Anime LARP Analysis
Preface: Remember as you read this that I don't mean to criticize this form of LARP. There are some severe logistical limitations on the medium, and I think that the people who put these games on do a fantastic job despite them. However, I will conclude this analysis with some recommendations for how they could do better, within the constraints of the medium. These recommendations are coming from an outsider, and should be seen with a critical eye by those who play and run Anime LARPs.
Anime LARPs are interesting to examine for non-Anime-LARPers for several reasons, including:
1) Huge attendance. No Anime LARP has less than 50 people every year. This is interesting both in terms of player wrangling (see #3) and in terms of untapped resources for the "normal" LARP community. However, beware #2: Why they play.
2) Totally different mindset. As I will discuss below, Anime LARPs are more about "Squee!" moments than "Bang!" moments. Though the pieces of how the LARP is run look the same as any other shoestring budget LARP, the difference, when you look at the whole picture, is immense, and a "regular" LARPer will sense it immediately once they start playing, even if they can't quite put their finger on it. This huge difference goes way beyond what the sort of people who GM LARPs consider "normal" player motivations, crossing into very interesting territory.
3) Player wrangling. What the GMs at these LARPs do for the players during run-time to manage potentially hundreds of mostly-inexperienced LARPers of all ages and expectations is nothing short of amazing. You could use an anime LARP as a training ground for floor GMing. Still, I saw some examples of remarkably awful floor GMing at the Neko LARP along with the good. But on the whole, it takes a lot of talent to keep the attention of so many players with the limitations they have (see below).
4) Improvement. I think that people who have experienced all kinds of LARP formats can offer a lot to improve anime LARPs and what we can learn from anime LARPs (and all other kinds that are different from our usual) can offer a lot of insight through comparison.
REVISED 11/11/08, 1:30pm; new problem/suggestion added; made public; some typos fixed.
Warning - this is VERY LONG
It's also just my thoughts, and thus may be incomplete or subject to revision later.
The Structure and Execution of the Anime LARP
In an anime LARP, players pick pre-existing characters from Japanese animation and play them all together in a giant cross-over scenario written and run by the GMs. Very diverse characters interact, fight, make friends, etc. PvP action occurs when people play characters who are enemies or would be enemies if their series' had a crossover. E.g. Sgt. Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell may try to stop Gendo Ikari from Evangelion from destroying the world. Or whatever. PvE, or adventure style play, takes place when GM-designed plots entertain players.
The LARP at the convention often gets just one large room and minimal budget, most of which is spent on printing. As a result, there are no sets, and multiple locations are represented in the same one room and adjoining hallway. This means all space is virtual space. Most adventure scenes and even most PvP scenes are run as "tabletop standing up." Granted, most of what anime characters do must be simulated by system anyway; they don't use realistic looking weapons, wear realistic costumes, or do realistic things. When you have the Death Scythe battling the King Kittan in near earth orbit, it's really hard to do anything but tabletop standing up. Mundane locations like the inside of hotels and convention centers just don't convey the anime vibe, and so the GMs often set the game in exotic places with appropriately wild locations mixed with the mundane (because there is a lot of high school anime after all).
Anime LARPs are written to run at Anime conventions (of which I have attended three or four). They are designed for a large player base -- the smallest seem to have 50 players, and Otakon's LARP numbers well over 200 frequently -- where over half the players sign up to play at the door. Most of these games have over 75 players. Furthermore, these LARPs happen at a convention where the players make up a small minority of the attendees, from an insignificant minority at Otakon to about 8% of attendees at Neko-Con (which is largely known to have an excellent LARP).
The conventions all start on Friday mid-day and end Sunday afternoon, for the most part, making an anime LARP slightly longer than a Threads event.
These conventions are for fans to come express their fandom and geeky side, so there are panels, concerts, dealers, artists, workshops, and anime showings. As a result, the players -- even the hard core who come to the con just for the LARP -- are often drifting out to watch a few episodes, attend a panel, or browse the dealers' room. The majority of players are not the hard core, and spend a considerable amount of time out of character, enjoying the convention.
Costumes are tricky at Anime LARPs. Many con-goers cosplay, but often -- usually -- the character they cosplay is different from the character they LARP, and there is a lot of cross-gender LARPing. A typical example would be a 20 year old woman dressed up as Kakashi (male, ninja) from Naruto, LARPing as Haruhi (female high school student who pretends to be a boy) from Ouran High School Host Club. Badges with pictures and names of the characters are used to help with this.
To help get a handle on who is playing, the GMs do pre-registration, where players reserve characters ahead of time. This process tends to attract the hard core, but it also attracts the newbies the hard core drag into Anime LARPing and some random strangers. As a result, the GMs can be more certain that the pre-registered characters will get played, but still not entirely so. For instance, Neko-con's LARP this year had most of the Death Note characters pre-registered, but none of them showed up. Good anime LARP GMs are ready for this, and often try to give those characters away, though they are often unsuccessful.
At the door, there tends to be a lot of last minute registration. These people sometimes turn out to be excellent LARPers, but they usually are more flaky than the pre-registered players. They are a totally unknown element. To help with this, anime LARP GMs keep a massive database of character sheets from anime, mostly built up from previous years, but new series' keep coming out. They also curttail what characters are allowed. Typically only japanese TV animation characters are allowed. Some LARPs allow a few video game charactes or manga characters, but with more strict guidelines.
Because the LARP allows children to play, the game stays PG-13. Some LARPs have an official age minimum. This further limits what the GMs can do and which characters can be played (no hentai).
All anime LARP systems are designed like tabletop systems in terms of complexity and simulation. Characters have stats, skills, hit points, magic power, and powers. The powers tend to be written extensively so that players get a lot of fan service by just reading their stats. Also, interestingly, characters come back to life generally an hour or so after they die, and can escape jail or captivity easily.
The Limitations of the Medium
1) Low budget: The LARP has to survive on the budget that the convention affords them, most if not all of which is spent on printing and LARP badges (to tell LARPers from the other cosplayers at the con).
2) Unpredictable attendance numbers: The LARP attendance number is totally unpredictable, but at each con, after a few years, the GMs get a vague idea, give or take 25%
3) Unpredictable character attendance: Even if people pre-register, the GMs can't be sure they will be there, or if they are there, they may disappear for hours on end to do con stuff. Plot cannot be written for specific characters at all.
4) No space. Because the LARP happens in one room and a hallway, there is no space to designate as specific settings, beyond "this table represents the ramen stand" or something. This is arguably worse than running a LARP at a bar or student union, as logistics go.
