Spellbound
Adventure as the social form for cultural cohesion and collective action in the realm of leisure
carien moossdorff
Thesis RMSS August 2018.
Supervisor: Don Weenink Second reader: Stef Aupers
My gratitude goes to all the people that have helped to make this project much more than possible, a true joy. Thank you:
The organizations of Booyah, De Dwaler, Heimr, Vortex Adventures.
Andries, Bas, Brian, Chris, Davy, Ernst, Jaime, Jan, Kenrick, Kotka, Lea, Lindy, Lotte, Pascale, Remy, Tom, Vincent, Wander, and nameless interviewees.
Everybody that has been kind enough to welcome me into this hobby, with all of your kindness, and all the wonderful moments of play I have had the privilege to enjoy so far. Everybody that has been patient and generous enough to help me get started and teach me about LARP - socialization is difficult and annoying and I thank you.
The people that have sacrificed their time to help me with proofreading and checking of this beast. Special thanks to:
Anne, Brian, Lindy, Lise, Peter, and Spring.
I am grateful to Academisch Media Instituut Amsterdam (PolDox/DIA) for teaching me how to think and argue visually, for selflessly helping me with the film part of this project. Thank you and best of luck, Hilbert Kamphuisen.
I thank the second reader who has managed to challenge my thoughts with a few lines, and has made me look forward to my defense:
Stef Aupers.
Eternal gratitude to the supervisor who managed to be patient, kind, and inspiring, and who manages to make his own brilliance feel like my accomplishment:
Table of contents
Introduction What is LARP? Theory
Symbolic interactionism: How does world-building work in LARP? Excitement and adventure: Why are people drawn to adventure in LARP?
Cohesion, collective agency: How do collective adventure/excitement and world-building work together in Interaction Rituals?
Methods
Participation/observation Interviews
Other data
From skeptic to spellbound - findings Part 1. World-building
Socialization
The Self: Impression management and immersion The Self: Immersion to identification to I
Rules of irrelevance or suspension of disbelief Conclusions
Part 2. World preservation: Taboo 1. OC dipping
2. Safety and wellbeing 3. Lolplay v. IC dipping 4. Bleed 5. The Law 6. Metagaming Conclusions Part 3. Adventure 6 9 14 14 16 17 20 20 21 23 25 26 27 32 35 37 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 49 51
LARP as an adventure
Pushing boundaries, testing oneself, and experienced agency Engulfment and embodiment
Catharsis and raising stakes Genre enclaves
Conclusions Part 4. Group adventure
LARP as an IR-machine
1. The ‘epic battle’, high-intensity IRs 2. The powers of talk
Interaction Rituals, from sociable to intense 3. The formal ritual, good and bad
Conclusions Conclusions
Limitations References
Appendix A: List of native words (Dutch) Appendix B: Event itinerary outline
51 52 55 56 60 62 64 64 66 69 70 73 76 78 83 86 89 92
What can we, sociologists, learn from the people that habitually withdraw from society for the weekend in order to imagine their own? Far from the confounding web of interdependencies of everyday life, the subculture of LARP (Live Action Role Playing, which consists of a combination of improvisational theater, gaming, and design) forms the kind of isolated experiment that is usually not available to scholars of society. Through this ethnographic research project, LARP shows us how meaning-making and world-building happen, both on the level of the subculture, as well as of the fictional worlds that arise. It shows how the challenging of these created meanings and worlds through adventure may foster a sense of collective agency and group cohesion. The importance of the term ‘immersion’ points to the Durkheimian transcendence we seek in leisure.
In general, this project addresses a gap in the sociological attention: leisure. As noted by Elias and Dunning as early as 1986, leisure (and especially play) is often disregarded by social scientists as a trivial site that is devoid of social action (cf. Aupers 2006). This oversight, although understandable because of the contrast with the earnest political and economic institutions, leaves the field of sociology with a major gap in the knowledge of social life. Because it is precisely in the free time, that people spend their time, energy, and resources on the activities and aspects of social life which they value the most. And what we call ‘hobbies’ are social, not only to the extent that they provide social contact to their practitioners, but more importantly, in that they are ‘sandboxes’, where people get to ‘spend’ their agency to build (on) the social worlds they deem worthy.
This, then, is the main objective of this thesis: To find out how and under what circumstances people successfully form cohesive collectives with stock of symbols, and why such activities coincide with fun and enjoyment. The answer is to be found in a free yet purposeful participation in collective action, and the pleasurable sense of (group) agency. This study shows that cultural sociology has a lot to gain by studying cultural
participation as a possible form of and site for social action, rather than (for example) as a mere reflection or inevitable outcome of social backgrounds1. In this line of reasoning, cultural
1 One interesting avenue for further research could be access to, and manifestations of, cultural capital within LARP.
participation is not a passive type of consumption of cultural goods, and instead a contribution to the system of values and symbols of one’s community.
Aside from the academic relevance of this shift in perception of cultural participation, it may help open up some of the current public debates. In LARP it becomes clear that cultural consumption is a contribution to world-building. Additionally, both the acceptance of external abstract institutions, and of the own identity, appears to be much more flexible and irreverent of fictionality than typically assumed. Those policy-makers and op-ed-writers struggling to balance between the search for a shared (national) identity or cohesion on the one hand, and steering clear of cultural essentialism on the other, can benefit from these findings, too. Leisure is a field of cultural participation where people can create their own identity, and at the same time contribute to the social world in the way they themselves see fit. And in a time when many people in this country struggle with loneliness (Couzy 2017; Vermeulen 2017) or cultural
segregation (Ten Dam 2018; Veldboer 2018) we need to know more about the creation of cohesion through shared enjoyment, regardless of background.
I will start by providing a brief description of LARP - what it is, how it is played, and how the field is organized. It should be noted that LARP is infinitely more complex, subtle, and
challenging, than I could have imagined before playing myself, and any ink-on-paper description will surely not do it justice completely. It will, however, be possible to draw out a sketch of what a weekend of LARPing could look like. Additionally, I will spend some words here on the existing academic literature on LARP. Most of this does not describe the scene in The
Netherlands, but it does provide interesting starting points for research, such as player motivations, and learning benefits.
Next, I will outline my theoretical starting points. This will produce a synthesis of ethnomethodological insights into the social creation of social worlds or culture through interaction (see Berger 2008; Fine 1979, 2002; Goffman 2008, 2013); of Durkheimian theories of meaning structures and social action (see Durkheim 1976; Collins 2005); and of theories of the social functions of excitement in leisure (Elias & Dunning 2007), and adventuring (Simmel 1971). All combined, these theories will help shine a light on my data, to make sense of the investment of energy, time, money, and skills into fictitious worlds.
