Leaving Mundania

by Lizzie Stark

  Larp in the United States is beginning to diversify. Edu-larp, short for educational larp, is a hot topic on the Nordic scene right now and has started to crop up in the United States in the form of literary summer camps for kids. A July 16, 2010, New York Times article by Sharon Otterman looked at Camp HalfBlood, a summer camp run in Decatur, Georgia; Austin, Texas; and Brooklyn, New York. The sold-out camp, based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series, arms kids with foam swords, teaches them about Greek mythology, and encourages them to keep reading.

  The theater scene may also improve larp’s crossover appeal; several plays that break the fourth wall, offering dispersed action, and in some cases, multiple narratives have cropped up recently in New York City under the guise of participatory theater. Most notably, there is Sleep No More, an amazing theatrical installation put on by the British-based company Punchdrunk in New York City, where I saw it in early 2011. The wildly popular show, which also ran in Brookline, Massachusetts, had its New York run extended at least three times and garnered rave reviews from the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vice, and many other publications. Audience members were decked out in white masks and unleashed into a six-story set to explore their surroundings and silently follow the actors and scenes of their choice for a couple hours. The production riffed on Macbeth and felt like a larp for voyeurs, since for the most part, the masked audience watched the unfolding, wordless scenes without interfering—the audience, though players in some important sense, couldn’t affect the course of events. And like a larp the action was dispersed, with different scenes occurring at the same time. I missed, for example, the witches’ rave that one of my friends loved, because I wasn’t in the right place at the right time.

  Arty larp is also making forays into the US scene. On the West Coast, larpers have begun gathering each year at Wyrd Con, a Knutepunkt-like convention that offers both games and talks on larp theory, while on the East Coast, Intercons, conventions focused on small prewritten larps, continue to thrive. I suspect that if the US arty larp scene grows, it will legitimize larp as an art form, give it some cultural capital, and in doing so, diminish the social stigma around all forms of the hobby. After all, the idea of game design as an art is beginning to gain mainstream traction—in May 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts expanded its guidelines, making digital games eligible for funding, in essence, legitimizing them as an art form.1 More strangely, it appears that the US government has already funded larp … in Norway. According to Ole Peder Giæsver of Playground Magazine, the US embassy in Oslo gave a local larp group nearly $5,500 for the Cold War larp A Doomsday Eve.2 Perhaps, like their Nordic fellow-hobbyists, US larpers will someday be able to apply to their own government for grant money.

  As for me, I learned a great many things about myself through larp in the course of reporting this book. I’m a self-conscious, nosy, organized, vain, unspontaneous sort of person who loves words, art, and performance. As a player, I prefer role-play and plot discovery to hack-n-slash. While I quite enjoyed my long stint in an escapist campaign game, I think that my natural proclivities lean more toward the Nordic-style games; I felt less self-conscious imagining myself into emotional dramas than I did imagining myself into some magical fantasy world. Plus, I suck at remembering rules.

  Most importantly, during this book I learned to embrace my own weird. With so many exotic costumes and haircuts on display, with so much nerdy talk about the subtleties of Dungeons & Dragons rules or the ins and outs of Doctor Who plots, I felt no need to hide the fixations that make me unique, from pickles to Xena to Dorothy Parker.

  Will I keep larping? Maybe. Putting on or playing in a larp takes up a stupid amount of time and energy, although with the right playmates, it can be exhilarating. Despite my walk on the larpy side, I have other deep commitments, like, say, a drive to write books, that might prevent the return of Portia, Ophelia, or Madame Blavatsky. And yet, the game is hard to relinquish. Portia wants to get her new altar, Madame Blavatsky requires reanimation, and I can almost see myself rolling around in six inches of flour while discussing the terminal ovarian cancer that will kill me next month, working out conflicts in 1980s NYC through break dancing (or in contemporary NYC through krumping), or enmeshed in some sort of future gender dystopia in which gangs of women roam the streets. New York-based artist Brody Condon already ran an artsy game in 2010 called Level Five in two US-based art galleries in conjunction with Danish and Swedish larpwrights.3 If only someone would invite me to a nearby game like that. American larpers: could you get on that, please?

