S1E6: The Folklore of Live Action Roleplay (LARP) - Tara Marie Clapper

Mar 27

Intro:
Welcome. You've got Digital Folklore.
Mason Amadeus:
Hey, Perry.
Perry Carpenter:
Hey, I'm glad you're able to make some time today.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, no, I got the place all ready for us. Check it out.
Perry Carpenter:
Oh yeah. It's super clean.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, man. After the road trip... uh... I didn't really feel like editing. I felt like I should clean the whole thing up…(Perry coughing in the background)… just in case I got a visit from the police or something.
Perry Carpenter:
Did you ever figure out what happened to our feed?
Mason Amadeus:
Okay, sure. I guess I don't want to talk about it either. Yeah. Well, I figured out that it wasn't us, I mean, which we knew. I tried to trace the IP address, but it just went to some data center somewhere, so they're probably using a VPN.
Perry Carpenter:
The thing that I'm most worried about is that it's out there in our RSS feed confusing people. We've already seen an article written about it. We've seen some people on our Discord server with all this weird speculation about what's going on. I think we just need to figure out how to kill it.
Mason Amadeus:
Well, if we just delete it, then it's gone and we don't have evidence of it. I mean, I could save a copy or I could put a copy on the website. That way it's still there, but it's just not cluttering up the feed. And then we have it as evidence.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, we'll have it as evidence. We'll be able to take a look at it at some point if we get a chance to.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay, so I'll delete it from the feed and I'll throw it up on our website.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay.
Mason Amadeus:
We've got to do the recording for the next ‘folk’ episode, right? We're going to run the interview with Tara.
Perry Carpenter:
I think that's why I'm here anyway. I know we're tired and confused. There's been a lot going on over the past few days, but yeah, let's figure out that episode.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, it's been a little bit busy. I got our setup nice. Digby's not here to bug us this time, so we get the place to ourselves.
Perry Carpenter:
Oh, that's the difference. It smells better too.
Mason Amadeus:
Why don't you sit on the other side of the table? I'll swing the mic arm around and you can sit over there and I'll sit over here.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay.
Mason Amadeus:
I'll use this mic.
Perry Carpenter:
That good?
Mason Amadeus:
Yep. You're coming through.
Perry Carpenter:
Yep, you got it. All right. Anyway, so where is Digby? Where's the little guy?
Mason Amadeus:
A little bit echoy in here. Digby is at the vet.
Perry Carpenter:
Is he okay?
Mason Amadeus:
Oh, yeah, he's fine. I mean, he's getting-
Perry Carpenter:
The last time I saw him, he was eating... I don't even know what that was over in your corner.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, but he always eats there. No, he's fine. He's getting a procedure done. It's not exactly the vet, but you'll see. I mean, he'll be back in a week or two.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, I know he helps you with your editing and stuff, and if we can get him back soon, that would be fantastic.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, and when he comes back, he's going to be hopefully a little bit more helpful if things pan out.
Perry Carpenter:
I'm scared.
Mason Amadeus:
Let's get rolling on this. So I have the tape for the Tara interview. I've got that queued up. We should probably-
Perry Carpenter:
This is the loudest chair in the world, Mason.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, I know. Well, it was quieter when there was stuff on it, but I figured I would clean it up nice.
Perry Carpenter:
…Creaky and slippery at the same time.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. It's a little bit loose. Just hold still. It'll be fine.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay.
Mason Amadeus:
So…,we got to punch in... Do the, "This is, I'm Perry, I'm Mason. This is Digital Folklore."
Perry Carpenter:
Okay.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't think we have any content warnings for this one.
Perry Carpenter:
Right. Right.
Mason Amadeus:
I guess we'll just jump in with that about LARPing.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay, cool.
Mason Amadeus:
So we'll have you set that up once we get going.
Perry Carpenter:
All right.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay. So I'm rolling and then whenever you're ready, just do your (in mock Perry gravitas) "I'm Perry Carpenter" thing.
Perry Carpenter:
All right. Hi, I'm Perry Carpenter.
