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==Bleed-in==
''Designing close to home vs. differentiation''
Do you use elements from the players’ real lives in the game (close to home), or do you deliberately try to create a barrier or distance (differentiation) between the character and player? Using the players’ own experiences or background might create a stronger emotional experience, but also has its downsides: making the game less larp and more reality. It can divert focus from the story and the emotions the story creates to the emotions the players bring with them into the game. Taken to the extreme, you might have the players play themselves, just in an alternative setting. Are you willing to lessen the player-character divide?
* [[Bleed]]
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==Scenography==
''360-degree illusion vs. modelingminimalism''
How does your larp look? Do you aim for a [[360º]], where everything the players see around them is part of the larp? Or do you use a minimalist approach, where you only pay attention to the
==Story engine==
''Competitive Collaborativity vs. collaborativecompetivity''
What motivates the players in your game? Having something to win or a goal to obtain, be it individually or collectively, can be an easy way to motivate players, especially for beginners. This is the competition approach. On the other hand, you often get more interesting stories and stronger player experiences when the players collaborate – for example, by deliberately getting their characters into trouble, i.e. [[Playing to lose|playing to lose]].
Larpwrights often have to consider the tradeoff between playability and plausibility. When making a historical game, for example, having a female factory owner might be highly implausible. However, it might be very playable – creating lots of interesting drama and intrigues for the players to use in the larp. In most games, you leave out the characters that have nothing to contribute to the drama, even though it would be plausible to have them there. Sometimes, you make unlikely twists to make the outcome of a story unpredictable. How true will you be to your setting? A plausible story might be a requirement for players to believe and immerse into the fiction. But, the players also need drama and often the least plausible setups create the most drama.
==Bleed-in==
''Close to home vs. differentiation''
Do you use elements from the players’ real lives in the game (close to home), or do you deliberately try to create a barrier or distance (differentiation) between the character and player? Using the players’ own experiences or background might create a stronger emotional experience, but also has its downsides: making the game less larp and more reality. It can divert focus from the story and the emotions the story creates to the emotions the players bring with them into the game. Taken to the extreme, you might have the players play themselves, just in an alternative setting. Are you willing to lessen the player-character divide?
* [[Bleed]]
What kind of communication style does your larp encourage? Is the natural way to interact in the game through talking, or through physical action and body language? Communication style can be adjusted through the characters, through workshops, through scenography design, or through simply telling the players what you want. A physical communication style might be more thrilling, letting the players immerse more through using all of their senses, but a more verbal game might be easier to involve new players in, as well as being more realistic in many settings.
==Representation of theme==
''Abstraction vs. realismsimulation''
How does your larp represent the reality of the setting? Is realism your goal? Or do you use abstract or even surrealistic elements to focus on the feeling and atmosphere of the setting or to highlight a particular aspect of the game? If the goal of the game is to create the atmosphere of a prison camp, you might do this in two ways: by trying to simulate an actual prison camp or by using abstract or surreal elements to create the feeling of one.
[[Meta-technique|Metatechniques]] are techniques for giving information to the players, but not the characters, during the game. Examples can be “inner” [[monologues]] that are played out during the larp. The players can hear these, the characters cannot, but nonetheless, they can be an aid for creating stronger drama. If metatechniques are used in a game, they might be intrusive or discrete. Examples of intrusive metatechniques are techniques that force all other players to stop while it happens, while a more discrete technique might be, for example, having access to a special room where players can go to act out scenes from the past or the future. This fader illustrates the combination of the amount of meta-techniques used and their degree of intrusiveness.
* [[Meta-technique]]
==Player pressure==
''Pressure on players (hardcore) Hardcore vs. pressure on characters (pretense)''
There are some things in larp that are difficult to play out. Hun- ger, violence, sleep deprivation, drinking, sex and drug use might be examples. If you want to include these elements in your game, how do you do it? Do you put the pressure on the players as well as the characters by using with hardcore methods such as real alcohol, real food deprivation, and waking people at night? Do you shelter the players from the pressure on the characters by using replacements like boffer swords, fake alcohol, and telling the players to pretend to be hungry or sleep deprived? Hungry players will, of course, feel what it is like to be hungry, but their ability to role-play and enjoy other aspects of the game might be hampered.
