Emotional Baggage by Quinn D, Susan Weiner, and Steve Vig
7 players, 1 GM
Actual Play Report
It might have been a little foolish of me to sign up for a larp that occurred almost immediately after I finished flying from Toledo, OH to Austin, TX for The Living Games Conference. I literally dropped off my bags, said hi to a friend in the lobby, and then hopped in a cab to the location the game was to take place. I was tired and kicking myself a bit for the decision, as it also meant I would be unable to have much in the way of unscheduled time while in Austin. However, I had really wanted to leap right into larping, which is a thing I only get to do rarely, and the appeal of playing a larp that takes place on a plane immediately after leaving a plane held a delicious sort of meta-quality for me.
In Emotional Baggage, a group of airline employees are on their way back from Honolulu in a plane on its way to be decommissioned. The characters have complex familial, romantic, and social relationships with one another, but have (previous to this trip) largely let them lie beneath the service. This changes when, after sounds of a scuffle in the locked cockpit, they realize that the plane is being hijacked for purposes they cannot fathom. During play characters are sometimes called two at a time out of the room to play flashback scenes, which add depth to their relationships and shift the context for the conversations they are having during the flight.
Emotional Baggage is a little different than my usual American Freeform fare in a few ways, though it still keeps costumes and props down to a minimum. It is what we sometimes call a black box larp, a sort of theatrical game which uses the lack of features in a room as a tool for flexibility. In this case, a few rows of chairs simulated the seating in the main cabin of the plane, but that was it. Unlike the transparency I normally favor, the carefully layered secrets of Emotional Baggage were essential to its play, a factor I will return to later. The last big difference for me was that I was asked to fill out a survey beforehand to help determine which character would be appropriate for me to play, as opposed to choosing or improvising on the spot. Many of the characters were homosexual, and some characters were Asian or had Asian ancestry. When I filled out my form I had left it pretty open, though I was not entirely comfortable with the idea of playing an Asian-American, and was given the role of Andrew.
As written, Andrew is a customer service agent who is in a long-term monogom-ish relationship with Tyler, one of the stewards. He was basically raised by his sister Paige, because dad left when he was little and their mother was not really there for him. Andrew owes a substantial sum to his best friend, Lin, and there is some stress over it. Also on the plane are Xiu (Sue), a pilot and Lin’s mother, Hannah, Paige’s girlfriend and Tyler’s boss, and David, a pilot who seems to have his life in order.
This was the first time I had ever played a larp in which a character I was playing was clearly and explicitly homosexual, and knowing that ahead of time gave me a chance to make some decisions about how I would play Andrew. In trying to put together his picture in my mind, I thought about friends and relatives that were homosexual, and tried to imagine what the world would be like through those eyes. I knew that I did not want him to have exaggerated stereotypical traits, but to be a caring, empathic, and friendly presence. When I first got to the larp, the man playing Tyler introduced himself to me and I said “I am enamored of you!” and he said “And I of you!” Under the direction of the facilitator we established the physical limits we would play within, which was in the area of holding hands, embracing, or having arms around the waist of a partner.
When we started playing the scenario in earnest, Andrew was frozen in place while his friends and family rushed around trying to find what had gone wrong. As a character without much knowledge of airplanes themselves, there did not seem much that he could contribute at first. As we played and I got to know Andrew and the others better, I found that this was actually not the case. The Andrew I played had a sense of humor, which he used to defuse tension and to support the people he loved. Tyler told him that while being a steward meant following a script, Andrew was good with people, and I tried to live up to that expectation as much as I could. In this way Andrew helped keep everyone together, or at least felt like he did.
This being a secrets game that I hope others will play some day, I am not going to go too in depth into the facts that emerged during play or the particular flashbacks that any of us were a part of. I, personally, was a part of four flashback scenes during the game, and each one of them had two effects. Firstly, they set the actions and dialogue that had already happened into a different context. Where what a character said may have been intended to be loving and supportive, thrown into the shadow of the flashback it may now look suspiciously manipulative or calculated. This unstable narrative was the root of a lot of the fun in playing the scenario. Secondly, phrases and experiences played out in the flashback could reappear in the main scenario, not just as references but as shared experiences that new layers of action, feeling, and thought could be built on.
A broad theme I found evoked by Emotional Baggage was the danger of comparing other people’s exterior to your interior. While many of the characters were constructed so as to feel marginalized and other in some way, to somehow not measure up to the expectations of those they cared about, their perceptions of those characters always presented them as people who had a much better grasp on how to live their lives. I found that this applied in the player-to-character relationship as well as in the character-to-character one. While to be sure my Andrew is at least a little like me, I also recognize that he is a little like people from my real life, and that I have not always been as thoughtful towards them as I ought to be.
During the debrief, the facilitator asked us to think of one thing we wanted to take with us about our characters, and one thing we would like to leave behind. Andrew, for me, was incredibly caring and supportive, and I would love to have his genuine empathy for others play a larger role in my own life. On the other hand, he often used his love and facility with people to avoid tackling hard questions or dwell on difficult problems, and could be quite selfish in that regard… a trait that we perhaps share more than I want to admit.
