I used to play in a large LARP that was run over the weekends in an empty dorm. I also helped run a LARP that involved no less than 5 locations, (the sponsoring game store and 4 private residences.) I don’t LARP any more.
While I didn’t see any more “freaky” people than usual (all the LARPers I knew also did table top, so it would have been the pot calling the kettle black.) But the biggest turn off was “gamer politics.” On this forum, we get a “I got kicked out/How do I deal with a problem player” thread once a week as people talk about the egos and in-game solutions to the politics of those at the table. Now multiply that by 10 times and you have the potential for a real headache.
Both set ups I mentioned were popular and went of for a couple of years, but both ended the same way. A group of new gamers came in who had the idea that they would “take over” the scene, even if it meant arguing with the refs and ruining the game for everyone else. Now here is where I will get flamed.
It seems that LARPS, Medieval Age recreation groups and fandom organizations have one thing in common, the members of these highly social cultures like to play politics each other, who can be the “coolest” fan with the most fellow subfans adoring them. I don’t see the point.
Perhaps this part of that “wrongness” some sense, they don’t see the point in joining a group where the rules are unspoken and taken up a notch in passion, oddly enough there is an SF book that hits on this. http://www.scifi.com/sfw/current/books.html
The other reasons I quit are that most of the LARPS (boffer/social) have pretty much the same structure. Boffers is the “run from combat to combat” and Social is the “GM is the ‘prince/king’ and his best friends all play the movers, shakers and minions of the king (so then you usually a “us vs. them” thing going.)
The only other thing, which was highly personal, was the suspension of disbelief. For me if I am sitting at the table, I have to imagine the whole scene, which I can do quite well. For LARPing, you can dress up to be “in character” and maintain the acting, but then you have to suddenly gear up and imagine someone’ bathroom is the dungeon or the sewer. The constant switching to accepting what I see and then using my imagination again sort of jars me. There was one game, Changeling, where the characters lived in the real world as well as a magical one. That game might something I might enjoy.
So between politics and predictability, I burned out on LARPing in a few years. Then again, the same thing almost made me burn out on tabletop gaming a couple of years ago WotC may never know how 3e really put a kick back into rpging.
While I didn’t see any more “freaky” people than usual (all the LARPers I knew also did table top, so it would have been the pot calling the kettle black.) But the biggest turn off was “gamer politics.” On this forum, we get a “I got kicked out/How do I deal with a problem player” thread once a week as people talk about the egos and in-game solutions to the politics of those at the table. Now multiply that by 10 times and you have the potential for a real headache.
Both set ups I mentioned were popular and went of for a couple of years, but both ended the same way. A group of new gamers came in who had the idea that they would “take over” the scene, even if it meant arguing with the refs and ruining the game for everyone else. Now here is where I will get flamed.
It seems that LARPS, Medieval Age recreation groups and fandom organizations have one thing in common, the members of these highly social cultures like to play politics each other, who can be the “coolest” fan with the most fellow subfans adoring them. I don’t see the point.
Perhaps this part of that “wrongness” some sense, they don’t see the point in joining a group where the rules are unspoken and taken up a notch in passion, oddly enough there is an SF book that hits on this. http://www.scifi.com/sfw/current/books.html
The other reasons I quit are that most of the LARPS (boffer/social) have pretty much the same structure. Boffers is the “run from combat to combat” and Social is the “GM is the ‘prince/king’ and his best friends all play the movers, shakers and minions of the king (so then you usually a “us vs. them” thing going.)
The only other thing, which was highly personal, was the suspension of disbelief. For me if I am sitting at the table, I have to imagine the whole scene, which I can do quite well. For LARPing, you can dress up to be “in character” and maintain the acting, but then you have to suddenly gear up and imagine someone’ bathroom is the dungeon or the sewer. The constant switching to accepting what I see and then using my imagination again sort of jars me. There was one game, Changeling, where the characters lived in the real world as well as a magical one. That game might something I might enjoy.
So between politics and predictability, I burned out on LARPing in a few years. Then again, the same thing almost made me burn out on tabletop gaming a couple of years ago WotC may never know how 3e really put a kick back into rpging.
