Live-Action Roleplaying Organizations
Before roleplaying arrived on the scene, however, the concept of live-action “let’s pretend� already existed in the public mind. Theatre, after all, has actors playing pretend roles on a live stage. Improv theatre entered the American mainstream in the early 1950s when Paul Sills and David Shepherd adapted a theatrical exercise developed by Viola Spolin, a recreational director working with immigrant children in neighborhood theatre in Chicago. A thespian in England’s Royal Court Theatres named Keith Johnstone began an “impro� movement known as Theatresports at about the same time. Corporate business trainees, psychologists and historical re-enactment groups have used and continue to use the assumption of live-action roles for a variety of simulative purposes.
In 1966, “a group of science fiction and fantasy fans � in Berkeley, CA organized theme parties in which attendees dressed and acted as if they were in the middle ages. After discovering that there was an enthusiastic audience for these sorts of gatherings, the group named itself the Society for Creative Anachronism and spawned multiple chapters across the country, orchestrating events that allowed participants to engage in a variety of medieval activities, from costuming to dancing to fencing to cooking.
This intersection of SCA activities, college roleplaying gamers and press reports provided fertile ground for the birth of pioneering groups such as the Harvard Society for Interactive Literature (SIL). Despite this group’s turbulent history, its splintering and its reincorporation as the Interactive Literature Foundation in 1988 and later as the Live Action Roleplayers Association in 1999, they are still recognized as an important force in the development and popularization of a variety of live-action roleplaying game formats. Today, one can find mass-market live-action roleplaying rules and scenarios in large bookstores, including the popular How to Host a Murder Party Game series by Wooden Horse Books that has been in publication since 1990.