7 players, 1 GM
Actual Play Report
It might have been a little foolish of me to sign up for a larp that occurred almost immediately after I finished flying from Toledo, OH to Austin, TX for The Living Games Conference. I literally dropped off my bags, said hi to a friend in the lobby, and then hopped in a cab to the location the game was to take place. I was tired and kicking myself a bit for the decision, as it also meant I would be unable to have much in the way of unscheduled time while in Austin. However, I had really wanted to leap right into larping, which is a thing I only get to do rarely, and the appeal of playing a larp that takes place on a plane immediately after leaving a plane held a delicious sort of meta-quality for me.
In Emotional Baggage, a group of airline employees are on their way back from Honolulu in a plane on its way to be decommissioned. The characters have complex familial, romantic, and social relationships with one another, but have (previous to this trip) largely let them lie beneath the service. This changes when, after sounds of a scuffle in the locked cockpit, they realize that the plane is being hijacked for purposes they cannot fathom. During play characters are sometimes called two at a time out of the room to play flashback scenes, which add depth to their relationships and shift the context for the conversations they are having during the flight.
Emotional Baggage is a little different than my usual American Freeform fare in a few ways, though it still keeps costumes and props down to a minimum. It is what we sometimes call a black box larp, a sort of theatrical game which uses the lack of features in a room as a tool for flexibility. In this case, a few rows of chairs simulated the seating in the main cabin of the plane, but that was it. Unlike the transparency I normally favor, the carefully layered secrets of Emotional Baggage were essential to its play, a factor I will return to later. The last big difference for me was that I was asked to fill out a survey beforehand to help determine which character would be appropriate for me to play, as opposed to choosing or improvising on the spot. Many of the characters were homosexual, and some characters were Asian or had Asian ancestry. When I filled out my form I had left it pretty open, though I was not entirely comfortable with the idea of playing an Asian-American, and was given the role of Andrew.
As written, Andrew is a customer service agent who is in a long-term monogom-ish relationship with Tyler, one of the stewards. He was basically raised by his sister Paige, because dad left when he was little and their mother was not really there for him. Andrew owes a substantial sum to his best friend, Lin, and there is some stress over it. Also on the plane are Xiu (Sue), a pilot and Lin’s mother, Hannah, Paige’s girlfriend and Tyler’s boss, and David, a pilot who seems to have his life in order.
This was the first time I had ever played a larp in which a character I was playing was clearly and explicitly homosexual, and knowing that ahead of time gave me a chance to make some decisions about how I would play Andrew. In trying to put together his picture in my mind, I thought about friends and relatives that were homosexual, and tried to imagine what the world would be like through those eyes. I knew that I did not want him to have exaggerated stereotypical traits, but to be a caring, empathic, and friendly presence. When I first got to the larp, the man playing Tyler introduced himself to me and I said “I am enamored of you!” and he said “And I of you!” Under the direction of the facilitator we established the physical limits we would play within, which was in the area of holding hands, embracing, or having arms around the waist of a partner.
When we started playing the scenario in earnest, Andrew was frozen in place while his friends and family rushed around trying to find what had gone wrong. As a character without much knowledge of airplanes themselves, there did not seem much that he could contribute at first. As we played and I got to know Andrew and the others better, I found that this was actually not the case. The Andrew I played had a sense of humor, which he used to defuse tension and to support the people he loved. Tyler told him that while being a steward meant following a script, Andrew was good with people, and I tried to live up to that expectation as much as I could. In this way Andrew helped keep everyone together, or at least felt like he did.
This being a secrets game that I hope others will play some day, I am not going to go too in depth into the facts that emerged during play or the particular flashbacks that any of us were a part of. I, personally, was a part of four flashback scenes during the game, and each one of them had two effects. Firstly, they set the actions and dialogue that had already happened into a different context. Where what a character said may have been intended to be loving and supportive, thrown into the shadow of the flashback it may now look suspiciously manipulative or calculated. This unstable narrative was the root of a lot of the fun in playing the scenario. Secondly, phrases and experiences played out in the flashback could reappear in the main scenario, not just as references but as shared experiences that new layers of action, feeling, and thought could be built on.
A broad theme I found evoked by Emotional Baggage was the danger of comparing other people’s exterior to your interior. While many of the characters were constructed so as to feel marginalized and other in some way, to somehow not measure up to the expectations of those they cared about, their perceptions of those characters always presented them as people who had a much better grasp on how to live their lives. I found that this applied in the player-to-character relationship as well as in the character-to-character one. While to be sure my Andrew is at least a little like me, I also recognize that he is a little like people from my real life, and that I have not always been as thoughtful towards them as I ought to be.
During the debrief, the facilitator asked us to think of one thing we wanted to take with us about our characters, and one thing we would like to leave behind. Andrew, for me, was incredibly caring and supportive, and I would love to have his genuine empathy for others play a larger role in my own life. On the other hand, he often used his love and facility with people to avoid tackling hard questions or dwell on difficult problems, and could be quite selfish in that regard… a trait that we perhaps share more than I want to admit.
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