I don’t really know where to start on this one. There’s *SO MUCH* out there advice-wise for new players (newbies). So here’s a couple “rules” that I’ve always found helpful:

1. Be fearless. That doesn’t mean charge stupidly into the front of every combat you bump into. It means stuff like don’t be self conscious, and don’t be afraid to try new things. I’ve gotten my way out of more scrapes by *trying* something Plot hadn’t considered simply because I offered up a creative solution. LARPing is designed to reward stuff like that. Don’t be afraid of Roleplaying - that’s what the game is there for. When the bad guys jump out and try to attack you, rather than making “beat them down” your first solution, try talking your way out of it. My latest character is a pretty scary guy in combat, I still usually try to talk my way out of fighting. Being fearless also means don’t be afraid to take a couple hits OOP. A lot of people start off intimidated by getting hit with the weapons so they don’t want to get in scraps in combat. HOWEVER, IP (in play) a little fear is a *good* thing... when the Lord of Death says he’s gonna kill you if you don’t run then running is a pretty cool option.
2. Roleplay. Sounds like a stupid piece of advice in an article about roleplaying games, but it really makes a difference. I really could care less who has the coolest stats, if you don’t RP well my character isn’t going to invite you to module with him under most circumstances. USUALLY I cheat for newbies (‘cuz a lot of time they’re overwhelmed by things as it is) to keep things more fun for them, but if you’ve been to a few game days and still don’t have a personality I’m prolly not going to want to interact with you much. LARPing is *ALL* about roleplay, and the more interesting you make your character the more fun you’re going to have. Fun is really a group thing... if you’re fun to be around, other characters are going to have fun interacting with you, and you’re going to have more fun because you’re getting the extra interaction.
3. Know your background. This one is prolly the hardest one for newbies, since you’re not as familiar with the system. But I’ve seen “experienced” players who don’t really have much of a background and can’t roleplay much... after a few games you really should know some of it. Backgrounds help you immensely in two ways:
   1. If you know your background you know how you’ll react to things, and you know what your motivations as a person are. This isn’t like a play where the director tells you how you feel, you choose it. For example, how do you react to the following question: “There’s a princess up in that tower, we need you to rescue her”. For some players, the reaction is “Okay, let’s go get her”, no questions asked. For some the reaction is “What’s in it for me?” Neither response is *wrong* from a game sense, although your reaction will change how people interact with you. My character’s reaction is usually “Let’s go” because he’s into the whole chivalry thing. This is also where the disclaimer should go: There’s nothing *wrong* with being somewhat greedy and expecting rewards for your deeds. Think about real life: Would you really go up to a dragon infested castle and hack your way up to save some potentially ungrateful princess without a reward? *I* wouldn’t.
   2. Plot can use them. If you turn in a background saying “I’m running from X government agency because they caught me stealing”, you very well might bump into agents from that government trying to capture you. Put a few things in your background for Plot to “grab onto” and use, and they very well might. In my character’s background, he’s notoriously bad at disarming pressure traps (famous for it, actually...). In one of the recent modules I went on, failing to disarm a pressure trap would potentially kill the whole party, so we had to *roleplay* my getting everyone else out of the area in case things went bad. We *barely* came out of it alive. And frankly it was one of the most kick-ass modules I’ve ever been on. My character is a “tomb raider”, the entire module was set up where we had to go into a tomb and retrieve an ancient artifact. It would have worked just as well Plot-wise to break into a building or something else, but the little touch of having it be a tomb made the roleplay involved that much more fun.
4. Put some work into costuming. You’d be surprised how a little extra costuming makes a HUGE difference. In the case of a futuristic LARP jeans and T-shirts are *acceptable* clothing, because it would make sense that some of that stuff would *still* exist. But you’ll find that if you make a little effort to *look* the part you’ll feel more at ease with your character and it makes it easier to *be* that character. Costuming doesn’t *have* to be expensive, I’ve gotten a few respectable costumes for under $20. They’re not the best, but they work.
5. Practice. Just like anything else, practice makes you better. Spar with your friends. The best person to fight is someone who’s a *little* better than you but not a whole lot. You don’t learn much by fighting people who “suck”, and you don’t learn much by getting your ass kicked by some badass with a sword... but you learn a lot by getting barely beaten. If there *IS* some badass with a sword nearby, ask him for some pointers, ‘cuz he’s prolly got a few. Roleplay with people, either in real life, through email, or online. Most LARP groups have message boards, use them. The more RP you do offsite, the more you get used to your character, the easier you’ll find it to roleplay.