5) Distracted players. The players are often running off to enjoy other elements of the convention.
6) Unoriginal characters. Literally every character is derivative. It constrains GMs and players, but the constaint is welcome and intentional.
7) PG-13. This limits some things, obviously; but it's not the end of the world.
8) Not serious. The players don't take anything in the game seriously.
9) Inexperienced players. Many players at these LARPs have very little, if any, LARP experience. Advanced techniques are not worth planning ahead of time, though if a GM is good enough to pull them off on the fly, and happens to corner some good players, so be it.
10) Public space. The area the LARP is in is full of thousands of anime fans. The LARP room or area may be dedicated space, but it's set inside a thronging convention.
11) Different expectations. Though there are some common motivations (see below), the players at an anime LARP are playing under varigated expectations. Some expect the game to run like Final Fantasy, with bosses and levels. Others expect it to run like the anime their character is from. Others still expect (and bring abou) total goofy chaos.
Anime LARP Player Motives
The motives of players in an Anime LARP are complex and myriad. Most expectations are made up of the common gamer and live theater expectations, with one stark, glaring, near-unanimous, and probably unique feature: They care more for Squee! moments than Bang! moments.
The players at an anime LARP like spotlight time and plot Bangs! as much as the rest of us, but they are at an anime con because they are fans. And fans want fan service -- often more than they want plot Bangs! or spotlight time. All of their other motivations support and facilitate Squee! moments.
A Squee! moment is a moment of focused fan service for a beloved character. Fan service can come in two forms in these events. First, a character can have one of his signature lines, personality traits, actions, or powers demonstrated superbly by a player. For instance, if Lina Inverse from Slayers ends a combat by destroying everything within three miles of her "DRAGON SLAVE!!!" spell, or Vash the Stampede from Trigun loses a fight because his opponent hides behind innocent victims, or if anyone shouts "It's a Gundam!" when the aforementioned Death Scythe appears... Second, a Squee! moment happens when a character experiences something that contrasts, jars or juxtaposes with his character. Examples of this would be Ash from Pokemon capturing Ryuck, a monster from Death Note, in a pokeball during a scavenger hunt held on the Soyokaze (the quirky, rundown space ship from Irresponsible Captain Tylor); or when Haruhi from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzamiya has a conversation with Tenchi Muyo explaining how she wishes that aliens, espers or time travellers existed; and he explains that he always wished that they didn't, or, at least, they'd at least leave him alone for a while.
Since these players have come to the convention to express their fandom -- specifically, in many cases, their warmest love for the character that they chose to play, they want to cause these fan service moments. Some of the more shy players enjoy the GMs or other players portraying Squee! moments, or they latch onto them and enjoy contributing to them. The more bold players grab for spotlight time.
As an aside, a funny result of this is that combat takes a very, very long time -- regardless of what system is being used. This is because everyone gets their turn to try to produce a Squee! moment, and when done well, those moments slow the dramatic and constructive (destructive?) progression of the combat down to a crawl. Yet the players love watching each other pull them off, and are willing to tolerate an hour long wait until it gets around to their turn because they enjoy watching the fan service moments that other characters pull off more than they care about ending the fight. In fact, this results in a unique expression of the common (in anime) sentai trope of waiting until the last moment to use an attack that is actually effective against the enemy. Players sometimes prefer trying crazy and often stupid plans with drastic potential for (often dramatic) failure because those sorts of things happen in anime, both with skin-of-your-teeth success or hilarious catastrophe.
The progress and resolution of a plot, therefore, is less important than how it is resolved and all the Squee! moments that can happen along the way.
Squee! moments depend on player knowledge of anime; therefore, a player who has never heard of Magic Users Club will not understand a Squee! moment that happens to a character from it. This both encourages and discourages players. It encourages hard core fans to see other (often older) series; and it discourages players from playing more obscure series' characters.
The tendency toward Squee! moments instead of Bang! moments, and the myriad of characters creates a fairly shallow plot by necessity, because it has to fit in every sort of character from normal high school students to time travelling alien espers piloting mecha to teenagers who can kill you by writing your name in a book to meiji-era samauri to fantasy elves to magical girls to Yu-Gi-Oh.
Ultimately, it is these Squee! moments that make the anime LARP fun.
These Squee! moments are also why these LARPs allow people to come back to life after a short time and easily escape captivity. Villains and criminals get fan service too! And because Bang! moments are less valuable than Squee! moments, having consequences (and therefore a real sense of danger and building drama) is less important than just being around for when those chance opportunities for fan service arise.
Some Observations
I. Light on Writing
The amount of writing that goes into the characters for these LARPs is immense, but it builds up over years, rather than being one huge project every year. But the writing that goes into the plot seems rather skimpy. I have written games for one night, 4 hours, one campaign episode, etc. that have been more extensively plotted than an anime LARP.
Part of this is that the writing cannot be customized to specific characters, or even series'. Part of it may also be GMs underestimating how much work they should do to plot three days of LARP. Throughout the weekend, there are a few kinds of plot, which are common to most elysium and adventure style games. As I said, these plots show up in other LARPs, too. But the majority of the plots at anime LARPs are these types:
Walk-on NPCs: The GMs portray NPCs who present challenges to the PCs. Often these are characters (usually villains) from series' who would be threats or present challenges. Sometimes they are something for characters to fight over or negotiate with. Sometimes they have a key or item the players want and they have to decide how to get it. Another common NPC is Basil Exposition: an NPC that shows up just to answer questions (or worse, just start explaining) about the plot. Many of these NPCs are spontaneous; they get called up to push plot forward or provide excitement if things start to drag. Since the GMs have a huge character database, it's easy to pull up a fully statted character.
Scheduled IC Events: These are scripted events, like a party or swap meet or tournament. Most events give the characters something to do, often to compete in friendly (or violent) PvP. The frequency of events varies, but there is usually at least one event for every 3 hours of game, and events that run well can take an hour of game time. A fighting tournament is a common event, because there tend to be many characters from anime series' that have fighting tournaments. These events seem to involve signifigant logistical and player wrangling effort, but little actual plot writing. Often they are the various lynchpin points on the progress of the LARP's central plot, bringing all the players together, bringing the ones that missed out on the tabletop adventures and Basil Expositions up to speed, then offering the next phase of plot progression. This doesn't seem to be intentional; what actually happens is that the players who fell through the cracks wind up getting the GMs' attention for once because they're not "somewhere else" running a tabletop adventure.
