Anecdotally I’ve seen a large uptick in organizer burnout, especially among those that were trying to keep an event afloat during the 2020-2021 madness. Fighting your way through all the extra stress, last minute changes, high dropout rates, low signups, etc etc, can be a big motivation killer that makes organizing something ambitious or risky even less appealing.
Interesting little addition from organising a one day UK game: I could not find an appropriate venue that would let me do Saturday. Venues were earmarking Saturdays for weddings, and those that were not doing that booked up more than 14 months in advance. Actually, most appropriate venues that were unused to LARP told me they now ONLY do weddings. Possibly this will change when the post lockdown wedding boom fades, but who knows.
I would absolutely love a D&D-style system where a group of friends bands together and runs a larp. I simply do not want to have to deal with the “are these people going to be creepy and/or transphobic”, or feel super overwhelmed by the system itself or expectations/requirements for kit. I’m surprised more people aren’t holding onto online gaming - atm I’m in a three-person D&D game online (including DM) that goes weekly and it’s the best part of all our weeks. I guess D&D is a very different creature but still! as a person who’s still covid-conscious and wanting to do the right thing, I just wish everything were a bit more accessible
I think we all just decided we’d rather play D&D (or whatever tabletop system, WoD is my new best friend) than try and run more online larps when they weren’t really working how we wanted! I definitely think there’s a lot more could be done with the genre, but the will isn’t really there at the moment But I agree, even being well connected with other larpers new games can be a massive gamble if I don’t really know the people running it, and a lot of games don’t even consider making themselves more accessible. It’s something the game I’m crewing for IS really trying to do, but we’re early days yet
Never LARPed. I found Ash through the costuming side. I was previously quite involved in my local in-person kink community. I volunteered at a number of events and acted as staff and a host. I knew there was a venn diagram involving LARP and kink (and community theatre, and...) But it amazes and annoys me just how many the problems sounds similar. Venues who won't rent to anyone putting on your "type" of event. Inaccessible venues. (How dare we have people who use mobility aids!) Or venues that are accessible, sort of, in a very marginalizing way. Venues that aren't accessible by transit - and are even less accessible when the event ends. Organizers with egos the size of the moon. Organizers who enjoy the problematic people. Organizers who just kinda hope the problematic people will disappear on their own. Organizers who are themselves, the problematic people, but are revered for being organizers?? People who believe that the cost of the event is the "organizer making loads of money" when they're not even making minimum wage if they paid themselves for their labour. And apparently building up any savings towards the costs of the next event is a no-no to some people. Events that don't pay or fully comp the tickets for volunteers, (or presenters) who are losing a big chunk of their event to that. I spent a number of years recreating bits of the community in the healthiest ways I knew how. Some changes had ripple effects. Some didn't. But I burnt out, and walked away from the events, including monthly hang outs, that I wasn't enjoying around the end of 2019, which happened to be all of them at the time. I thought I'd have gone back to at least some, when hosts or venues changed... but nope. I haven't heard of a single event from friends, that they'd honestly recommend bothering to return for.
Coming from a background in historical re-enactment, ttrpg and am-dram, Empire was the first LARP I ever went to in 2019 and I absolutely fell totally in love with it. I go each event without fail and have never really had the opportunity to do any other system: coming from the Isle of Wight, every type of event on the mainland is a steep up-front cost, so differences of £40 in ticket price don't mean much. I have looked at other events, both festival style and smaller, but everything I have looked at has put me off in one way or another. Empire drew me in originally because of things like the very high trans player-base and in-universe trans representation, the large amounts of available information about the game world (one of the things that make me querulous about trying other LARPs I've looked at is the feeling that it would be difficult to immerse myself in the world as I do in Empire's, and I feel lost trying to make a character) and the complex game systems underlying the political, religious and economic game. I would certainly like to try other things though, if something jumped out at me. I would be interested to know why you so dislike the costume briefs.
Sounds like there are a lot of unfortunate changes in your part of the world, too. So many events we used to enjoy are limited in similar ways. Hang in there.❤
Honestly I haven't done a LARP in decades, and I really kind of miss it. Out here I was only able to do single day events and never really felt like I had any character development because they were one-off campaigns by different DMs, so I never really felt attached to my characters. I hadn't even thought of how the last few years would've affected the scene, but I hope it picks up again!