6. Do stupid things if it’s appropriate. There’s two kinds of stupidity - Out of Play stupidity and In Play stupidity. Some of the coolest roleplay out there is when the Ork pushes the “big red button” or somesuch... if you’re playing someone “dumb”, act dumb sometimes. Expect it to have consequences, but roll with them. If your character is bad at certain things, screw them up, even if you’re good at them in real life. However, stupid things out of play are different. Don’t give the big bad guy the finger and wonder later why he killed you. Understand that every action has a reaction. Generally speaking, good decisions are rewarded with positive consequences and bad ones are rewarded with negative consequences.
7. Bad guys are hard. If you want to play a bad guy character, understand a few things. First off - bad guys are *cool*, and they’re entitled to have as much fun at a game as the “good guys”. However, you *have* to understand that if you’re caught stealing the crown from the king, he’ll probably have you executed. If Plot is doing their job right, if you “get away” with a crime you’re probably clear, even though they should be aware OOP that the crime occured. Bad guys are usually hard to pull off as a character, especially for newer players, but they *are* satisfying to play. Just realize you’ll have to work *much* harder than the good guys to stay alive and make their profit.
8. Get whatever information you can, IP and OOP. Knowledge is Power. Knowing how all the effects work makes the game much more fun to play, both because you won’t have to ask “stupid” questions (more on this in the next part) and because you’ll have more potential resources to work with when you’re trying to solve problems. Knowing the local power structure means that you’ll know *not* to piss off the grey skinned guy who just walked in the room - he happens to be the leader of the planet and prolly won’t like you too much after that. With a minimal knowledge of the planet, I’ve bluffed my way out of encounters before because I managed to convince an NPC that I was somewhere I was supposed to be. A little preparation can go a long ways...
   However - DON'T Metagame. Metagaming is where you take knowledge your character shouldn't have and use it In-Play. It's cheating, and all kinds of Bad Stuff.
9. “Stupid Questions” aren’t so stupid. One of the best ways to get used to the game is to ask people for help. I don’t know *any* experienced player who gets irritated with a newbie asking “what did that do?” when they get hit with something. If you’ve been playing for three years, you’re kinda expected not to be asking anymore “stupid” questions, but *all* of us were there once, and I haven’t met a single player who hasn’t asked a question or two. I’m on the rules team for two different LARPs and on occasion I *still* ask “what’s that do again?” Experienced players actually like helping out newbies (for the most part) because that makes more experienced players. And with LARPing, the more players (especially experienced ones) the more fun the game is. You can’t get experience without practice *and* occasionally asking for help. We had two newbies in a module I played recently that completely screwed up their hit point count. Ordinarily that’d be “cheating”, but since we know they didn’t know better we rolled with it. Did it mess up continuity? A little. But by adapting to the problem hopefully they had more fun, and they *did* eventually figure it out.
10. LARPing is a team sport, IP and OOP. Basically, if you break it down, there’s three groups of people:
    1. Plot: They “run” the show, set up all the encounters, and are basically responsible for the story and how things work.
    2. NPCs: They work for Plot and *are* the encounters that the players see and interact with
    3. PCs: The characters of the game, the stories revolve around them.
    Each of these groups works together to make the game a better game... Plot can’t do it’s job without the help of the NPCs, and without PCs it doesn’t have any reason *to* do things. NPCs don’t have any direction without Plot, and without the players don’t have things to interact with. PCs don’t have anything to *do* without Plot and without NPCs wouldn’t have anything to interact with. EVERYONE has to work together so that everyone has fun. Even if you *hate* the character I play, you need to distinguish that from how you interact with me out of play (and vice versa). Out of play, my friend Bryan is one of the cooler people I know. In Play, if I were ever to meet his Ork PC I’d probably hate him. But OOP we’d have to work together to have a good time, even if IP we spent the whole game trying to knock each other off. IP, MOST systems are designed so that nobody, no matter what class they play, can do everything. In order to get the most out of a module, you need fighters to handle combat, thieves to take care of the traps, healers to help people, spellcasters to provide the extra “punch” for fights, and engineers to create stuff to bypass obstacles (physical or biological). By working as a cohesive group you’re more versatile as a whole. And if you look at the experienced “badass” players, you’ll find they all have one thing in common - they work well in teams. For example, my character is generally regarded as a badass, but when you *really* get down to it, the reason he’s cool is because he knows who to “hang” with and the teams he chooses are usually fairly balanced. He plays the front combat roles, and because that’s what he excels at he generally gets better “press”, but without a strong healer to support him, and his squire providing covering fire he goes down pretty fast (this has been evidenced several times in combat) despite being “badass”. And to get the most out of your team you have to... ROLEPLAY.
