Cerise Magazine

August 2007 Issue

Features

• From the Editors
• Craft Check: Custom Game Master's Screens
• Gaming in the Media: Much Ado about AO

Interviews

• Miriam Ruiz [Game developer]

Articles

• Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Introduction
  Author: Samara Hayley Steele

Samara kicks off her series looking at LARPing from a feminist perspective.

• Myth Busting: Gaming as Antisocial Behaviour
  Author: Andrea Rubenstein

Andrea takes down the myth that games are inherently antisocial events.

• Women will Love Stranglehold: A Hands-on at E3
  Author: Yvonna Lynn

Yvonna talks about her experiences playing Stranglehold at E3.

Gamer Stories

• Notes from the UnGamer
  by Jewel Faulkner
• 8 a.m. on Saturdays
  by Karen Healey
• I'm a Female Plant Shaman
  by Anna Holt

Reviews

• Jade Empire PC Special Edition
  by Cherie Thomason
• Retro Review: Prince of Persia
by Abby Wilson

Odds 'n Ends

• The Back Page

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Stranger in the Mirror

It is the day of my first LARP game. After riding in a cramped car for over a hundred miles, my companions and I have finally arrived at the campground. We unpack our gear and wander through the trees, searching for the tiny cabin that will be our home for the next two nights. When we find it, we push through the door and spread the contents of our suitcases across the dusty, pine-needle-covered floor.

Within minutes the six of us are donning tabards and leather armor, painting our faces with stage makeup, and tying little tinkling bells to our ankles. Someone is gluing little elfish tips to his ears, and the fellow next to him is affixing satyr horns to his forehead. I weave little rubber cat ears into my hair and paint whiskers across my face.

When I am finished I look into a mirror and see more than a mere reflection of myself in a costume. I see an opportunity, a chance to step out of my skin for a weekend and create a new identity free from the constraints of normal society. I imagine what my new character will be like: a gruff rogue barmaid that swaggers when she walks and don’t take shit from no one. I visualize myself strolling into the village tavern, edging up to the bar, swigging a rootbeer, and demanding a job. In my naivety, I think that it will be easy to define my character; that I will be given the same creative freedom and opportunities as everyone else.

My friends are still unpacking their gear, but I am eager to start playing. “I’m going up to the tavern,” I say.

“Alone?” says one of my more experienced companions.

“Yeah,” I say, “it’s in my background story. I’m supposed to show up at the tavern alone.”

“Well…good luck,” he says, in a tone that is less than supportive.

“Don’t worry,” I say, “I can take care of myself. Besides, if I die once, I’ve still got at least two lives left.”

He doesn’t answer and continues unpacking.

I open the door and the crisp night air ruffles my hair and tunic. In the distance I hear a shrill cackle. Perhaps a goblin? Nearby, I see a shadowed figure walking through the trees, silhouetted by the silver light of a quarter moon. I grip the hilt of my sword and quietly follow the figure into the forest. The game has begun.

LARP and Society

It is Scholars Week at my university, and I have been chosen to represent the Anthropology Department by giving a public presentation of my research regarding ‘Live Action Role Play and Society.’ I have spent the last three months analyzing my favorite hobby using the lenses of Posthuman Philosophy and Cyborg Anthropology, and I am excited to share my findings.

As I prepare for the presentation, over fifty people crowd into the room and many passers-by have stopped to look through the door. They are all staring at the podium, transfixed. With a smile I wonder what will be more interesting to them: the theories I am about to present about LARP, or the fact that I am demonstrating them by dressing as one of my LARP characters: a colorful, bell covered gypsy-raccoon.

The Theories (abridged)

During the past several decades, psychologists have studied the relationship between media consumption and behavior. Recent studies have shown that the brainwave patterns of a person viewing an event on television are the same as those of a person experiencing the event in real life. So, if a viewer is engaged with a television program and she watches characters fighting, kissing, or inflicting self-harm, her empathetic human brain reacts as though these things are happening to her. But when the program ends and she is still sitting on her sofa, she experiences a disparity between her active emotional state and her passive physical state.

Many viewers attempt to reconcile the mind/body rift that passive media consumption creates by physically enacting events that they have viewed. Examples of this phenomenon exist everywhere. The first example that comes to my mind is a test conducted by the American Association of Pediatrics, linking the recent increase of sexual behavior among adolescents to popular television programs depicting promiscuous behavior, such as That 70’s Show and Friends. Countless other studies link media consumption with violence, eating disorders, and self-harm.

Viewers want to amend the rift that exists between their media-influenced emotional reality and physical reality. But what happens when the passively viewed events cannot be enacted within the confines of physical reality?

During the last forty years, the fantasy genre has become a huge part of the lives of media consumers. Fantasy-genre novels, films, and television programs are now popular among mainstream audiences. Naturally, viewers want to become more active in the emotional realities that these media create, and this desire has led to new forms of media that allow the ‘viewer’ to become the ‘player.’ These media include tabletop RP games, video games, and online multi-user computer games. These media are overwhelmingly oriented toward the fantasy genre, with the top-selling titles being Dungeons & Dragons, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Everquest, and World of Warcraft.

But while the new player-based media allow the individual to be emotionally active within a fantasy reality, a disparity still exists between the player’s active emotional reality and passive physical reality. Many players, myself included, have longed to step through the computer screen and physically enter the reality that they have emotionally lived in for so long. It is from that desire that Live Action Role Play was born.

In a LARP, the player creates a character by dressing in a costume, designating stats, and designing a new personality. Her avatar is no longer onscreen or on paper; it is embodied. During the game, a player becomes her character, enabling her to exist and interact with other characters within a fantasy world. The alternate world of the game is created by a system of mutually accepted rules that guide the players’ imaginations. A foam-covered pipe becomes a sword, a beanbag becomes a destructive ball of magic, and a Boy Scout summer camp becomes a village. If a Storyteller (i.e. the people who lead the plot of game) points to herself and says, “You see a dragon,” within the world of the game, that storyteller now is a dragon. Many of the larger LARP organizations rent parks and campgrounds in which to host their games, allowing players to physically travel through forest and village settings on their quests for justice, gold, and glory. Thus, the player is able to actively use both mind and body in a fantasy setting, and, though there are obvious physical limits to the extent of the LARP fantasy world, her imagination fills in the gaps.

The popularity of LARP has skyrocketed in recent years. Thousands of women and men are registered members of three of the largest LARP organizations—The Alliance, The New England Roleplaying Organization, and Amtgard—and there are countless more players involved with smaller organizations and private games. While fantasy is, by far, the most popular genre of LARP, there are also LARP organizations that operate within the genres of science fiction, horror, mythology, anime, and historical periods.

A New Lens

When Ariel Wetzel, my friend and fellow Cyborg Anthropologist, recommended that I write this series of articles, I had never before thought to analyze my experiences with LARP through a feminist lens.

Both women and men are affected by the mind/body disparity that is caused by fantasy media consumption, but within the major LARP organizations, women are treated very differently than men. During my three and a half years as a LARPer, I experienced this treatment first-hand, and by experimenting with several different characters and organizations, I pushed the boundaries of the limitations placed upon the female LARPer.

In this series of articles, I will share some of my LARPing experiences, with a specific focus on the role of gender within the game. I will analyze these experiences, but I will also focus on describing them as accurately and realistically as possible, inviting the reader to join me on my strange adventures, and hopefully allowing them make their own conclusions.

For my first article, I will return to that crisp quarter moon night four years ago, when my life as a LARPer began.

Watch for the continuation of Samara’s series in next month’s issue of Cerise!