Sabbat Attacks: They don't call them Sabbat Attacks, but the rest of us do. These are times when bad guys attack the assembled heroes. Sometimes they take the side of PC villains, and sometimes not. They give the fighters (which is most anime characters) a chance to kick ass and get their fighting Squee! on. They can also start or end a tabletop adventure, or result in or be defeated by scheduled events or walk-on NPCs.
Tabletop Adventures: Plot exposition through NPCs, or twists and surprises at IC events, tend to lead the PCs toward tabletop adventures. These are adventures that are run entirely in imagination space, with a GM leading players through challenges and battles through fantastic locations frought with danger and opportunities for fan service. Many of these locations are fan service themselves, being locations from various anime (NERV, Furinkan High, Leaf Village, etc.). After each lynchpin event, several PCs go off on tabletop adventures to acquire plot items, progress events, and piece together information. Then another scheduled IC event happens; rinse; repeat. Some of these tabletop adventures are run on the fly, when a group of players has a creative idea or wants to do some serious fan service together (e.g. Sven from Black Cat, Iria from IRIA and Spike from Cowboy Bebop - anime bounty hunters - decide to work together to hunt down one of the plot's villains out of the blue, in part to see what it would be like if they all got together, and in part to give them all spotlight time to have Squee! moments together). Others are pre-scripted and are set up or revealed by NPCs. These are typically designed loosely, because of the vast range of powers characters can bring to bear and the unpredictability of which characters may be present. Doing a lot of prep work would be a waste of time given that you may have just a few plucky high school shoujo manga characters following the adventure, or a large group of world-smashing demigods bearing artifact weapons and riding mecha.
SUGGESTION I: The GMs should create a lot more plot, and, perhaps, consider instance based plots, so that they can run different groups of players through the same plot over and over, to give more players a chance to experience the same adventure scenes. Some of these scenes could even be written as DIY scenes, where one player checks out a binder and takes a "worksheet" and runs the scene for other players as a simple choose your own adventure type of plot. So what if they cheat? It's not like death or failure here really mean that much anyway! In addition, they could be more ambitious with their use of the public space at the con site if they wrote more blocking and set suggestions into their adventure scenes. A scene that explores a large compound may be better staged in a stairwell or unused hallway and empty panel room than run in a cluster in the corner of the LARP room. Finally, with more prep comes more props: Even without a budget, if you prep more scenes ahead of time -- even if they are tabletop adventures -- you can gather up what props the other GMs and their friends might have already cluttering their closets. Brassy's Men had some tabletop adventure scenes, but because a lot of them were pre-written, the GMs were able to scrounge a lot of props to make them come alive.
II. Not All Characters Fit As Easily
It is very easy to get lost and find yourself with nothing to do in an anime LARP. Part of that is based on what you take for your character. Some characters from anime don't work very well in crossover. Other character types guarantee constant action for a player:
Superheroes: These characters have nothing to lose and no reason to be in game other than to fight evil and maybe die trying (only to come back an hour later).
Villains / Criminals: Jail and death are just momentary setbacks in your plan. Unlike NPC villains, when you are killed, you can come back later to continue your evil plan, leading to another death or imprisonment, followed by further nefarious recidivism.
Comic Relief or Mascots: Characters that exist in a series merely to provide comic relief will, in the hands of a funny player, be constant fan service for everyone else. For instance, Kon (bleach), or Happosai (Ranma 1/2). Characters from purely comedy anime series' also fit here (Lupin III, Hamtaro, Golden Boy, Love Hina) because they can bring about ridiculous juxtapositions with more serious characters (for instance, if the perverted Happosai tries to spy on a demon-tainted Claymore when she's changing, or if Lupin runs off with a Dragon Ball).
These three types of characters are generic enough in their dramatic role that they can be dropped into any story and kick ass, do evil, or make life funny, respectively, regardless.
Dramatic characters, romantic characters, and any character whose main motivation or effectiveness is tied to other characters in his series is going to be a risky choice. There is really no net to catch the players of these characters if they get left behind on plot, because unlike over-the-top heroes, they can't (weak fighting stats) or wouldn't (strong character reasons that would create dissonance -- the opposite of Squee!, when a character acts severely different from canon interpretation) jump into a battle. This is especially dangerous as the con goes on, and these players find other things to do with their time. In fact, in my (albiet breif) experience with two anime LARPs, they tend to lose players as time goes on, and "final battles" tend to be full of only superheroes and comic characters versus villains and/or NPCs.
One problem with this is that very popular characters are often the hardest to play in an anime LARP. Example: Misa Amane, from the extremely popular Death Note series, would be fun to play in a non-crossover game; but in a typical anime LARP, her fame is lost; and if Light Yagami doesn't show up in game, her main reason to care about or do anything disappears; she is only a villain for the sake of "Kira" (Light's public alias as a self-appointed god of justice) who she is obsessively devoted to. And her Squee! moments mostly revolve around being manipulated by Kira, fawning over Light, and trying to help him avoid discovery and capture by the authorities. What little else of interest about Misa Misa there is involves characters trying to find out who Kira is, so they can stop him; and with so many inexperienced players in an anime LARP, it's likely someone will "discover" that she is the holder of a Death Note fairly quickly unless she doesn't ever use it (or plays a version of the character where she doesn't have it). Even if players don't metagame the discovery badly, the characters from other animes can often see spirits (including the shinigami that follow the death note around), identify magical items, steal things with ease (if Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop picks the "rich girl's" pocket, there goes the notebook!), get people to admit things, or force them to tell the truth. Yet she is appealing to players because the series is so popular; her character is consistent, well-developed, and interesting; she is beautiful, sociable and famous; and, because she has a death note, she is incredibly powerful.
Finally, it is nearly impossible for the GMs to take characters that depend on another character, like Misa, and connect them to a surrogate (for instance, connecting her to Alex Rosewater, a villain from Big O) for some big reasons. First, the GMs don't usually know who will be in game. My personal experience shows that even with pre-registered characters, this can backfire (I played a bodyguard character who was assigned to guard a pre-registered character who never showed up). Second, this is a lot of work, in a game with hundreds of characters. It's also hard for a player to do this work in-game. Even the most obsessed otaku won't know every character in the game, and building these on-the-fly crossover "pre-existing" connections requires some metagaming. For Misa Amane to latch onto another cunning megalomaniac villain (not too uncommon in anime) and pretend to have been obsessed over him, the player needs to be able to recognize characters from other series' -- so poor Misa Misa's player has to depend on 1) someone playing a megalomaniac villain; 2) knowing about the character (having seen or heard a lot about the series); and 3) having the LARP skill and wherewithall to approach the player OOC and work out a pre-existing relationship that is not canon for either series, but which would make sense for both characters.
