"Some of them 'can be intense experiences, and that is probably not what we want to offer to our mainstream audience.'"
That's just an isolated snippet from "LARPing Goes to Disney World/On a 'Star Wars' spaceship, the company has taken live-action role-play to a lavish extreme. Guests spend days eating, scheming, and assembling lightsabres in character" by Neima Jahromi (The New Yorker).
LARP = live-action role play.
We're told that in the "Nordic larp scene," they prefer "games with deep emotional involvement and few rules." Nordic designers of LARPs were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but they rejected the idea of using actuarial tables to determine who wins and loses a fight. That "didn’t really fit the culture here.... Nordics are way more collaborative than adversarial."
I'm not at all familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, but it was funny to read that it's based on insurance underwriting.
Anyway, the article is mostly about a big Disney/"Star Wars" production. I had trouble understanding this. My point of reference was a Renaissance Faire, not that I'd ever attended one, but I've seen that phenomenon discussed and mocked for decades, most recently in episode 5 of "Love on the Spectrum U.S." Isn't this LARPing like going to a Renaissance Faire?
I've been on immersive Disney World rides like "Pirates of the Caribbean," where they load you into a fake boat and pull you though various scenes, but you're still a passive member of an audience. I did that only in the context of amusing my children. I can't imagine wanting further immersion with the pressure of being part of the show. But I will put some effort into trying to understand what other people are finding rewarding.
And does this mean I'm a standoffish observer in life, missing out on the fun? I'm standoffish about manufactured things that you're supposed to get caught up in. If there's one thing that makes me feel like a separate individual, it's being in the midst of people who are having an emotional group transformation.
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---And does this mean I'm a standoffish observer in life, missing out on the fun?
Yes. No. I mean, what fun?
I hope, and believe, that Meade fully understands the care and feeding of his introvert.
LARPing, when done right, is unscripted acting. You and a bunch of friend and acquaintances dress up in costumes, get into a character and act out your characters beliefs and motivations. It is fun and build friendships.
The two movies with LARPing as a major theme that don't totally sh*t over the concept are "Role Models" a comedy with Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott, and "Knights of Badassdom" a horror-comedy movie with Peter Dinklage, Summer Glau and Steve Zahn. The Hawkeye series on Disney had some LARPers in there too.
As a freshman and sophomore in high school, I was in the SCA - the Society for Creative Anachronism. I don't think the term LARP had been coined yet, but we were certainly doing it...
My chapter, or whatever we were, was all adults except me. The object was to create a medieval persona (no Renaissance allowed, thank you very much). You had to flesh out your own back story, make or buy as authentic costuming and accoutrements as possible (one guy who came to every meeting spent the whole time working on his chain mail), exchange knowledge about the period, and - the culminating events - sometimes gather with other groups for feasts, tourneys, and I think battles, though I wasn't in it for long enough to go to any of those. It was by no means limited to European personae, but in those pre-Internet days it was a lot easier for an American kid to gain knowledge about the European medieval period than African or Asian analogs (and I don't remember if there was acknowledgement of a New World medieval period then - actually I don't know if there is now).
It was a HOOT for a nerd like me. The only reason I left it was because we moved overseas.
Renaissance faires and fests are silly but fun - and for most attendees, it seems to me there's NOTHING like the authenticity the SCA was going for. One of my kids and I attend a huge one outside Houston each year, and she laughs at my frequent grumbling about how "none of this could ever fly with the SCA."
Althouse wrote:
I'm standoffish about manufactured things that you're supposed to get caught up in. If there's one thing that makes me feel like a separate individual, it's being in the midst of people who are having an emotional group transformation.
You would have been so much fun at an EST seminar. (I'm assuming you never were part of one.)
I should have said that when I was in the SCA, I wasn't in it for long enough to go to any battles. I did go to feasts and tourneys, as a bard.
An event like that is not a "show" (though I did have to perform, because of my persona). It's temporarily living your life as someone else. It's definitely not for everyone, and I don't know whether, today, I could muster the necessary suspension of disbelief to do it right. Even when I was doing it as a kid, I remember a sense of having broken loose from my moorings - drifting in this weird world, not really knowing what to steer toward.
Just now, I'm wondering whether that feeling came from my being so young. If I'd been dropped into a big loud party with a bunch of adults, as myself, would I have felt any less confused about what I was supposed to do there?
Sounds like a tool for people to get their Jungian archetype freak on. Better than overeating junk food, guzzling booze or gobbling antidepressants.
Not my thing. Horses for courses.
"You would have been so much fun at an EST seminar. (I'm assuming you never were part of one.)"
I would leave.
