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MizPiz
May 29, 2013

by Athanatos
Are there any collections of good cat piss stories somewhere online? Can't buy archives upgrade and don't really want to go through the threads to find them anyways.

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Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

Coward posted:

That was always my experience with the Camarilla. A huge number of people inordinately emotionally invested in their characters where it became clear that dressing up and affecting an air of superiority as someone completely different was vitally important to their self-esteem. It made enjoying faux drama or danger really hard, because so many people refused to be vulnerable in any way except on their own ludicrous terms.

It made me glad I ended up running the Changeling game, since most of the people playing that were incredibly relaxed about things and were there to have fun. Well, very shortly after the first game I ran all the creeps left the game (hopefully because they scented the change in the way the game was going to be run) thus leaving me with funhavers.

Experiences like the ones you're describing make up 9/10's of my LARP stories. They aren't even that interesting to tell. It mostly involves trying to engage players in argument or over an issue only to have entire rooms of people back down because nobody wants to have a flaw or an ideal. I've seen a pack of Carthians refuse to take a hard stance on democracy in a Requiem game. I've seen player-characters struggle to admit they drink blood in a game about vampires. It's like the background noise to every cat-piss story about vampire LARPs--a bunch of flimsy, one dimensional characters built around having absolutely no personality or weaknesses because that would make you ~inept~ or ~a zealot~ or whatever. Meanwhile you're off in a corner trying desperately to roleplay your character (why the gently caress else would you play in a vampire LARP) while people watch you more than participate. It's an awful lot like being at a middle-school dance.

Crazies flock to WW games because of their stance on outsiders. You're an outsider because you're secretly magic, or because the world just can't stand how cool you are, or whatever. Tack on the fact that some people who have difficulty functioning in society legitimately believe these things about themselves IRL and you've got yourself a pretty nice nutso stew. Any game that starts from the premise of, "You think that old man on the corner who says he's a wizard is crazy, but what if he wasn't?" is going to attract some weirdos.

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

MizPiz posted:

Are there any collections of good cat piss stories somewhere online? Can't buy archives upgrade and don't really want to go through the threads to find them anyways.

You're posting this in a 171 page long thread. There's plenty of cat piss.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

Mendrian posted:

Experiences like the ones you're describing make up 9/10's of my LARP stories. They aren't even that interesting to tell. It mostly involves trying to engage players in argument or over an issue only to have entire rooms of people back down because nobody wants to have a flaw or an ideal. I've seen a pack of Carthians refuse to take a hard stance on democracy in a Requiem game. I've seen player-characters struggle to admit they drink blood in a game about vampires. It's like the background noise to every cat-piss story about vampire LARPs--a bunch of flimsy, one dimensional characters built around having absolutely no personality or weaknesses because that would make you ~inept~ or ~a zealot~ or whatever. Meanwhile you're off in a corner trying desperately to roleplay your character (why the gently caress else would you play in a vampire LARP) while people watch you more than participate. It's an awful lot like being at a middle-school dance.

Crazies flock to WW games because of their stance on outsiders. You're an outsider because you're secretly magic, or because the world just can't stand how cool you are, or whatever. Tack on the fact that some people who have difficulty functioning in society legitimately believe these things about themselves IRL and you've got yourself a pretty nice nutso stew. Any game that starts from the premise of, "You think that old man on the corner who says he's a wizard is crazy, but what if he wasn't?" is going to attract some weirdos.

Exactly. This, and the fact that the sanctioned game can't turn anybody away as long as they're paying dues makes it really rough. A troupe game at least has the independence to say, "You're a troll. gently caress off," even if they don't often have to do it. the Camarilla (or whatever it's called now) has to invite any member, up until (and often still after) they do something terrible.

Kavak posted:

World of Darkness games attract the crazies so well that White Wolf even hired a few of them. Phil "Satyros" Brucato and at least one other guy kind of thought Mage was actually loving real on some level.

I know a guy who knows most of the WW writers and has written some stuff himself for Geist and Mage. I'll ask him about Brucato and see if he has any stories about him. He might not know him, but he likely does. His relationship with WW has been on the rocks for a while because of their sanctioned LARP and how it got a little (well, a lot) weird on a personal level. His story in and of itself would fit right in here, despite being mostly out-of-character drama. But that's his story to tell.

Coward posted:

That was always my experience with the Camarilla. A huge number of people inordinately emotionally invested in their characters where it became clear that dressing up and affecting an air of superiority as someone completely different was vitally important to their self-esteem. It made enjoying faux drama or danger really hard, because so many people refused to be vulnerable in any way except on their own ludicrous terms.

It made me glad I ended up running the Changeling game, since most of the people playing that were incredibly relaxed about things and were there to have fun. Well, very shortly after the first game I ran all the creeps left the game (hopefully because they scented the change in the way the game was going to be run) thus leaving me with funhavers.

This is my experience with WW LARPs as well. I have a ton of goofy experiences, and most of them revolve around one or more people not understanding that they a) are supposed to be there to have fun, and b) are in a game that is not real. Things got... weird.

StringOfLetters posted:

You got some good story-telling mojo, :justpost:

Thanks! Here's one from the sanction WW LARP, then called the Camarilla. This was in the 2000's.

My city is small, but has a robust LARP scene. At the game's peak, we had 30 players regularly attending. Masquerade (and later Requiem) anchored the game, with Forsaken and Lost being offered as well. Most of the weird poo poo happened in Requiem. Here's a cast of characters pertinent to this story:

:toughguy: I played an INT 1 gangster from South Boston. He was relatively young, and a Nosferatu in the Lancea Sanctum faction. Unlike most members of the faction, he was there because it was the closest thing to the Catholicism of his mortal life that he could get as a vampire. He was too stupid to think as an immortal and conceptualize any of the differences. But he was also a Tradition hard-liner, and would get downright psycho about people breaching the Masquerade. He was dumb as hell, and a traditionalist with a horrible anger problem. He was also spec'd to wreck the loving poo poo out of people at close range. He had grappling skills, supernatural strength, and Nightmare all in spades. He also had enough Obfuscate to get the jump on most people. I mean, he was literally a professional killer before becomign a vampire. I'll call him Southie.

:ironicat: One of the players played an Ordo Dracul Gangrel, and she made that faction downright unplayable to everyone else. She and two of her friends had been playing long enough to be able to bully 80% of the players, and used that bullying to make their faction their own personal weirdo den. Other Ordo characters were welcome to game with them, but they just bogarted all of the plot action, conversation, decision making, and so on. She also had a 300 year old ghouled panther with mutations and poo poo that was represented by a literal stuffed animal. The character walked around with it in the streets (imaginably, of course). Conceptually, her character walked around with a loving panther in the streets of the city. You may see where this is going. I'll call her Ironicat.

:freep: Ironicat's IRL husband played an Invictus Daeva. His character wasn't notably goofy, but the player was a loving psychopath. Remember that anger problem that Southie had? This guy had it IRL. He once threw a metal chair across a room because another player beat his in a fight. And, no, it wasn't a cool, dramatic thing to do. It was uncontrolled, without warning, and done in anger. Because the Camarilla is an old boy's club of which he was an old member, they gave him a slap on the wrist. He should have been banned right then and there. Instead, he got to keep playing and get involved in this little story. I'll call him Freeper, because on Facebook he's one of those people that jerks off to guns and rails against liberals and won't shut up about Obama being a communist or whatever. A pleasant fellow.