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to the US and Nordic communities of larpers, to whom I owe the deepest debt a writer can owe. A great many gamers, GMs, and game designers generously shared their time with me, although only a handful appear in this book. To everyone who sat down with me for fifteen minutes or multiple hours, thank you—I learned something new from every conversation.

  My immersive research would have been impossible without the cooperation of James C. Kimball of Knight Realms, and Avonelle Wing, Kate Beaman-Martinez, and Vincent Salzillo of Double Exposure.

  Several gamers went above and beyond to help me in the course of my research. Special thanks to my guides to the world of larp: Geoffrey Schaller, for his all-around kindness, for many introductions, and for generously answering every question I lobbed his way over more than three years; and Gene Stern, who endured numerous interviews, explained rules, arranged rides to Knight Realms for me, and so much more. I am also grateful to Brendan O’Hara, Liz, and Jeramy Merritt for putting me up at conventions and helping me run the Cthulhu larp in Chapter 11.

  Any larper will tell you that the best thing about larp is the people. Thanks to the Knight Realms and Avatar communities, which made me feel welcome, especially Jason Michaeli, Frank Martinez, Renny Stern, George Pereira, Ian Penny, and the rest of the FishDevil team, along with Carol Stanley, Terri DePrima, Molly Mandlin, Charlie Spiegel, Michael Smith, and the court of Drega’Mire.

  The following people greatly assisted me in reporting several chapters: Anthony Lodato transcribed hours of taped interviews and conversations; Scott Trudell hipped me to Elizabethan pageantry; Major Cory Angell arranged my visit to Fort Indiantown Gap; Associate Professor Mark Rom of Georgetown reviewed my account of Knight Realms’s economics; the members of the LARP Academia listserv alerted me to Atzor, the Nordic scene, and military larp; and Tobias Demediuk Bindslet helped me navigate the Nordic scene and reviewed my Nordic chapters. I’m also grateful to the crowd that attended a Vampire game with me at DREAMATION 2010 and the vast, transatlantic group of gamers who answered my many technical queries via Facebook. Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, editors of the incomparable Nordic Larp, provided useful feedback on an early version of the manuscript and patiently answered many queries. Sarah Miles first told me of larp’s existence.

  My father’s comments and copyedits were almost as valuable as the love and encouragement that he and my mother offered. My husband, George Locke, provided unwavering support. The Fringe armada helped me find the time. Urban Waite and Chip Cheek read drafts, helped me battle the challenges of solitude, and cheered me on from afar. Thank you.

  Thank you to my agent, Jane Dystel, my editor, Cynthia Sherry, and all the other people at Chicago Review Press—especially Michelle Schoob and Mary Kravenas—who worked so hard to make this book a reality.

  Samuel Freedman, who runs the book seminar at the Columbia journalism school, was the first one to believe I could write this volume, and I owe a special debt of thanks to him and to all the other tough writing instructors I’ve been lucky enough to study with over the years, particularly Pamela Painter, but also Sally Alexander, Joeseph Hurka, DeWitt Henry, Margot Livesey, and Sanford Padwe. To paraphrase a Flannery O’Connor story, I wish you were there to shoot me every day of my life.

