With the recent Chimera larp convention, my mind has once again been on the ins and outs of theatreform larping. I’ve been thinking about the role of villainous characters in theatreform larp games – characters whose goals and actions are counter to the generally perceived notion of ‘good’, ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’, or whose means of achieving ends (however noble) is ruthless, cruel, exceptionally manipulative and or other ways just not at all cricket.

My discussion here is on a fairly specific topic – it refers specifically to the type of larp game where characters are pre-written by the game master (known assortedly as theatreform or freeform) rather than the type of larp where the players devise their own characters. In essence, the kind of larp situation where your character’s moral attitude, history and/or goals are pre-determined. The article also presumes the people involved are all mature roleplayers with the intention of interacting with the game material in such a way as it enhances the experience for all. The topic of what to do when a player starts being disruptive and negative is a whole other – quite awful – kettle of fish, and not one for discussion here.

Lastly, this isn’t a piece to discuss perceptions of morality in a larp. If you read your character sheet and go, “What a bastard!” or otherwise find it’s your gut instinct that this character is bad news, you’re playing a villain for the purposes of this piece – even if the ‘villainous’ characters have convincing motivations and reasons for being and acting the way they do (and in a well written game, they should have exactly that.)

I started thinking about the obligations of being a bastard in a larp when in a recent theatreform game, I was playing quite a manipulative and destructive character. The core problem the larp was dealing with was organised by me, and I meant active harm to two of the characters in the game. I was somewhat anxious before the game about how to play the character – after all, if I succeeded, it would mean the ruin of two characters. But then what occurred to me was, how much wouldn’t happen in the game if I didn’t act the part of a bastard?

I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s felt this way. Playing villains can be equal parts excitement of sanctioned villainy, and trepidation. And when you get a really hair raising bastard, you might feel apprehensive and wonder if you should play it as nicer than written. But here’s why I think being a bastard is essential to theatreform larping, and why you’re being a great roleplayer when you play a good bad guy.

There is, I think, a natural anxiety attached to playing a bastard. Many of us are by nature quite nice people, and very few of us act in a way that is deliberately detrimental to others’ happiness. When we’re cast in the role of a ‘hero’, or at least, someone with a morality that lands on the scale between ‘good’ through ‘neutral’ and stops somewhere before ‘villainous’, we find ourselves in a role that is more familiar to us. We’re in a position of ostensible integrity, and we’re struggling against forces that try to thwart us. Being a bastard is quite alien to most of us.

I’ve played larps where the player of a particularly bastardy character did not play their character with the demeanour or agenda that had been written for them. In both cases, the pressure from the character pursuing their agenda with mine would have generated conflict and roleplaying, and its absence left my character floundering somewhat. During the game, I had no idea what was missing. I knew something was, there was a distinct lack of direction in my game, as the circumstances that were designed to develop the pivotal crisis of the character did not come to bear. In one case, it was meant to drive forward a struggle with a key secret, and in the other, the villainous character’s agenda would have been the catalyst for the character’s struggle between living life for herself or for someone else. I think sometimes we don’t want to play the bastards for fear of ruining someone else’s game. In both those cases, I wish they had gunned for their agenda because I would always (in roleplaying!) rather lose a fight than win a fight by default.

In another recent theatreform game, I wasn’t playing what I would describe as a good-guy, but there were definitely more villainous bastards in the game than me. I was part of stopping two of them. One group decided to, three quarters of the way through, enact their grand plan, and gave it every shot of succeeding – and when mine and some other characters turned up to thwart them, took their loss with grins. Another, when I caught him, gave me the satisfying roleplaying moment of looking terrified.

My husband once played in Ryan Paddy’s game, “The Queen’s Justice” in the role of the Prince, the representative of a tyrannical regime, who was something like Louis XVI meets the Spanish Inquisition. He said he knew going in he would have to be a bastard, but only after the game started did he realise how much of a bastard he was going to have to be – the game’s central focus is about revolution against an oppressive tyranny of which the Prince is the representative in the game, and his behaviour had to be powerful and audacious enough to drive spark the revolution plot. The harder he pushed, the more the revolutionaries were galvanised into action. He found it a fascinating experience. When I asked him about it for this piece, he said, “It’s a particular thrill being a catalyst. You’re the one controlling the length of the fuse on the powder keg. You do know it’s going to go off – and you know that once the Prince gets gacked, that’s when the real drama starts to unfold. Everyone lays their cards on the table, all the backstory, all the drama. It’s certainly a thrill, and an odd wave to ride.” He observed that in a game like “The Queen’s Justice”, survival isn’t the goal anyway – it’s a concept game exploring certain themes and characters and that “it’s a way of synthesising a part of life where you suddenly have to make a decision.”

A theatreform larp is a complex machine of carefully positioned dominos aligned to strike each other, trip wires, weights and counterweights, trapdoors and nooses. It relies on anticipated actions and reactions, and while every larp writer knows that there’s just no surefire way to predict what the players will do, they do try ensure that if character X needs information Y, there’s at least one (usually more) ways they can get to it. But they still need players to try and stay within the confines of the machine they’ve built: it gets a lot harder for things to work when players start independently reinterpreting characters.

If larp is about improvisation, how do we reconcile this? While freedom of action is one of the hallmarks of larping, there’s a social contract in place to be true to the integrity of the story. The same as you would not (as a good larper) start treating a comedy game as a slasher horror movie, or start treating an intense personal drama as a comedy, so to there are sacrifices of creative licence when taking on a pre-written character. It is the challenge of the roleplayer to take elements present in the character and carry them forward. The larp writer surrenders the fate of the character to the player as of the moment the game starts. They do not own the end of the character. In that same way, the player does not own the beginning of the character. They surrender the beginning of the character to the writer, but they own the end. We must, at least, start in the place of overlap, to take the character in the direction that it was written in, at least as a starting point. Redemption is always possible – but it must be the interest of the character, not the player, to invite that element.

In many ways, theatreforms rely on the bastard characters to be the flint to create the sparks which in turn light the kindling, and igniting the game.

In a case where you find yourself cast as a bastard, and are unsure or a bit nervous, it’s worth talking to the game writer and getting some guidance on how far you’re meant to push it, and then give it a go. After the game, talk to the players of the characters you were being a bastard to, and get their take on how things went – and it never hurts to meet out of character to show there’s no malice!

In the end, it’s always fun to play a hero, but our times as heroes would never be as fun without the people who thoughtfully and with consideration play a bastard for the heroes to succeed against. The game writers design certain characters to push dominoes and twist arms. And that’s why, in especially theatreform larp, it’s good to be bad.