:ohdear: Was a new player. A couple of friends and I brought him into the game because he said he wanted to try it out. He made a "character tie" with mine, to give him a foothold to get involved. It's a pretty common thing to do with folks you know, especially new players. I'll call him Newbie.

:eng101: A storyteller, AKA a GM, because WW has to sound *~dramatic and mature~*

A long-running political conflict had been brewing between two sides in the city: the Ordo Dracul and the Invictus/Lancea Sanctum alliance. Pretty basic vampire political junk. However, the city's most powerful Invictus, Freeper, sided with the Ordo because of... reasons? (Hint: IRL poon is the reason, because Ironicat and Freeper are both too stupid to separate fantasy from reality enough to not fight with each other IRL about poo poo they did in-character).

So, Freeper's character was jacked because he'd been playing for too loving long, and he moved forward with a plot to betray his own alliance for IRL poon. He and Ironicat met up, and unfortunately, Newbie stepped in front of that freight train. He had no idea how outclassed he was until Ironicat ashed him in two rounds. This was done for virtually no reason, and with no IRL courtesy of not PKing a brand new player two hours into his first game.

Bear in mind, that according to the game, delivering "Final Death" (i.e. killing a vampire) is illegal unless the act is sanctioned by the city's authorities for some crime against vampire society. So, basically, Ironicat just committed murder, and Freeper's faction is supposed to be the lawful, traditionalist types. But she wrecked the new player's character basically for no reason, and Freeper didn't do a thing.

When word of this gets back to Southie, he was in "Elysium," the safe, neutral zone for vampire social/political bullcrap. He managed to not lose his poo poo right then and there, but then Ironicat left with her ghouled panther. He left right behind her. He was out for revenge because someone killed one of his allies, and did it against the rules of the Traditions. To top it all off, Ironicat was a known ally of Freeper in-character, and she happened to be wandering around the city in breach of the Masquerade. Southie, in his impulsive stupidity and anger, decided to take revenge. He was dumb and nuts, but he was still a Tradition hard-liner. So he couldn't waste her without specific sanction to do so, but her ghoul was fair game because it was just a ghoul and was in breach of the Masquerade anyway.

Southie follows them for a minute, waits for them to be out of range of help, and ambushes them because that's what he does. I got the jump on them enough to basically cripple her with Nightmare and kill the ghoul in one fell swoop:

:toughguy: (In character) "Imma break dis furball's neck. Open dem eyes and watch!"

:ironicat: (IRL) *Cries* No! Don't!

:toughguy: (IRL) Are... are you crying? What are you doing?

:eng101: Ironicat, are you alright? Are you comfortable with this scene?

:ironicat: No I'm not! He's going to kill Nobbles!

:toughguy: I'm sorry. I'm not trying to make you upset. But you killed Newbie's character, so I'm just doing what Southie would do. Come on.

:ironicat: You can't kill him! *Cries more*

:toughguy: It's a character sheet, Ironicat. What the gently caress?

:ironicat: *Cries, leaves the room*

:eng101: :shrug:

It just really bugged me that Ironicat did something that had in-game repercussions, and then avoided those repercussions by being a drama queen that can't separate fantasy from reality. At first I thought she was just doing it in a calculated way to get out of the scene, but then I ran into Freeper later, who threatened to fight me IRL for making his wife cry. She was still upset like ten minutes later. I told him the same thing that I thought: that if her character is that attached to her ghoul, she should not piss off other characters that are stupid and psycho enough to wreck her character. And,

:toughguy: And if ironicat herself is that upset about losing a fictional character, she should take a goddamn break.

He threatened to fight me again and got in my face. A storyteller whisked him away. In the aftermath, the storytellers wanted me to apologize to Ironicat and take on some sort of written sanction with the group. Meanwhile, Freeper got no such punishment because he was an Old Boy with the club. I pointed out that I wasn't personally threatening Ironicat and was acting according to the plot in-character, and that she was basically getting away with whatever in-game by her out-of-game theatrics. The storytellers understood the plot situation, but didn't dismiss the whole thing. So, I got served with a punishment for in-game poo poo that made sense, and the guy that threatened to fight me IRL got nothing.

I never served the sanction. I left the group. Good loving riddance.

Coward
Sep 10, 2009

I say we take off and surrender unconditionally from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure



.
I'd still probably feel that a player has a right to call a timeout in a confrontation where a character is going to murder a loved one, even if it is a ridiculous 300 year old pet kitty (but a panther because that's so dark and mysterious, you guys).

But the main thrust of the point - that the worst players in the Camarilla were those who had emotionally invested far too much in their character's status, appearance, and cool they would fall to pieces or fight to the death if anything went against them - I am completely behind and I have a lot of experiences seeing things like that first hand. Players immediately and passionately arguing with the GMs about any consequence for actions behaving like the badass heroes they obviously were, making things like the whole PC ruling council of a city in-game deciding that due to their actions a character needed to be killed to maintain peace into a "don't come back as that character for a couple of months".

It was something the core group of the saner players I hung out with kept trying to tell people: Stop trying to make yourself the hero of your own little story. You'll never be able to handle when things go wrong, or when you have to the villain, or the foil, or the henchman, or the fool, or the sidekick, or the bystander.

Most of my stories from my time in the Camarilla were either the stories of the creepy people the game attracted, or the things my group did to send up the others for taking it so seriously.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

Coward posted:

I'd still probably feel that a player has a right to call a timeout in a confrontation where a character is going to murder a loved one, even if it is a ridiculous 300 year old pet kitty (but a panther because that's so dark and mysterious, you guys).

But the main thrust of the point - that the worst players in the Camarilla were those who had emotionally invested far too much in their character's status, appearance, and cool they would fall to pieces or fight to the death if anything went against them - I am completely behind and I have a lot of experiences seeing things like that first hand. Players immediately and passionately arguing with the GMs about any consequence for actions behaving like the badass heroes they obviously were, making things like the whole PC ruling council of a city in-game deciding that due to their actions a character needed to be killed to maintain peace into a "don't come back as that character for a couple of months".

It was something the core group of the saner players I hung out with kept trying to tell people: Stop trying to make yourself the hero of your own little story. You'll never be able to handle when things go wrong, or when you have to the villain, or the foil, or the henchman, or the fool, or the sidekick, or the bystander.

Most of my stories from my time in the Camarilla were either the stories of the creepy people the game attracted, or the things my group did to send up the others for taking it so seriously.

She didn't take a time out, though. She had an out-of-character freakout and left the scene entirely, and was allowed to do so. Her "panther" never got killed in the story because she left IRL. Her character never suffered a consequence for her actions because the player was immature about things. Taking a time out to check your emotions is alright if it's a heated scene, but this was handled badly. Honestly, the storyteller should have handed it differently, but then again I don't know what she could have done when Ironicat was freaking out as much as she was. It was dumb as hell on a lot of levels.

