LARPA Opens VR Gaming Initiative

[Gordon]

LARPA, the Live-Action Roleplayers Association announces the Grand Opening of its presence in Linden Labs Secondlife.  LARPA is a nonprofit corporation based in Maryland, in the United States.  LARPA has recognized since the early 90s that roleplay in virtual environments was an important element of Live-Roleplay, and is now moving to support Roleplay in Linden Labs' Secondlife, which supplies the most flexible framework of tools to date for authors or organizers looking to create a Roleplay Experience

Where do I Find LARPA?

SL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Midge/244/17/140/

Our core mission is to help SL users find good Roleplay Content, and to help Content developers network, find tools, resources, and players, so that they can spend less time bootstrapping and more time creating Roleplay.

FREE ADVERTISING FOR ROLEPLAY SIMS/GAMES/EVENTS
* Create a fair and unbiased central point for learning about all the various opportunities for Roleplay in SL by providing free ($L2) advertisements and other free advertising opportunities.  The goal is to create a place where new and experienced users can "shop" for Roleplay choices presented fairly and equitably.

CALENDAR-NEWSLETTER
* LARPA will organize a biweekly mailing (notecard based) with a simple and easy to read set of articles and promotions for roleplay events.  Basic advertisement listings are free.

PROP LIBRARY
* Create a huge library of props to make it faster and easier to set up Roleplay games.  Our site already has a catalog of over 2,400 items in more than sixty Categories.  We're not out to supplant the various newbie collections in SL.  We are providing a value-added catalog of sorted props aimed at those who need to be able to find a wide variety of artifacts.  We are fine with newbies making use of it, but our intent isn't to devalue the work indivduals like Yadni who have dedicated a great deal of time and energy to bringing free content to SL.

GAME BANK
* We are also expanding the LARPA GameBank into SL.  In RL LARPA offers free downloads of some basic and intermediate eclectic Live Roleplay games

PROMOTIONAL BUT NON-COMPETATIVE
* LARPA is not an organization to run Roleplay events but an organization for and about Roleplaying.  Any events run using the LARPA name will be free admission, and focus on promoting the general concept of Roleplay.  Individual operators of Roleplay games, sims, and events will be given equal opportunity to promote their own ventures at any LARPA event.  LARPA does not compete with other games or sims and is out to offer a chance for everyone to learn about each other's work.  

What is LARPA's Mission in SL?

Many RL groups that come to SL have an empty corporate presence – just an ad for their RL services or identity.  LARPA's Chief of Staff is James Seraph in SL, a longtime member who rents several properties and holds citizenship in Caledon, and is a strong and enthusiastic supporter of the development of the virtual world.  LARPA seeks to be an active player bringing the same value to SL that it has brought to RL.

LARPA has always put forward a mission statement that embraced MUD and MUSH type activities, but until recently there has been no reason for LARPA to become highly active in those areas.  Most online games had a firm constituency and either a local or commercial focus.  LARPA members have participated in many of the more interesting and experimental online games, and many are active online gamers.  But there was no mission for the organization.

With SecondLife Linden Labs has created a virtual world with many of the same features as the real world.  For the first time the tools to produce a sophisticated online game are within the reach of any reasonably dedicated author with a few hundred dollars to invest.  This is a tremendous leap forward for creative and content-focused producers.


A few brief answers from James Seraph (Gordon Olmstead-Dean), who is acting as Liaison  for LARPA's Virtual Reality Initiative.[/b]

Q: Do you expect pushback from those already running Roleplay Sims?  They may not be anxious for their users to have a chance to learn about other opportunities.

A:  There are always a few people frightened of a new thing.  But we think most Sim Owners and Roleplay Operators are proud of their work and feel it can "stand up" to competition.  And when everyone knows all of the possibilities, creators are pushed a little to create new and better work.  That ultimately benefits everyone.

Q: Do you expect to profit personally from LARPA in SL

A: I never have in RL unless you count the richness of entertaining your friends and the satisfaction of doing something you really care about.  If others donate to the prop library, then it will grow and make things easier for everyone including me.  But a basic rule about LARPA is that its resources are available to everyone involved.  I'm acting as a core sponsor for LARPA, and we've set aside a certain amount of space for core sponsors who donate to keep the property running. But any other LARP group is welcome to become a sponsor and have the same focus and attention I do.  LARPA has to be equitable and fair, or it has no value to anyone.

Q: "Roleplay" in SL is a term often used in conjunction with Sex.  How does LARPA feel about Sexual Roleplay.

