Larp lessons: the art and politics of showing up
What roles do you play in life, and more importantly, what roles and scenes do you forego because you feel out of your element in them? Can you give yourself more grace to grow into your roles? After all, not everyone has the privilege to grow up practicing roles of power. What if we applied ‘fake it til you make it’ to societal roles in the same way that we ‘walk in’ a new pair of shoes to get comfortable in them?
By Carien Moossdorff, PhD researcher, Anticiplay project
‘Leven is larpen’ is one of my silly-serious mottos in life: ‘To live is to larp’ in English, more or less. I want to share with you how making a difference in the world often comes down to showing up to play the part, in the game-worlds of larp and in the rest of life. Joost wrote last month about larping as in the internet-slang of pretending as a role that isn’t yours and the emotional strain that comes from that. Some critical questions come up around societal demands and authenticity. But there is another side to this story: When we treat all the world, not like a stage, but like a series of larp scenes, the very world becomes ours to create — and that includes the roles that initially don’t seem to ‘fit’.
Let me start with larp. Live action role playing is a freeform collective storytelling, often with game mechanics. It’s as if one prompt from improv just kept going and going for the entire weekend, and maybe another one next year to pick the story right back up in the case of on-going campaigns. Over time, a whole social system emerges with religions, professions, and lots of other organizations and roles.
Larp is a hobby, so people do it for fun. One larp game master told me that good larp design mostly means making sure that everybody has something to do. After all, if you want to have a good time, you have to… do fun things.
Doing fun things can be surprisingly difficult, and the fun in a larp is certainly not distributed equally. Unlike real life, inequality in larp joy does not come from financial capital. Instead, social and cultural capital prevail. Being friends with people who are close to hotspots of fun helps. Not because people try to play favorites, but because they understand you better. Or you’re friends with them because you are drawn to each other, and so you will be drawn to each other in the game as well. Having the right skills and knowing the social codes helps a lot. From genre conventions to leadership skills, they help you skip over the part where you figure out what the hell is going on here. Charisma and guile help.
But in the end, one thing is the most important when it comes to ‘being part of the fun’ and ‘getting shit done’: Showing up.
Are you in the important meeting? Then your neighbor is much more likely to ask you to help her out with her exciting next step, and not another player with the same skill set. But how did you end up in the meeting in the first place? You either just showed up and stayed, or you showed up somewhere else where you got invited to this meeting. Are you ‘around’ a lot? Boom. You’re a person who’s ‘there’. Now you have a say in the next step. Now, you have powerful people right next to you and willing to listen.
Once I discovered this in larp, I started to notice this pattern is true for most of social life outside of the play-setting. An acquaintance would go to boring city council events, only because he knew he could pick up grants for his projects there. And this makes sense: The local politicians hang out there, with all the project money they can give away. Showing up (even if the event isn’t relevant to you) makes you more likely to get those funds than someone who didn’t go. From the perspective of the politicians: They want to do what’s best for their town, but can’t see the forest for the trees of useful projects. You, a likable person, telling them about your important work, is really helpful in the decision-making. And like with the larp-meeting, you keep showing up and before you know it, you’re one of the local project-people (whatever that means!).
The importance of showing up counts in many other places: Hybrid meetings are very convenient, but many things that matter, happen ‘in-between’. In the break, or even in a quick look. Publishing research is great, but most of the time that leads to next steps through interaction: Somewhere, with people. Indigenous groups and developing economies fought to be at the table when the Sustainable Development Goals were designed.
But if it were so easy, why don’t people show up much more? First, they do. But nobody’s telling you. Second, the condition of being allowed to show up is usually that you do so under the prevailing definition of the situation. It is probably easy to sneak into academic conference sessions, at least after the first coffee break — just flop a blazer over your arm and let people assume your name tag is on the garment somewhere. But if you don’t know the social rules of the session, it is equally easy to betray yourself once you start speaking up. In this way, some people are excluded from situations where they are supposed to be welcome. Every citizen is allowed to speak at a civic assembly. But when a person seems to be operating ‘on a different server’, their presence is discounted or even ended. To return to the petri dish of larp: I have seen countless ‘noobs’ accidentally talking about out-of-game concepts, which immediately shuts them out of the in-game interaction.