The time I felt most like I was in a group ecstatic experience and it left me utterly cold and feeling like am I the only thinking individual left was at a Pantera concert in the 1990s. (I was there because I drove some kids who were too young to drive. I tried to enjoy the music and actually did. But there was exhortation from the stage that felt weirdly irrational and the response from the crowd, to me, looked like a Hitler rally.)
The Northman movie might inspire some non-Star Wars LARPers.
I would have guessed a Nordic Larper was a species of fish.
Your last sentence describes my reaction perfectly.
People are welcome to their mass wanks, but don't expect me to participate.
I know very little about dungeons and Dragons, and had always thought of it as a sort of dull and deadly serious exercise involving plodding combat-centric narrative that mostly revolves around rolling a lot of dice. Honestly, that's still mostly my impression -- I tried watching some Critical Role stuff, and while I can see the appeal, I'm not going to spend 1000 hours or whatever watching people roll dice no matter how good they are at doing the voices. But I have discovered that I do enjoy watching the looser, more comedic, and much less rules-based version of D&D played by the Outside Xbox ("Oxventure") youtubers. So I can understand the appeal a lot more than I used to.
I think Rennassaince fairs were fun. Liked Pirates of the Carribean ride too, even as an adult. Funny how the New Yorker/NYT times, etc. are always sneering at LARPers, Civil war reenactors, etc. I guess its not an elite approved activity so it must be declasse and laughed at.
There's nothing wrong with fantasy and games, as long as they are kept in their proper place.
I'm not at all familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, but it was funny to read that it's based on insurance underwriting.
The actuary tables comment was more like hyperbole. In an D&D encounter, your odds of "striking" an opponent is based on a dice roll. You take you numerical skill at hitting (based on numerous factors such as character level and weapon choice) add your dice roll and compare it to the armor points of your opponent (based on skill, level, armor type, etc.) If your total is higher than their total you score a hit. So, the actuary tables comment is just referring to the fact that character level A plus armor B plus skill C add up to X points. The contrast here is between paper scores of a character's ability vs the LARPing player's actual physical abilities.
Adults role playing. Hmmm.
Is that the same as cosplay or is cosplay just dress up?
Hmmm ... I sense a theme. The Handmaid's Tale protestors are also LARPing. These apolitical cosplayers are waiting for a cause to energize them. The people with a cause are waiting to be disillusioned by causes.
I know what you mean. When I was caught in the riots in Charleston and they smashed a table through our window, I was in the midst of people having an emotional group transformation. There was a hurricane blowing around the I.
"People are welcome to their mass wanks, but don't expect me to participate."
Yo.
Almost everyone has a "thing" that they gain emotional satisfaction from, often vicariously. Traditional RPG, MMORPG, Geeking over Glee or the Kardashians, LARPing, Civil war re-enactment, Commenting on blogs, Mexican soap operas, game shows, sports, etc. It's just that some are more socially acceptable than others.
D&D was not based on actuarial insurance stats. There are no actuarial stats for how much damage a crossbow can inflict on a kobold.
Gygax et.al. made all that stuff up, seeking more personal involvement and narrative than offered by commercial wargames such as Avalon Hill products.
We had some SCA-ers here; they met Sunday afternoons at Audubon Park for play fights--in the early days I called them the Buckets and Blankets people, since their costumes were generally
repurposed household items, but over time some of them got pretty skilled.
Many of my wargaming friends also did ACWABAWS re-enacting, but not me. I'm cheap and lazy.
Crap- I published before I was done- lol
Catholic Mass is interesting b/c it’s interactive (especially w/foreign priests!) but, very personal and private. I appreciate that one hour/week to center myself around mystery and something other than self.
Althouse writes, "I'm not at all familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, but it was funny to read that it's based on insurance underwriting."
Actuarial is used in its more generalized meaning in this sort of gaming. In terms of its gameplay mechanics, "Dungeons & Dragons" is based on Kriegspeil, the game rules initially invented for the general staff of the Imperial German army in the decades before the outbreak of the Great War, and used to evaluate their plans and scenarios. The Kriegspiel game pieces, often called "counters", represent military units that, depending on the tactical scale, may represent units as large as entire divisions or as small as individual soldiers. The counters have associated qualities such as attacking strength, defending strength, and movement factors. The qualities are subject to modification via statistical calculation, hence the term actuarial.
For example, a particular counter, call it the 1st Battalion Braunschweig Light Infantry, has a nominal movement factor of 3, however, local weather conditions in the hex it occupies indicate heavy snowfall. (Kriegspiel is played on a map overlaid with a grid of linked hexagons like a honeycomb.) Consequently, as the actuarial table for that counter class, German light infantry, calls for a reduction of the movement factor by 3 in heavy snow conditions, the 1st Battalion Braunschweig Light Infantry is immobilized as long as the local weather condition persists. Had the player deployed a different counter to that hex, for instance, a mountaineer unit equipped with skis, the snow might enhance its movement factor. So, bad generalship on the part of the player and bad luck for the snowbound Braunschweigers. That's it, really. Kriegspiel is just calculation after calculation, but it wasn't intended to be fun.
