Does LARP freak anyone else out?

[The Little Raven]

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.

Well, how would you feel if I said that most D&D gamers are overweight, ugly, social retards that continue to live with their parents for most of their lives, while collecting trivial pieces of plastic in order to feel a deeper connection to an old television series than the people around them? What if I said that most D&D gamers were immature children that lack the basic social skills to even interest a member of the opposite sex? What if I said that most D&D gamers are unimaginative lunatics that would rather delve into a book about some fantasy world that was made up almost 30 years ago by a guy in Wisconsin than go out into sunlight and fresh air?

I'm sure most people on these forums would have quite a problem with that, and it would be construed as an attack on D&D gamers. However, by looking at a few stereotypes, I could paint the entire D&D community with this brush, just as you people are painting the LARP community... remember, the most vocal portion of any community is a minority... and those socially maladjusted LARPers that everyone seems to acknowledge were socially maladjusted before they ever picked up a LARP book.

LARPers are just gamers that don't care what society thinks of them. However, the problem with a good deal of LARPers is that they do not know how to actually LARP, since many of the "freaks" that I've met have usually been between the ages of 14-18. These kids don't even know how to be themselves, much less seriously act like another character.

And before anyone takes offense to my statements above... I know plenty of well adjusted and socially adept D&D players (being one, myself), but I have met MORE than enough gamers on the other end of the spectrum to give this stereotype immortality.

 

[tarchon]

One other thing.

All this talk about LARPers pretending they're vampires, actually think it's true, as well as biting eachother... that has nothing to do with LARPing. In fact, a very strong rule in the Mind's Eye Theatre (the LARP system from White Wolf) is NO TOUCHING, along with NO WEAPONS (even props) and NO DRUGS/ALCOHOL.

Well, as a way old time VtM player, it seems to me most people who've been around the White Wolf scene have a story or two about someone who took the whole vampire thing just a little too seriously. "Cape-boy" is that guy we've all run into who sleeps in a cardboard coffin and drinks "bloode wynne," as Justin Achilli once put it, the VtM equivalent of that proverbial unbathed guy who lives in his mom's basement and sleeps on his complete collection of Dragon. That's probably why that yarn usually gets a better response on WW fora than D&D fora. It's admittedly unrefined too, but it's a very old post to which I'm sentimentally attached. My favorite email response to its original posting was (AINMTU): "oooh, I hope it's true."

LARP has calmed down a bit, from what I can tell (it seems, by an active effort to discourage that small but unfortunately very noticeable freak element), but, man, some of the stuff you'd hear about on alt.vampyres back in the old days...

 

[mistergone]

Well, I don't do LARP myself, being a table-topper at heart, but I did see
something last weekend that probably qualifies as a bad LARP experience.

>snip cool story<

Hm, well, that is interesting indeed. Two things:

1) How was the Floyd show?

and,

2) Can I hang out with you and your friends?

 

[mistergone]

Well, how would you feel if I said that most D&D gamers are overweight, ugly, social retards that continue to live with their parents for most of their lives, while collecting trivial pieces of plastic in order to feel a deeper connection to an old television series than the people around them? What if I said that most D&D gamers were immature children that lack the basic social skills to even interest a member of the opposite sex? What if I said that most D&D gamers are unimaginative lunatics that would rather delve into a book about some fantasy world that was made up almost 30 years ago by a guy in Wisconsin than go out into sunlight and fresh air?

I'd feel just fine, 'cause I know just to what degree I personally fit into the typical gamer stereotype. And I'm comfortable with it.

Let me add "highly defensive and exciteable" to my opinions of most LARPers.

Here's a token if it makes you feel better.

 

[Numion]

Well, how would you feel if I said that most D&D gamers are overweight, ugly, social retards that continue to live with their parents for most of their lives, while collecting trivial pieces of plastic in order to feel a deeper connection to an old television series than the people around them? What if I said that most D&D gamers were immature children that lack the basic social skills to even interest a member of the opposite sex? What if I said that most D&D gamers are unimaginative lunatics that would rather delve into a book about some fantasy world that was made up almost 30 years ago by a guy in Wisconsin than go out into sunlight and fresh air?

If that was your personal experience, go ahead and say that. Mistergnomes observations were just that - his own observatio ns and experiences from hanging with those larpers. It's quite ok to speak his experiences here.

I'd say that it's quite difficult to speak on others experiences, so it was quite ok for him to say that.

 

[James Heard]

OK, my experiences with LARP:

I began playing tabletop wargames, evolved into tabletop roleplaying games, quit gaming for a few years in the early 90s so that I could devote more time to girls than my gaming habits left me time for. Slowly, as I got back into more or less constant gaming I found myself playing with more and more people who were talking about LARPs being ran in the area. Since I'm an open-minded guy, knew every game store owner for a 100 miles in every direction, and noted that there were lots more women attending these LARPS than even my Cyberpunk game I went.

