{"id":8262,"date":"2011-11-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=8262"},"modified":"2011-11-09T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T09:00:00","slug":"final-word-thoughts-from-a-woman-on-live-action-roleplay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2011\/11\/09\/final-word-thoughts-from-a-woman-on-live-action-roleplay\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Word: Thoughts from a Woman on Live Action Roleplay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, I’m Sarah and I’m a Live Action Roleplayer. Following on from a guest post we recently ran on the subject<\/a> we got a few responses from other folk who enjoy the hobby talking about their experiences – including this response to the original post<\/a>, which we ran yesterday. So we thought it might be a good idea if one of Team BadRep (that would be me) joined the discussion our guest bloggers have been having and wrote about LARP. Before I wade in with lots of personal anecdotes or analysis of game theory with respect to gender (and I can talk for hours<\/em> on that), I thought I’d kick off by talking a bit about the comments from the original post.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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:<\/p>\n

Get your fucking sexism out of my hobby. Now.<\/p>\n

*Ahem*. Now, to business. <\/p>\n

Live Action Games: an Action-Drama Love Affair<\/h3>\n

The subtitle for this is “why my cupboards are full of kit, costume and rubber swords for various pretend people”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Me<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve played sexist characters, such as a matriarchal tribal leader in Maelstrom<\/strong><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.\"Me<\/a><\/p>\n

So, what does LARP have to offer women? First, a bit of a health warning.\u00a0 “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.<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Making LARP Work For Women?<\/h3>\n

I have also written, crewed and managed live action games. A quick rundown includes Odyssey<\/strong><\/a>, Winter in the Willows<\/strong><\/a>, Victoriana<\/strong><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>. 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<\/em>.\u00a0 Here’s what to look out for:<\/p>\n