After a short overview of the methodological choices (observant participation, interviewing, and online sources), I will proceed to a presentation of the empirical findings. These will immediately be accounted for, analogous to the abductive process of interpretation
that has been followed during analysis. The first part shows the mechanics and efforts of world-building in LARP. It is descriptive in nature but structured thematically, along the lines of several different institutions that help the creation and maintenance of the fictional and subcultural worlds at hand. The question all of this addresses is simply ‘how does world-building work in LARP’. The second chapter outlines the most important taboo that sustains world-building, which is the separation between In Character (IC) things and actions, and those that are Out of Character (OC).
The third and fourth chapters are shorter and both relate LARP to the theories of adventure and excitement presented. The third chapter tries to answer ‘what draws people to adventure?’, by first argumenting why LARPing is adventurous, and secondly why it is
pleasurable (and, perhaps more interestingly, why people enjoy it even when it is
uncomfortable and unpleasant). The final chapter brings these two questions together by linking adventure and excitement back to group processes and world-building. It shows how collective adventure has the power of (or the possibility for) great cohesion forming, symbol creation, and sense-making - and makes an argument for why this is something people enjoy.
What is LARP
Photo of a part of the play area and some props at Vortex Adventures.
LARP is a form of improvisational and interactional performance. I start with this very concise definition, because I feel this captures the activity more or less accurately, and because I will soon have to make it much more complex and confusing - the overwhelmed reader is
continually invited to return to this simple sentence. The act of LARPing comes close to
improvisational theater, with players acting out a character and responding to external stimuli as that character on the fly. Additionally, LARP may be described as a game without a clear win-condition but with clear game-mechanics. As stated by ‘Gamedesigning.org’, “game mechanics help provide gameplay by providing a construct of methods or rules designed for the player to interact with.(...) A game designer’s main role is to come up with game mechanics that are engaging enough to either entertain a player or give them an impacting and worthwhile experience” (gamedesigning.org 2018). I will start with a very brief description of how LARP is played in this country, based on my own experience, and information provided online by different organizations. Then, I will discuss some of the existing academic literature, which builds on the scene in different countries. Some differences in typical game mechanics, esthetic styles, and amounts of realism exist between countries, but the form of play is similar.
In line with Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938) the game or play’s primary goal is to serve itself. In fact, Dutch LARP typically does not have so much as a win condition. The goal is explicitly to create ‘good play’2, indicating good scenes or storylines, adding to the layered
2 Mooi spel, or goed spel.
fictional reality. Besides its nature of freedom, also in line with Huizinga’s theory are the creation of order, separation in time and space (see below).
"Maak het echt!" Het spelen bij GNS evenementen, maar ook het uitbeelden van de regels leunt veelal hierop. LARP is een spel, maar wel een spel dat wij samen mooi maken. Hoe overtuigender (dus geloofwaardiger!) en mooier alles uitgespeeld wordt, hoe meer je elkaar meeneemt in de ervaring. (Regelboekje De Dwaler 2018: 5).
Het is belangrijk om te beseffen dat de regels zijn bedoeld om de simulatie van de “high fantasy” setting in deze werkelijkheid te ondersteunen. Met behulp van spelregels vullen we leemtes op tussen onze werkelijkheid en de high fantasy setting. (Regelboekje Vortex Adventures 2014: 5).
Standaard larp dingetjes:
Time freeze: tijd staat stil en doe je ogen dicht
Time stop: tijd staat stil en houd je ogen open (iets wordt uitgelegd). Time in: Tijd gaat weer verder.
Time out: het spel stopt.
Handje omhoog: Deze persoon bestaat niet.
Dipperlint: Deze persoon is OC gewond en mag niet geslagen worden. In plaats daarvan mag je zeggen "ik sla je" en dan hapt ie automatisch schade elke seconde dat jij bij hem blijft. (Regelblaadje Heimr, retrieved 2017)
Following a character (as each player does) implies a narrative structure of some sort. And although it is up to the player to decide what decisions his character will make, there are few players that do not get involved in any storylines. As with any kind of story, the narratives in LARP are pushed by internal and external stimuli. Internal stimuli, such as hunger, a desire for revenge, or madness, are provided by the player him/herself in the form of a character background that include personality traits and some amount of personal history. External stimuli are provided by other player-characters, which may interact with one another at any time; and by non-player characters (NPCs), that are assigned a role, costume, and function by game staff (‘spelleider’ or SL in Dutch), typically for a couple of hours, sometimes for a full event or even a recurring part. Oftentimes, they provide an external threat of a political, violent, or metaphysically existential nature that requires cooperation amongst the players to confront successfully. Depending on the specific organization’s outlook, however, NPCs are often benevolent as well and can provide information, or plot events that are not necessarily
harmful. In appendix B, a made-up outline for a LARP weekend is provided, which is meant to provide but the crudest of outlines of the pace of an event.
Simkins (2015) draws out LARP (in the US) as a triad composed of acting, immersion, and gaming (p. 44). This model resonates with the ‘Three way model’ as suggested by Bøckman (2002) to describe ideal types of the main playing styles among Scandinavian LARPers, that he calls dramatist, gamist, and immersionist. In this model, a player with a strong preference for the dramatist style would look for nice narratives and plot moments and would choose to put his character in danger, or lose identification with it, if it facilitates a beautiful scene. The gamist likes to ‘solve puzzles’ and get involved with the magic system and metaphysics of the setting to gather more powers - the gamist enjoys ‘wins’. Finally, the immersionist seeks identification with his character above all else. Even if this prevents a ‘win’ for the character, even if a dramatic scene could happen - if it is not from the lived fictional psyche of the persona that a motivation emerges, an immersionist player will not act it out (Bøckman 2002). Most players combine elements of the different styles but have a preference. Players’ having different styles is not necessarily a source of irritation.
It should be noted that typically, there is no audience as such. Rather like in everyday life, the audience consists of others, passers-by in the same world, going about their business. In fact, most events are not publicly accessible. In The Netherlands, a LARP organization (typically a not-for-profit foundation), will rent a scouts’ campsite or low-budget holiday accommodation for private use. Most LARPs in this country are weekend-long events where participants spend the night on site. Participants pay anywhere between 25 and 90 euros for the weekend, sometimes having to provide for their own food. Often NPCs get a small discount. The organization does a lot of preparational work, such as story-writing, costume-creation, buildup of thematic tents and props on the site, and administration. This is, in line with the country’s tradition of ‘verenigingswerk’ in leisure (Van Bottenburg 2007) done by volunteers that choose to spend an amount of their free time on these tasks for a couple of months or years.
Most LARPs are set in a completely fictional world, often high fantasy, sometimes sci-fi, and sometimes post-apocalyptic. Modern-day LARPs with a magical twist such as the existence of vampires exist, too. In this research the main focus is on fantasy LARP, and for now it will suffice to say that the great majority of LARPs is currently set well before or after modernity in terms of a civilizing process (Elias 1987). It should be clear that this makes the threat of
violence, as well as relatively free expression of all sorts of emotions and sensations, readily believable. I will spend a few words on genre in the empirical section on adventure to further explain why the fantasy and sci-fi genres suit LARP so well.
