I’m going to deal with another retro LARP-manifesto classic, just so I know I’ve covered it off.  This time it’s a pair of documents, The Manifesto of the Turku School and The LARPers Vow of Chastity.  I’m not going to break them down like I did Dogma 99, I’m just going to flag them up, and then talk about why I don’t like them, which is basically because they’re all about Immersionism.  However, for all I disagree with them I think that, much like the Dogma 99 Manifesto, they provide a great starting point for thinking, and I do encourage reading them.

So Immersionism and Me, then.  Well, basically, I regard Immersionism as selfish.  It is, particularly when taken to the extremes of the Turku school, all about saying “I came here to play this character, and anything that pulls me away from that is bad.  My highest obligation is to my character, which is to say to what is going on in my own head”. It feels like it’s kind of the roleplaying equivalent of Objectivism – elevating the (fictional) self, rather than the group.  (And it therefore doesn’t surprise me that it’s popular with a certain subset of gamers.)

Don’t get me wrong: I know it can be rewarding to look back on a session, and realise that you were thinking as someone else, making decisions that you would never make yourself.  And if that can be done safely, and while meeting one’s obligations to the group, than that’s absolutely brilliant.  But it’s a happy secondary goal, not the primary objective.

To me, the primary goal of LARPing is intrinsically social.  It’s saying  “I came here to share and shape an interactive narrative experience in such a way that the largest number of people have the most amount of fun.  My highest obligation is to ensure that those around me are enjoying themselves.”

I hate the phrase “my character wouldn’t do that”.  I absolutely believe that characters can have an inner life, and can with enough Immersion, suddenly originate new information about themselves in the mind of the player.  That’s fine.  But I also believe that the player is in charge of the character at all times, and that the character can be changed.

An overly-simple example: Character A is holding a gun to the head of Character B. If Character B is executed, it is known that the this will be No Fun for their player, who is up for playing out a fun, dramatic scene where a gun is held to their head, but not for having their character die.  And yet, in the fully-Immersionist school of play, if Character A would pull the trigger, then they should pull the trigger.

Except that Character A is fully under the control of their player.  The player can opt not to pull the trigger, and then work out why Character A didn’t do it later, and in the process discover/invent some new facts about Character A.

And, of course, it doesn’t need to be on this scale.  I’ve seen people (and I don’t exclude myself from this – I have done stupid things I wish I hadn’t in the past) do things that upset other players, ranging from the trivial (slightly inconveniencing of something another player had planned), to the more major (dominating another player’s game experience with their actions, in a way the other player does not enjoy) to the character-death example above, because they were “what their characters would do”.  And it can all be excused, if your highest goal is “Immersion”.

So that’s where I get to with Immersionism: it’s a nice and fun thing, but it does not trump other obligations to the overriding goal of Fun Game.  I’d be very interested in hearing opposing views, because I’m aware that it’s a very popular gaming philosophy, and I’d like to understand the thinking behind why it is considered good a bit better, in a way that the Manifesto’s amusing confrontational style rather fails to get across.

2 thoughts on “The LARPers vow of Promiscuity

  1. Ooh! Let me show you my opinions! There are two reasons I lean much harder towards immersion.

    The first is a principle: I believe it is each player’s responsibility to have fun. To a somewhat lesser extent, it’s the responsibility of the people running the game to create an environment where it’s players can have fun (and equally to be up front about players who would not have fun at their games). Nonetheless, fundamentally it’s each player’s responsibility to do the things they enjoy. For me, larp is escapism from “real life”, where I worry about how other people perceive me and my actions. One of the things I love about larp is not having to worry about people judging me on the basis of my character, and thinking someone else might blame me because they didn’t have fun at a game would seriously impede that.

    The other is more practical. If I’m playing the character having a gun held to their head, however much I want my character to survive, I also want their survival to be because I managed to grapple my opponent and turn the gun on them, or because my monologue or my tears made them think again about killing me. If I thought my character survived simply because the other person thought I’d have more fun than way, it would seem a pretty hollow victory to me.

    Equally, I enjoy playing in an environment where there is a risk of things going wrong, of things happening to my character that I don’t want to happen if I screw up or I’m outmanoeuvred; that’s part of what makes the game “real” for me, rather than an elaborate game of Monopoly where Mum gives you a loan to avoid you going bankrupt too soon. It does mean that, in the short term, I might lose a character I’d prefer not to lose, but in the longer term it makes a much more enjoyable game. A lot of my fun comes from the challenge, the risk, and the consequences.

    That all said, I don’t think immersion is the sole thing to consider. For game designers, for example, I think there’s an onus to avoid character death that’s purely due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For players, I think it’s often worth remembering that creating game for others is often going to make more game for you; if I were the one holding the gun, I’d try to give my target a chance to plead for their life before I kill them, and/or to monologue myself about why their life is forfeit – that both makes their game more interesting and gives greater chance for traumatising my own character.

    In particular, over the past couple of years I’ve moved away from considering immersion to be the sole measure of a good game, not least because I play to have fun, and doing things I don’t find fun in the name of immersion and being “true” to my character seems to miss the point. Nonetheless I still reject the idea that I ought to be responsible for other people’s fun, because that’s a responsibility I’m not willing to take on.

    1. I completely agree that everyone is responsible for making their own fun, but I also think it’s important be be responsible for not actively stepping on someone else’s fun in the name of one’s own.

      I personally complete agree with your view that IC risk should be, well, risky, and I want the gun to my head to go off, if that is what should “really” happen. But I’m aware that there are other players out there who don’t find that fun, and I think it’s incumbent on everyone to be roughly aware what other player’s limits are, so as not to fuck their game up. 🙂 So I’m not suggesting the rule should be “never pull the trigger”, I’m saying “be aware if the other player is someone who is OK with the trigger being pulled in this context, and act considerately”. (Bearing in mind that most people have different views on when they think it’s OK to have the character die/get severely damaged, and not.)

      I’d also complicate it a stage further: it is also incumbent on the player with the gun to their head to consider the prospective trigger-puller’s fun, as well – if it would be UnFun for the trigger-puller not to pull the trigger, well, then than needs to be considered too. As indeed, do the opinions of other people in less direct contact with the situation. I don’t ever intend “I wouldn’t find it fun to die/suffer consequences” to become a catch all shield behind which someone can hide if half the game are baying for their blood because they’ve screwed people over left right and centre.

      Which for an Extreme Immersionist of the Turku School, would apparently be considered Bad and Immersion Breaking, because it’s balancing a lot of OOC considerations with IC action.

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