All that Jazz
We have now for a while been reading about Mike Pohjolas new lajv (larp) All that Jazz (homepage in Finnish and English). I think it will be a fun event, but I won't go because of my problems in dealing with reality. But a couple of things have struck me.
Firstly, they tell us that emotional realism is the style of play. Hooray I say. This sounds like what you can expect from a Pohjola larp and that is also a quite good description of the type of play that fits me. But parallel with this you have the hilarious world description, where all players come from planets descibed as The goth planet, The western planet and The gangsters'n'jazz planet. Earth is the leading distributor of media in the galaxy and other societies choose parts of our popular culture. I can't really figure out how this background in a good way will benefit this style of play. I would really like to hear the reasoning behind this!
Secondly, isn't it nice to see Pohjola, the writer of the Turku Manifesto saying something like this:
Firstly, they tell us that emotional realism is the style of play. Hooray I say. This sounds like what you can expect from a Pohjola larp and that is also a quite good description of the type of play that fits me. But parallel with this you have the hilarious world description, where all players come from planets descibed as The goth planet, The western planet and The gangsters'n'jazz planet. Earth is the leading distributor of media in the galaxy and other societies choose parts of our popular culture. I can't really figure out how this background in a good way will benefit this style of play. I would really like to hear the reasoning behind this!
Secondly, isn't it nice to see Pohjola, the writer of the Turku Manifesto saying something like this:
However, in contrast to several of my previous larps, I urge players to take the enjoyment of the other players into consideration and play in a style that encourages participation.
posted by Sven Holmström at 8:48 pm
3 Comments:
I think the best way to answer this question is by listing pop culture references:
Buffy.
Firefly.
Star Trek.
Farscape.
The X-Men.
Good question! Let's continue the discussion on the larp's forum at http://xy.utu.fi/fourcolor/foorumi/
Maybe I could also try to give actual arguments. The point of calling the style emotional realism instead of social realism or just realism, is in precisely that the focus is not on trying to create a world that's as believable as possible. (Our world hardly is, either!)
The attempt is instead on creating characters you will genuinely care about, and see how they interact with each other. Melodrama, if you will, only done right.
"Melodrama, if you will, only done right."
wow
I think I get you. I guess i would have done it differently myself, but looking at it this way it sounds cooler than before.
Now I will check out the forum.
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