Leaving Mundania (18 page)

Another solution to inflation is to remove money from the economy. The staff accomplishes this through taxes and fees. Each character owes five gold in taxes each year, payable to an in-game tax collector, and anyone who wishes to sell goods at Market Faire must pay a five gold fee to obtain a yearly trade license. The staff also removes gold from circulation by charging for certain items. For example, the Dragon's Claw Inn serves coffee, hot chocolate, and instant lemonade for a nominal in-game fee. If a smith wants to establish a smithy or a priest wants to purchase an altar, plenty of in-game gold is required. NPCs sell trinkets and other items in exchange for gold. Some coinage also goes missing when players leave the game either permanently or for extended periods, for example, while going to college in another state. Real-world economies usually suffer from
hoarding or inflation, but Travance's economy suffers from both hoarding—because characters don't have to spend money on essentials—and inflation—because characters can potentially afford the high prices and because the merchants don't have perishables they must sell, which usually triggers steep price declines.

Cash-flow problems also plague the game, since hoarding is part of the larp mentality. Some players love carrying jingling bags of loot and will hang on to their coinage. James buys silver and gold coins for use in-game, hands them out to new players as starting money, and doles them out to NPCs to serve as “treasure” should their lifeless goblin corpses be searched. When players hoard coinage, a liquidity problem develops; there is no physical treasure for the monsters to carry into the woods. The game bank helps ameliorate the cash-flow problem—players withdraw and deposit their physical funds at Logistics. The changes in bank balance are recorded on character sheets, and the recovered coinage is sent out into the woods in the pockets of monsters. Matt speculates that this may actually exacerbate the problem of inflation as in-game money is not tied to the actual coinage available. Using deposited money as monster loot pumps an unlimited amount of money into the game economy, money that does not have anything productive backing it.

At Knight Realms, inflation isn't only a problem in terms of money but in terms of levels. Characters who have been around for all or most of the thirteen years of Knight Realms' existence—and there are many—are powerful and fearsome. The challenge for staff is to entertain both the level 60 and the level 1 characters with monsters that are interesting and fun. Send out an NPC geared toward the higher levels, and the low-levels, or lowbies, will have no chance to hit it and will die in droves. Send out a smaller monster that the low-levels can affect, and a high level player can kill it with one blow. In the latter situation, it is considered good manners for an upper-level player to stand to the rear, letting the lowbies do the job and helping only if they get themselves in serious trouble. Knight Realms attempts to manage level disparity by sending out different sorts of plot, plot that can be resolved through role-play, for example, as well as plots that are geared for high- or low-level characters. During main mod, the town
might fight a powerful boss with a bunch of minions, with the idea that the lowbies will take care of the minions while the higher-levels take care of the boss. It's also common for an NPC to roll into town, say, “We've got to fight the goblins in the cave,” and then add something like, “The enthusiasm of the inexperienced will be most useful in killing them.” This translates to, “This mod is geared for people who are level 15 or under.” In this circumstance, an experienced NPC uses his out-of-game knowledge to help select the low levels. It's a safe bet that those barbarians he's never seen before are lowbies, so they're asked to join the quest. Likewise, an NPC might go to a seasoned player and say, out-of-game, “I need people under level 10. Can you help me?” and together they'll round up whatever low-levels are around the inn, using role-play. High-level mods are denoted in the same way, with characters being told that it is “very dangerous” or “only for the experienced.” Sometimes during the speeches before lay-on, a GM will advise players that main mod is going to be broken into two parts, one geared for people of level 30 or higher. Sometimes during main mod or other large mods, a magic field will suddenly appear that only allows characters of a certain level or higher to pass through to fight the monster or monsters inside. At times, the lowbies feel excluded by this type of mod entrance, but ultimately, it's the staff's way of controlling the crowd, creating interesting monsters for the higher levels, and preventing mass character death.

The economic situation of players also causes conundrums. Knight Realms has a diverse player base. There are tweens who arrive with parents, a lot of teenagers and twenty-somethings, a smaller but devoted contingent of players in their thirties and forties, and a few players in their mid-fifties. The occupations of these players include retired entrepreneurs, IT professionals, lawyers, union organizers, high school teachers, and waitresses, plus a number of high school or college students. Along with these differences in age and profession comes some economic disparity, and with economic disparity comes the risk that some players might be able to buy in-game status, and that doesn't play into the notion of fairness. It wouldn't be fair, for example, to walk into Knight Realms, lay down $5,000, and expect a level 50 character—that is something that has to be earned over time.
On the other hand, Knight Realms is a for-profit business, and so, as a sort of compromise, it is possible to pay to advance your character slightly faster than usual—James allows players to purchase one point of build at each event for an extra ten dollars.

James manages disparities in wealth through several channels. It is possible to “buy” certain in-game items with actual money, using Market Faire as a money-launderer. A player can turn out-of-game cash into food or other goods and then, through Market Faire, turn those goods into in-game gold. For this reason, Knight Realms has a rule: if it costs more than ten dollars, you can't sell it for in-game money. Players can also purchase an in-game benefit through armor, which provides a defensive benefit. Players receive armor points, according to the Knight Realms rule book, “based on the armor's type, craftsmanship, and looks.” Wear a great-looking suit of full body armor—which can cost upward of $500—and you get more points. Of course, when players wear real plate or chain mail, the immersive atmosphere of the game is enhanced; the rule is there as an incentive to raise the standard of costuming, not to punish those who can't afford armor. Donations of money and time are also rewarded with service points, which evens the playing field. If a player can't donate money or latex weapons, perhaps she can make some time to organize the costume trailer or clean up after feast. Finally, with a large mortgage and a new camp to trick out, James has offered pledge projects to players—donate money in increments of $250, $500, or $1,000 to help improve an aspect of the camp and receive thirteen, twenty-five, or fifty build and a magic item.