And I'm not a gamer that doesn't roleplay. I'll get into character and try to maintain motivation and whatnot. I borrowed a little speech from a friend who played a loud, boorish ogre in the changeling game: I would take a few seconds at the start of game to say to the group, "Southie is stupid and a jerk. Anything he does or says is not me, and I apologize in advance if he offends anyone with his stupidity." That was usually good for a chuckle, but should have gone without saying. I can have a heated argument in character and turn around literally seconds later and laugh with the other player IRL about it. Some players need to take a lot longer to step back out of their character, and that's alright. But some players don't step back out of their character at all, or don't know how. It gets even worse when IRL drama bleeds into plot drama, or vice-versa. We had IRL cliques feuding with each other over childish bullshit and had that affect how their characters acted toward each other. It didn't make any sense in the game's narrative, either, which threw off everyone's game even if you tried to ignore it. Worse yet, we would have some people's characters feud in-game and have that create an IRL feud for months, even after the game plot should have resolved itself.

But you hit on the crux of it: people trying to be the hero of their own personal story, all the time, every time. There is a time and a place for that, but it isn't every game and it isn't every plot. I understand that impulse, but White Wolf games put you in a position to play other roles on a regular basis. It's supposed to be about conflict between PCs, especially in a LARP where you have enough players for them to create their own plots amongst themselves. On paper, it's an interesting idea. But when the players can't divorce themselves from the narrative long enough to see things objectively and know their role in a story, then you get that Bad Kind of Drama.

ellbent
May 2, 2007

I NEVER HAD SOUL
I've only played in like three or four LARPs (at conventions) and the only times I had fun were when I stayed as far away from the inescapable nexus of timestops and drama that surrounded the core group of regulars and their tackle box of plot hooks.

In the "good times" column, there was a LARP set in Acre during the Crusades, where I played a Ratkin knight. Few of the knight positions had been actually filled, so our posse was four vampires and myself. We had an OOC agreement to try and postpose any cards-on-the-table who's who moments so we could stick together. Eventually they hatched a plan to rebel against their leader, which my character was faithful to, so they pitched the idea to my character and when he refused were nice enough to wipe his memory of the conversation instead of kill him, so we OOCly shook hands and they went off to have their rebellion while I wandered around eavesdropping on people in the common areas where it seemed like I was the closest thing to a cop and thus couldn't be asked to go away.

Lot of old guard in that game who were really lovely to me, though. I'd have dudes walk up to me and just abruptly ask what I was because they were using a power, but would be reticent or standoffish when I asked what the ability was. I mean, maybe that's prying, but Ratkin were one of a handful of changers that detection powers couldn't get a very precise read on, so it was relevant what was being used on me. Also I was treated to more scrutiny walking around as a common rat than as a person. Eventually a nice GM had to give me a note to hand to people using their woo-woo x-ray specs on the rat that told them they were very dumb and very paranoid if they inspected every drat rat they came across in this densely inhabited 12th century port city.

After being hypnotized, dominated, and told I couldn't steal an object with my Steal That Object gift because the vampires were too busy arguing over if one of them had declared "Fair Escaping" (?), I took my lanyard off and went to play board games instead of be there for the wrap-up. My friend had to come and get me because I won Best New Roleplayer. Hey, free knife.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

ellbent posted:

My friend had to come and get me because I won Best New Roleplayer. Hey, free knife.
This seems like the worst reward to give.

Echophonic
Sep 16, 2005

ha;lp
Gun Saliva
That's what I was thinking. They allow knives around those lunatics?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
My only real interactions with Larpers in real life was when I was at a street fair and saw a couple of people dressed like goths standing on a street corner all doing the "obtenebration you can't see me" thing with their hands, and talking about how they should drain all the kine there for treading on their ancestral grounds, or some other such thing.

They got really annoyed when people paid attention to them, even though they stood out like sore thumbs.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

Kurieg posted:

My only real interactions with Larpers in real life was when I was at a street fair and saw a couple of people dressed like goths standing on a street corner all doing the "obtenebration you can't see me" thing with their hands, and talking about how they should drain all the kine there for treading on their ancestral grounds, or some other such thing.

They got really annoyed when people paid attention to them, even though they stood out like sore thumbs.

I refused to LARP until I was in my 20's. I had known a bunch of guys who played Masquerade every Friday night at the mall. I knew people who played in public parks, college community centers, and other modestly populated public spaces. It was one of the big reasons I was so reluctant; I like the idea of designating a safe area where you can play a weirdo character without anybody thinking you're actually a weirdo. I didn't like the idea of my recreational time being something 'weird'--I wanted to legitimize it. You can't play paintball in public but paintball is a perfectly sane thing to do in the proper context. That was the goal.

I've run a couple of LARPs and been involved in a bunch. I've told a couple of those stories before I think but I can't remember which ones. I don't know if any of them are anything other than run-of-the-mill LARP nonsense, is it worth posting? I remember whole groups being slaughtered by an invincible skeleton in a Deadlands LARP, and I remember a guy who insisted on playing a Unicorn lawyer with a giant invisible oar in a Changeling game (the latter is not as much fun as it sounds, it is the opposite of fun).

FrostyPox
Feb 8, 2012

I played a couple LARPs that were pretty all right, while in college. My first one was a V:tR LARP in a room the club had specifically set aside for it by the school so it wasn't too weird. I played a Nosferatu Lancea Sanctum (the only one of that clan AND the only one in that covenant), which may actually not have been a good idea, since as a babby LARPer with a babby character with no hard and fast allies I was unsure of myself and reluctant to do anything. It was an official Camarilla LARP and the Prince was kind of a dick I guess, I don't know the details but all my friends quit and started a stand-alone Masquerade LARP. It was pretty fun, I played a Malkavian musician with no combat skills except, like, one dot in melee so I could use a lovely switchblade. Also, perhaps, not the best choice for a new roleplayer. I tried so hard to make sure I was playing the "dangerously mentally ill" bit seriously and not in the fairly common "LOL randommonkeycheese" way that I might've just been too reluctant to interact with other players. At least the ST tried his damnedest to make sure every single clan had something going on and to include every player in the plot as best he could, despite there being something like 25 people involved.

StringOfLetters
Apr 2, 2007
What?
^^^Good poo poo. :allears:

Mendrian posted:

I've run a couple of LARPs and been involved in a bunch. I've told a couple of those stories before I think but I can't remember which ones. I don't know if any of them are anything other than run-of-the-mill LARP nonsense, is it worth posting? I remember whole groups being slaughtered by an invincible skeleton in a Deadlands LARP, and I remember a guy who insisted on playing a Unicorn lawyer with a giant invisible oar in a Changeling game (the latter is not as much fun as it sounds, it is the opposite of fun).

Yes, and yes. :justpost: please.

PantsOptional
Dec 27, 2012

All I wanna do is make you bounce

Mendrian posted:

I remember a guy who insisted on playing a Unicorn lawyer with a giant invisible oar in a Changeling game (the latter is not as much fun as it sounds, it is the opposite of fun).

The drinking game entirely centered around him was pretty fun, though. The rules, if I remember, were "drink whenever he makes you feel like you need a drink," but because there was no drinking allowed at location we saved them all up and then immediately got completely and thoroughly shithammered afterward.

