mr. Edwards more directly applicable to this form of larp, but as written it doesn't quite describe the larp-reality I am working within.

I agree that experience and exploration are quite close. However, I still think a distinction is in order, because in my opinion the term experience better describes the activity and attraction of larping. The difference between the use of props, physical acting and such in verbal roleplaying and larping is its purpose. In a verbal roleplaying game the purpose of such elements is assisting the exploration of an imagined space, through evoking and stimulating the players (and the GMs) imagination. In a larp the physical representations is what is actually being explored, which in my opinion should be distingusihed from the form of exploration utilized in verbal roleplaying, by terming it experience. The use of imagination in larp is primarily the suspension of disbelief, not the conjuration of an imaginary space.

Further, I think the creative agendas of the different modes when applied to larp deviate slightly from their verbal roleplaying counterparts.

M.J. Young wrote wrote: The answer almost always is one of those three things: we play because we want to show off, or examine moral issues, or experience another world (simplified, again).

I have extensive LARPing experience with boffer LARPs, Vampire LARPs, and ILF-style LARPS (closer to the Scandanavian model) in the United States, so I feel I can put my two cents in here...

In short, it's Incoherent Sim/Gam Writ Large, with no shared Creative Agenda and a very messy social contract, and it plays out about how you'd expect. The theory applies beautifully, both to articulate why the parts that work well did indeed work, and also why the unsatisfying parts were unsatisfying.

Now we are getting somewhere!

People seem to agree that the modes are relatively easily seen in larping. Even the narrativistic one - I've myself penned a game that was effectively a larp (or trivial to convert to one) and strongly narrativistic. This is quite clear both empirically and in theory - people still have essentially the same motivations when they go to the forest.

The aspect of the question I'm more interested in is how the other levels of the theory are affected by a larp. I myself suggested yesterday that there might be a difference on the level of exploration, in the sense that the things explored are irreducibly different in a way that affects all other levels. Our norwegian friends seem to agree, and this difference is what interests me in relation to the GSN theory.

Mister Rognli straight out wrote:
I agree that experience and exploration are quite close. However, I still think a distinction is in order, because in my opinion the term experience better describes the activity and attraction of larping. The difference between the use of props, physical acting and such in verbal roleplaying and larping is its purpose. In a verbal roleplaying game the purpose of such elements is assisting the exploration of an imagined space, through evoking and stimulating the players (and the GMs) imagination. In a larp the physical representations is what is actually being explored, which in my opinion should be distingusihed from the form of exploration utilized in verbal roleplaying, by terming it experience. The use of imagination in larp is primarily the suspension of disbelief, not the conjuration of an imaginary space.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Now, let's finish with a short comment about the out-of-game conserns in larps. Xiombarg interpreted mr. Edwards' insight as referring to the social outgrowths of larp scene. Much as we all might hate condescending, self-important larpers (that's a joke), one should remember that whatever negative behaviour can be seen, it is not relevant to a theoretical discussion if it doesn't spring out of the form itself. Otherwise players who aren't interested in the game and just want to hang out are a problem of the scene, not the form.

The problem with LARP is large scale social contract. It's easy to get a group of five agreeing on what they are trying to do (even if not overtly stated), but thirty or seventy is a whole different matter.

As others have said, agreeing that everybody is playing with vaguely Sim goals is an easy default. Since LARP tends to be attractive to people who want an "immersive" experience (the costumes and tendency to stay in character as much as possible encourage this), most people tend to drift towards Sim by general agreement.

In many LARPS I've seen frustrated gamist goals(power advancement conflicting with "realism") and frustrated narativist goals (characters created with obvious thematic goals in mind dying because of arbitrary "realism" being a common one). This leads to furstrated players complaining that LARPing is boring, or not proper roleplaying, because their normal aims are not being met by the way LARP tends to work. Such players often leave, meaning the situation perpetuates itself.

