One of the greatest challenges of a LARP is reconciling the Out-of-Game realities that effect the IG experience. Every LARP, of course, has to deal with a standard set of these (many of which are inevitable parts of campsite structure): cars become carriages, camp cabins are villages, taverns, or ruins, and some features, such as electrical wire, are just ignored entirely. Generally, this requires players to accept the "willing suspension of disbelief." But what about other things, especially creatures, that are standard parts of daily life? I'll give you one example: horses.
As any fantasy lover or historian will know, horses are integral parts of classic fantasy repertoire and actual historical maneuvers. Cavalry were essential to military development, and horse husbandry facilitated human complexity. Clearly, though, horses are not feasible for a LARP. While we may be able to forgive giants, dragons, and unicorns (all of which I've seen at a LARP), the absence of horses is a bit jarring. Horses are part of idiomatic parlance ("I could eat a horse/beat a dead horse/horsing around"), and, for many people, a day to day reality that is hard to ignore. So, in a LARP, it's reasonable to a) phys-rep some horses (difficult) or b) make an IG excuse for the dearth of equines. I know Madrigal has some excuse-- they were lost in a series of wars, or something similar, and I'm sure other games have encountered this. Mirror, Mirror has the very nifty and tidy "refraction" mechanic: things don't appear in the gameworld as they would elsewhere-- this is due to mirrorways and "refraction" through these mirrorways. (There is, in fact, a horse IG-- he has been refracted as a small mouse.)
What OoG/IG problems have you run into-- either as a PC, NPC, or plot staff? How have you dealt with these OoG realities that effect IG play?
Horse appreciates the shout-out!
ReplyDeleteIn Numina we approach it from a developing world standpoint. We have fully functional magical gates for transport around the world, which makes things much faster and cheaper than riding some manner of beast anywhere. So while "real world" culture was predicated on these beasts of burden, our imaginary world never had the need for fast moving ridable animals.
Now, for what it's worth, we accept the concept of riding pack beasts, but in our design the domestication process did not favor passengers but instead slow moving beasts with large carrying capacity. So if you want to jump on a horse and ride, it walks along at roughly a walking pace.
That's a good rationale behind horse-lessness: it fits in with the whole "magic, rather than technology, developed in this universe" schema.
DeleteI'd love to do a spot on Numina sometime, if you or any other players are interested, let me know. It sounds like a very cool game (and very different from what we have in NE).
(Tell horse 'hi.')
Maybe I'm weird, but lack of horses never bothers me...probably because they're not around me on a day to day basis, so they're not first in my thoughts when I think of "every day life".
ReplyDeleteOne thing that has come up lately for me is in-game "drinking". Obviously (and for VERY good reasons) alcohol is prohibited at the game. I would never ever want a game to allow for real drinks, and faking it is just fine. There are talented folks who like to make their own soda or other safe drinks, and it is a perfect for substituting the fancy party wine or tavern drink.
However out of game, if you try to talk about how you had a cool encounter out in the graveyard drinking to your ancestors and making ceremonial toasts, everyone gets a look of immediate horror. "GASP! You were drinking at game???" and you have to explain that no no no, it wasn't REAL alcohol, it was just soda and sparkling grape juice! Then they give you a funny look for pretending to drink at a game with grape juice. Such an awkward conversation. I mean we "pretend" that you get hit with fire and attacked by goblins, but "pretending" to have a fine wine is apparently a stretch. It's harmless misunderstanding, but still embarrassing. What's more, hopefully it doesn't paint the wrong impression about proper game conduct by accident if someone misunderstands that we're talking grape juice and not mixed drinks. O_O
Haha. The lack of children has always bothered me-- as someone who can, reasonably, fake a childlike voice, but is pretty tall, I have a hard time pretending to be a child. As a PC, I have a hard time believing 6'5" men are children.
DeleteYeah, I'm with you there. I've played games that are more family-friendly, where children play in a non-combat capacity, and don't have much trouble with that. But adults playing children often feels a bit silly to me, unless it's a situation where they are "childlike spirits" or something, and it's reasonable that they wouldn't exactly look like actual kids.
DeleteFighting around cars when there's not space to move them away from whatever location you're at is always an annoyance for me. If I'm just walking by, it's easy enough to blank them out, but if there's fighting near them, I need to pay attention to them enough to not smash a knee into a headlight or something, which means I'm not blanking them out as background noise.
ReplyDeleteOne of the funnier counter-examples of this that I ran into was when an NPC told me that we needed to bake bread as part of some shamanic ritual to strengthen the land. I fell entirely OOG at that point (at least in my head), wondering how exactly they were going to rep that and if we were going to be sitting around pretending to bake bread... at which point the NPC pulled out a mixing bowl and a pile of flour and other ingredients. It was awesome. (A toaster oven was discreetly delivered to my cabin a while later.)
Mmm... more mods should involve bread baking.
DeleteI think one of the most obvious examples with cars is when, middle of a field fight or trek to combat area, a car roars onto the scene. Everybody breaks game, and stands shame-faced to the side. Not only is it a car, but it's also an outside person, who can't be figured into the gameworld. (Because if they were actually a carriage, they'd probably be attacked by monsters.) however, it's often pretty funny-- I usually wonder what they say to themselves afterwards...
Re: Horses,
ReplyDeleteI've larped at enough sites that have horse trails running through them that pretending they didn't exist was vastly more immersion breaking than just accepting that they did, and we didn't ride them in town. Because magic and combat makes animals skittish, or whatever.* In most games I've played other than Madrigal, they exist, just off-board, much like palaces, huge cities, or topiary gardens.
*Which handily explains our reaction when the ranger's dog, or one of the barn cats, ambles through an IG area.
Re: Booze
While they are in the minority, my understanding is that there are actually a fair number of games that do allow consumption of alcohol on site. Generally they are either non-combat larps (some friends of mine ran a 1920s Cthulu larp where they served classic cocktails) or they have a non-combat tavern area where drinkers can hang out without being a danger to anyone (I know this is a part of some big fest larps in the UK, and I've been told that there are larps in New England that use a similar model, not to mention the not-a-larp-but-sorta SCA).
I think the "combat can happen anywhere, anytime" nature of the type of games a lot of us play makes alcohol an unfeasible choice, and site restrictions and insurance reasons just make it logistically simpler to run a dry game. But clearly there are games where it works for them.
Re: Your actual question
I have a particular hatred of mods where you have to do a detailed search of an indoor space. And not only because of my dust allergy :P
As you mentioned in your still life post, a lot of creating an IG atmosphere is about blurring the OOG details and drawing attention to a few evocative IG items or decorations. Having to do a detailed search of a building forces you to closely examine every OOG aspect of the space in search of the one IG thing you're looking for. Drives me bonkers.
The search point is a good one-- if you're in the woods, or a particularly run down cabin, it can be fun. Endgame, because of the genre, uses the search mechanic to good effect. However, if you're in a high fantasy game, searching an abandoned gym, only to find basketballs, can be a let down. Also, Bill recently posted on this: canvas over tarps at larp sites. Canvas, while not as utilitarian as tarps, looks so much better. It might be difficult to get used to, but i think it could really improve mods.
DeleteYeah, I should have noted "perfectly repped" spaced as an exception. It's why, for fantasy games, I love scenes in the woods, or especially the snow, because you're experiencing the environment exactly as your character would experience it.
DeleteI really like the prop advice posts on Bill's blog. I thought this one was interesting too: http://larpohio.blogspot.com/2011/04/behold-wonder-of-light.html