SUGGESTION II: The GMs should write the less superhero/villain/comic characters more toward those three roles. And players -- especially new players -- should be discouraged from playing characters that are not as "portable." Character sheets for characters that aren't that portable should include suggestions for alternate interpretations that are villainous or more blatantly super-heroic; or comedic, where possible (e.g. Akane Tendo from Ranma 1/2 could become more comic by focusing on her violent brand of feminism; the assassin, Mirelle, from Noir could become more of a villain by using her character from earlier in the series before she developed more depth; and Spike from Cowboy Bebop could be more heroic by making his hidden soft side a bit less hidden and his mercenary facade a little more transparent).
I really can't think of anything to make it easier for GMs and players to re-forge broken connections for characters that depend on other characters -- other than "more work." GMs should discourage new players from playing these less-portable characters, and for experienced players, they should take a few hours at the beginning of the game to try to pull characters together into impromptu pre-existing crossover relationships. Example: Gendo Ikari is in play, but none of the child pilots from Evangelion are, so he has nobody to manipulate and "mentor." Maybe the GMs can pull Duo Maxwell over and try to merge the plots of Evangelion and Gundam Wing so that the two have a connection.
III. Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Poorer
One problem with the lack of safety net is GM access time. Since all plot exposition comes from GMs, players need GMs to advance or learn about the plot. Once a group of players gets a GM, they get plot; which leads them to needing to talk to the GM; which leads to more plot. Players who don't know what to do may find themselves without a clue because everyone who does know what to do has mugged a GM and is now off "somewhere else" in a tabletop adventure doing something about it. So now not only are the GMs all busy, but so are the players whose charactes could explain things. This tends to be the final stage of poorly run campaign LARPs, before the game starts to bleed players like a stuck pig and only the hard core (the ones involved in the knows-stuff-does-stuff-learns-stuff-repeat loop) remain. In the case of the anime LARP, it's not a recipe for death. But it does leave players behind, and may cost the game some attendees.
I have seen this happen to small games and campaign games. This is not an off-the-cuff theory. When the GMs start to get sequestered by a portion of the players for long adventure scenes, the rest really do get left out with no goals (because they don't have plot info), no way to learn plot info (because the players who could share it with them are away with the GMs) and no way to affect the world otherwise (because the GMs are all busy, and even if a GM is available; the plot is progressing elsewhere, so players would be prevented from generating any of their own plot if it interferes with adventure scenes already in progress).
SUGGESTION III: I don't think the Scheduled-IC-Events-as-lynchpins arrangement I mentioned above is a conscious design feature. Scheduled events could be more intentionally designed as "catch-up" points for plot, where PCs are prodded to spread what they've learned about the plot in IC conversations (possibly producing Squee! moments for brainiac and information broker characters) before some NPC gives a summary speech sharing the basic fundamentals of What You Should Know By Now. Anime LARP can be improved by putting one of these into the game every four hours or so, and making their purpose explicit, and giving the players a schedule of when they will be. Other events can be scheduled at other times, but these would be noted as plot exposition lynchpins. If you need to get caught up, have a character that gets Squee! moments by explaining things to others, or just want to make sure you haven't missed anything, you should be at these events.
Furthermore, no scene should be closed. There should always be one GM not running a scene. That GM should facilitate lost players joining tabletop adventure scenes that are already in progress, passing them off to the GM in that scene, and going back to helping lost players. This may seem odious to a GM who is 75% of the way through such a scene, and it may seem like the player is "butting in" and stealing Squee! moments, unearned; but it is in-genre for most anime for just about any character to show up midway through a dramatic scene. And it is far better to allow some GM-facilitated butting-in than to have a system that cuts players out of the loop if they miss the boat. In fact, a good GM can turn this into a Squee! moment for the arriving character or for any of the characters in his scene already (remember, most anime LARP players enjoy watching Squee! moments for other characters they are familiar with almost as much as they like them for their own). For instance, if several mecha pilots are battling a mysterious alien warship, Urd (from Oh My Goddess!) can pop out of a screen on Simon's Gunmen (from Gurren Lagann) and demand to take over piloting because she thinks she (as a goddess) would be better at it (though she is definitely not a mech pilot; the character is more than demanding, deceptive and impulsive -- and perhaps drunk -- enough to try). A new conflict would ensue, possibly resulting in hilarity, additional challenge for the other pilots (as Simon's drill-mech is no longer participating in the fight and Simon has to deal with a mercurial goddess) and heavenly demerits for Urd (which would be yet another Squee! moment).
IV. Poverty
Anime LARPs are run on a shoestring budget, in one room and a hallway. There are no real locations, forcing all locations to be virtual (tabletop), and this resolves to GMs standing in the center of circles of players, narrating scenes that are, as I like to put it "Left Area, Moved Elsewhere (L.A.M.E.)". Furthermore, the space lacks set dressing; there are item cards for stuff that could very easily be propped (Ramen! It's seventeen cents, damnit!), and there is no budget to rent other rooms for space.
SUGGESTION IV: Other convention LARPs (other than anime LARPs) charge an additional fee for playing the LARP. Frequently this fee is low -- $10 or so. It pays for props, chits, printing and sets. Take 100 players, multiply by $10 a player... $1000. That would be a lot of set dressing, and maybe it would even pay for some hotel rooms in the hotel the con happens at, to use as locations; or some conference rooms in a convention center. The problem is that you would lose some of the less dedicated players; the ones trying it "on a lark" who just walk in to see what LARP is on their way to the dealer's room or whatever. There are some ways around this. For instance, you can charge $10 for the privilege of selecting your own character; otherwise the GMs assign you a character based on who they need in play (helps ameliorate the "characters missing their better half" problem, above). This way the walk-ons get in free and can pick a new character later, for $10; poor players can still play for free; and the GMs get another tool to use in preventing bad character fit. You can also use it as a fee to discourage changing characters, for players who get bored with a character or make too many enemies. Some cons may frown on additional charges; in which case you can call it a "suggested donation" which works almost as well. In that case, players can try out the LARP before they make their donation; and the GMs can keep track of who donated, and regularly remind the non-donors that they are "encouraged" to donate if they're having fun. The first year they implement the payment strategy, the GMs will need to severely underestimate their revenue, so as to avoid going deep into the red. They can deposit any surplus from that year into a bank account for the LARP and appoint a treasurer to manage it and prevent corruption. Smart "club treasurer" practices like maintaining a solid buffer and publishing a record of how the money was used are assumed. The LARP should be able to find someone who has been a club treasurer before; they're a dime a dozen out there.
