A Tip for Newbie GMs of LARP Events

LARP as a hobby is based on trust. You cannot play with people who's only goal is to win, because they will either cheat or are so into winning that they don't realize they got a hit by a huge axe.
One thing that should be made clear to them is that there is no winning. There is living and dying, but no winning or losing.
In order to win you have to be a part of the whole event.
Their goal should be to give the best experience to your fellow players trough role-play and actions.

Having a character that is a great fighter but is ultimately silent all the time may not be considered as fun as they might think.
There is almost no role-play involved, which demotivates other players to act their part. However if the person is shy to go into character or just really loves the silent type characters, they could probably make a “Batman: Dark Knight” character.
But of course they should lose the costume and the overly forced deep voice. But a deep voice to some level could prove useful if it fits them.

Another way to enforce fair game play, if all else fails, is to use the token system, made up by a psychologist named Watson. Note that Watson used the system in schools.

In LARP, the token system enforces people for all the actions they take for the benefit of the event. These tokens can give the person an experience point or maybe be exchanged for an item and so on.

Negative tokens should not be introduced as they could demotivate people to come to the event at all.

Hope this tip helps all you newbie GMs. Have a great game!

And so it began......

Dawn breaks, war looms, the evil Lord is gathering his armies to wage a campaign of destruction upon the free peoples of the world. It is up to I, Sir Maximilan Pegasus to stop him, with my trusted band of adventurers we must gather the enchanted sword of Tek, the Shield of Way-Lem and the amulet of Subsidence and together we shall slay this abomination! “TIME FREEZE” And bam, the fantasy world fades away, the enchanted sword of Tek in my hand is a rubber sword smothered in coloured ribbons with a laminated card cable tied to the hilt, I look down and I’m wearing plastic armour and unflattering heropants, and the magical world of my imagination washes away to reveal a field in Wigan, but you know what? It’s larp and I’m a larper, it’s what I do.
I started larping when I was 17, I’d never role-played before, I’d never played D&D or Warhammer, never played WoW or any form of online game, I’d never even read Lord of the Rings, I feel somewhat privileged that I hadn’t done any of those things, I think it gave me an untainted attitude towards what larp could be, I had no preconceptions about saving the maiden fair, slaying the dragon or smiting the liche, to me it was just a new thing to try.
It was cold, really cold, 10am on a September morning, the rain was battering down and I’d been given a faux fur tunic, a mouldy old sword and been pointed towards a man and told, “You’re monstering, there’s the ref he’ll tell you what to do.” I obeyed, I played wave after wave of zombies, orcs and various line monsters and to be honest, was cold, bored and hungry. That is, until lunchtime, the teams switched sides, I got into the kit I’d scrounged up, as with most first timers, a black trenchcoat. I took the mouldy old sword, stood with my fellow adventurers and it hit me, I’m a god damn hero!
Pow, there it was, a new larper was born.