New Player Advice: Conversation and LARP

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Melissa
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New Player Advice: Conversation and LARP

Post by Melissa »

I'm doing a series for first-time LARPers and new players. Older players may find something of value here too, but this is mostly a series based on information I wish had been available to me as a new, not very well socialized LARPer six and a half years ago.

80% of LARP is talking to people. 10% is walking around looking for the person you're trying to talk to, and 10% is watching and observing other people talk. How well you can carry a conversation is going to have an effect on your game, and the techniques involved in being good at conversation also make you good at roleplay.

Being a good conversationalist is often essential for doing well in a LARP and having fun. Fortunately, it's a skill like any other and builds with practice. I didn't learn most of these skills until I started LARPing, and then I stumbled across more as I grew up and started working.

First off: it's pretty important to have a character who has reasons to talk to other people. They don't have to be an extrovert or even LIKE talking to other people, but we all drag ourselves to company parties even if we don't want to, and gathering at Elysium is a lot like a company party. You might have a couple friends from your department, but there's a lot of people you don't know, and some people, like the CEO, you don't just go up to and start talking with.

So building reasons to interact is good. If they have no reason to be out and about, why are they there? If they feel socially obligated to be present, why not make them feel just a bit more obligated and actually have them talk to people?

Which brings to the next point: What makes for a good conversationalist?

There are some guides online that are really helpful, but here's the gist of it:

Be polite. Please, thank you, and pardon me go a long way and can smooth over talking to someone of higher status.

Be interested. Even if you don't find the other person interesting, pretend. Ask follow up questions that guide the conversation back to areas of mutual interest. Unless you're sucking up, then ask questions that seem to be what they most want to talk about.

Ask questions. People love talking about themselves. Characters also love talking about themselves, and players love a chance to spill opinions, backstory, gossip, sidequests, etc. If you get rebuffed, try for something less personal or sensitive. Maybe they don't trust your character- which is a fascinating topic to get into all on its own.

Cultivate topics. Your character does lots of stuff in downtime that you may not think about. Actual downtimes should be a whole article on their own since they can produce conversation topics, too. Research some current events your character would be interested in. Ask Staff what's going on in nearby domains. Become an expert on a few weird, interesting topics. Find ways to bring them up, or to ask people questions about them.

Be generous. With your time, with your energy, with your character. Find out what other peoples' personal projects are, then help them with them. If the conversation flags, turn the conversation back around to the other person. Ask them about their week, the plots they're working on. Offer to help.

Be curious. If someone else has weird interesting topic they like, ask them about it! They probably did a bunch of research. If they stutter and don't seem to know more, shift topics, but keep asking questions. Strive to find things out about other characters. OOC, strive to find out what other players like and what sort of interactions they enjoy.

Most of these apply both in and out of character. It won't work every time, and it doesn't always get the results you want, but most of these are good tips for being entertaining at parties and LARPs alike. A good rule of thumb I've found is that if you aren't sure what to do, imagine if your character was an NPC. If you had the goal of "make the game fun for other players with this character", what would you do? How would you change how the character played? What would you do next?

What about everyone else? What are your tips for making good conversation, keeping things going in Elysium, and generally being a good time at parties?
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Leon
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Re: New Player Advice: Conversation and LARP

Post by Leon »

My thought:

Perhaps the most important thing to do as a character is to not wear the tag that says "HELLO FELLOW PEOPLE. I AM HERE FOR INTERACTION." (note, this also works out of character. Lord knows I've seen people put on such the fake smile and painfully obvious attempt at networking out of character to know that it's not just isolated to LARPing).

Really, as I see it, conversation at LARP should be similar to conversation OOG. Best bet is to mentally have little notes such as "my character wouldn't know this" or "my character would know this" going on in your head to go on. The key there is do your best to be natural and not come off as forced. A ton of times, I've seen that it's that forced attempt at conversing that sets things off wrong (lord knows I've been guilty of it from time to time).

In one of the other threads, I encouraged finding a good voice for your character. Use that to dictate the nuances here and there as part of it.

One other suggestion I'd give is to avoid being an audience member. I've seen tons of times that, Elysium tends to essentially be a small group of people who essentially hold court with those not involved in the conversation watching them. Break away from that habit and form your own little groups of conversation, or heck, break away from the building entirely and see if you can walk around with others for the conversation. Does your character have a question, request, comment, or small side conversation they want to have? Then by all means push for it and make it happen.

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Ted
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Re: New Player Advice: Conversation and LARP

Post by Ted »

One way I've seen that helps make conversations more natural on introduction: Come in with something that you want from people.
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Melissa
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Re: New Player Advice: Conversation and LARP

Post by Melissa »

Ted wrote:One way I've seen that helps make conversations more natural on introduction: Come in with something that you want from people.
This! This helps a lot. Knowing what your character wants (even if your character doesn't) does a lot. That segues into ideas for getting integrated in the other threads with advice for new players.

The reverse is also true- having things you want from Kindred in general helps established characters integrate new ones. It's not a bad idea to keep background projects/downtime sinks running in the background that you can throw pretty much any new character at that isn't so sensitive that your character will exhaustively observe and vet the person first.
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