The Most Controversial Topic in LARP: Flagging and Banning

I’m going to outline how Mooney Bin does banning and flagging first, and then I will delve into the philosophies behind our policies because I am sure not everyone wants to read my incessant moralizing, but honestly? I, like everyone else in this community, have a lot to say on this topic!

How we do it:

1. We release a flagging list with the names of all the participants of the game, both staff and player. This isn’t a perfect science, since we often add people between when applications close and the game actually runs, but we do our best to announce additions, and always update the participant list.

2. We solicit players to flag people they find problematic or that detract from their enjoyment of the game. Yellow and Orange flags require no investigation, and we do our best to simply keep these players apart, either by casting them separately or putting them in different runs of the game. You can yellow flag anyone for any reason, we don’t really care unless you have SO MANY yellow flags that it becomes hard to cast you according to your preferences.

3. When a Red Flag (aka “this player is harmful to the game and people around them”) comes up we do a full investigation. We protect the flagger’s anonymity unless they choose to waive it, but we do require first hand accounts of the flagee’s behavior in order to ban them from a game, and we do reach out to the accused to get their side of the story. 

4. When we choose to ban someone, we try to be as transparent as possible while still protecting the flagger. If you are banned from our game, you will get a letter telling you that you are and telling you as much “why” as we are able.

Necessity of Safety Measures:

We feel responsible for the people at our games. LARP is an intimate and vulnerable space. Trust or lack thereof can make or break an experience, and people can be downright traumatized by another participant’s bad behavior. We strive to create environments where people feel deeply, and our games handle content that can be triggering. We also charge a decent price tag for the experience. We feel that it is our duty to ensure the safety of our games.

But what “safety” means, and what steps are reasonable to take to achieve it, are some of the most controversial topics of the LARP community.

To us here at Mooney Bin, we believe that our participants should be protected from themselves, other players, staff, and environmental factors such that they will not be subject to unreasonable physical, emotional, social, sexual, or reputational harm. How we achieve this is built into the safety features of our games, but also in who we allow to be players and staff. The latter is the far more controversial because (as a fascinating article I just read on LARP Women Unite outlined) exclusion causes harm too. Taking that into consideration informs why and how we conduct investigations, and the rights we are committed to providing for the accused even while we are committed to protecting their accusers. 

Protecting Victims:

I am going to talk a lot in this article about how to handle perpetrators/the accused, so I really need you to hear me in this section when I say that believing and protecting victims is a cornerstone of our philosophy. We ALWAYS start from a position of belief when accusations are brought forward, and we fully acknowledge how hard it can be to speak up. Creating a space and building enough trust in your community so that victims will actually come forward is so important as a LARP runner. How we treat the concerns that are brought to us has ripple effects far beyond what we actually see in creating the community we want to support.

Now, why am I going to talk so much about the accused? Because it gets real messy sometimes determining WHO is a victim. We have heard (and even been on the receiving end of) some over-rotation in our community where the first person to raise an issue is always considered the victim.  

It takes a lot of courage to Red Flag another participant in a game, especially when you know the LARP Runner is going to reach out and ask you for details. Re-hashing something that caused you enough pain to demonstrate that someone is unsafe for a community is a terrible thing to have to do. You hate these conversations, we hate these conversations, no one feels good afterwards.

Yet unfortunately, the flagging process can and has been mis-used and even weaponized. Simply banning someone because they were red flagged without gathering details is not an option for us. It is thankfully rare, but we have experienced the flaggee being abused by the flagger, and in unravelling the story had to change our perspective on who the victim was. 

While we strongly believe in starting from a place of belief whenever concerns are brought forward, protecting and supporting victims is more complicated than simply supporting whoever raises their hand first.

First hand accounts:

To ensure our bans are accurate, we do not issue bans based on hearsay. We are happy to listen to second hand concerns and file them away for staff awareness, but unless we have a first hand account a ban is extremely unlikely. Stories just grow too much in the retelling, even if everyone has the best of intentions. The person delivering the first hand account does not need to be at the game, but we do need to hear from them.

