The people within the park are playing a live-action role-playing game or LARP. Many people may consider LARP as a grown-up version for children playing make-believe. Every LARPing game has its rules and history. The game in the location of a LARPing event is a battle game but also focuses on an unfolding story. This article will discuss how the game works.
LARPing is a crossover between a game and theater role-playing. It is about designing a personality or persona to suit an imaginary world. Depending on the game, the character can be involved in something similar to a sport where people will fight out the fights or talk. The gist of the whole game is that someone creates an imaginary setting with its own set of rules and themes. The person creates a personality that will fit into the character for the environment the game is in. It is total immersion and involves many people to accept an alternate reality while in the game.
In layman’s terms, a LARP is an extended interaction between three things; a world, its rules, and the people in it. The method of designing a game world takes a long time because its creator must address virtually everything that appears within the world. The outline of the game world also includes what its people, technology, and cultures are like.
If the game involves astronomy and magic, then the peoples’ characters must also have a grasp of those two things. If a live-action role-playing game world has lower classes, having no electricity in the game setting might mean that the lower classes are not able to read or write since they cannot study in the dark. During the day, the lower classes may need to work so they cannot study in the light and their only free time is during the dark hours. However, there is no electricity which means they cannot study in the dark.
The other complexity of most LARPing games is the weapons. If the players were given handbooks or workbooks at the beginning, players will have access to the weapons using the details and mechanics of the game.
The next part of the equation is the game’s rules. Game designers have the choice of making a completely new rule system to deal with combat, magic, death, and characters’ skills. They can also use an existing rule system. The ultimate component of a LARP is the people. The game can separate the people involved in a LARP into three categories.
The Categories of People in a Live-Action Role Playing Game
The People that Ran the Game
In some games, one person, usually called a game master (GM), leads the action. In larger games, a plot committee or several GMs work together to keep the game moving forward.
The People that are Part of the Game
These are non-player characters (NPCs). for instance, an NPC might be a bartender who tells players about rumors of bandit attacks on the outskirts of town. The bandits themselves can also be NPCs.
The People that Play the Game
The people that play the game are called the player characters (PCs). Unlike an NPC, a PC is able to learn and develop new skills during the course of a campaign or storyline. In other words, the NPCs are a part of the story, and the PCs experience and learn from that story.
The interaction in a world, including its people and rules, often takes place in the context of a campaign or game session. In the game, there is a lot of time to interact with the world’s history. A game session can last anywhere from a couple of hours to many days. A campaign can continue for months. During that point, players will congregate at the game location, often a campground or a park, on a daily schedule. While the game is ongoing, the players pretend to be their characters – they walk, talk, and act the way their characters would.
Reasons Why People Participate in LARP Games
There’s a wide selection of reasons why people play. Some people wish to play it as a type of sport, or a game, to win. Most people who are drawn to LARP are very imaginative people, who already create stories and things in their minds, or perhaps write stories may be drawn to the immersive feeling in a LARPing game. It also fulfills fantasies for a few people. The fantasy of living in a world with simple, black-and-white lines, or of just being a heroic figure can be appealing for some.
There are many people who may join LARPing as a form of escapism. They can become someone else for a short time. Others are drawn to it just because of the literature and theatrics associated with it.
