by Lizzie Stark
While Brian’s extended family is well aware that he’s a larper, only two people at his office know. One is a computer geek who understands, Brian says, because he’s a computer geek. The other person who knows was surprised at first but calmed down after Brian explained the hobby in detail. He’s not as sure of her silence, though, and worries that if she gets angry with him she might let it slip one night after too many drinks. That’s just how Brian’s department catches criminals.
James Dallas Egbert and Irving Pulling, through their suicides, enshrined the idea that gaming was geeky, dangerous, and bizarre in American culture, and it’s kept men like Derrick and Brian firmly closeted at work and home and ensured that scores of others hide where they’re going on the weekends behind such euphemisms as “camping” and “family time.” In doing so, the stigma against larp forces some gamers to adopt secret identities, forces them to compartmentalize their personalities in order to live up to the real-life roles thrust upon them by circumstance. All this raises the question: when is a closeted larper not larping? Is Derrick more himself in real life, where he is forced to hide his love of fantasy because it doesn’t conform to some role that society has scripted for him, the role of the strong black man? Is Brian any less of a detective or any less of a man because he enjoys harmless dress-up? The societal pressure to fulfill a certain role at the expense of any other desire ensures that the only place where a closeted gamer can be emotionally whole is that place where his or her personality and profession are both accepted: namely, at the game.
7
The Unwritten Rules
To say that the land of Travance has problems is a drastic under-statement. Mummies! Deadly plagues! Malevolent floating eyes! Heroes have managed to quell all these evils with swords, spells, and cunning, and yet, they have not been able to defeat one insidious foe, so inhuman and barbarous that even the greatest minds of our generation have struggled to subdue it: inflation. Even fantasy is subject to the laws of economics and, as it turns out, to modern political sensibilities, sexism, and the unknowable rules that govern the real emotions of players.
Travance suffers inflation because players have too much money and too little to spend it on, according to Matt White, a long-time staff member at Knight Realms who is deeply interested in the in-game economy. Matt likened Travance to a gold rush town, except instead of mining gold, its inhabitants kill monsters, loot them, and find hidden treasure vaults. This labor doesn’t produce anything concrete, just heroism; characters are simply foraging for gold and introducing piles of previously uncirculated money into the game economy. The supply of monsters is inexhaustible, and while the monsters occasionally have problems with cash flow—sometimes there’s no gold in the game kitty so they leave Logistics empty handed—still the adventurers who hunt them can’t help but become wildly rich.
When the Knight Realms staff introduced Market Faire, it gave form to Travance’s inflation, Matt theorizes. Market Faire takes place in the inn on Saturdays. Characters sell pickles, knitted scarves, hand-blended tea, candy, and much more—it provides a marketplace where loot may be spent. In addition, it’s something to do on a Saturday afternoon during a natural lull in the game, and a player who has forgotten to bring food can purchase actual lunch with fake coin. However, the idea of selling real food for the fake money intoxicates some players—on both ends of the transaction—making prices exorbitant. A basic sword may cost one to two gold coins to purchase in-game, but at Market Faire that will hardly buy a steak sandwich. Of course, a poor character won’t go hungry—most everyone is generous with their food, whether a character is paying for it in-game or not; the transaction simply makes it seem more realistic.
