Live action role-playing games, known as LARPs, are a form of role-playing game in which live players/actors assume roles as specific characters and play out a scenario in-character. Technically, many childhood games may be thought of as simple LARPs, as they often involve the assumption of character roles. The National Institute for Play describes "Imaginative and pretend play" as the fourth of seven "primal patterns of play". However, the scope of this article concerns itself mainly with LARPing in a technical sense: the organized live-action role-playing games whose origins are closely related to the invention of tabletop role-playing games in America in the 1970s.
Live-action role playing appears to have been "invented" several times by different groups relying on local ideas and expertise. Sometimes such groups were inspired by reports of LARPs elsewhere. Such a multifarious process has led to an extremely diverse range of LARP practices and histories. By the 1980s, LARPs had spread to many countries and organizations, and different styles of play had been developed. During the 1990s, Mind's Eye Theatre was the first published LARP system to achieve popular status. Also during the 1990s, the hobby began to attract critical and academic analysis. For example, the 2003 Knutepunkt conference published a book entitled, As LARP Grows Up (subtitled Theory and Methods in LARP), to propose future directions for LARPs.
Early history It is likely that childhood LARP games date back to pre-history, with well-known games such as "cowboys and Indians," "house," and "doctor" stemming from earlier historical and pre-historical equivalents throughout many other cultures ("Athenians and Spartans", "hunting deer", etc.). Childhood LARPs tend to consist of very simple or no rules and reflect the surrounding culture.
Live-action role playing as practiced by adults has also existed for millennia in the form of historical reenactment. The ancient Romans recreated mythical scenes and naval battles in the Colosseum regularly. Likewise, the Han Chinese and medieval Europeans occasionally enjoyed organizing events in which participants pretended to be from an earlier age. Entertainment appears to have been the primary purpose of these activities. However, it appears that historical re-enactment only became a hobby in the 20th century.
Likewise, adults have used live-action role playing as an educational or practice exercise for centuries, with mock combats being an important part of military training, and mock treatments and trials used to teach doctors and lawyers. It's unclear to what extent these have been considered "games." The Prussian term for live-action military training exercises is kriegspiel or "Wargames," a term that has entered English as well, although the contemporary military prefers to call them military exercises to distinguish them from games.
Another early stream of LARP tradition is the improvisational theatre tradition. This goes back in some sense to the Commedia dell'arte tradition of 16th century. Modern improvisational theatre began in the classroom with the "theatre games" of Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone in the 1950s. Viola Spolin, who was one of the founders of the famous comedy troupe The Second City, insisted that her exercises were games, and that they involved role-playing as early as 1946, but thought of them as training actors and comics rather than as being primarily aimed at being fun in their own right.
G. K. Chesterton's 1905 book The Club of Queer Trades includes a story describing a commercial organization which stages LARP-like adventures for the entertainment of its customers. It's possible that this may have helped to suggest later ideas for commercial LARPs.
In the 1920s, Model League of Nations clubs formed around the United States, creating a style of live-action role playing that was not thought of as a game per se but was thought of as a recreational pastime. There is some evidence that Assassin-style LARP games may have been played in New York City by adults in the early 20th century as well.A simple version in which an assassination was performed by saying, "You're dead," was mentioned in Harpo Marx's autobiography, Harpo Speaks!. This particular part of the autobiography covers the late 1920s. The 1920s also saw the beginning of role playing used for psychotherapeutic purposes, often called psychodrama. It was championed in the US by Jacob L. Moreno. It was not thought of as a game, but the psychodrama tradition probably influenced LARP games as they later developed.
The 1960s saw the creation of fantasy LARPs (as distinct from pure historical re-enactments), which probably originate with the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronism in Berkeley, California, on May 1, 1966. A similar group, the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia, began holding events on the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1969. These groups were largely dedicated to accurately recreating medieval history and culture with only mild fantasy elements, and were probably influenced by historical re-enactment.
In the 1970s, after the publication of the early tabletop role-playing game (Dungeons & Dragons) in 1974, Fantasy LARPs began springing up in many places somewhat independently.
American history American LARPs have no single point of origin, although many of the groups still in operation can claim a lengthy history.
Among the live-combat groups, Dagorhir Outdoor Improvisational Battle Games (Dagorhir) was founded by Bryan Weise in the Washington, D.C. area in 1977. The International Fantasy Gaming Society (IFGS), also live-combat but with a complex rules system more clearly influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, was started in 1981 in Boulder, Colorado. (IFGS took its name from a fictional group in the novel Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, which described highly realistic, futuristic LARPs.) At about the same time (but before 1981), the Assassins' Guild was created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to pursue "killer" or "assassin"-style live-combat games with toy guns, but also to encourage creative design in LARPs. Assassination style LARPs spread to many other college campuses, even spawned two movies TAG: The Assassination Game in 1982, and Gotcha in 1985. Amtgard (a spin off of Dagorhir) was founded in 1983 in El Paso, Texas, and has hundreds of active groups in the US and Canada, while NERO International has over 50 chapters in the US and Canada. It was founded in 1988. In 1994, L’aventure du Duché de Bicolline was founded in Quebec, Canada.