  Glossary

  ACRONYMS

  BADD Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons

  CACTF
Combined Arms Collective Training Facility

  D&D Dungeons & Dragons

  DM dungeon master

  EOD explosive ordnance disposal

  FOIG Find out in-game

  GM game master

  IC in-character

  IG in-game

  KR Knight Realms

  larp live action role-play

  NPC nonplayer character

  OOC out-of-character

  OOG out-of-game

  PC player character

  PvP player versus player combat

  RP role-play

  RPG role-playing game

  RPGA Role-playing Game Association

  SCA Society for Creative Anachronism

  ST storyteller

  TPK total-party kill

  TERMS

  bleed: What happens when the emotions of a character and a player are conflated. Bleed in occurs when a player’s mood affects a character’s mood—if my bad day makes my character irritable in-game, for example. Bleed out occurs when a character’s mood affects a player’s mood—if my character falls in love and I develop a real-life crush on her boyfriend. Larps generally produce some level of bleed, whether unintentionally or by design.

  boffer: A weapon made out of PVC pipe or kite rod (hollow fiberglass tubing), covered with pipe insulation foam and then swathed in various shades of duct tape, so as to imitate a sword or other weapon. Boffers are safe for live combat. Their more realistic brethren are latex weapons, which are molded or cast using foam and then coated with latex.

  buff: A beneficial spell that one player casts on another. A buff might increase a target’s total health points, allow them to swing for more damage, or provide another benefit.

  campaign: An episodic game run over a series of sessions, where each session offers the next installment of the adventure. Campaigns can last for a specified amount of time, say eight sessions spread over two months, or they can be open-ended, continuing for years. (See also: one-shot)

  canon: The official narrative of a larp or RPG as determined by the GM. It distinguishes what is shared fantasy from what a player might make up. This term also applies to TV show fandom and distinguishes between the official contiguous narrative and fan fiction. For example, “The scene in which Lord Apollo destroyed the world was not canon.”

  card pull: A mechanic used during role-playing games that employ cards as a randomizer instead of dice. Player characters draw one or more cards from small decks created and stacked according to level in order to determine whether their actions—such as opening a locked door or striking an opponent—succeed.

  character card: Each player carries one of these for the duration of a tabletop game or larp. The sheets list a character’s base statistics and skill set, and many games use them to keep track of health points, mental points, and bank funds during play.

  con: An abbreviation of convention. For example, “I’ll see you at the con.”

  Con Suite: The public room at Double Exposure conventions that contains snacks, soda, and seating.

  cosplay: Costume play, a subculture related to both larp and reenactment, in which participants dress up as figures from popular culture, particularly anime, with a high premium on replicating the original outfit exactly.

  Cthulhu fhtagn: A Lovecraftian phrase meaning “Cthulhu waits,” or possibly “Cthulhu waits, dreaming.”

  d_: A means of specifying dies with different numbers of sides used in tabletop games. A d20 is a die with twenty sides, while a d6 has six. Sometimes, a number precedes the d. A player who rolls 2d8 damage would roll two d8 dice to determine the amount of damage her character inflicts on the enemy.

  Double Exposure, Inc.: Company that puts on the gaming conventions DREAMATION and DEXCON each year in New Jersey.

  elven princess: A damsel-in-distress type character who is very nearly useless and almost always a goody-two-shoes. Also known as a Mary Sue. Gamers revile her.

  farb: Reenactment term used to describe casual reenactors with careless regard for historical accuracy. Farbs don’t care whether the topstitching on their Revolutionary War uniform was done by hand. (See also: stitch counter)

  fatbeards: They’re fat, they have beards, and they’re into all known forms of geekery. This self-labeled contingent has a presence at fandom, comic, and gaming conventions.

  freaking the mundies: A game that larpers play, in which they wear funny outfits and behave strangely in public for the sole purpose of attracting strange gazes from that sad species, norms. (See also: norms)

  game master: The impartial referee who administers the rules and settles disputes in a tabletop role-playing game or in a larp. GMs also organize games, coming up with plot, treasure, and monsters. In Dungeons & Dragons, the GM is referred to as a Dungeon Master or DM. In many games, GMs responsible for creating plot are called Storytellers or STs. In Cthulhu Live, GMs are called Keepers.

  gank: This term is often used loosely, meaning to kill or be killed, as in, “I ganked that goblin,” or “I got ganked by phase spiders on the way to bed.” At Knight Realms, the “gank shift” is the late-night NPC shift during which bands of monsters circle the camp and get ganked by the PCs. The term’s more technical meaning applies to PvP, or player-versus-player combat, as in, “Team Evil ganked me last night.”