The fact that he actually did tote around an oar that everyone was supposed to ignore was the icing on the cake. And he's still better than the guy who brought a replica gun as a prop, which was indistinguishable from a real gun (no orange tip or any other markings), and then threw a hissy fit when people told him to put it away. I honest to God thought you and I were gonna get shot that day, and I'm still not 100% convinced it actually was a replica.

Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
poo poo like this makes me question why LARPs are even a thing. It's one thing to sit around a table or at a computer and laugh it up while throwing on silly accents and rolling dice, but then you inject play-acting into the scenario and it's just a recipe for disaster. I mean, I've seen LARPing happening. I've also seen the cops get called to LARPs.

Actually, let me amend that, I've seen and heard people bring guns and knives and poo poo to tabletop roleplaying and threaten other people with them, I'm amazed that LARPs usually go well (and they must, because they ARE still extant), when you give those same fringe nutjobs something that might seem like an excuse for that behavior.

Maybe the roleplaying groups at my college were just exceptionally lovely.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

Shady Amish Terror posted:

poo poo like this makes me question why LARPs are even a thing. It's one thing to sit around a table or at a computer and laugh it up while throwing on silly accents and rolling dice, but then you inject play-acting into the scenario and it's just a recipe for disaster. I mean, I've seen LARPing happening. I've also seen the cops get called to LARPs.

Actually, let me amend that, I've seen and heard people bring guns and knives and poo poo to tabletop roleplaying and threaten other people with them, I'm amazed that LARPs usually go well (and they must, because they ARE still extant), when you give those same fringe nutjobs something that might seem like an excuse for that behavior.

Maybe the roleplaying groups at my college were just exceptionally lovely.

the LARPs I've played in were hosted on college campuses but weren't in public spaces. I wouldn't have played in them if they had been. that's just disruptive to both the regular folks and the LARPers. It seems like more trouble than it's worth.

But to the point of LARPs: having played in some terrible ones and some good ones, I've found some value to them. The good LARPs were basically large-scale tabletop games with tons of players, more than one GM, and a lot more improvised plots from the players. Because you can't always count on a GM being in the same room as you while you're playing, you kind of just... improvise. You go get a GM (and they respond quickly if it's a good game) if you run into something that the players can't resolve or don't know about the plot or setting. Otherwise, players kind of have to trust each other to keep things reasonably honest. Player characters can even fight each other as long as they're both not stupid jerks about it. For example, if Southie started some poo poo with another vampire, they could just duke it out with a GM around. If their combat spilled out into a LARP space that is understood to be "public space," like a hallway that is "the streets," then you may want to get a GM.

What it boils down to is that the quality of a LARP depends squarely on the players involved. If you have sketchy, munchkiny, psycho players, then you'll have a bad LARP. If you have good, responsible, sane players who understand improve and plot and motivation enough to play a character and not be a loving idiot, then you've got a good thing going. Good ones are great because they let a ton of people play one game in a player-driven way that a tabletop game couldn't possibly manage. It's not suited for every gamer or every game group, but if that idea interests you, you should try it.

I'm talking about theatrical LARPs here, though. Boff games are a whole other animal.

some FUCKING LIAR
Sep 19, 2002

Fallen Rib

Railing Kill posted:

the LARPs I've played in were hosted on college campuses but weren't in public spaces. I wouldn't have played in them if they had been. that's just disruptive to both the regular folks and the LARPers. It seems like more trouble than it's worth.

I'm talking about theatrical LARPs here, though. Boff games are a whole other animal.

I've never played in a LARP but the college I attended, in the late 1990s, had V:tM LARP going on in public, in the student union (here's a Geocities page that lists it). I figure there were maybe fifty or sixty players at the time. The LARPers were never, to my knowledge, the most disruptive people in the area, maybe because there was a bar inside the student union. LARP night meant, at worst, that the goths standing around out front smoking clove cigarettes were dressed slightly more nicely than usual. According to two friends of mine who participated, the biggest problem they had was with creepy fellow players, not with civilians. I never got hassled by any of the players.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
My local group realized that it was a really, really bad idea to LARP randomly in public areas when an undercover cop approached them one night in a downtown park. Goddamn cop thought the idiots were having a drug meet.

Then there was the time I was conned into acting as a proxy for some Auspex read or something at a bar downtown. That was so uncomfortable, especially when I realized that the victim didn't know anything game-related was loving going on, that I swore never to do it again.

Half the play-group was still in high school (god help us all) so they were more than happy to arrange poo poo between themselves during lunch periods. Most of them really weren't all that bright, so it didn't really help.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Railing Kill posted:

Awesome. I haven't played D&D in a long time, but the next time I play I kind of want it to be a "gently caress it, let's all make conniving, selfish, lying, looting scumbags" game. Every game has moments when the players fantasize about saying "gently caress it all" and just going how-wild with the system. I kind of want to do that with D&D, just for a short campaign. If the DM really wanted to run wild with it, they could set specific "achievements" for each session, based on whatever was planned that day. Keep the "achievements" secret, and just see if anyone can bungle into them. That would keep the players doing reckless, silly poo poo constantly in pursuit of IRL loot.

"And with that last casting of Fireball, you just finished burning down a whole village and somehow only killed the children and infirm. You won today's prize! Here's the bag of Sour Patch Kids I bought for today's prize. Oh, and you're a terrible person."
I would love to play in a game like this. I might even play D&D for it!

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009
As a bit of background for this story, I played vampire LARP for a little while in a split off from the Camarilla global vampire LARP group. It was full of drama, politics, infighting and bullshit but by all accounts from everyone I've spoken to who was in our group and the Cam, ours has waaaay less of that than the Cam had, which means Cam must have been awful. The setup for those who are unfamiliar is that each real-life city has its own LARP group with its own GMs who write their own plot, but there are also national GMs who write national level plot and coordinate the different domains to try and make things line up, or cross contaminate the plot a bit. So, like, you might have a group of vampire hunters the London GMs have written who spend a few months loving with the London domain, and then the GMs arrange to have an offshoot arrive in Manchester and start loving with that domain, and then London and Manchester can compare notes and team up if they want. There were annual national events with an open invitation to any member in the country, where all the big poo poo went down. In between all of this, there's plenty of player driven IC drama and happenings, and free travel between domains is allowed and encouraged.

So, the domain I played at was a clusterfuck to say the least. We had what was eventually called the Year of Five Princes, where every two months to a schedule the prince would be deposed, stand down or get murdered. We had two princes at the same time once and that went well. Most of the clusterfucking happened within the Invictus and Lancea Sanctum (the vampire government and church respectively) while the Circle of the Crone and the local Ordo Dracul academy stayed well out of it and recruited, and recruited, and recruited. People would get driven out of politics and get snapped up by one of them. New players would join and join one of the two factions that wasn't having a civil war. People would die and make new characters in the quiet factions. Eventually, while the Prince remained an Invictus, Ordo and Crone held the rest of the positions of power and were numerically superior to the rest put together. This is super unusual from what I understand. I think there's a few domains out there who have Ordo supremacy but by and large the country is Invictus or Sanctified.