‘Suspension of disbelief’, a concept from media studies, is commonly known among Dutch LARPers with many of the rulebooks (see Omen 2015: 10) and interviewees referring to it. It refers to media users ignoring the medium itself. For example, in a theater screening of a film, a viewer would only focus on the shots on the screen and the sound, and try to forget or block the other people around him, the subtitles, and ideally even the fact that it is a screen he is watching. Likewise, in LARP, players ignore things such as the paper participants’ bracelets, ‘calls’ that may indicate a special effect from a weapon (instead play-acting as though the effect itself happens immediately), and spelleiders. The goal is the same: To achieve full immersion in the story and the fictional world and to forget that it is to some extent a mediated experience.
Sociological literature on LARP is somewhat scarce, but some work on this hobby has been done from fields such as game- and media studies, or angling from developmental psychology. When Bienia asks LARPers why they play, the top five of reasons he finds are fellowship, embodiment, flow, catharsis, and spectacle (2012: 102). Although less frequently mentioned, his list also includes matters of learning and self-expression and -exploration (ibid), which are familiar themes from research into school-based LARP (Bowman & Standiford 2015; Bowman 2010; Gjedde 2014; Simkins 2015). Bienia goes on to say that these benefits are not intrinsically linked to the fantasy and sci-fi-themes that are often found in LARP and suggests that genre may be responsible for keeping LARP away from mainstream popular culture. He invites the reader to see LARP generally as “a tool for communities to engage with alternative realities together” (2012: 104). After all, LARP is a medium to investigate worlds that never became real, whether based on the modern world as we know it, on Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or an imagined post-apocalyptic wasteland. It allows its players to deal with whatever comes their way as they please, with few ‘real-world’ consequences.
Copier (2005) has made a sociological link to LARP by stating that, although Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938) is a good tool for analyzing this hobby, academics should take to heart Huizinga’s own goal of accounting for culture beyond the act of playing itself. Copier notes that most authors that build on Huizinga focus on his ‘magic circle’ play-conditions of separation of time, space, and goals, and leave it at that. She herself goes so far as to make a connection from LARP to ritual in a vague sociological or anthropological sense, but refrains from a
systematic analysis, as well as from addressing the implications of this view on play to a wider scope of social life (Copier 2005).
A sociological work studying the predecessor of LARP dates from 1983 by the hand of Gary Alan Fine, who describes the local scene of tabletop gamers (Fine 2002). Tabletops still share basic game mechanics, some aspects of roleplay and character creation, and genre conventions and settings, with LARP - and many LARPers play tabletop as well. Tabletop games however, tend to happen in smaller groups, do less in terms of physical acting out and design, making suspension of disbelief more demanding and providing less of a ‘360’ experience. Fine notes the elaborate world-building that goes on in this scene. Both fictional world-building happens, where players imagine their world’s geography, belief systems, religions, clothings styles, races, and magics, as well as real-life world-building, where players meet in shops, have interactions, make friendships, institutions, and superstitions (ibid).
An exposition of such world-building in Dutch LARP is the goal of the first empirical part of this project, although unlike Fine, I will be focusing on the process rather than the content. It is my belief that a rudimentary comprehension of what LARP is and of what academic work exists on it, will be enough to understand how it facilitates world-building and consequently, adventuring. Summarizing, LARP is improvisational acting in a fictional world within the parameters of game mechanics but without a win-condition.
Theory
The theoretical foundations for this project rely to a large extent on symbolic interactionism. This paradigm is briefly explained in so far as it will help to explain the efforts and practices of world-building as found in LARP. Second, a strand of theory relating to leisure, excitement, and adventure is presented. Finally, I will briefly introduce Collins’ Interaction Ritual theory.
Symbolic Interactionism: How does world-building work in LARP?
Symbolic Interactionism will be at the heart of my question into world-building as it happens in LARP. Since a large part of LARP consists of explicit efforts of building fictional worlds, the characteristics of world-building as proposed by symbolic interactionists are expected to be seen in this hobby. Additionally, this is an opportunity to look into the difference (if any exists) between (experiencing) socially constructed lifeworlds or institutions on the one hand, and fictional lifeworlds (which of course are socially constructed as well). Likewise, this research provides insight into the development of identities and identification levels, as well as social cohesion and group creation, in the realms of leisure subcultures, and fictional experience.
According to Berger, “the socially constructed world is, above all, an ordering of experience. A meaningful order” (2008: 307). Berger shows how this societal world, with its subset of culture, is both sustained, experienced, and learned, through interaction with ‘significant others’. So while the socially constructed world grants meaning to the specific individual, he upholds this world by engaging in it with other individuals (Berger 2008). In this way, sharing a similar framework for meaningful experiences binds people, and is dependent on people continually coming together, or “the world-building activity of man is always and inevitably a collective enterprise” (ibid: 302). Importantly, the man-made worlds of culture and society appear to the individual as external and objective actualities, rather than a product of her conscious effort.
This collective creation of shared frames of reference is beautifully related to the realm of leisure by Fine - as mentioned briefly above as relates to tabletop role-playing games (2002) and more famously to baseball (1979). What Fine shows in both activities, is that each
gathering builds on previously established cultures and enforces (some of) them, but at the same time, that repeated interactions with more or less the same group creates own ‘versions’ of the same thing, or even completely group-specific symbols (Fine 1979; Fine 2002).
Where Fine’s focus seems to be on what happens when symbols are shared enough to function as a means of understanding and to support interaction, Goffman illustrates that this understanding requires individual efforts and is by no means automatically successful, even within a group. Goffman has elaborately, and to wide appeal, posed his metaphor of the stage for social life. In every interaction, he states, the actor (both in the theatrical and the social sense), takes on a role. As it is on stage, getting this role across convincingly is a matter of skill, verbosity, and timing. The social actor, like the stage-actor, is continually concerned with delivering a passing performance if he is to be taken seriously - if, that is, he is to appeal to the right symbols in between himself and the audience (where any part of himself may be a symbol) (Goffman 2008). Every possible actor thus becomes audience and critic alike, in the position to deny an attempted interaction success.
Successful transfer of an intended role is not necessarily a simple matter, however. In social life, the actor may not wish to be too convincing, or to connect emotionally to the part he is expected or required to play, and keep a ‘role distance’ (Goffman 2013). Additionally, and Goffman illustrates this by using another play-metaphor, that of the game (2013), it is of importance to have a common notion as to what ‘counts’ to that what is being played, and what (environmental/social) elements are to be ignored. These ‘rules of irrelevance’ (ibid) are more or less stable across similar situations, but their proper application often requires a practiced sensitivity as to what is relevant to a specific interaction.
