LARP

Why Your LARP’s Safety System Will Fail: A Hacker’s Guide to Engineering Player Safety

I’ve been thinking a lot about authority and safety teams in our LARP games. My mind started drawing parallels with my own background in software engineering and security. Part of my job is thinking about complex systems, and how to control the power of users in those systems.

I began to see problems in the ideas and standard policies being proposed. I began to see failures in my community and elsewhere. So, I started to think –

Can you take lessons from the world of hacking and security, and apply them to the meat and bone world of LARP communities? What happens when you start thinking about community safety like a hacker? What problems with our current approach are revealed?

“Can what we are creating to protect people actually be used to make things less safe? How do we stop that from happening?”

Hacking is about how systems can be made to turn against themselves. I want us to start thinking – can my LARP organization be hacked? Can what we are creating to protect people actually be used to make things less safe? How do we stop that from happening?

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