The big issue appears to be around whether or not “LARP is sexist”, which is difficult to deal with because that’s a lot of games and a lot of players to tar with the same brush, whichever way you paint them. It is also, as one commentator pointed out, a little bit hard to seperate LARP and LARPers from the real world (where we all live), which IS sexist. Some of those sexist values are going to seep in, no matter how hard we try. And people do try. I talk to a lot of gamers and game designers about things I think they’re doing which might be seen as sexist, and a lot of the time those (rare) occurances are not being done on purpose. This doesn’t excuse it, but it does rather empower people who give a shit to improve things by talking about it more, and raising problems where they find them.

I think it’s really important to separate the design of a game (what it was intended to do) from the experience of playing it (how it feels to do it). This way, we can look at where and how a game may or may not succeed on being Not Sexist; after all, there’s a difference between a game being inherently sexist and those who play it sometimes behaving in ways which are sexist. I would argue that most LARP games are not desgined to be sexist, but that there can be sexist elements that occur within gameplay and that it is the responsibility of the player base as a whole – men and women – to root this out and set it on fire with extreme prejudice, as follows:

Get your fucking sexism out of my hobby. Now.

*Ahem*. Now, to business.

Live Action Games: an Action-Drama Love Affair

The subtitle for this is “why my cupboards are full of kit, costume and rubber swords for various pretend people”.

My own personal experience of playing has been very positive. LARP, for me, is about storytelling, play-acting, and a permission to explore different personas and world-views which I don’t normally get access to. I can also wear cool costumes, have magic powers and fight Epic Battles. That fact that I am a woman does not bar me from any of those things, although I would be lying if I said it didn’t colour my gaming experience.

I’ve played sexist characters, such as a matriarchal tribal leader in Maelstrom who assumed that anyone of importance was female. I’ve played characters who were victims of terrible, awful sexism; I’ve played downtrodden and abused prostitutes. I’ve also played characters who used their looks and feminine charms to their advantage. Conversely, I’ve played characters who would consider such actions ridiculous and to whom a sword or a well-placed word was the correct tool to use. I’ve even played characters whose gender and sexuality was, for the purposes of the gameworld, almost entirely absent, such as a human slave in a world where humans are uniformly seen as cattle to their orcish, elvish and dwarvish overlords – my gender was as important to the other characters as the gender of a table.

In short, I’ve played around a lot with gender and sexuality, and LARP has been a big enabler in exploring those roles. My one “bad” LARP experience revolved entirely around the race of my character, rather than her gender, and in fact the person who delivered that bad experience was female. In my experience, men who LARP tend to be more concerned with not being sexist than men in day-to-day. Perhaps because the man who leers at me whilst I’m at a bus stop does not fear me striking him down with a fireball. Or perhaps – optimistically, but possibly, maybe – the chap who LARPs has a much broader experience of women being in charge than men in real life.

So, what does LARP have to offer women? First, a bit of a health warning.  “Women” is a broad category which we at BadRep Towers want to avoid using in a way that assumes all women want the same things. They don’t. Fortunately, in LARP, as in life, there are options. Even more fortunately, there are often more options in LARP than there are either in life or in most fantasy and science fictions. One of my major complaints about the FSF genre is that we create these amazing make-believe worlds but then populate them mostly with men. All too often women characters are whores, witches or princesses – prizes to be won or challenges to be overcome. Check out the piece fantasy author Juliet McKenna wrote for us on the subject. LARP lets you, the player, take control of these stereotypes and challenge, subvert or even explore them. You can become your own hero in a fantasy world. Which means you get to tell your own story how you want.

Making LARP Work For Women?