11. Know your limits, IP and OOP. If you’re a quiet mousy type, an Ork probably isn’t for you. If you’re not a good leader type OOP, you PROBABLY wouldn’t want to make a character trying to get into politics. And if you can’t swing a sword *at all* you PROBABLY shouldn’t play a fighter. This DOESN’T mean that these are hard and fast rules. Most LARP systems encourage you to be things you can’t be in real life (most people *can’t* chuck harmonics powers at people in real life) so your roleplay works the same way. In a LARP you’re free to do things that are outside of your normal comfort zone.
12. Plot *isn’t* all there is. Some of my *favorite* situations have been roleplay between two characters that had VERY little to do with Plot. I’ve spent all day in a tavern just hanging out with other PCs before and not going on a single module, just because I was having fun with the roleplay of the other characters. And if your character *feels* like a real person and *reacts* to roleplay, you’ll get roleplayed with more... that adds to the enjoyment of both people involved.
13. Be Creative. Just because Plot intends you to solve the module by crossing the bridge of doom across the moat of fire to get to the castle of death to save the princess doesn’t mean it’s the ONLY way to solve things. If you’re equipped right, it’s VERY possible that there’s other ways around it (tunnel under?). Most Plot people reward creative thinking like that. On a recent module, my character encountered some childlike creatures that seemed to be fairly powerful, he managed to steal a ball they were playing with and said it got tossed further down the hall where we’d come from, so they left to go chase it. Later on, when he bumped into similar creatures, instead of having to fight them off I pulled out the ball, said “Hey, wanna play with my ball?” and when they looked I tossed it back down the corridor. They left us to go get the ball, so we didn’t have to fight them. Plot wasn’t expecting that (they were actually pretty shocked that I managed to steal the ball without them noticing) but they thought it was cool and ran with it. There are almost always multiple ways around everything if you think things through. Sometimes, the big bad nasty thing is going to attack no matter what, but sometimes you can get around it.
14. Most important. LARPs are *GAMES*. Have fun. Fun is why we do this, and if you’re not having fun you shouldn’t be playing. This isn’t to say if you have a bad day you should quit - especially in the beginning where you’re trying to absorb everything still. But fun is contagious. If you’re having a good time it’ll rub off on other people. And just because my character isn’t having fun doesn’t mean that I’m not. I got in a mess where a big slime thing almost killed me, got in two fights on my way - running - out of the building, and was completely pissed off at one of the other PCs who’d not followed instructions and almost gotten us both killed. IP I pretty much hated the situation, but OOP I was thinking “wow... what a rush...” The module is *still* one of my favorite ones, because of all the cool roleplay that went on - MOST of it between PC characters (the NPCs were almost *ALL* representing traps, so there weren’t a lot of characters to interact with, the PCs had to interact with each other...). And all the players that day were making an effort to enjoy themselves... that makes all the difference in the world.

So, to sum up. LARP is four words - Live Action Role Play - TWO of those words (half) are Role Play - meaning that’s one of the most important concepts in the game. As with anything else - you get out what you put in. A little effort goes a long way. And if someone is doing something cool, figure out what it is and copy it. Ask for help... most other people dig helping people - it’s good for our egos. If you get to the point where you’re considered “experienced”, help people out. It makes the game more fun for everyone.
Experience isn’t about “play time”, although that’s a big part of it. I’ve seen people play for over a year before they finally “got it”, and I’ve seen some people that fit right in their first day. Kind of like anything else, some people are just naturally good at LARPing. But the coolest part of it is that *anyone* can do it well, just takes a little more work for some people. Get in, enjoy it, RP and HAVE FUN.