This is the first one that's gonna really hurt, because this is a lesson we have all either learned or will someday learn. I may be violating some sort of "old cranky gamer code" here, or maybe I'm just putting things into more rambly words.
You're just not that pretty, snowflake.
This goes back to what has now been dubbed Mitchell's Law #1 (by me, right now, but who's keeping track?) of "Whenever You Bring Out Your Character Sheet, You Become a Douchebag." Putting on a little sticky note that tells me how pretty you are doesn't change that rule. Neither does telling me how scary you are, or that you're a 12 year old girl. I once knew a 6 foot tall player who had a pin saying "I am a 4 foot Asian man."
I know these are all holdovers from tabletop gaming, and half the fun of gaming is being something else. I have no problem with escapism. But once you decide "Yes, I want to LARP, because there are girls/some what attractive boys there and my Gamemaster became addicted to WoW and has put on sixty pounds and has made the whole gaming thing kind of sad but hey this is different" then there has to be an acceptance of the level of theatre involved. I'm not saying go out there and play yourself. That defeats the point and there's people who do it that are equally annoying.
What I am saying is try not to write yourself a role that an objective director wouldn't cast you in. So if you think you'd like to play a 12 year old child and you have grey hair and a beer belly, think for a minute. When someone sees your little pin with your brilliant idea, and sees you with your stubble and sideburns, and they have to treat you differently then what they see, is their gaming experience going to be enhanced, or strained? People should be using their imagination on their own characters, not for having the most basic interactions with yours.
We all have to suspend a lot of disbelief in order to LARP. We're not Vampires, mighty woodland warriors or who knows what else we want to pretend to be. We're also not the Esoteric Concept of the Colour Orange, The Flying Spaghetti Monster or Three Thousand Candy Wrappers With Feet. The less you make the other players stretch their belief, the more they can focus on being more authentic in their role, and thus, here's the kicker...make the game better for YOU.
This gets into the touchy issue of "Looks." Many games have written in stats to tell you how beautiful our character is. And for many people, the very thought of telling someone that they are indeed, not a supermodel, is tantamount to calling them Quasimodo With B.O and Severe Facial Herpes. That's why this continues to happen, people either won't say anything or if they do it's taken personally. There are alot of very attractive people in LARP. There are very few awe inspiring ones on looks alone. I don't mind people using these traits or abilities or stats. What I mind is people broadcasting to the world how I as a player should treat their character and thus denying me the roleplay opportunity of finding out myself in character.
Here's my frame of mind: I know some models. There is a certain way that beautiful people carry themselves especially if they have been beautiful their whole life. And it has nothing to do with how they ACTUALLY LOOK. I know this because they have friends who even they will acknowledge are more physically attractive then other people in their field, but do not get treated that way. If you are going to PLAY hot, then all you really need to do is ACT hot. You don't need to broadcast it. And if you're not acting it, no one is going to treat you that way anyway, at least not in the way you were hoping when you spent those precious XP. Ask yourself if this is really how your character thinks and acts, or is this just something you'd like people to treat you like for once?
So Mitchell's Law #2: Don't cast yourself in a role you couldn't cast yourself in as an outside observer. No one should have to use their own creativity to interact with you instead of your own.
But don't worry. I think you're all beautiful. But if you come up to tell me to treat you like you're beautiful, I will. However, I'll react the same way I do around all beautiful people.
I'll run away in fear and hang out with my ugly friends.
M
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9 comments:
But I have a high MC, I want to be the only beautiful Nosferatu...
Lemme see...currently can play, according to rule #2
Redcap
Orc
Ork
Urak-Hai
Really Big Goblin
Very Small Troll
Thank god Orks are so awesome.
At least I don't have to wear any PVC.
Heq: You forgot sketchy drug addict, torture victim and homeless person. I would however rule out Personal Stylist concepts.
Thos aren't roles, they are historical recreation of my days of living in To.
I love your rules! Now if we only had more people who followed this philosphy.