  garb: Costuming, especially reproduction costuming, in larp or reenactment communities.

  hack-n-slash: A style of gameplay that emphasizes combat.

  homebrew: The house rules used during a tabletop role-playing game that are not included in an official rule book. For example, some GMs will allow their players to count a 19 as if it is a 20 when rolled on a d20.

  in-game/out-of-game: The distinction between IG and OOG is the line between what is happening in the imaginary and real worlds; it’s the difference between what you know and what your character knows. Imagine a car driving through the camp during a Knight Realms game, for example. Cars don’t exist in 1209 Travance, so the car is OOG, and players must either pretend that it doesn’t exist or that it is something else that fits into the game world, say, a strange caravan of gnomish design. Character cards are OOG items, since a person doesn’t carry around a list of their own attributes. Players who are walking to their NPC shift wear white headbands or place fists atop their heads to signify that they are out-of-game; these markers make a player physically “disappear” from the game world. IG players who see that herd of OOG NPCs must not react to them, for in Travance, they do not presently exist. Occasionally players might refer to OOG NPCs as “wind,” to acknowledge their presence while allowing the game world to remain unaffected. In some games, in-character (IC) and out-of-character (OOC) are the preferred terms for this. The Scandinavians use the term “off-game.”

  initiative: In a tabletop game or a larp with turn-based combat, each player rolls or draws initiative at the beginning of a fight. The numbers determine the order in which each player and NPC may take his or her action.

  Keeper: Name for a GM in the Call of Cthulhu and Cthulhu Live gaming systems.

  logistics: The place where sign-up occurs in a larp. Often a gathering place for GMs or NPCs.

  level up: When a character achieves enough experience points to go from one level to another. At Knight Realms, a character levels up after every 10 build he or she spends. In many tabletop games, a character receives points for fighting certain kinds of monsters and overcoming specific challenges. Accumulate enough points, as dictated by the rules, and that character moves up a level. Move up a level, and a character may be able to learn new skills or spells, wield special items, or increase his or her base statistics. Levels are important in many role-playing games, in part because they serve as measures of experience, allowing GMs to match plot obstacles to characters’ abilities, preventing mass death.

  lowbie: A low-level character. When used self-referentially, it is not pejorative, but when used by upper-level players, it sometimes is.

  mage: A magic-user.

  m
eta-gaming: The practice of using out-of-game feelings or knowledge to affect something inside the game. For example, learning which character is a necromancer from a friend on the ride to the game and then persecuting that character or finding the all-powerful jewel because one saw an out-of-game (and therefore “invisible”) GM hide it.

  min-maxer: A player who employs an extreme version of power gaming to create a powerful character. Min-maxers work the system of a game, placing the bare minimum number of points in skills that are neutral or undesirable and placing lots of points in skills or stats that maximize desirable traits. A min-maxer might create a “glass cannon” character—one with lots of awesome offenses but next to no defense. (See also: power gamer, munchkin)

  mod: Short for “module” and used in Knight Realms and in some other games. A mod is the basic unit of adventure. It’s a discrete encounter that takes place over the course of a campaign. A mod can be as small as two rogues trying to rob a cabin and fighting its inhabitants or as large as a battle pitting the whole town against an army of dark elves. Sometimes, players at Knight Realms will playfully hold “bacon mod,” during which several pounds of bacon are cooked and fed to whoever wanders by.

  moulage: Makeup and latex prosthetics used to simulate wounds.

  munchkin: A player who seeks to amass power and items at all costs, even at the expense of his or her party in a role-playing game. Considered pejorative. (See also: power gamer, min-maxer)

  mundania: The real world, according to some reenactors and gamers.

  newbie/noob: Fresh meat in the world of gaming. Noob or newbie may also refer to a gamer of any experience level who is behaving in an annoying way. Generally considered pejorative.