Business Is the World's Biggest LARP

I'm a geek. A nerd. I own it. And in my particular corner of the geekosphere, there's a thing called LARP — Live Action Role Play.

If you're not familiar, picture Dungeons & Dragons but cranked up to eleven. People create characters with levels, skills, and backstories. They craft costumes, develop their own phrases and dialects, form alliances, and engage in elaborate political manoeuvrings. But unlike sitting around a table rolling dice, LARPers physically live their characters. They dress up. They fight. They barter and trade.

It's wonderful. It's immersive. It's ridiculous.

And it is nothing compared to the biggest LARP on the planet: working in business.

The Costumes

Every good LARP needs costumes. In fantasy roleplay, you might don a suit of chainmail or a wizard's robe. In the corporate LARP, you wear a suit. A proper one. Maybe a tie that costs more than your character's starting gold.

On casual Fridays — the corporate equivalent of a tavern rest day — the costume code relaxes. Chinos are permitted. A polo shirt, perhaps. But don't you dare show up in actual casual clothes. That's breaking character.

Some guilds have even adopted the "smart casual" dress code, which is the corporate world's way of saying "we don't know what we want, but we'll know it when we see it." It's the alignment chart of office attire.

The Language

Every LARP develops its own language. Elvish. Klingon. Dothraki. But none of these constructed languages hold a candle to the sheer creative density of corporate jargon.

Let me translate a few phrases for the uninitiated:

• "Let's circle back to that" — I have no answer and I'm hoping you'll forget.
• "We'll action that" — Absolutely nothing will happen.
• "Let's take this offline" — I disagree with you but I'm not going to say it in front of everyone.
• "Synergy" — I needed a word and this one sounded important.
• "We need to move the needle" — Profits are down.
• "Let's leverage our core competencies" — I have genuinely no idea what we do here.
• "We're pivoting" — The last plan failed spectacularly.

In a fantasy LARP, speaking in-character is admired. In business, it's required. Drop the jargon and people look at you like you've broken the fourth wall.

The Levels

Every RPG has a class system. Fighter, Mage, Rogue, Cleric. Business has its own:

• Level 1: Intern. You carry things. You make tea. You have no abilities yet.
• Level 5: Junior Developer / First Line Support. You've learned a cantrip or two.
• Level 15: Senior Something. People ask for your opinion, sometimes even listen.
• Level 25: Director of Operations. Your title is longer than your job description.
• Level 40: VP of Synergistic Transformation. You've ascended beyond mortal comprehension.
• Level 99: Assistant to the Assistant Chief Human Resources Director. The final boss? No — that title is its own dungeon.

And just like in RPGs, the levelling system makes absolutely no sense from the outside. The XP required to go from "Senior Developer" to "Staff Developer" is some arcane formula involving tenure, visibility, and how many times you've said "great question" in an all-hands meeting.

The Politics

Ah, politics. The beating heart of any good LARP.

In tabletop games, you might scheme to overthrow a kingdom. In a corporate setting, you scheme to get a window seat. The stakes are different, but the mechanics are identical: alliances, betrayals, whispered conversations, and the occasional backstab during a "restructure."

There's the classic one-upmanship. Someone presents an idea in a meeting; someone else repackages it with better slides and takes the credit. In D&D, we'd call that a successful Deception check. In business, we call it "leadership potential."

Everyone's In On It

Here's the thing that really gets me. In a fantasy LARP, everyone knows they're playing pretend. That's the point. There's a wink, a shared understanding.

In the corporate LARP? Everyone is in on it, but nobody admits it.

Scroll through LinkedIn for five minutes. You'll see posts dripping with business-speak, carefully curated professional personas, and "thought leadership" that reads like someone fed a motivational poster into a buzzword generator. "Come to our business, we LARP good!" — that's essentially what every corporate brand page is saying, just with better stock photography.

The CVs, the personal branding, the carefully worded "passionate about delivering value" bios — it's all character sheets. We're all building our characters, grinding XP, and trying to level up.

The Stakes Are Real

Here's where the analogy takes a darker turn, and honestly the bit that sits uncomfortably with me.

In a traditional LARP, you can break character. You can go home. The worst that happens is you lose imaginary gold or your character "dies" and you roll a new one next weekend.

In the business LARP, you can't just opt out. Play it wrong and your livelihood is at risk. Don't speak the language? You're not a "culture fit." Don't wear the costume? You're "not professional." Don't engage in the politics? You get passed over. Refuse to perform? You get shown the door.

It's a LARP where the consequences are very, very real.

The Authenticity Problem

As someone who values authenticity — and I know that's itself become a bit of a corporate buzzword, which is beautifully ironic — I struggle with all of this. I see through the play. And it genuinely hurts when others play it at me, when I can tell the jargon is a costume and the smile is a skill check.

I don't think the answer is to refuse to play. That's a losing strategy in a game where participation isn't optional. But I do think there's value in being aware that we're all playing, in finding moments of genuine connection between the performance reviews and the stakeholder alignment sessions.

Maybe the goal isn't to quit the LARP. Maybe it's to be the player who occasionally breaks character — who says "I don't understand" instead of "Let's park that for now," who admits "I messed up" instead of "There were learnings."

The best LARPers I know are the ones who bring genuine emotion to their characters. Maybe the best professionals are the ones who bring genuine humanity to their roles.

Even if the costume is a suit and the dungeon is an open-plan office.

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If this post resonated with you, or if you've got a favourite piece of corporate jargon that deserves to be in a fantasy phrasebook, I'd love to hear from you. Let's take this offline — wait, no. Let's just talk like normal humans.