Larping in London

The Larp scene in London is growing, and although it isn't as large as the scene in some other countries there are lots of events that run on a regular basis. Navigating the scene can be confusing as there are some unique terms which aren't used, or are used differently in other countries.

There tend to be 3 distinct types of larping that I've encountered in London, but there seems to be more and more of a cross-over between them, to the point where I think these may operate as a slider rather than as distinct categories.

Nordic, and Nordic influenced larp: These games tend to have a goal of immersion and work collaboratively. Play to lose and play to flow (reacting to what’s happening as your character would, whether this is going to lead to an overall positive or negative outcome).

UK Freeform: Rules and system light games which are often (although not always) goal oriented. Playing to lose used less here, but there is low transparency which means there is often a goal of obtaining information or keeping secrets, which the player needs to figure out how best to achieve.

Fest larp: An area I’m less knowledgeable about, this type of larp tends to involve on going campaigns, are more rules and system heavy and feature combat. Empire larp is a popular form of this in the UK.

I’m really excited about the current larp scene in London.

I’m a co-organiser of the Immersivists club  and we tend to run short larps on a weekly (or so) basis. The next two are Sarcophagus by Kaia Aardal, Jone Aareskjold and Martin Nielsen and then Bring Your Own Bottle by Nastassia Sinitsyna, Yauheniya Siadova and Alisa Matavilava. We’ve recently run Old and Wise by Jantine van den Bosch and We Almost Were Heroes by Jasmin Räbsamen.

There is also the Game Kitchen which is a group which facilitates the collaborative design of Nordic-style larp and facilitates discussions around this topic. There are monthly meet-ups and in addition to group design sessions and play-testing, we have also had sessions discussing topics like use of lighting, use of drawing and steering vs immersion. I designed my first game in this group, and some great games have come from it.

Incarnation games run a UK Freeform game on approximately a monthly basis. They normally fill up quickly and cast players in advance.

London Larp Studio is a new group for designers to discuss challenges and support each other in their work.

There is London Larp Frothmeet where players talk about games, normally Fest Larp games, from my understanding.

Finally, although this isn’t a larp group per se, London Indie RPG meet up group often run games which have a emphasis on narrative and story telling.

I will write soon about weekend larps and festivals that have run or are going to run which welcome international players and sources of information that will help players find them. I would welcome comments on larp groups in the UK outside London, Fest larp and anything that I haven’t covered here.   

Currently writing...

I’ve been looking back at my old posts here, and the excitement and awe I felt at discovering roleplaying and larp for the first time. It’s interesting to notice that the questions I had then are still the questions I have today - ‘What are there practical applications of larp?’ and ‘How can we allow people to feel and act as safely as possible while playing?’ Although I think that my understanding of the topics has increased since then, that has opened more possibilities and nuances that I’m looking forward to exploring.

It's hard to feel bad about a less than perfect playtest when everything is beautiful. 

Today I’m writing about two short larps which I playtested recently, one which I wrote, and one which I co-wrote . Mo Holkar writes about them on his blog here:

Inside is a game I wrote and playtested based on my experience of working in the education department of a women’s prison. This is an environment that can be sensationalised and I wanted to depict a more accurate reality. The character creation process of this game takes almost as long as the game itself which actually felt like a worthwhile trade off to have fully fleshed out characters and a game which makes a point about anxiety and boredom while keeping players immersed. I got some great feedback which suggested that I had achieved the effect I wanted (“I was miserable, but in an immersive way”!) I also got some suggestions on possible improvements. At the time having a teacher in a player role felt interesting because I thought they could play out their own feelings regarding the situation of teaching people who resented being there, but also who could benefit from it. In practice though, I think it proved too frustrating. The game wasn’t long enough to provide the internal conflict I was hoping for, so it just became an exercise in frustration for the player. In future I will structure it slightly differently and make that a GM role, giving more possibility to steer play and drop the idea of the teacher as their own character.

Another idea suggested was to get players to create a reason why their character was in the class and how much control they have over whether they joined it. I think this will work really well in the future and am looking forward to running it soon.

