Animosity between traditional gamers and LARPers?

[Old One]

Zerovoid, MaxK and jollyninja...

Ah, it is as I feared! I like LARPing...but the whole idea of Vampire is a turn-off for me.

I think your experience with a NERO event (particularly a weekend event) would be substantially different. True, it has a different flavor than tabletop, but is pretty darn enjoyable IMO.

~ Old One

 

[Holy Bovine]

yes, there are

Cullain

LOL! That was what I was trying to find originally. Forgot what it was 'offically' called though.

 

[Andor of the Blade]

I've been playing D&D for close to 20 years. I have also LARPed on many occassions. I have enjoyed both immensely.

My first LARPing was a variant of NERO, started and run by some university students in Toronto. My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I would drive to Toronto (from Ottawa about 4.5 hours) seven or eight times a year to play. Unfortunately, they started graduating and couldn't continue running the game.

Now that I've got a family, it is much harder to get away for an entire weekend (as opposed to a few hours for a PnP game).

The only real difference I've seen between LARPers and non-LARPers in general, was that LARPers tend to be in better physical condition than non-LARPers.

I have never LARPed at a WW or Vampire game, so I can't speak of them. IMO comparing LARPers to non-LARPers is only fair if the games they play are similar (i.e., DnD is similar to NERO LARPing). If you want to compare Vampire LARPers, you need to compare them to Vampire PnP players.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Just Curious...

With the exception of Tsyr (who has played a fantasy LARP using the IFGS rules), how many of you have actually experienced a LARP besides VAMPIRE or some other WW derivative?

*Umbran raises his hand*

While I won't join in on bashing WW players, Old One has a point.

Everyone here is a tabletop gamer. If someone told you they'd gone to one D&D game, filled with sweaty, smelly, Cheetos-munching, Mountain Dew swilling, immature D&D munchkin geeks, and came away thinking that they therefore disliked all tabletop games, would you think they'd really given the genre a fair shake?

Probably not. One bad experience with one bad group does not a general classification make. You'd probably suggest that the person try another group, possibly a different game, but not to give up so quickly. Similarly with larps.

I'll have to disagree a bit with Andor, though. Nero and D&D may be similar in fictional genre, and theme. But the differences in execution of the game vastly overwhelm any such similarities.

To use a (perhaps weak) analogy - to me Andor is effectively saying you can't compare basketball players to football players, because they aren't playing similar games. Instead, you should compare football players to people who play in fantasy football leagues....

[edit: I fixed the link to LARPA.]

 

[CaptainCalico]

My one experience in a LARP was this last GenCon. It was a ~5 hours home-rules LARP that was basically an expansion on the "Dinner-Party-Murder-Mystery" genre. I had a blast and I'm lookingforward to playing agian next year. Something like that has a lot more appeal to me than the three-night WW LARPS that were also running at the con.

 

[Barastrondo]

i regularly buy sword and sorcery studios stuff but i hate white wolf stoeytellers players. odd.

Considering that a bunch of Sword and Sorcery Studios stuff is written by people who also play/write Storyteller system/World of Darkness material, yeah.

 

[Ziggy]

Re: Just Curious...

For those posting/lurking in this thread...

With the exception of Tsyr (who has played a fantasy LARP using the IFGS rules), how many of you have actually experienced a LARP besides VAMPIRE or some other WW derivative?

~ Old One

I've played both fantasy and modern-based LARP's, but these are also the most common LARP's in Norway (and in the rest of the Nordic countries).

In fact I've never played any WW-based LARP's, as I find the inherent *angst* in these games a bit too much for my taste

The "nordic style" of fantasy LARP (or "live" as its know as here) is less rules based than most LARP's found in the US. Rules are mainly limited to areas that must be simulated (i.e. magic), while social and physical skills are totally based on the players abilities. This has been a hotly discussed issue here, but most players I know are pretty comfortable with this style.

I've encountered a few elitist idiots in both in LARP and table-top gaming, but a large potion (half?) play both, and thus have little animosity

.Ziggy

 

[novyet]

I played in one LARP game when I was 16. It was a vampire game with some gamers from my high school, and it was a nightmare. I won't go into details but suffice to say it was similar experience that others have mentioned. Afterwards I was told I just wouldn't fit in, and should go back to those "kiddy" pnp games. Needless to say that was more than enough to kill any interest I had in it.

 

[Zog]

I've done both - and run both!

The Intercon's on the East coast of the US - in Boston and New Jersey - are a great place to be exposed to all of the options and varieties of games, styles, and rules.

Intercon C - in March, in Chelmsford Mass, is the next one. I don't have a handy link, but try a google search for it, it will pop up.

The Intercon's are weekend long conventions. There tend to be 5 game slots over the weekend - with some games taking up two slots. Friday night, Sat morning, afternoon and night, and Sunday morning. Occasionally you'll see a midnight game tucked in somewhere. Most games tend to be theater style - with Pre-gen characters and their own rules.

You generally get about 4 or 5 games for each slot, with about 20-30 players needed for each game. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Intercon C, the next one, apparently has tons of pre-registered guests, and long list of games. You generally have a few White Wolf games, using one of their published systems, a few Rules to live by games - as the author is a regular con attendee, and a whole lot of home-brew rules light systems.

The one I wrote and ran was called 'The Unexpected Storm' - 27 odd travelers end up in a strange Inn during a freak snow storm. Plot and character interactions and chaos ensue. It ran, um, a year and a half ago at Intercon A - and was fairly well received, I think. It was mechanics light, I do need to work on the combat system, try and make it easier and faster, but the plot and characters worked well I think.

Partly because of Intercon, and several healthy LARPing groups in the Boston area, there is lots of cross-over between tabletop and live action gaming. I, at least, haven't seen much animosity. Expect perhaps towards certain *poorly run/written* games - but that can only be expected.

 

[Barak]

Well. My whole gaming group (me excluded) goes to PENNSIC every year, and do other stuff related to it regularly during the year. Only thing I don't like about it is it means we didn't game for 2 weeks. :/ They all have tents and armor and weapons and stuff.. I don't have much interest though, so I don't know too much about it.

I Larped for a while, but it was V:TM stuff. I had lots of fun, but it wasn't because of the game itself, more because of the beer and the easy goth chicks. In fact, the time I had most fun, I wasn't even playing, but going to work late at night. Crossed a bunch of teens wearing the lil ankh. I had mine on me, for some reason, so I put it on, and announced to them that they were dead. They looked real surprised, and went in search for a GM. I removed my ankh and went to work.