This became apparent when some visitors came to the domain. A death squad of Sanctified heavy hitters, to be precise. Now it should be noted that our group has the Cam's old Membership Class system, where being a member for a long period of time and doing useful things for the society gave you IC XP. You also accumulated XP for going to games. These characters had been going to games for years and were rock-hard combat specced monsters with hundreds, if not low thousands of XP. I think there was one person in our domain with 400+? I wasn't there for the session it went down but something massively offended these visitors and it was made clear that they had taken affront to this Ordo and Crone held domain and were going to come back with their mates and enact a forcible regime change.

What they hadn't quite banked on is our domain calling them out on it. I don't think anyone had ever really stood up to these people in numbers before - vampire LARPers are super risk averse and wouldn't dare take an active stance against people who could kill them. Our domain was entirely made out of newbies and people who didn't give a gently caress. Newbies who, for whatever reason, almost to a man had Protean which gave them magic aggravated damage claws. It doesn't matter how hard you are, you die to enough agg claws. I think there were literally about twenty people who were totally down with the idea of a deathmatch with the Lance. The plan was that the whole domain would come combat specced and jump them immediately as soon as they entered play. They wouldn't have stood a chance.

They loving chickened out. There was some sabre rattling and I think a lot of messages were sent over the IC email channels, but they never showed up to our domain again. Not only that, but other domains were only ever polite to our domain after that.

It's a shame. Our group's plan if we all died was to collectively come back as a group of torpored German Landschnekts who awoke at the same time in the city caves. We were all going to borrow plate armor and fake swords from our reenactor friends and get character builds that were carefully statted to be absolutely monstrous but coincidentally required absolutely no approvals from GMs at all. We were going to spend all our time drinking beer and having a laugh and telling anyone who tried to communicate with us that we were speaking 16th century German and if they didn't have that as a language we couldn't understand them. Then occasionally roll out and stomp on any combat encounter that presented itself. Ah well.

Doodmons fucked around with this message at 03:30 on May 27, 2015

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Doodmons posted:

Our domain was entirely made out of newbies and people who didn't give a gently caress. Newbies who, for whatever reason, almost to a man had Protean which gave them magic aggravated damage claws. It doesn't matter how hard you are, you die to enough agg claws.
Swap some of the nouns around and you've basically described Goonswarm.

Doodmons posted:

It's a shame. Our group's plan if we all died was to collectively come back as a group of torpored German Landschnekts who awoke at the same time in the city caves. We were all going to borrow plate armor and fake swords from our reenactor friends and get character builds that were carefully statted to be absolutely monstrous but coincidentally required absolutely no approvals from GMs at all. We were going to spend all our time drinking beer and having a laugh and telling anyone who tried to communicate with us that we were speaking 16th century German and if they didn't have that as a language we couldn't understand them. Then occasionally roll out and stomp on any combat encounter that presented itself. Ah well.
Man, you actually made a vampire larp sound interesting

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Doodmons posted:

It's a shame. Our group's plan if we all died was to collectively come back as a group of torpored German Landschnekts who awoke at the same time in the city caves. We were all going to borrow plate armor and fake swords from our reenactor friends and get character builds that were carefully statted to be absolutely monstrous but coincidentally required absolutely no approvals from GMs at all. We were going to spend all our time drinking beer and having a laugh and telling anyone who tried to communicate with us that we were speaking 16th century German and if they didn't have that as a language we couldn't understand them. Then occasionally roll out and stomp on any combat encounter that presented itself. Ah well.

This would have been a fantastic idea.

Coward
Sep 10, 2009

I say we take off and surrender unconditionally from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure



.

Shady Amish Terror posted:

poo poo like this makes me question why LARPs are even a thing. It's one thing to sit around a table or at a computer and laugh it up while throwing on silly accents and rolling dice, but then you inject play-acting into the scenario and it's just a recipe for disaster. I mean, I've seen LARPing happening. I've also seen the cops get called to LARPs.

I actually thought all the stories I'd heard of people doing live action stuff in public, especially to "freak out the squares/greys/pinks," was just typical exaggerated bullshit. I'm amazed anyone actually ever did that, if only from having to fight personal embarrassment.

To answer the first point, though, I realy enjoy live action playing with good players. I sometimes have a lot of difficulty staying in-character at the table, especially when it's with friends I really enjoy having a laugh with. Live action really helps keep you motivated to remain as much as possible in-character, and I often find myself reacting more satisfyingly (to myself anyway) when things come up if I've dressed up a bit and been in-character for an hour or so. Some of the most personally enjoyable role-playing I've done has been in live-action with friends I love to play off, and it really scratches that theatrical itch.

All the issues that the Camarilla and those large organisations tend to have is usually because it often attracts broken people looking for self-esteem boosts, risk-averse players, creates a weird high-school cliquey kind of atmosphere, and has a weird attitude of making the game focused from player-up, rather than GM-down which is more problematic than it might otherwise be when you're trying to coordinate multiple cities' games and need characters to face consequences for their actions.

Doodmons posted:

It's a shame. Our group's plan if we all died was to collectively come back as a group of torpored German Landschnekts who awoke at the same time in the city caves. We were all going to borrow plate armor and fake swords from our reenactor friends and get character builds that were carefully statted to be absolutely monstrous but coincidentally required absolutely no approvals from GMs at all. We were going to spend all our time drinking beer and having a laugh and telling anyone who tried to communicate with us that we were speaking 16th century German and if they didn't have that as a language we couldn't understand them. Then occasionally roll out and stomp on any combat encounter that presented itself. Ah well.

And this is the sort of stuff my group would get up to, when we realised that most often in these games you have to make your own fun.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Bieeardo posted:

My local group realized that it was a really, really bad idea to LARP randomly in public areas when an undercover cop approached them one night in a downtown park. Goddamn cop thought the idiots were having a drug meet.
I'm picturing some poor bastard on the force going undercover in the "drug ring", then having to do all the LARP poo poo for weeks and months on end, all the while sending reports about the "incredibly elaborate rituals" and trying to get into inner circles that don't exist because no one has had any drugs so far but they've got to be here, dammit!

Actually there's a movie in that, I think. "d20 Jump Street".

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Playing in the Camarilla sounds like being in the actual Camarilla. You have no power and are subject to the whims of people whose only talent is seniority, and the law doesn't apply to them, there's basically no chance for advancement unless someone dies (or quits).

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

Kavak posted:

Playing in the Camarilla sounds like being in the actual Camarilla. You have no power and are subject to the whims of people whose only talent is seniority, and the law doesn't apply to them, there's basically no chance for advancement unless someone dies (or quits).

:siren: You solved the puzzle! :siren:
It took me several years of hope and denial to solve the puzzle. :negative:

More to the point of what Doodmons was saying about the Camarilla: he's absolutely right. The global chronicle is a good idea on paper but terrible in practice. Local GMs don't have enough autonomy, local Old Boys choke the fun out of everything for the sake of preserving their own hoarded piles of XP, approvals become unmanageable, and regional/national/global GMs occasionally poke their noses in with horrible plots that are no fun and that no one in the local game wants do deal with. I guess the idea is to have a continuous, interconnected story across every city, which would be cool if it worked. Theoretically, if you did something crazy in your city, it would have ripple effects in other cities. And if you travel with your character to play in another city's game, your character's reputation precedes him or her. But that's not what happens. Bullshit happens.
Oh, and if you ever want to get a Camarilla vet wound up, ask them about "Approvals." Hint: it's hours of homework you have to do to play a make believe game. It makes Rifts character creation seem breezy by comparison. :thumbsup:

I do want to stress that people should try out a local LARP, though. Just make sure it's a troupe (i.e. non-sanctioned) game. You'll probably still have some measure of bullshit, but it'll be a fraction of the bullshit you have to deal with in a Camarilla game. I organized and ran a troupe game in my city after we let our Camarilla game die. Well, we kind of deliberately killed it. But it was a mercy killing. But the troupe game went swimmingly and everyone had a good time and there was no psycho drama.

