The Masquerade Report or “All LARPed up and no place to go”

The Masquerade in Pullman was said to be a murder mystery masquerade. I had many ideas of what that meant, especially since we were all required to come up with Clue-like names, but my ideas were all wrong—it turned out to be a puzzle and a riddle-solving exercise. It was not my cup-of-tea, but—as it was rightly pointed out—it was not created with me in mind. Frank, you see, dislikes Live Action Role Playing or LARP games. A good example of that form of gaming would be a How-To-Host-a-Mystery game, where people take on and act out a character in the game. Those styles of games are limited to 8 people, sometimes only 6. They are tightly control with 3 rounds. Each round a person gets to open a sealed envelope for their character. No judge is required. On the larger scale there are game-setting-inspired LARPs, the most successful of which is based off a table-top role-playing game by White Wolf where all the LARPers get to play angst ridden vampires. Neither Frank nor I would touch that one, but I have found a few game settings I did like. The first one was also a White Wolf setting but it was about fairy courts—which inspires cooler costumes and a whole lot less angsty black gothiness. The second one even attracted Frank, who dislikes LARPs in general as I mentioned. It was based off of the 7th Sea Role Playing game and was created to star movie-inspired swashbuckling characters (but mostly pirates) and was loads of fun.

The personality of a polymathic Leaverton is well suited to playing in this type of game and I love them. I subscribe to the philosophy that if doing something in game is fun for me, it will be even more fun with another person involved, and if that’s even more fun, then it stands to reason that it will be even more fun to get a whole group of people in on it. That way everyone has a great time. I usually find some person like me…dressed up and friendly, to make friends with and then we begin recruiting all the timid folks who just showed up that day and wanted to play but have no costumes. These are the folks most other LARPers ostracize but their characters are completely equal and with a little push these people can shine. If you can overcome their timid barriers, that is. I can. Mostly by being so outrageously in-character that people feel that they can’t be nearly as silly looking if they stand next to me. Also, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that I have no name for other than proxy costuming. People who are around me and watch how I act in my costume begin to move as if they were dressed like me. For example, I once played a French noblewoman. One of my draftees was also playing a French noblewoman but she was in jeans and a t-shirt. It didn’t take long until she was bending at the hips not the waste, moving as if she had skirts in the way and fanning her bosom as if it were exposed. I never knew jeans and a t-shirt could be that sexy and flirtatious! Sort of bothered her son, who had talked her into doing the LARP…I guess Moms shouldn’t move like that.

The structure of this type of LARP is a little different from How-To-Host-a-Mystery. The LARPers are given a character, a primary goal for the evening and a few tertiary goals. A pirate might be given the goal of getting hired on to a ship with one of the captains present plus side goals: to cheat so-and-so at cards and pass on a secret to so-and-so. A noble woman might have a goal to steal something important plus the side goals: hand out a particular item of gossip and get so-and so to like her. Some people are set up as targets…they know so-and-so is out to get them so they must avoid being alone with that person while trying to accomplish their other goals. Most of the characters will be able to achieve at least one goal, so you can end the night with everyone feeling accomplished.
The downside of this style of LARP is that you need judges (AKA referees, storytellers, or Non-player Characters). So if a victim ends up in a room alone with the guy who was out to get him, they can “fight” and the judge says who wins. Sometimes the fighting is just rock-paper-scissors, other times a dice or coin might decide the outcome. The more people you have in the game, the more judges you need. Often these judges play bit parts like a servant or a wall flower, and so blend in until they are needed. Often they take on majorly powerful setting based characters that you couldn’t let just anyone play and very often must do something to move the story along…like the king of the fairy court who is scheduled to die at precisely 11:15pm!
That’s the thing with the Pullman Masquerade…Frank had 21 people to deal with and no judges but himself. He was tasked with the job of involving everyone too, so How-To-Host-a-Mystery was out because there would’ve been only eight principles and all the rest would’ve been detectives. It would’ve turned into dinner theater.
If everyone had a character and a goal to do all at once, how could he alone judge all that? (Plus he dislikes LARPs) So he made it puzzles and riddle clues, which everyone worked on together and no one solved…not so much that they weren’t getting the riddles but that they were letting other people talk them out of the right answer. I was both frustrated with it, and anxious for Frank being successful in this. I shouldn’t have bothered…these were his allies. These kids were his friends and his gaming groupies, long used to picking up whatever gauntlet Frank choose to throw down. Plus, they are enough like him that the things he enjoys are the things they enjoy. So they saw puzzles and riddles and said “Yay!” and got to work on them. I have never felt so out of place in my life. At least there was Nicky…my fellow polymath…to be my refuge. She was the fabulous hostess of the party. She and I gave the game a chance—more than an hour actually—but when the gamers began to debate, we retreated to the other room and played with the cat, talked arts & crafts, discussed costuming, touched on mask & backdrop design, talked about cooking a little, and took pictures. Every now and then we’d look into the other room and watch all the gamers in their element…grinning ear-to-ear…just to make sure they were having a good time (which I was no longer in any doubt that they were), and then go back to our pothmathic topic-hopping discussion. I have to say that I was glad for two things…that I stayed in the game longer than Frank thought I would (he told me this after) and also that I was the only one all LARPed up with no place to go.