LARPs?

[dinsdale]

I've been LARPing since 1990 and have had mostly positive experiences, though I'm pretty much retired these days. Most importantly, I met my wife and a large percentage of our friends through those games.

Most of my experience was with either the MIT Assassin's Guild (1-10 day games in every genre imaginable, no physical contact) or Nero Alliance (Medieval boffer-LARP with a continuing story/characters for years).

As with all things, there are good and bad examples of LARPS and LARP players..

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

we just went into the backyard and wailed on each other with sticks, wiffle ball bats, and pvc tubes.

Hell yes man! I like you better already. I've been doing that with my brothers and anyone I can sucker into it for 8 years. Once I made a bunch of weapons out of PVC and pool noodles. I had axes, sword-chucks, flails, and sundry coolness. However, after one brother threw a dagger at me and broke my tooth with the PVC, and the other's double swords noodle fell off and he cut my throat up, my switched back to sticks

 

[Twinswords]

Larps

Well my dutch larporganisation is starting it`s new larpyear. Unfortunaly it`s in The Netherlands. But we had alot of fun in the previous year.

Here is a trailer of some things we did. (about 10 minutes)

http://cauldron-nl.bene.ws/trailer/Cauldron2003.wmv
or for slow internet:
http://cauldron-nl.bene.ws/trailer/Cauldron2003_smalband.wmv

Some comments:
Most talking is in dutch.
The witch is a good friend of my and still lives offcourse.
We use some pirotechnics, we have some guys who are good at that.
Some pieces are from a no budget LOTRlarp.
Sorry for the orcs.

 

[Creamsteak]

we just went into the backyard and wailed on each other with sticks, wiffle ball bats, and pvc tubes.

I never called that Larping... that's just Mondays in the summer for me. Pipes padded with inches of foam and covered in ducktape work pretty well for both beating each other and shooting bottle rockets. At one point we had close to thirty people over on a farm where we proceeded to blow each other's fingers off and if you missed, you closed to beating range.

 

[frankthedm]

I don't like the nero larps much due to the costs per session [ Nero was 50 bux to join and that much for a one day event]

Vampire is ok, but i don't like the reduction in randomness MET does over Pen and paper. I do like that more conflict is interplayer rather than players vs. npc's in larps.

There is a pretty good VtM larp in my area [moves from Bolingbrook to Lombard based on time of year] that is on the same day my RPG group meets.

 

[Zappo]

First time I LARPed, it was at a con, a Vampire LARP, and it ended in a bloodbath where half the players (eer, characters) lost their unlives. Fun, but not what I expected and not what I was hoping.

Second time, it was to be a new Vampire LARP campaign (yeah, chronicle, whatever). Turns out that me and one other new guy were the only ones who actually had new characters for this new campaign, all the rest were using old and uber characters from previous campaigns. On top of that, they brought their old plots and feuds as well, and I couldn't understand anything of what was going on. Apart from that, the game had heaps of politics and nothing else, and all characters were extremely two-dimensional and similar to each other. I got severely bored after two sessions and left.

I'm not interested in more combat-oriented LARPs; I was ready to put up with the goth genre only because I hoped for good roleplaying, but having seen none I don't think there will be a third time in the near future.

 

[frankthedm]

Yep heaps of politics, thats your standard Camarillia vampire game. Plus a side order of getting screwed over by everyone else seasoned with the threat of getting diablerized [cannibalized] by every lick[fangface] who decided to save a few points on Generation [how close your blood is to first vampire and how strong you can become] during character creation.

 

[NiTessine]

I haven't LARPed before, but I should be participating in one LARP starting exactly a month from now, called Faerûn IV: The Baron of the Stonelands. I'd post the URL to its website, but since it's all in Finnish, there's little point. A friend of mine practically forced me at gunpoint to register. Who knows, maybe I'll have fun.

 

[Zappo]

Actually, I quite like political plots, and if someone threatened me of diablerie, I'd pull out my concealed tape recorder and start a blackmail fest. Everyone was a scheming bastard, but that doesn't mean that I can't play that game as well as any of them. I kinda liked the system, too. It's the absolute lack of anything else that went to my nerves. It's no better than playing the stereotypical D&D mindless dungeon hackfest.

I've had people tell me not to give up on LARPing because of a couple bad experiences. But if and when I try a LARP again, it will be with at least some people I know, and I will have some input on the style of game before starting.

 

[Henry]

Never tried it personally, but I've always been hesitant to, because it just doesn't look like a lot of fun to me. I have a family member who is really into it (she used to go to one called SOLAR), and I'm glad she had fun, but it doesn't look like something I'd want to get into seriously.

THe Mind's Eye stuff looked far too political for me - I can play DIplomacy with friends any time, and I don't even like doing that.