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Working the Room in a LARP
Topic Started: Dec 7 2016, 08:28 AM (31 Views)
Shannon Lopez
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"Talk To Me" gestures
  • Avoid looking at your phone, writing things down or otherwise appearing busy. Unless it's something that would make an easy talking point (typically won't ever happen with phones but may with books or drawings since it's acceptable to ask about such things). People will be too polite to bug you when you look busy.
  • If you are seated on your own, look around at the people around you and make plenty of eye contact. While you can nor or do the eyebrow flash in response to eye contact (quick raise and lower of the eyebrows), such an acknowledgement might not be enough to get an immediate response. Call them over by name or wave them over. Or take the eye contact as permission to go over to them. Understand it won't always work (sometimes people are busy) but if you're polite about it your efforts will be rewarded more often than not.
  • Get up and say hello, what you up to? What do you think of blah? Folks love being asked for their opinion.
  • Avoid putting too much effort into people who are currently heading somewhere. They're probably busy. Feel free to flag your interest in talking to them later as they walk past, "Hey Dawn King, can we chat once you're done?" Even if it's just to say hello and how are you going later on.
  • If you're sitting, have an open seat next to you to encourage people to sit down on it. Make sure that seat and the spare in front of it doesn't have a bag or book which other people might mistake to mean that someone has reserved that spot.
  • If you want an in-depth conversation, get them to sit. Standing encourages mingling so don't be surprised if after a few minutes they head off to talk to someone else if they're standing.
  • It's a LARP and there's often urgent matters at hand that people can suddenly realise they need to attend to. It may be hard to maintain a seated conversation for a long time, but it'll typically hold longer than people walking off.
  • It's best to have an open set of three or more chairs, as people are then less likely to leave you on your own until someone else comes up to chat to you.
  • Sitting in a group of three chairs in a triangle formation (or more in a circle) will encourage larger groups to join you.
  • If you stand with both of your feet pointing at one person, your body language will be directed at them and other people will avoid talking to you or won't talk to you very long. An open stance involves pointing one foot at your conversational partner and the other foot pointed at the empty space where a third person could join you at any time.
  • If someone tries to join your group and there's not enough space, step back a bit and give them room. No one can be a full part of a conversation if they are even partially hidden behind someone in a circle. This also matters if someone pulls up a circle. Move a table if you have to but give them room to join in.


"I Wanna Be Alone" gestures
  • Sit down and focus your attention on a phone. While idle doodles and even reading can work, they can also provide talking points. People aren't encouraged to read over someone's shoulder if it's a mobile phone. Plus most phone use is OOC and therefore people are even less likely to comment on it and will assume that you don't want to be disturbed.
  • Sit down in the corner facing a wall, or side on to the wall, so that you're not facing the crowd itself. The less eye contact, the less open you will appear.
  • Stand in the corner with crossed arms and shoulders slouched slightly, glare at people when they approach or avoid eye contact.


Posted Image
POWER POSES

Drawing Attention & Convincing Others
  • Power Poses increase your credibility (to a point, some power poses are very informal and may not work in every situation) and will help you draw attention to yourself and your words.
  • One of the troubles with working a room that's cold by immediately launching into a speech is that you'll get the Naysayers already saying No.
  • Approach them first on an individual basis, especially your chief influencers, and see if you can get them on side. That way when you need to make your point more broadly you'll also have allies.
  • Understand that some people will never be on your side in a particular situation. Accept this. Focus your energy elsewhere.
  • Encourage them to point out that they agree with you. This is called Amplification. Too often people only pipe up when they disagree and not when they agree.
  • Don't ask the question to something you don't have the answer to (politically, that is). You can if you need more information, but if you want to get support you need to already know if you'll get it before you even ask the question! Why? Because it undermines your credibility if people keep refusing you all the time. Plus a "Yes," creates more "Yeses."


Other Tricks
  • Introduce yourself! People might be busy but the players won't take issue with an introduction. Even if they know you, come over with a smile and say hello.
Edited by Shannon Lopez, Dec 7 2016, 08:50 AM.
Sam (CtL) ... that quiet kid with the headphones who is also loud and tries too hard to be friendly.
Evzenia Radovek (SW) ... nothing like a paladin of lies to provide all your surgical needs.
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Shannon Lopez
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LARP Patterns go through a lot of details about how setting up a room can really affect the emotional roleplay.

Problem: Whatever means you want to use, average conversation size has a huge impact experienced intensity, flow of events, and behavior of ideas in the game.

Solution: Craft average conversation size to your desired outcome. This can be done with explicit rules, SPATIAL LAYOUT, plot dynamics, or a combination. Because larp requires getting people on the same page quickly, the smaller the conversation size, the more interactions that are unique, nuanced, and/or subtle will register and be responded to.

Instruction: Trying following this guide for conversation sizes.

  • 2 people: Personal. No interaction is accountable to any other interaction, so a lot of truly new directions get born in this cluster size.
  • 3 people: Intense. Work gets done, few external imperatives create distraction. Use this cluster size for a focused, intense, progress-advancing game with a sense of accountability but still plenty of room for conflict. This is a favorite because it makes for really interesting interactions and has high criticality (see RESPONSIVENESS & STABILITY) at any cast size under 22-ish.
  • 4 people: Affable. Inclusion/accountability beats progress, but relationships are strong. Backstabbing within an interaction is possible. So this is good for high-political tight-knit games. Allows factionalism and parity, which can be good or bad.
  • 5+: Chill. At this point, you’re really just all just hanging out together in character. For IN-GAME COMPLEXITY reasons, a cluster size of 5 will tend to be too loose for games of under 30 people. Howeve, it’s great for tight faction / plot binding in larger games, especially because it keeps regular interactions at a size in which plenty of sophisticated action can still happen with a cluster. At this size people will literally be gathering in circles.
Edited by Shannon Lopez, Dec 7 2016, 09:56 AM.
Sam (CtL) ... that quiet kid with the headphones who is also loud and tries too hard to be friendly.
Evzenia Radovek (SW) ... nothing like a paladin of lies to provide all your surgical needs.
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