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Splicer posted:

Man, you actually made a vampire larp sound interesting

Vampire LARP is actually super good if you a) like Vampire and b) are playing with people you like who are not insane. Playing as the Ordo Dracul's political liason was hysterical, it was like getting to be Malcolm Tucker for a couple of hours once a month. The academy would spend the session having chill meetings in private rooms where they talked about the occult, and would occasionally come out to court to be polite and nonconfrontational. Meanwhile all hell is breaking loose in the Invictus, the outside visitors to the domain are getting more and more amused that everything is falling apart and me as Ordo Dracul Malcolm Tucker is sprinting around the place swearing loudly, trying to keep the academy out of the mess and stop things completely spilling out of control. Occasionally people would comment that I'm not really pulling my occult research weight as an Ordo member and I'd tell them to shove their own dick up their rear end because I'm doing all the real work. Ironically, with the way the Ordo heirarchy works - the more Ordo Custom Superpowers you have, the higher up you are. That's it. Not age, not time served, nothing. Just the superpowers - I was actually in charge of the academy since I went "yeah, I'll have a few of these" when I made my character and ended up buying like twice as many Coils as anyone else.



Railing Kill posted:

I do want to stress that people should try out a local LARP, though. Just make sure it's a troupe (i.e. non-sanctioned) game. You'll probably still have some measure of bullshit, but it'll be a fraction of the bullshit you have to deal with in a Camarilla game. I organized and ran a troupe game in my city after we let our Camarilla game die. Well, we kind of deliberately killed it. But it was a mercy killing. But the troupe game went swimmingly and everyone had a good time and there was no psycho drama.

Word. If you can find a locals-only game, it's well worth trying it out. There's a non-zero chance that it'll be full of weirdos but odds are if somebody is putting in the effort to run a vampire LARP by themselves with no help from a society, they're really invested in the game and a keen GM is likely to make everyone else keen and the effort they put in can compensate for a lot of poo poo. Plus it'll probably only be like 20 or so people and imo that's a good number for a game. Too many people means that somebody has to be at the bottom of the totem pole and that's not fun.

Beardless
Aug 12, 2011

I am Centurion Titus Polonius. And the only trouble I've had is that nobody seem to realize that I'm their superior officer.
drat, reading all this Vampire LARP stuff makes me glad that I stick to boffer larps. There's still the usual assortment of grog and socially maladjusted nerds, but at least if they annoy you you get to hit them.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Splicer posted:

Swap some of the nouns around and you've basically described Goonswarm.
I love the idea of a pack of goons going around to different LARPs and just destroying everything everywhere.

Beardless
Aug 12, 2011

I am Centurion Titus Polonius. And the only trouble I've had is that nobody seem to realize that I'm their superior officer.

Yawgmoth posted:

I love the idea of a pack of goons going around to different LARPs and just destroying everything everywhere.

The only two Goons I've ever met IRL where both LARPers.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

Doodmons posted:

Word. If you can find a locals-only game, it's well worth trying it out. There's a non-zero chance that it'll be full of weirdos but odds are if somebody is putting in the effort to run a vampire LARP by themselves with no help from a society, they're really invested in the game and a keen GM is likely to make everyone else keen and the effort they put in can compensate for a lot of poo poo. Plus it'll probably only be like 20 or so people and imo that's a good number for a game. Too many people means that somebody has to be at the bottom of the totem pole and that's not fun.

Yeah. There's an ideal ratio of players to GMs. I'd say you need one GM for every 10-15 or so players. Any more than that, then the group should add a second GM to either assist the first GM, or to run their own plots independently. Having too few GMs means you're going to get players stuck frozen in scenes while they wait for a GM to gwt done in another scene to come over and help them resolve theirs. It's not hard to coordinate setting and plot stuff between 2-3 GMs, and everyone's local, so you don't run into the Kafkaesque nightmare that is the Camarilla. I ran a troupe game of 7th Sea and when the number of players swelled above 15, I asked a couple of them to help me for part or all of each game session. I still wrote and ran most of the plots, but they just did a couple of things: they would act as neutral GM presences when other players needed someone to tell them what happens when they couldn't figure that out on their own, and they sometimes played NPCs for me in crowded scenes. Eventually we had enough players that we had two whole GMs writing and conducting plots, with a couple of part-time assistants who got to play their characters as much as they helped run the game.

Better yet, in a troupe game, you can control the group of players like you could in a tabletop game: as long as at least one person running the game has the backbone to tell truly disruptive players to find another game, then you can keep things sane and friendly. The Camarilla can't do that without literally months of paperwork, and even then the player will likely not be thrown out. Case in point: the aforementioned chair-throwing weirdo in our local Cam game. That guy threw a loving chair at another player and got a slap on the wrist and was back for the next game because he was an Old Boy. Theoretically, he should have been thrown out, and he would have been if he wasn't connected. But when policy doesn't translate to practice, then it doesn't mean a thing.

That last sentence should be on the Camarilla's tombstone.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Doodmons posted:

free travel between domains is allowed and encouraged.

I want to say this is a terrible idea, but I had fun going back and forth between home and a city an hour away with my namesake character. It becomes a terrible idea when you can't refuse characters sporting an inches-thick deck of weapons chits, or let someone drag your game into their epic blood-plague story. Which, given the way the Camarilla and One World by Night worked... yeah.

Coward posted:

I actually thought all the stories I'd heard of people doing live action stuff in public, especially to "freak out the squares/greys/pinks," was just typical exaggerated bullshit. I'm amazed anyone actually ever did that, if only from having to fight personal embarrassment.

When I was in the SCA, the other young members (early university age-- most of the group were toward their forties) liked to sing 'freaking the mundanes' to the tune of the Pinky and the Brain theme. During camping events, people loved to go into town in their garb. In LARP-related bullshit, some of these people pretended to be their characters, pretending to be themselves, pretending to be their SCA personas, and one year at an enormous camping event some idiots decided to run a secret oVampire LARP during the main event.

While a lot of it's just excitement at affiliation, like born-again pagans or BDSM newbies wearing bits of paraphernalia, there are an embarrassing number of asshats getting off on the idea that they're making people uncomfortable and thereby getting power over them. Makes me want to tell every asshat going all Christian Grey on the waitress at a munch that it hasn't worked for Marilyn Manson since they were in diapers.

CzarChasm
Mar 14, 2009

I don't like it when you're watching me eat.

