"The Information need of role players and LARPers"
Sara Westerdahl
Institution for library and information science
Borås University
Address of the Faculty
+4673-783 66 88
[email protected]
...
ABSTRACT
This paper is about the information need of LARPers and role players and how the library can cater to those needs. With
role playing in this paper it’s the kind of table top role playing where a relatively small group of people sit together and
have a shared story telling with individual characters on a mutual adventure that is intended. LARP is an acronym for
Live Action Role Playing and is essentially the same as previously mentioned role playing, but instead of gathering
around a table, you act the adventure out as if it was real life instead. The reason this subject has been chosen is because
this group has a great need to get information but hasn’t been properly acknowledged in public libraries. In short, the
purpose is to shed light on this group of users and what they need. The questions of issue has been as follows; What
does the information need look like for the role players/LARPers? How can this need be catered, if at all, by the public
library, taking its presumed role in society into consideration?
To get the answer to these to questions two different methods have been used. To answer the question of the information
need of the role players and LARPers, from now on only referred to as players, a qualitative interview via e-mail with
two players chosen to be as different as possible was conducted. The method used to answer the second question was a
study of already conducted research, mainly one on how a few libraries have tried to cater to the needs of the players
and how it has worked out.
The result of the research found that the players indeed have a great need for information of both the kind that is written
specifically for the games, such as rules and descriptions of the world etc. and information that helps making the
character as authentic as possible, such as researching cat behaviour for a cat-hybrid character. I also found that it is
possible for libraries to cater these needs, especially with help from the organisations that hold these events. A
collaborative effort made it possible to make it easier for the players to find the information they need.
KEYWORDS: role playing, LARPing, new users, public library
INTRODUCTION
The main reason why this paper needed to be written is because the future public library should be able to offer help and
information to all groups in society. It is impossible to force everyone to use what the library has to offer at all stages of
their lives but it is important to at least give them the chance. This, I find, can be severely lacking in some places. So
this paper was written to bring up a problem with one of the groups that may not have gotten recieved all the attention
that they might need. In other words, what I aim to achieve is to draw a picture of the information that the players need
both before and during a game and how it might fit into the public library’s role in society. This is the point where this
study has its foundation; to bring in new user groups by offering them what they need to fulfil their information needs.
The group this paper will be about is the players of role playing and live action role playing games. Role players and
LARPers are in my experience as one of them a group in society more in need of information than what librarians seem
to be aware of. Role players are referring to those who play tabletop role playing games and not other versions that are
sometimes included in the definition of the word. LARP is an acronym for Live Action Role Play and has through time
become its own word; it is essentially the same as role playing but with the players acting it out instead of telling it like
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a story. For a deeper definition see the chapter Important terms and definitions.
Role plays and LARPs often take a lot of inspiration from the fantasy genre or historic times. Those who partake in
these games find pride in getting clothing, the way they express themselves through speech and various props to make
the experience as accurate and authentic as possible. There are special books with rules, guidelines, tips and other
helpful information such as back stories and character creation information, usually one for each type of role play.
These books are often expensive and sometimes difficult to get a hold of and it is usually a preference that everyone
participating in the role play or LARP reads them before starting the game. So the problem that this group experiences
is an enormous need for information of both general and more specific kinds but that in some cases this information can
be very hard to access.
The questions I have asked myself for this paper are:
1. What does the information need look like for the role players/LARPers?
2. How can this need be catered, if it should be at all, by the public library, taking its presumed role in society into
consideration?
IMPORTANT TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
Role play
In this paper this term will be used to refer to table top role playing. This is when a group of people, usually somewhere
between three to six people gather around a table and play under the lead of a Game Master, from now on referred to as
GM. The GM controls everything in the game except for the characters created by or for the players. The aim is most
commonly to solve a problem or go on a quest or adventure where various obstacles get in the way and it is up to the
players to solve them. It is sometimes described as interactive story telling. The term role playing games is often
shortened RPG. (Bøckman, 2003)
There are several other definitions of role playing for other purposes such as therapeutic and educational. These are not
the versions that will be discussed in this paper, when role playing is mentioned it is solely the tabletop kind that is
intended. (Falk & Stenkula, 2007)
LARP
Short for Live Action Role Play and is very similar to tabletop role play and usually has similar settings and goals.
