Does LARP freak anyone else out?

[Waylander the Slayer]

LARPing is definitely interesting but it is not for everyone. I actually wanted to try it out and went to a LIONE event.

Couple of things i picked up:

1. There are definite cliques and groups there; i saw and heard a lot of negative comments about other people when i was scripting.

2. Some people take this waaay to seriously. I saw people getting into yelling matches and throwing temper tantrums; This is a live action role playing game, instead of having fun a lot of people get so involved that it's bigger than life itself.

3. some very nice and helpful people as well... I was shown around/ learned things pretty fast.

4. The hobby is insanely expensive; a friend of mine was paying $250 a pop to advance/ play his character without doing any scripting (it would be around $65 otherwise ).
5. Learn to yell out thing reallly fast, it seems to make the difference between life and death (and throwing bean bags).

It seems like a decent hobby for people of the EverQuest mode but it did not really appeal to me. My imagination works a lot better when it is on table top; with LARPing it felt like everything was half way. You cant really swing your weapons, it's how fast you can flick your wrist that matters ( for obvious safety reasons). You throw bean bags and call out spell effects. people walk around with outfits that are not exactly FX (for obvious reasons). with table top its all in your minds eye, which makes it a lot easier and more fun for me.

This is just my personal take and not a criticism of the hobby; some of the best role players i know LARP ( and there are more women

 

[psychognome]

I've LARPed twice. Once in a cheesy fantasy LARP, where I was given the role of a child. I was quite bored with my role, but it was my first time ever. And some interesting things happened. I liked it.

The other time I wouldn't even call a LARP. It was more like Improvisational Acting. It was arranged by a friend of a friend of a friend, and the idea was that we were a bunch of kids on the last day of our confirmation camp. The people who arranged it did a great job making up the plotlines... and it was fun too. But my character died in the end of drug overdosage.

P.S. Don't go getting the wrong idea: not many people in Finland die of drug overdosage on confirmation camps.

 

[mistergone]

Bothered about LARPs

LARPs freak me out. The people who play them freak me out. I really don't get the appeal of them, though I can understand why some people like them. Keep in mind, my BEST FRIEND loves LARPs, and has been involved in several in the Berkeley CA area. More on that later.

I've tried a couple kinds of LARPs, and even tried to help design one at one time. I've attended a few SCA events, and a Renfaire or two. I own items that could be considered "garb". I have a lot of the White Wolf rpg books. (All for sale, btw, cheap). I've found a few things I like about all of those things. But what I don't like about those activities, are the kind of people they attract. It's ironic, and a little disappointing.

Ideally, I would have no problem with some like-minded people dressing up in costumes and getting together at some location and making wiggly finger gestures and pretending to be cool characters. It sounds fun. Soon though I realized it was freaky and wrong.

Almost every single person I have come into contact with involved in a LARP has some deep-seated serious mental problem that they use LARPs as an excuse to act out. And hey, I'm not exactly the pinnacle of mental wellness myself, no, but COME ON. I am talking to the point of seriously questioning some of these people's ability to remain free in society. Seriously freaky people, not just "odd" or "quirky" but PROFANELY DERANGED. The kind of people you do not want your kids, or pets, around. Not all of them, mind you, but a LOT of them. The majority, in my experience.

I'll site examples, assuming you dare to read on, and also list my personal reasons why LARP is not for me.

A couple instances that come to mind occurred when I wasn't directly involved in the LARP. One time, I was with a friend in a record store. A large chain record store in a mall. Back then, I was a lil more of an "edgy confused youth" and I like lil shiny trinkets (hey, who doesn't?). I had a Tremere clan symbol pin on my jacket. I think my friend did too, we just liked the symbol. Really, we were more Mage fans, but I digress... So we're minding our own buisness perusing the racks, when this grungy raggedly looking guy like appears from behind some shelves and starts doing some kind of hand gesture combind with praying or something. Me and my friend looked at each other and walked past him. Outside of the store, we were like "What the hell was that about?" and laughed it off. Then coming out the the bookstore next door, I catch sight of the same guy with a couple others like watching us. We got in my car and drove off. Later, when I told another friend about this, he said "Oh, that was the sign for (some protection spell or something). He was probably in a local LARP and thought you guys were too. You probably wandered into agame, or some LARP groups play all the time nonstop. They're all over. " We laughed about it, ("So, he was throwing goth gang signs?") but it weirded us out some too.

