The LARP Lifecycle

"Living well is the best revenge." - George Herbert

LARPs follow an interesting lifecycle. From what I've seen, they reproduce asexually. Players who become disenfranchised with their first game gather like-minded supporters and start one of their own. It may be a simple matter of taste; maybe the original was light on combat or immersion, for instance. Or it might be a matter of pragmatism; the original is too far away to be convenient.

More often, though, it's a matter of personality. In any group of sufficient size, some people won't get along. Interpersonal conflicts create schisms, leading some players to jump ship and form their own LARP. Some of these die while others grow and mature, forming their own buds and continuing the cycle.

The Shards of Orn is no exception to this. Nick and I started out in Talan, which budded from Solar, which I believe budded from Nero. Certain things about Talan had never sat well with us (unchecked PvP, limited game system, paper-based logistics). Unsurprisingly, our responses to those things became the hallmarks of our game when we budded a few years later.

Likewise, we have our buds. Destria was created by a group of players who were banned after our first season. Ithyria was formed by Melissa and Andy, who are still with the game. Lands of Exile was formed by a player who left after season five. Lately, I've heard tell of some of our current players starting a post-apocalyptic Nerf LARP. There may be others, but those are the ones I know of.

All too often, the nature of how these new LARPs form engenders resentment between them. Advocates for the new LARP distance themselves from the old one, creating games that are reactionary in some ways and strikingly similar in others. Advocates for the old LARP criticize the new one, either for copying aspects of the original or lacking the aspects that aren't copied.

This sort of discourse doesn't really serve any purpose other than ego-stroking. We all want to believe that our game is the best, that our opinions are facts, that the people we like are objectively good and the people we dislike are objectively bad. We want to bask in the greatness of the things we love and diminish the greatness of everythng else.

The reality is, people are just people. We all have good and bad qualities. The same is true of LARPs. The Shards of Orn is heavy on game mechanics and combat but light on RP and immersion. We like our PvP rare and our community friendly. We do a lot online and favor a very structured schedule at events. We take steps to limit the game's size (because, trust me, it's hard enough managing 50 people) and exclude problem players (because one bad egg spoils the batch). We run things like a large, well-organized game of D&D.

Are these things good or bad? Neither. They're just preferences. Nick, Jennifer, and I learned early on that we couldn't please everyone, so we stopped trying to and focused on building the sort of game we wanted to run. Has that approach caused friction? Certainly. Just read some of the negative reviews we get on YouTube, LARPCore.com, LARPing.org, and Facebook (wherever the confessions page went).

Like budding, the negativity doesn't bother me. It's just another facet of the LARP lifecycle. If you accept that interpersonal friction correlates with group size and that you can't please everyone, it only follows that criticism is both inevitable and an indicator of how much we've grown. Nick likes to say, "It means we're important enough to deserve the comment."

As they say, haters gonna hate. I take solace that I am part of a great game surrounded by friends. I'm happy that those who bud from us are building games more suited to their tastes, because why else would anyone do this if not to have as much fun as possible. And I read the criticism with a mix of pride and pity. Pride because it means Orn is growing up. Pity because the real reason these folks are mad is most likely because they're no longer part of the fun.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, everyone's entitled to their opinion of how a LARP should be, but if you're doing it right, you're having too much fun to care. ;)