Anime LARPs are interesting to examine for non-Anime-LARPers for several reasons, including:
1) Huge attendance. No Anime LARP has less than 50 people every year. This is interesting both in terms of player wrangling (see #3) and in terms of untapped resources for the "normal" LARP community. However, beware #2: Why they play.
2) Totally different mindset. As I will discuss below, Anime LARPs are more about "Squee!" moments than "Bang!" moments. Though the pieces of how the LARP is run look the same as any other shoestring budget LARP, the difference, when you look at the whole picture, is immense, and a "regular" LARPer will sense it immediately once they start playing, even if they can't quite put their finger on it. This huge difference goes way beyond what the sort of people who GM LARPs consider "normal" player motivations, crossing into very interesting territory.
3) Player wrangling. What the GMs at these LARPs do for the players during run-time to manage potentially hundreds of mostly-inexperienced LARPers of all ages and expectations is nothing short of amazing. You could use an anime LARP as a training ground for floor GMing. Still, I saw some examples of remarkably awful floor GMing at the Neko LARP along with the good. But on the whole, it takes a lot of talent to keep the attention of so many players with the limitations they have (see below).
4) Improvement. I think that people who have experienced all kinds of LARP formats can offer a lot to improve anime LARPs and what we can learn from anime LARPs (and all other kinds that are different from our usual) can offer a lot of insight through comparison.
REVISED 11/11/08, 1:30pm; new problem/suggestion added; made public; some typos fixed.
Warning - this is VERY LONG
It's also just my thoughts, and thus may be incomplete or subject to revision later.
The Structure and Execution of the Anime LARP
In an anime LARP, players pick pre-existing characters from Japanese animation and play them all together in a giant cross-over scenario written and run by the GMs. Very diverse characters interact, fight, make friends, etc. PvP action occurs when people play characters who are enemies or would be enemies if their series' had a crossover. E.g. Sgt. Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell may try to stop Gendo Ikari from Evangelion from destroying the world. Or whatever. PvE, or adventure style play, takes place when GM-designed plots entertain players.
The LARP at the convention often gets just one large room and minimal budget, most of which is spent on printing. As a result, there are no sets, and multiple locations are represented in the same one room and adjoining hallway. This means all space is virtual space. Most adventure scenes and even most PvP scenes are run as "tabletop standing up." Granted, most of what anime characters do must be simulated by system anyway; they don't use realistic looking weapons, wear realistic costumes, or do realistic things. When you have the Death Scythe battling the King Kittan in near earth orbit, it's really hard to do anything but tabletop standing up. Mundane locations like the inside of hotels and convention centers just don't convey the anime vibe, and so the GMs often set the game in exotic places with appropriately wild locations mixed with the mundane (because there is a lot of high school anime after all).
Anime LARPs are written to run at Anime conventions (of which I have attended three or four). They are designed for a large player base -- the smallest seem to have 50 players, and Otakon's LARP numbers well over 200 frequently -- where over half the players sign up to play at the door. Most of these games have over 75 players. Furthermore, these LARPs happen at a convention where the players make up a small minority of the attendees, from an insignificant minority at Otakon to about 8% of attendees at Neko-Con (which is largely known to have an excellent LARP).
The conventions all start on Friday mid-day and end Sunday afternoon, for the most part, making an anime LARP slightly longer than a Threads event.
These conventions are for fans to come express their fandom and geeky side, so there are panels, concerts, dealers, artists, workshops, and anime showings. As a result, the players -- even the hard core who come to the con just for the LARP -- are often drifting out to watch a few episodes, attend a panel, or browse the dealers' room. The majority of players are not the hard core, and spend a considerable amount of time out of character, enjoying the convention.
Costumes are tricky at Anime LARPs. Many con-goers cosplay, but often -- usually -- the character they cosplay is different from the character they LARP, and there is a lot of cross-gender LARPing. A typical example would be a 20 year old woman dressed up as Kakashi (male, ninja) from Naruto, LARPing as Haruhi (female high school student who pretends to be a boy) from Ouran High School Host Club. Badges with pictures and names of the characters are used to help with this.
To help get a handle on who is playing, the GMs do pre-registration, where players reserve characters ahead of time. This process tends to attract the hard core, but it also attracts the newbies the hard core drag into Anime LARPing and some random strangers. As a result, the GMs can be more certain that the pre-registered characters will get played, but still not entirely so. For instance, Neko-con's LARP this year had most of the Death Note characters pre-registered, but none of them showed up. Good anime LARP GMs are ready for this, and often try to give those characters away, though they are often unsuccessful.
At the door, there tends to be a lot of last minute registration. These people sometimes turn out to be excellent LARPers, but they usually are more flaky than the pre-registered players. They are a totally unknown element. To help with this, anime LARP GMs keep a massive database of character sheets from anime, mostly built up from previous years, but new series' keep coming out. They also curttail what characters are allowed. Typically only japanese TV animation characters are allowed. Some LARPs allow a few video game charactes or manga characters, but with more strict guidelines.
Because the LARP allows children to play, the game stays PG-13. Some LARPs have an official age minimum. This further limits what the GMs can do and which characters can be played (no hentai).
All anime LARP systems are designed like tabletop systems in terms of complexity and simulation. Characters have stats, skills, hit points, magic power, and powers. The powers tend to be written extensively so that players get a lot of fan service by just reading their stats. Also, interestingly, characters come back to life generally an hour or so after they die, and can escape jail or captivity easily.
The Limitations of the Medium
1) Low budget: The LARP has to survive on the budget that the convention affords them, most if not all of which is spent on printing and LARP badges (to tell LARPers from the other cosplayers at the con).
2) Unpredictable attendance numbers: The LARP attendance number is totally unpredictable, but at each con, after a few years, the GMs get a vague idea, give or take 25%
3) Unpredictable character attendance: Even if people pre-register, the GMs can't be sure they will be there, or if they are there, they may disappear for hours on end to do con stuff. Plot cannot be written for specific characters at all.
4) No space. Because the LARP happens in one room and a hallway, there is no space to designate as specific settings, beyond "this table represents the ramen stand" or something. This is arguably worse than running a LARP at a bar or student union, as logistics go.
5) Distracted players. The players are often running off to enjoy other elements of the convention.
6) Unoriginal characters. Literally every character is derivative. It constrains GMs and players, but the constaint is welcome and intentional.
