I think this was the best LARP I’ve ever written. It’s a very traditional Superhero world with the twist that it’s very “corporate-controlled.” Big conglomerates own the rights to various heroes and the heroes themselves spend as much time at celebrity events as they do fighting supervillains. The villains include twitch streamers and some of the heroes really only do what they do for the fame. If you’ve seen/read The Boys this might be familiar to you. I really hate The Boys, (and most anything Garth Ennis has ever written) because there’s so many interesting questions and ideas in the story but it’s all executed so poorly. This was my attempt to make something better.
So the LARP itself took place over two days, with the characters having access to “twitter” and “instagram” over Discord for them to interact with the broader internet (played by me and the co-writer). Virtual LARPs can be hard, since it’s hard to feel immersed and it’s harder to just walk up to someone and talk to them or do anything. I tried to fix this by trying to make strong character connections and having a shit ton of things to engage with at all times, (in-character interviews, a lot of twitter interaction, causing chaos in the city, and then just letting the characters interact with each other via both text and video channels.) I think it worked pretty well because of it, and people seemed to really enjoy it. I think it contained some of the tightest relationships in any LARP I’ve written and all the characters had both strong wants and fears while still having some idiosyncrasies.
I also wrote this behemoth of a project in the span of a month during the first month of the pandemic. I think it was my way of trying to stay connected with people and have things that I’m excited about. Because of the timing, I think, it became sort of a touchstone for a lot of the people in the game and I think people connected with it a lot because of that. It’s a mix of the timing and the (then) novelty of it that I think it went really well.
I think it’s one of those things that would be impossible to have in person, and I think that’s what makes the best virtual larps. It has to take advantage of being virtual to make up for the fact that it’s hard to feel immersed if you’re in your room on your laptop. I think Masks managed to make up for that.
I really love superheroes and I think there’s this weird mix of camp and seriousness that you need to maintain for a good superhero story. You need it to feel hopeful and larger than life while maintaining the soap operatic elements inherent in the double life parts of superhero fiction. Worm is one of my favorite pieces of superhero fiction and so Masks took a lot of the idea of very specific powers with creative uses, as well as a world that treats superheroes like celebrities in a different way that The Boys. It was a story with a lot of political overtones, and I think it went well enough. I think the biggest lessons from Masks were threefold. I think I learned the importance of little details. The sheets were incredibly long because they often featured little scenes between characters. It’s not enough to say “Hey, you two are friends.” You need to give a reason. You need ot give examples. You need to give a jumping off point. I think another important lesson is just that hype is important. With a LARP you want players talking to one another. You want them to feel comfortable existing in a space. You want them to be fans of their characters. I think hype allows that to happen and I think hype is something that Masks did well that I need to do better in current games. Finally, I think that it just highlighted the importance of little, lighter interactions. Even the most emotionally heavy characters were interacting with ilikebread (an icon) on twitter. They were advertising their new brands of lipgloss and arguing with haters online. It was something silly that makes everything feel more well rounded and lets emotional moments hit harder.
Masks, in my mind, is the best LARP I’ve written because of all the reasons I’ve listed. But I think it’s also because if there’s one thing I know, it’s superhero stories. I’ve been raised on that stuff. I know it inside and out, so writing something about superheroes feels as natural as breathing.
Also, the fact that I wrote Masks 1 implies a Masks 2 which I am currently in the process of writing. Exciting.