Another drive-by LARP instance happened when I was walking between two friend's houses (one of them the same guy that was with me in the record store) on a cold winter night out in far suburbia, where the houses are farther apart yet there's still alleyways and main streets alongside open fields and clumps of woods. Well, as we're passing this one house sort of set back from the road, all these black cloaked figures come running out from around back the house and start swirling towards us. Naturally, we freak right out. So I'm about ready to pull out every self-defense move combined with sheer freaking out crazyman fighting, when the lead figure pops off her hood and some girl with white paint on her face says something like "oh you're not Kevin" and they all go flittering back toward the house. We just stand there staring for a minute, then got the hell out of there. Later my friend told me one of them was holding a real looking knife. We laughed about that event too, but it sure as hell weirded us out.

And those were the times I wasn't involved in the LARP, experiencing them as an outsider. So, you could say that maybe since I wasn't involved and I didn't fully understand what was going on, my experiences were tainted. Or maybe these were just a couple isolated instances with "bad" LARPers. Well, so as not to have anyone think I have a closed mind, both the above events took place during a time when I had known about LARPs and had even participated in a couple.

The first LARP I ever tried was a mixed World of Darkness one. At the time I had been playing the rpgs, and this guy I knew was really into the whole thing and was running the LARP. Well, I found it boring as hell, and a little silly. It was a small one and not very involved, but I think it gave me a fair sampling of the genre. The plot was straigtforward, but the whole event seemed more an organized attempt to score with goth chicks than to play out a game. And you know, every story about a WoD LARP I have ever heard and every one I have been in has turned out to be, however convoluted and contrived, and organized attempt to score with chicks.

My experience with "boffer" LARPing was not as bad, but didn't make me want to put much time into that either. It was through IFGS, which has been mentioned in this thread, and admittedly, I think, it was a splinter group of IFGS or maybe a small faction trying to get started in this area. I went to a couple of the meetings where they explained the rules and combat systems. Right off I thought it would be difficult to execute but it sounded fun. I noticed a lot of the other players were males younger than me, but there were a few females in the group too. The first game was a big combat scenario. It was ridiculous. Basically, it involved a lot of guys in their late teens and early 20's trying to protect and impress a couple young girls while at the same time beat on each other with foam swords. All the while shouting out numbers. Now, I'm a big guy, and I guess I can strike an imposing figure, but I don't really know.. for whatever reason, a lot of these guys sought me out to try and pummel me with their foam swords, but when I whack one of them back, he freaks out about me hitting too hard. There was a fight there about anotehr guy bending someone's foam sword. It was a mess, in the end, and despite the guy in charge being a pretty well-meaning guy, I didn't go back. I figure if I wanted to impress underage girls by demonstrating my mock prowess, I could find another venue.

I mentioned before that my best friend likes LARPs. He's played in a WoD LARP in the Berkeley area (I think right on the college campus) quite a bit. He would tell me about it from time to time. Keeping in mind that he LOVES LARPs and he's my best friend, more dear to me than a brother, know that I worried for him greatly. He told me how a typical game went. Apparently, there were some freaks in his group, and they tried to edge them out, but more would always take their place. He describe some behaviours that I know made him cringe, but he has a bad habit of trying to see the best in people, so I know that he was glazing over some of the more disturbing details. He told me about some of these people would dress all the time in their LARP costumes, and always be playing the game. Honestly, it sounded like a cult. He never got so into it (I don't think) that he ever did anything really whacky, but it was obvious that he had become involved with people who were scary, troubled people. He quit the one group because it got to be too much for him even. The last I heard he was not currently playing in any LARP. Come to think of it, I haven't heard rom him in a while... so maybe they sucked him back in.