7) PG-13. This limits some things, obviously; but it's not the end of the world.
8) Not serious. The players don't take anything in the game seriously.
9) Inexperienced players. Many players at these LARPs have very little, if any, LARP experience. Advanced techniques are not worth planning ahead of time, though if a GM is good enough to pull them off on the fly, and happens to corner some good players, so be it.
10) Public space. The area the LARP is in is full of thousands of anime fans. The LARP room or area may be dedicated space, but it's set inside a thronging convention.
11) Different expectations. Though there are some common motivations (see below), the players at an anime LARP are playing under varigated expectations. Some expect the game to run like Final Fantasy, with bosses and levels. Others expect it to run like the anime their character is from. Others still expect (and bring abou) total goofy chaos.
Anime LARP Player Motives
The motives of players in an Anime LARP are complex and myriad. Most expectations are made up of the common gamer and live theater expectations, with one stark, glaring, near-unanimous, and probably unique feature: They care more for Squee! moments than Bang! moments.
The players at an anime LARP like spotlight time and plot Bangs! as much as the rest of us, but they are at an anime con because they are fans. And fans want fan service -- often more than they want plot Bangs! or spotlight time. All of their other motivations support and facilitate Squee! moments.
A Squee! moment is a moment of focused fan service for a beloved character. Fan service can come in two forms in these events. First, a character can have one of his signature lines, personality traits, actions, or powers demonstrated superbly by a player. For instance, if Lina Inverse from Slayers ends a combat by destroying everything within three miles of her "DRAGON SLAVE!!!" spell, or Vash the Stampede from Trigun loses a fight because his opponent hides behind innocent victims, or if anyone shouts "It's a Gundam!" when the aforementioned Death Scythe appears... Second, a Squee! moment happens when a character experiences something that contrasts, jars or juxtaposes with his character. Examples of this would be Ash from Pokemon capturing Ryuck, a monster from Death Note, in a pokeball during a scavenger hunt held on the Soyokaze (the quirky, rundown space ship from Irresponsible Captain Tylor); or when Haruhi from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzamiya has a conversation with Tenchi Muyo explaining how she wishes that aliens, espers or time travellers existed; and he explains that he always wished that they didn't, or, at least, they'd at least leave him alone for a while.
Since these players have come to the convention to express their fandom -- specifically, in many cases, their warmest love for the character that they chose to play, they want to cause these fan service moments. Some of the more shy players enjoy the GMs or other players portraying Squee! moments, or they latch onto them and enjoy contributing to them. The more bold players grab for spotlight time.
As an aside, a funny result of this is that combat takes a very, very long time -- regardless of what system is being used. This is because everyone gets their turn to try to produce a Squee! moment, and when done well, those moments slow the dramatic and constructive (destructive?) progression of the combat down to a crawl. Yet the players love watching each other pull them off, and are willing to tolerate an hour long wait until it gets around to their turn because they enjoy watching the fan service moments that other characters pull off more than they care about ending the fight. In fact, this results in a unique expression of the common (in anime) sentai trope of waiting until the last moment to use an attack that is actually effective against the enemy. Players sometimes prefer trying crazy and often stupid plans with drastic potential for (often dramatic) failure because those sorts of things happen in anime, both with skin-of-your-teeth success or hilarious catastrophe.
The progress and resolution of a plot, therefore, is less important than how it is resolved and all the Squee! moments that can happen along the way.
Squee! moments depend on player knowledge of anime; therefore, a player who has never heard of Magic Users Club will not understand a Squee! moment that happens to a character from it. This both encourages and discourages players. It encourages hard core fans to see other (often older) series; and it discourages players from playing more obscure series' characters.
The tendency toward Squee! moments instead of Bang! moments, and the myriad of characters creates a fairly shallow plot by necessity, because it has to fit in every sort of character from normal high school students to time travelling alien espers piloting mecha to teenagers who can kill you by writing your name in a book to meiji-era samauri to fantasy elves to magical girls to Yu-Gi-Oh.
Ultimately, it is these Squee! moments that make the anime LARP fun.
These Squee! moments are also why these LARPs allow people to come back to life after a short time and easily escape captivity. Villains and criminals get fan service too! And because Bang! moments are less valuable than Squee! moments, having consequences (and therefore a real sense of danger and building drama) is less important than just being around for when those chance opportunities for fan service arise.
Some Observations
I. Light on Writing
The amount of writing that goes into the characters for these LARPs is immense, but it builds up over years, rather than being one huge project every year. But the writing that goes into the plot seems rather skimpy. I have written games for one night, 4 hours, one campaign episode, etc. that have been more extensively plotted than an anime LARP.
Part of this is that the writing cannot be customized to specific characters, or even series'. Part of it may also be GMs underestimating how much work they should do to plot three days of LARP. Throughout the weekend, there are a few kinds of plot, which are common to most elysium and adventure style games. As I said, these plots show up in other LARPs, too. But the majority of the plots at anime LARPs are these types:
Walk-on NPCs: The GMs portray NPCs who present challenges to the PCs. Often these are characters (usually villains) from series' who would be threats or present challenges. Sometimes they are something for characters to fight over or negotiate with. Sometimes they have a key or item the players want and they have to decide how to get it. Another common NPC is Basil Exposition: an NPC that shows up just to answer questions (or worse, just start explaining) about the plot. Many of these NPCs are spontaneous; they get called up to push plot forward or provide excitement if things start to drag. Since the GMs have a huge character database, it's easy to pull up a fully statted character.
Scheduled IC Events: These are scripted events, like a party or swap meet or tournament. Most events give the characters something to do, often to compete in friendly (or violent) PvP. The frequency of events varies, but there is usually at least one event for every 3 hours of game, and events that run well can take an hour of game time. A fighting tournament is a common event, because there tend to be many characters from anime series' that have fighting tournaments. These events seem to involve signifigant logistical and player wrangling effort, but little actual plot writing. Often they are the various lynchpin points on the progress of the LARP's central plot, bringing all the players together, bringing the ones that missed out on the tabletop adventures and Basil Expositions up to speed, then offering the next phase of plot progression. This doesn't seem to be intentional; what actually happens is that the players who fell through the cracks wind up getting the GMs' attention for once because they're not "somewhere else" running a tabletop adventure.
Sabbat Attacks: They don't call them Sabbat Attacks, but the rest of us do. These are times when bad guys attack the assembled heroes. Sometimes they take the side of PC villains, and sometimes not. They give the fighters (which is most anime characters) a chance to kick ass and get their fighting Squee! on. They can also start or end a tabletop adventure, or result in or be defeated by scheduled events or walk-on NPCs.
