In the giant barrel of geekdom the LARPers (Live Action Role Players) are generally considered to be the least cool of the geeks. Lower than cosplayers, lower than Furries, lie the LARPers. It seems a bit unfair - all they’re doing is having fun. Is it their passion, or their sincerity that people disdain and make fun of them for?
As Wikipedia says it’s “impressionistic theatre”
Live action role-playing game
Why no love for the merry LARPers?
Here are some below enjoying themselves.
Dude, you’re way off. LARPers, as you can see, are equivalent to Klingon-speaking Trekkies, Erotic Fanfic writers, and Fanfic writers who put themselves in the story; they’re above 13-year-old gamers of any sort, Pokemon fans over the age of six, Trekkies who get married in klingon garb, Erotic fanfic writers who put themselves in the story. And they’re way above Furries, Erotic Furries, and People who write erotic versions of star trek where all the characters are furries, like Kirk is an ocelot or something, and they put a furry version of themselves as the star of the story.
The LARPers who go “Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!” are, as far as I’m concerned, about on the level with folks who play paintball. I don’t get the contempt. The ones who sit around being vampires often express a lot of contempt for mundanes, and I think that mundanes return the favor.
I say this as someone who has played more than my share of Vampire LARPs and even helped run a couple, way back in the day.
Daniel
Possibly because when paintballing, you don’t dress up as a wizard to throw beanbags at some guy dressed like a troll shrieking, “Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!”
That lightning bolt thing does seem to be a bit unfair though. How the hell is someone supposed to stand up against someone who can hit them from a distance with lightning bolt after lightning bolt as quick as they can throw them?
Cloak of lightning protection, +3.
That’s right: you dress up like a soldier and run around shooting fake blood at one another from toy guns. Wayyyy cooler.
As opposed to the fairness of paintball games where the dorks who take it too seriously have automatic weapons, where the folks who do it one time are using pistols or other single-shot weapons?
I’ve not done the throwing-beanbag thing or the paintball thing, but I really dont’ see where one of them is any cooler or fairer than the other.
Daniel
Also known as Grandma’s old tablecloth.
The mothball smell is… reagents! Yeah, reagents.
Camphor is, as is well known, a necessary component of the Repel Insects spell. 
How the hell does this work? I used to play AD&D back in the day, but I have no idea how this live version calculates hits/damage etc.
Is there some super-DM off-screen who can roll many-sided die in his head and instantly calculate the results? And how is this communicated to the participants?
I can’t really speak for myself, but my friend’s views are that in a pen and paper RPG, your imagination is medium, or the canvas, which the actions are happening. No real-life props or theatrics you can find is as good as what you can imagine – going life-action is just a “needless complication”.
IIRC, LARPing is more about the role-play than about beating each other up with plastic swords. (This is a total WAG, but one possible way of doing it is to determine the outcome ahead of time and then improvise the battle.)
The group I used to belong to had simple rules. Damage was by color
White-slashing
Red-stabbing
Yellow-bashing
Black-Really Big edged weapon
There were inly four damage locations- limbs, body, head and hands.
Only certain yellow weapons could be aimed at the head(fer example throwing hammers made from big carwash sponges in grey hammer shaped covers). This was just a safety thing.
Aiming at somebody’s hands got you in trouble, also a safety thing.
One white, red, or yellow wound to a limb rendered it wounded and unusable. A second hit cause a mortal wound. Mortally wounded people can not fight, cast spells, or move other than by crawling. If not healed, they die in 12 minutes. If the body is hit again after being mortally wounded, death results.
Dead players put their weapon and both hands over their head and sign in to Valhalla. They come back after 12 minutes.
A black hit to a limb was a mortal wound. A second black hit, or a black to the body was death. White and red swords, knives, and daggers had length limits. A black sword could have an overall length equal to the player’s height.
Spells required the cleric or mage to have a holysymbol/spellbook and material components, and to say a spell of X words. If it’s a lightning bolt, etc, they threw bean bags. The number of spells per day was limited by level. Damage from spells was addressed in the rule book.
There were rules for armor ranging from hide, padded, leather, studded leather and ring mail, chain, and plate. Each type could absorb a certain amount of hits from various colors before needing to be repaired. Plate mail allowed a player to ignore all yellow hits. Shields could only be destroyed by a blackweapon.
