Live action role-playing games: Control, communication, storytelling, and MMORPG similarities

Abstract

Live action role-playing games share a range of characteristics with massively multi-player online games (MMOGs). Because these games have existed for more than 20 years, players of these games have a substantial amount of experience in handling issues pertinent to MMOGs. Survey and review of live action role-playing games, whose participant count can be in the thousands, reveal that features such as size, theme, game master-to-player ratio, and others interact to form complex systems that require several different groups of control tools to manage. The way that these games are managed offers a variety of venues for further research into how these management techniques can be applied to MMOGs. © 2006 Sage Publications.