LARP is an excellent looking glass into the social processes as proposed by these social interactionists. Not only is it a subculture like any other hobby (like, for example, baseball), but it is, more clearly than most hobbies or social activities, explicitly an effort of world-building. This is a trait it shares with Fine’s RPGs (2002) but because a LARP typically has many more players and does not have a turn-based structure, the possible outcomes are, like in ‘real life’, much more diverse. Correspondingly, each player has a wider range of actions (and
interactions!) at his disposal. And although both the fictional reality that is constituted by the play, and the subculture or hobby around it, should be seen as social realities of their own right, both are a nice middle ground of social studies. In sheer size, a LARP (scene) is smaller than an incomprehensibly large social reality at the level of for example the nation state. On the other
hand, it allows for much more individual agency and contingency than for example any
organized sport or a stage production would. This has led to the first research question, which will lead to a descriptive answer, and is deceptively simple: ‘How does world-building work in LARP?’
The expected theoretical benefit of asking this question with regard to this hobby, is to learn more about experiencing and creating fictional worlds, and to see how and to what extent people can ‘switch’ back and forth between completely different lifeworlds. The effect of
participation on the player is studied as well as the effect of playing on the built world are studied simultaneously. This is in line with the ‘conversation partners’ that interactionism requires, and it allows for an exposition of the role of the self in world-building. After all, Berger writes that not only ‘man’, “must ongoingly establish a relationship with [the world]” (2008: 301) but also that “he produces himself in a world” (ibid).
Excitement and adventure: Why are people drawn to adventure in LARP?
Leisure is central to this research project. Leisure seems like an especially fruitful ground for IRs as described by Collins (see below) and therefore as an important site for social action, but it is studied surprisingly little. This has been noted by Elias and Dunning who ascribe this to the tendency to see work as serious aspects of life, and therefore as serious objects for social research (2007). It is, however, in the realm of leisure that members of society spend their resources and energy on social situations because they deem them worthy, and pursue activities as ends in themselves. It should be made clear that the authors distinguish between ‘free time’, which essentially is time off work, and leisure, which describes free time spent actively according to the individual’s desire (ibid).
Elias and Dunning go on to note that in today’s (which seems to have held up since the 1980’s, their time of writing) society, people do not seem to look for relaxation in their leisure activities, but rather for excitement. The explanation provided by the authors is that in society characterized by an advanced civilizing process, everyday life becomes in fact too safe and constrained, leaving the individual with (possibly dangerous) urges and tensions that can find no proper expression. The classics inspire Elias’ and Dunning’s next move: This can be resolved by means of catharsis, or the purification of emotion by vicariously experiencing it. Sports,
games, and mimetic culture (interpretable as fiction) are fruitful vessels for catharsis (ibid). These experienced emotions, though not in line with the usual demands of civilization, don’t form a threat, unless they start to seep from the mimetic realm into the actual, immediate own experience. This is what happens, for example, in hooliganism (Elias & Dunning 2007). In this way, thrilling pastimes sustain society by acting as a controlled channel for emotions we need to feel. LARP, with its imitation of historical eras and imagined magics; with its imitation of fictional emotions in the own body; with its fights, and with its insisting on looking for tension, fits this model of looking for harmless excitement perfectly.
This stepping out of the usual state of affairs as a pastime is finally reminiscent of Simmel’s adventurer (1971). An adventure, says Simmel, is characterized by unusual experience, a heightened sense of individual agency and vivaciousness, and a remarkable relation between the environment and the interior psychological experience. At the same time, the adventure seems like the most ‘alive’ episode an individual can encounter; and, it is as far removed from normal ‘real life’ as possible. The adventure, after it happens, needs to be reconciled with the usual flow of everyday life, for “it itself is a specific organization of some significant meaning with a beginning and an end; and that, despite its accidental nature, its extraterritoriality with respect to the continuity of life, it nevertheless connects with the character and identity of the bearer of that life” (Simmel 1971: 190).
However, viewing LARP as a world-building activity first, would beg the question: why adventure at all? After all, building a second world and taking on a second personality could be construed as adventurous, and moreover, looking for intense emotions, danger, and adventure within that would could seriously jeopardize it. The puzzle of LARPers’ risking their meticulously built worlds by looking for excitement then leads to the second question: Why are people in LARP drawn to adventure and/or excitement? The research should also show how and why LARP is better or more precisely explained by adventure, or a ‘quest for excitement’.
Cohesion, collective agency: How do collective adventure/excitement and world-building work together in Interaction Rituals?
These two strands of theory are united by application of Collins’ Interaction Ritual Chains (2005), a theoretical model that combines group experiences that lead to cultural symbols and
group cohesion on the one hand, with strong emotion and being overwhelmed on the other. After all, Simmel describes adventuring implicitly as a solo endeavor, and to Elias and Dunning, group composition seems to matter very little so long as catharsis is achieved. The goal of the next theoretical section and ensuing question, is to investigate what happens when catharsis or adventure becomes a group program.
This unison leans on one of the field’s founding fathers. In the work of Durkheim, as in symbolic interactionism, flexible meaning systems are more or less shared, and symbols are affirmed in group interactions. Durkheim makes it very clear how these systems of meaning are interwoven with the lived social reality. Symbols that represent the society through gods thus become sacred and so does interaction with those symbols (Durkheim 1976).
Collins has famously united Durkheim’s take on the ritual and its effects with a more interactionist approach (2005). Collins writes that from “minor Goffmanian interaction rituals: casual conversations, shared greetings, little jokes, bits of gossip, small talk about the weather” (ibid: 272), to more formal rituals such as funerals or official speeches, all kinds of social
situations can be successful IRs. In this way, he places both all-encompassing rituals that celebrate the society itself, and small rituals, that may yield a (pleasant) societal feeling, in the same format. Because the expectation has been that LARP’s successful moments are perfect examples of such Interaction Rituals, I will spend some words on Collins’ theory here.
The Interaction Rituals of the ‘mutual focus/emotional-entrainment’ model are all characterized by a physical gathering of the group of participants, with barriers to outsiders, a collective focus of attention, and a shared mood (the latter two reinforcing one another). If the event is successful, the collective emotion will build up to a point of effervescence, and the outcomes of the event are group solidarity, individual experience of emotional energy, sacred symbols representing the ritual bond, and shared morality (ibid).
It thus becomes clear how LARP unites these somewhat divergent strands of theory. Without denying a usual, ‘everyday’, system of meaning that is more or less shared and in which people of the nation-state or society can more or less consistently understand each other, LARPers take small vacations not only from their jobs and chores, but from those meaning structures (including social hierarchies and the civilizing process) as well. The stories they LARP are exciting works of fiction and therefore, like theater plays except more
interactive, possible sites for quite successful Interaction Rituals. On that local level, LARP would thus create culture and meanings locally, at the same time leaning and building on
existing and well-known scripts, and allowing for idiosyncrasies. In fact, quests for excitement imply that the organized structure is temporarily abandoned, but it should be clear that this is a brief and deliberate deviation and not in fact a societal or political revolt. Instead, it fulfills a societal need.
