Does LARP freak anyone else out?

[Lord Pendragon]

Yes, of course. Standing up and pretending to be a vampire or mage is soooooo horribly worse than sitting down and pretending to be a vampire or mage.

I didn't say it was worse. I said it didn't sit well with me. I think perhaps you need to take a step back, Tsyr. Nobody's bashing LARP, here. People are stating their own impressions/feelings about it, and they're entitled to that as much as you are entitled to LARP.

 

[Tsyr]

I didn't say it was worse. I said it didn't sit well with me. I think perhaps you need to take a step back, Tsyr. Nobody's bashing LARP, here. People are stating their own impressions/feelings about it, and they're entitled to that as much as you are entitled to LARP.

When people stop calling larps "freeky and wrong" and larpers things like "unbalanced" and so forth, I'll stop thinking I'll buy that larps are not under attack.

 

[DM with a vengence]

Re: Cthulhu Live (long?)

(Unless you count that time I led an attack on a Vampire LARP to deprogram our group's DM... Nine Inch Nails drove them vamps outside good. What a sight it was, a half-dozen gamers, hopped up on Mountain Dew [or the Faygo equivalent], armed to the teeth with foam stakes, yelling out "Hoody Hoo!" at the top of our lungs whalst we ran into the heart of the enemy. We had been deprived of DnD... We were unstoppable.)

-Apologies to Knights of the Dinner Table

Actually what you really needed was a guy with one of those big 500 Watt Flashlights. When you shine that in somebody's ees at night, they'll start rolling around and screaming. Make them feel the power of Pelor.

not that I advocate this sort of action.

 

[hong]

That being said, you don't need to be some kind of super-athlete to play... but a willingness to try something, look silly the first few times, and sweat a little really helps.

Sounds like karaoke.

As to real-world stats vs game stats, a quote from Robin's Laws of Good Gaming seems very insightful:

"Some purist method actors shrink away from rules that determine the progress of persuasion attempts and other character interactions, arguing that these should simply be acted out. You might argue that, just as players untrained in combat get to use dice to vicariously experience victory on the battlefield, those who aren't naturally persuasive should get to do the same in social situations. But in doing so, you're arguing against the thing that attracts the method actor to roleplaying games in the first place." -- RLofGG, p.8

 

[dave_o]

Let's just have some hugs, all around.

I've never tried a LARP. I'd love to, though. It seems like it'd be fun. Creepy folks are no.

Though, I'm sort of jaded to creepy folk. Hang around in a few punk circles, and you're become nice and familiar with neo-Nazism. *sigh*

But, can't we all just get along?

 

[gamecat]

Says Vampire Player to Amy:

I liked that picture of you in black clothing.

Says Amy to Vampire Player:

Thank you.

Says Vampire Player to Amy:

I like to rub my face on that picture.

Says gamecat:

Consider me FREAKED OUT.

Originally Quipped by Morgan LeClaire

Stereotypes wouldn't exist if there wasn't anybody to fullfill them.

 

[Kerrwyn]

LARPs are alright, I guess. The FLGS where I work has a bi-monthly group that come in and goes from 6 until about 3 in the morning, and a couple of my friends are in it. These are guys that I play 40K or D&D with during the day, but when they come into the store on Sundays dressed in black, it does get a little strange. I don't really see it as freaky, they just have a different method for portraying their characters. Though I could see being called scary if I walked into my Wed. night game in full plate carrying a bastard sword.

 

[Berk]

I don't need to "believe" in something that isn't real to participate.

Magic isn't real? Since when?

And no, I'm NOT kidding. =o)

 

[Umbran]

Who ever said that anyone thinks rioting and looting and burning is okay?

Nobody did. But then, nobody said that football fans in general were violent and that the passtime of watching sports was fundamentall wrong, either. And, if we apply the same logic to football that's being applied to larps, that should be the conclusion. My point being not that football is evil, but that the logic is absurd.

What I'm saying, is MOST LARPers seem to me to be really weird people with oddly developed ideas of social interaction, or, "freaks" as it were. And I haven't pulled this opionion out of my ass, it comes from years and observation, participation, and first hand experience.

Yeah, I hear that sort of thing a lot. IME, it rarely means what the speaker thinks it means, and in such cases, it misleads the reader.

You see, I too have an opinion formed from years (about a decade) of observation, participation, and first hand experience, and it says exactly the opposite.

The fact is, there are very few people around that have wide enough experience with larpers (meaning that they've met enough of them, spread widely enough over gaming style and geographic location) to say what "most" of them are like. Fewer still have enough experience with them outside of the game they play to talk about what their personality is like in general.

You're talking about a group ("larpers") that is both ill defined and large - quite probably in the tens of thousands. Are you really so confident in your sampling that you are willing to label thousands of people you've never met as "socially inept freaks"?

Stereotypes are like salt and fats. They should only be used sparingly.

 

[Glaurung]

LARPs are alright, I guess. The FLGS where I work has a bi-monthly group that come in and goes from 6 until about 3 in the morning, and a couple of my friends are in it.

Are you near DC? Which gaming store? I've been looking for a local area LARP to join. I think I may have found one that plays near Dupont, but its good to have more options.
Personally I love LARPS. They're the only reason I go to conventions (after LC was destroyed). The people are freaky? Well its a fringe hobby-lots of tabletop RPers are quite freaky as well. Just have to find the right group.
So does anyone know what LARPS are going to be at Gen Con yet?