And now for something completely...okay it's just more ranting.

Heeeeeeey everybody!

(Hi You Insufferable Prick!)

Actually insufferable is not the right word. You folks suffer me all the time. Prepare for more.

Todays topic: The Sell-job.

All you perverts can close your Firefox tabs opening up Urban Dictionary, because I just made this word up and it's not something you can do to a hooker.

Well, not quite. What many of you don't realize about your Angry Storyteller, is that his debt inducing theatre degree had one very interesting job result: I was once a referee on the professional wrestling circuit. The strange and chaotic theatre-of-the-round that it is of course has it's own century long carnival sub-culture. The term "sell" is used to mean when one person throws a punch, kick, or Spinning Ocean Cyclone Pumphandle Dragon Bomb that doesn't actually cause physical harm, the recipient acts in such a manner that convinces the audience it does indeed cause them a great deal of pain.

It has more to do with LARP then you might think.

No matter what anyone says, everyone wants their character to look cool or at the very least interesting. No matter if they are focusing on supporting other players or hiding in the corner, they want their time to shine. Maybe not today, maybe not tommorrow, and more commonly, they want it every fricking possible second.

The common problem is that no matter how cool you FEEL, it means very little if you're not treated like it as a result of your actions. You could be speaking the greatest monologue in the world, but if you're doing it in the corner and no one hears, it doesn't matter.

In the world of wrestling, both performers have to sell to make the drama mean something, to make it look like it is a competition. If one performer does NOT sell, they make the other person look like a chump. If their actions don't matter, if the cool things that wrestler does are easily ignored, there is no drama. More importantly, the person doing all this work to create drama gets PISSED OFF. If they stop selling in response, then nothing matters and there is no drama. If both sell for the other, then their actions have meaning.

Here's the key.

It's the person who sells MORE who looks cooler, not the person who sells LESS.

Not only does everyone want to interact with them (because they have a reputation for making their character look cool and interesting) not only are people more likely to sell for them (because their egos are inflated by the previous selling enough to let them be deflated a bit by selling themselves) but people will actually...what's the word...oh yeah GIVE A SHIT about the character, because they are human and they suffer.

Now in television and film characters get to look like badasses on a MUCH more regular basis then any character in a LARP will, because they get extras and flunkies to do so whose development doesn't matter, who can be made to look like peons so you can look cool. You don't have that luxury in LARP. Every character is important, and if you make them look like a loser with no effect, the only story you have the possibility to tell is for them to come back and prove you wrong. Because there are no extras. Not everyone can be the hero, but no one can be untouchable.

And btw, only selling for NPCs doesn't count. I see lots of players do this and say their character has flaws and struggles. I am not hear to put on the You Show, so I'm even less inclined to run the You Show AND make sure it's cast the way you want.

You know what wrestlers do to a guy who wont sell? They force them to with a good old REAL kick to the face. The players can't do that in LARP, but if you don't sell, they may feel like it. Or worse, they will use their Almighty Character Sheet to do so. That's a bad cycle.

For fucks sake get over yourself and your Totally Awesome Character and just sell, people.

Mitchell