With a special attention to cohesion and value systems then, the final research question becomes how do collective adventuring/excitement and world-building work together in
Methods
This project is best described as ethnographic, with participant observation with a high level of involvement (Bryman 2008: 411) and semi-structured, free-flowing interviews comprising the bulk of the data.
Participation/observation
In order to get a grasp on the experience of LARP, I have participated in events of several organizations over the course of a year (summer of 2017 - summer of 2018). As noted by Simkins (2015), LARP is a social phenomenon that can really only be understood by
participation. This is in line with the example set by Fine, when he studies tabletop roleplayers in their creation of social worlds (1983).
The amount of observation to this participation has varied somewhat. Although I have taken many notes on many scenes, there has been much more that I could not take the time to write down as it happened, or that I literally have no words for. That is to say, the experience that is LARP is embodied and active to such an extent, that participation is the only way to really get a grasp on it. This goes especially for this research, with its emphasis on emotion, sense of group belonging, and collective effervescence.
I have waited with my debut in the field until after the ‘official’ start of my fieldwork. In this way, I have ensured to include the whole process of my socialization into the hobby. The learning curve has enabled me to grasp every mistake, every moment of misunderstanding, confusion and discomfort that a more experienced player might have taken for granted. With two organizations, I have started playing as a Player Character, and have played a total of 6 weekend-events. At four organizations, I have played as a Non-Player Character and have played as many events. The experience as a player has allowed me to understand the
identification and empathy with a long-term character; participating as an NPC has allowed me to be a part of many different kinds of scenes with many different people.
Additionally, it should be noted that ‘participation’ is not limited to the events
themselves. Making friends in the world of Dutch LARP, as it turns out, is easy to the point of inevitability and, as everybody I got to know has been aware of my academic endeavor, I have
allowed myself to enjoy these friendships. Apart from reflecting on, preparing for, and joking about LARP itself, the chat group with my LARP-friends is one of my most active ones. I also attended birthday- and christmas parties, concerts, and board- and video game days. Apart from my own enjoyment, this has deepened my connections within the field and helped me understand the social ties that arise from it.
Selection of events to participate in has been based on a handful of loosely applied criteria. For one, the project has been limited to LARPs in the medieval fantasy genre, so as to be able to fruitfully compare between different organizations without being limited by genre confusion. Within this scope, one organization of ‘low fantasy’3 has been selected, which allows
for some amount of comparison. Additionally, I was determined to study the largest
organization (Vortex Adventures), a very small-scale one (Heimr), as well as some medium sized (e.g. De Dwaler). Within each different organization, I made sure to not go with a player group I already knew from a different LARP.
These latter choices serve to improve the external validity (see Bryman 2008: 376-377) somewhat by incorporating experiences from different settings. This has placed the emphasis on types of processes and mechanics, rather than the local situations themselves, and has provided some confidence in their similar nature across settings. However, more research is necessary to further confirm this. Likewise, external reliability is limited by the dynamically emergent nature of role-play. In fact, one could make the argument that no other person could play my part in the way that I have (for better or worse), or have the same experiences. This cannot be completely resolved regarding LARP, or life. Both concerns are partly addressed using interview- and supplementary data.
Interviews
Twenty semi-structured interviews have been completed, transcribed, and coded in Atlas.ti. All interviews are between 60 and 120 minutes per person and produce topics relating to
memorable/successful moments in LARP; how the experience relates to that of other mimetic media; sociality and sociability; socialization. Three of the interviews have been with two
3 Low fantasy incorporates magic to the extent of medieval superstition, and magic is not as prevalent or
players at the same time.The first five interviews have been analyzed by a process of open line-by-line coding (see Bryman 2008: 542-433, Silverman 2011: 72). At this point, the first steps towards an abductive interpretation have been made, which has been to include Simmel’s notions of both Geselligkeit (1971) and the adventure (ibid). Coding has since been resumed using a thematic or selective scheme (Bryman 2008: 543), based on theoretical concepts on the project’s initial literature, as well as the works by Simmel.
Where the participation/observation has yielded information on the goings-on at events; the flow of time; the ‘rules of irrelevance’ (see Goffman 2013), interviews have granted more depth to these rather descriptive pieces of information, by allowing players to explain what these different aspects of LARP mean to them individually and what they mean on the greater scale of the participant’s personal life, as well as that of LARP in general. By focusing on the individual experience, the interview data supplements the observation; it has made clear how concepts are related that seem separate at first sight. An example would be the different forms that excitement or tension can take - stepping outside one’s individual ‘comfort zone’ thus seems surprisingly similar to engaging in a major fight scene that is dangerous to the character.
A great yield from the comparative analysis of the different interviews has been the separation of playing style on the one hand, and generalized taboos on the other. Where some players have a downright severe attitude towards the IC/OC separation (see below), others are more lenient. An example would be comedic play - for some immediately threatening,
acceptable to others. Additionally, many respondents turn out to play (or have played) in more than one organization (with some playing as much as possible), which may settle some unease regarding external validity; despite differences in genre, size, and style between different organizations, respondents clearly discuss them using the same frame of reference. The two most important theoretical approaches, those of world-building and excitement/adventure respectively, remain intact regardless of the LARP my respondents refer to.
Transferability to other realms of leisure or even broader social life (and I will attempt to justify this below) is therefore not a given, based on the empirics, and relies heavily on the internal validity, or “a good match between the researchers’ observations and the theoretical ideas they develop” (ibid: 376). Because LARP takes place in a vacation-like setting away from ‘distractions’, and because it is a somewhat complex activity, we find many native concepts
there which point to densely used and very local meanings that are used so much they require their own word. These are also excellent starting points to make links to sociological concepts.
A drawback from the interviewing was the experiment with two respondents in one conversation; where I had hoped that this would inspire the ‘storytelling’ vibe so typical of LARP talk, this only happened occasionally and the set-up mainly proved lengthy and
time-consuming. Some topics were dropped from the list after they proved confusing too many times. An example is that of ‘group immersion’ which to most participants required too much explanation to be unworried of bias.
Other data
These data sources have been supported by audiovisual material made by me; by forums and online platforms; and by material provided by LARP organizations, such as rulebooks. It should be noted that this data has not been analyzed in any structural way - it should really be seen as a means by which I have sensitized myself to the concepts, discourses, and public debates of the field. Some examples of the institutionally successful reality of this social world for example, we find in the lively discussion on a Facebook forum following 2017’s media movement
‘#metoo’; in online debates on what requests from researchers, journalists, and casting directors to the general community seem legitimate or worthwhile; in anxious starting players asking for (and receiving) advice, and much more. Generally speaking, these data show the outlines of the social world as it stretches beyond the fictional realms it revolves around. The forum data have also shown a range of opinions throughout the subculture, allowing me to make sure that my interview sample has not been too isolated or deviated from the hobby’s current debates and viewpoints.