In the past a lot of scout camps didn't want to hire out to LARP groups that may have changed, especially as site managers change, but it essentially created a list of places that were just accepted as Not For LARP. And then like you say the cost of things. But i think it would be worth us tapping some of those sites again and seeing what the status is these days. But honestly thank you for this summary. I always feel super out of the loop about what LARPs are available to book so hearing that there just aren't as many, especially of that niche I enjoy is slightly reassuring.
I now really really want to hear your rant on the Empire kits briefs. Like I can guess, having read them when drafting my refusal to my friends, but I would like to hear your points.
I suspect with the risks associated with larp going up we're seeing people return to safer operating models for a while - definitely on the player side as you mentioned with just not signing up for games with red flags, but also on the organiser side. In terms of getting your game to run, Empire player events have built in recruitment pools and are great starter events if you want to dip your toe into larp organising for the first time in this new world (or ever) without having to work out everything for yourself. High budget international blockbusters are catering to a market that's relatively financially resilient and are starting to feel like they're back at something close to the scale we had pre-pandemic. The type of larp you described liking (which I would LOVE to see more of, with the added bullet of "as little system as possible please") are riskier prospects - they're harder to reliably recruit for, harder to find appropriately-costed venues for especially if you also want them to have decent access for wheelchair users, have worse crew-to-player ratios needed to get them to run, etc. Right now it's a LOT of risk to attempt to put that kind of game out into the world. I suspect they're also more creatively rewarding, though, and much more likely to poke a larp runner in the brain incessantly until they exist in the world. People will run safe models for a while because that's the balance of risk they're currently comfortable with, but as things get better or orgs get more experience operating in the current situation, the risk-reward equations will start to shift and we'll get more of the good stuff back.
The main thing that is making me not want to go to nearly so many larps post-covid compared to the before times is that I am Just So Tired. Like, this was an issue beforehand but it is rather more so now. That and I put on enough weight that much of my existing kit collection no longer fits.
One of our smaller ongoing games recently announced they've had to end. We're getting a Swansong event (hopefully) next year but it just can't continue anymore, due to things like money, player uptake and site availability. It used scout camps, but a lot of them do not allow nerf dart related games or even larp games in general. One of the things I heard the team did for a scout site that got used routinely before we moved was people would go and help with the landscape ahead of time to make it safe to play in. I've dropped out of one game due to ...reasons. One game overestimated their player uptake and basically had to cancel and refund everyone. My only non-fest larp I am currently playing is still going, but it only has two events left. There are two I am intending to play which are smaller games but unable to go currently for health reasons. I play one fest larp atm. I enjoy it but am realising I like smaller games because ...they usually end? I like the story wrapping up. It's cathartic.
Darn that all sounds really complicated. I know that things have been weird and things I enjoy have changed a lot from the before time. I hadn't really thought about larp in that context. I guess this is our new normal which sucks. I also hadn't realised how complicated travel was. There's very little public transport in Canada and what is available is usually a case of you can't get there from here. Or is crazy expensive. Lots of people here talk about how much easier public transport is in Europe forgetting just how big it is here. No to mention the hay day of rail was more prevalent in Europe than North America. Hopefully you will be able to find more soon. I know that there are lots of people who enjoy larping.
I recognize a lot of what you are describing, but it sounds like your neck of the woods has been pretty badly hit. :( Here in the Netherlands we did see an uptick in interest in one-day games, but a specific type. The local montly vampire games were the first to be up and running out of the gate and saw a spike in interest to the point that there are now waiting lists for it. It will be interesting to see how the one-offs recover, as last year saw the last few games post-poned from the Covid era run - we expect there to be new ones, but will there be more, less or about the same? While we did see a handful of games that did not survive the lockdowns, most is now up and running again, albeit at a slightly lower pace. Dropout rates have remained consistent since lockdowns at about 10%, up from ~5% in the before times. The data at the moment is incomplete, but next year we kind of expect to be able to start seeing the net effects on the hobby and how it is recovering. It isn't there yet, but between new larps popping up and international games largely back or re-running my ballbook is full again. Hope you can find something new that offers the experience(s) you seek soon!
cries in doing the right thing and not being able to go to the final event of the local university system, thus resulting in a depression spiral i'm still coming out of :') that particular part of the video hit hard
I hope not. I've FINALLY found a carer who's a LARPer and am hoping she's going to be able to facilitate me in going. Second day and we're already designing costumes!