So those are my main reasons why LARPs freak me out. Mostly, it's the people who play. LARPing is kind of ironic, because it's the kind of thing that most gives gaming a bad name. Acting out like that. It's really one thing sitting around a table with dice and figures, or even dressing up at a Con and playing, but it's defiantely a weird weird thing in a weird hobby anyway. Sure, there are freaks in tabletop games, but a lot of those I have met that are freaky gamers are ALSO LARPers. Even my friend who is an actor (I mean an actual, paid professional actor, and also a gamer) thinks LARPing is weird. Maybe, I dunno, maybe it's just the appeal of the whole thing. I can see how it is appealing to some. On the other hand, and moreso, I can see where it is an activity that excuses and even invites the kind of behaviour that is just not acceptable in polite society. I think it's akin to "slash fiction", Hentai, and the whole "furry" movement in it's appeal and attraction to people who have serious mental issues.

No, not ALL LARPers and horrid freaks, but the very act of LARPing is flypaper for freaks. Does that mean it should never be done? No. With common sense, thoughtfulness, and COMMON SENSE, I'm sure it can be as fun and acceptable as sit-down role-playing. But I don't like it.

 

[Wayside]

Re: Bothered about LARPs

LARPs freak me out. The people who play them freak me out. I really don't get the appeal of them, though I can understand why some people like them. Keep in mind, my BEST FRIEND loves LARPs, and has been involved in several in the Berkeley CA area.

No kidding. Berkeley is full of insane people, period...part of its charm. It doesn't surprise me that they'd play on campus. FAR stranger things go on on campus. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the drama department ran the LARP game either.

I think in general LARP's fall into the category of 'sure.. when holodecks are real' for me. You have control over your gaming group. For a lot of us, we only game with close friends. I only play with friends I've had since seventh grade. We're all 21-22 now, so that's a few years. No interest in branching out, which includes the unpredictability of the 30-80 players in a LARP game.

 

[tburdett]

We did a LARP game all through high school. I don't remember the exact name of the game (Assassin, Killer, something like that) and the whole point of the game was to be the last one alive.

Each player had a laminated photo id card and at the start of the game you'd put all of the cards into a box and shake the box up.

Each player would pick out a card and that would be their target. You wouldn't tell anyone else who your target was. If you picked your own card you were a free agent and you could go after any of the other players. The game would start the day after the target cards were drawn.

The last player alive was the winner.

We'd shoot rubber bands (which represented firing a gun) or use other improvised weapons to wipe each other out.

I wouldn't recommend doing this nowadays as teachers and school administrators have lost their minds when it comes to this type of stuff.

As an adult I have no interest in LARP. I have to admit that I feel a certain amount of pathos towards those that LARP. The need to escape reality in such an extreme way is disturbing to me.

 

[Gez]

I don't find it freaky, but I'm really not attracted by it.

Playing someone that looks exactly like me, that wears out-of-place clothing because he can't offer proper disguise, and that exhausts my very own self when the character do something exhausting, no thanks. I don't want to get slapped by latex swords, wet by rains, covered in sweat from running under a too-hot sun with heavy clothings, fall from a cliff (it happened to the girl of our gaming group); when I could sit comfortably on a sofa, eat pancakes, watch my little brothers in the next room so that they don't crash the computer once again, etc. And this allow me to play little characters, strong characters, female characters, old characters... Things that don't look like a lanky, skinny geek.

 

[Tsyr]

I larp. I've done both boffer and WoD style larping, I prefer boffer by far.

Most of my boffer experience comes from a group using the IFGS rules (loosely in places), though not technicly affiliated with the IFGS. Played for 3 years with them, until they shut down last summer when the man-and-wife team who were the "core" of it moved away and no one stepped up to take over. (I should point out they didn't just up and leave. We had known for about a year it was going to happen, and they had a big final game and all that. Just the way things work) About 20 people on average, though we got up higher a couple times. Great fun. And yes, I know, it's not as "safe" to run an unafilliated game. Yes, yes, I know. It was still fun, and I was willing to take the risk.

