The Art of Expectation - Designing Within Reality, Playing Within Reason
There’s a rhythm to live games that most people don’t recognize until they’re already in the middle of it. That rhythm isn’t set by the plot beats or the combat calls or the soundtracks in the background. It’s set by expectations. The spoken ones. The unspoken ones. The ones we didn’t mean to set but did anyway. The ones that sneak into the back of our minds when we hand over cash or commit to months of preparation.
For game runners, this means every decision they make is already sitting inside a container built by what the players think they’re signing up for. If you promise a small-town horror experience and show up with an off-brand fantasy masquerade, it doesn’t matter how good your content is. You broke the rhythm. If you bill your event as a political game of influence and legacy, but your core structure is built on weekend-long boffer modules, you’re not delivering the game you advertised. That isn’t a matter of quality. It’s a matter of clarity.
Managing expectations doesn’t mean aiming low. It means being honest. What’s your actual scope? How much can you deliver with the resources, staff, time, and experience you have? If you have the infrastructure for a tight two-day story arc with deep personal scenes and a bit of prop support, then own that. Build that. Deliver that with everything you’ve got. But don’t overpromise a full cinematic universe because you feel like that’s what will sell the tickets. Design to your strengths. Say what you’re doing, say what you’re not, and then do what you said.
Transparency isn't a loss of mystique. It's a sign of respect. The more honest you are about what your game is and isn’t, the more likely you are to bring in players who want that exact thing. You can still have surprise. You can still have mystery. But no one wants to spend months building a political noble for a game that turns out to be a monster-of-the-week larp. No one wants to craft an emotional connection arc for a weekend that’s structured like a combat ladder. If you want to deliver impact, then the first step is building a foundation that aligns your intent with your communication. Everything else follows.
On the other side of the story is the player—and here’s where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Because players, consciously or not, carry their own expectations into every game. And more often than not, those expectations are inflated by price, history, entitlement, and assumptions that don’t match the production sitting in front of them.
This is where we need to talk, bluntly, about value. If your ticket cost is under a hundred dollars and you're playing in someone’s rented community center or vamp site, the scope of what you should expect needs to match that. If you're paying nine hundred dollars for a three-day fully-catered game with added costuming rentals, actor-staffed roles, and a 24/7 immersive environment, then yes, the bar is higher. But you don't get blockbuster expectations at backyard indie pricing. You don’t get high-gloss festival impact at kitchen-table costs. And more importantly, you don’t get to demand labor someone else has to eat because you don’t want to pay for it.
Larp has long held a strange position. It has an expectation of being culturally immersive, creatively rich, logistically intense, visually stunning, and often priced like a charity bake sale. But the truth is, if you want sets, tools, costumes, props, logistics coordination, staff with experience, safety frameworks, accessible support, and tight narrative design, then someone has to pay for that work. If you're not willing to, then what makes it fair to expect someone else to build it for free?
This isn’t about gatekeeping or exclusivity. It's about respect. Respect for labor. Respect for time. Respect for the reality that building good experiences requires resources. And as players, we have a choice in how we show up to those experiences. We can walk in with the unspoken contract of “entertain me,” or we can walk in with the mutual understanding that we’re all here to raise the bar together.
Because that’s where the magic lives. Not in perfect props or flawless scheduling, but in the collective commitment to meet the game at its level and then lift it higher. That’s when staff and players become collaborators. That’s when immersion becomes personal. That’s when expectation becomes trust, and trust becomes payoff of really being a part of a fictional world.
Not every game needs to be massive. Not every player needs to spend hundreds of dollars. But whatever level you’re playing at, whatever stage you’re building on, make sure the expectations are shared. Make sure the value is understood. And above all, make sure the experience being promised is one you’re ready to meet from both sides of the mask. Set realistic expectations for your players, have realistic expectations of your game runners, and in the end try to raise the experience instead of expecting others to make the experience better for you.