Thankfully, most of the people in charge of the games were people I was more or less familiar with or had gamed with before. Some of the folks from the Rocky Horror Picture Shows that I'd been dragged to in high school featured prominently in the management, which was both good and bad. They were familiar with organizing venues, patrolling the fringes of the playing areas and dealing with concerned citizens, but they weren't the best gamers in my opinion to begin with. After a few sessions where I was a bit uninspired, but willing to be liberal where it concerned the presence of attractive young women gamers showing cleavage, I decided to try my hand at organizing the game issues. Alas, months past, and quality control over a game with 50-200 players and a dozen moderators and game masters proved to be more difficult than I thought. Since there was money to be made by charging fees for entry, the people in charge of the games were reluctant to allow people to kick out disruptive players. Even though the games were fairly mature in tone, for some reason they decided to let in every player who showed up to the door regardless of age. Occassionally, given that games were held on Saturday nights and had an excess of younger players, alchohol and drugs would enter the mix with little acknowledgement from the folks in charge even to recognize that they might be held responsible for the player's activities.

Given all that, the games weren't bad on the weekends where the storylines and plots were in sync. After a while I stopped thinking of them very much as a game, but as a social occassion to meet gamers. Very few of the folks playing the LARPs would resist sitting down for a good sit down game, and they've proven excellent at them even years later since I still game with many of them.

Eventually I gave up the WoD LARPS and began attending SCA events, which I quickly decided weren't in any way a LARP but more of a sport with a built in excuse to drink homebrewed beer in kilts while camping. Unfortunately, even having been invited and attended some sort (excuse me, I have no clue what game it actually was) of boffer LARP, after my experiences with the SCA I couldn't get into them at all. I'm sure I just didn't get it, the immediate thing that came to mind the moment I picked up my friend's weapon and watched everyone engaging in combat without any real sort of armor on I cringed.

The best thing I've come away with from LARPing, beyond the many excellent players I've met through it, is the easy way my groups can stand up and seamless go through the motions of a scene if it suits them. I've ran very interesting "dinner party" scenes right up until the moment everyone knows to sit down and get out their 20-siders. Even the most gamist members of the group have long since been indoctrinated.

I think the pacing and management of most LARPs are where they suffer most. The "freaky player" problem is no more so in LARPs than in sit down games, except that almost no LARPs I've attended have ever successfully stressed or communicated the sorts of things that sit down gamers do every time they accept a new player onto the table. I find it interesting that so many gamers are so against it based on so few experiences though. I've played Rifts on more than one occassion and hated it each and every time, but I realize that one good game master could change that viewpoint tomorrow.

I think with time LARPing might develop into something really intensely interesting, as people start gathering the sorts of experiences that they can share with each other to help each other make better games. D&D has had a much similar evolution, with I doubt very many DMs out there making the same sorts of tragic mistakes running a game as I did back in the 80s. I wish there wasn't the animosity factor that clearly runs between the two sorts of gamers, because I think both would do well to learn a thing or two from the other.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Can we knock off the sniping? Thanks.

 

[fusangite]

A few (maybe 6) years ago, I became associated with a group of gamers who had coalesced around a highly successful and popular Vampire the Masquerade LARP. As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, these people were the most charismatic, well-adjusted, sexually successful and socially adept group of gamers I have ever known. They are known by my other gamer friends on good days as the "cool gamers" and on bad as the "snobby gamers."

These people were, I believe, able to be successful LARPers because they, to a much greater extent than anyone else I know in gaming, were comfortable with their physical selves. For me and most of my gaming associates, table top games will always win out over LARP because table top games allow one to retreat from the physical world and interact in ways that are exclusively social and intellectual.

So, like many other table top gamers, I do not LARP. However, I don't see this as in any indication that I'm a more well-adjusted person. Indeed, it may indicate the reverse.

 

[Teflon Billy]

A few (maybe 6) years ago, I became associated with a group of gamers who had coalesced around a highly successful and popular Vampire the Masquerade LARP. As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, these people were the most charismatic, well-adjusted, sexually successful and socially adept group of gamers I have ever known. They are known by my other gamer friends on good days as the "cool gamers" and on bad as the "snobby gamers..."

Who calls us "Snobby gamers"?

That's it. I'm excluding them from our social group

 

[Magic Missile]

*drops out of Lurk*

OK, I spent ages writing out a nice post, got two errors when I tried to post it, and then the PC crashed. So if you could just imagine the following paragraphs are well written pieces of prose that flow beautifully and abund with colourful and evocative languauge and metaphor, I'd be thankful.

I was reluctant to start LARPing after heaving so many negative comments and horror stories on this forum and similar RPG sites. However, during my first year at university I was eventually roped into joining one with the Games Society.

It was great fun, and now I LARP regularly. We use our own LARP system, of the "actually hit things" variety rather than the rock-paper-scissors method.

It appeals to the part of us that swings plastic lightsabers around going "zwwwwing! zwwwwwing!", the part of us that shouts out "flank left!" during games of laser tag, the part of us that builds forst out of the sofa cushions. Everyone understands that, at some basic level, it's just an excuse to run around fighting with big foam swords. And it's fantastic fun. No-one takes it too seriously.

It's completely different from a P&P game. It's hard to make a player scared when you describe a hulking shape bearing down on his 180hp fighter, but when it's *you* trying to creep through the woods, and *you* seeing a huge Demon with an axe burst through the undergrowth and come running at you (trust me, some of the guys are scary enough out of costume... put them in spiked shoulderpads with a skeleton mask on and they're pretty damn intimidating) it's a different story.

Having said that, I have also taken part in Vampire and Mage live action games, and found them unbelievably dull and boring. Nothing happens! Ever! People just sit and chat! Give me a big foam sword any day...

But I digress. LARP is as valid a form of RPG as much as a pen and paper game is. Gamers shouldn't be divided amongst themselves, when there are bigger prejudices to fight against.