Animosity between traditional gamers and LARPers?

[shadow]

The other day I ran into a friend who I used to game with for a time back in my high school days. When we started talking about gaming she started talking about how she no longer "table-top" games, but has really gotten into LARPs. She started to really bash on D&D, saying that the whole game was about "how many hit points you have left, and how much XP you can get from killing things." She went on to say that LARPs were the only way to go and that not everyone who LARPed were goths (she certainly was not a goth).
On the other hand, a while back I was talking to a person in my university's game club. He started talking about LARPs and how stupid they were. He said the one (and only) time he LARPed he embarrassed himself by running around the campus student center dressed in a black jacket pretending he was some sort of vampire "gangster".
These two completely different stories got me thinking of the incredible aminosity that exists between traditional gamers and LARPers. It seems even greater than the hatred between power-gamers and storytelling gamers. So my question is, have any of you ever LARPed before? If so what was your experience? Have you noted similar aminosity between these two different types of gamers? Is it possible to be into both traditional gaming and LARPing?

 

[Psychotic Dreamer]

I myself have never LARPed. It's just not something I'm into. I like table-top. I have nothing against LARPing. I have known quite a few table-toppers who though LARPers were stupid and the other way around. Not sure why this is, but I have also noticed it.

 

[Crothian]

Yes, for the most part LARPers and table top gamers don't seem to like each other. I've LARPed before, but it wasn't that great. There were to many clicks in the LARP and they were very condensending to the newbies.

But the difference between table toppers and LARPers is that unusual. Heck, everyone who doesn't play D&D seems to hate it. All gamers seem to have a particuliar game they like and dislike all the rest. I've heard the phrase "Gamer Nation" and if we are, we are a Nation divided.

 

[Tsyr]

I larp. I enjoy larping.

However.

I do not "goth larp". I also do not LARP any "orginized" white wolf group. Most of those guys are a bit creepy for my tastes. Fantasy LARP, or white-wolf with just close friends, thats something else.

But yes, the animosity does exist, that's for sure.

 

[Negative Zero]

when i got introduced to DnD, there was one guy, a really good friend of mine, who constantly refered to those "sad, pathetic, losers" who would "actually dress up in armour go out in the countryside somewhere and try to hit each other with a sword." seeing as he was the guy who introduced me to gaming, that shaped how i percieved LARPers for a long time. (at the time i didn't even know they even had a name for themselves.)

i've since met a few LARPers (since i moved to the US) and like anything elses, there are a wide range of personalities. one guy i met is kinda goth, one's a really weird hyper (but likeable) guy who i'm convinced is on caffeine pills or something, a woman, who i didn't get along with at all, and another guy who seems kinda normal ... most days.

in retrospect, i think the animosity, at least for my friend, came from the idea (misconstrued or otherwise) that while tabletop DnD was mostly an imaginative mental excersise, LARPers really shunned or weren't capable of that sort of mental acrobatics. they weren't content to imagine a fantasy world, they had to go try to live it out. which of course, if it is true, makes them very mentally unbalanced people.

possibly, there are some like that, but i'm sure that those wankers run the whole gamut, and some of them might even be OK ... but i doubt it

~NegZ

 

[Tsyr]

Of course "Go dress up in armour in a field and hit each other with swords" could easily describe the SCA too. I love the SCA

 

[Teflon Billy]

I found the Vampire: the Masquerade LARPS to not only be fun, but to be an excellent place to get drunk and pick up women.

The Camarilla handbook disagrees with me, but ask me if I care

Amongst my various gaming groups, there is no animosity between LARPers and P&Pers.

We've all done a lot of both.

 

[jgbrowning]

larps

i've always just plunked it down into different types of people.

i've always view people who like to larp more as "actors" than gamers.

actors, are to me at least, creepy because i dont like to see fake faces on people. scares me the way clowns do, ya know...

joe b.

 

[trentonjoe]

From my own experiences (which has been 5 or so conventions) , most LARPers I have met I did not like. THey just didn't seem like nice people. At one convention a LARPer ripped a paper towel dispenser off the wall and then blamed it on me. That didn't make TrentonJoe happy. In their defense, they were "playing" when I met them, maybe they were busy.


However, one of the guys in my regular D&D group LARPs pretty regularly and I like him. I imagine there are good and bad in every crowd.

I have no interest in doing it but I don't have muchg interest in learning French either. I would imagine that most people don't have a real strong opinion either way. It is the vocal minority that creates this "wedge".

(DIdn't nixon say that? GOd I am getting old!)

 

[Holy Bovine]

A great many of the table top roleplayers I know have (and do) play in LARPs. That hasn't stopped them from enjoying a game of D&D (or Shadowrun, that one's very popular around here) on a regular basis (I know of 4 other campaigns that were started after 3E came out - that covers just about every gamer I personally know). Most of that crowd still LARPs though.

Its not my 'thing' I guess - the dressing up and fake weapons seemed pretty lame to me. Probably just as lame as sitting around a table with warm Coke and stale Doritos rolling dice as we play make-believe with each other seems to the 'average' LARPer (I have not idea what I mean by average here - maybe one who doesn't tabletop game at all?)

Do I hate LARPers or see any animosity between 'them and us'. Nope to both. Of course all of this in only my experience - take it for what its worth (about $1.23 with tax)