I co- wrote First Blast of the Trumpet with Patrik Balint. I think it began as a conversation after a we’d had a few drinks and picked up pace as we came up with ideas for NPCs and situations that don’t actually appear in the game at any point. The idea was to have a modern day feminist group carry out an action which would have significant effects on the course that their country was taking, but would be morally distasteful. We split the game into two parts, the first part being flashbacks to a time that character had suffered under the patriarchy, and the second part playing out what happened after the group had been given their mission. We had mechanics to replay and increase the intensity of the flashbacks if the characters started having doubts about the mission. The idea was to invoke real life anger by playing relevant music, and using articles about violence and discrimination against women in the present day.

Unfortunately it didn’t work, I think mainly because of the scope of the mission and lack of workshopping of the group. We wanted the group to generally have positive relationships and to induce strong feelings about the importance of the mission which meant that there was little source of conflict for the characters. The scope of the mission was also too large for the players to feel a personal connection to it, so I hope that for our next run we will be able to scale it down, give a more personal feel to it and allow players to build positive and negative relationships. I’m still very excited about it, and think it has a lot of potential.

La Sirena Varada - A Larp about Community and Madness

CN: Mental health, death of a child

La Sirena Varada (The Stranded Mermaid) is a contemporary larp about the dwellers of a community built outside of conventional society, people who eschew common sense for the pursue of fantasy and dreams… and their descent into madness. http://somnia-larp.wixsite.com/lasirenavarada/vision

The Republic of the Free, near Granada in Spain, is constantly in sunshine during the day and overlooked at night by thousands of stars. People gather for meals, never eating alone. The food is delicious and the wine and beer are plentiful. You can spend your days sitting by the pool, singing along to music played by talented musicians and watch people dance, the brightness of their clothes and the rhythm of their movements almost hypnotic. You can write, sitting among friends, or alone among incredible beauty. Your strangeness and eccentricities aren't just accepted but celebrated. You can feel at one with the people around you.

The cave where Gea and other members of the community lived.

But better than that you can believe. You can live in a world where if anything bad happens you are simply gathering the power to fight it. And world where nothing and no one ever leaves you. 

I admit that I was originally a little apprehensive about this larp. My friend pitched it to me as an incredible, almost life changing experience, but I was unsure what to expect. The Mediterranean larping style was new to me and my character, Gea, seemed like she would be challenging to play. She was a mother who had lost her child, but couldn't let go and I was worried about how to portray her.

I needn't have worried. I was able to understand and immerse in my character within the first few hours of play. You are given an outline of your character when you're cast which in my case included the traumas she had suffered, the terrible things she had done and the delusions that she embraced to deal with it. Maybe it was my decision to write a backstory for her and the fact I was always aware that she had been someone else, however much she tried to forget it, which led to the conclusion of my game. 

As a player I felt so safe during the larp. It didn't feel like there was any pressure to step over boundaries I had set (at least in my own experience of play) and in scenes of confrontation (and my character was very confrontational) I felt that the other players were aware of the out of character dynamics of the scene and acted accordingly. This trust of my fellow players let me play some challenging scenes and be vulnerable in a way I've never managed during a multi-day international larp before. 

Mo Holkar talks here about last year's run and the techniques used so I won't repeat them, except to say that I had very powerful experiences in both the shadow caves and the Waters Divine and I felt they were very effective techniques. 

Prior to the game there was some pre-play, forming impressions and relationships. I feel like a lot of things that we agreed out of character would have probably occurred in character anyway. One of the things it did give me with some characters was a sense of which buttons to push to annoy, upset or make them happy, so I could approach them already knowing their views. In that sense it was useful, but not necessary. 

As much as I would love to recount what happened scene for scene I have already bored many people with it! But this was a beautiful larp, with a community of damaged people who seemed to be pushing each other deeper and deeper into their delusions and away from the real world.

My game ended with Gea and another character, Comrade, declaring their real names and running from the community, away from the light and towards the darkness of the surrounding land. Gea (Melinda now) was blinded by tears, running because she was scared of being followed, running because if she stopped she might turn back. I wonder what happened to them and how they fared, faced with reality.