Adelaide Roleplaying Community Inc.

So you’ve signed on to play a political game where multiple characters, and often factions, compete to achieve their objectives through social manipulation and acquiring, and putting to good use, important resources. What are some of the ways you can stay occupied and have a good time in the political field?

Have a goal.  This is essential because political LARPs tend not to have consistent intrusive plots that force your attention and give you something to do.  Instead there’s space for you to champion your own in-game agenda, undermine your enemies, uplift your allies and aim for positions of power (or simply try to boost an ally into that seat). 

Downtime Desires. Is there a downtime system where your character can attempt things between games that you submit to the Game Master?  Perhaps there’s a goal there that you can struggle to accomplish.  A nightclub to buy which you might use to later host a gathering.  Or libraries that you want to collect until you have them all. This gives you the opportunity to clash with other characters.

Remember, too, to have less lofty goals.  Perhaps you want to collect a secret, no matter how minor, on each of your fellow conspirators.  Or you might want to give all of your allies a well-chosen gift and must find out what they like.  Perhaps you just want to introduce more pomp and ceremony into the average session.  This kind of activity can really add flavour to your character as well as give you something fun to accomplish.

Accept your losses.  This can be hard when you try your very best and use all the tools at your disposal. The truth is that even the best-laid plans sometimes fail. Accept the feeling of frustration or disappointment, realize that you can do everything right and your character still can fail, and acknowledge that a great story can be made from charting a rise and fall as much as pure success. It can help to think about how your character would cope with failure, and think that through, as it’ll help to think of it as part of your character’s story rather than consider it a personal failure of your own.  Even the best political minds don’t succeed sometimes.

Play a character different to yourself. This gives you scope to try things you wouldn’t consider and make mistakes, on purpose, that suit your character’s ideology and personality. This not only introduces more interest and intrigue into the game, especially if you’ve played a few different characters already, but it helps separate your decisions from your character’s when your character fails at a goal.

Get to know the other players so that both of you have a frame of reference for each other as people, outside of the game.  This is especially important if your two characters are likely to clash in-game as it can be difficult to avoid instinctively regarding them as holding similar traits to their character if you don’t know any better.  If your character screws over someone else in-game, it’s important to go up to them afterwards and sincerely thank them for the roleplaying experience.

Have goals that require other people’s assistance. Bonus points if you don’t need a specific person, just people in general, so that you can reach out to whoever is available.  If your goals never rely on allies, it cuts down on the social manipulations you can attempt, and makes it difficult to get involved in areas where political LARP can really shine which is in its interaction between characters. So think of your political goal as a product you want to sell, and find someone to sell it to.