After a LARP event

After a LARP event, it always takes some time to fall back into your daily routine. In this blog, I explain what potential struggles might be and offer a few options on how you might deal with them. Keep in mind that a feeling of melancholy after a LARP event is completely normal, and proves that you had a good and enjoyable event!

After living in a grand, immersive, epic story for an evening, weekend, or perhaps even longer, your daily life can suddenly feel very small and disappointing. You no longer need to be constantly ready to solve major problems and engage in battles, but instead, you are confronted with the more mundane tasks of daily life, such as housekeeping, grocery shopping, and your (home)work. Additionally, at a LARP event, you are often supported by a large group with the same goals as you are trying to achieve. This group of people supports you mentally, physically, and emotionally when you need it (sometimes even when you haven't yet realized you need it). When you return home after the event, all this disappears. This can sometimes result in a few days where you feel downcast and lonely. LARPers often call this the after LARP dip. You are physically tired because you have demanded a lot from your body, but do not underestimate the mental and emotional exhaustion either. Usually, the after LARP dip lasts a few days to a week, after which you feel much better again. 

An after LARP dip can be very intense when it catches you off guard. For the physical fatigue, it is fairly obvious what you should do: keep moving gently to keep your muscles warm, and ensure you get enough sleep, as you probably have some to catch up on. Also, continue to eat healthily, with enough variety and vitamins. What can also help to counteract the mental and emotional setback is not to cut off all contact with the LARP group immediately after the event. Often there are Discord groups where you can continue the fun digitally for a while. Sometimes other participants live nearby, with whom you can meet in the week or weeks after an event to discuss the happenings at the event and what it meant for your character, but also for you personally. This way, you can slowly get used to life outside the LARP group. Additionally, events are sometimes organized between the official events. This is often arranged by a small group of participants instead of the game masters and organization, and can, for example, revolve around a special event for which there is less time during the overarching story and thus during the official events. Such a special, as it is often called, can also be seen as a one shot in Dungeons and Dragons and usually lasts shorter than an official event. By participating in this, or perhaps organizing something yourself, provided your LARP organization allows it, you have the opportunity to bring your LARP character to life again if you find you have to wait too long for an event. Note: if there are no game masters present at these specials, the events are often not included in the official story of the LARP. So if you want your one shot to have an effect on the entire LARP, invite at least one member of the game masters.

Another remarkable phenomenon that can occur after a LARP event is character bleed . This means that you adopt certain traits of your character in your daily life. For example, if you play a character with a strong accent that differs from how you normally speak, it can be difficult to return to your normal accent in the days following an event. Or if your character is very paranoid and draws a weapon at the slightest provocation, you might catch yourself reaching for a weapon that is no longer there. This phenomenon is often considered amusing rather than annoying, so not everyone will make a strong effort to reduce character bleed, especially if you have many other LARPers in your immediate surroundings.

However, it is not possible or desirable for everyone to adopt too many traits of your LARP character, especially if you have to return to work or school directly after an event, and you do not want to stand out for the wrong reasons. Character bleed is naturally related to habituation. If you fully immerse yourself in your daily life, your LARP traits will quickly diminish. If you want to get rid of your character bleed as soon as possible, seek a lot of social interaction with people who have nothing to do with the LARP world and keep reminding yourself that your character is not the same as your LARP character. Do not be too strict with yourself: your environment will surely understand that it takes a few days before you are completely back to your old self, especially when you explain why you might react differently than you normally would.

After an event, it is important to evaluate about how you experienced this. You can do this purely for yourself, but it is also good to do it in a group, so that others also know how your experience has been, and vice versa you also know this from others. In an evaluation, you can discuss things like elements in the story that you were happy with, or less happy, or situations you encountered during the event that you couldn't discuss immediately, or situations you found very pleasant and want to emphasize further. You can also consider what type of game you enjoyed, and whether your character is on the right track to achieve his or her goals, or if you need to make changes to the skills you have, or how you handle them. When you make this clear to yourself, but especially when you share your feelings and experiences with others, you can ensure that in future events, better consideration can be given to what you need. Additionally, it can be very nice for your fellow participants to hear when they have contributed something positive to your LARP experience. This ensures that they also know when something they tried worked out well, which gives them a good feeling and may lead them to be more daring next time. Within the aforementioned Discord groups, there is often a special place for this, where you can share all the beautiful, special, and funny moments of a LARP event. You can also mention the specific players, NPCs’s, or game masters who contributed to a good event for you. 

The organization and game masters of the LARP also always appreciate hearing all feedback. You are often asked to check out your character. This can happen on-site at the end of the event, but you may also be asked to do this by email. I recommend that you definitely take advantage of this, because the more the story writers know about your character, but also your OC experiences and wishes, the more they can take this into account when writing for the next event. Besides your check-out (email), there is a possibility that you will receive an evaluation form a few days after the event. On this, you can indicate what the positive, neutral, and negative points of the event were for you, so that it is also known from the organization what needs to be adjusted, and what should occur more often. You can also use this for yourself to assess why certain points stood out, how they came about, and how any negative aspects can be improved, and also how you can contribute to this yourself. 

Once you have completed your assessment of the event, and have also heard the assessments of the other participants, it is time to translate this into plans for the future. You can start thinking about what your character's long-term goals are, and what you would like to achieve in the short term, and also how you plan to approach this. You can also assess for yourself as a player, NPC, or game master what OC changes you can make for the future. This can range from something very simple like bringing more socks or snacks or ensuring you drink enough to more extensive plans, such as IC learning certain skills, delving into a certain type of smaller or larger game, adjusting your costume (possibly for IC reasons), to grand sweeping decisions that can influence the entire LARP, such as taking an IC power position within the world, planning a war, or perhaps even making the decision to create a new character. Once you have mapped out these kinds of plans for the future for yourself, you can start from the top again with the preparation for a LARP event.

In the next series of LARP blogs, I delve a bit deeper into the player's side of the story. I will guide you through the steps of the character creation process in a couple of blogs, mention a number of handy tips for (beginning) players, and also dedicate a blog to creating a game for yourself, when there is temporarily little coming your way from the game master or when you cannot find a connection with it. 

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