Mendrian posted:

I remember a guy who insisted on playing a Unicorn lawyer with a giant invisible oar in a Changeling game (the latter is not as much fun as it sounds, it is the opposite of fun).

drat it. Now I want to have a piece of treasure called The Oar of Ig'n which massively boosts a player's stealth when equipped, but also makes them less likely to be paid any attention within the group.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

CzarChasm posted:

drat it. Now I want to have a piece of treasure called The Oar of Ig'n which massively boosts a player's stealth when equipped, but also makes them less likely to be paid any attention within the group.

That pun is oarful.

Falstaff
Apr 27, 2008

I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

Doodmons posted:

They loving chickened out. There was some sabre rattling and I think a lot of messages were sent over the IC email channels, but they never showed up to our domain again. Not only that, but other domains were only ever polite to our domain after that.

This brings to mind one of my own Vampire LARP stories - one involving the Camarilla, no less. Honestly, for all that the Camarilla gets a (mostly deserved) bad rap, just like with a troupe game you could have good domains and bad domains. That whole chair-throwing thing would have gotten the guy banned for life in the domain I played in - enough people were banned for less there. And at least when I was involved, there were systems in place specifically to prevent the "old boys' network" from being able to pull poo poo like that... If you weren't happy with how your Chapter or Domain Coordinator handled an out-of-character problem, you had the right to escalate the matter. I honestly can't see why you wouldn't escalate something as grievous as a thrown chair.

Anyway, back in the day of oWoD, I eventually got approval to play a Ratkin in the vampire game. This was a fairly big deal at the time, which required a good deal of paperwork and fairly high-up approval, and whenever I wanted to travel domains I needed Domain-level Storyteller permission from both domains, but I had a reputation as a pretty good player so I never had anyone turn me down. Mostly, I just stuck around home town, and played one of my vampire characters when I wanted to go play another city's game.

My character was permitted into court because he was believed to be a ghoul (which he was, but only briefly - still had a blood bond, though) in the service of a Toreador. The Toreador in question was already something of a black sheep, with more ties to the Ventrue and Gangrel than her own clan and lineage, so she didn't have a whole lot to lose - plus with the frequent IC death threats sent her way, she figured having a dedicated bodyguard with abilities that no one else could predict would probably add to her longevity.

My Ratkin was... Well, I wouldn't call him a paper tiger, exactly. If he wanted to wreck you, you were wrecked, particularly if you were a vampire (or vampire player) who didn't know anything about the kind of abilities a Ratkin could pick up. Thing is, I never wrecked anybody. I saw my approval to play such an oddball character in what was otherwise a fairly normal domain as a privilege and a responsibility, and I didn't particularly care for ruining other folks' fun, so in the entire history of playing the character I never actually dusted anybody.

I came close, once, without really meaning to.

See, the Toreador I was serving suddenly found herself in a fairly good position. She could take a lot more risks than before, and because I was always shadowing her (and even when I wasn't, nobody could really be sure whether or not I was ready to explode out of her purse in Crinos form), nobody really wanted to mess with her. She'd still get threats, but they'd be political rather than physical in nature.

Eventually, this led to her character climbing the social ranks and taking the position of Toreador Primogen away from one of the domain's central clique (who had run headlong into one too many scandals). This did not sit particularly well with them - one of the players actually walked out of the game as soon as she was voted out.

At the time, there was a process in place in the Camarilla where you could send your character to another far-off domain to be played by proxy, allowing you to make your character's influence felt over great distances without having to spend hundreds or more on transportation. There was usually a disclaimer you had to agree to, your character could end up dead blah blah blah, and because of the way a lot of people grew perhaps a touch too attached to their character, it wasn't used very often. But it was there.

The former Primogen happened to be the distant great-great-grandchilde of one of the movers and shakers in the Cam's Toreadors at the time. This elder wasn't played by one of the Cam's founders, but one of the second or third waves of players, and she'd been playing that character and no others continuously since joining. Her character was 6th or 7th generation with a ridiculous number of out-of-clan disciplines and influence. Once she'd heard of what happened, she threatened my character's employer - promising that if she didn't step down as Primogen and put her descendent back in her "rightful place," she'd come to our little city and put things right... Violently if necessary. She then contacted our ST about setting up a proxy for her character and a couple of her local hangers-on to make the trip.

This player made a habit of using these proxy rules - but only in domains that were too new to have much in terms of elder characters, to ensure that she could bully other characters safely. Thing is, as a player, she wasn't very good at it.

Like, when our ST asked her what kind of precautions she was taking in travel, she just said she'd use her private jet to get to and fro. Smart players would combine this with spending enough influence - pull and sway in the mortal world - to ensure that her flight would take place in secret, that there would be no hiccups or problems, etc. But she didn't bother - again, probably assuming that she was too overwhelmingly powerful to meet with any kind of resistance.

It was trivial for me to spend some influence to keep track of the comings and goings of supernatural creatures in and out of the city, to the point where when I found out her flight was filed in her name, and set up through normal channels, at first I thought it might have been a bluff. But no, sure enough, that was her flight. So, my character just waited around for her plane to appear in the sky at the appointed time.

Jam Tech is a low-level Ratkin power where you look at a piece of technology, spend some points, and that tech just stops working. Beginning characters can pick it up. So, I just jam tech'd her jet, and she fell out of the sky. The ensuing fiery conflagration nearly killed two of the characters on the plan thanks to some tests that went very badly for the proxy players and almost snowballed out of control, despite the fact that I insisted the crash take place during the nighttime. (A daytime crash would have been a death sentence and, again, I didn't much like the idea of abusing my character to ruin other folks' fun.)

The player of the elder was livid. At first, it was because her jet was totaled and she'd have to spend precious influence points to get another. Then she grew angrier as it was explained to her how much aggravated damage her character took, and how close everything came to going tits-up for her, and that really the jet was the least of her problems. It was like it was the first time anyone had ever stood up to her character and she didn't know how to react. At one point, she tried to ream me out on IRC over it, until I threatened to take things up with my Domain Coordinator if she didn't calm down and leave me alone. Her character left with her tail between her legs, my character's employer remained Primogen of the Toreador for the city, and I honestly have no idea if she ever used the proxy rules again (I quit the Cam not too long after this all went down, so I really have no idea. I do know she ended up skipping one of her home games waiting for her character to heal up.)

taiyoko
Jan 10, 2008


I actually had a really great time checking out a boffer LARP near me (near in the sense it was in the same state). It's a custom fantasy setting, and there's a strict 18+ rule, as well as most events not allowing alcohol because we're at a state park. I went as a full-time monster at no cost, while players are $60 regularly (pays for admin costs as well as renting the group camping area). Everyone was super friendly and I'm looking forward to the double July 1-day events.


Now in more of a realm of cat-piss would be Stephen in my every-other-weekend Pathfinder game. He has literally died four times to his own stupidity and nearly killed the rest of us several times. Last game ended up derailing when he said, "I want to use Telepathy to try to talk to the red dragon." It's like when he's not over-thinking something, he's not loving thinking at all, because this dragon was ancient, with a great wyrm mate...basically way out of our league even at level 15.

Talking with our DM, we've decided that he's done enough stupid poo poo that this will finally shift his alignment to evil and my paladin will not stand for that. Maybe we can reincarnate him as something less stupid. As it is I want to bring up the idea that as moderately convenient as Stephen's house has been to be able to play at, it will ultimately hurt the rest of our brains less if we just don't invite him back for the next campaign.

