The two most risky activities in a larp have very different issues.
Consider two scenes.
First, you’re at a large, weekend-long larp. The venue is amazing, everyone is in costume, and you’re all role-playing in a big room. Suddenly, in the middle of the room, a fight breaks out. The two participants are really into it and obviously have stage combat experience: one throws the other on their back, then mounts them and delivers a realistic punch before they’re pulled off. Afterwards, someone checks in on both participants to make sure they’re okay - they both had a good time and enjoyed the scene, and the organizers all agree that the fight scene was within the scope of the larp.
How would you feel about witnessing this scene?
Here’s the second scenario. Again, you’re at a large, weekend-long larp. The venue is amazing, everyone is in costume, and you’re all role-playing in a big room. Suddenly, in the middle of the room, two people start having simulated sex. The two participants are really into it and comfortable with each other: they strip off their clothes quickly, and then one slides between the other’s legs and starts simulating oral sex in a manner that’s hard to tell if it isn’t the real thing. Afterwards, someone checks in on both participants to make sure they’re okay - they both had a good time and enjoyed the scene, and the organizers all agree that the sex scene was within the scope of the larp.
Do your feelings change at all?
No matter what your feelings are, you’re not wrong, and we’re not trying to call anyone out. Also, larpers are a pretty intelligent group of people who understand nuance, and we expect a variety of feelings. But what we do expect is that there’s often a change between how someone feels about witnessing a fight scene versus a sex scene. And when there’s a difference, we have to ask, “why?”
We Actually Have An Answer
Everyone reading these two scenarios will have different reactions, but we have another way to look at the same question. Instead of asking larpers how they might theoretically feel, we can look at larps, and see what their design addresses. We looked at the ten most recently announced larps on a popular Facebook group, and categorized them by whether they facilitated, limited or omitted sex and/or violence from their design. We found a trend that we expected:
By facilitate, we mean the design does things to encourage or promote this sort of play, or explicitly includes the element in its design; by limit we mean the design does little to promote this play and actually imposes restrictions on what’s acceptable. If the design didn’t facilitate or promote the element, then we said the element is omitted. As you can see, the 10 random larps we picked are far more likely to promote violence than sex.
And there’s a really good reason for that.
The Problem With Sex
The reason is obvious. Unlike violence, people can engage in actual sex without likely needing medical attention afterwards. There are larpers who go to larps intending to have sex. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, it does lead to unwanted attention, sexual harassment and even sexual assault. Combining this with the alibi larping provides, you can significantly increase the risk of these hazards occurring. So designers have to protect their participants from this increased risk, and one control that works is limiting the sexual activity you can role-play during the larp.
Doing so doesn’t just decrease the risk - the lower risk also increases participation and promotes role-play. Individuals who would be targeted for sexual coercion or unwanted attention know that such behaviors are not permitted or facilitated by the larp, and may be more comfortable playing. Individuals who are uncomfortable with sexual activity in general can now engage more fully. All of these are unequivocally good things.
Conversely, violence has to be facilitated, or it won’t happen: most people don’t go to larps looking to injure or murder their friends. Even when realistic, violence in larps isn’t actually real, and to even achieve the in-role effects of violence requires some sort of game or simulation. Combined with the risk of sexual activity at a larp, it’s no surprise that the default of most larps is “facilitate violence, limit sex” - from a perspective of play, that’s a pretty good stance.
Of course, this leads to a different problem.
The Problem With Violence
The problem with violence is entirely narrative: because we have to facilitate violence to have it in a larp, any larp that does so becomes kind of violent… and violent larps tend to glorify violence. Consider a few of these scenarios:
A historical romance larp includes a way to play out duels: with if they occur, push the focus of the larp on deadly combat between two characters. The participants are rewarded with this focus for violent role-play, possibly without examination of the toxicity of any culture that would have duel.
A boffer larp has various ways to heal in-role injuries after combat, and even ways to return from the dead, making violence relatively consequence-free. Violence becomes a fun past-time… maybe even the point of the larp.
A gritty war larp focuses on the angst and negative effects of combat, focusing on “Type II” fun. But the participants are literally larping someone else’s trauma, and most of these design teams don’t consult with any actual combat veterans.
A larp has armed police characters in it, without considering that there are likely people present who have good reason to fear deadly violence from police.
Of note: most larpers have never engaged in the sort of violence they role-play: they’ve never been attacked with a deadly weapon or seen actual combat. They don’t have experience with the material with which they engage, and are playing out a story that some might consider a fantasy. However, there is one sort of violence that is the exception to this: Of the seven larps that mentioned both sex and violence, six of them had an absolute prohibition on sexual violence, and the last one had explicit limitations. Larpers are legitimately concerned with sexual violence, and many of them have survived the experience - sexual violence is not a fantasy for them, but a reality.
This is not to say - at all - that we should have more scenes of sexual violence in larp, or that a duel in a regency larp equates a rape scene. But consider that there might be people at a larp who have been attacked, personally, by deadly weapons, or have been in fights as an adult, or who have seen combat. Shouldn’t designers consider their experience as well?
Perhaps, but honestly, such conversations are rare, as the people impacted by such violence (like all survivors) deal with it all the time. A Black person knows the danger of interacting with a cop. A war veteran with PTSD deals with it every day. Depictions of violence are not unique to larp; they saturate the media, and if you’re a person who has been impacted by this sort of violence, interaction is routine. And that’s the root of the problem.
The Stories We Tell
The stories we tell reinforce behavior, not just of individuals, but of society. These narratives are insidious, and often run counter to our expressed values. For example, war stories have a purpose: even the most depressing “war is hell” tales present a particular picture of the protagonist, which often represents a “voyage from innocence to experience.” That trope, however, falls into a particular sort of toxicity: that combat experience imbues some sort of unique wisdom, and those who survive the “hell” of war are due some sort of respect. This promotes military service in military age (typically masculine) young adults. Violent stories usually promote some sort of masculine, nationalist or authoritarian value. A cop protecting someone promotes the idea that the state will save you from your neighbors (who are often different from you in some way). Any duel you have in a larp will promote tropes of toxic masculinity, as the moment people witness the duel, the two duelists now become “the men in the arena” surrounded by spectators. Patriarchal, nationalist and authoritarian structures rely on these narratives to reinforce those structures.
Arguably, the restrictions on sexual activity (in particular sex-positive, consensually-told stories) also reinforces these structures. However, the problems that increased risk impose on play means that sexual activity in larp will have to remain either restricted or highly designed. However, we have no such risk driving our preponderance of violence stories. If we all started designing larps with more sex, there would be people at more risk, but if we cut out all the violence from our larps tomorrow, not a single participant would be less safe.
So why are our stories so violent? Is it because of the prevalence of violence in mass media? Is it that larp has war-gaming built-into its design? We don’t know, but we know it’s there, and our reliance on violent narratives is part of the problem. We’ve seen plenty of discourse on sex and larp. Maybe we should start talking about making larp less violent.
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