Larp Design Series (5 of Series): Now Be Blunt With Your Players

Running a LARP community isn't just about writing plot, setting up sites, or coordinating mechanics. It's about people. And when you're working with people—especially in high-emotion, collaborative environments like LARP—you have to get real comfortable with communication. Not just the fun kind. Not just the celebratory kind. The blunt kind. The kind that comes with discomfort and the risk of not being universally liked. The kind that sometimes feels more like a necessary chore than a cathartic connection.

In the business world, there's a concept from the book Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. It’s about tackling the hardest, ugliest, most uncomfortable task first—before it eats up all your energy avoiding it. That frog, in LARP, is communication. Especially the kind of communication that involves telling people what they don’t want to hear. When you’re running a game, avoiding the hard conversations doesn’t make the problems go away. It just gives them room to fester.

Transparency is your greatest asset. That means being honest about your intent, your process, your capacity, and your expectations. It means setting the tone early and often about what people can expect from you—and what you expect from them. It means telling your players when you’re taking a break. When you're stepping back to care for yourself. When you're focusing on one area of the game and letting another rest. When something needs improvement, or when you know something didn’t land the way it should have. You don’t owe everyone your private life, but you do owe the community enough clarity so they’re not navigating in the dark. The more you tell them, the less they have to guess.

Of course, you can’t personally tell every single player everything in the exact format they prefer. That’s not sustainable. That’s not reasonable. What you can do is offer a consistent and well-organized method for those who are invested to stay informed. Whether that’s a Discord announcement channel, a monthly digest email, a pinned document, or a combination of all of them—what matters is that the effort has been made and the door is open. After that, it is perfectly acceptable to say, “This information is available. It is clear. It is accessible. It is your responsibility to read it.” If someone needs help understanding, you or your team should clarify. But you are not obligated to communicate every detail in every preferred medium just to avoid being misinterpreted.

This is where community and communication gets tricky. The part most people avoid. The part where being a leader means stepping up and saying what needs to be said, even when it’s going to make someone uncomfortable. It means calling attention to unhealthy patterns. It means naming the behavior you’re seeing. It means addressing the social undercurrents that erode community health if left unchecked. You don’t need to shame people. You don’t need to lecture. But you do need to find your voice and use it when it matters.

Because if you don’t say it, someone else will fill in the silence for you. And chances are, they’ll do it with half the facts and twice the drama.

Let’s take one example I’ve seen across the board—from small-town parlor games to large-scale blockbuster events. Communication breaks down between players. Let’s say you have a player who has an issue with another attendee. Maybe it’s an in-character conflict that got too real. Maybe it’s a non-game personal grievance, a social misunderstanding, or some kind of emotional bleed. Maybe someone was too aggressive with a shield or came off curt in the moment during boffer combat.

What happens far too often is that instead of addressing it directly and speaking as adults, one or both individuals choose the path of perceived least resistance. They quietly distance themselves, vent to others and spark online drama, or escalate it by expecting staff to step in as a go-between. Suddenly the issue becomes “a problem with the game,” or “a community issue,” or something staff is now expected to manage—despite the fact that no direct conversation has ever taken place between the people involved.

Now let’s be absolutely clear so this idea isn’t taken out of context. If there is a threat, a danger, or even a vaguely credible perception of danger to a member of your community, that is not something you shrug off or delegate. That is your responsibility to address—immediately and decisively. If someone is being harassed, stalked, threatened, or harmed—physically, emotionally, or psychologically—you don’t ask them to talk it out first. You take it seriously. You investigate. You include outside authorities when needed. You act with care, with urgency, and with the full understanding that safety is not optional.

And if you run a game—whether it’s a backyard one-shot with twenty friends or a weekend event with a hundred people at a rented site—you don’t get to pass that responsibility off. Not to the people who wrote the rulebook. Not to the publishing company. Not to the developers of the software you use. Your event, your players, your scenario—you have to own it. That doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. But it does mean you have to be present.

Those danger-danger situations are not what I’m talking about in the previous example. What we’re looking at are the quieter, murkier interpersonal conflicts. The “I don’t like that person” moments. The “I had a bad vibe from something they said” dynamics. The “we don’t get along and now it’s awkward” tensions that often get elevated into structural problems when no direct communication ever occurred. These aren’t dangers. They’re discomforts. And while discomfort should never be dismissed, it also shouldn’t be mistaken for harm. Discomfort should be acknowledged—but not used as a reason to bypass personal responsibility.

This happens over and over again. And every time it does, the culture shifts a little further away from accountability. Staff become the default conflict negotiators. The community becomes hesitant, wary, and performative. And worse, the actual problem—the real human connection that could have been salvaged—is lost. You cannot build a strong community if people aren’t willing to talk to one another. And you cannot run a sustainable game if your staff is expected to be a surrogate for every hard conversation players avoid.

The hard part is that once this pattern sets in, it takes more effort to undo than it would have to prevent. It takes policies. It takes reinforcement. It takes saying, “No, we’re not going to step in until you’ve spoken to the other person first—unless someone’s safety is at risk.” And yes, you may get pushback. You may have to guide people through their discomfort. But it’s worth it. Because the alternative is a game where staff are social referees, where players offload their communication responsibilities, and where emotional transparency becomes weaponized instead of respected.

I know this firsthand because I’m trying to address it right now—with my own successes and failures. I don’t know exactly when the conversation should have happened to prevent where we are. But I know it should have been long before now.

Being blunt with your players doesn’t mean being cruel. It doesn’t mean being dismissive. It means respecting them enough to tell the truth. It means giving them the context they need to understand the game’s direction. It means setting boundaries that keep your team healthy and whole. And it means making it clear—to your staff, to your players, to yourself—that when someone is behaving in a way that runs against the health of the game or the community, they should be encouraged to have the uncomfortable conversation. Because if you don’t, and they don’t, you might as well throw out half the work you’ve done to get to this point.

Frogs. For eating—not just for frog cults anymore.