I offer you a new term, a new definition in the ever-expanding lexicon of larp gaming and design. Necessary because as the hobby expands around us into genres and culturally-defined practices, new language creates definitions around these expressions and allows us to capture and discuss what otherwise might drift into obscurity uncommented on. Anyways – I’m calling it Hamburger larp. 🍔
Why am I calling it hamburger larp?
Well, everyone wants a hamburger sometimes. It’s tasty, it’s filling and it’s familiar. Maybe you want cheese, or pickles, maybe sometimes you want fantasy, and sometimes you want the post-apocalypse, but at the end of the meal you want to pat your belly, sigh in relief and say “wow, what a great hamburger that was” and go home.
Am I making sense yet?
Larp is big; inasmuch as it is difficult to pin down definitionally, so we’ve invented words like “Nordic”, “parlor” and “blockbuster” to describe particular kinds of experiences provided under particular circumstances. So what’s the definition of the experience I’m trying to evoke when I call it, of all things, a hamburger larp? Well, simply put, something routine and enjoyable, like a hamburger.
Recurring festivals like Drachenfest, or Neotropolis, weekly combat larps like Amtgard, monthly Dystopia Rising games and Vampire: the Masquerade yearly national events; these are all hamburger larps in their own right. Every event has the same premise, and every time you go – you’re ordering a hamburger, made by whichever organizer is in the kitchen that month, but according to a logic that’s cultural and shared.
Hamburger larps are community-building machines. Every time the players come back for another serving, they return with their previous experience and expectations, and those enhance the experience of new participants. Often this can be observed in the form of physical reinvestment (props, costumes etc.) or emotional reinvestment (mentorship, networking, community aid etc.). By their very nature, that they recur at frequent intervals with low barriers for entry, hamburger larps become natural third places, which are physical spaces where people can connect with their community not unlike a coffee shop or a library, for low and middle income players.
The result of the proximity and consistency of the hamburger larp itself, is often the development of a large and complex community of players whose mutual interest in the larp create the foundation for their relationship as friends and peers. This can, occasionally, put the gamerunner in a position where they must manage both the complex design and production process of a recurring event, while governing a population of players while not necessarily having the education or credentials to do it well. I compare this phenomenon to the local and bustling hamburger restaurant; wherein regardless of the restaurant’s purpose to sell burgers, the living human beings that pass through will inevitably create community. And that community, sooner or later, will experience conflict.
Like the aforementioned restaurant, a hamburger larp relies on its location. Likely the players have a relationship not just with the characters they play, but with the locale and trappings of a recurring event. In the case of some weekend-long games, many hamburger larp communities have held a monthly event at the same scout camp for over a decade. To the same point, other evening-long events held at the same hotel every year generate the same sense of continuity. By providing the players the same backdrop upon which to perform at each event, the gamerunner creates a canon setting in which immersion, pre-scripted scenes and complex modules can more effortlessly take place.
On the flip side, when a hamburger larp’s ability to perform at their preferred location is disrupted, it is my experience that event sales and ratings plummet. This is demonstrated effectively by my experiences organizing the American larp; Dystopia Rising. Successful chapters of this national-scale organization depend on running their events at the same location every month. When changing location, either temporarily or permanently, the drop-off in players has been proportional to the change in routine. The safety and consistency that the players of a hamburger larp crave, simultaneously makes them resistant to change in procedure. Expectation, and expectation fulfillment over and over, is baked into hamburger larp, where the consistency of the recipe is a major selling point.
As a final note on hamburger larps, they’re universally cheaper than one-time blockbuster style games. As monthly events, the player expectations around props, costumes and location should be lower. As community is a natural expression of the hamburger larp model, prioritizing it creates a self-sustaining system wherein the attention and effort of the player base uplifts the value of the game far beyond what the financial model would otherwise allow. Hamburger larps are, at their core, folk art – and always expressions of a local scene, even at their highest level of production value.
Whereas a blockbuster larp might be compared to attending a Broadway show one time, a hamburger larp is the pub you go to after work, or the community center at which you meet your friends on weekends. The expectation for transcendence and performance at a hamburger larp, while offered as an implicit function of the roleplaying experience, is diluted by the surety that the opportunity will come again, and again.
In conclusion, “hamburger larp” encapsulates a recurring, familiar, and community-centered experience. Its framework thrives on consistency, and offers players a sense of comfort and belonging, much like their favorite burger joint. The draw of a hamburger larp isn’t in grand, one-time experiences but in the steady, ongoing opportunities to engage, build relationships, and create memories in a familiar setting. It’s illustrative of how the simple, routine pleasures in gaming can be just as fulfilling as the most elaborate productions. And like a well-made burger, it’s something players can savor again and again.
Cover image: Illustration by Ester Pérez Ribada from Pixabay