Done some WoD larping, mostly with some group on campus. It's not bad, though not as much to my tastes. I have a hard time suspending disbelief when we aren't even allowed to carry a squirtgun or something to symbolize the fact we are armed. Boffer combat spoiled me, I guess. I guess most of it comes down to a general distaste for (what I assume to be) the Minds Eye Theater rule system... It just doesn't work for me.

I'd also like to think most of us were perfectly normal. About the only common thread in the boffer game was a general interest in fantasy and/or melee combat... we had RPGers, non-RPGers (not many, but a few), people from age 18 up to age 30-something, even some non-larpers that would lend a hand playing "npc"ish characters in town and so forth. There were a couple people that showed up now and then that were a tad peculiar, but none that I would be scared of.

Now, the WoD game... eh, more or less the same. We do have one sterotypical goth, albiet kind of an uban-slum style goth (Which is hard to explain, because I live in a fairly wealthy town, and we don't even have a "bad section of town" much less a slums-ish area). Other than that, once again, there really isn't much commonality between the people. Well, age, but since it's a college group, that's understandable. But mostly, it was just a bunch of people getting together to do something. Heck, a couple of the guys in it were in the boffer games too. No stranger, to my mind, than getting together to roleplay at a table, or quake/everquest/etc guilds/clans/etc getting together in real life once a year or something.

 

[Henry]

This thread treads on thin ice. It's a very easy target. Please, let's stick to our own personal experiences and make no generalizations based on them.


I'll add my piece by saying that the few LARP experiences I have had have not been positive, but I know of many that are. I have a close family relative that attends a Southeastern U.S. chapter of SOLAR (if that's the proper name for it, it's what she calls it.) She has a blast, and goes back at least once a year, if not more often. I know of NERO, of SOLAR, of IFGS, and a game called Sabratact, which is in its way a LARP, though a more competitve one.

I myself don't have the drive to invest so much time and money into LARPing - my RPGing fills that need quite nicely. But some people who like the near-total immersion of a LARP are just as devoted as other gamers to their hobby of choice - some moreso, as in the case of my relative - she'll drive for a couple of hours to SOLAR, and stay all weekend - coming back bone weary, dirty as crap, and havig enjoyed every second of it. It's not much different from getting together to slay dragons or make runs in the Shadows of Seattle.

 

[Inez Hull]

I've had some amazing experiences LARP'ing and also some shockers. When it comes down to it, LARP's are just like PnP roleplaying - it depends on the group you play with. If you try LARP'ing with bunch of gamers who you would not enjoy tabletop gaming with, guess what? You probably wont enjoying LARP'ing with them either.

Although I'm a fan I haven't LARP'ed for many years, simply because there aren't any clubs around Sydney and those that have occassionally sprung up have been filled with folks I didn't enjoy spending time with and who would definitely have turned me off LARP'ing if I had never played before. Don't write off the hobby based on a few nutters, thats what the mainstream does to roleplaying. If you ever get the chance to LARP with a group whose roleplaying pedigree seems to gel with you give it a try, but yeah, prolly best to avoid the groups filled with social misfits, and they are out there.

 

[Ruined]

Hey Jeph! I wasn't really gonna stop by this thread until I remembered you were located near me. I'm not going to get in on the pros and cons of Larping, but I will pass on some information to you.

There are two Larps that run once every two weeks on NCSU campus. They're open to anyone who wants to come check them out, and the Storytellers that run the games are all good people to get along with (and not some of the really bizarre types you hear about in Larp horror stories).

Should you want to stop by and check one out, I can put you in contact with the crews that run them, or direct you to their websites to look around.

And as far as being freaked out, don't worry. I was exactly the same way. I played one at a Convention because a tabletop fell through. I had a blast. Then I decided to try one back home, and I felt really uncomfortable. A few months later, they did a restart with a brand-new chronicle, so I went in with my friends. Next thing you know, I was hooked, and me and my friends actually started running one of the vampire larps. Go figure.