A guide to professional development through fantasy roleplay.
Almost six years ago, I found myself in a field in the middle of nowhere with about one thousand other people.
Like many others, I was smeared in face paint that was now dripping into my eyes, mixed with sweat, a latex mask sat uncomfortably tight to my face and clad in heavy leather armour that restricted my breathing.
I was about to be thrust into a small, circular pit marked out with wooden stakes in order to fight another person to prove my worth.
This was me.
Well…sort of. It was me, playing a role that I’d created. In that moment I was Iko, an Orc who had come to the fantasy city of Anvil for the first time and just like Iko, I had come to a LARP for the first time.
What is LARP?
Live Action Roleplay is a hobby that has hundreds of thousands of participants across the globe. It’s a particular passion of mine and has been since the first moment I donned that mask.
The hobby is made up of various ‘events’. Some of these are run every weekend on a particular day, some of them take up whole weekends running quarterly or similar and some (like the event I run) only run once a year. In each of these events is a different world, a world constructed by a Game Manager who writes the story and lore behind the world and how it works (similar to how J.R.R. Tolkien built the world of Middle-earth).
They also write a set of rules that take into account things like combat, using magic and how players can interact with the world that has been built. It’s then up to the players to create a character within that world and play out a story that they want to see, as well as experience the story that the Game Manager has written.
A LARP doesn’t have to be just medieval fantasy, it can be any genre like post-apocalyptic or science fiction or even just modern day. There’s a LARP event to suit every taste and everyone is catered to, no matter what their background.
Who LARPs?
Everyone.
Well, not literally but you get my meaning. I’ve met people from so many different walks of life through LARP and have even made professional connections through this strange and wonderful hobby. On my adventures I’ve met people who in the real world are judges, police officers, nurses, doctors, lawyers and more.
People from all different classes of society come together in LARP to be completely equal. It’s one of the main draws for me; to see people coming together and creating a collaborative story despite them probably never meeting or interacting in their day to day lives and careers.
LARP is unique in that it creates communities within communities. The events bring their own social scenes where groups have in-depth discussions about their characters, the game and plans for the next event, on top of that though, there is a LARP community as a whole that connects people across games and creates an amazing network of people all with a shared passion.
One of the great things about this community is the amazing support net that it creates for people. Practical issues like not being able to attend an event due to money and lack of transport are solved easily by the many good Samaritans who look out for everyone involved but more importantly, the support for people with mental health issues (which are prevalent in LARP, something that deserves an article of its own) is utterly astounding. In no other area of life have I seen such a supportive and warm group of people.
Why LARP?
This is the main reason I wrote this article, because I think there’s something deeper than just an enjoyable hobby in LARP. I think that LARP is a valuable personal development tool.
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that I was about to be shoved into a fighting pit for the first time, it was my first character and it was my first LARP. I was nervous.
There were probably fifty people surrounding that pit, clinging to the wooden stakes. Some were cheering my name, some were cheering the name of the other Orc stood in front of me. He was much in the same situation, a new LARPer probably as nervous as me.
Before we fought, we each had to give a speech, in character about how we were going to bring glory to our respective Orc clans. Before this point I had never done public speaking, never really stood in front of a crowd and I had a whole Braveheart-esque speech planned out in my head filled with tales of glory and professions of honour and bravery.
It came out as some incoherent mumbling about trying to do my best. I felt awful.
Everyone was incredibly supportive though, they still cheered and rallied behind my clumsy words and the fight began.
By some miracle, I won.
There, stood over my opponent I felt a wave of confidence unlike anything I’ve felt before, despite my fear and my clumsy words I felt more confident coming out of that pit than I did going in.
Over the next six years, I developed my public speaking skills through LARP alone. I was working jobs that didn’t give me a chance to do that sort of thing but through this hobby, I became a skilled orator.
The freedom to choose what character you play means you can come out of your shell, trying different personalities and approaches in a safe environment full of supportive people. As you roleplay these characters, naturally you become better at empathising with others as you’re constantly putting yourselves (literally) in the shoes of another, albeit, fictional person. To roleplay effectively you need to understand their struggles, their hopes and their dreams, this is a skill in itself.
As well as this though, you do develop other transferable skills. As a player, you can develop crisis management skills as you strive to manage combat situations (nothing hones your situational awareness like twenty armed soldiers coming at you at a sprint). More obviously perhaps is team building skills, as mentioned before, LARP is about creating a collaborative story and it ultimately requires you to work together with others and have an absolute mutual understanding of where you all want to end up, this is something that many companies would strive for in a team but in LARP it comes as second nature.
These skills are developed just as a player, as a Game Manager, it opens up a whole new world of learning. In a sense it is like managing a business, just in a seasonal capacity. Every year I have to arrange a venue, sell tickets, book insurance and ensure we’re compliant with health and safety regulations and that all our bases are covered. On top of that I have to write an overall plot line for the event as well as writing subplots that are personal to each character and their stories.
Once the event starts you work as a referee, consultant, counsellor and storyteller all in one, making sure that all your players are having fun and enjoying their experience for the whole weekend. It’s utterly exhausting but it’s an unbelievable experience and there’s so much to learn from it both on a business level (you try finding an insurance agent that won’t put the phone down when you’re trying to explain that it’s perfectly safe to have fifty people running around a forest hitting each other with swords) and on a personal level.
LARP is, in essence, a hobby. It’s an escape from the real world and injects a boost of fantasy into an otherwise normal life, but I believe there’s more to it than that. I believe that LARP helps us grow as people, as professionals and as a collective of people who can be a force of good. I wouldn’t recommend it as a one-off team building exercise but perhaps if you’re looking for something to do with your weekends, perhaps if you feel there’s some creativity and imagination deep inside you that hasn’t been unleashed.
Perhaps you should LARP.