A film-project has been started but has hit several snags. As the hobby is privacy-sensitive and completely experience-based, it is not a natural match with film. An organization was kind enough to set up a ‘film event’ for me to work with. Unfortunately, however, this turned out so far from the typical reality of LARP, that I feel this material in and of itself does not do academic justice to the subject. By very way of not being useful data, however, this endeavor has helped me greatly in understanding LARP - as it made me realize just what was missing and what, by extension should have been there.
An example would be an ongoing miscommunication between myself and a small group of actors/players as we set out to make some shots based on ‘The blair witch project’. I instructed the players on what I wanted as a director, they took these as cues given by a Spelleider. In short, they were more concerned with creating the immediate experience of (and for) me being chased or surrounded by mysterious figures in a dark forest, rather than producing the necessary shots to be able to edit this into a mediated experience for a film viewer. So when I asked these players to approach us within a six foot radius and within the camera light’s reach, they found this almost impossible to do, because they were too keenly aware of how visible they were to me. What I, as a director, tried to explain, is that they were really playing with the camera rather than me.
In general, capturing the real experience of LARP at this event was problematic for the following reason: only one single participant played his own character; everybody else was there as an NPC. And even though most people present were experienced players and
performed their parts well, the emotional connection to their roles had only been established that weekend; they did not share a history yet. This gave it the impression of a stage play, alternating with a movie set, rather than a freely emerging social world with all the depth and engagement that LARP typically has to offer. Again, looking at this problem as a data source in and of itself, it highlights the emotional, social, and temporal investments that go into creating a shared social world that exudes a robust sense of reality or realness.
From skeptic to spellbound - my findings in the world of Dutch LARP
The empirical findings that follow are structured thematically. The first part describes how world-building works in LARP, with a special attention to the creation and legitimation of the fictional worlds. Socialization, presentation, and emotional experience of the individual are important to achieve the desired effect. The second part describes how these worlds are protected by the most important taboo, which separates IC from OC, and institutions that have arisen to accomodate or negotiate this taboo in specific situations. In the third part, these worlds become trials and tried at the same time through adventure - which actually turns out to be constitutive of world-building. We see the connection between genre of the fiction, and social organization of the subculture. The final part goes deeper into the sociality and cohesion, linking world-building and adventure to collective action and institutionalization.
Photo of the play area at Heimr, where I took my first steps into LARP’s socialization. Photo by Roos.
Part 1. World-building
In this first empirical chapter I will discuss world-building as it happens in LARP. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I do this not by describing just how LARPing works step-by-step; instead I have chosen a thematic approach to show the different institutions that create and sustain the worlds of LARP. If you, reading this, feel completely overwhelmed and underprepared at this point, you are probably right where I was before starting my very first event, organized by Heimr. This is why the first section of this chapter on world-building will describe socialization, and the first piece of empirics I will share, describes my very first effort to do something in-game (I failed). Hopefully, my journey through the first steps of socialization will be as instructive to the reader as it has been to me, and will help you understand the following sections. These discuss the (second/fictional) social self in LARP, and the ‘rules of irrelevance’.
Building on Berger, I see world-building as the collective product of interactions. On principle, it concerns the social world, although the social world in turn may influence interaction with and views of the material or natural worlds. This world, though socially constructed, appears external to and coercive of the individual. The people that are together included in a social world, can interact successfully since they share a frame of reference and meaning-making (see Berger 2008). When trying to make senses of LARP’s world-building, we should keep its layered structure in mind. At the same time, LARPers build the social world of their subculture or hobby, and they create their fictional worlds. Because I assume that world-building in LARP at the level of subculture is not too different from that in other leisure
activities, I do not go into great detail there. Instead, I focus on world-building during play itself. (It should be noted, that in order to play properly, some subcultural socialization is required.)
‘How does world-building work’ then begs description of the process of creating a new, fictional world, on a scout’s campsite, and more importantly of how this fictional world
becomes and remains legitimate - how it is made to feel real. Perhaps unexpectedly within this interactionist approach, a lot of individual effort and socialization appears necessary to achieve this effect. Quality and substance of the interactions are notably of secondary importance; errors and failure do not disturb world-building so long as they remain In Character.
Socialization
Edward has introduced himself to Nira4 and asked her what she is capable of. She looks
at him, dully, and he explains that he and his companion are both priests, and that he is something of a healer, too, and she knows some alchemy. I can’t do a lot, Nira tells him, but I can talk to the spirits a little. Good, Edward says, maybe you can get them on our side? (We have just learned we will need to protect this place.) I can try, she answers. We should try to get the trees on our side. The two of them water the trees and collect pine cones to arrange them in patterns around the stems.
During my character creation, Brian had explained to me that spirits gain strength from worship, so I figured this might help. And as I was supposed to play a pretty strong shaman, I should know how to reach the spirits - I did not want to let the other player down by falling flat right away.
As it turned out, I did nothing.
Brian later told me that to grant a spirit strength or to convince it to join your side, a much bigger type of worship would be necessary, like a ritual. The sociologist in me was confused: Had watering and decorating trees not been a ritual somehow? (fieldnotes)
Because LARP is complex and dynamic, a player’s socialization into it may last many years and he can keep learning and improving as long as he keeps playing. However, the very basic
socialization that is necessary to be an independently adequate player can happen much faster. Even this stretches well beyond playing itself and into storytelling, esthetics, jokes, beverage choices, and carpooling. It is important that all new players learn the proper modes and symbols of interactions as soon and as well as possible, because successful interactions keep this world alive.
In the following paragraphs, I will start by addressing the play itself, working from the outside in; it is easier to understand the socialization process by first covering ‘relating to the environment’, and to move from there to internal socialization. The goal is to become a fully functional player/character that contributes to the fictional world as it is being played. The additional purpose of this section is to offer some amount of socialization to the reader, to give a feeling for what it is like to actually participate in a LARP.
4 My character at this setting.
My own initial discomfort and confusion are relevant to interpret this learning process. The world-building that is so vital to LARP is completely dependent on participants believing in, and acting out, the fictional world they find themselves in. Getting it truly wrong, disturbs all the interaction around you, and you feel this when it happens. This is very much different, though, from a character making a mistake. To illustrate this, imagine that someone asked me in character ‘whose tent is that?’, and the tent being Lindy’s, or her character Lavera’s. I could answer ‘It’s Ognag’s’, and even though that answer would be incorrect, it would not be an impossible mistake - my character could be corrected and the world would keep going. Should I say ‘That is Bas’ tent’ (who plays Ognag) that would be wrong and disruptive. Since Bas does not exist in the IC world, others would have to break character to point that out to me, make a point of not knowing what a ‘bas’ is, or ignore me all together. But all of us would be reminded of the roles we were playing, which is detrimental to immersion.