A: LARPA is made up of real members who have the same range of sensibilities as anyone.  As an organization LARPA has a policy against sex-based discrimination of any kind.  LARPA supports the law, and this means being absolutely against sexual activities involving minors, including roleplay activities between adults that violate the law.  Practically LARPA is an organization of artists, and from Baudelaire to Andy Warhol have pressed the envelope of human sexuality through new experiences.  The members of LARPA have always been strongly and overwhelmingly in favor of personal privacy and artistic freedom.

Q: Why "Live" roleplay.  Isn't SL a computer game?
A: In the LARPA mission statement the emphasis on live is on "simultaneous and fully interactive." SL is a true virtual environment, where interaction takes place in a fashion as close as possible to RL.  With the need to help people find good entertainment content, the jump was a natural one.


[/b]

[Kaladhan]

I'm sorry if this is seemed like trolling. Can you name virtual role-playing means that was around in the early 90s? I'm curious.

Also, why do you define live role-playing this way? Does this mean that World of Warcraft is a larp? There is nothing wrong with other kinds of role-playing (table top, online rpg, larp, etc), but at least give it the proper name.

[Ryan Paddy]

I think that the line between larp and online roleplay in a virtual environment is much thinner than the separation in style with tabletop roleplaying.

As a thought experiment, imagine that you're interacting with the computer-generated environment through VR technology like visors, headset, and motion sensors. It would feel like you're immersed in the setting in a similar way to how you are in larp. I know that's not the technology of things like SecondLife right now, but really the only difference is the interface... which is sure to catch up one day.

That's a far cry from tabletop, where the shared imagined space is almost entirely descriptive not immersive in terms of the senses.

VRP (to coin a term) and LRP/larp have a lot in common, and will have progressively more in common as the VRP technology improves. Like larp, virtual play works well with larger numbers of players in social situations. Many of the scenarios in the gamebank could be fairly easily ported to a virtual roleplay, whereas they would be difficult to do in tabletop roleplay on account of limited verbal time for each player in a situation where everyone can't talk at once.

I'm not much into the existing virtual/online stuff. But I look forward to when the technology is really immersive and provides another option for activities very much like larp, whatever they might be called.

[Gordon]

Sure...MUD and MUSH were around in the early 90s.  They were text based, but they existed.  

Regarding LARP, when it comes down to it, I think LARPA really doesn't care about terms or names or media.  The point is that the sort of plot design, setup, resources, time management and player handling skills I need to run a game in virtual space are nearly identical to what I need to run a game in real life.  So the skills carry over, and there's a lot of benefit, and a lot of mutual interest.

I think WoW is the same issue really as something like SCA.  There's nothing wrong with it, but it's self contained and doesn't NEED any support from the gaming community at LARGE.  There are roleplay groups that generate their own plot, and sure, if someone said "I want information on generating internal drama plots for my WoW Guild, " I think that would be very much a topic of interest for us.  But by and large the scripted combat elements aren't.

It's about CONTENT and INTENT, not names and media.  

A good analogy might be this.  If LARPA were a support group for actors and playwrights, you could ask me if we had any business in Hollywood.  I'd say if the issue was scriptwriting or conveying emotion through acting we did, and if it was about editing, or sound recording, we didn't.  

A world where people walk around and talk to each other is pretty significantly "live."  It may not be traditional LARP in the same way that Cinema isn't Theatre, but it is in many ways the same thing.

LARPA has always concentrated on content and writing, rather than on tech.  Not that we haven't had tips for that, but our members are so widely divergent in that area. Practically our focus has been on CONTENT.

While early MUD and MUSH could support dramatic roleplay content with really aggressively good players, it wasn't as easy.  Now we're seeing the rise of virtual media where strong dramatic roleplay content can work, and that's really interesting.

Let me go a step further, and mention why our outreach effort is in SL.  In WoW and other MMORPGs the presumption is that the company providing the MMORPG is "writing the game" and you are "playing it."  You may develop some Roleplay on the side, but that's not the emphasis.

In Linden's SL, there is little or no company provided content.  It's a blank slate.  That means that a GM for the expenditure of thirty or forty bucks and a bit of time (no more than running a standard LARP) has the tools available to run a game themselves.  That's really the crux of the difference here - we're a resource for people developing content for roleplay.

Truthfully in the past we've been followed by a lot of "crossover tabletop/live" campaigns that did salon style play where they basically tabletopped standing up some of the time.  I don't think that lessens the value of what we have to offer.

An organization should never get bound up in names and terminology but focus on ideas.

[Gordon]

Yeah, just to echo what Ryan said here...

