(no subject)

[usernamenumber]

This is probably old-hat to a lot of you, but to anyone on my flist who boggles at me going on and on about larp, especially if your main experience of it is that one vampire game you saw in high school, I've got something to share. Last night I happened upon an article written by Andrew "Looney Labs" Looney, circa 1988 about his experience with theater-style larping. I was really interested by the fact that despite being over 20 years old, it still pretty accurately describes the structure and appeal of the hobby as it is today. The main thing that's changed, from what I can tell, is that there's a lot more nowadays: more games, more players, and more variety in terms of format and genre. Perhaps indicative of this is that fact that, despite enjoying what the article says and how it says it, many of the specific games he describes don't actually sound that interesting to me, because since the article was written they've almost all become sub-genres unto themselves, examples of most of which I've played in.

Anyway, here it is.




...ok, one class down for today. Off to grab lunch and prep/teach my afternoon class. *kermitflail*

Comments

[zrealm.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind, the minigame barely existed in 1988, which means that every game was a huge production. Shorter, much easier to put together LARPs is one of the things that lead to more variety (and more LARP in general).

[londo.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting insight, and I think I knew that, but never pieced those two things together.

Thank you.

[tpau]

indeed. however, the converse is also true. the plentifulness of the shorter games make the weekend-long games rare, and i miss them

[zrealm.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree with this. My favoring of full weekend long games is fairly well known :)

[marius23.livejournal.com]

FWIW I was one of the founding members of the MIT Assassin's Guild and fairly active in the larp community, attending the early SiliCon's and playing in several of Andy's games (I may even have some old experience point cards...good for scraping the salt off crackers). I pretty much dropped out of larping in 1992 when my son was born, but we both took it up again starting with Intercon D. From my perspective, I see three additional significant changes in addition to the overall ever-so-much-moreness:

• Short format games. Getting stuck in a dead end or boring game is not such a big deal
• Horde games. It's possible the concept was around, but I hadn't seen it before I dropped out. It allows interesting tricks to be played with the scale of games.
• An overall improvement in playability. It feels like the average game is better cast, better run, and more satisfying.

[darkoni]

I would definitely agree with overall playability. Earlier games were written as full weekend games, but were often run alongside a con like Arisia as well, so didn't have nearly as much plot as some four hour games do now, because they didn't expect people to be playing the entire time.

[darkoni]

This article seems familiar to me. It was before I started larping, but I think I read it around the time I started larping.

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

This is great - thanks for linking.

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Heehee, "kermitflail." I like that.