The Land of Nowhere

One more thought from yesterday's book review: in retrospect, Jane, Unlimited could make a good LARP; some aspects of the worldbuilding might be a little tricky to do, but much of it would work. This might not be that surprising since it was originally written as interactive fiction, but also it has a good ensemble cast of interesting characters each with their own secrets.  If it were actually played as a LARP, I think the players would come up with all sorts of genre-crossing solutions to their problems that would be far more awesome than anything in the actual book.

This is not the first time I've encountered a piece of fiction that felt LARPy to me, so I thought I'd explain what aspects can make a story feel LARPy to me, and give some examples.  (I am an occasional LARPer: my social circle from college included a bunch of people who did LARPs, though I didn't get into it until the end of college and since have only done it when it's been convenient to me.)

• Stories with a large cast of interesting characters whose concepts can be described in a few sentences.   Especially if the book is more about giving them the chance to interact and develop than about a specific plot, e.g. Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway.
• Plot mechanics that feel particularly game-like, or that are particularly easy to implement in a LARP (e.g. the blank visas in Casablanca are totally a LARP item).
• Stories set in a mansion or other building/enclosed space, or which have a specified cast of characters (e.g. The Westing Game, which feels like it might be in dialogue with the murder mystery game genre, but appears to predate the murder mystery roleplaying game so maybe it's just in dialogue with Clue?)
• Certain types of tropes/genres that play well in LARPs: secret identities, hidden agendas, espionage, mystery, characters are absurdly rich and/or powerful.
• If in a genre that involves worldbuilding, types of worldbuilding/social structures that feel highly legible/easy to implement in games.  The best example of this is Jasper Fforde's Shades of Gray, a dystopia in which characters are sorted into castes based on colors, and also wear badges showing their social status+how much credit they have in the social credit system.  In fact, ( Read more... )

A book feeling LARPy doesn't necessarily make it less good, though I find that it can have a distancing effect if I notice it when reading: I'm more likely to abstract away from the characters and view them more as game pieces -- though the way the book is written can also lend itself to that regardless.  Jasper Fforde's Shades of Gray is a good example of that: it didn't hold up as well as I would have liked on a reread because I could see the ways in which it was LARPy more than I connected with the characters.  (Also that book has some troubling stuff going on with sexual consent.)

Readers: have you ever read(/watched) stories that particularly felt like LARPs/RPGs/other sorts of games?  What aspects of the story gave them that feel?  How did it affect your enjoyment of the story?