Niven's Dreampark is generally acknowledged to be a seminal reference for LARP.  I'm aware LARP pre-existed Dreampark, and even have lists of groups, etc. but Dreampark popularized LARP.

We had approximately none of the technologies of Dreampark.  But LARPers weren't willing to let that stand in our way.

Now for a good number of years the holy grail of interaction has been a fully interactive, fully immersive environment, where you can produce reality at will and set up any situation you want.  

There are nascent forms of that out there.  I think we don't do a service to the art if we sit with our thumbs in our posteriors until they are perfect.  They are good enough to do some startup work.  They aren't quite up to Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash yet, but they're coming along.

In terms of importance, I will point out that the reason there are very few practical commercial models for LARP - and thus very few opportunities for people to work professionally in the field - is that LARP is not:

1) Quickly reproducible
2) Cheaply reproducible
3) Able to be presented in parallel for multiple audiences in a short period of time, without incredible and expensive redundancy of resources.

Virtual Reality fixes most of those problems.  So it opens the possibility of a future where those of us who have been cranking out good games for twenty years but can't work in our chosen field might be able to.  I think that it would be irresponsible of LARPA not to open that door if it exists.

[Kaladhan]

Perhaps my main problem comes from the french translation of larping (french being my first language). In french, a live action role playing is translated as "jeu de role grandeur nature". An accurate translation would be life-sized role playing game. Nothing virtual could be life-size.

To use an expression that I'm fond of, "don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining". This is not larping. It may be close to it on many points, but it is not larping.

That the people behind larpa wants to have a presence on Second Life is their business. I have no problem that you enjoy Second Life. I have never tried it and hold no interest to it, but if you do, more glory to you.

At least be honest with yourselves and call it something else. VRP sounds good.

[Ryan Paddy]

I agree with Gordon that terminology is a side-issue. For example I think that there is no clear line between what actually takes place in a larp versus an improv theatre game, and the terminology is irrelevant. But many larpers rail against larp and improv being lumped together because our society gives them different names, even though when you scratch the surface they are just variations on a theme. What matters to me is what things are, not what you call them.

In terms of defining larp as "full scale", once VR is good enough it will feel to the player like the computer simulation is full scale. There will be a convergence of the media.

Of course, it still won't be live in the sense of real bodies meeting in the real world. But the similarities will far outweigh the differences. Theatre and film are different media but what you do in both is called "acting". Larp and virtual roleplay will be different media, but what you do in them will be effectively the same.

Let me go a step further, and mention why our outreach effort is in SL.  In WoW and other MMORPGs the presumption is that the company providing the MMORPG is "writing the game" and you are "playing it."  You may develop some Roleplay on the side, but that's not the emphasis.

By that logic Neverwinter Nights would be another logical arena for effort. It's extremely specifically D&D, but servers are set up by general users without support from the game producers. I'm contemplating running a NWN server using larp-like approaches in much the same way as you're talking about using SL.

Gordon - for those of us who haven't seen SecondLife, can you describe how flexible it is in terms of environments, characters, and what actions characters are capable of? Could you do most genres, and will what you see on screen look good? As a difficult case, could you do people on a spaceship visiting various planets?

[weeble1000]

While I think that LARPA's support of SL is awesome, I'm afraid that my opinion about SL has a lot in common with Kaladhan.  The program looks very flexible and I can see the possibilities of it, but for me, LARPing has always been about face to face interaction.  I have never really been a fan of computer mediated communication, in any form, and I don't think that I would ever be more interested in a SL game than I am in any other computer game.

I like the "life-sized role-playing game" translation a lot, because I think that's best part about LARPing.  No matter how good a computer program can be, I don't think that it will ever fulfill the human need to interact with other members of the species.  Human communication relies on a tremendous ammount of factors other than words.  Facial expressions, posture, body language, tone of voice, scent, and touch all contribute to the totality of human expression.  I LARP because I want more of that than what you can get in a table-top RPG.  Second Life RPGs would give me even less, though I expect the visual impact could be rather stunning.

[SwordDancer]

I ran a small local gaming club here in California in the early nineties. Back then, I predicted the evolution of roleplaying games, not as an artform, but how it would be played. One of those aspects was LARP, albeit in the form that it does converge with a VR standpoint. WoW is not really a RPG, though it can be used as one with the right players and viewpoints. Too many oog references and the idea of spawning creatures smacks of artificiality (even instanced dungeons still do not feel "real" to me from the standpoint of the game reality).