I have also written, crewed and managed live action games. A quick rundown includes Odyssey, Winter in the Willows, Victoriana and some local systems, so I’ve got experience behind the curtain, as it were. I have noticed that I am in the minority. The vast majority of games are written and run by men – it’s much the same with anything nerd-based. I’m never quite sure why this is the case with LARP, given that young girls are almost magnetically attracted to games of Let’s Pretend and Dressing Up Boxes. I think that these little girls end up doing drama and the few boys that like dress-up (who often can’t do drama on account of it being seen as “girly”) created LARP to allow them to run away to a field, where no-one else could see them, and play dress-up. This is backed up by the fact that I often see young teenage boys at LARP events, but rarely young teenage girls. Any, even slightly more, scientific study into this would be appreciated.

With all due credit to the guys behind the Games Operations Desk (GOD – geddit?), there is absolutely a perception of the hobby as being profoundly white and male. This is not their fault. Let me repeat this: this is not their fault. What absolutely is their fault is any time when a game feels lacking in opportunities for women to enjoy it, and connect with the game as much as men. The absolute best way to work this out is to look at some game websites and then play the games.  Here’s what to look out for:

• Game Background – This is the blurb that tells you about the game and the gameworld. It’s like the back cover of a book or DVD. Gender-aware games should include both male and female example characters in their background documents so women players can see that there are parts for them to play. Pronouns are your friend – there should be instances of “he” and “she” – or my personal favourite, “they” and “their” – I like pronouns that include everybody. Game blurbs often include artwork and photographs, which should have a good selection of all kinds of characters; male, female and sometimes neutral. If the blurb doesn’t, or if anything makes you feel “put off” because of how they have described themselves, then don’t play that game. If you’re feeling brave, email the game designers and tell them why: I’ve done this and the response was very positive, including instances where I’ve received follow up emails from other game designers going “are we gender-aware enough, can you help?”
• Character creation – this is the way in which you pick what sort of a person you will play, and it is almost always the same for men as it is for women. There are rarely, except in games which have a specific built-in sexism (few and far between), situtations in which a woman cannot play a certain type of character. Unlike me, aged 6, trying to participate in a game of cops and robbers with the boys who lived next door, being “a girl” does not stop you from picking up a gun. Refeshingly, I have never seen a character creation form with a section for “gender” which then negatively impacts my options if I select female. Women are fighters as much as they are wizards, healers, leaders and politicians. I’ve also played in lots of games where women have chosen to play male characters, and vice versa.
• There are all kinds of games; try several. There are big games and little games, games in fields for the weekend and games in a room above a pub for an afternoon. There are high fantasy games with magic, and gritty, realistic games with guns. Games for ten people and games for a thousand. There are games about fighting, games about battles of wits, games with long, complicated rules and systems, and games where you turn up and improvise your way along. LARP is becoming more and more a space to try out new ideas and new ways of playing around, many of which have their backgrounds more in theatre and performance than Games Workshop. There will probably be something that suits you.
• Ask Other Women Who Play. There are, when you get into it, a surprising number of women who LARP. The common perception is absolutely still that it’s ‘a male hobby’, but the reality is different. There are also a large number of women, like myself, who are very active and vocal in the hobby, and equally active and vocal about getting other women into the hobby. Ask us which games you might like.

Sarah writes about designing and creating games and live performance over at sarahcook.net and is unapologetic for this shameless plug.

Photos by disturbing.org.uk.

Tomorrow, we’ll conclude the discussion that first post has generated with a post from our own team, since we’re no strangers to LARP ourselves…¹

LARP is sexist in the same way that many things we can know and touch in our society are sexist. It’s a broad sweep to say it is primarily played by white, male, ostensibly middle class individuals often lacking in social skills and hygiene, and it’s increasingly not true or fair to do so.

In this response to Al’s post I’ll speak about the games that have informed my perspective – Lorien Trust, PD’s Maelstrom and Camarilla/Vampire LARP. I’ve been LARPing for about 11 years now. It’s probably also appropriate to point out that I am a cis male and therefore I won’t experience sexism – at least, not in any way comparable to most female players.

