When developing a larp event, one alternative perspective to consider your design from is an information viewpoint. This is particularly important for mystery / investigation type scenarios, but ultimately any social situation can be viewed in this fashion.

Consider the in-game area of your larp as a semi-closed bubble; Game theorists might term this the ‘magic circle,’ which is a concept I’ll be discussing further in a future article.

When your larp begins, the player characters start off with information from various sources:

• Their own personal character briefings, either written by the player or the organiser.
• ‘Group briefings.’ e.g. in a fantasy larp, all characters from a certain culture may get a briefing about their culture, or otherwise get a brefing based on some attribute of their character
• General briefing material about the setting; some players will have read this, and some may not have bothered to.
• Player assumptions about the setting, including knowledge brought in from elsewhere. e.g. Orcs may be assumed by players to be warmed blooded mammals, even if this is not stated in the briefing material. If you describe a culture as ‘feudal,’ players may assume that a baron outranks a count and inheritance passes down the male line, even if you haven’t even mentioned such things in your setting.

The next point to consider is how new information enters the bubble:

• New characters enter with information. Classically this means NPCs, but could also include late arriving players, or players making new characters partway through the event.
• Information from items that arrive or are found. e.g. hidden in the location is a character’s diary, which when the players find it explains the backstory behind what is going on.
• Deduction. By putting together different pieces of information, they players might determine new facts. This is the classic basis of a murder mystery plot.

In larp cultures with player-created characters, often much of the focus has been on supplying information into the bubble during up-time with NPCs. The problem with this approach is that it can make the event focused on interactions with NPCs. With organiser-designed characters or characters with extensive personal briefs in advance, more of the play is centred around inter-player interactions. Consider which you want to focus on. Character briefs do take more time in advance, but result in less effort in up-time.

One possible problem that may arise is information may get hoarded, lost, ignored or never found. Be aware of the possibility of this happening. Points to consider:

• Is it a problem at all? Sometimes it’s not ‘important’ that the information is shared, or you might want to stress the puzzle solving element of investigation by allowing for failure. If playing for drama however, you might feel it not dramatic if a key point never comes out.
• Will the information simply remain unknown, or will conflicting facts gets assumed? Is that a problem?
• How many times and in what ways is the information put into the bubble? If it only enters in one place, it’s easy for it to be lost or covered up. If you want to make sure something comes out, you may want to insert the information more than once.
• It may help to think in advance how you handle this situation if it does arise. A Simulationist organiser needs to plan and prepare accordingly when designing the scenario; They can still react, by having intelligent characters (including those off-screen) react to developments. Those less concerned with maintaining setting integrity can ‘fudge’ things on the fly.

Another possible problem can be some players simply making up completely original material, perhaps as part of a gamist strategy. Some larp cultures support and encourage this creativity. Others call it ‘larp-jacking.’ (as in, ‘hijacking’). It can be more of a problem is it completely outside the scope or themes of the larp. E.g. If you are making a historical larp based around the middle class marriage market, one character suddenly accusing another of murder out of the blue may not be in keeping with the rest of the event. Often original settings are not well enough defined that player characters lack the ability to disbelieve statements due to their improbable nature.