Tabletop Adventures: Plot exposition through NPCs, or twists and surprises at IC events, tend to lead the PCs toward tabletop adventures. These are adventures that are run entirely in imagination space, with a GM leading players through challenges and battles through fantastic locations frought with danger and opportunities for fan service. Many of these locations are fan service themselves, being locations from various anime (NERV, Furinkan High, Leaf Village, etc.). After each lynchpin event, several PCs go off on tabletop adventures to acquire plot items, progress events, and piece together information. Then another scheduled IC event happens; rinse; repeat. Some of these tabletop adventures are run on the fly, when a group of players has a creative idea or wants to do some serious fan service together (e.g. Sven from Black Cat, Iria from IRIA and Spike from Cowboy Bebop - anime bounty hunters - decide to work together to hunt down one of the plot's villains out of the blue, in part to see what it would be like if they all got together, and in part to give them all spotlight time to have Squee! moments together). Others are pre-scripted and are set up or revealed by NPCs. These are typically designed loosely, because of the vast range of powers characters can bring to bear and the unpredictability of which characters may be present. Doing a lot of prep work would be a waste of time given that you may have just a few plucky high school shoujo manga characters following the adventure, or a large group of world-smashing demigods bearing artifact weapons and riding mecha.
SUGGESTION I: The GMs should create a lot more plot, and, perhaps, consider instance based plots, so that they can run different groups of players through the same plot over and over, to give more players a chance to experience the same adventure scenes. Some of these scenes could even be written as DIY scenes, where one player checks out a binder and takes a "worksheet" and runs the scene for other players as a simple choose your own adventure type of plot. So what if they cheat? It's not like death or failure here really mean that much anyway! In addition, they could be more ambitious with their use of the public space at the con site if they wrote more blocking and set suggestions into their adventure scenes. A scene that explores a large compound may be better staged in a stairwell or unused hallway and empty panel room than run in a cluster in the corner of the LARP room. Finally, with more prep comes more props: Even without a budget, if you prep more scenes ahead of time -- even if they are tabletop adventures -- you can gather up what props the other GMs and their friends might have already cluttering their closets. Brassy's Men had some tabletop adventure scenes, but because a lot of them were pre-written, the GMs were able to scrounge a lot of props to make them come alive.
II. Not All Characters Fit As Easily
It is very easy to get lost and find yourself with nothing to do in an anime LARP. Part of that is based on what you take for your character. Some characters from anime don't work very well in crossover. Other character types guarantee constant action for a player:
Superheroes: These characters have nothing to lose and no reason to be in game other than to fight evil and maybe die trying (only to come back an hour later).
Villains / Criminals: Jail and death are just momentary setbacks in your plan. Unlike NPC villains, when you are killed, you can come back later to continue your evil plan, leading to another death or imprisonment, followed by further nefarious recidivism.
Comic Relief or Mascots: Characters that exist in a series merely to provide comic relief will, in the hands of a funny player, be constant fan service for everyone else. For instance, Kon (bleach), or Happosai (Ranma 1/2). Characters from purely comedy anime series' also fit here (Lupin III, Hamtaro, Golden Boy, Love Hina) because they can bring about ridiculous juxtapositions with more serious characters (for instance, if the perverted Happosai tries to spy on a demon-tainted Claymore when she's changing, or if Lupin runs off with a Dragon Ball).
These three types of characters are generic enough in their dramatic role that they can be dropped into any story and kick ass, do evil, or make life funny, respectively, regardless.
Dramatic characters, romantic characters, and any character whose main motivation or effectiveness is tied to other characters in his series is going to be a risky choice. There is really no net to catch the players of these characters if they get left behind on plot, because unlike over-the-top heroes, they can't (weak fighting stats) or wouldn't (strong character reasons that would create dissonance -- the opposite of Squee!, when a character acts severely different from canon interpretation) jump into a battle. This is especially dangerous as the con goes on, and these players find other things to do with their time. In fact, in my (albiet breif) experience with two anime LARPs, they tend to lose players as time goes on, and "final battles" tend to be full of only superheroes and comic characters versus villains and/or NPCs.
One problem with this is that very popular characters are often the hardest to play in an anime LARP. Example: Misa Amane, from the extremely popular Death Note series, would be fun to play in a non-crossover game; but in a typical anime LARP, her fame is lost; and if Light Yagami doesn't show up in game, her main reason to care about or do anything disappears; she is only a villain for the sake of "Kira" (Light's public alias as a self-appointed god of justice) who she is obsessively devoted to. And her Squee! moments mostly revolve around being manipulated by Kira, fawning over Light, and trying to help him avoid discovery and capture by the authorities. What little else of interest about Misa Misa there is involves characters trying to find out who Kira is, so they can stop him; and with so many inexperienced players in an anime LARP, it's likely someone will "discover" that she is the holder of a Death Note fairly quickly unless she doesn't ever use it (or plays a version of the character where she doesn't have it). Even if players don't metagame the discovery badly, the characters from other animes can often see spirits (including the shinigami that follow the death note around), identify magical items, steal things with ease (if Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop picks the "rich girl's" pocket, there goes the notebook!), get people to admit things, or force them to tell the truth. Yet she is appealing to players because the series is so popular; her character is consistent, well-developed, and interesting; she is beautiful, sociable and famous; and, because she has a death note, she is incredibly powerful.
Finally, it is nearly impossible for the GMs to take characters that depend on another character, like Misa, and connect them to a surrogate (for instance, connecting her to Alex Rosewater, a villain from Big O) for some big reasons. First, the GMs don't usually know who will be in game. My personal experience shows that even with pre-registered characters, this can backfire (I played a bodyguard character who was assigned to guard a pre-registered character who never showed up). Second, this is a lot of work, in a game with hundreds of characters. It's also hard for a player to do this work in-game. Even the most obsessed otaku won't know every character in the game, and building these on-the-fly crossover "pre-existing" connections requires some metagaming. For Misa Amane to latch onto another cunning megalomaniac villain (not too uncommon in anime) and pretend to have been obsessed over him, the player needs to be able to recognize characters from other series' -- so poor Misa Misa's player has to depend on 1) someone playing a megalomaniac villain; 2) knowing about the character (having seen or heard a lot about the series); and 3) having the LARP skill and wherewithall to approach the player OOC and work out a pre-existing relationship that is not canon for either series, but which would make sense for both characters.