Mason Amadeus:
And I'm Mason Amadeus.
Perry Carpenter:
And this is the Digital Folklore Podcast.
Mason Amadeus:
Can we get one of just, and this is Digital Folklore?
Perry Carpenter:
And this is Digital Folklore.
Mason Amadeus:
Nice. And then I'll glitch that out and we'll have the... Then we'll go into, I guess, us setting up the interview.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay.
Mason Amadeus:
So you set it up. I'll chime in.
Perry Carpenter:
All right. Let me get the narration voice.
So over the past few episodes, we've been talking a lot about folk groups and ARGs and legend tripping. And just kind of a side journey with that, someone reached out to me on Facebook and she is an expert LARPer. Her name is Tara Marie Clapper. And what we found out is that this idea of live action role play is really something that dovetails nicely with these other topics. When you think about LARPing, when you think about live action role play, you have these groups of people coming together. Those are folk groups. You have a game aspect that is both physical and virtual in a lot of ways. So there's an alternate reality game component of that. And then in physical space where they're actually ostensing into the real world and participating in these things. And that is an interesting summary of what LARPing is.
Mason Amadeus:
And something I thought was really fascinating in this interview that Tara talked about was the depth at which these live action role-play scenarios can explore much deeper topics and hard topics. One of the things she talks about in this interview is marginalized groups or oppressed people can participate in these and either be a part of a world in which that oppression does not exist for them and feel sort of more free or some of the scenarios that they play through can mirror aspects of that and help people face those things and be in a situation like that and empower themselves in different ways through the practice that they gain experiencing it inside of this fictional world. Tara puts it a lot better than I could, but it's a really fascinating aspect because it's way more than I ever really thought about when it comes to LARPing.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. I mean, Tara puts it better than both of us can because she is the expert in this. So I think we can get the interview queued up. We'll let people hear what Tara has to say, and then we can come back and maybe wrap up with a few closing thoughts.
Mason Amadeus:
Perfect. So I'll chop that up. I'll tighten that up. Maybe we drop an ad break for a minute or two and then right into the interview?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay. So then we'll put the ad break. We'll just cut out glitchy sound, glitchy sound, glitchy sound, and then the glitchy sound goes away and the ads are over and we just roll the tape.
Tara M. Clapper:
My name is Tara Clapper, she, her pronouns. I am an analog game designer, a freelance writer, and then I work full-time in the defense industry doing marketing and content creation. So I have a few different roles.
Mason Amadeus:
Analog game designer, do you mean tabletop, like board games, things like that?
Tara M. Clapper:
I am working on a tabletop game now. I am most known for designing LARPs or live action role-playing games, and I've run them at conventions. But in 2017, I actually started running LARPs online. So it works the same way it does in person. You're talking to someone else as though you're speaking in character, I'm talking to you, character to character, only gets done like on Zoom. And so my game that I started as a LARP on Zoom is a sci-fi game. So the technology is part of the game, so you're not really destroying your immersion to participate on a video chat. So that's the kind of stuff I do. So I'm most known for doing the digital live action games, and I started in 2017 and then the pandemic happened and suddenly everybody was very hungry for that.
Mason Amadeus:
I kind of want to dig into that because live action role playing is something I feel like people generally either don't know what it is or have some idea in their head that's not realistic and also that's an interesting folk group. And I'm curious, I just want to dive into LARP in general. What is LARP, I guess for people who don't know?
Tara M. Clapper:
LARP stands for live action role playing. It was originally an acronym, but now it's kind of used as just a word like SCUBA was an acronym, but now we just call it scuba. And it covers a very wide variety of participatory experiences. Everything from nerds beating each other up in the park with boffer weapons, which are padded foam swords to really high budget, immersive, low mechanics games where it's very cinematic. It feels like you're in a movie. And those are actually the kinds of LARPs that I gravitate more towards now. But I've played a whole bunch and there's a big range in between where you assume characters and play the roles like at a convention or as I design online, you could even do face-to-face on Zoom. And it ranges from the mechanical, so it would have rules more like a board game to the theatrical, which is more like going to a play except you're participating.