The formal trade system was a failed attempt to provide an additional set of potential purchases to players. The system is essentially a game within a game—the aim of which is to collect a full set of commodity cards and earn an extra point of build. Here’s how it works: players may spend build to acquire a skill called “trade.” Trades come with a specialty, so for example, Portia has Trade: Picklemonger on her character card, while other players have anything from Trade: Taxidermist to Trade: Cobbler to Trade: Winemaker. Each trade produces one type of commodity—wearables, durables, consumables, or luxuries—symbolically represented by commodity cards given to players with the requisite skill at check-in. Players may learn up to two trades and can spend extra build to pick up trade proficiencies—essentially advanced merchanting skills—which increases the total number of commodity cards received at check-in. Portia is a pickle maker and a soap maker. Her pickles are classed as consumables, while her soap is classed as a luxury, so at check-in I get a set of commodity cards emblazoned with “consumable” and a set emblazoned “luxury.” A character with a trade such as tailor or cobbler would get “wearable” cards, while a character with a trade such as wheelwright or carpenter would get “durable” cards. Spend build on trade proficiency +1, and you get a larger quantity of cards. Though it is not required, many players choose to represent their trades in-game by selling real-life items for gold at Market Faire. So in addition to the symbolic pickles and soap (the consumable and luxury cards) I carry around with me, I also sell real pickles at Market Faire for gold coin, which enhances my ability to role-play Portia. The aim of this game-within-a-game is to collect a full set of commodity cards (one of everything, but three luxuries, for low-levels, double that for high-levels) by trading or paying other merchants. So, for example, Portia produces all the consumables and luxuries she needs, but she swaps her extras to other merchants in exchange for the commodities she needs—durables and wearables. Turn in a full set of cards to James, and you gain an extra build.
The idea was that some players, generally noncombat characters, would want to pick up trades and produce commodities, while adventuring types would use their gold to pay for the cards in cash to get that free build point. Plus, according to Geoff Schaller, the trade system enhances the realism of the game, because realistically, adventuring is an impractical occupation for so many people to have. It’s much more reasonable to think that the battling bard is really a cobbler during most of his waking hours—the ability to acquire a profession provides an opportunity to fill in a character’s backstory. The cost of acquiring the cards also simulates real expenses that a character would have each month, the expenses of food, clothing, and shelter. As a role-play tool, the system is successful, although it doesn’t serve its intended purpose of creating an additional market where gold is spent; players who have commodities mostly wheel and deal among themselves, using the cards as currency, while players without trades move on with their weekend.
The staff partially controls inflation through price-fixing. For example, according to the rules, one minute of smithing costs one silver. It takes five minutes to make a basic dagger and ten to make a basic sword, so the costs of these items are five silver and one gold (equivalent to ten silver) respectively. There are similar regulations for the cost of sorcery. These checks are in place so that new players without much coinage can afford to have equipment fixed and created.
However, price-fixing isn’t universally successful because black markets arise. Certain spell ingredients and materials needed to forge weapons and armor are very rare in-game. Take mithril, a nearly indestructible metal (borrowed from fantasy literature, most notably, J. R. R. Tolkien’s work) that enhances the ability of armor to protect the wearer. Mithril armor is immune to destructive attacks and cannot be pierced by attacks that would normally bypass armor. In addition, it enhances the “soak” of a piece of armor. A soak rating basically allows the wearer to take less damage—if you’re hit for five and have a soak of four, then you take only one damage. Thus, at Knight Realms, where long-term, continuous protection is rare, mithril is incredibly valuable. A character who wants mithril armor has to find a bar of mithril and pay a smith to turn it into armor. Although the laws of the barony fix the price of a bar of mithril at twenty gold, scarcity combined with a glu
t of currency has more than doubled the material’s street value. To help alleviate the problem of scarce materials, players are now able to purchase them with service points.
Another solution to inflation is to remove money from the economy. The staff accomplishes this through taxes and fees. Each character owes five gold in taxes each year, payable to an in-game tax collector, and anyone who wishes to sell goods at Market Faire must pay a five gold fee to obtain a yearly trade license. The staff also removes gold from circulation by charging for certain items. For example, the Dragon’s Claw Inn serves coffee, hot chocolate, and instant lemonade for a nominal in-game fee. If a smith wants to establish a smithy or a priest wants to purchase an altar, plenty of in-game gold is required. NPCs sell trinkets and other items in exchange for gold. Some coinage also goes missing when players leave the game either permanently or for extended periods, for example, while going to college in another state. Real-world economies usually suffer from hoarding or inflation, but Travance’s economy suffers from both hoarding—because characters don’t have to spend money on essentials—and inflation—because characters can potentially afford the high prices and because the merchants don’t have perishables they must sell, which usually triggers steep price declines.
