Previously in this series I’ve talked about using symbols in larp and using clothes to convey social status. In this article I’m going to touch on a related issue, which is his how props and costume are interpreted by the viewer.

In very few games, the WYSIWYG (What You See I What You Get) holds true even it might be aspired to.

For example, most larpers understand that that a foam and latex sword is represents a metal sword, or a nerf gun represents a real gun. This is not actually true in all larps; in some larps set in the real world, a foam sword would literally be a foam sword. A modern person can represent a medieval person even if too big to literally do so.

As an aside, one way to increase the WYSIWYG-level of the setting is to design it around features. For example, rather than larpers having to pretend that a latex sword is made of metal (which is unclear if they should pretend it to have weight that it doesn’t), one could write a setting where everyone has a severe latex allergy, and a latex sword is actually a deadly weapon.

Often however, it can be unclear to players what level they should interpret what they see. Suppose at a middles ages larp, someone turns up wearing a bright white robe, made from modern bed sheets.

• Some players might experience off-game thoughts at the sight of the robe ‘there is someone with poor costume, probably a new player who didn’t have other kit.’
• Some players might understand that garment as representing a normal white robe in-game ‘There is someone in a white robe, probably a monk of the Franciscan Order.’ (At the same time, the players might ignore that fact the player lacks the haircut of a monk)
• Some players might understand the garment as literally being what it looks like in-game ‘There is someone with shining white robes of unnatural brightness beyond any I have seen before. Perhaps this is an angel made manifest upon the earth?’

Less dramatically that this example is the question of how deeply a symbol should be understood. A heraldic device can denote simply that someone is noble, but it can also denote deeper information to those able to read it. For example, the presence of a Mermaid in the coat of arms implies a connection to Cornwall. However, if the designer of the arms was unaware of that fact then the viewer may read more deeply than was intended.

This gets more complicated at larps with fantasy elements : Because the ‘monsters’ often really are ‘people in funny costumes’ it can be prudent to put a mention in in the player briefing to preclude player characters from claiming this, at when once the monsters actually turn up. This can be a particular problem in a more modern setting (e.g. 1920s horror) where characters are actually to actively look for a ‘rational’ explanation, while hopefully not actually finding the off-game special effects behind the supernatural events.

One variation on this problem I heard about was a zombie survival larp in Denmark, where a player character doctor had an off-game function to discretely apply make-up to people during the game while checking them to indicate they had been infected by the plague that caused the zombies. However, the other players eventually noticed that people who had been checked got infected, decided the doctor was the one in-game spreading the infection, and killed them.

This can also be a problem for larps with investigation elements, where players need to look for clues at the correct level. Here are some real examples:

• ‘Is the button we found at the murder scene a vital clue or the result a player off-game losing a button off their costume?’
• ‘This letter is signed in a different style to the previous letter, with the titles presented differently and a different wax seal. Perhaps it is a forgery, or perhaps a different organiser produced it?’
• ‘There is a piece of paper lying in the bushes over there. Probably someone dropped their off-game briefing. Let’s ignore it (despite the fact it’s an in-game letter / plot clue’).
• ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that everyone here (all the characters) has the same star sign?’ ‘No, it’s probably a copy-paste error by the organiser writing the briefings.’

A related issue to this is reading the experience of other players. If a player is crying, it might indicate the player is actually upset, or that their character is, or that they are deeply immersed in their character (they really are upset, but are happy to have the experience). This was previously discussed in the Article 18 on Safe words.

Of course, much of the time humans manage to handle these different levels of interpretation without problems. This is why the occasions when it goes wrong stand out, can be very jarring. It can be worth addressing this in the briefing, especially with a range of players with different expectations on how deep to interpret what they experience.