I talked to you about this online already, but I'll leave my concept here. I can't entirely agree with this rule, as there are VERY few roles I'd cast myself as. I'm not the type to be an ex-cop, but I want to play a down on her luck ex-cop. If I stay strictly to proper theatre/film casting guidelines, I can play the ugly friend, 20 something mother, ugly teacher or comic relief. Just not my cup of tea for a LARP. I have to play those roles in my real acting jobs.
There's a difference between casting oneself objectively and playing a mirror of yourself in real life (be it physically or emotionally). With the possible exception of several feet of height, there's little that costuming, makeup, and -- oh, yes -- roleplay can't enhance. However, it goes the other way as well, as humans are decidedly visceral creatures.
I believe that there is a finite amount of energy that goes into a shared interaction, be it in LARP or reading a blog post, and the energy is shared in a proportional relationship. That is to say, if I want to be able to interact with you, and I haven't bothered to engage you with making my appearance and mannerisms representative of my character, but instead am wearing a nametag with a basic visual description (for example, "Green, scaly skin with red hair"), then it is going to take more energy on your part for you to even bother with processing the interaction because I'm not providing you with recognizable cues. Similarly, if I wrote this post in the voice of some twelve-year-old kid on an AOL chatroom (I'm dating myself, I know), it will take all the more energy on your part, as the reader, to comprehend it because I didn't have the courtesy to provide you with recognizable English.
This is where the beauty (sometimes, literally) of LARP comes in: the fact that the players are in costume within a space and are acting out their actions provides different kind -- I daresay a deeper level -- of immersion into the collective gameworld that we are creating, as opposed to a handful of us sitting around a table with dice and character sheets. It's the difference in engagement between a live performance and a table-read.
Suspension of disbelief is for chumps. Good interaction creates belief.
I can't in good conscience pretend that all things are possible in LARP, but certain things are reasonable. For instance, in Changeling, I can't help but lapse into OOC narration if I were to describe the esoteric or visual-effects elements of my Mien (I mean, if I could have a few leaves swirling freely around me, that would be awesome, but not feasible), but if you assumed the time investment to read my character page on the Wiki, you would already be prepared to fill in the gaps in an interaction with my character.
Some elements, however, can be represented in Meatspace. Is your character blond? Wear a wig if you don't want to colour your hair. If your character has a satyr's horns, then you should be expected to get the appropriate prosthetics. I do not believe that it would be considered unreasonable for a storyteller to require a player to at least make an effort to appropriately represent their character within the game, if only for one reason:
This isn't tabletop.*
There is only so much that you can test a player's sensibilities before you break the limit of credibility. For instance, given that I am all of 5'2", I definitely have to think twice before playing a LARP character with the Giant trait. Even though the Camarilla doesn't have a rule that states that a character is only as tall as the player, should it upset me that there are certain roles that I can't viably, credibly play?
In spite of it all, I don't necessarily feel limited by always having to be "The Short One," or otherwise find a short-statured character to play. I have found other ways to make a credible representation of the characters that I play.
Costuming, makeup, mannerisms, and good ol' roleplay.
Game on.
*The corollary is that if there is a character that you're positively dying to play but can't viably represent it in LARP -- and I don't mean this flippantly at all -- there's always tabletop (and perhaps, that's why the LARP game is an adaptation of tabletop material).
David earns extra Mitchell points for coming with the word Meatspace, which is the blogs new title.
This is why I try to make sure I do my makeup well for Rosalie. Her Mask looks quite a bit like me, but she does have Striking Looks 2.
For Vampire I'm probably going to have to resort to a wig and a tag, because my character is significantly bigger than me. (She's not a giant, but she's a little on the tall side of average with a sturdy build. Strength 3, and looks like it.) I'm working on costuming her decently, since she dresses quite differently from me. I wouldn't play a 6' character because that would just be laughable, but I do occasionally want to play a character who doesn't have Strength 1 :P, and nobody I know plays WW tabletop.
I think my recent weight loss has helped me get a lot more enthusiastic about my personal casting.
I'm often one to go for the tough as nails romantic male lead role and I'm feeling a lot more ready to jump into that role now that my confidence in my physical appearance has improved.
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