Back To The OP
Huh? Say wha? My real problem with most LARPs is that they IMO don’t portray the original game well. Vampire The Masquerade has folks becoming invisible, disguising themselves perfectly, changing into animals and a bunch of other stuff that really doesn’t work in a LARP.
IMO LARPing can’t really be placed above or below cosplay as there is no clear division between the two. The guy who shows up at the animecon dressed as dwarf may belong to a Lodoss LARP.
Furries? Way above furries.
I dunno. One of the LARPs I ran once involved a demon who gave people icky powers, and inspired icky deeds. We had different rooms in a college building set up to be locations around town (the hospital, the all-night diner, the morgue, the water supply, the mayor’s office, etc.). We wrote short descriptions of the locations on chalkboards in each room: “This is The Cavern,” it might say, “a small, dark bar down on Franklin Street. A folk-singer is sitting on stage playing old standards, while a mixed crowd of hippies and college students sit in booths or at the bar, drinking and smoking.”
The demon-possessed occasionally went to a location and rearranged it by writing new descriptions on the board. “This bar is the scene of a massacre,” they might write. “The floor is slick with blood, and over two dozen corpses litter the booths and the stage. A man on stage appears to have been throttled with a guitar string. Twelve beer steins are lined up on the bar, and in each, a human eye is floating.”
Creepy folk I played with; but it worked well to provide that old PnP atmosphere.
And one of the best moments in the LARP was when a guy playing the demon-possessed confronted a group of badasses down the length of an empty hallway. The player smiled, and said, “I slump to the ground and dissolve into a puddle of slime,” and then slowly, slowly began walking toward the badasses. “Oh, shit!” they yelled. “We pull out our guns and start firing!” I told them that their bullets passed harmlessly through the creeping slime. The demon-guy continued his slow walk, and the badasses, nerve broken, took off running.
What we saw–a guy walking down the hallway–was nothing like what we were imagining–a gelatinous pool of mucous oozing along the ground. It worked beautifully.
Daniel
living up to his handle
Oh, I can see that working just fine. But, that was a change the players were meant to see. Many vampire campaigns involve intrigue and things players are not supposed to see. How do you handle “That’s not the repair man! It’s Bobby the Malkavian!”. What about those times you tell your players “Ignore Bobby walking into your house and taking things. He’s invisible.”
ExtraKun
Unless a LARPer has a lot of money, crafting skills, or a lot of time, their costume and props suggest things rather than attempt to portray them. The rest is role-playing. My costume ended up being a fine velvet jester’s cap ( a gift after one of the LARP founders decided I was a fine fool), a green leatherete vest, an oversized purple shirt with black spots like a cow’s hide, and black sweatpants. I expected derision the first time I wore that instead of the hooded cloak and belt I’d been trying. Instead, an acquaintance saw me and said “At last! A real costume!”. My earlier outfit had been properly period. But, it didn’t match the character I was playing. The new outfit was full of anachronisms. But it was the brightly colored clothing of a fool and a little imagination changed leatherette to real leather and sweatpants into baggy cotton trousers.
There were almost no stats, though there were experience levels. Every event was an experience point (the camp outs were 2). Every so many experience points you made a level. Nobody in the group felt left behind as other players advanced since we all had the same opportunity to advance and advanced at the same rate.At certain levels, classes gained new abilities- thieves had a backstab that increased in damage, spellcasters gained new spells and the ability to cast spells more quickly, etc. There were no to-hit rolls. The thief’s ability to move silently involved no dice, just a thief trying to move silently. There were no rules lawyers, because the rules were simple. There were no munchkins as there were no stats to minmax, there were few magical items, and it was not possible to permanently own a magic item.
Finally, a lot more people could play at once. A few elders stationed at various spots would warn people who broke the rules, investigate allegations of rule breaking and oversee certain other things. OTTOMH, I’d say we got fifty or so players at the campouts. I can’t see that working with a pen and paper game unless you change so many things that you’re essentially LARPing anyway.