Cash-flow problems also plague the game, since hoarding is part of the larp mentality. Some players love carrying jingling bags of loot and will hang on to their coinage. James buys silver and gold coins for use in-game, hands them out to new players as starting money, and doles them out to NPCs to serve as “treasure” should their lifeless goblin corpses be searched. When players hoard coinage, a liquidity problem develops; there is no physical treasure for the monsters to carry into the woods. The game bank helps ameliorate the cash-flow problem—players withdraw and deposit their physical funds at Logistics. The changes in bank balance are recorded on character sheets, and the recovered coinage is sent out into the woods in the pockets of monsters. Matt speculates that this may actually exacerbate the problem of inflation as in-game money is not tied to the actual coinage available. Using deposited money as monster loot pumps an unlimited amount of money into the game economy, money that does not have anything productive backing it.
At Knight Realms, inflation isn’t only a problem in terms of money but in terms of levels. Characters who have been around for all or most of the thirteen years of Knight Realms’ existence—and there are many—are powerful and fearsome. The challenge for staff is to entertain both the level 60 and the level 1 characters with monsters that are interesting and fun. Send out an NPC geared toward the higher levels, and the low-levels, or lowbies, will have no chance to hit it and will die in droves. Send out a smaller monster that the low-levels can affect, and a high level player can kill it with one blow. In the latter situation, it is considered good manners for an upper-level player to stand to the rear, letting the lowbies do the job and helping only if they get themselves in serious trouble. Knight Realms attempts to manage level disparity by sending out different sorts of plot, plot that can be resolved through role-play, for example, as well as plots that are geared for high-or low-level characters. During main mod, the town might fight a powerful boss with a bunch of minions, with the idea that the lowbies will take care of the minions while the higher-levels take care of the boss. It’s also common for an NPC to roll into town, say, “We’ve got to fight the goblins in the cave,” and then add something like, “The enthusiasm of the inexperienced will be most useful in killing them.” This translates to, “This mod is geared for people who are level 15 or under.” In this circumstance, an experienced NPC uses his out-of-game knowledge to help select the low levels. It’s a safe bet that those barbarians he’s never seen before are lowbies, so they’re asked to join the quest. Likewise, an NPC might go to a seasoned player and say, out-of-game, “I need people under level 10. Can you help me?” and together they’ll round up whatever low-levels are around the inn, using role-play. High-level mods are denoted in the same way, with characters being told that it is “very dangerous” or “only for the experienced.” Sometimes during the speeches before lay-on, a GM will advise players that main mod is going to be broken into two parts, one geared for people of level 30 or higher. Sometimes during main mod or other large mods, a magic field will suddenly appear that only allows characters of a certain level or higher to pass through to fight the monster or monsters inside. At times, the lowbies feel excluded by this type of mod entrance, but ultimately, it’s the staff’s way of controlling the crowd, creating interesting monsters for the higher levels, and preventing mass character death.
The economic situation of players also causes conundrums. Knight Realms has a diverse player base. There are tweens who arrive with parents, a lot of teenagers and twenty-somethings, a smaller but devoted contingent of players in their thirties and forties, and a few players in their mid-fifties. The occupations of these players include retired entrepreneurs, IT professionals, lawyers, union organizers, high school teachers, and waitresses, plus a number of high school or college students. Along with these differences in age and profession comes some economic disparity, and with economic disparity comes the risk that some players might be able to buy in-game status, and that doesn’t play into the notion of fairness. It wouldn’t be fair, for example, to walk into Knight Realms, lay down $5,000, and expect a level 50 character—that is something that has to be earned over time. On the other hand, Knight Realms is a for-profit business, and so, as a sort of compromise, it is possible to pay to advance your character slightly faster than usual—James allows players to purchase one point of build at each event for an extra ten dollars.
