LARP and the IC/OOC Barrier: The Religion

I've played in multiple LARPs, both boffer and non-boffer. I've gotten to soak up the stories of yesteryear, the events of the day, and seen where things later end up. They're certainly not what I would call 'young' entities, having existed for many years, but I think only now, with many of them running their course for long periods of time, can we see certain trends in them.

In this article, I'm going to deconstruct what I find perhaps one of the most abysmal institutions in LARPing, a strongly held belief that serves SOME of the gaming population SOME of the time, but perhaps at the cost of others.

I talk about the separation of in character and out of character actions. Primarily, this involves what I would call 'open PVP'.


Background Experience:
I'll leave names blank to protect the guilty and the innocent.

I first get into boffer LARP, and from the standpoint of immersion, it's a blast. I hear about someone who, over the course of a year or so, built a stockpile of bodies, used some janky necromancy rules, and damn near killed everyone in the game. Total pwnge. But rules we're changed to stop that. During this time, I'd also seen that the social structures of the game we're quite draconian, especially in the arcane magics- a rule had been established that to learn a skill, you had to roleplay out learning it from a teacher. A good rule for roleplay, that unfortunately formed into a stranglehold on the magic rules when the mages banded together and all but made one fourth of the game inaccessible to other players. This in a largely cooperative, adventure based fantasy in which players are most likely to fight orcs, and not each other.

I at first thought this an isolated case, until I reached the next boffer LARP. I then get hit with tales of the first LARP players were in, where a singular evil character played skillfully over many years basically nuked the player base. I got killed in my second game there due to a poorly planned open PVP event, in which I got to hear about my characters grizzly dismemberment, almost like verbal salt in the wounds- hey, you're not just dead, you're also mutilated! Granted, the oldbie important characters get rezzed despite all the difficulties later because people want them back that bad, and the usual unfortunate trend towards LARP elder status, but it leads me to questioning just WHY open PVP is good. And the basic answer I am given is that it CAN lead to good consequences, and that one should just have FAITH that one's fellow players will make tasteful choices, accept when things go wrong, and then hope things go better the next time.

I warned them once, about the syndrome of the super necromancer, of the psycho, of the slow building terrorist- they said it couldn't happen in their game. A few months later, one of the major PCs turned evil and kills half the players in the game- and escapes, and survives. Me one, the religion zero.

So now I'm playing Vampire. It's a cut throat game, with open PVP, so it's expected people will power play, politic, possibly assassinate one another. The chainsaw is gimped slightly by numbers being more powerful than stats, but that doesn't really change things here sociologically. No vampire terrorists yet, from what I can see, but rules created to enhance roleplay and prevent twinking may be quickly turned into weapons to screw people out of XP. Status strips, intimidation, and covenant rivalries allow for people to be much, much worse to one another in some ways then a fantasy based but of live action D&D- and they are. I got to hear a story of people getting forcibly converted to a new faction after being unmanned physically by their enemies- fun!

All of this behavior, these bad results, are direct results of the Religion of OOC/IC being completely separate. Unfortunately, they're not.

The Three Types of Gamers

There is a theory labeled GNS Theory, a theory used in roleplaying games for the three types of fun they can provide. Not everyone adheres to this theory, as it's strictest interpretations are sort of unrealistic, but the basics of it are there. We may come up with a better theory one day, but for now, the GNS theory is perhaps the first step in deconstructing what makes a roleplaying game fun for people. If you don't think there are any theories or methods towards making a roleplaying game good, go bang your sticks together in a cave and hope for fire, because you might as well say there's no difference between good and bad movies. This may be opinion, but it is an informed opinion.

The quick of it is that Gamists play the game to compete, and in some sense, win. They may want to just be powerful, they may want to overcome challenges, they may want to PK. The worst of these are power gamers nobody wants, with the best being the tacticians you always want on your side.

