As I begin to develop Kensei, I've begun thinking about the kind of game I want to play in. You see, Kensei is a larp about competition, about being Number 1. As much as I, as a storyteller, like that, I as a player have an issue.
I've noted before that, in other games and groups I've played with, there is a decided undercurrent of wanting to win inherent in the game. We've all heard stories of Vampire games devolving because the political backstabbing was going on out of character just as much as inside, people working more for their own sake than for the game as a whole. I've been witness and party to several episodes of drama that frankly take the fun and flavor out of games, and there are entire articles of literature about horror stories of larping where someone or someones just had to get what they want, and damn the rest.
And then there is the subtle stuff. Small groups of a larger club forming into cliques that tend to only work with each other, even in other games. Where does the line get drawn when you just decide to stop playing with the larger group and branch off and do your own thing?
I think, one of the things that has always drawn me to larping is the most basic thing that separates it from most other forms of performance and gaming. It is, by it's very nature, a collaborative effort. Larps cannot and will not work if the greater body performing in it is not in some way working together. This was evident in my Mage game, where people were showing up simply because there was a game to play. There was no real drive to interact or really do anything there, which resulted in lopsided gaming and what was in effect a table top that no one really wanted to go through, least of all the person playing it.
Larping is one giant study in Group Dynamics. I swear to God, I have professors who would have mental breakdowns trying to map our interactions with one another. We are the audience to our own performances, the characters of a story that we are all writing. That's not prosaic, that's what's happening. My friend Chris, one of the best roleplayers I've ever known, told me once that larping was a social contract. You agree to a degree that you are in a room with people doing a thing. When that works, it works. It's bumpy and it needs recalibrating at all times. When it doesn't work, you fucking feel it at every step of the way.
In short, people need to be on deck for what is going on in this game. They have to agree that they want to be part of the collaborative whole, they don't all have to have the same agenda or the same methodology, but they all need to accept that they are all in this together and that each and every one of them brings something to this. They also need to acknowledge that their Characters do not equal The Players. I think a lot of the drama that goes on is when we forget that I am not He and He is not Me. As someone who supports the concept of Bleed, where you experience emotions and feelings of your characters (and vice versa) you'd think what I just said would be contradictory. It isn't. Bleed is fun, Bleed is great, Bleed is the best parts of the experience. However, when things go bad in game you have to remind yourself that this isn't happening to you, it's happening to your character. You have control of your character, you are not your character completely. I think that when we don't keep that in mind, it's easy for something In Character to be taken personally Out of Character, especially in some of the darker games.
I find this is difficult to maintain in larger, public clubs like Mind's Eye Society. You're guaranteed to get different personalities and concepts about how the game is to be played when the only major requirement for membership is to be a paying member of the club in good standing. I've seen people who, in any privately run group, would have been thrown out on their ass and/or beaten to crap for the amount of abusive drama they've leveled to a people. I'm not just saying they there are levels of disagreement. I'm saying that these are people who Do Not Care For Anything But What They Can Do and Get. They don't collaborate, and that becomes a dead stop in gaming.
I would also like to point out that this is not just people with Malicious Intent (though God Help Me, there are those out there). Let's be honest, we're nerds. We're all of us dorks to the outside community and for most of us, social interactions aren't our forte' for whatever form or reason. I'm not saying that those of us who aren't good at social mechanics should exclude ourselves from gaming, because I'd be one of the first people thrown out the proverbial window, but I'm saying that in a culture that promotes collaboration, these things would be balanced out both in and out of game. There would be more discourse before the player joined the game as to what was expected of them and what they expected of the game. There would be more dialogue. In the culture of a public club, that becomes difficult because there is a sense of "well, I'm here because I paid to be here, so I'm here to do what I paid to do." In a private game, where the player pools are smaller, more intimate, and more often than not know each other, the gaming becomes more communal and honest and open. In a club that is more public and paying (key word), I've found people more closed off to collaboration. The irony is captivating in a depressing matter.
We need to all be aware that we, as players, are in this process together. It's one of the reasons I was initially drawn to Dystopia Rising. The DR New Jersey game, began at 9pm on fridays with a gather up of all the players and game runners, lead by Michael *He-Who-Swims-In-Tears* Pucci would run down the general rules and regulations for the game. This is necessary because it helps bring the players together and no one gets to say "well I wasn't told". He also, as I recall, would finish off his ranting announcements by reminding us, each and everyone of us, that we are all nerds and what we're doing is geeky beyond belief. It's a unifying call, a rallying cry, and while it doesn't guarantee that everyone will all play in the sandbox nicely together, it does mean that the cultural expectations of the group have been set.
And when the Man setting the rules down is literally responsible for the world you're playing in, it is not wise to fuck with him. Especially at 4am and he has killer-ninja-zombies on deck.
And that's what I think it is a problem of, ultimately. A cultural expectation. I think that it's easy to view larping as just a hobby, just a game, and not what it really is: a sub culture. We meet at appointed times on a regular basis, have our own language, meetings, tomes and core beliefs. We're a community of people of various backgrounds united because we like this kind of thing. If we consider it like that, how can this not be a collaborative effort. We can't survive on our own, we need community.
We also need a language, and something I learned recently touched a nerve for me. I was trying to build Kensei as a Player vs Player game, but I was trying to keep it as an IC thing without it becoming an issue with the Players. So a PvP game without OOC PvP. Aaron Vanek, whom as I write this is currently being awesome in Wyrdcon (damn him) introduced me to a term that cuts the confusion out of that sentence. Character vs Character. This was something of a revelation to me because it never occurred to me to think of it that way. It states, right there, that the characters are in conflict with one another, not the players. It sets up, even for those who value the Letter of the Law over it's Spirit that this is a game where the drama is for the characters and not for the players. So is making the rules favor roleplay over statistics, because instead of focusing on just raising numbers, you have to interact with the pool at large, seeking out others and creating something within the game. It doesn't have to be a large thing, but it's a great thing.
Talking with Aaron and some of the Nordic Larpers that I have met over the past year, they have managed to pull off a level of intense play that I've not experienced yet. And they are the ones who really drive home the phrase: Play to lose. During our discussions, it's become a stereotypical sort of notion that the US larps are more focused on the individual because the US as a cultural focus on the individual's needs and attaining them while the Nordic games are more communal because their culture values communal.
To close, there is nothing I can really say to really answer "What can we do?" I think that being open about what we want, and how we want it is always a good thing. We're playing in different worlds, in different mindsets. We need a place we're safe in, with a group that is on track with each other, that can, at the very least, trust one another to maintain that world and support each other in their own process. It doesn't seem to make sense to me any other way. I can't say that this thinking is the right way to go about larping, but it just makes too much damn sense that in an activity that requires the interactions of other people we need to accept that we need other people to make it work.
Or else, what the hell are we doing here?
Later.
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