So, let me put it this way. You have a playstation 10, you have a floor pad (similar to the Dance Dance Revolution pad), and a camera setup (probably in three locations). You have the latest vr helmet, virtually weightless. You have the Iron Liege virtual sword that also can be used

Your virtual avatar you built from scratch, allowing you to be that nine foot tall ogre you always wished you could be. It smiles when you smile, leers when you leer. It also drools, which you don't, but hey - that's a cool distinction for the game that would be gross and hard to keep up all the time in real life. It doesn't quite walk the way you do, and you had trouble at first learning to walk away from things that normally you could squeeze by. How many merchant stalls selling fruit have you knocked over this way? When you get angry, or feel insulted (the sensors can pick up your facial expressions and tone of voice), his face turns into a rictus of rage known for his race, and most people scramble away in fear for thier lives.

You head out with your friends, hot on the hunt of a holy relic deep inside the Forest of K'tarth, you really get spooked out, thanks in part to the ambient noise all around you of every living or non living thing, surrounded by glorious 10.1 THX Dolby Surround Sound. As you enter the forest, creatures come ambling out of the forest, the decay and rot extremely visible (your wife didn't let you buy the sound module, she was with you when you playtested the game with all the trimmings, and almost retched when you fought a zombie... so no smells). The awful sounds of flesh out of it's skin, loosely draped or falling off of bones (many of them broken), is quite a sight to behold - as scary as scene in any horror movie.

 The thought of how evil the force was that created and controlled such abberations flashes through your head before you yell "Rage!" into your mic and run forward, arm raised high - your avatar bellows a very fearsome howl of anger and lumbers forward, only the noble knight at your side. The others have learned long ago to give you a wide berth, your blows create a LOT of damage around you, and so work slowly in the wake of carnage, body parts being flung all over the place. Your arm tires after a bit, the Iron Liege sword - foam or not - getting heavy from all the combo moves you execute (the game recognizes when you do them by you hitting certain areas in a rapid succession of moves, even your powerful overhead smash has over five moves to it).

Covered in a thin sheen of sweat, you start to thirst for the Gatorade bottle a few feet from you, and hope the fight ends soon - this was a pretty hard encounter! The Shrine Maiden comes up and slaps you in the face after the fight, and stunned, you realize the last thing you killed landed, albiet in little bity pieces, all over the outfit she had just bought in town. You remember she was in more than one store for more than an hour, trying on different outfits, only coming out to show her lover (the Ranger) what she found. He of course looked very sheepish everytime she did this, the Knight giving you a knowing look. You grimace in apology, the blood of your enemies sort of mixing with your own vile drool a bit more than she can stand, and she stalks off, knowing you need to ask the healer for a little help - you start rummaging through the bodies to find something he might like...

LARP is not really real, fellas. You have oog calls you need to do so that others understand what is going on, most combat systems have numbers that need to be called in battle, and forget over going to a bustling town of 10,000 people (most of whom just live and work there) to go shopping or explore! One of the advantages that tabletop has over LARP is that it is largely predicated on the participants imagination. LARP works at the same thing, but mechanics and things like props tend to get in the way. LARPers also depend on imagination, but an environment starts to show it's shortcomings the less it can interact with the participant. Someone who spent 3 hours building the alchemists' lab will be very upset with the player who knocks it over in a fight that spills over into that room.

I believe that a computer created environment, with the right tech, will allow people to play characters that are larger than life, and have just about every little thing simulated to a T. It will virtually erase the oog calls needed in the game environment (you will still need to do it in the living room I would guess), eliminating a lot of the bad Metagame stuff that happens (especially in Live Combat games - i.e. people shouldn't really know that I am really a mage posing as a fighter because the damage I call is that of a mage, etc.). I am somewhat involved in this concept not only to promote new technologies in LARP, but to make sure that they then spill over back into traditional LARPs, allowing LARPers to keep playing both forms, and to promote LARP into a HUGE field of potential players, the computer and console gamers. The technology of LARP weapons have not evolved much in the last 15 years - but I helped design the glowing weapons that Iron Liege now builds, and I am actively keeping tabs on any relevant technologies that might turn up to allow it to be built into actual LARP gear. This is important, because I do not believe the corporations will create a game like this and allow this exchange of mediums if we, the LARPers, are not up to snuff or keeping tabs and show them there is a market for it. I am working with a few people who are using similar tools like SL to build virtual worlds to mirror the ones being played in with some LARPs. Amtgard is working on one atm...http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/amtgardgame/

Rick McCoy
LARP Alliance

P.S. Shout out to the concepts bandied about by different groups on LARPA-gen, especially Gnostica, with their MMLARP. They didn't go through with it, but they have inspired me to keep the torch alive.