The Simulationists play the game as a what if, wanting to just see what happens. This is, in some ways, the core strength of LARPing. It's deeply immersive, something simulationists love, meaning they can more easily get the What If aspect of gameplay- its almost real, cause you talk to real people in real time, with real bodies rather than images provided by a gamemaster.

Narrativists play games because they want cool stories. Whatever happens in a game, they want to see neat things happen, have moments of drama, tales that keep them interested and worth telling to others. Narrativists, in many ways, want to see that a game has something that resembles a plot when all is said in done.

Why the Religion Works:

The religion works because it serves both Simulationists and Gamists to keep OOC and IC completely separate, at least as a creed to say, and on paper. The Simulationists are often the improv actors of the game, people who play a character to a hilt- whether they are psycho or hero, a bit part or a mover and shaker, the Simulationist loves to just see where things go with whatever they play. Open PVP and IC/OOC separation, to them, is only logical as it adds to their immersion, at least theoretically. For them, separating the two is second nature.

The Gamists benefit from this because it means they can do whatever they want IC and reap no OOC repercussions for it. They can be 'as bad as they wanna be', callously kill others off, and basically go around kicking ass, taking names, bullying people, and 'winning' and there is no game master intervention to get in their way. In some cases, the system even supports it, allowing them further ways to strike at their imagined enemies with zero risk to themselves- this is the perfect gamist solution.

Narrativists are left on the outs by this, and the whims of Gamists and Simulationists do not always lead to good stories. While Simulationists are far less guilty of railroading and ruining the game, being that they often add a lot of immersion with their roleplay skill and interesting characters, more often we have to deal with the Gamists. A Gamist might kill your character for fun and then slyly give a blaise IC reason- he annoyed me, I have low humanity, he was another covenant, etc. They may kill you out of boredom. Their reasons are ultimately that it was a path to them winning, and it means they will use whatever means they wish to accomplish that.

Take a moment to realize that nobody is necessarily just one or the other of these things- people can derive fun from all the approaches, but there is probably one that is above all the others.

The Religion's main purpose is that it serves two kinds of mindsets- it forces everyone to OOC 'get along', but allows IC for people to be total assholes, even needlessly. This works into the hands of those who believe everyone could (and should) get along as well as those who wish to Win the game, because they can excuse even the most vile behavior IC as being 'just my character'.


Heresy: The Problems with the Religion

The First Heresy: My Character

It's just what my character would do is NOT an excuse. It's a reason, but it's surely not an excuse for ruining other people's fun because you MAKE your character. When you put the dots, the faction, and ultimately, when you dream up the persona of your character, you've decided just how they're going to act in the game. If you make a psycho killer who is going to PK at the drop of a hat and end people's stories then you DECIDED to make that. If you roleplay your humanity drop as a reason to PK, you DECIDED to roleplay that way.

Your character is not a ghost who possesses you and makes you do things.

The Second Heresy: Order

Some people think keeping IC and OOC seperate is the only way to keep people friendly, because when someone screws your character over, you should never hold it against the person who did it because it's just IC. There is some truth to this...

However, it contradicts human nature. When roleplay turns to PVP issues, it quickly goes sour. When playing against NPCs, nobody cares too much to look at your character sheet, but once it goes PVP people whip them out and double check and look at databases because the PLAYERS care about their CHARACTERS. It's a simple truth. No matter how good a dinner I am bought after getting assassinated, if the reasons were stupid or ill conceived, I'll probably be fuming the entire time. The hurt will likely remain. The people who are most equipped to get around this are the hardcore Simulationists, but both Gamists and Narrativists will hold the grudge both IC and OOC. Two thirds of everyone pays this rule lip service, ultimately.

There are big arbitration boards and rules in many LARP organizations as people take issue with one another, and I'm sure that PVP is due the lion's share of these conflicts.