I am trying to get into historical reenactment. I am also thinking about the possibility of getting into larp. I think I know/can learn enough sewing to make most of my own kit. I am mostly interested in making things and cooking instead of fighting. Can you do larp without having to participate in a lot of fighting?
Absolutely - there are entire games (usually described as parlour or social larps) that have no fighting at all, and some fest larps like Empire have rules about fighting in camp which means many people can safely avoid the battles altogether
Another possible entry route for you could be archaeological re-enactments. Big overlap between this and LARPing in my experience. You could ask university archaeology departments. My experience suggests that the archaeologists I know do the practical stuff and then the ones who want battles head for LARPs
Hi there! If personally run LARPs are on the decline, what do you think about the concept of corporately-run LARPs? I refer to things like Star Wars: Galactic Supercruiser -or- Evermore Park in Utah. (I recognize that neither of these are strictly speaking LARPs… but it’s as close as the common man might ever get) In your opinion, do you think that these corporate projects will ever… how should I say this… “get it right”?
Is it not feasible to have a LARP Bus, a coach bus, pick everyone up at a specified location? Here, in the U.S., we have buses that take people to concerts, or casinos, or other events and places.... kind of "party buses". Could there be a LARP co-op? Everyone gets a chance to choose the topic/style/story.... and everyone commits to playing , even if there is a game that doesn't thrill them, because they will get their turn. And, I'm wondering if something like community theater might work for you, in the LARP downtime? I don't do LARP, soooo..... my comments may be irrelevant or innovative, lol I hope the kind of LARP you like picks up.
Annoyingly people are too spread out and that only really works for the big games: Empire used to have some groups club together to get a bus, but that's for a fest larp game like the kind Ash is trying to avoid and I think at last count the players for that game are in the thousands. As with a lot of things here, anything outside of London struggles with momentum. One of the things that died here post-Covid was the Manchester chamber larp monthly meet which is a lot like what you're describing as a larp co-op: venue hire got too high and nothing has filled the niche.
Anecdotally I’ve seen a large uptick in organizer burnout, especially among those that were trying to keep an event afloat during the 2020-2021 madness. Fighting your way through all the extra stress, last minute changes, high dropout rates, low signups, etc etc, can be a big motivation killer that makes organizing something ambitious or risky even less appealing.
Interesting little addition from organising a one day UK game: I could not find an appropriate venue that would let me do Saturday. Venues were earmarking Saturdays for weddings, and those that were not doing that booked up more than 14 months in advance. Actually, most appropriate venues that were unused to LARP told me they now ONLY do weddings.
Possibly this will change when the post lockdown wedding boom fades, but who knows.
I would absolutely love a D&D-style system where a group of friends bands together and runs a larp. I simply do not want to have to deal with the “are these people going to be creepy and/or transphobic”, or feel super overwhelmed by the system itself or expectations/requirements for kit. I’m surprised more people aren’t holding onto online gaming - atm I’m in a three-person D&D game online (including DM) that goes weekly and it’s the best part of all our weeks. I guess D&D is a very different creature but still! as a person who’s still covid-conscious and wanting to do the right thing, I just wish everything were a bit more accessible
I think we all just decided we’d rather play D&D (or whatever tabletop system, WoD is my new best friend) than try and run more online larps when they weren’t really working how we wanted! I definitely think there’s a lot more could be done with the genre, but the will isn’t really there at the moment
But I agree, even being well connected with other larpers new games can be a massive gamble if I don’t really know the people running it, and a lot of games don’t even consider making themselves more accessible. It’s something the game I’m crewing for IS really trying to do, but we’re early days yet
Side comment that I love your coat patchwork lining.
Never LARPed. I found Ash through the costuming side.
I was previously quite involved in my local in-person kink community. I volunteered at a number of events and acted as staff and a host. I knew there was a venn diagram involving LARP and kink (and community theatre, and...)
But it amazes and annoys me just how many the problems sounds similar.
Venues who won't rent to anyone putting on your "type" of event.
Inaccessible venues. (How dare we have people who use mobility aids!) Or venues that are accessible, sort of, in a very marginalizing way.
Venues that aren't accessible by transit - and are even less accessible when the event ends.
Organizers with egos the size of the moon.
Organizers who enjoy the problematic people.
Organizers who just kinda hope the problematic people will disappear on their own.
Organizers who are themselves, the problematic people, but are revered for being organizers??