Gamist play happens quite regularly in LARP, from old school style Dungeon bash games in Fantasy Boffer LARPs to the more political games of Minds Eye and Freeform scenarios ("Rules-less" games which rely on GM fiat)

Narativist play is certainly possible, and it's more common with small groups where the players have an understanding that they're all aiming for a particular goal. This is most successful when the Storyteller/Ref/whatever states upfront that there's a thematic question and uses GM fiat to help enforce it. There's little rules support for it though (I think the Nobilis LARP comes close, but it's a while since I read the rules)

From my experience then, the only difference between LARP and tabletop roleplaying is that the players are in costume and move around. And even these are optional. In general, it has the same mess of conflicting assumptions that tabletop does. So it fits nicely into the model really...

-Matt

Matt wrote: The problem with LARP is large scale social contract. It's easy to get a group of five agreeing on what they are trying to do (even if not overtly stated), but thirty or seventy is a whole different matter.

this began as a brief note to say although I haven't had enough time to
contribute, I have been eagerly reading, but typing on (and on) I'm now
thinking we may be ready to move into new and divergent threads...

we seem to agree that LARPing can be discussed within the boxes, but that the influence of the LARP technique filters both up and down - I'm not sure that we need new terminology, but each keyword certainly needs to be considered in the context of physical space and independent agents

(I don't want to brush over anyone's remaining concerns here, but we do seem to be at a point where we can discuss, frex, Simulationism as it relates to LARPing as opposed to whether or not it does relate)

eero's put in words where my difficulty was in analysing LARP in the box model: "multilateral information flow" (ie, the product of independent agents) - even in the case of a highly Illusionist LARP (ie, with strong but "invisible" GM guidance) or a LARP with a GM per player, information flow is very different from the shared-verbal-space(*) experience

(*) ha!

...I think this is a product of play that permeates the boxes, but doesn't invalidate them in discussing LARPing

I've definitely decided that the ease of Simulationist play in LARPing,
particularly with Drama ("freeform") mechanics is something that is not
neccesarily inherent to the LARP technique itself - my LARP-in-production is probably not Gamist at all (on reflection it just uses a in-LARP game as the social/temporal structure), but with this and the suggestion (or my reading) of a more abstract LARP experience in the sorcerer larping thread I'm considering less naturalistic options for future designs

for example, I have seen on the 'net a LARP outline where the player
characters where the ids, egos and superegos of three or four game-people (each game-person had his or her full quota of id, ego and superego) - the game consisted of intra- and inter-game-person dialogue where the shared physical space was presumably abstracted - I'm not sure how physical interaction between players or game-people was handled, but it's easy to see there are a range of options available where abstract does not equal "effectively tabletop"

to riff on one of the ideas mentioned in the sorcerer larping thread,
imagine a physical space where the structure is a more active constraint on interaction - certain game-actions can only be made in certain areas, there are rules to movement between areas, physical considerations such as line of sight can be brought into play (hmmm... the Turing Machine LARP?)

finally, very briefly because it's practically dogma, I am certain that
System Does Matter in LARPing and the difficulties with, for example,
Narrativist play in LARPing, may be because GM-fiat or "consensus" Drama mechanics are not the ideal support for Narrativist play in any form of roleplaying

(I should briefly note, subject to correction, that a LARP that produces a good story on reflection/after the fact is not Narrativist; a Narrativist LARP should reinforce each player-character as a protagonist all the way through - is this even feasible? I have some ideas, but this is a subject for another thread)

boffer LARP, especially as described in Nero play, definitely adds a new resolution method to the DFK trio, "I hit him because I bloody well hit him" - I think it's sufficiently distinguishable from Fortune (I've been to the Nero website before, it sounds like a blast)

if you also see avenues for more specific discussion, get threading in the relevant forums - I don't think we need to agree on the fine details of using the box model in the context of LARPing, these can only be developed in real discussion, I think, not discussion-of-discussion

my contributions may be minimal for the while, but I'll certainly be reading and promise to discuss some concrete design ideas when I get my hands stuck in next year (larpwright, what a cool term!)