So I’m working my way through slightly over a decade’s worth of writing about LARP, and while I know a lot of it is old hat, a decade and more later, it’s probably still of value to me to read it, think about it, and write about my responses to to it. Some of it I’d already read and thought about before now, but I think writing about it will help me clarify what’s useful. I decided I’d start with arguably the oldest thing: The Dogma 99 Manifesto, which is one of the things I’d read before – I suspect most LARPers have. I’m interested to see that my perspectives on it have shifted quite a lot in the period since I first read it.
Obviously, it’s taking Lars von Trier’s Dogme ’95 rules as pretty heavy inspiration, and should be viewed in that light. The Dogma 99 Manifesto, and a lot of the writing that followed it are obviously extreme statements of position, intended to provoke debate, and inspire people to try and do something new, different, and arguably “purer”, without being bound by a lot of the conventions that came before. Basically: it’s not meant to be take 100% seriously. Thank god.
One of the things that strikes me about it is that my first thought is “I don’t think I’d want to run or play a Dogma 99 game” and yet when I come to the dissection of each individual point, I find it quite hard to disagree with at least the intention of each of them.
I’ll probably take on one or two of it’s points per post for a bit, because there’s a lot to cover.
I’m going to close out these posts by noting a few things I want to consider as a result of them, when designing the next game. It doesn’t follow that everything I want to think about will automatically become part of the finished game, this is just so I’ve got a short record of things to think about at a later date.
1. It is forbidden to create action by writing it into the past history of a character or the event.
I’m obviously not disposed to like this one. We just completed a successful two-year game that made use of the fact that several of the characters had decades and in some cases, centuries, of history with one another. There were buried conflicts all over the shop. And I suspect the same will be true of the next game. I do not like the idea of a game that does not draw on background to generate conflict, because I like the depth and richness that a backstory gives.
But the spirit in which this rule is intended is one I really agree with: the only action that matters occurs within the context of the LARP time-in (on-camera, if you like). Everything you need to know to understand the conflicts of the LARP must be shown at the time-in, and not in a “expository dialogue” way.
Part of the reason I disagree with this, of course, is that I like LARP as a serial form, rather than a one shot. So there’s always going to be a context in which some of the action for any given session will be firmly rooted “off camera” as it were – because it took place in a previous time in. And once you’re there, what’s wrong with adding a few similar kinds of conflict that are set up in backstory?
But there’s a key flaw in the medium: the only conflicts from backstory that are likely to play out are those between players. Where a player writes an unresolved NPC conflict into their backstory, I have two choices: find a way to make that conflict relevant to more than just them, or, more probably, ignore it. And unfortunately, if I pick one player’s backstory NPCs over another’s then it creates a sense that that particular character is more important than others, which is not a desirable outcome.
And having said that I don’t mind a bit of backstory, I think it’s important in a serial LARP to remember the same rules that exist in most serial fiction: every episode is someone’s first. If someone new can’t walk in and reasonably quickly hook in to what’s going on, with am absolute minimum of IC exposition, then the LARP isn’t working. I know I’ve been guilty in the past of running games where there was a reasonably standard “new player” experience – a new character walks into the room, and is immediately introduced to a couple of key other characters, who proceed to infodump on them until they’re caught up. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but I wonder if it can be done better?
Key ideas to consider for the next game:
- No unresolved PC-NPC conflicts in backstory prior to the first time in. If PC-NPC conflict develops in the course of uptime, that’s acceptable, but not necessarily desirable.
- Every session is someone’s first, but every first session should be different. Design so that new characters can be caught up on anything they need to know to access the game in a variety of ways, depending on player preference.