Instead of sitting around a table and share the story telling the players take on the roles of their characters and physically
act out the story. It is very similar to theatre without a script and audience. These groups are often bigger than the role
playing ones, usually with ten or more players. (Bøckman, 2003)
Player
The players are the people who have not been involved with organising the LARP or role play but still participate in it.
They are given a role or create their own characters within the rules and regulations of the game and then they play this
character for as long as the game goes on. (Bøckman, 2003)
EARLIER RESEARCH
Sadly not much earlier research has been made in the specific area studied and so the texts that have been found
relevant will be used to both illustrate what the research situation looks like and to give a theoretical foundation to this
paper. Most of the research around role playing and LARPing that has been done is on how to arrange actual gaming
nights in the library rather than meeting the needs of the players and will thus not be brought up here due to lack of
relevance for the topic at hand.
The earlier research relevant to this paper is research from the Finnish librarian-in-chief and LARP designer Toumas
Harviainen and from a master thesis written by Falk & Stenkula in the Library and Information Science field.
Harviainen (2007) has studied LARPs over a couple of years as information systems and have placed the different needs
in three categories, extradiegetic, diegetic and in-game information. These fields will be used to categorize the
information need of the players in the analysis and discussion.
Extradiegetic information is the kind of information that will be needed pre-game, such as material giving details about
the setting, characters and character creation, genre information and the mechanics of the game. In other words most of
the information needed to be able to set the game up and play it as it was intended by the original creator. Another kind
of pre-game information that is often needed is what will eventually become the character’s knowledge in game. It is
important for the player to research this beforehand to give an as authentic representation of their character as possible.
(Harviainen 2007)
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The category called diegetic contains documents constructed by the players based off the information found in the parts
belonging in the extradiegetic category. One example of this is the character sheets written by the players. The
information needed to create them is pulled from the extradiegetic documents and the result will become a diegetic
document. (Harviainen 2007)
The last category has not been given a name by Harviainen (2007). It contains the information that the characters ingame will need in what he calls “The magic circle” which is the physical and imaginary place where the game takes
place. To create a realistic image of the world as the players see it during the game it is important for the player to know
everything, or at least as much as possible, that the character is supposed to know beforehand.
Falk & Stenkula’s (2007) master thesis brings up how the public library have introduced role playing literature in their
catalogues, meaning the official literature such as the rule- and guidebooks for the games. They have interviewed
librarian’s in charge of the role playing literature section in different Swedish libraries in order to map their attitudes
towards it implemented in the library. Falk & Stenkula’s study will in this paper be used to see if the public library
could meet the information needs of the players.
According to Falk & Stenkula (2007) literature connected with role playing has recieved more attention from the public
libraries in the past ten years. The librarians interviewed for this master thesis all present different reasons for
introducing role play literature to the library. Some bought it due to users requesting certain books but most of the
librarians saw it as a chance to help develop their users’ creativity. Role playing literature was seen by them as an
excellent chance to provide the means for the players to further explore their own ability to create and hopefully help
them to write their own stories eventually. The informants also saw it as a good opportunity to expand the players’
horizons and think outside the box.
Not all responses were positive to the new addition within the library. Some informants said there was not enough
interest in this kind of literature for it to have a place in the public library but one of these blamed it on lack of
awareness due to bad marketing. Another point made against this type of literature in the libraries was that there is no
good way of securing the quality of the books since most librarians lack personal experience in this area. They said that
they did not want to bring in literature that was racist or overly violent but many of them trusted the book dealers to
have sorted out those books beforehand and some also cooperated with the local role playing organisations to find out
what they needed from the ones who will be using the literature themselves. (Falk & Stenkula, 2007)
METHODS
The method used for research in this paper consists mainly of qualitative interviews with players. This is in order to get
a more in-depth view on how they see their own information need and how/if they use the public library in order to
satisfy that need. In an ideal world the interviews would have been face to face but due to unforeseen circumstances I
have chosen to use mail interviews instead. Due to this I will lose the advantage of seeing facial expressions and body
language and it also takes longer to write a text than say the same amount of words which might make the answers
shorter and less detailed than what would be preferred. I may however, also get more extensive answers since the
informants get more time to think about them.
