Let those without sinister machinations cast the first nerdball

Ben Morrow
Sep 1, 2018 · 6 min read

So, Matthew Webb wrote http://www.foolreversed.com/nerdball-the-game-no-one-wants-to-play/ back on 08/20/2018, and I definitely recommend reading it. To entice you: It’s an examination of some toxic behavior patterns that many would recognise in larp as well as other gaming activities whose communities wind up having a similar structure to larp communities. It calls out a toxic behavior that he calls Nerdball.

Aside: I love the term Nerdball. To me, it evokes dodgeball, the most aggressive trauma inducing form of violent sport short of actual punching contests, and nerds which I frame as the community of people who paid a social price for their particular interests which has their own trickle down toxicity of ostracization amongst their own.

Have you been enticed to read it?

If I have failed to entice you, I’ll do my best to summarise what I need to reference from his blog post to prologue for this one.

Matt defines Nerdball: “Nerdball is an unhealthy form of competitive LARP, usually when games are part of a long chronicle, that arises naturally from factors in human behavior and the nature of the games being played.”

He goes on to detail the unhealthy behavior, which I’ll try to bullet point here in a concise fashion without adding too much of my own explanation and details.

  • A team of players form that optimizes their characters for power and influence.
  • Their team has the characters that are the most powerful. They can, in some combination, kill (or end the game of) most if not every other player’s character.
  • The team has the loudest “customer” voice, either through actual majority control or silencing other voices with their ability to end others game.
  • They are the main influencers of the game. They will do everything in their power to remain the main influences of the game.

Matt says, “If you are the current nerdball champions in your game, no one can do anything you dislike or threaten your control over the game without risking character death, neutering of their concept and/or out-of-character social ostracism. This might even include the staff themselves if you are playing nerdball really well.”

He is not wrong. It is very real. It sucks. It’s usually done in ways that are, in specific incidents, deniable if not actually covert. It makes games worse. It drives people out. It causes new people to recoil. And Nerdball leads to Nerdball League. (Read Matthew’s blog if you want to hear about Nerdball League.)

I would make one change though to his opening definition.

Nerdball is an unhealthy form of c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶it̶i̶v̶e̶ LARP, usually when games are part of a long chronicle, that arises naturally from factors in human behavior and the nature of the games being played.

In my time running larp events over the past three years that used a consent based “system” that effectively means no one can ever kill anybody else’s character, I feel I can say with some sense of experiential authority that collaborative style larps are not immunized against nerdball.

Nerdball in competitive larps comes from the particular group of players desire for control. That desire isn’t necessarily unique to competition, and I don’t even believe that competitive play styles lead to nerdball. I would even suggest that nerdball is opposed to everything that’s good about competition.

In order for larp, and also most games really, to be competitive, the individual players must exercise a minimum level of self discipline to compete fairly. No system of rule enforcement will ever be effective enough to force the players to play fair. While one can argue that Nerdball champions are not necessarily cheating (though they often are) they are most definitely playing unfairly, and overtly breaking the spirit of the rules of play if not the letter. Healthy competition, competitors that are playing fairly with each other won’t ever become Nerdball.

The good values of competition, to give it your best, to focus on self-improving, to encourage people who are struggling, to help your opponents improve, to desire close competitive matches, to express disappointment at shut-outs or uneven match ups, these things are healthy. A community of players who prioritize thsoe things, who make sure their game’s culture retains those types of values, and takes reasonable measures against bad actors who want to introduce toxic unfair play, can thrive.

“Do Your Best” from The Prince of Tennis stage show

In collaborative style larps, surely Nerdball is harder to pull off? No one can kill anybody else, right? So it’s safe, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s not really true.

I refer to the system used in New World Magischola and A Wolf By Any Other Name as consent based because consent is the most important part of how it works. However, in order to arrive at the consent phase there has to be a negotiation. People can be negotiating through the basics of the spellcasting system (use exposition to make it obvious what you are trying to cast, the person you are pointing your wand at decides if it works or not), through negotiating in advance by planning a scene out collaboratively, paying enough attention to each other to negotiate non-verbally, or being able to trust each other enough to just go along with what’s happening, secure that when it isn’t fun or interesting anymore they are free to disengage at any time.

Negotiation can only work when it’s done in good faith.

If you are not negotiating honestly, then you are not actually getting consent from the other party.

Negotiation can be staged strategically.

It doesn’t work when someone negotiates and gets consent for what is only the first part of a plan. (The first yes.) Then when it comes time to negotiate for the second part of the plan, the goal all along usually, leveraging that initial yes as if it was an agreement to the unrevealed plan to pressure the other party for consent is bad faith negotiation. This not just part of the creep’s playbook, but also that of the Nerdballer.

Negotiation empowers the loudest voices.

The nerdball tactic of teaming up for control? That’s even easier to pull off in a collaborative style larp. Doesn’t require any optimization. Pull your team together, negotiate with them, establish the co-created narrative. Don’t invite other people to negotiate. It’s a simple matter from that point to merely expand the co-created narrative, to share the plot with others as if it was an act of inclusion and not one of dominance.

“Yes And…” can be abused.

“Yes And” works because of trust, because the people who are using that improvisational model are acting in good faith with each other. Weaponizing it to compel people into consenting to a dominant narrative is both contemptibly insidious and extremely hard to detect and object to.

These things are not hypotheticals. They are observed and reported behaviors. Nerdball already exists in collaborative style larps.

I suspect that this happens because the urge to play Nerdball is more the desire for control than it is the desire to “win”, though people can definitely want both.

Regardless of the style of rules for a larp, any player’s social capital can be weaponized to seize control. Any group of players can pool their social capital. No one can compel or force anyone to not do this. Players have to decide on their own that using this social capital to seize control is harmful to others and to not do it. Or, at the cynical bare minimum, people need to accept the outcomes of seizing control are destructive to the thing they are trying to gain control over, and in a remarkably short amount of time they’ll have nothing worth controlling left.

Ben Morrow

Written by

larp organizer, feminist, experience calibrator, something clever

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