As will be the case with becoming a character, the layers of social action in LARP are relevant to socialization: One is socialized into a person that LARPS and is familiar with the subculture, as a player that knows how to LARP, and as a character that understands the world around him. Whereas most of the chapter on world-building focuses on the process of building and sustaining a fictional world and identities, this particular section deals mostly with being an adequate player that knows what to do. This is because, once a person is such an adequate player, the process of contributing to world-building is similar for each character. For example: Whether a new character is socialized in-game into learning to fight better, or socialized into understanding how to work with spirits, matters only for the substantial outcome of the story and of the world. It does not matter for the process of world-building and the extent to which it will be successful: Both are behaviors that are possible and make sense within the world, even if they go wrong. All the ways to be socialized, once fully in the IC world, are OK, and do not influence the processes of legitimation and objectification.
This is illustrated by one of the most prevalent adages in Dutch LARP, ‘zoek dat IC maar uit’. Often it is the answer to questions posed from player to player. It would be translated to something like ‘go figure that out IC/in game’. The reasoning behind it is that finding stuff out and discovering how the fictional world works (or what goes on behind the facades) is fun and constitutive of more play. Additionally, the point can often be made that if a player does not know something, that means that the character does not know it; and that if a character does or should not know something, there is no need for the player to be aware of it. The phrase
itself is continual OC socialization, and it points to the fact that IC and OC socializations should remain separate. This separation prevents new characters, played by experienced players, being near omniscient - which would detract from the legitimacy of the world.
The first thing to discover once ‘time in’ has been called, is what one can possibly interact with. Most obviously, that includes everything that is visible and part of the fictional world. In the case above, that means the trees and pine cones, other players and NPCs, the fire pit and the tents surrounding it (see the photo on p. 25). Inside the tents are things like altars, food, and alchemy products, all of which can be played with. Though visible, the small building with bathrooms and showers is not part of the game world. When a character has to go, s/he is in play right until stepping over the threshold, after which s/he disappears. One of the tents is where the NPCs change and are briefed; this is invisible and inaccessible. Participants who (like me) brought a regular, modern tent, camp on the next field, outside of the playing area. Sometimes cyclists pass by; they are invisible and cannot be interacted with by characters. Characters cannot directly interact with Spelleiders, because they are not present in the IC world; if a player has a question, she can ask a Spelleider for help, as herself. Spelleiders take the place of invisible or immaterial interaction partners to talk to the character (see below). The visible and tangible elements are easiest to learn; it is enough for a Spelleider to point out the borders of the playing terrain, and to indicate what elements are not in play.
Invisible elements that can be played with may include things like spirits (as in the example), gods, magic, and portals. The catch here is that you can ‘play’ with them in your mind exclusively (for example, my character Nira may take solo trips into the spirit world to
recuperate), but if you really want to ‘do’ something with them, you need a Spelleider. After all, without getting an external response, playing with spirits is kind of like playing chess, or
improvisational theater, alone. Spirits, gods, and magic, however, do not seem to exist in the non-fictional world, or if they do, they don’t seem to partake in LARP. This is why spelleiders speak on their behalf.
Since Nira started play as a somewhat capable shaman, she should have known how to communicate with the spirit world. Conflictingly, I, as myself, did not know how to properly enact this (make sure that a spelleider noticed that that was I was trying to do). This creates an uncomfortable situation, since the separation between IC and OC (see below) is both disturbed and made visible, questioning the internal legitimacy of the IC world. More generally speaking,
the new player does not have access to the shared stock of symbols that is required for smooth interaction and mutual understanding; many symbols from everyday-life are not valid IC.
Although most setting rulebooks explicitly state that during IC-time, everybody is expected to stay IC, this is mentally taxing and many new players find themselves slipping back into their normal selves and are consequently scolded or scoffed. This points to the sociality of learning to LARP. Up until the point where a player has grasped the basics and can just start practicing and improving, she is completely reliant on others to teach her. Partly this can be done in mediated form, through rulebooks and loresheets online; forum discussions and chat groups; and blogs, clips, and books. However, after taking in as much written information as possible, it is still very possible to have little idea of how to really play - as happened to me for my first time. This means that in order to socialize me, other participants have had to invest time and energy.
The effort that goes into socialization is confirmed by the fact that certain player groups, especially in larger organizations, are reluctant to actively engage with new players. This is discussed by my player group of Vortex Adventures, and some veterans, Brian among them, divulge this in the interviews:
Ik denk dat er dus een klasse speler is en niet iedereen bereikt dat punt, die op den duur zegt, ik heb wel genoeg newbies opgeleid. Ik heb mijn plicht gedaan. Ik heb er vijf compleet neergezet en hier en daar ook nog mensen tips gegeven, en nu mogen andere mensen dat rotklusje doen, want ik vind het te immersiebrekend of te spelbrekend of wat-ze-dan-ook-zoeken-brekend. (...) Maar dat zie ik ook wel hoor, dat mensen na een aantal jaar dan wél weer de energie vinden om dat te doen. (Brian)5
Brian goes on to explain that the preparation for a starting player (new costume, character background, understanding of the rules and lore) requires a lot of energy, and that this often feels wasted after the new player decides the hobby is ‘not for him’ after one event. On the other hand, the community as a whole relies on the influx of new players to ensure continuity. Sacrificing some quality or time of play to the benefit of socializing others may therefore be inevitable to some extent.
5most ‘elitist’ players (including Brian) do contribute to the scene and to socialization in other
This paragraph has shown how socialization is of vital importance for new players to function and by extension, for the continued existence of this hobby. We have seen that it takes time, effort, and considerable discomfort, to really get a grasp of how LARP work. The first steps into socialization are typically external, coming from experienced friends, rulebooks, or the internet; but that gradually, socialization turns inwards as relating to the external world becomes more natural. Notably, the most important part of socialization happens on a kind of ‘eta level, of how does this improvisational interactional activity work? Everything that happens after this lesson, can happen IC and thus fully contributes to world-building.
This part resonates very well with Berger’s assertion that to interact with the social world is to contribute to it, as well as to learn from it (2008). The true trick of socialization, then, is to become a functional part of the social world and to apply the right set of symbols. After this point, one’s lack of knowledge, or access to symbols, is no longer threatening and can be resolved within the proper frame of reference. “Man is in a world that antedates his
appearance. But unlike the other mammals, this world is not simply given, prefabricated for him. Man must make a world for himself” writes Berger (2008: 300), but man must (in this case) willingly place himself in this world by a mental effort.
Another interesting point is, that this process seems no different in the case of a fully fictional world. All the LARPers that talked to me, were completely aware of this nature of the game, comparing it to books, video games, and movies. Awareness of fictionality from the start, however, does not preclude the successfully felt acceptance of a social world, or socialization into it at all. In fact, spending four weekends on one setting over the course of a single year, is plenty to fully accept this world within hours upon arrival.