SUGGESTION II: The GMs should write the less superhero/villain/comic characters more toward those three roles. And players -- especially new players -- should be discouraged from playing characters that are not as "portable." Character sheets for characters that aren't that portable should include suggestions for alternate interpretations that are villainous or more blatantly super-heroic; or comedic, where possible (e.g. Akane Tendo from Ranma 1/2 could become more comic by focusing on her violent brand of feminism; the assassin, Mirelle, from Noir could become more of a villain by using her character from earlier in the series before she developed more depth; and Spike from Cowboy Bebop could be more heroic by making his hidden soft side a bit less hidden and his mercenary facade a little more transparent).
I really can't think of anything to make it easier for GMs and players to re-forge broken connections for characters that depend on other characters -- other than "more work." GMs should discourage new players from playing these less-portable characters, and for experienced players, they should take a few hours at the beginning of the game to try to pull characters together into impromptu pre-existing crossover relationships. Example: Gendo Ikari is in play, but none of the child pilots from Evangelion are, so he has nobody to manipulate and "mentor." Maybe the GMs can pull Duo Maxwell over and try to merge the plots of Evangelion and Gundam Wing so that the two have a connection.
III. Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Poorer
One problem with the lack of safety net is GM access time. Since all plot exposition comes from GMs, players need GMs to advance or learn about the plot. Once a group of players gets a GM, they get plot; which leads them to needing to talk to the GM; which leads to more plot. Players who don't know what to do may find themselves without a clue because everyone who does know what to do has mugged a GM and is now off "somewhere else" in a tabletop adventure doing something about it. So now not only are the GMs all busy, but so are the players whose charactes could explain things. This tends to be the final stage of poorly run campaign LARPs, before the game starts to bleed players like a stuck pig and only the hard core (the ones involved in the knows-stuff-does-stuff-learns-stuff-repeat loop) remain. In the case of the anime LARP, it's not a recipe for death. But it does leave players behind, and may cost the game some attendees.
I have seen this happen to small games and campaign games. This is not an off-the-cuff theory. When the GMs start to get sequestered by a portion of the players for long adventure scenes, the rest really do get left out with no goals (because they don't have plot info), no way to learn plot info (because the players who could share it with them are away with the GMs) and no way to affect the world otherwise (because the GMs are all busy, and even if a GM is available; the plot is progressing elsewhere, so players would be prevented from generating any of their own plot if it interferes with adventure scenes already in progress).
SUGGESTION III: I don't think the Scheduled-IC-Events-as-lynchpins arrangement I mentioned above is a conscious design feature. Scheduled events could be more intentionally designed as "catch-up" points for plot, where PCs are prodded to spread what they've learned about the plot in IC conversations (possibly producing Squee! moments for brainiac and information broker characters) before some NPC gives a summary speech sharing the basic fundamentals of What You Should Know By Now. Anime LARP can be improved by putting one of these into the game every four hours or so, and making their purpose explicit, and giving the players a schedule of when they will be. Other events can be scheduled at other times, but these would be noted as plot exposition lynchpins. If you need to get caught up, have a character that gets Squee! moments by explaining things to others, or just want to make sure you haven't missed anything, you should be at these events.
Furthermore, no scene should be closed. There should always be one GM not running a scene. That GM should facilitate lost players joining tabletop adventure scenes that are already in progress, passing them off to the GM in that scene, and going back to helping lost players. This may seem odious to a GM who is 75% of the way through such a scene, and it may seem like the player is "butting in" and stealing Squee! moments, unearned; but it is in-genre for most anime for just about any character to show up midway through a dramatic scene. And it is far better to allow some GM-facilitated butting-in than to have a system that cuts players out of the loop if they miss the boat. In fact, a good GM can turn this into a Squee! moment for the arriving character or for any of the characters in his scene already (remember, most anime LARP players enjoy watching Squee! moments for other characters they are familiar with almost as much as they like them for their own). For instance, if several mecha pilots are battling a mysterious alien warship, Urd (from Oh My Goddess!) can pop out of a screen on Simon's Gunmen (from Gurren Lagann) and demand to take over piloting because she thinks she (as a goddess) would be better at it (though she is definitely not a mech pilot; the character is more than demanding, deceptive and impulsive -- and perhaps drunk -- enough to try). A new conflict would ensue, possibly resulting in hilarity, additional challenge for the other pilots (as Simon's drill-mech is no longer participating in the fight and Simon has to deal with a mercurial goddess) and heavenly demerits for Urd (which would be yet another Squee! moment).
IV. Poverty
Anime LARPs are run on a shoestring budget, in one room and a hallway. There are no real locations, forcing all locations to be virtual (tabletop), and this resolves to GMs standing in the center of circles of players, narrating scenes that are, as I like to put it "Left Area, Moved Elsewhere (L.A.M.E.)". Furthermore, the space lacks set dressing; there are item cards for stuff that could very easily be propped (Ramen! It's seventeen cents, damnit!), and there is no budget to rent other rooms for space.
SUGGESTION IV: Other convention LARPs (other than anime LARPs) charge an additional fee for playing the LARP. Frequently this fee is low -- $10 or so. It pays for props, chits, printing and sets. Take 100 players, multiply by $10 a player... $1000. That would be a lot of set dressing, and maybe it would even pay for some hotel rooms in the hotel the con happens at, to use as locations; or some conference rooms in a convention center. The problem is that you would lose some of the less dedicated players; the ones trying it "on a lark" who just walk in to see what LARP is on their way to the dealer's room or whatever. There are some ways around this. For instance, you can charge $10 for the privilege of selecting your own character; otherwise the GMs assign you a character based on who they need in play (helps ameliorate the "characters missing their better half" problem, above). This way the walk-ons get in free and can pick a new character later, for $10; poor players can still play for free; and the GMs get another tool to use in preventing bad character fit. You can also use it as a fee to discourage changing characters, for players who get bored with a character or make too many enemies. Some cons may frown on additional charges; in which case you can call it a "suggested donation" which works almost as well. In that case, players can try out the LARP before they make their donation; and the GMs can keep track of who donated, and regularly remind the non-donors that they are "encouraged" to donate if they're having fun. The first year they implement the payment strategy, the GMs will need to severely underestimate their revenue, so as to avoid going deep into the red. They can deposit any surplus from that year into a bank account for the LARP and appoint a treasurer to manage it and prevent corruption. Smart "club treasurer" practices like maintaining a solid buffer and publishing a record of how the money was used are assumed. The LARP should be able to find someone who has been a club treasurer before; they're a dime a dozen out there.