I recently read Aaron Vanek’s Cooler than You Think: Understanding Live Action Role Playing. It is a short essay on larp, mostly from an American point-of-view. I found the text not only interesting but valuable; there are few descriptions of North American larping out there. The text is aimed at a laymen and novices, but also at experienced larpers who might not be aware of the cornucopia of different types of larp available in the world.
I found the text very accessible. Vanek is good at communicating even complex ideas. I especially liked Vanek’s definition of larp. He has three defining criteria (“pillars”), basically the rule of first person audience, the rule of performative or representative action, and the rule of constant iterative definition of the diegesis. The definition is not analytically sound (for example rituals and formal dinner parties are larps according to it), but it has communicative power. Also, the more definitions there are out there, the more apparent it will be that after a certain point arguing about a definition becomes a matter of aesthetic preference.
That said, I disliked Vanek’s tendency to change certain key terminology (e.g. magic circle is now the bubble) as if feels like unnecessary dumbing down. (Still, changing magic circle into “the bubble” is similar to what Thomas de Zengotita did when he used “blob” instead of postmodernism. The difference is that de Zengotita has a precise reason and points it out.)
I found Vanek extensive description about narration very interesting. It seems that American larps use narration during games (quite rare in the Nordics)? Do game masters just hover there in the midst of action while the game is played? Do they directly interfere? Another cultural difference is pointed out by the following passage where the author explains what a larp looks like:
In larp, a player-character walks into a hotel room and decides to open an adjoining door and stroll through. In their mind, and the minds of everyone else around them, they just stepped out of the starship’s airlock without a spacesuit. Someone else may or may not try to save them. A GM might pour a bucket of ice water over the person to simulate the effect of outer space on unprotected flesh.
If this is indeed a stereotypical larp, then the North American and Nordic larps are quite different beasts. In the Nordics in a stereotypical game the playing area would be scenographed to look as much like the diegetic setting as possible, props would be as authentic seeming as possible and people would dress up as their characters as well as they can. Thus the door-that-is-an-airlock would look like one (even if it were built from styrofoam and cardboard painted silver). One of the strongest design ideals in the Nordics is the 360 degree illusion; games strive for indexical or at the very least iconic representation – symbolic representation is frowned upon – expect if that is whole as in Luminescence (room filled with flour representing cancer ward).
I was not impressed by the way Vanek gave advice as to how games should be constructed. This did not happen much, but an example of this is: “Active duty police officers and working emergency medical personnel, for example, should not ever be considered part of the larp world.” I cannot know if I agree with this blanket statement as the author does not explain his reasoning. We have written about the same subject in the ethics chapter in Pervasive Games and shied away from such overarching statements. The author is clearly worried about safety, which I understand and sympathize, but as he does not unpack the idea behind this statement I do not know what his reasoning is exactly.
I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read about the closest relatives of larp: theater and table-top RPG. The author states that “Theater also includes performance art”. Now I agree with this statement 100%. However, people who work in theater and in performance art do not. For them these two traditions are very, very different (and historically they are). It is just from the point of view of role-playing games that one can see that they are pretty much one thing; immediate representing for a live audience. Even if I often make this generalization myself, it is a little unfair to expect non-role-players to differentiate between fantasy boffer larps and more artistic works, if we do not go through the trouble of differentiating between theater and performance art.
Vanek’s agenda is that of spreading the gospel of larp. He believes that it is an important emerging form of art that should become mainstream. At the end of the document he outlines the next steps. One of them is national (US) regulation:
To further the art, we need standards, ratings, and possibly even regulation. This won’t kill larp, for there will always be renegades that expand the craft by ingeniously breaking the standards. However, without something to react against, chaos reigns, and few groups, or the art as a whole, can progress.
He also identifies one of the major obstacles: “However, one thing that seems to be lacking in many larp groups is a desire to popularize the art form.” I’m not sure where I stand on this issue. Role-players historically have been divided to thousands of tiny groups. Organizing these groups under one or even a few umbrellas is quite difficult which means that it is impossible to “speak for the whole hobby”. And that is a good thing, it keeps things fresh and interesting. Still, it is possible to represent a small portion of the people involved – and this approach has had good results in the Nordic countries.
All in all I find Cooler than You Think interesting and recommend it to anyone interested in finding how they do things on the other side of the pond. Also, I love the fact that someone has started to write for an audience in North America. Too long has all discourse on role-playing been restricted to newsgroups, webforums and other venues where good ideas are buried under huge numbers of endless threads. I hope Vanek inspires others to follow in his footsteps – even and especially if they disagree with the content.