LARP is, primarily, a male-dominated game – just on the basis of who attends. Women can and do come and play, but as Al notes in his post, it is often (though not exclusively) as tag-along girlfriend characters. Women who subvert this and succeed in the game, whilst sometimes respected, often become more of a target for “PVP” (“player versus player” conflict) than male players succeeding in the same manner, simply because they’ve deviated from an assigned social position.

In a highly anecdotal and unscientific manner I’m now going to list a few instances of sexist and/or straight up misogynist behaviour I’ve witnessed whilst LARPing. I’m listing them because I feel they most accurately depict common manifestations of sexism within LARP, and I promise they’re all true. They’re absolutely not true of every male player, but they do definitely exist and they’re not rare like a dinosaur. They’re also not especially true of one system over another.

“Humour” and Misogyny

First off, myself and a NPC (non-player character) were standing around during a major Lorien Trust game watching people walk by. Half a dozen teenage girls in ballgowns walked past us. They were pretty smiley and seemed to be having a laugh in the sunshine.

NPC: Aww, look at them! Don’t they look all bless and nice!
Me: Aww, yeah!
NPC: Fair play though, as soon as they hit the stroke of 16 they’re going to get the living fuck raped out of them.
Me: WTF?!

The untyped climax of this story is that I said that this was not a cool or acceptable thing to say, and I did not think it was on. It had definitely been said in such a way as to suggest that such abuse would be quite desirable/fun were it to take place. My reaction caused a significant souring of attitude towards me both from the individual I had this exchange with and also from the people generally around this person – it was felt that I was making a fuss over nothing and should just “take a joke”. I’ve heard similar comments from other individuals and small groups, as far as I can remember though only when there was no female player or female member of staff around to overhear.

I can also cite numerous cases where a “provocatively” dressed female player was scorned and massively disparaged for “being a slag”. This often seems especially likely to happen if she has achieved some kind of success in the game, and it’ll range from jokes about what “whorish behaviour” must have taken place to get said advantages to just straight up behind-the-back savaging:

Male Player 1: Yeah, I hear she’s a virgin.
Male Player 2: At this event, maybe.
Male Player 3: If we went to kill her character, we could be half way through and then be like “OK, we won’t kill you if you suck us off”.
Male Player 4: Then kill her anyway afterwards. If she complains to a ref just say she’s trying to get out of being killed because she’s a cheating bitch.

This sort of shared humour goes way beyond risky “laddish” jokes told privately amongst men, and in some cases actively steps towards hate. It also suggests that actual sexist action – even where it is less extreme than the above – is more and more being seen as okay (or desired?) at LARP amongst some parties.

Gender Roles

It’s already been identified that women can play prostitutes or healers in many systems, and that alternatively they can make a push into a more ‘competitive’ character that is less traditionally ‘feminine’ (at least in terms of many LARPs’ expectation of what is appropriate for a woman to play). Women who choose these characters may find they are competing with male player characters in a way that male characters do not have to. A male character that is not a caricature or inversion of masculinity can compete with any other character on the strengths and weaknesses of their character. A female player character, unless she wants to be ignored outside her group of mates in roleplay, can expect to be treated principally as a woman rather than as a magician or a priest or whatever else first – unless she is particularly vigorous IC and manages to defy being categorised as some kind of “slag” – or indeed “just” a female.

Casual Sexism

The above are fairly extreme examples of nastiness I’ve seen happen at LRP events, but there’s also milder general and casual sexism. Pleasingly, this sometimes goes wrong. About two years ago I was at an event where four very hard, very killy male combat characters all died from drinking the poison that a corseted and large breasted female character served them from a bottle of mead when she came into their camp. This is quite believable – boys are often stupid, and many like breasts, whilst also assuming that “girls are bound to be harmless”. A few camps down? Oh, how we laughed.