James manages disparities in wealth through several channels. It is possible to “buy” certain in-game items with actual money, using Market Faire as a money-launderer. A player can turn out-of-game cash into food or other goods and then, through Market Faire, turn those goods into in-game gold. For this reason, Knight Realms has a rule: if it costs more than ten dollars, you can’t sell it for in-game money. Players can also purchase an in-game benefit through armor, which provides a defensive benefit. Players receive armor points, according to the Knight Realms rule book, “based on the armor’s type, craftsmanship, and looks.” Wear a great-looking suit of full body armor—which can cost upward of $500—and you get more points. Of course, when players wear real plate or chain mail, the immersive atmosphere of the game is enhanced; the rule is there as an incentive to raise the standard of costuming, not to punish those who can’t afford armor. Donations of money and time are also rewarded with service points, which evens the playing field. If a player can’t donate money or latex weapons, perhaps she can make some time to organize the costume trailer or clean up after feast. Finally, with a large mortgage and a new camp to trick out, James has offered pledge projects to players—donate money in increments of $250, $500, or $1,000 to help improve an aspect of the camp and receive thirteen, twenty-five, or fifty build and a magic item.
Even the fantastical world of Knight Realms is subject to the laws of economics and, of course, the laws of nature. In an obvious physical sense, gravity still exists at Knight Realms, although for druids, turning into a bird and flying is possible. The laws of physics have been somewhat preserved inside the rules system as well. To weave a spell or pray to one’s god for aid, a player must expend mental energy, for example, and a character’s physical prowess is a combination of a player’s natural strength and agility and skills bestowed by the rules, for example, the ability to deflect any one hit. A high-level fighter likely has several advantages over a low-level fighter—a lot of health points, a weapon that hits for a lot of damage, and so-called tag skills that allow him to disarm his opponent, resist certain attacks, or provide other benefits. However, a clumsy player will blow through these advantages faster than a skilled and agile athlete.
Unlike the rules of economics or physics, however, the rule of law in Travance is inconstant and disturbed by the modern sensibility of its players. Knight Realms is se
t in the 1200s, and a hereditary monarchy rules the land of Kormyre, though none of Travance’s nobles inherited their titles. Rather, Travance’s lords earned their titles, working their ways up from squire to knight to lord.
The medieval realism of Travance has limits. Unlike the real denizens of the 1200s, Knight Realms characters bathe, get their vitamins, and abstain from bubonic plague. Lords do not behead everyone who displeases them. And the townsfolk have suspicious tendencies toward democracy and the press, suggesting that everyone’s voice ought to be heard, defending beleaguered Chroniclerites from censure, and grumbling about the directions the nobility shouts to them during battle, many players taking a “you’re not the boss of me” attitude because during the week everyone spends time pleasing their bosses and aren’t we all here just to have fun?
In-game racism also produces liberal-minded anxiety. Although racism is written into the game, the concept that all men, dwarfs, and gypsies were created equal is hard to shed. The rules might stipulate that most people in the Kingdom of Kormyre think that wild mages are part demon and should be killed on sight, but apparently only the most tolerant citizens in the country have arrived in Travance. In other words, few players practice the racism dictated by the rules, maybe because tolerance is so ingrained in players out-of-game, maybe because racist assumptions—even imaginary ones—create real-life discomfort.
This discomfort is heightened thanks to the fine line between portraying an emotion and feeling an emotion. Larp, with its alter egos and complex imaginary worlds, can create confusion between a player and a character. Sometimes it’s unclear where the character ends and the player begins, particularly if a larper has really thrown him-or herself into the role. When a character tells Portia he hated a story in the Travance Chronicle, sometimes I have a gut reaction of anger and disappointment, which Portia channels in-game. Perhaps I’d be better able to separate the two if I were a more experienced gamer. Add the racism written into the game to the emotional mire, and the potential is explosive. It’s possible to use the prejudices ingrained in the rules to be mean to a player one dislikes, but it’s also possible to use these prejudices to heighten a scene or a rivalry between characters. Over my two years at Knight Realms, I most often noticed racism between players who were friends or at least long-time acquaintances out-of-game; in other words, racist role-play most often occurred in a friendly context where it had the least chance of causing permanent offense.