People who believe that the cost of the event is the "organizer making loads of money" when they're not even making minimum wage if they paid themselves for their labour. And apparently building up any savings towards the costs of the next event is a no-no to some people.
Events that don't pay or fully comp the tickets for volunteers, (or presenters) who are losing a big chunk of their event to that.
I spent a number of years recreating bits of the community in the healthiest ways I knew how. Some changes had ripple effects. Some didn't. But I burnt out, and walked away from the events, including monthly hang outs, that I wasn't enjoying around the end of 2019, which happened to be all of them at the time. I thought I'd have gone back to at least some, when hosts or venues changed... but nope. I haven't heard of a single event from friends, that they'd honestly recommend bothering to return for.
Coming from a background in historical re-enactment, ttrpg and am-dram, Empire was the first LARP I ever went to in 2019 and I absolutely fell totally in love with it. I go each event without fail and have never really had the opportunity to do any other system: coming from the Isle of Wight, every type of event on the mainland is a steep up-front cost, so differences of £40 in ticket price don't mean much. I have looked at other events, both festival style and smaller, but everything I have looked at has put me off in one way or another. Empire drew me in originally because of things like the very high trans player-base and in-universe trans representation, the large amounts of available information about the game world (one of the things that make me querulous about trying other LARPs I've looked at is the feeling that it would be difficult to immerse myself in the world as I do in Empire's, and I feel lost trying to make a character) and the complex game systems underlying the political, religious and economic game. I would certainly like to try other things though, if something jumped out at me.
I would be interested to know why you so dislike the costume briefs.
Sounds like there are a lot of unfortunate changes in your part of the world, too. So many events we used to enjoy are limited in similar ways. Hang in there.❤
Honestly I haven't done a LARP in decades, and I really kind of miss it. Out here I was only able to do single day events and never really felt like I had any character development because they were one-off campaigns by different DMs, so I never really felt attached to my characters. I hadn't even thought of how the last few years would've affected the scene, but I hope it picks up again!
In the past a lot of scout camps didn't want to hire out to LARP groups that may have changed, especially as site managers change, but it essentially created a list of places that were just accepted as Not For LARP. And then like you say the cost of things. But i think it would be worth us tapping some of those sites again and seeing what the status is these days.
But honestly thank you for this summary. I always feel super out of the loop about what LARPs are available to book so hearing that there just aren't as many, especially of that niche I enjoy is slightly reassuring.
I now really really want to hear your rant on the Empire kits briefs.
Like I can guess, having read them when drafting my refusal to my friends, but I would like to hear your points.
Oh my god theyre so bad I have no words genuinely!
I suspect with the risks associated with larp going up we're seeing people return to safer operating models for a while - definitely on the player side as you mentioned with just not signing up for games with red flags, but also on the organiser side.
In terms of getting your game to run, Empire player events have built in recruitment pools and are great starter events if you want to dip your toe into larp organising for the first time in this new world (or ever) without having to work out everything for yourself. High budget international blockbusters are catering to a market that's relatively financially resilient and are starting to feel like they're back at something close to the scale we had pre-pandemic.
The type of larp you described liking (which I would LOVE to see more of, with the added bullet of "as little system as possible please") are riskier prospects - they're harder to reliably recruit for, harder to find appropriately-costed venues for especially if you also want them to have decent access for wheelchair users, have worse crew-to-player ratios needed to get them to run, etc. Right now it's a LOT of risk to attempt to put that kind of game out into the world.
I suspect they're also more creatively rewarding, though, and much more likely to poke a larp runner in the brain incessantly until they exist in the world. People will run safe models for a while because that's the balance of risk they're currently comfortable with, but as things get better or orgs get more experience operating in the current situation, the risk-reward equations will start to shift and we'll get more of the good stuff back.
The main thing that is making me not want to go to nearly so many larps post-covid compared to the before times is that I am Just So Tired. Like, this was an issue beforehand but it is rather more so now.
That and I put on enough weight that much of my existing kit collection no longer fits.
One of our smaller ongoing games recently announced they've had to end. We're getting a Swansong event (hopefully) next year but it just can't continue anymore, due to things like money, player uptake and site availability. It used scout camps, but a lot of them do not allow nerf dart related games or even larp games in general. One of the things I heard the team did for a scout site that got used routinely before we moved was people would go and help with the landscape ahead of time to make it safe to play in.
I've dropped out of one game due to ...reasons.
One game overestimated their player uptake and basically had to cancel and refund everyone.