There’s a good line in utilising sexism in this way that can be done by women at LARP events, although this is still arguably a hideous cop-out in terms of actually being able to play the same game as male players, on top of whether you find it distasteful or not. Some (usually) female players create characters who work in the in-character sex industry, the background to which rarely involves STIs, violence, drug abuse, sexual assault or any of the other issues of the real world sex industry. This is an interesting thread off of the infamous Rule 7 forums about how to play through the in-character sex industry with “sex” as both a business transaction and a romantic interaction.

It also cuts (very, very slightly) both ways: as a male player, I’ve played character types who were meant to be without gender or sexuality and found that some female players attempted to use what I’ve perceived as out-of-character flirting when interacting with me, probably because as a male player I’m perceived as potentially at least a bit sexist in my behaviour. A more advanced manifestation of sexism in LARP is what I like to think of as “harem” behaviour. This is where a female player deliberately cultivates around her – both in and out of character – a small collection of young men that follow her around and who do what she wants – in a way that I think is often distinct from simply being a female group leader with group members who happen to be male. I think I can see in this a recognition that some women feel they can’t compete in the same way as male players because of sexist attitudes and general uncomfortable treatment. Instead they may feel the need to cultivate a group of male characters to act through – or to provide enough security to roleplay with the rest of the field in such a way that is insulated on their terms, without being either leched at or just ignored.

In LARP and in Life

I think my main issue and argument is that all the examples above translate neatly across from real life. Sexism does happen a lot in real life, but there is an increasing social and political movement backed up by law to reduce and prevent discrimination. However, in a LARP game, there is only what players and system are prepared to step up against and say “NO” to. There is no standard of behaviour that can really be expected to be enforced beyond the absolutes of “no out of character violence”. This means people are free to avoid rewarding female characters in-game and can also get out of taking them seriously. If someone behaves in a sexist way, people might think less of them but often there’s still no threat of consequence. The behaviour that often goes on in the field, if it were relocated to an office, would result in investigation and employment tribunals, which illustrates how some men are able to get away with treating women in the field in a way they might not always in real life.

The Plus Side

Things are getting better – in real life, many men and women are increasingly unimpressed with sexism. Male and female staff exist in senior roles in more and more systems. One LARP system I’ve heard has allegedly cancelled the contract of a catering company at its festivals because of numerous complaints about its staff standing around loudly making rape jokes with customers.

It’s certainly unfair to say that every man who plays is sexist or hates women, or agrees with the things they hear their mates say when standing around in the dark at an event. It’s just as unfair to say that every woman that plays is either a victim suffering from sexism, encouraging sexism in some way or having to engage with sexism all the time. It also wouldn’t be right to say that every female player is actively engaged in dealing with or fighting their way past sexism all the time as they try to enjoy the game – most of the time people care more about killing the undead, and a lot of the time sexism does not come up. After all, it wouldn’t be much of a fun game if it was always horrible. When it does go wrong, though, fantasy can be just as bad as some of reality.

I would advise women that are into sci-fi or fantasy to go LARPing if they like the sound of it – I think it’s awesome – but I wouldn’t sell it to them as a completely optimistic, prejudice free, potentially feminist activity – at least, not any more or less than any other male dominated hobby.

• Ribenademon has been larping for 11 years since starting at university. He is very tall with laser beams for eyes; once mainly a purple demon, he now more often resembles a tall and angry tree focussing its efforts on fighting imaginary imperialism and colonialism, all the while appeasing its dark god. He also clearly spends too much time thinking about LARP. He looks forward to sacrificing you regardless of your gender.

1. OK, not all of us. But a significant amount – about a third of the team – have LARPed at some point in their lives. Geek power at BadRep Towers!

“That’s pretty geeky,” laughs the guy in the pub. “I bet you don’t get many girls doing that!”

I sigh inwardly. I’ve just outed myself as a Live-Action Roleplayer, and although he’s never heard of it before, my drinking partner instantly knows that all larpers are young, socially awkward, computer programmers, and male.

If you don’t know what larp is, it’s often somewhere between Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft and amateur dramatics. We dress, act and speak as our character – so mages cast spells using vocals, and combat is resolved using specially-made “safe” weapons to hit each other. Sound silly? Damn right, and a great deal of fun too.