Even the fantastical world of Knight Realms is subject to the laws of economics and, of course, the laws of nature. In an obvious physical sense, gravity still exists at Knight Realms, although for druids, turning into a bird and flying is possible. The laws of physics have been somewhat preserved inside the rules system as well. To weave a spell or pray to one's god for aid, a player must expend mental energy, for example, and a character's physical prowess is a combination of a player's natural strength and agility and skills bestowed by the rules, for example, the ability to deflect any one hit. A high-level fighter likely has several advantages over a low-level fighter—a lot of health
points, a weapon that hits for a lot of damage, and so-called tag skills that allow him to disarm his opponent, resist certain attacks, or provide other benefits. However, a clumsy player will blow through these advantages faster than a skilled and agile athlete.

Unlike the rules of economics or physics, however, the rule of law in Travance is inconstant and disturbed by the modern sensibility of its players. Knight Realms is set in the 1200s, and a hereditary monarchy rules the land of Kormyre, though none of Travance's nobles inherited their titles. Rather, Travance's lords earned their titles, working their ways up from squire to knight to lord.

The medieval realism of Travance has limits. Unlike the real denizens of the 1200s, Knight Realms characters bathe, get their vitamins, and abstain from bubonic plague. Lords do not behead everyone who displeases them. And the townsfolk have suspicious tendencies toward democracy and the press, suggesting that everyone's voice ought to be heard, defending beleaguered Chroniclerites from censure, and grumbling about the directions the nobility shouts to them during battle, many players taking a “you're not the boss of me” attitude because during the week everyone spends time pleasing their bosses and aren't we all here just to have fun?

In-game racism also produces liberal-minded anxiety. Although racism is written into the game, the concept that all men, dwarfs, and gypsies were created equal is hard to shed. The rules might stipulate that most people in the Kingdom of Kormyre think that wild mages are part demon and should be killed on sight, but apparently only the most tolerant citizens in the country have arrived in Travance. In other words, few players practice the racism dictated by the rules, maybe because tolerance is so ingrained in players out-of-game, maybe because racist assumptions—even imaginary ones—create real-life discomfort.

This discomfort is heightened thanks to the fine line between portraying an emotion and feeling an emotion. Larp, with its alter egos and complex imaginary worlds, can create confusion between a player and a character. Sometimes it's unclear where the character ends and the player begins, particularly if a larper has really thrown him- or herself into the role. When a character tells Portia he hated
a story in the
Travance Chronicle,
sometimes I have a gut reaction of anger and disappointment, which Portia channels in-game. Perhaps I'd be better able to separate the two if I were a more experienced gamer. Add the racism written into the game to the emotional mire, and the potential is explosive. It's possible to use the prejudices ingrained in the rules to be mean to a player one dislikes, but it's also possible to use these prejudices to heighten a scene or a rivalry between characters. Over my two years at Knight Realms, I most often noticed racism between players who were friends or at least long-time acquaintances out-of-game; in other words, racist role-play most often occurred in a friendly context where it had the least chance of causing permanent offense.

Sexism also plays a subtle role in the game's social dynamics. Chivalry and its sexist assumptions are part of knightly culture, and that culture is part of what draws gamers to larps such as Knight Realms. The rules of the game make no distinction as to gender—men and women can and do play characters of every class. While the population of larpers appears—based on my anecdotal experience of the community—to skew heavily toward men, Knight Realms has a surprisingly large population of women, one that has grown over the years, according to James. He hasn't kept track of the numbers, but I'd estimate that not quite half of his player base is female. And yet, despite the game's strong female population, few women have achieved titled in-game power. In the course of the game's thirteen-year history, there have been only a small handful of female knights—six out of about forty knights—and only two women have been appointed ladies of the land, out of about twenty-five appointed lords, though five women have married into noble titles in-game.

After discussing the in-game hierarchy with a variety of Knight Realms players of both genders, three reasons for the paucity of female leadership emerged. Generally, the lord slots are filled by characters and players who have been fixtures in the game for many years, and in the early days, Knight Realms skewed more dramatically male, so the pool of experienced male players is significantly larger than the pool of experienced women. Second, many women in the game play “support-class” characters, roles sometimes denigrated
as “scenery” or “girlfriend-class,” characters such as healers or priests, not the frontline fighters favored for positions of power in a medieval-esque setting. Perhaps related is the fact that many women in the game do not appear interested in amassing power or politicking their way into court.

Kristen is one of a handful of women to attain political power at Knight Realms. She asked that her last name be withheld since she works in a small academic field and thought an easily Googled connection to larp might hurt her chances of becoming a professor of comparative religion one day. Kristen began playing Knight Realms while she was still in high school. She had been a fan of fantasy literature and movies growing up, a love that grew to encompass tabletop role-playing games. In high school, a coworker at the pet store where she worked invited her to a one-day Knight Realms event, which she attended with her boyfriend. She remembers the flirtatious environment of the game; it'd been the first time anyone had really hit on her, and she found it flattering. Soon she was coming to the monthly events as the druid Elawyn, and she'd broken up with her old boyfriend and gained a new one. The split, like many romantic splits in a small community, earned her some enemies. For several years Kristen floated along in-game merely understanding the rules that directly applied to her. She thought of knowing the rules as a guy thing. She wasn't a great fighter either. The friends she'd made at Knight Realms encouraged her to do better, she says. They told her that she could do it, that she was capable; and as it turned out, she could and she was. Kristen wanted to move up in the in-game hierarchy, so she worked hard at memorizing the rules and became one of the first female rules marshals. For more than a year, her long-time boyfriend would run her through weapons drills to help her learn to fight better, and now she's known in-game as a frontline fighter.