This experience of not being able to strike the right chords can be very frustrating, even in larp. But in the game, failed interactions cost you relatively little: You may feel embarrassed or dejected, but you can still ask for advice with a game master, pull yourself together, and try again the same day. If you’ve burned too many bridges, you can even start a new character and show people that you’ve learned from your mistakes. In everyday life, embarrassing experiences feel more directly connected to your own identity — and it can be obscured how easy it still is to show up again for another attempt. Some people are immune to this embarrassment and cheerfully move on to the next interaction, but many people resort to self-negation.
On the flip side, people who show up in the right register and who play their role convincingly, can join almost any conversation or decision-making in some way. Larpers who are clear about the part they portray, the goals they aim for, and the values they hold, will find that other players around them are generous in how they respond. Generosity in larp means to ‘lift each other up’, to recognize and acknowledge what the other person is trying to play, and to respond as if the act is very convincing. This, too, is true in life. It is comforting and activating to understand the role and goal another person brings to an interaction. This is why, when you make an online bid for a second-hand dining table, you explain who you are and how you plan to feed your children/play board games/sew clothes/etcetera on the table. It doesn’t matter, but it really does.
And finally: Making a difference in larp is an art. Influence happens in the emergent parts of the media, so in all the outcomes that are unpredictable. It is not ‘showing up’ to contribute one gold piece when three hundred are needed to bribe an enemy and solve the weekend’s plot. (You can still do it, and it can be helpful or even necessary. But you are not steering the story, here.) Likewise, participating in bureaucracies is usually not showing up — you are acting as input in an algorithmic system, not playing a role free-form. The memed ‘Karens’ know this very well — you’re better off speaking with the manager from the role you are equipped to play, than to pick a number and go through the system. (But let’s please make the world nicer and choose to play kinder roles than this archetype.)
At a societal level, we should offer practice in the politics of showing up. Showing up at places that matter should be a skill you learn at school, not a secret handshake you only learn if you have powerful parents. On a more local level, we can empower people by being very open about the rules of the situation, and by giving grace when new people make mistakes.
At a personal level, everyone can practice the art of showing up. Places to show up are all around: Civic organizations, book clubs, sports organizations, work opportunities. Wherever you choose to show up, you get to contribute to the world-building. And if you don’t know where to begin, you can always practice in larp, the hobby that can mirror your self-negation and offers a practice ground to show up a thousand times.
My wonderful methods professor held the view that trite, taken-for-granted adages point to profound sociological truths. In this case, that adage is ‘fake it til you make it’. Often, this piece of advice will be very unhelpful or simply pointless. But from the perspective of larp and the art and politics of showing up, the line rings very true in a particular way. Power and access are not distributed equally. But showing up and expressing your role and goal with conviction, gives the people around you opportunity to ‘lift you up’ and consequently, grow in the role. Showing up will expand your social capital, and making mistakes will grow your cultural capital. Playing a role socially is a good thing — everybody is always playing a role. You can choose yours — and you can change your costume the second you get home.
If you are wondering whether you should take the center stage — yes, you should. The ultimate example of a person larping to the spotlights, stepping up to the most sacred pulpits and demanding a new truth, has recently been Elon Musk. A person who just showed up to a new setting, literally stepped into positions of power and made claims to prestige and truth. Watching that happen made me feel powerless at first, until I realized that he is larping. I have seen countless players play this gambit in larp, and they can always be stopped. Not immediately, usually not easily.
These are the ways to counter hardcore larpers. The first is obvious: Never stop countering. Every villain needs to be heckled. People need to know that heroes are still out there, and heroes need to feel supported sometimes. And more actively, be that hero! Larp harder yourself. Can you get access to a center stage? Take it. Claim the truth back, and make it spectacular. Give the truth a proper show to make it stick. Those who don’t have access to a center stage, can and should claim smaller stages, where you can build up your voice. Finally, make allies. Most of larping (and social construction of reality, in general) is talking. Definitely talk to known allies, and go hard with them. Be gentle with potential allies. Work together to claim at least some common ground. This is the trick: Bring people into the common ground you can share, to build up the social world that you stand for. You must challenge the world the villain is trying to force on you, but at the same time, always lay the groundwork for your world, and welcome new allies to land on it.
Carien is a cultural sociologist and PhD candidate at Anticiplay. In her PhD, Carien investigates how games can allow us to engage emotionally with transformations and the building of institutions.