Images from the essay, by Jennifer Albright.
nordiclarp.wordpress.com 
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September 8, 2009 at 13:54
Montola
I’m still in the browsing phase. Looks very interesting, and I totally agree that his mission is important and worthwhile.
As it is a living document, there’s one thing I’d like to see — and to the surprise of no-one, it’s referencing. While I realize it’s an introductory document, referencing would still be nice for “Read More In Here” purposes. I’d do it as lightweight as possible, though, with sparing use of endnotes that could be easily interested by people who don’t care.
Referencing ==> Discussion ==> Progress.
Anyway — thumbs up! And hope he writes a story or two to Knutebooks as well, even though this particular photobook won’t include non-Nordic stuff, sorry!
– M
September 19, 2009 at 11:28
Aaron
Stenros, thanks so much for this great review! (Jituomas pointed it out to me).
Just a couple of quick explanations to your points, which are great (I’ll include them in the revisions):
1. I didn’t change key terminology intentionally, I didn’t know there was any (I haven’t read all the Knutepunkt and related essays; I’m a bit behind). I didn’t know “magic circle” was the “bubble”. That being said, I like the idea of a bubble better; it’s three dimensional, and can be transparent or opaque. I also didn’t want to suggest there was any magic involved. This is my personal preference.
2. Narration in our larps
Although my example of the airlock isn’t typical (I’ll change it in a revision), it is fairly common. Our larps in America aren’t recognized as art; the budgets on them are usually very low. I didn’t want to suggest that the hotel door would look just like a hotel door, just that it WAS a hotel door in real life. I have done/seen some awesome set design in our larps.
My preference tends to lean towards what I enviously see the Nordic larps as doing. But I didn’t want to write a manifesto about how *I* want games to be, just how they could be. Maybe if I do a sequel, I’ll talk about what works best.
Do our GMs hover and narrate larps? Alas, many times, they do. I personally attempt to never do that, and I don’t usually like games that do, but there have been frequent occurrences where a group of players are lined up waiting for a GM to adjudicate some mechanic or explain background or answer a question or whatever. These are my friends’ games, so I didn’t want to slam them (too much). But yes, I have been in many larps where I am standing in a closet or hallway and a GM narrates what I experience, much like a table top game. I strain to never do this (unless there’s an emergency or something unusual; we once had a real fire start at a location and, after dousing it, had to get some narration of what happens).
As to the reasoning about not including emergency personnel in the larp, it is a safety issue. Police and fire don’t know what larp is over here, most, if not all, have no clue what we are doing. I once addressed a venue security officer in character (he was hired for the larp), and he got so upset I had to apologize and explain myself or risk the larp being shut down (which I did, profusely).
I really tried to refrain from explaining how larps are constructed; a good friend who proofread the document encouraged me to do just that, though…to write a manifesto about how larps should be run. But I thought that would only engender ill will, and I want to be as accommodating as possible, at least at this juncture. I tried to pull back as much as possible from dictating how it should be. Still, I think that all larp designers should avoid including non-larp people in their larps. If a paramedic shows up and they’re on duty, I think it’s criminal to remain in character and somehow confuse or irritate them. A personal preference, but again, here in the States, larp is not well known nor understood by the mainstream.
To Montola – If you are Markus Montola, I bow to a Master and am honored you’re reading my humble attempts to follow in your wake.
I dithered long about including footnotes and references in the essay. Ultimately, I explicitly did NOT want to write a Knutepunkt essay, for that wasn’t my only audience. You guys are way ahead of us, I need to reach the people who have never really thought about larp as an art form before. I didn’t want to come across as an academic, I wanted to make the essay accessible, so I shoved all the links to the appendix in the back. This may have been a bad decision, but it was a conscious decision, and I will stick by it (for now–if I get more complaints about it, I’ll include references in the revision).
Anyway, my great hope was that people read it and discuss it…especially here in the States. Thanks again for the commentary!
September 22, 2009 at 12:18
Montola
Wow, thanks for the compliment Aaron!
(I guess I’ve had my share of luck being a part of the Nordic Solmukohta scene and the Finnish tabletop scene, and on top of that the IPerG research project that sought to do pioneering work on pervasive games…)
Anyway — you should join us for a Knutpunkt 2010 or Knudepunkt 2011, Aaron. For a beer and a chat!
Best,
– Markus
PS. Jaakko and I are even lucky enough to be allowed to run a course on role-playing research at our university, even!