Mason Amadeus:
There's a friend of mine, Ben, who's very big in live action role play in Britain, and we were talking about some of the immersive exhibits or things you see at Disney where they have the immersive suites and something he said that has stuck in my brain. He was just like, "Everybody just wants to LARP but won't admit it or doesn't know it," which I thought was interesting because immersive experiences have been a whole thing.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
I'm curious about the lore of the story, of the roles that you're assuming and the ways you interact, because presumably you'd probably end up being with sort of a core group of people, but then there's these bigger events. How is it handled? Is it often taking place inside of existing universes and cannons, or is there some kind of mutual understanding of shared cannon building or lore building? How does that aspect of it work?
Tara M. Clapper:
LARP is such a wide variety of different types of experiences that the answer is so often yes and no, but usually there is some kind of set lore. And by the way, the cruise director for the Star Wars experience in Disney World is actually someone who has a LARP and immersive theater background. I know them and got to attend one of their productions. So if people are calling it a Star Wars LARP, it's largely accurate. That's definitely in the vein of LARPing. It's very, very close to what we do as a LARP.
But yeah, there's usually some kind of, just like it would be if you went to Disney and participated in the Star Wars experience, there is a shared lore there, and Star Wars is a great example because everybody kind of knows the same lore, they've seen the same movies. So when they're stepping into this consensual reality, they're dealing with the same kind of stories and the same kind of backgrounds, and then you're just kind of inserting your own character into it. And in certain systems or settings, there are moments for every character, for every person playing their character to shine.
Mason Amadeus:
I love the phrase consensual reality.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Tara M. Clapper:
Yeah. It's fantastic because everybody's kind of opting in to a shared vision. And then in a well-run experience, you also have safety rules. So along with consent comes safety rules. How do you depict combat? Is it okay to depict romance? All of that kind of stuff. How do you indicate that you want more or less intensity? Because you can get really into it and start yelling and screaming and having a fight, and the other person might be all about that, or they might kind of want you to back off, but continue the scene.
So there are different rules and mechanics for every game to indicate that. And a lot of them are put into gameplay. One of the ones that we've used in past games was if you were angry at me about the way I might have given your pet raccoon a dirty look, and I wanted to continue that angry role play and I was okay with it, I could say, "I really, really want to take this further and just end this confrontation. Let's have a duel." The indicative words would be, "I really, really want to continue, so I'm telling you like, yes, let's escalate this scene. Let's fight about your raccoon. I'm down."
Mason Amadeus:
So just using clear language and everyone sort of agrees ahead of time that that's how they're going to talk. They're going to use those phrases.
Tara M. Clapper:
And most settings have really specific phrases for that. And then also some more blunt rules. There's one that's called Cut, which is similar to in tabletop, you usually use the X card where you hold up a card with an X on it and that just says you're going to cut out that topic or what just happened. So if it's something sensitive and you don't want to continue down that path, you can do that and then cut it out, and then the game just keeps going.
Perry Carpenter:
Is there a certain personality or demographic or anything that seems to be drawn to LARPs, and even the types of those, whether that's online or offline, more than other personality types or demographics?
Tara M. Clapper:
I've found that it's largely a haven for people who have felt like an outsider in one way or another. They're marginalized for a certain reason and they want to do the best they can to bring justice to the world or experience a world in which they are not constantly faced with injustice or where they can push back about it. So not every LARP is necessarily about that or centering that, but I found in the types of LARPs that I've been playing and running and writing, that those are the people that it tends to attract. And my LARPs kind of coincided with a brand I already had going. I used to run a website called The Geek Initiative, and it started as a site for women in geek culture because 10, 12 years ago, the Mary Sue was really the only website doing that at all. And so I was like, okay, we need more.
So I started doing that on my own, got to go to conventions like New York Comic Con. It was like the ultimate nerd experience. And from there got interested. I was already LARPing and I started interviewing people who ran these more blockbuster, as they've called them, games that are more immersive, cinematic, take place on big campuses and stuff like that. Ultimately, it's people who want to tell a story and people who want to co-create stories.