Its remote descendant, D&D, also involves calculations from statistical tables but is modified by the arcane powers of magic and the ineluctable diktats of an omniscient judge called a "Dungeon Master".
I can't imagine wanting further immersion with the pressure of being part of the show. But I will put some effort into trying to understand what other people are finding rewarding.
It gives people something to do and lets them decide what they want to do.
There aren't many job openings out there for Renaissance Studies majors, so more power to them if they find their niche, and aren't burning down Portland or Seattle or Minneapolis.
I played D&D as a kid and while in the military and the dice rolling and table lookups were always secondary to the personal interactions between people.
These are fun diversions, yet simultaneously at the national level, we're witnessing the act of pretending supplanting reality.
Can't remember what book it was I was reading (it was about the South), but the author joined some sort of hard-core Civil War enactment group for a while.....they don't (obviously) shoot each other, but otherwise live as closely as possible to how the actual soldiers did, with crappy, ill-fitting uniforms, crappy, ill-fitting boots, eating salt-pork and hardtack for days, sleeping outside, marching for hours, etc. Utterly Type II, miserable "fun".
I recall many years ago some group or other also tried to recreate as closely as possible a wagon train of settlers heading west and most didn't make it the first hundred miles because it was so miserable.
Thus, I find LARPing to be something sort of half-@ssed.
With a small amount of embarrassment I confess that my wife and (adult) daughter have signed us up for the Disney Star Wars adventure this fall. They (and my son) are enthusiastic D&D players, and we all like Star Wars to one degree or another. It's definitely designed with them in mind. We have watched several reviews, and Disney seems aware that there will be people like me who will be happy to have a few drinks and watch other people have silly fun. While there seems to be plenty of room for people to do their own thing, they have Disney cast members creating a lot of action, so lurkers like me will be entertained by pros. I'll dress up as a Jedi (i.e. put on a bathrobe) and treat it as a weekend-long Halloween party. I anticipate a large bar tab. I hope my family has as much fun as they are anticipating.
The 2009 cult film THE WILD HUNT captures “Nordic LARPing” well and effectively contrasts it with the quotidian lives of the LARPers. The trailer: https://youtu.be/WENre45f13c
This seems more like acting out a video game. In a "Star Wars" video game, you're playing a "Star Wars" character and interacting with / fighting with other "Star Wars" characters, but there's an emotional distance because you're just watching things unfold on a screen. With a live-action role play, the setting wouldn't have the same cinematic realism, but you'd feel as if you're truly a part of action. And role-playing in a well-constructed set at Disney would bring make everything seem more real. (I imagine that with eventual improvements in virtual-reality technology, games that take place in the "metaverse" will combine the best of both worlds. Except for the part where you're actually meeting other people.)
I could never go to one of these things—I’m afraid it would give me a terminal case of the giggles. Also, light sabers have to be the stupidest fictional weapon ever not invented.
Anthony references the late Tony Horwitz's "Conederates in the Attic" per hard-core reenactors. (Some of my reenactor friends were actual veterans, and drew the line at pretend morning reports etc. They lounged as much as possible when not playing sojer out in the field.)
Quaestor's account describes one way of kriegspieling, but the Reisswitz game was prior to the German Empire by some decades and was already being used in Prussia and other places. The hex overlay is a modern invention, and lots of games still use range and movement sticks. For that matter, Reisswitz's game wasn't the first attempt at applying historical experience and mathematical models to simulate battle--it was just the Model T.
Robert Louis Stevenson and H.G. Wells popularized hobby militarism with miniature soldiers, but commercial board wargaming was a Boomer phenomenon starting in the late 1950s with Charles Roberts and "Tactics II." The early version, as well as the first Avalon Hill Gettysburg game, used a brick-pattern map, soon replaced by the wonderful, detestable, hexagon.
I have friends who do "escape rooms" as a family activity. Go figure.
There's an award-winning film out entitled "Miniature Wargaming, the Movie." I'm waiting until it's free, or at least real cheap to watch.
Disney is Enemy.
Anthony @ 10:28 AM above, I think the book you are trying to remember is Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War" (1998).
Is Black Bloc the newest trend in cosplay?
I’m betting, Ann Althouse, you never “went forward” at a Billy Graham crusade. Graham used massive emotional group pressure to great effect … but what a turnoff to the individualist.
Attractive Eighties Women: Lightningbolt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l12NZrYEVno
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