To find the informants I needed I contacted a LARPing organisation and asked for volunteers. I asked all members
through the organisation’s internet forum. It is hard to say how many members they have since not all registered
members are active in neither the forum nor at the actual LARPs. In total the organisation has about 50 members, active
and inactive ones, and according to the numbers on the forum almost half have a forum account. Out of these
approximately 25 members two showed interest in participating in this study. I wanted the informants chosen to be as
different as possible. Having more than two would have been better in order to get a more general view of the subject
and it would also bring more depth to the study. If more informants had been used one key point would have been to
get informants who played different genres. For example: fantasy, horror, or vampire. This would have been to see if the
information need differs from genre to genre. Since only two showed interest however I had to settle for this. One of the
informants is a girl who does LARPing but rarely participates in role playing, and is fairly new to the game. The other
informant is a boy who has been role playing for several years but only recently started with LARPs.
To get the earlier research I have used search strings with words relevant to the subject such as role play and
information need and run them through a few different databases connected to the library and information science field.
It was supplemented with going through SVEROK’s1 collection of links to different articles and studies about gaming.
1
Sveriges roll och konfliktspelsförbund. A national organisation for role playing, LARPing and other forms of gaming.
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The methods used could have been different. For instance the e-mail interviews could have gotten a better response if
they had been face to face. As it was now the answers were short, probably because writing takes more time than talking
and it was harder for me to explain what I meant right away due to not being at the same place at the same time as them.
My role as a LIS student and a LARPer could also have affected the answers. One informant gave answers from a LIS
point of view and the other assumed I knew what all game terms meant and never explained them.
It could have been interesting to have done interviews with the librarians too but since that had already been done by
Falk & Stenkula (2007) I decided to concentrate more on getting the information from where it was lacking, the players,
and use the study already made as a supplement in order to see both sides as well as possible.
RESULTS
The informants
The two informants, for the sake of their anonymity called A and B, both belong to the same group of LARPers and are
currently participating in LARPs of the same genre, urban fantasy2, but that is where the similarities end. They have
been chosen to be as different as possible to get as wide view of their information needs as possible.
Informant A is a woman in her 20’s who started LARPing about one and half years ago. One of her friends made her
come to a vampire LARP and, as she describes it, after that she was stuck. Once she was getting into these games she
also tried LARPing urban fantasy and lately she has started trying out role playing, among other games the classic
Dungeons & Dragons but also some freeform without pre-written rules and stories. A also has a connection with the LIS
world as a former student in the field.
Informant B is a man of the same age as A but who started with role-playing instead of LARPing several years ago and
has only begun with the latter recently. When it comes to role playing he has mainly played low fantasy3, medieval and
Viking games. As stated before he is currently mainly playing urban fantasy in the same organisation as A. B does not
have any experience with libraries above average and is not familiar with the field of library and information science.
While reading the answers from both interviews it was obvious both informants had answered the questions as LARPers
rather than role players. This could be because I myself is a LARPer but do not do much table top role playing or maybe
because LARPers have a greater need of information due to needing more props for their games. There is, however, no
way to tell for sure.
The interviews
Both informants express how important it is to do a lot of research pre-game so the player will know exactly what time
and world the game is taking place in. This allows them to act accordingly and not do anything to disturb the illusion.
Both claim to do extensive research about the world the game takes place in, the types of people who live there and also
read up on the other players’ characters in case anyone is well known to either their own character or the entire in-game
world. A also says she enjoys researching the background of the game in itself. For example, when she began playing
Dungeons & Dragons she read the game’s history to get a better understanding of what it was. B on the other hand
expresses no desire to know where the game came from or where it has its roots as he is satisfied as long as he finds it
fun to play. The informants have different things that they feel are the most important things to research before a game.
A stresses the point of getting familiar with the rules and the guidelines for character creation whereas B states that it is
most important to know about the time and setting of the world to get props as authentic as possible.
They both say that they research more information that is used before the game and in creating the character and props
that they need while they are playing. A says it can be good to, when playing a game set in real time, research big recent
news. She brought up the example of playing a wind demon and the ash cloud coming from the volcano on Iceland. As
a wind demon you could claim you controlled where the ash cloud went, but in order to do that as realistically as
possible, you would need to look up where the wind had brought the cloud and where it was expected to go next.