Perry Carpenter:
What's the gateway? What's the toe in the water? And then how do you broaden that out after you've gotten some experience?
Tara M. Clapper:
Some people come into it from theater, some people come into it from sports, but most people have traditionally come into LARP from a background of tabletop role-playing games, most popularly, Dungeons & Dragons. Back when I started LARPing, I actually didn't really feel much of a place in Dungeons & Dragons because it was more combat focused. It's a really good system for combat. And people who ran Dungeons & Dragons, primarily men, were often more focused on do a dungeon crawl and stuff like that. So even though the LARPs I was playing were like that, they felt more inclusive to me than sitting at the table. But now because of shows like Critical Role, it's more socially permissible to be very storytelling focused and have a lot of finesse in your game mastering, both in tabletop and LARP. Once that started happening, I was like, thank you so much for doing this. Once the popular white guys do it, then it kind of gives permission for everyone to like the thing that I was doing all along.
So now these more story-focused games have more credibility because that's what it takes things in culture to get there. But the gateway for a lot of people has been role-playing games. There are a lot of people that are now exposed to it through just fringe mentions. And there are, I would say, positive and negative depictions and fringe dimensions in society. Most people now actually know what LARPing is. When I started, they didn't, but they might know the movie role models or if they're more theatrical, they might come into it as just being really open about it and open-minded because they're like, "Oh, so it's improv." Because it's very similar to improv theater.
Mason Amadeus:
Role-playing in general is such an interesting and fascinating and fun thing. I'm trying to think of tying into folklore. The thought I had had, and I bet you it's wrong and, Tara, you would know more than I if it's almost like a near realtime ostension in a way, because you're acting out a story you're telling.
Perry Carpenter:
That's I think exactly what it is. So if there's a lore that you're subscribing to, participating in, and even changing as a player, well then other people are then going and acting that out in the physical world or in the digital world. So they're taking something that's a lore and turning that into an action in some way. So that is ostension.
Tara M. Clapper:
I have so much to say about that. I'm glad you both took it in this direction because to me, storytelling is a spiritual mandate. I am not a religious person. I am very witchy. I'm very much about intentions and I'm focusing on something. And because I'm focusing on something, I'm doing more of it. I'm saying more of it. I'm conditioning myself. I'm not manipulating the environment around me, but I'm actively talking about these topics, for example, and then that is what makes my interaction with the environment or the other people build that lore and that story together.
So if you play a lot of LARPs, like say you're not into the idea of having your personal freedoms restricted, this is one that comes up a lot with LARPers who tend to often be rebellious in one way or another, or are just very interested in protecting their own rights. If that is something that bothers you and you're in a role-play environment where you can change it, then you're basically constantly conditioning yourself and putting it out there to the environment around you and practicing protecting your own rights or your own personal sovereignty. And the idea is that if you condition yourself to do that enough, then when you go out there in the world, the next time someone comes up to you and is like, "I'm just going to grab your hair," for example, and you're like, "Yeah, no, I'm not okay with that," that you'll be more comfortable saying it because you've already LARPed that so much.
So there's like a therapeutic aspect to it that's different than therapy, but can be used in conjunction with just this personal conditioning and intentions and stuff like that. If you're focusing on that and that's what you project to the world, then you're allowed to take that with you when you leave. And I think, Mason, as someone with a theater background this will sound really familiar to you, when we end LARPs, a lot of times we'll say, "What's something you want to leave behind and what's something you want to take with you?" So you could say, "I want to leave behind the fact that I played the villain and she was a terrible person, but I would like to take with me the fact that my character had very firm boundaries and felt very comfortable expressing those because I'd like to maybe be walked all over a lot less as a person in real life." So that's kind of how it works in practice, and that's something that I think a lot of actors will probably find pretty familiar.
Perry Carpenter:
That's great.
Mason Amadeus:
It's practice and it gives you a safe space to express those things or try to express those things that are difficult and then take it away. And it's also cathartic in a way, I would imagine.