I’ve been larping for 16 years, and although many systems and genres exist, I mostly enjoy standard “fantasy” settings, with warriors, wizards, trolls and the like. A game might be 8 friends playing in a local wood, or several thousand at the largest of the weekend fest events.

Rules and Regulations

What’s it like larping as a woman? Well, there’s the rules, for a start.

The rules of a system cover combat mechanics, magic systems and character creation. Superficially, for the past 15 years these have been gender neutral. In every system I have played, skill sets are available to any gender – a woman can play a battle-hardened warrior, just as much as a man can play a one-hit healer.

Larp is a physical sport, and other restrictions have far more impact upon your character choices than gender. L has been larping for nearly 20 years. “If you don’t have the physical ability, you are far more restricted from playing a tank than if you are a woman,” she says. “In my experience, what affects somebody’s ability the most is personality: a combination of being larger than life, able to take initiative, play your character, and be part of a team.”

As well as the rules, game creators invent the world into which characters must be placed, and these can come with social prejudices. Usually these are fantastical (“We hate the unliving!”) but a few reflect more real-world issues. For example, a society might be defined as “matriarchal”, such as many of the Drow from the Lorien Trust events, or the Tritoni from Profound Decisions‘ Maelstrom system.

Is this a problem? Perhaps. Cultural distinctions add flavour to a game, but by singling them out, other cultures risk being tarred as “patriarchal” by default. But players who don’t wish to interact with these issues in their games can usually opt out.

“I’m fine with Maelstrom, where there are a couple of cultures with strongly ingrained gender roles,” says R. “I can simply avoid playing a member of either culture and there is still a lot of game available. I don’t want to stop other people roleplaying gender politics just because it’s not something that interests me.”

Young, Geeky Men

Larpers should be used to stereotypes – as we’ve already established, we’re all single, misanthropic male students, yes? Well, no. Larpers are doctors, lawyers and teachers (and, yes, students and computer programmers). We often started as students, but most of my University friends are still larping, and are happily partnered (usually to each other).

And today, “male” is definitely right out. Women play at every level, both as players and game organisers, designers and plot writers.

We have our own stereotypes. We’re familiar with the Metallica Warrior (rock t-shirt, black jeans, £80 sword) and the Drunken Bum (turns up, drinks beer, smokes rollies).

Women in larp face stereotypes too. The most persistent is the “Healer Girlfriend”. She only came because her boyfriend insisted she’d enjoy it. The description is damning – you aren’t a proper character. Worse, your actions are only defined by a man, and you just exist to enhance his weekend (and act as a trophy for him to parade, of course).

R, who has been a key player and organiser in her local group for many years, agrees. “The stereotype is certainly sometimes accurate, but I don’t think it’s fair because applying it is patronising and dangerous. Even to people it does apply to.”

Healer Girlfriends do exist, albeit briefly. “I effectively started at the Gathering as a Healer Girlfriend,” says L. “In my experience, one of two things quickly happens; either she gets bored and stops playing, or she finds her own game.” L found her own game, becoming one of the most renowned characters – and players – on the field. To call her a Healer Girlfriend now would be laughable.

Another trope is the “Shelf” – the larper in a corset, often generously endowed, and invariably flaunting cleavage for (predominantly) male attention. Characters might resemble the likes of Ce’Nedra (from David Eddings‘s novels), or Tika Waylan (from the Dragonlance books) – or some less salubrious counterpart. Are these roles compatible with calling larp a feminist-friendly sport? Personally, I’ve always struggled with this. Empowerment does not equate to equality.

Ultimately I must have faith in those who choose to play these parts. We have a responsibility to resist stereotypes, and expect more from our fellow players. In film, the corset-wearing pretty girl is too often a bit-part to the male lead, but no larper writes a character in order to be part of the scenery. In your head, this story is all about you. There’s a place for these heroes, and a panoply of other characters, pleasant or otherwise – I could count on one hand the characters I’ve played that I wouldn’t detest if I met them in real life.