When asked if they had used the library in order to get the information they needed, A stated she did not as much as she
would like since she did not know if they had the necessary role play literature she needed and she had never even
thought about checking. B said he often goes to the library to look at books on how to make the clothes, weapons and
other props he needs. When asked further about it A does remember she did go to the library to research cat behaviour
for a shape shifting character and torture methods for another but other than that she sticks to internet and borrowing the
game books from friends who bought them.
2
Fantasy LARPs placed in modern times.
Low fantasy is mostly set in the real world and fantasy is only a small part, as opposed to high fantasy that most often
is in a completely different and the fantasy element is much more prominent.
3
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Their method of searching also differs. A says that she prefers using Google and when she needs books in the library
she looks up what shelves might be relevant and then browses through them manually. B on the other hand looks up
what books he might need beforehand through the library’s online catalogue and then brings a list on what books stands
on what shelf so he can find them quickly.
When the players don’t use the library to find what they need, the biggest media used, in my personal experience and
also according to the informants, is the internet. Like so many others a lot of information needed in-game is googled
and for the rulebooks they are often either borrowed from the few friends that can afford them or downloaded illegally
in copies that are hard to navigate through and pretty much impossible to carry around unless the player has access to a
small laptop or similar.
A can be perceived as contradicting herself, which she also did. She first claimed not to even have thought about using
the library for what she could need for the game and then, a little later in the interview, she recalled two specific
occasions where she had gone there solely to get information she would need in her character creating.
Informant A added by the end of the interview that she had never thought about the library having specific role play
books but that it would have been a great help if the library close to her had offered them since the books are too
expensive for her to buy. She said it would have been a lot of help and would make sure more of the players knew the
rules before the game starts. She also says that internet cannot always offer what she needs and that there is no good,
legal way to get a hold of the game books without spending a lot of money on them. She states that she would love it if
more libraries took the chance to offer books for at least the most common games in the area.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Information need
Harviainen talks about different kinds of information needs for different stages in the game. The extradiegetic
information such as rules and character creation guidelines, the diegetic which is player created information created
using the extradiegetic material and lastly in-game information that the character is supposed to know to create an as
authentic environment as possible.
Both informants show a big need for the extradiegetic material, especially informant A who stresses the importance of
knowing the rules and the setting several times. B talks a lot about information that would fall into this category as he
states he often needs to know the time and setting for the game in order to make props as realistic as possible. This is
something that B has more need of than A since he plays games set in historic times where A has only done LARPs in
modern/real time where the need for historical accuracy is not as big of an issue. She does point out that it is good to be
updated about issues in the real world however and to some extent this knowledge can be called extradiegetic if it is
used to create diegetic information. Otherwise it would most likely fall under the category other pre-game material.
It is more difficult to estimate the informants need and use of diegetic material. They both create characters and thus
also diegetic information in the form of the finished character sheets but other than that neither of them express any
need of creation of diegetic information. This is nothing that public libraries can offer either.
Informant A is the one with the most concrete example of in game information when she explains that she had to
research torture methods for a character with extensive knowledge in the subject. B talks a lot about researching clothes
and weapons for the period where the game is set but this is mostly to create a setting rather than using it as in game
knowledge and therefore it should probably be considered pre-game material rather than in game. He could however
use the knowledge he gets through his research as in game knowledge for his character.
I think it is safe to say that a lot of information is needed for the players of role plays and LARPs both to create the
illusion of the world the game is set in and how it is supposed to be played with rules and similar material. Both of the
informants showed that they need all the categories from Harviainen’s study. His study however is about LARP and
LARPers and not about role players but since both the informants seemed to answer the interview questions as
LARPers rather than role players it was still possible to see a connection. I believe that it is possible to see how role
players also have need of these categories of information material. There is a need to know rules beforehand, meaning
reading extradiegetic material, and the characters are also created by either the players themselves or the GM. From
what little the informants mentioned about it there seems to be a lesser need for in game information however, at least in
the traditional games where you fight monsters and find treasures since all battles are decided by rolling dice and all the
player needs to do is consider the characters action from his stats in different areas such as strength, magic and
dexterity.
