LARP: Personal Entertainment or Shared Project?

[baron_saturday]

When you go to a LARP are you going for some entertainment and a chance to hang out with friends? Are you going to be part of a larger project that you take partial responsibility for? Is it the GMs job to entertain you? Is it your job to entertain your fellow players?

ambug666's YaYoG (You Are Your Own Gamemaster) idea explores these questions, as

Comments

[ambug666]

I am somewhere in the middle. I especially enjoy playing a different viewpoint from my own and trying to stretch my roleplaying muscles

[balthazar99]

This is pretty reminiscent of the difference between many of the newer "indie" tabletop RPGs and the more established "traditional" games. One of the characteristics of many of these newer games is to put more burden (or opportunity, depending on how you look at it) on the players to consider the story as a whole, and to participate by inventing plot, setting, NPC's and other things that have traditionally been a GM's job. (see Mountain Witch, Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Empires) Some of these games even dispense with the role of GM altogether (1,001 Nights, Polaris

[baron_saturday]

Nice thought. I really like the new idie RPGs, but they will never compete with d20 (or even GURPS)for popularity. Likewise, community style theater LARP is unlikely to get the same kind of numbers as a medium-popular Boffer LARP.

I wonder if the same game can appeal to Imemersionists and Participantists.

Please forgive my lame attempts at coining terms.

[sophistbastard]

For reference: GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory.

[balthazar99]

You may be right about market acceptance. On the other hand, I think that some of the indie RPGs have the potential to leapfrog the standard gaming market and do what traditional RPGs have sometimes failed to do - attract new non-gaming blood. I don't have a huge amount of experience with this, but from what I've read it seems like some of the indie-rpgs have a much lower barrier to entry for someone who has never gamed before. Primetime Adventures, for example, has apparently been successfully played by lots of people who have no gaming experience, but who do happen to have watched television

[aries_walker]

What I like about it so much is that it has more than just one facet. It's entertainment, to be sure, but it's also society, creation, activity, escapism, and therapy.

I hesitate to use the terms "job" or "responsibility" for something that everyone is doing for fun, but I suppose it's up to everyone to see that everyone (including themselves) is having a good time. The GM's write the music and conduct, as it were, but if the horn player starts his own riff, the whole orchestra suffers.

Also: Neil Diamond - nice!

[baron_saturday]

Obviously, if anyone completely ignores the shared reality, it will break everyone's fun. But I don't think everyone has to see to everyone all the time. As long as a solid percentage of the players are watching the GMs backs, I think that's enough.

[interactivearts]

Well, I think it's simple enough. To some extent it is worthwhile to look at the TERM model (http://www.threadsofdamocles.org/policies/policies_community_based.shtml#term) - TERM is "Time, Expertise, Resources, and Money

[laurion]

All too often I find myself with lots of E&R, and not enough T&M. This is a very frustrating place to be.

[sophistbastard]

Hmm... I'm a pro-story, pro-immersion, anti-escapist, and pro-CvC player. My ideal event would probably be a CvC game with Noir Los Angeles' sensibilities. I dream what the-smith-e would call "the impossible dream." I want to play a character to the extreme and take the rewards or consequences as they come. I want to be on the fucking bleeding edge. I want to play with people who, to paraphrase Dr. Evil, will, upon losing a character, "probably move on, get another character but there would be a 15 minute period there where I would just be inconsolable." I want to LARP with no safety nets.

[ambug666]

I think such a player base can be created if the concept of "character win = player win" can be diminished in favor of "drama win = player win."

[sophistbastard]

Well that's a large part of why I'm a major proponent of swing casting. Although that being said I'd probably only play my ideal game in an invite-only situation.