in which our heroine gets in touch with that inner crone

[freckles_and_doubt]

I'm getting too old for LARPing. Or, at least, getting too old, opinionated and set in my ways to really enjoy LARPs written by all but an extremely high-quality few (d_hofryn, this means you and your partner in crime, so get writing, people!). As I am not generally in, as they say, a Good Space at the moment, I seem to have very little tolerance for the kinds of problems and inconsistencies an inexperienced bunch of designers are likely to perpetrate. I become very frustrated, and end up spending three hours gnashing and gnarling at all beholders in a thoroughly obnoxious fashion.

This wasn't too much of a problem in last night's Discworld LARP since I was supposed to be taking upon me the mantle of Granny Weatherwax, probably the character most designed by a benevolent providence to be my role-playing soulmate, and herself constructed with a fair amount of gnashing and gnarling intrinsic to her personality. But I always had misgivings about the idea of a Discworld LARP that used actual canon characters, and in the event, despite the evident care and detail that went into writing this LARP, I don't think the final result was ultimately successful. There are too few surprises, too many ponderables attached to each character, and too great a discrepancy in the extent to which the players are familiar with the history and personalities of the canon.

The risk is also simply too great that the designers, in a desperate search for novelty, will take the characters too far away from the canon as it is perceived by die-hard, read-everything fans such as I unashamedly am. The dual layers of interpretation - designers and players - mean that the LARP comes to read like slightly slap-dash fanfic. This is fatal in the context of Pratchett: I don't personally enjoy fanfic written for any setting which has, in canon, a reasonable degree of complexity and subtlety. (I love Harry Potter fanfic because Rowling's world is basically flat and full of holes, and any embroidery has a high chance of actually improving on the original. I won't read fanfic in any Joss Whedonverse, because they're complex enough that an insensitive reading really stuffs with the canon. Call me picky. I'm picky).

The fact that I was, last night, in Day 3 of a particularly obnoxious four-day headache (possibly more than 4-day, depending on whether or not I wake up with the blasted thing tomorrow) really didn't help. Nor did a major communication breakdown among the DMs about character abilities, leading to a somewhat doomed attempt to play Granny Weatherwax with no actual effective power at all for three quarters of the evening. In fact, bleah.

On the upside, she says, trying desperately not to turn into Schopenhauer, I have fiendishly addicted the Evil Landlord to Season 1 of the new Doctor Who, which is entertaining to watch; he seems somewhat tickled by Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. Heh. I'll make a drooling Germanic fanboy out of him yet.

Also, outside in my courtyard a small flock of white-eyes has found the hanging baskets, the fibrous padding for which apparently makes excellent nesting material. I'm so enjoying watching the little buggers flipping about uttering muffled witterings through a mouthful of fibre, I don't particularly care that the baskets are starting to have that shocked Afro look.

Comments

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

Hmm yers. Was likewise a little suspicious of DW LARPing in general, but particularly with canonical characters.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with the idea of Discworld LARPing - in fact, Chimera have technically been in the middle of a Discworld LARP for, ooh, about eight years now... It's an amazing setting, and should work really well for LARP-style plotting and characterisation. I would not, however, under any circumstances include canon characters as actual characters. As a designer, apart from anything else, I think I'd simply find it too limiting.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

Oh it's a wonderful setting. But my suspicion steps from a review of the umm, GURPS I think, Discworld expansion. While it apparently wasn't bad as it stood, play was a difficult experience as players had to rapidly ajust their Discworld expectations. Apparently there was a general feeling that their unspoken understanding of the setting and characters icluded elements of Pterry's facility with language humour and arcane references which they could not match. Even though it is the result of an irrational expectation, it did lead to a slightly flat play experience.