Maintaining Friendships Built in Larping

This article was prompted by several online friends, you know who you are.

The concept of larping is inherently social in nature. You and a bunch of people get together and portray characters getting together and interacting with one another. Larps and gaming are one of those places where you can make connections very quickly, whether you realize it or not. Someone likes the way you roleplay, or that scene that your vampire and their changeling shared really brought the two of you close and gave you some common ground. Friendships are easily formed in the larping circle, rivalries too, to be honest. It's a great place to meet with your friends and share in one of (I'm assuming) favorite activities.

For the past six years (yes, I'm including Jedi in it, hush) role play has been the central hub of most of my social activities. Through meeting people during games, I've gotten to become acquainted with other people. I'm blessed to say that larping is one of the best things to happen to me socially.

But what happens when that becomes the sole means of interaction between you and their friends? Sometimes we live too far away and can only afford to come down during games, sometimes that wacky thing called Life happens and our day to day gets in between us and the people we consider dear to ourselves. Stuff happens.

I've run into situations like that. And as I said before, larping is a great source of friendship and a great unifying tool. However, it isn't often the best way to maintain a friendship. I have and had friends whom, because of life, I only got to see at game. It was fine, at first, but after a while I began to realize that I was interacting more with their characters than I was with them. That's the problem with using larp as the central rock of your friendships: half the time you're not you and they aren't them. So what here is real?

The key to keeping a friendship between larpers is to extend the friendship outside of larping. We're living in an age where we can chat with, interact, and see each other from miles away. I have friends I converse with on Facebook, Tumblr, Skype and Google Hangouts. Even if it's briefly, the key is to touch base with one another on a somewhat frequent basis. It's dependent on you and your friends as to what 'frequent' means.

I can't stress how important it is to have communication outside of game and about things that do not revolve around game. There are incidences where when I'm hanging out with friends I please ask that we not bring up games. I can be enthused and excited with the best of the puppy dogs, but after a while even I get tired of having the same discussions over and over again. Finding a common ground outside of larping is necessary. I've had frienships wither away, and the usual sign has been when you notice that you're only interacting with the other friend during game, or only about game. To me, that's not friendship. That's being really tight players together. While they're both good, one does not necessarily mean the other.

Another important thing to do is to check in with each other during game. This is especially important if you're playing characters who are emotionally invested in one another. By this I mean as lovers, family, comrades, rivals, or enemies. Always check in with one another afterwards to reinforce that what part is the character and what part is the friendship. I've watched and taken part in too many conversations as a PC which was dripping with unspoken subtext from out of character. It gets awkward and potentially leads to the relationship (the out of character one) turning toxic.

These are just some of the things that I've found helpful in relationships. What have you found that helps?