The Problem With Pre-Negotiation

A Guest Post by Amanda Rose Villarreal

We had pre-negotiated the fight. We’d talked about the build-up: where we’d be, what he’d say to activate the disagreement, and how it would end. He told me I could slap him—yes, really slap him, he’d insisted—and I agreed that he could pin me to the wall and scream in my face. 

We each had different understandings of these agreements.

In the moment of escalation, he shouted at me; I shouted back. He pulled my hair; I turned and slapped him. Suddenly, I hit the wall behind me so hard that I lost air. His hands were on my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed at his hands, shoved against his torso frantically; I couldn’t breathe. I stopped resisting, hoping he’d ease up. My vision started to grey, so reluctantly, I tapped out. I’ll never forget his response: he threw his hands up in exasperation and proclaimed it wasn’t fair to tap out of a pre-negotiated sequence. I’d ruined the scene he’d been looking forward to all game. 

This example highlights the three-prong problem with unstructured pre-negotiation.

Calm negotiations are uninformed by in-the-moment needs. 

Pre-negotiation usually occurs when we are in states of increased emotional regulation and decreased physical threat when compared to the circumstances of play. We typically negotiate in states of logic and calm, rather than in the typically higher stakes our characters are experiencing during co-created storytelling. But our bodies and brains have real physiological responses to the scenes that emerge during play. In a moment of surprise or in heightened emotional stakes, our threshold of tolerance shrinks and our needs change, regardless of what we had previously agreed to—and these changing needs are difficult to predict and pre-negotiate for with accuracy. 

Pre-Negotiation relies on presumptions

When I said “yes” to being pinned against a wall, I was operating under the presumption I’d be held by my arms, shoulders, or torso—not with applied pressure to my windpipe. This presumption seemed so obvious that it didn’t occur to me to clarify. But every larper brings their own set of “obvious” presumptions to pre-negotiations. When these presumptions misalign, our pre-negotiations and best intentions can lead us to misunderstand one another at best, or to cross unclarified boundaries. When we each assume our own expectations set rules the other person should follow, none of us actually has the clarity necessary to support others’ changing needs.

Pre-Negotiation fuels expectations

Once pre-negotiation has occurred and players have agreed to a plan, there is pressure to follow through with the plan as discussed. There’s often a pressure to perform in larp in general; many of us want to be “good larpers” and to provide play opportunities and scenes that others enjoy. A previously stated agreement established in pre-negotiations, then, creates a situational incentive to follow through. We may believe we need to endure an action regardless of our feelings, because our calm negotiations were uninformed by our in-the-moment needs. This pressure may be internal monologuing: I said this would be okay, so I should just endure it, it’s my own fault this is happening, or it could come in the form of spoken or social repercussions from fellow players afterwards: you said I could do this, how dare you back out. 

Together, these three prongs make it difficult for players to effectively self-advocate during play. When a larp is built in such a manner that high-risk play relies entirely on players’ ability to, without a clear structure, simply pre-negotiate for themselves—when many players may not know how to navigate their own presumptions, plan for changing needs that differ from those forecast during calm conversations, or to remind one another that pre-negotiations are loose ideas, not ironclad agreements of what must be done—pre-negotiation alone can hinder our capacity to self-advocate during play.  Unstructured prenegotiation can lead to directed scenes, rather than fueling consent-based improvisation. We're larpers, not directors; supporting improvisational interactions should be our aim.