5 Types of LARP Play Style
All playstyles are valid.
Drama Club
Your character is a nuanced bundle of pathos and well realized details. You don't want the test outcome that leads to you winning, you want the one that makes the best story. Pros: Your DT RP, if you do it, is novel quality. You understand how to communicate through costume and phrasing and props, and your willingness to chase story at your own possible expense makes your games more dynamic. Cons: You take a long time to accomplish things as they need to be scened out, and your commitment to character means you will live on bad decision island. This can tank people who play competitively as an ally and are dealing with you eating an energy field bigger than your head... AGAIN. Plus you don't necessarily handle not having story control any better than someone else handles not winning.
Cloak & Dagger
You play social, but you play competitive. You stay in character, like Drama Club, but you also aim to win most of the time. Pros: You can make for a more stable social dynamic than Drama Club, and are generally better at keeping other people alive. A more conservative approach means that you are more likely to seek advantage in the setting the ST set out than behave so explosively you become plot in your own right. Cons: Eventually people start noticing the boons always flow in your favor. Drama Club may eventually stop wanting to be the butt of your schemes and Killbox Hero will probably just punch you on sight. Not enough real flaws and vulnerability can cause people to reduce you to numbers. At your worst you have a hard time understanding that not everyone finds losing all the time (and you usually beat them because it’s what you invest in) fun.
Action Figure Chess
You rarely story outside of a live game, but you are wise to social dynamics. You are competitive, and although you may have your own personal private IC dramas, you see social rp time as a coin to spend. Pros: Your ability to yadda yadda gets things flowing more smoothly and helps in a leader of a larger game. You bridge the story and math people, being bilingual in social politics and math mechanics. Cons: Taking a step back from your character to treat them like a pawn means that when you PvP the bleed is instant as it doesn't feel like your character doing it but you doing it. Story oriented players can get frustrated at the lack of RP, while your level of removal can frustratingly blur IC and OOC.
Killbox Hero
Mediation is a dirty word. Math is your friend. Characters come and go (and you do flesh them out, you like your imaginative play too) but story for you involves pummeling the other players with traits- narration comes from the reaction to statted choices. Pros: Like Drama Club you take big risks that serve to add conflict to story. You add risk and tension and usually reach a sticky end cheerfully, being the least likely to find it unfair if you die. Although woe betide the ST who throws fuzzed or bad mechanics at you. Cons: Your ability to mathematically demonstrate might makes right terrorizes pure Drama Club, who spend their points on what sounds appropriate for the character. Murder means that you often go through carefully constructed story like a cannonball through a doll house- you don't care about nuance. Setting is to be beaten into submission- if PC can't mechanically make you, you ain't gonna. At your absolutely worst case expression of this play style, you forget not everyone plays hard math and loves heavy conflict.
Along For The Ride
You don’t take LARPing seriously, and can enjoy it without a large investment into either winning or having a hugely detailed, emotionally charged story. You are as much a part of the game as anyone else.
Pros: Who. Cares. Of all the players you most embrace that LARPing is supposed to be about fun. You show up and have your assigned roles, and aren’t particularly grumbly about much. You may not even ever get bleed.
Cons: When the other four types take everything very, very seriously, your lack of fervor can leave other players baffled. At your worst, you check out of what everyone else is doing or tend to even skip DTs. While DC prides themselves on things like “never throwing a chop!” you may not even bother with tracking or spending exp purely out of lack of competitive zeal - even to your own faction’s detriment.
Seem reductionist?
The here is caveat that people play blends or may split two play styles between people they trust and acquaintances. For example a lot of people who play C&D or AFC will go DC among close friends they trust to be vulnerable with. Nordic favours DC but DC is in and of itself not better- bitter bleed fights get fought over story control just as much as character death as perpetuated by a KBH. Everyone at their worst forgets everyone else has different play styles and as a skilled ST your job is often balancing everyone. Each adds their own thing to the game- AFC is often very good at connecting a larger narrative together, while KBH and DC, at their best, take losses better than C&D, but C&D generally makes smart on the ground choices. AFtR require the least effort, but are the most likely to not add much chaos on their own.
They can also stack together in interesting ways- a KHB/DC combo flips between hammering through the social structures with mechanics and letting the explosions be bigger through working with other players to make a better story