The Social Contract of Larping

ROOTS

Friday, 12:30–13:00

Whispering Woods


What is it that larp designers, writers and organizers expect of players? How are these expectations set, and what do players expect in return? We can say common sense all we want, but as the saying goes, it is not as common as we think.


In this presentation, Sándor will present various examples of bad experiences from different larps in the history of Hungarian boffer fantasy games, which result from deviations from these basic assumptions of expectations.


All this is to emphasize how important it is to make as many unspoken rules as possible explicit while recognizing that there are no perfect recipes for doing so.

Sándor Mesterházi
Hello, my full name is Sándor Mesterházi, but most local larpers and roleplayers know me by the name of my early larp characters that sticked with me: Kildar. I’ve been playing and organizing various boffer larps since 2005, and I also run a hungarian-language Youtube channel focused on methods and techniques to enhance tabletop roleplaying, and found a portion of these interchangeable between larp and tabletop.
Social Contract & Expectations
In this presentation I will show various examples of bad player experience arising from differences in these core assumptions of expectations from various larps in hungarian boffer fantasy gaming history, all to emphasize how important it is to make as many unspoken rules into spoken ones as possible, while admitting there are no perfect recipes for it.
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