Tara M. Clapper:
Extremely. Extremely. Yeah. Just like, if you play a character who gets to really yell it out or cry it out, that's certainly a thing. It's certainly something that people play for different reasons. Maybe they don't get to express how they really feel in real life. I've spoken with a lot of men who LARP that say, "I feel like I'm only allowed to express anger, but when I LARP, I'm allowed to cry or hug somebody." So that can be really good for someone to be able to have a place to safely do that. And that's my favorite kind of style of LARP myself. I like to just let it all out. I'm not saying you want to throw your real life traumas on everybody you're interacting with, but as you're building this story together, as you're creating this lore together, it follows you through life and sometimes instead of your trauma. And that's awesome.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I mean, just as an example, the D&D group I played with, one of the arcs we did ended up dealing with a lot of grief and loss in this really interesting and tasteful way. And in a lot of ways it's easier to deal with in a fictional scenario, but it also sort of helps you. It weirdly equips you, even though you know that it's not real what's happening, it sort of equips you to put yourself in those shoes.
Perry Carpenter:
Hey, we need to go to another ad break. We can't forget that people are expecting two within this segment.
Mason Amadeus:
Right, right, right, right. Okay, so we'll just stop it here and then we'll-
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, we'll just go and then come right back.
Mason Amadeus:
I'll just rewind a little bit here and we'll go back into it.
Perry Carpenter:
Sweet.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay.
In a lot of ways it's easier to deal with in a fictional scenario, but it also sort of helps you. It weirdly equips you, even though you know that it's not real what's happening, it sort of equips you to put yourself in those shoes.
Tara M. Clapper:
We all have roles and almost kind of LARP in certain ways. I mean, you definitely, you code switch. You speak differently to your guests or people you encounter in the world as you might to your parents or your kids or your teacher or your boss. We all do that and we wear different things. I mean, I'm sitting here being very comfy talking to you, wearing a hoodie, but if I went to a business meeting, this isn't what I would wear.
I even think about it as makeup. I used to not really wear makeup, even though it's kind of a cultural expectation for me to do as a woman. But once I started LARPing, I got really into it because not only is it regular makeup like you see a lot of women wear, but different characters require different makeup. Maybe I'm a ghost and I'm making my face pale, or I'm a warrior and I'm like simulating woad with some cool face paint. Well, I played that character who wore this "woad" into battle, and I wore the paint. I took it very seriously and researched what that really meant to people in the past, and then I use the same makeup. So when I had a very challenging business meeting, I wore it as eyeshadow and it looked like normal makeup because it was, and I was wearing it normally, but I was really LARPing. I was bringing something with me that reminded me of that really badass character.
Perry Carpenter:
That's really cool.
Mason Amadeus:
That is cool.
Perry Carpenter:
Set a psychological frame or an anchor essentially.
Tara M. Clapper:
Exactly.
Perry Carpenter:
And then said, yeah, because of this, I'm now able to more easily recreate the mindset of the person that I want to be in this moment.
Tara M. Clapper:
Exactly. That's just one thing you can do through LARPing, but that has been the most useful for me. I had a pretty decent job when I started LARPing, but I was not in any kind of leadership role, and I wanted to be in a leadership role in my community, and maybe it worked. And LARP enabled me to earn a leadership role in the game and learn leadership skills, which I wouldn't have gotten to do in another way. But because of LARP, I was able to try it out and step into that and then realize, oh, these are my strengths as a leader, and this is where I could use some work or maybe work better with somebody who has my weaknesses as their skills.
Mason Amadeus:
And the things that you mentioned that you like to talk about, you talked about the lifecycle of online groups and I'm assuming LARPing groups as well. What do you see as the lifecycle there? How do they begin to form, mature, and then what are those end stages when you say, hey, it's time to move into a new kind of creation or just let it end?
Tara M. Clapper:
I've found that to be a big challenge in gaming communities when they're big. It happens less with the same five people that get together and play D&D every week. In that small group, you're dealing more with people grow up or they move, or they have kids, and you can adjust around five people's lifestyle most of the time. Adjusting around big events and changes in and out of your game world for 500 people is really, really hard. And it's sad because unless there's that planned part where everyone gets like their funeral for the story, or if you were in a play, you generally know when your last performance is, and you get to have that closing, and then you have a cast party and you get to hang out with everyone and say goodbye.