He is also currently playing a Drow (with the drow noble template), raised by gnomes, with levels in rogue, sorcerer, arcane trickster, and alchemist. He is also the reason why we told our DM to ignore any Rods of Wonder that come up in the loot roll, because he will use them and nearly kill us or himself in the process.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Falstaff posted:

Like, when our ST asked her what kind of precautions she was taking in travel, she just said she'd use her private jet to get to and fro. Smart players would combine this with spending enough influence - pull and sway in the mortal world - to ensure that her flight would take place in secret, that there would be no hiccups or problems, etc. But she didn't bother - again, probably assuming that she was too overwhelmingly powerful to meet with any kind of resistance.

It was trivial for me to spend some influence to keep track of the comings and goings of supernatural creatures in and out of the city, to the point where when I found out her flight was filed in her name, and set up through normal channels, at first I thought it might have been a bluff. But no, sure enough, that was her flight. So, my character just waited around for her plane to appear in the sky at the appointed time.

Jam Tech is a low-level Ratkin power where you look at a piece of technology, spend some points, and that tech just stops working. Beginning characters can pick it up. So, I just jam tech'd her jet, and she fell out of the sky. The ensuing fiery conflagration nearly killed two of the characters on the plan thanks to some tests that went very badly for the proxy players and almost snowballed out of control, despite the fact that I insisted the crash take place during the nighttime. (A daytime crash would have been a death sentence and, again, I didn't much like the idea of abusing my character to ruin other folks' fun.)

The player of the elder was livid. At first, it was because her jet was totaled and she'd have to spend precious influence points to get another. Then she grew angrier as it was explained to her how much aggravated damage her character took, and how close everything came to going tits-up for her, and that really the jet was the least of her problems. It was like it was the first time anyone had ever stood up to her character and she didn't know how to react. At one point, she tried to ream me out on IRC over it, until I threatened to take things up with my Domain Coordinator if she didn't calm down and leave me alone. Her character left with her tail between her legs, my character's employer remained Primogen of the Toreador for the city, and I honestly have no idea if she ever used the proxy rules again (I quit the Cam not too long after this all went down, so I really have no idea. I do know she ended up skipping one of her home games waiting for her character to heal up.)

There's a lot of low level Werewolf/Fera powers that can be very effective if you use them correctly. I know I ended at least one car chase by using create element. Cars really don't like having a cubic meter of fire suddenly inserted into their engine block, or their gas tank.

Still, sounds like someone with way too much power and influence through sheer inertia getting their comeuppance, I approve.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

taiyoko posted:


A]Talking with our DM, we've decided that he's done enough stupid poo poo that this will finally shift his alignment to evil and my paladin will not stand for that. Maybe we can reincarnate him as something less stupid.

B]As it is I want to bring up the idea that as moderately convenient as Stephen's house has been to be able to play at, it will ultimately hurt the rest of our brains less if we just don't invite him back for the next campaign
B is the mature thing to do. A is using in game methods to get across out-of-game messages, which has never gone well and is sinking to his level.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

A is just a dick move, there's In-game actions = in-game consequences, it should not be the reverse.

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Coward
Sep 10, 2009

I say we take off and surrender unconditionally from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure



.

Falstaff posted:

At the time, there was a process in place in the Camarilla where you could send your character to another far-off domain to be played by proxy, allowing you to make your character's influence felt over great distances without having to spend hundreds or more on transportation. There was usually a disclaimer you had to agree to, your character could end up dead blah blah blah, and because of the way a lot of people grew perhaps a touch too attached to their character, it wasn't used very often. But it was there.

That's a pretty amusing story, and reminding me of that proxy clause brings up something that happened at our National Camarilla event many many years ago.

There was one player in our game who'd been around forever, and had an incredibly powerful Gangrel character. To his credit, pretty much nobody had any idea how powerful or old the character was since the player was not a dick about it and basically never used any of his abilities. He was in it more for being the centre of attention and having fun chatting to people, which curiously happened more regularly in the Sabbat game where there was a lot of conniving and manipulation and yelling than in the Camarilla game where there was a lot of standing around.

So, this Gangrel's Sabbat pack was also made up of other almost-as-powerful characters (except for one very young character who they decided to claim was the city's Bishop and see if anyone would argue with them), and they were fairly deeply involved in the international politicking that was going. As this was a long time ago, I can't quite recall exactly what was happening at the time, but the Gangrel had been making a few enemies overseas by pointing out they were idiots.

At the big National Conclave's Sabbat game, the faction had decided that they wanted that Gangrel dead so sent three very powerful characters to kill him, providing detailed proxy information on what to do. They showed up at the game, I believe being played by local players who were not hugely fond of the Gangrel's player, played the characters in disguise, and stayed interesting but otherwise inconspicuous until they were able to get close to the Gangrel and convince him that they had important information to discuss with him in private. As I understand it, the true players of the characters were aware of the fact that the Gangrel was tough, so decided that one assassin wasn't going to cut it. With three, they were pretty sure the hit would be easy.

But the Gangrel's player wasn't an idiot, and saying "We three strangers you have never seen before have important information to discuss with you but only in private" was, in the obvious stakes, only slightly behind holding up a neon sign that read "We Are Going to Kill You Now."

So, they go to a side room, engage in a little light conversation to try and lull the Gangrel into a false sense of security, and then ambush him. Very cleverly, the ambush is by using a magical weapon that when it touches the target it will shut down their supernatural abilities, basically the only way to get the jump on what they expect to be a killing machine. A carefully orchestrated plan had been outlined in the proxy information about how to handle him after that point, trying to counter the abilities they expected him to have.

The Gangrel's player receives the information on the weapon, nods in understanding, and then explains that the weapon just passes straight through his body with no effect before saying, "Now that's not nice, lads."

The proxy players poo poo themselves. Because two things come out of this. One is that their surprise attack hasn't had the effect they were looking for, and there is nothing now stopping the Gangrel from alerting the rest of his pack (and all the Sabbat packs present for the event) and murdering the three assassins, making the meticulous battle plan pointless. The second is that they've just discovered he has a power that means he's older and more powerful than they were initially thinking.

Of course, as is true in the Camarilla, the proxy players immediately start calling bullshit on it (well the item is magical so obviously it'll still affect someone who's in a form that explicitily states they're completely incorporeal), and the GMs arrive to make a decision on either an international trio of assassin characters successfully murdering someone on home turf or ruling that the item would have no effect and those three characters being instantly slaughtered under proxy and making some players overseas probably irate, and we couldn't have that. I think at one point the Gangrel was arguing that he'd be happy if the item worked on him, if the proxy players agreed not to cut and run with their characters, which worried the poo poo out of them and they immediately started backing off on it.

I think the final call was that the attempt failed, but the assassins were free to escape without being torn to shreds by the Gangrel and/or his backup. At least it made sure that whining and complaining didn't happen.

I did proxy once where I felt that my character had no option, and I died during that. Some of us felt that the only reason it was our characters that were killed in that situation instead of anyone else's was because the GMs knew we were players that wouldn't whine and complain at them.

Coward fucked around with this message at 02:54 on May 28, 2015

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