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April 1 2002, Volume 2, Issue 1.1

EU debrief begun, players not convinced

By Mike Pohjola

The first major attempt for a joint European larp has now reached the debriefing stage. The LARP originally titled "European Economic Community" and later the rather silly "European Communities", earned its final name "European Union" as late as 1993. The game begun March 25th 1957 with only six players, many more joining as first reviews of the game got out.

The huge LARP project was initiated by Sir Winston Churchill, and the first GM meeting was organized as early as 1949 in Strasbourg. The long planning period was mostly a reaction to the badly written World War LARPs that were criticized for poorly motivated characters.

EU remains the second longest running international LARP of the twentieth century being put to shame only by "Soviet Union". Yet, most critics applaud EU for its emphasis on inter-character struggles instead of using cast members to play enemy states. Yet one of the main storylines in EU was the Balance of Terror, foreshadowing some great outward threat that disappointingly never came.

"The Germans told us the EU was a good game," says Finnish president Tarja Halonen repairing her boffer sword. "We applied to play, and were accepted. We'd heard rumors about the darkness rising and revolutions, but turns out all they had was some lame-ass economic plots. Yeah, the
currency changes. Whoop-de-doo. I mean, who cares, right?"

Several players have given similar critique during the debriefing session that has been going on for over a month, and is scheduled to end April 1st, 2002. Main problems seem to be lack of purpose and the erratic plots.

The last main GM Javier Solana admits to some of these accusations during a pause in the debriefing. Says Solana, "When we realized the end of the LARP was near, we got desperate. We knew we wanted to go down with a bang, so we came up with this George W. Bush character. He was your perfect villain: ruthless, stupid and self-righteous."

"Many of our characters did instinctively hate him. But somehow they never got around to doing anything about it. We were expecting a war, or at least some international conflict. But the players just sat on their butts watching him take away their liberties." Adds Solana, "in retrospect, we
could've made it clearer that he was the end villain. But how obvious should we go? Dressing the guy in black leather and calling him Evil Emperor just doesn't work in a political game like this."

Not all the participants have negative feelings about EU, though. "Sure, it wasn't perfect but they had some great ideas", comments British Prime Minister Tony Blair removing his glued-on ears. "With more characters and more plots, it would've been brilliant. The game material had a concept called the 'United Nations.' I'm thinking it could work by itself, as well. Think about it! Over a hundred players and the clash of different religions and cultures. If we could find a place large enough for that, there could really be something in that." Blair thinks about this for a
while, and then says: "Not that I'd want to organize it. It's too much work."