The Third Heresy: Better Gaming

The final heresy on this rule is there is some belief that this divide leads to better gaming, despite evidence to the contrary. The best we can say is that open PVP and IC/OOC separation provide some element of 'surprise' to the game. Oh hoh, I never expected to be kill boxed tonight by people proxying their characters from half a world away! But this complexity doesn't necessarily lead to good story, immersion, or even a fun "I Win!" scenario for gamists. Gamists in open PVP are small sharks in a big shark pond and may find themselves on the receiving end of the same kind of action they deal out for reasons as simple as 'you were getting too powerful and I don't trust you'. Simulationists may have to deal with poorly reasoned PVP which they are then forced to rationalize away IC. And the Narrativist, as per usual, will probably watch as a chainsaw comes screaming through and killing a plot.

Oddly, most of the best gaming comes about from OOC/IC interaction- giving game masters character information to use in plots, establishing character ties with others. None of that is IC, but it effects IC for OOC reasons and its GOOD.

Losing the Religion or Where Do We Go?

It's a sad fact that to really predict LARPs, the easiest thing to model them on are MMOs. No, seriously. An MMO is a large social group of gamers, and while we stretch out our 'go time' and rules with talking IC and acting, MMOs function very similarly to LARP.

Add in long snippets of text in between each battle, and we're pretty close.

Now, in MMOs, we got to see the micro-evolution of PVP. Open PVP was featured in a lot of early MMOs, because people thought the What If machine and labeling something a roleplaying game would be enough to police the worst elements. Only it wasn't. People would still be cheesy assholes and kill newbs for fun, make the game a living hell if they were bored. Open PVP generally proves to be not very fun for anyone but the most hardcore elements.

A few years later and we get the flag system: we can challenge people to duels, which they can deny or accept. We can be Flagged, allowing ourselves to be attacked, inviting that misfortune and competition. And there are special areas where things like that can happen.

I give the Requiem Larp some credit for taking this last feature and introducing an inverse rule- Elysium's are places where it takes Willpower points to hurt and Willpower Dots to kill. This certainly cuts down on the direct violent PVP aspect of Vampire a good deal, adding an element of stability. However, we do not see any Flag elements- there is no 'duel' system, nor is there any 'flagging' for PVP. There is a 'parlay' type system to PVP, where one can negotiate consequences down, but it's rarely if ever employed.

So, to replace the religion, what would it take?

I think, a PVP flag of some type could be useful- there are people who want to engage in the extremely confrontational aspects of Vampire, fighting tooth and nail in the global game. I think a flag could include both benefits and disadvantages: unflagged characters certainly could not diablerize, but there may be other advantages available I am unaware of.

Meanwhile, those unflagged would be relatively 'safe', unless they initiated a 'duel'- duels being a PVP based situation both parties agree to engage in. Once someone duels, they are flagged for a certain period. I think a period of a year would be fair- this gives plenty of time to plot against and deal with said person if anybody wanted to. It also fosters reasons for new characters to get involved with the game without fear they will be killed, bloodbound, and diablerized a short time after joining- certainly not common events, but totally possible in the rules at this point.

I also think, dueling ought to have some Storyteller/GM intervention involved, for the simple following reason: I trust Storytellers, for the most part. Storytellers are there to make the game good, are voted in to do so, and they can look at the IC reasons for attack/declines/etc with a critical eye. Unlike a player, whose reasoning I have no input or effect on whatsoever, a Storyteller I can at least Vote on at a later date. If someone plays a horrible PK machine and runs rampant, I have no real recourse, no way of preventing him from coming back and killing my next character, or the next. BUT if the Storyteller decides to allow for PVP I thought was unfairly deserved, I can vote against him next term, even run against them if need be. There is a way to show my disapproval in this case without having to get a lengthy bureaucratic nightmare involved.

Summarized Conclusion:

The OOC/IC divide and Open PVP could be replaced by a flag and duel system with GM oversight and intervention. It let's new people play for a while without having the global game stomp them, it let's gamists make progress without getting utterly stomped, it assures most narrativists better story, and lets simulationists avoid the worst excesses of gamist attitudes.