Gooooood evening everybody! Today I want to talk a little bit about Tournament-based LARP events. I have attended a couple of LARPs that offer a Tournament one or more times a year in various flavors and I wanted to talk a little bit about my feelings on them here.
Now, for those of you who don’t know me... I am a stick jockey when it comes to LARP. I. Love. Combat. I enjoy playing characters who are based on combative ability as their primary focus and enjoy being able to show my skills when I can. That being said, with the exception of a few specific notes. I. HATE. Tournaments.
It’s not because I always lose, because as a very good friend and game runner once said, “If the only reason you are going to have fun in this tournament is to win, then perhaps consider not participating.” The issues come more into play with the interest of “fairness” when it comes to these styles of events both for those participating and those who are not.
For those who are not participating. Tournaments can last sometimes an entire period of game play, which for many games ranges from 4 to 6 hours and most often takes place in during the early afternoon of the game which takes the LARP up to Feast. This is normally prime-time for plot seeds and various encounters. When a LARP hosts a Tournament, they typically focus all of their attention on making the event feel big, important and weight-bearing. Which results in a limited need for NPCs, most of which are played to come out and observe or cheer on the Tournament to give it a bigger feel.
The players who do not want to participate though, are stuck forced to watch the Tournament in which they may have absolutely no interest at all, or wandering around doing their own thing. Before you say that it’s up to each player to make their own fun, I don’t disagree with you, but when you know the game all but shuts down to play this Tournament there isn’t a whole lot of your own fun to be had, especially if your friends DO want to participate.
For players who maybe do want to participate there are also large barriers. Most Tournaments these days do host a number of side games, but the big prize... be it a special item, a title, a ton of money or any number of other incentives almost always belongs to the main event. The main event is almost always some semblance of a Double Elimination, Round Robin style 1 on 1. These types of combat tournaments favor a specific type of character build and place many others are a huge disadvantage.
For example, a Rogue is fundamentally at a disadvantage for Tournament Play, even if the player would have enjoyed or even benefit the most from the prize based solely on the fact they are not an armor wearing, hp stacking meat tank with a shield. Their skill set simply does not lend to confined areas and singles combat. The same could be said for an Archer and a Spellcaster. I think this is a hold over from the real life notion that Champions are Warriors, but I feel like in Fantasy and especially LARP this doesn’t have to be the case.
The concept that you have to build your character to win a tournament shouldn’t necessarily be true. Anybody who can fight and hold their own in a Main Mod should feel like they have an equal chance to win in a more structured scenario in my opinion, or at the very least consider perhaps hosting more relevant scenarios that allow each archetype to play in their element, and all have relevant prizes. A Caster’s Dual, an Archer Showdown, a Rogue’s game of Assassin and Honor Duels for Warriors as an example.
Ultimately, you don’t want to make your players feel ostracized as a result of your desire to host a Tournament. Players both new and old should feel like if they want to participate they can, and that doing so provides a realistic chance of success. I don’t have any specific or surefire answers to deal with some of these problems, but I think that generating conversation and consideration into these things is the key to starting.
If you’ve read this far, then I want to thank you all for taking time to read through my random LARP rants and supporting me. You guys rock!