My only non-fest larp I am currently playing is still going, but it only has two events left.
There are two I am intending to play which are smaller games but unable to go currently for health reasons.
I play one fest larp atm. I enjoy it but am realising I like smaller games because ...they usually end? I like the story wrapping up. It's cathartic.
Darn that all sounds really complicated. I know that things have been weird and things I enjoy have changed a lot from the before time. I hadn't really thought about larp in that context. I guess this is our new normal which sucks. I also hadn't realised how complicated travel was. There's very little public transport in Canada and what is available is usually a case of you can't get there from here. Or is crazy expensive. Lots of people here talk about how much easier public transport is in Europe forgetting just how big it is here. No to mention the hay day of rail was more prevalent in Europe than North America.
Hopefully you will be able to find more soon. I know that there are lots of people who enjoy larping.
I recognize a lot of what you are describing, but it sounds like your neck of the woods has been pretty badly hit. :(
Here in the Netherlands we did see an uptick in interest in one-day games, but a specific type. The local montly vampire games were the first to be up and running out of the gate and saw a spike in interest to the point that there are now waiting lists for it. It will be interesting to see how the one-offs recover, as last year saw the last few games post-poned from the Covid era run - we expect there to be new ones, but will there be more, less or about the same?
While we did see a handful of games that did not survive the lockdowns, most is now up and running again, albeit at a slightly lower pace. Dropout rates have remained consistent since lockdowns at about 10%, up from ~5% in the before times.
The data at the moment is incomplete, but next year we kind of expect to be able to start seeing the net effects on the hobby and how it is recovering. It isn't there yet, but between new larps popping up and international games largely back or re-running my ballbook is full again. Hope you can find something new that offers the experience(s) you seek soon!
cries in doing the right thing and not being able to go to the final event of the local university system, thus resulting in a depression spiral i'm still coming out of
:') that particular part of the video hit hard
I hope not. I've FINALLY found a carer who's a LARPer and am hoping she's going to be able to facilitate me in going. Second day and we're already designing costumes!
I am trying to get into historical reenactment. I am also thinking about the possibility of getting into larp. I think I know/can learn enough sewing to make most of my own kit. I am mostly interested in making things and cooking instead of fighting. Can you do larp without having to participate in a lot of fighting?
Absolutely - there are entire games (usually described as parlour or social larps) that have no fighting at all, and some fest larps like Empire have rules about fighting in camp which means many people can safely avoid the battles altogether
Another possible entry route for you could be archaeological re-enactments. Big overlap between this and LARPing in my experience. You could ask university archaeology departments.
My experience suggests that the archaeologists I know do the practical stuff and then the ones who want battles head for LARPs
Many scout venues don’t rent out to non-scout events.
Many scout groups are selling off their venues as well, which means the remaining ones need to cater to more scout groups
There are a lot of Scout Camps in Scotland and from phoning round, only 3 of them accept anything outside of scout or school groups unfortunately :(
Comment for the algorithm gods
Hi there! If personally run LARPs are on the decline, what do you think about the concept of corporately-run LARPs? I refer to things like Star Wars: Galactic Supercruiser -or- Evermore Park in Utah. (I recognize that neither of these are strictly speaking LARPs… but it’s as close as the common man might ever get)
In your opinion, do you think that these corporate projects will ever… how should I say this… “get it right”?
It has been dying for decades, by this point.
Commenting for The Algorithm.
Is it not feasible to have a LARP Bus, a coach bus, pick everyone up at a specified location? Here, in the U.S., we have buses that take people to concerts, or casinos, or other events and places.... kind of "party buses". Could there be a LARP co-op? Everyone gets a chance to choose the topic/style/story.... and everyone commits to playing , even if there is a game that doesn't thrill them, because they will get their turn. And, I'm wondering if something like community theater might work for you, in the LARP downtime? I don't do LARP, soooo..... my comments may be irrelevant or innovative, lol I hope the kind of LARP you like picks up.
Annoyingly people are too spread out and that only really works for the big games: Empire used to have some groups club together to get a bus, but that's for a fest larp game like the kind Ash is trying to avoid and I think at last count the players for that game are in the thousands. As with a lot of things here, anything outside of London struggles with momentum. One of the things that died here post-Covid was the Manchester chamber larp monthly meet which is a lot like what you're describing as a larp co-op: venue hire got too high and nothing has filled the niche.
@@lieslr147 Hope it gets better