The amount of legitimacy, or granted reality, that we attribute to institutions in ‘everyday life’ then should be no surprise - they tend to exist longer and more often, and are actualized by more people. This calls into question, though, on what grounds we base the attributed ‘realness’ of abstract institutions. (Over the past few weeks I have been wondering: To what extent are sports leagues real or fictional? How about stock markets? How about the constitution?) Differently put, humans appear to have a capacity for creating and accepting social constructs, as suggested by Berger, but once this has happened successfully, it is unclear whether the brain can distinguish fiction at all.
The Self: Impression management and immersion
We have seen that socialization is necessary for new players not to disturb the efforts of world-building too much; as I will show presently, the learned access to correct meanings, codes of conduct, and symbols, is needed to pursue impression management and the development of an in-game acting Self. This, in turn, is a prerequisite for achieving immersion. Again, this finding fits very well with Berger’s description of nonfictional social life, when he writes that “The individual not only learns the objectivated meanings but identifies with and is shaped by them (...) the success of socialization depends on the establishment of symmetry between the objective world of society and the subjective world of the individual” (2008: 306). Differently put, when socialization and the external world unfold in harmony, little immersion-breaking friction is expected. More immersion means more felt immediacy and therefore, more legitimacy. This section will explore how presentations of Self contribute to creation and support of the social world of a LARP.
Impression management in LARP can be reduced to three important and separate layers (which of course, may each be layered in turn). One pertains to the presentation of self as the leisurely ‘real-life’ identity of the OC player, which comes up mostly during set-up, break-down, and campfire time. Although LARP has its own typical words, beverages, and cultural
references, I feel safe in assuming that this is not structurally different from any other
subculture. Then, there is the matter of presenting the character convincingly enough (imagine the player as a stage actor). Finally, the character himself has to manage his impression, as well (imagine the character as a real person). These layers of identity are in line with Fine’s
observations on the leveled world-building of tabletop games (2002) as well as with Vorobyeva’s application to Russian LARP (2016).
The dramaturgical presentation of “self” becomes much more explicit when we turn to the enactment of the character (and if you are worried now that this is not a ‘self’ at all, I will expand on this below). A major difference with actual theater is the almost complete lack of scripting, and the serially ongoing storylines per setting. The absence of a script means that other actors have virtually no background knowledge of a character as it approaches them, meaning that (symbolic) presentation of self needs to be pronounced in order to be
immediately successful. And the presentation of self needs to be immediately successful to invite and facilitate play between participants.
This is why costumes tend to be outspoken and possibly why the unspoken esthetic rules are quite pervasive. A stock of symbols deriving from popular fantasy fiction, games, and previous LARP signals aspects of the identity on sight. Additionally, clear statements in posture and composure are encouraged, as well as taking a stance in discussions and dilemmas.
On my playing debut at Vortex Adventures (VA), I take part in the beginners’ bootcamp. We practice (safe and fun) fighting. We learn effective presentation of casting, which is the magician’s way of fighting. “If you are going to cast an offensive spell and you want it to have an impact” one of the presenters says, “you will have to deliver it in a strong way. That can obviously be by using a strong voice, from the belly”, - he demonstrates - “but I’ve seen someone cast beautifully and impressively by doing the exact opposite: waiting for the longest time, demanding all of the attention, and acting out his
concentration on the magic and then, with absolute control and with everybody’s attention, cast like this”, he demonstrates a soft-spoken but intense-gaze spell. We conclude with some exercises I remember from high school theater workshops. (fieldnotes)
As with the structure of socialization, it is very much possible to work from the outside in; start by acting how the character would, possibly by thinking of what the character would think, to arrive later at feeling the internal life of the character and acting without having to think at all.
Turning back to Goffman, we see that one aspect of his theory which fits LARP especially well, is legitimacy (2008: 343). The actor’s performance is not always successful; only if the other players in the interaction perceive it as A. real, and B. as meaning what it was ‘supposed’ to mean, success happens, and both may go wrong to the penalty of general confusion or irritation. For this reason, it is considered polite or necessary to convey otherwise invisible aspects of one’s status, personality, and intentions (ibid: 347). Bas provides an example of unmatching intentions, signals, and symbols, and goes on to explain that the legitimacy of the external self-presentation (costume and interaction skills) immediately, almost automatically, grants a better place in LARP, both IC and OC:
als jij bijvoorbeeld inderdaad zwarte Nike sneakers aantrekt en een katoenen
joggingbroek en een Mytholon-shirtje en twee Mytholon-dolkjes en je noemt jezelf battle mage dan ben ik wel een beetje klaar met je. (...) Ik vind het veel belangrijker dat je iets aan je kostuum doet en je interactieskills, dan aan je achtergrond om maar even iets te
noemen. (...) En je merkt wel dat als je een gaver kostuum aan hebt bijvoorbeeld, dat mensen wat liever met je willen spelen. (Bas)
Finally, after some work, the character herself can practice impression management, too (so IC). She could be hiding all kinds of secrets about her behavior, opinions, or intentions to friends and enemies alike. One of my interviewees even developed a secret sign language with his allies so they can share private conversations as they are happening.
In fact, lying and scheming are fruitful sources of conflict and tension and so generally encouraged. Roulaux recommends players in his blog (2017) to not only keep secrets, but also (“accidentally”) share them, thus creating more opportunities for interesting play. Taking the style of more immersionist players into account, he suggests that if your character simply would not divulge their secret and sooner take it with them to their grave, to let them do just that, die with the secret, and then make sure that a spelleider or NPC shares the secret after all (ibid)6.
This part of the blog points again to the intricate levels of impression management at LARP. People do not want to distance themselves from their (self-)image of a good player (of whatever style), and have to make those values work with the character’s values.
Proper impression management and proper interpretation are in everybody’s interest in LARP. What this means is that one’s ‘audience’ (i.e. the other players) are very generous and willing to make an effort and interpret one’s impression management as intended7. After all,
failed interactions are fun for noone and do not contribute in the desired way to world-building. The audience very explicitly serves as a ‘significant other’, that feeds back into the actor. This role is something that needs to be learned as well.
On the other hand, failed interactions within the fictional realm of LARP are, in the long run, much less harmful or dangerous than they are in the ‘real world’. Unsurprisingly, then, many players address the fact that they can ‘try out’ (approaches to) social situations or
emotional reactions in the relatively safe sandbox of LARP, which serve to expand their range of options back in everyday life. The next quote by Lindy shows how she felt the friction of letting go like that in the real world, but also how, if she keeps control, she can use the lessons of LARP to her advantage:
6 See the section on ‘metagaming’ to learn more about dilemma’s like these.
7 An exception, to some, is when people try to play a character they cannot ‘pull off’ - so for example a
person who is clearly out of shape laying claim to recent heroic feats of strength and adventure; cross-dressing without matching acting skills; trying to play a genius when not smart in reality.