When you're a LARP community or really any other community doesn't have that and there are a lot of very close relationships that often happen even more intensely and more quickly because of the level of intimacy that role playing can facilitate, it gets to be really intense. And then you add into that all the other things that everybody else deals with, whatever they're experiencing in their real life, whatever's going on politically, whatever's going on globally. I mean, it's hard to watch the invasion of Ukraine and then sit down and play D&D and just kind of push that from your mind. You might need to have a conversation where you talk about that with your group first and kind of let it out there and then get into play.
So when you've been bringing things like that into your gaming or into your community for years and years, it can just build some really, really tough, challenging situations. So a lot of groups definitely do have this lifecycle, and when you've built this kind of lore with your group, even done it to a degree where it actually impacts other corners of the internet or the real world, it's really tough to see that go away sometimes.
Mason Amadeus:
I guess it's interesting in all of the different ways that it can help and harm and how it can exist as sort of a parallel way for people to explore different sides of a narrative. But also, there's a lot of nuance to that and a lot of gray area in terms of privilege of where you're coming at that from, what your real life is like and things like that. But I think it's very interesting because when you say LARP to someone on the street, the thing they picture is people hitting each other with pool noodles. In reality, you're acting on a lot, a lot more and thinking a lot more and being a lot more intentional.
Tara M. Clapper:
Yes. Yes. And culturally, there's also so much lore that, whether it's conscious or not, get put into this new story you're creating. So I am playing a LARP in just a couple of weeks called Way of a Hero. It's a superhero game that my friend Terry Crew wrote, and you are a superhero. Well, my superhero, her name is Wild Banshee, and she is a banshee. She is from Ireland. And I'm using this cultural folklore that came across the ocean with my family and has survived through several generations and has inspired me to read more on it as a live action role-playing character and into the lore of the actual story that we're telling. And in this way, it's like, I don't have kids, I can't have kids, I never will, but I'm enabling my culture and my heritage to survive by telling this story and introducing this lore in a new way to new people that have different backgrounds than I do in a way that not only entertains them, but engages them and makes them actually care about this. Stuff like that is really rewarding.
Mason Amadeus:
I did not expect to learn most of the things I learned talking with Tara. That was such a unexpected interview, really made me think about LARPing in a completely different way.
Perry Carpenter:
And I think everybody that's listening will have learned something from this too. So thank you so much to Tara for reaching out on Facebook and making time for us and sharing your wisdom and your experience. This has been a really rich interview, so thank you.
Mason Amadeus:
Cool. And so we'll cut there. I'll put the credits and links in the show notes. We should find a way to get our Discord out there more.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, I mean, we should find interesting ways to talk about it.
Mason Amadeus:
The community we have there is really cool. There's a lot of fun discussion. There's some days where I absolutely can't keep up with it. I spend a lot of time building the Discord too, and we keep adding stuff based on what people are asking about. There is a link for it in the show notes, but I feel like we should talk about it.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. And so maybe we just put a little bit here. I'll start off. You can jump in.
Check out our Discord. There's a link in the show notes, and I think you'll really enjoy getting involved with the community that's been established and the community that continues to grow.
Mason Amadeus:
You think that's enough? That seems kind of like marketing copied. Do you think that's good enough?
Perry Carpenter:
I mean, I don't want to oversell it.
Mason Amadeus:
I guess that's true. Oh, and our Patreon, we never mentioned our Patreon.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Yeah. We do have a Patreon that's growing as well. Let me do something. Or do you want to do Patreon?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That way it will alternate.
Perry Carpenter:
Sweet.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't know what else to say.
Check out our Patreon at patreon.com/digitalfolklore.
Perry Carpenter:
It pays for Digby's vet bills.
Mason Amadeus: (with a few verbal stumbles)
Check out our Patreon at patreon.com/digitalfolklore and help pay for Dig... For
Digby… And help pay for Digby's vet bills.