Theatre Style LARP began in America at around the same time. In 1981, the Society for Interactive Literature (SIL) was founded by Walter Freitag, Mike Massimilla and Rick Dutton at Harvard University. The club's first public event was in February 1983, at the Boskone science fiction convention. A substantial part of the SIL membership broke off from that organization in 1991 and formed the Interactive Literature Foundation (ILF), which in 2000 changed its name to the Live Action Role-Players Association LARPA. The mid-Atlantic and northeastern US has been a center for Theatre Style events, especially the Intercon LARP conventions.
The northeastern LARP scene, founding place of the Realms of Wonder, SIL, NERO, Empires in Flames, and the MIT Assassin's Guild, continues to have an active LARP scene, due to the large number of college campuses present. Other universities along the East Coast have been strong "incubation" sites for northeastern LARPs. Early (pre-internet) campus-based LARPs formed in isolation, developing their own style of games with little crossover with other styles or regions. The existence of larger regional organizations, of published LARPs, and of the internet has helped to create a field of "LARP theory" and deliberate experimentation with LARP forms.
The region also plays host to many, smaller, fantasy-based LARPs, such as Lione Rampant, Quest Interactive Productions, Legends Roleplaying, Mythical Journeys and Chimera Entertainment's nTeraction (now Accelerant), all formed in the 1980s and 1990s by fantasy enthusiasts with a love for character roleplay and adventure, but without large player bases or complex rule systems. Quest is the oldest of these groups, dating back to 1986. Some of the other LARPs were formed as splinter groups of larger, more franchised LARPs, such as NERO. Such LARP groups tend to run in the spring and autumn, utilizing summer camp facilities (such as 4H and group campgrounds) in their off-seasons.
The Southeast is also home to a very large LARP community. The various Fantasy-based games are also splinters off NERO as well as one another, forming a relatively extensive list: SOLAR (the Southern Organization for Live Action Reenactments), Red Button Productions, and the experimental fantasy LARP Forest of Doors , among others. Many of these LARPs are run out of State Parks like in other areas, most often Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge, Georgia, A.H. Stephens State Park, or Indian Springs State Park. Several World of Darkness-based games are also run out of Atlanta, as well as a Science Fiction Stargate-genre LARP, Stargate Atlanta FTX. The neighboring state of Tennessee has chapters of Heroic Interactive Theatre, including a Steampunk game, World of Hashonen. Amtgard and NERO also run games in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee.
Since 1999, the mid-Atlantic US has been a center for a number of crossover Theatre Style/Adventure Style events or "campaigns," which fall outside the medieval fantasy genre which tends to characterize a majority of Live Combat LARPs. An initial impetus for this was the attempt of various fantasy groups to adapt the Call of Cthulhu as a LARP genre, however the genre has expanded to substantially wider horizons. The progenitor LARP in this genre was Mike Young's Dark Summonings Campaign, followed by transitional LARPs including the Mersienne Medieval Fantasy Campaign (medieval fantasy), Outpost Chi (science fiction), 1948: Signals, 1936: Horror, as well as the heavily Call of Cthulhu based Altered Realities Campaign and the Victorian "steampunk" Brassy's Men Campaign. Together this network of current and previous events make up a substantial and innovative body of work which characterizes a vibrant mid-Atlantic US LARP Community. The rise of many campaigns all drawing from the same community has tended to preempt growth of non-campaign games, though, and to some degree push out the 'less dedicated' gamers due to the higher commitment needed.
UK history
Treasure Trap and successors Treasure Trap, formed in 1982 at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, is recognised as the first LARP game in the UK. It featured rubber-weapon combat, heroic adventures and fantasy monsters. Over its three-year history, it garnered moderate attention from the press (even being featured on Blue Peter) and established a large, enthusiastic player-base. When it closed, numerous systems sprang up around the country to replace it.
Many of these systems copied most of the format, rules and setting of the original Treasure Trap. However, they were mostly independent of each other; despite their shared heritage, there was no shared world. Fools and Heroes was an exception: many branches of the same game were opened in different areas of the country.
These systems varied in their size and complexity. Some were established by university societies, and organised around the modest budgets of students. Others tried to expand the scope and size of the games - for example, Heroquest (founded in 1986) continues to run adventures lasting from 5 to 11 days and runs several events per month across the UK.
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