Live Role-Playing

The best way of describing the difference between normal role-playing and live role-playing is that live gamers do it standing up. Whereas in a normal game the players sit around a table, in a live game they dress in costume and actually act out what their characters are doing. Of course they don't act out everything - there's always some mechanics involved, whether it be cards, paper-scissors-rock, or even (gasp) dice, but in general an attempt is made to make these as nonintrusive as possible in order to focus on the role-playing.

Historicly, the style has two seperate origins. The first is groups of gamers saying "wouldn't it be cool if we could do this for real..." which resulted in groups of costumed gamers hitting each other with rubber weapons while doing D&D-style dungeon-crawls through rented castles. The second was a desire to have bigger games - huge games, with fifty or even a hundred people involved. This led to the "theatre" or "freeform" style of game, where the players are portraying attendees of some huge event (dinner parties and funerals are the favourites), and the major action is political rather than combat. I'll make my biases clear from the outset and admit that I like the latter style. Not that there's anything wrong as such about trekking through the mud until you get bopped on the head by a guy in a rubber mask who's pretending to be an Orc - it's just that I like to stay indoors where it's warm.

One other style which deserves a mention, if only because it's so popular, is Mind's Eye Theatre, otherwise known as "those Vampire freaks". White Wolf has published a live-action adaptation of Vampire: the Masquerade, and it has become a very definate subculture within LARP. While most theatre-style games are one-offs, Masquerade is intended for campaign play, and many cities now boast their own Chronicles.

LARP in New Zealand

I'm basing most of this on my personal experience, which is naturally a little patchy. If you have any information to add, or corrections to make, please email me.

Auckland: Has a fairly active LARP community, with an emphesis on live combat "boffer" games and Cthulhu-esque horror. Check out the Auckland LARP Guide for details.
Hamilton: Had a Masquerade game some years ago, which seems to have disappeared. I've also heard of another group, Quest Waikato, which specialised in live-combat, but their webpage has also disappeared.
Palmerston North: Has a Masquerade group, but I don't have too many details, sorry.
Wellington: Victoria University used to boast a live-action club, "Chapter Victoria", but they had disappeared by the time I arrived in 1996. There was a very active Masquerade game, Wellington by Night, but this died long ago and the community has scattered. There are or have been a number of small, usually invite-only games of live Mage or live Changeling, and several attempts to do another live Vampire game (of which Shane Thurston's Wellington by Night / Martonborough by Night seems to be the best publicised). One group is attempting to start some sort of Unknown Armies LARP, but there's no details on the web that I'm aware of. There is annual theatre-style at KapCon, but precious little else - we live in hope that the designers of Aliens: Apocalypse will get the game design bug again (or at least return from overseas).
Christchurch: Christchurch has an active LARP community, geared towards theatre-style games, and some relatively experienced designers. A group of them got together and formed the University of Canterbury LARP club in 1995, which has since become BORG. The club runs several one off events a year (notably at Buckets of Dice), and also seems to be running an ongoing Christchurch by Night.
Dunedin: OURS (Otago University Roleplaying Society) seems to run two or three games a year, though they are one-offs rather than a campaign. Recently they're done a Shadowrun "boardroom" LARP, a Sabbat game, and a "political werewolf" (yeah, right) game.

Further Links

The Live Action Roleplayer's Association (LARPA), publishers of The LARPer online magazine.
Shade's LARP List, a worldwide index of events.
The rec.games.frp.live-action FAQ (old, but being updated).
RPG Net's LARP directory.
The Turku and Dogma 99 manifestoes, on what a bunch of crazy scandanavians think LARP should be like.
Interactivities, Ink, a company which actually publishes LARP scenarios.

Last Updated: 13/11/2002.

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