Confessions of a new LARPer

First of all I have a confession to make; I lead a double life.

Or, it’s more like a quadruple life… or even more than that.

In my spare time I am a gun totting war journalist, a mutated arms technician, a ghost bound to my murdered remains in the ruins of my forest home. Sometimes I’m even male . I’m a necromancer, a warrior and a vampire.

From Edward -

- To the White Lady

And I’m a murderer;

A month after I came to University I dressed up in my nicest clothes, picked up my creepy doll and a parasol sharpened into a stake. I went to work as bodyguard to a lawyer at a meeting of the Vampires of Leicester. An hour into the meeting I used my sharpened parasol to brutally stab a fellow vampire to death for trying to bomb the court meeting, and sending my sister and myself to the fairy world for fifty years.

For this I should have been arrested, tried and maybe imprisoned for a considerable portion of my lifetime, though judging by the fact I thought I was a vampire killing another vampire, perhaps a psyche ward would be more appropriate. Instead I received a round of applause from all present and a man calling himself the Prince of Leicester sent me a very expensive bottle of antique wine as a present.

This gets a little more acceptable, depending on your perspective, when I tell you that I’m a LARPer – Short for Live Action Role-player – and the man I killed got up a couple of minutes later and congratulated me on the particularly fine set of dice roles that lead to his demise. 

Catherine's a Murderer- Photo by

Julie Kilminster and Giles Meakin

Personally I’ve only been LARPing for about five months. In which time I’ve managed to accumulate about twelve different characters in one way or another, ranging from a small incompetent pathological liar of a sneak-theif called Natty, to a vampire who can take a truck to the face and walk away with little more than a look of distain for the marks on her outfit, named Catherine. I’ve taken part in evening long LARPs in blessedly central-heated nightclubs and on one memorable occasion spent a weekend in a field, fighting in the pitch darkness, pretending to be a ghost in the rain and  waking up to find our tent flap frozen solid. It was a marvellous weekend spent in the company of some of the strangest and nicest people I’ve ever met.

Now, LARPing has been around since time immemorial – as a child you must have played House, or Cowboys and Indians and children back through time have been playing such games and in its purest sense they’re just the same. However in its modern form as people hitting each other with foam weaponry it grew up in the 1970s, where it spun off from the Dungeons and Dragons culture in America, cropping up all about the place as people realised D and D rules could be easily converted to work in real-time using yourself as your playing piece. From there it grew and grew and expanded into other areas; now there are LARPs for every genre from the most famous medieval fantasy to Noir, modern day or science fiction. Games are usually based on a set of core rulebooks –usually there’s at  least two or three for each genre – which outline skills and plot, and give guidelines to what a player can do and how.

Beyond that, rules are largely based on common sense; don’t be on fire, don’t take the … Michael, if you hear one of a number of calls then you do as you’re told; the most important, man down means someone is hurt for real so stop playing and help them and if the referee tells you stop playing you stop playing. Because there is a chance the S.W.A.T. team responding to an old lady’s complaint about teenagers discussing bombing the Leicester clock tower isn’t just a really accurate costume and really is the S.W.A.T. team and you don’t want to get shot for pretending to hit them with a foam dagger. 

Back in the 70s it was common practice to use gaffer weapons – constructed with PVC pipe cores covered in foam and wrapped in Duck tape, since then weapons have come on to look more realistic and are often constructed with moulded latex rubber and a PVC or fibreglass core. These are a lot better looking but you can’t hit as hard with them, they’re designed for touch attacks – where you swing and pull back at the last moment – and they can’t be used for thrusting because likely as not you WILL end up impaling your opponent no matter how squishy that thing looks.

Boffur

Latex

LARP is not a violent activity at its heart however. In my mind it is a community and a vehicle for people who are perhaps not very comfortable being themselves. Whilst LARPing I have met very strange people, some of whom might struggle to make eye contact with you in person – I know I’m certainly one of that number – yet here they are, leading a party of adventurers or running complex businesses through contacts in the underworld. These people are intelligent, imaginative and when they’re in character they’re building confidence and breaking out of shells and I think, making some of the best friends anyone could hope to make.

Everybody knows Mario - The importance of good game design

Think about your favourite game, or the most distinctive game you know. Final Fantasy? Journey? Now think about what makes those games stand out.

You've got one guess to guess the game

Did you say gameplay? That’s a difficult thing to define; in magazines it’s a term used to score how much the player or reviewer enjoyed playing the game overall and it’s how the player will interact with the game. Perhaps there’s a battle system that really worked in your opinion? Gameplay is about how you interact with the game and how the game interacts with you.

Of course, you’re even more likely to have said the artwork, the storyline or the characters. Chances are whatever you think sets your game apart from the others it’s going to be in the Game Design sector of production; The rules and mechanics, characters and scenery all come from this one area and nowadays meticulous work is put in to ensure that even though a team of people are creating these elements, they all look like they’ve come from one place. Studios such as Valve and Bethesda are currently some of the prominent figures in this industry, creating striking, memorable.

Everybody knows Mario, Even if you haven't played any of the games

In the beginning, emphasis was on programming with the limited resources available to game developers. Whilst box art and booklets might allow artists to create and expand on characters and story it was gameplay that took the main stage, with focus on programming and minimal visuals – though what visuals were had could be very distinctive.

What a design

 Now it shares it with the game visuals and game design takes place in pre-production as well as Production of a video game, it goes beyond character and environment concepts in the pre-production stage to include game mechanics such as rules and plot. With the huge amount of content in games nowadays the game designers not only have to think of the game’s core rules and storyline, but also side-quests, back stories and lore which flesh out the ever expanding worlds that games inhabit today. In production, game design takes on the roles of texture painters, asset creation and modelling which are necessary to create the complex scenes and objects that have become the norm in today’s games. With so much content the role of the designer is pivotal in the industry as it rests on their shoulders to create and maintain the feelings and motifs that will run through a game; the art and visual aspects of the production will tie the game together to make it a whole, singular piece where even the slightest discrepancies between style and feel may throw off the game completely and greatly impede the players suspension of belief and immersion.

 

 Each of these games, from the very earliest to the most cutting edge have had a distinct look and though their genres may differ, the principles behind their design are the same; a consistent image, a memorable motif and design and striking, immersive visuals.

 In this way they are not dissimilar to board games; the little metal dog are the only three words you need to think of the game monopoly, ‘Professor Plumb’ instantly invokes images of Cludo. Guess who, mousetrap, snakes and ladders all have distinct and striking designs and gameplay not unlike video games, though they’re definitely lower-tech (Though monopoly has gone electronic with it’s money and banks recently).

When you say portal, I think - Clinical white walls, haunting scenes and increasing decay. Yay!

 

Returning to answer my own question now; to me Portal and Portal Two are some of the most distinctive games I’ve ever played. To call the name to mind is to conjure an instantly recognisable mental picture that characterises the game and makes it distinctive and memorable. Strong visual cues in the lighting, colour schemes and character designs set it apart instantly and I like to play games who’s art grabs and engages the player. Coupled with a story that causes you to think upon and recall the game’s visuals and plot, that stays with you after you’ve played is the best kind of game in my opinion.