Rights of the Accused:

We are (thankfully) not the US judicial system, but we do believe that the accused and even the guilty deserve our fair and compassionate treatment. This is REALLY HARD to balance with protecting the victim – which is our first priority of course – but we do what we can. Mostly because there are different types of people and behaviors that can result in a ban from all or certain games. If there is a possibility for a person to rectify their behavior and learn to be a better community member, we want to give them that opportunity. While the most horrifying bans come from violent or predatory behavior, those are by far the minority of issues that we handle. Most potential ban situations result from misinterpreted neurodivergence, poor communication skills, or people in the process of learning emotional regulation or how to be a good roleplay partner. While this does not excuse the harm they have inflicted on the victim, it also does not mean that they can’t change or be a safe player in the future. 

Therefore (god I sound like a lawyer) the rights we assign to our banned participants are:

1. You deserve to know that you’ve been banned. Many LARPs make use of “shadow bans” where someone is simply relegated to the waitlist and never comes off it. We understand. That is emotionally way easier on the LARP runner, but we find it unfair to the ban-ee. Especially if there is potential for improvement in their behavior.

2. You deserve to know why you were banned as long as disclosing such will not endanger the victim(s). This gives people the opportunity to rectify their behavior and potentially be re-integrated into the community at a later time (depending on the severity of their offence of course)

3. You deserve a chance to tell your side of the story (again caveating that protecting victims comes first). Gathering the perspective of all sides is important to use, and we try to do so whenever possible.

Types of Bans:

Not all bans are forever! And honestly, reasons for bans are multitude. The horrific “this person is a physical/sexual threat and will abuse people at game” is incredibly rare. We also ban people for:

• Being a danger to themselves. AKA not being in tune with/prepared to draw their own boundaries, repeatedly pushing themselves, or refusing to drink water/eat/take their meds to the point where they are in physical danger.

• Being incompatible with the type of game we are running. Either overly competitive, overly sensitive, unwilling to engage in negotiation, or something else specific to the style or content of the specific game.

• Known to spread false and malicious rumors about players or staff. 

Additionally, keep in mind that afterparty behavior is taken into consideration as well. That is still our event, and we still feel responsible if you have a few drinks and can’t keep your hands off other players.

Now, not all bans are forever. Because we try to be transparent in the “why” behind the ban, we try to give space for people to correct their behavior. One of the most gratifying things is issuing a ban that says “We have reports that you tend to engage in XYZ behavior at games. Because of that, we are not including you at this game, but we encourage you to apply to our events in the future, keeping this in mind” and then seeing that person in a future game, absolutely excelling. 

We also issue “fix it” tickets. When a person has engaged in problematic but not bannable behavior, or we don’t have a first hand account of bannable behavior, we will reach out to the person to say “hey, we’ve heard disturbing reports of XYZ behavior at other games. Our code of conduct does not allow this. Please ensure that this does not happen at our game” and then we warn our staff to be on heightened alert for this behavior. That way we address community and behavioral issues early and correct it, rather than excluding someone.

Reputational damage/exclusion

Why do we go to all this trouble? Surely if we have a stack of rumors against a person it would be easier to just believe the zeitgeist instead of conducting an investigation and perma-waitlist them so they don’t threaten to sue us when they learn they’ve been banned. 

Yes. Yes it would be. Oh god, yes it would be.

However, while we seek to protect our players from harm, issuing a ban is harm as well. Exclusion is painful. Many people who have been banned from games describe it as psychologically devastating. Because of this, we owe it to our community members, no matter how problematic they are, to be as sure as we can be before inflicting this on them. Does our approach cause the victim(s) some pain as well? Yes it does, and we acknowledge and regret that. But I re-visit my former point about determining the victim being complicated sometimes. 

Toll on Staff

Which brings me to my final point. Handling flagging and bans can be an incredible toll on staff. Because of that, we respect every other LARP’s decision on how to handle their own safety measures. We do what we feel is right, and are willing to spend the time that that requires, and make the hard and unpopular decisions that that entails. We would rather burn our own reputations than allow someone to endanger our players, and we strongly believe that our community will support us in the end.

At the end of the day, we want to feel good about our decisions. Only then can we say we did everything we could to support the safety of our players and staff, and only then can we stand up confidently on this most controversial of topics and make our case with full faith in our own policies.