No, not really. Most people I’ve seen who have gone are just dressed in old jeans and a long sleeve shirt, though there’s usually a few people in camo, but they’re just generic hunting coveralls most of the time. Hardly dressing up like a soldier. Maybe at the really, really top level they dress up in fatigues, but I’ve never seen it. But at least it has a practical value - helps keep you from getting shot. Unlike some guy in a bright yellow cloak.
Those are few and far between. Been paintballing a couple times and I’ve never come across anyone who had an automatic weapon. Everyone had semi-auto, that’s even the kind given to you by the paintball place.
My point is that spells in most role playing games are limited in some way. You can’t generally hit someone with five fireballs before they’ve had a chance to even look up like you can with beanbags. Seems unbalanced to me.
Again, not speaking for all LARP groups, just the one I was in. Fireball, lightning bolt etc were spells mages only received at medium levels. They took a long time to cast (I can’t recall if fireball started at 200 words or 500). The mage cannot fight, dodge, or move faster than a slow walk while reading the spell. The spell must finish with the mage yelling “Fireball” and throwing an orange spell ball. The fireball only hurts whatever it hits, and anybody standing within 3 feet of that spot. If the ball misses everybody and lands in a spot with nobody in it, the spell is still used up for the day. If the mage hits one of the guards who have been defending them, that guard and everybody with 3 feet are dead. If the mage shouts, moves back their hand to throw the ball and drops it, the spell goes off killing the mage and everybody within 3 feet.
Mages were also not allowed to wear armor of anykind. All mages must wear ankle-length robes. If a spell requires material components, the mage must have them in order to cast the spell. All mages must bring spellbooks, without a spellbook a mage cannot cast any spells.
Fireball was generally used only to try to kill an enemy leader, or to take out a horde at fortress gates.
Ah. See, that’s what I remember spells being like in D&D and I think that’s pretty reasonable. I was just going off of the video clip in astro’s link.
Ah, due to the many problems I have with this computer I can’t view the clip.
At least LARPer’s venture outside… maybe even get some exercise. IMHO this puts them ahead of the basement dwelling geeks with carpal tunnel syndrome, calluses on their mouse fingers and no RL friends.
That’s how it worked with the group I played with. There was a tournament one (game) year to pick a champion. The players went off with one of the storytellers and left us to mingle and plot as usual. They did paper rock scissors behind the scenes and then returned to play out the results before the crowd.
Mostly it was lots of plotting and intrigue (I played vampire), and it grows easy to avoid seeing players who are ‘invisible’ (arms crossed in front of their chest).
The game I refer to was a really good one. They had a downtime system set up as the monthly games took place each new year in game time. We would turn in what we wanted to do on sheets to the storytellers and they would roll dice and make up rumors etc to hand out at the beginning of the new game. Major things would happen between games that were affected by what the players wanted to happen between games. You could also combine actions with other players in downtime, it was never a solo effort unless you wished it that way.
The lupine war happened in a downtime for example. (One of the vampires had gotten hold of something of theirs, they wanted it back, us Gangrel tried to get it back but failed and the fight was on…) Some people hid, some worked on a spell and some fought. I fought and I ended up dead in my enemy’s arms (I needed to die anyway, wasn’t doing much with the character at that point as she had come to an agreement with her enemy.) They wrote out stories and handed them out to everyone, so all who had died were immortalized. I still have my sheets from that game and wish I still lived in that city to play.
It grows harder to play when you have a group that is full of rules lawyers and fighters though. That really slows things down. One group I played with was like that, we’d take 3 steps and stand around talking about mundane things before our next three. Gah! I hated that. Nothing ever happened because someone was pulling a gun on someone else. I much prefered the dark ages game, but a good storyteller would have done wonders for the modern nights.
This is the game I really enjoyed. They finished up middle ages shortly after I moved (it ran about 2 years) and moved on to Elizabethan England.
As a Pen&Paper gamer, yeah, we always felt a little superior to the LARPers. A lot of it had to do with a tendency of many LARPers to take it WAY to seriously. Most PnP guys are there to have fun and play a little game. There are a much higher percenatge of LARPers who say things in dead seriousness like “I am only role-playing when I go about my day job, Garmok is the real me, and lets me release the spirit of the werewolf I was in a previous life and will return to.” The real freaks (of which there is a decently high percentage in my experience) Make it really hard to take the rest of them seriously.