Yellow Flag Your Besties (no really)

When we LARP, we want to be cast close to our friends… right? Well… maybe not in all cases. Sometimes, we should be flagging our friends and request to not be cast too closely to them. This isn’t any sort of reflection on them as “good” or “problematic” people. In my opinion, as both a player and a gamerunner, we should be making liberal use of “yellow flagging” even in very minor scenarios. 

So first off, what do I mean by “yellow flagging?” 

In most standard flagging systems, there are 4 flag colors: red, orange, yellow, and green. Red flags are usually saved for safety concerns, and are for people who are flagged to not be permitted into a game due to safety issues. Orange flagging is when you will not attend if a specific person is there, though not usually out of safety concerns (the standard example is a bad breakup where nobody was abusive/dangerous, but seeing each other at the LARP would make it awkward for everyone nearby, but I’ve also seen it used for people flagging family members or coworkers during erotic LARPs.) Green flagging means that you like somebody and want to be cast close to them. Finally, yellow flagging, the topic of this post: it’s simply a request to not be cast closely with somebody. Not as love interests, close family members, best friends, or deepest rivals, often trying to avoid putting them in the same faction in games where smaller factions are part of the structure. 

Why would a person yellow flag somebody they have no personal beef with? Isn’t that just for people you don’t get along with, to avoid having to don your characters as a “get-along” shirt for a whole game? NOPE. 

Transparency mismatch. Awkward crushes that never panned out, where you need a bit of distance from each other for a little bit. Different priorities in gameplay. Tonal clashing. These are all very good, very normal reasons to yellow flag somebody. And they in no way indicate any sort of judgment on them as a person or a roleplayer. If one of you tends to play tragic characters and are at the LARP to make terrible choices and cry about them, and another likes to play silly little guys who get up to goofy little schemes, yellow flagging each other so you can each pursue your preferred playstyle could be a good idea. Or if one of you loves to backstab and betray people, but the other can’t stand that kind of surprise? Yellow flag! Maybe you just want to branch out of your friend bubble and meet new people. Heck, yellow flag everyone you want to take a break from! Give out yellow flags like a power-crazed Oprah Winfrey. 

You can also yellow flag somebody only for certain types of roleplay! You may not want to roleplay romance with your sibling, for example, or roleplay siblings with your spouse. An easy way to get this across? Boom, yellow flag. In the case of an awkward crush that never panned out, requesting to not have romantic ties to them can be a good way of preventing that kind of bleed. Yellow flag, just for romance. Maybe you’ve played tense rivalries with one of your friends 3 games in a row and are just tired of that. Yellow flag for rival/enemy play specifically. 

As a gamerunner, I love seeing yellow flags. Yes, it can make casting a bit harder. But in the end, it makes a game run smoother if I can avoid people running into easily-prevented issues during gameplay. It also makes me more confident that you, as a player, know how to set boundaries and know how to ask for what you want! Being able to preemptively say “hey, I don’t want to play closely with this person because I want to be a conniving backstabber and they won’t take well to that kind of gameplay choice” shows that you know yourself well enough to even think of raising that as a concern and know how to prevent it from becoming a problem. 

I usually will accept yellow flag requests without further inquiry or investigation. Any reason is a valid reason to yellow flag somebody, even no specific reason at all. If you want to explain a bit in your flagging survey, feel free, but I always will do my best to avoid casting a person next to somebody they flagged. In some games with larger factions, having them be in the same faction may be inevitable. But I can avoid giving them a close tie, especially one that involves them interacting extensively over the course of gameplay. 

Not all gamerunners use a yellow flag system, or any formally-codified flagging system at all. Personally, though, I’d still encourage reaching out to the gamerunners during casting to tell them people you’d rather not be cast closely with, especially when it comes to either romance or family-based roleplay. See what communication tools are available and make good use of them, even if they’re not called “flags.” I’d rather go into casting knowing peoples’ preferences than have to rejigger the whole casting-Tetris game after the fact because I accidentally cast two siblings as lovers. Oof. 

It also helps further separate interpersonal problems or preferences from safety issues. Taking yellow and orange flags seriously and using them thoughtfully helps keep red flagging as a dedicated safety vetting tool. If people feel the need to escalate everything to a red flag, even if safety isn’t at play, it makes it harder to investigate actual safety concerns. Gamerunners should honor yellow flags (or whatever equivalent they have in their system, regardless of what they call it) for the sake of their own games running smoothly, so players can be honest about the urgency and level of their flagging. No, somebody getting OOC-sad about being hit with a betrayal plot isn’t a safety issue. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously by gamerunners. 

We also need to decouple the concept of flagging from moral judgment as a whole. Yes, some people are red flagged due to having done harmful things in the past and not being trustworthy to keep in a game environment safely. But most of the yellow and orange flags I see? Entirely unrelated to anything moral or ethical or safety-related. If you flag somebody, it doesn’t mean they’re a bad person who’s bad to LARP with. It just means you, for whatever reason, don’t want to play closely with them in this game. If somebody yellow flags you, it doesn’t mean they hate your guts or think you suck. Heck, I encourage people reading this to yellow flag me if they feel like my gameplay style and theirs don’t mesh well. 

So yeah. Yellow flag your besties! Yellow flag your partners! Yellow flag yourself! Wait, maybe that’s a step too far… but don’t feel guilty about yellow flagging people often, for seemingly minor reasons. The system exists for a reason, and using the tools that are made available is a good thing, and will make life easier for you, your co-players, and the gamerunner team.