Real Life

Ah yes, real life. We tend to let our hair down at events. Late at night, you’ll find more than a little drinking, carousing and singing of some shockingly ribald songs round the campfire. That said, larp events are, for most, a safe, welcoming, accepting place to be.

“I generally find male larpers polite and gentlemanly,” says P. “I don’t remember any instances of sexist behaviour, but then, I don’t feel particularly vulnerable to that type of abuse, and particularly these days I feel confident to challenge it or ignore it. The main sexist type of behaviour is a tendency towards protectiveness, but I don’t find that offensive.”

“I have had someone try to stop me doing heavy lifting during setup and takedown because it’s a ‘man’s job’.”, says R. “That’s hardly related to larp. It’s a piece of sexism ingrained into society in general, which does need a kicking.”

Things have changed over the last 10 years, says P. “The proportion of female to male larpers has improved a lot in that time and changed the dynamics in the field.”

Larping men seem more liberated. The Gathering is one of the more child-friendly events; of the parents I counted this year pushing prams or herding toddlers, nearly a third of them were men. (Think that’s not good? Try counting the same thing in your town centre tomorrow). When there’s no social difference between genders, there’s no pressure for women to “stay home” whilst the men go out and fight the battles. We draw our characters from fantasy, but women aren’t relegated into playing The Arwen.

Playing Your Part

In larp, you must physically represent – physrep – your character. Costume, weaponry and armour is available to turn anyone into a warrior or a wizard. However, a tall, balding, overweight man can put on a pair of pointy ears and call himself an elf, but he’ll be a tall, balding, overweight elf none the less.

Does this restrict a woman’s game? In other forms of gaming, there’s nothing to stop you playing a character of another gender, but this is much harder in larp. Effectively portraying another gender takes more care, physically and socially, than most larpers are able to put in over the course of a weekend in a tent. The easy option is to go “panto” – fake breasts and falsetto, or badly-drawn beards and that testicle-airing stance of the “man”. Such characters make me wince. They rely on stereotypes – invariably negative – that are almost always drawn from our out-of-character world. Not only offensive, but immersion-breaking to boot.

That isn’t to say that gender-reversal can’t be done well – it can. But for the most part, a woman can only play female characters. Does that really matter? I don’t think so. All larpers make sacrifices over what they can play – the overweight can never play svelte, the clumsy can never play jugglers, the tone-deaf can never play bards. P says she has never felt restricted in her character choices by her gender. “Physical ability has been a much bigger restriction for me,” she says.

I Love Larp

Writing that last paragraph made me remember why I love larp so much. There are so many other things we can play. The recluse can play a talented diplomat; the coward can play the hero. And more pertinently, women can play characters with real power. There is no glass ceiling. A woman playing a warrior will be judged and accepted not on her gender, but on how well she can wield a sword and shield. In Profound Decision’s Odyssey campaign, when a woman was elected Autocrator of Carthage – a bloodthirsty and vengeful nation in-game – nobody gave a damn about her gender, merely whether she could deliver us the victory we so deeply craved over our arch-nemeses, the foul dogs of Rome.

So what does it matter if you can only play women? If you’re judged by your actions, not your gender, not a jot.

Introduce yourself as head of a guild, and you will rarely see that condescending attitude so common in the real world that shouts, “Gosh, and you’re a woman as well! How very clever.”

Take up a battleaxe, gather your spell cards, ally with your foes and betray your friends. There’s a thousand others in this field who don’t care if you’re male, female or neither. Sharpen your wit, hold the line, and cross swords, for they’ll show you no quarter.

*

• Al has been larping since he fell in love with the hobby at University fifteen years ago, and to his continuing surprise, never grew out of it. He is currently attempting to bring up his kids to be free of gender expectations, as well as awesome swordfighters.
• Illustrations by Miranda