I guess that covers it.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, we got Discord. We talked about some Patreon.
Mason Amadeus:
You sent me that email the other day about maybe doing unplugged sessions or something, like episodes with just the bare bones, like just running-
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I was thinking about is, and maybe we can make an announcement on this too, there's a lot of great interview segments that we have that don't fit within the narrative frame, and there's also people that enjoy the segments of interviews that we have that really want more and more of that. So I want to find ways to give really everybody in our audience a chance to enjoy the flavor of a episode that they want. So I think we want to lean into some of these more unplugged episodes more and more often. What I'm thinking is every other week interspersed with the more sound design episodes that we have now.
Mason Amadeus:
Gotcha. Yeah. My only concern would be if it throws people off as they go through it. But I mean, hopefully they would sort of pick up on it. We can figure out a way to title them.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. We may even just call them Unplugged.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Yeah. I kind of like that.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. It's better than Naked Folklore.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. It's definitely better than Naked Folklore. That's like Naked and Afraid like the Discovery Channel show.
Perry Carpenter:
Right. Yeah.
Mason Amadeus: [note to transcript readers – this is referring to something that will be in April. It is not out at the time of this episode release]
Oh, also, Arielle and the Trailer Park Podcast, they're going to pick apart our trailer, right?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
And really give us a stern teardown.
Perry Carpenter:
A stern review. So I'll give you the background on that because you saw the email chain. Arielle mentioned that some people had said that they are too nice about the trailers that are on the Trailer Park Podcast. I offered us up as a sacrifice and said, "If you want to tear apart a trailer that we know is good in a lot of respects, but also missed a couple very critical things, then go ahead and use ours."
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. And I'm a sucker for harsh criticism. I need something to beat myself up with. So I'm really excited to see what they have to say.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Now that doesn't mean go in and leave negative reviews.
Mason Amadeus:
No, please don't.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Just because we like harsh criticism... We like that harsh criticism in email.
Mason Amadeus:
Yes.
Perry Carpenter:
Reviews is a different thing. So review us if you like us. We love good reviews, and if you think we can do better, we would love to get an email from you and be able to chat about ways that we can meet whatever you think you would like in a show.
Mason Amadeus:
You want me to... I'll tuck that into the credits too. I think that's good. I'll just cut out the-
Perry Carpenter:
Sweet.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. All right, I'll hit stop. And we're good. I think we're good.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, I think that's about it.
Mason Amadeus:
I'll shoot you an email if we need any retakes.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay. Yeah. I can record some stuff in the booth later if you need it.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. And I'll just get to chopping this up.
Perry, that means-
Perry Carpenter:
Oh, I should go? Okay.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, yeah.
Perry Carpenter:
Fine. I've got snacks in the car anyway.
Mason Amadeus:
Come on. Gosh. Now I feel mean about it.
Perry Carpenter:
You could ask a person to stay for a while. It's not always just about the business stuff.
Mason Amadeus:
I'll make us some sandwiches.
Perry Carpenter:
I was hoping, do you have those Totino's Pizza Rolls that I saw you eating the other day?
Mason Amadeus:
Actually, yeah. I just got a case of them.
Perry Carpenter:
They come in cases?
Click to download a fully formatted PDF version of this episode’s transcript.

Digby is at the 'vet', while Perry & Mason review a fascinating interview on LARP...

After the tumultuous and ambiguous events at the end of the previous episode, Perry swings over to Mason's place again. The pair talk through that strange thing that happened with their RSS feed, some potential production decisions for the future of Digital Folklore, and also plan their interview episode about Live Action Roleplay featuring Tara M. Clapper.

There is so much more to LARP than fighting with foam weapons (although that in itself is extremely fun). It provides a safe space to engage in empathetic roleplay, a venue for self-improvement, and a community around the creation and sharing of lore and stories.

Tara dishes her wisdom on the subject, and shares just how transformative and important LARP can be! And now Mason wants to find a group to play with.

Guests: