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I'm not what you'd call a LARP veteran (I've been to a total of three LARP events ever), but a lot of people in my social circle are hardcore LARPers. I'm also Swedish so it's interesting to read this thread and see the big difference between American and Nordic LARP. Nordic LARP seems to be more one-offs exploring weird concepts (like that hardcore survival LARP someone linked upthread) or long-running campaigns with maybe one or two events a year. They also tend to be pretty rules-light. The few I've attended basically had some bare-bones combat rules and that was it - no character sheet, no skill values, no special abilities, no experience points. Mechanical benefits are tied directly to what gear you have, and maxes out at plate armour and two-handed weapons. So it's impossible for veteran players to *mechanically* dominate newbies. There's also a huge overlap between LARPers and reenactors in Sweden - and in Sweden reenacting means viking or medieval stuff. So there's a huge focus on historically correct clothes and gear in LARPing - not enforced by the organizers, mind you, but the LARP crowd is such that everyone knows someone who knows the correct thread count and colour of the fabric for a 14th century English tunic, which of course you have to have if you are playing such-and-such a character. From what I've gathered the Swedish LARP scene has slowly (over the last 10+ years) attracted people more interested in ~emotional experiences~ than hitting people with foam swords, and have thus become increasingly pretentious. The result has been almost the opposite of how Vampire seems to work, but driven largely by (I think) the same kind of broken people looking for validation in all the wrong places. Instead of everyone looking to play a super-powered badass or special snowflake, there's a disturbing amount of people in Swedish LARPs looking to play slaves, prisoners and low-castes of all kinds. There's whole groups of players posting on event forums about how they want everyone else in-game to despise and harass them. Individual players genuinely posting "Looking for someone to oppress me at <LARP event>". This has of course also resulted in a whole slew of LARP events focusing entirely on putting the players through uncomfortable or disturbing experiences. Organizers sell their events to players by literally saying "We promise you'll have a bad time".
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Sep 28, 2016 13:27
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 22:31 |
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