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In other words it does seem as if LARPers are in greater need of information than role players even if the role player’s
needs are by no means insignificant. In a few areas they are the same for both groups as when it comes to rules and
character creation but since the purpose of a LARP is to bring the game to an illusion of reality the players there have a
greater need to know how people looked and acted in the time period set and also get the necessary information on how
to craft a lot of the props themselves. Like informant B many LARPers, in my own personal experience, take pride in
creating their own weapons and clothes and spend a lot of time learning sewing techniques and such.
In the library
The second question was about how the public library could meet the needs of the players and if they should at all.
According to Falk & Stenkula (2007) they can meet it and the librarians in this study show a positive attitude towards
bringing role playing literature into the library and also with cooperating with the local organisations to see what they
need and with the book dealers. So it does not seem impossible to introduce this type of material in the library
catalogue.
So how can the public libraries meet the needs the players have? Falk & Stenkula (2007) wrote that this is possible
when it comes to the rulebooks that some LARPs have and that the librarians seem to be able to help with these books
despite not having much experience with role playing at all. They do this by using the expertise from the book dealers
who offer these books and local role playing and LARP organisations. They know what this user group needs and can
help by suggesting to the library what books to buy so that they will be used instead of lying around and collect dust.
From the informants it also seemed as if other type of help would be appreciated too, especially on finding books and
material most public libraries already seem to have such as books about the middle ages or on sewing. The main thing
that I would say needs to be done there is to inform the users that they can get this kind of help, something that could be
done easily if the libraries and role playing and LARPing organisations started to work together. Some librarian’s said
that the demand for the books were not as big as they had expected but I am inclined to agree with this being more due
to insufficient marketing rather than the user group not needing them, the informants interviewed for this study did state
that having these books in the library would help a great deal.
CONCLUSION
In the beginning of this paper I asked two questions that I wanted to answer; what the information need looks like for
the players and how or if the public library could meet these needs. The first question cannot be answered in a general
way due to only having conducted two interviews and even though this gives a deeper view into the information need
with these two people it will not show the broader spectra but it does show an example of what the needs might look
like. From these two interviews it is clear that the need for rulebooks and guidelines is a great one in the players’
aspiration to get an as realistic experience as possible. They also need information that helps them make props and act
like the character created.
So how can the library meet these needs? In many cases they already meet the need of knowing about historical times
and in some libraries patterns to medieval dresses can be found and if not the librarians probably knows where to look
for them. The need of rulebooks and other role playing literature can also be met according to the informants in Falk &
Stenkula’s (2007) study. It might not be worth taking these books in if they will not be used but even the librarians
complaining over this said it probably had more to do with marketing than there not being a demand. It seems to be best
to cooperate with the local players in order to both get to know what they need and make them aware of what the library
has to offer them.
REFERENCES
Bøckman, Petter (2003). Dictionary. Part of Glade, Morten et al. ed. When Larp Grows Up: Theories and methods in
larp. Fredriksberg: Knudepunkt. S. 168-187
Falk, Christel & Stenkula, Christofer (2007). ”Tärningen är kastad”: Rollspelslitteratur i samhället och på bibliotek.
Borås: Högskolan i Borås, Bibliotekshögskolan/Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap. (Magisteruppsats i biblioteksoch informationsvetenskap vid
Bibliotekshögskolan/Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap, 2007).
Harviainen, J.T. (2007). "Live-action, role playing environments as information systems: an introduction" Information
Research, 12(4) paper colis24.
[Available at: http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis24.html]
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ATTACHMENTS
Questions that were asked to the informants translated from Swedish.
1. Explain what LARP/role playing is to you and how you came in contact with it.
a. What is the purpose?
b. What are the genres of LARP/role playing you have been practicing?
2. Tell me about the kind of information you need to get as a role player/LARPer
a. Rules?
b. Read up on the background story of the game?
c. Props?
d. Do you use more information in-game than off-game?
3. Have you used the library’s services as a role player/LARPer? Why? Why not?
4. What have your experiences of the library been in your role as a role player/LARPer?
a. Good or bad?
b. Did you find what you were looking for?
c. What were you looking for?
d. How did you look for it?
5. Other
a. Do you want to add anything else?
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