Ask me about LARPing destroying my life and my soul.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about LARPing destroying my life and my soul.

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

Milky Moor posted:

Bingo. The big thing about the game I played in was that the people who created the homebrew ruleset also played the drat game as significant members of player-on-player factions. To anyone who has had experience with anything competitive, you don't let the people who make the rules play the rules. Particularly not nerds, who can't be guaranteed to remain objective about anything. Now, all these people who made the rules were also the sorts to throw down a ton of money on metal armor, good foam weapons and so on. This isn't surprising. This, essentially, made them very tough to beat on the field - and that's fair because, well, they're in armor and it cost them a bit.

But let me tell you about magic.

The game had a magic system. A player could chant for a certain amount of time and then throw a rubber ball at someone. This did a lot of damage and two to three of these would take out a heavily-armored player.

Once people started stacking mages in their factions and decimating the slow armored rank and file, magic was summarily made 'consent-only'. Yes, players - in a competitive game - would have to consent to being affected by any magic. And then it was written out completely, to be replaced by healing - which, funnily enough, meant that people only ever spent time healing - surprise - the people with the most powerful sets of armor.

So, the games would just devolve into shield walls and line fighting because it was the most powerful way to play. Nothing could defeat a shield (except magic) and all weapons, from the smallest dagger to the biggest warhammer, did one damage. So, why would you do anything except fight with the lightest weapon you could get, as much armor as you could carry on your body, and bear a shield in one hand?

The game began favouring the lifers, though, and it's part of why I dropped out. You used to be able to show up in tracksuit pants, a tee-shirt, runners and you could just hire our a foam sword for a few bucks. It was a lot of fun to just beat on nerds as a fairly fit guy. But then they introduced a rule that you had to be period authentic (and the list of things that weren't period authentic included things like 'zips' and poo poo like that).

Not only that, but the referees were all volunteers - sourced from the teams. A big reason I left was when, in a capture the flag scenario, we had pushed the enemy team into a river (instant-death) and won. Then, the referee - on the other side of the field, dealing with something else - said that we had actually lost because we had gone into the river too. Even though the other team went into the river first and therefore would have died before us since we pushed them back into it. Quell surprise, his faction was the one holding the flag.

There was no way to officially question the ruling.

And that's not even going into the fact that the people in charge were almost assuredly just embezzling the money from the weekly fee people had to play. Hundreds of people paying about twelve dollars each every week, and they couldn't even provide food, drinks or anything that you'd expect from a weekly activity with full physical contact.

So, that explains that the game itself wasn't very good and suffered from, yeah, the political and social issues that regular LARPs suffer from. I'll get in on this on another post because this already feels long.

Are you over the east side of Australia? If so I am 100% sure I know this game. Went over (from Perth) to one of their major events this year. It was a change of pace from our games. And the cheating was ridiculous.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 13:01

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 20:17

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

Milky Moor posted:

Yep, over in Melbourne. Wouldn't be too surprised that you know it because it's the only game over here. I'd go back to playing it if everyone involved treating it like a fair competitive game with a friendly spirit. But, nope, cheating is endemic and you can't count on the refs to be impartial, so, why even bother wasting my time?

This kind of goes with my above point - I'm a pretty nerdy guy and I don't think Australia's ever had a real LARP subculture. We 'cargo cult' a lot of things that are big overseas.

My point about corsets is more how the game I'm talking about was really big on making sure that all armor was as practical as possible. For example, if you were going to have scale mail, you would have to ensure it was of a certain thickness and certain material to get armor points from it - and they were incredibly particular about what counted. Sometimes I don't think they really knew if they wanted to be historical reenactment with foam swords (hence the removal of magic) or a more conventional LARP. But, yeah, corsets are the exception for some reason and would just grant armor points.

Don't wanna tangent this too much... I can talk about Australian non- Camarilla LARP for forever. It's has only been a thing in Australia for maaaybe 10 years. In WA, it's 3 years old. Most of the time it's made by people to ape games they've never been to, only heard about (Drakenfest, etc).

Slightly more on topic, Australian Camarilla was, for about 2? or so years, completely unofficial. They got removed from the global registry due to how terrible it was over here. And that's saying something.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 16:19

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

Camrath posted:

If you're scottish/from the Aberdeen area, colour me scared at the smallness of the world.. (a close friend of mine from Uni and LARP died last month and we're holding his wake at the Gathering this year.)

And yeah, having any sort of background in a combat sport helps. I'm not sure about how well unarmed martial arts would transfer across directly, though I guess even just the concept of maintaining your balance and responding to incoming blows would help. I've seen some truly awesome escrima-based ambidex fighters in my time; my own ambi style is more a combination of my fencing background and being genuinely ambidextrous rather than any formal training. Fun fact. I broke my shoulder at the start of a linear (I guess the equivalent of 'an adventure', where a smaller group goes to deal with plot/monsters in a seperate location of the site); my right arm simply stopped working so I switched over to my left, fought on for the next hour until I was the last man standing and THEN went to first aid. Not my smartest of moments, but eh.

Anecdotal: One of my friends is a martial arts instructor, that's what he does for a living. Just because he's so good at footwork and knowing his range, he can hold his own with a lot of people even though he never trains LARP combat outside of games.

And then you have 20 year medieval reenactment veterans who are death machines. Saw an old, chubby guy with grey hair who could school most people he fought just because his blow placement and control was so perfect.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 01:51

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

Dave Syndrome posted:

At the games I attended, the archers (and yes, there were very few of them) used fiberglass arrows with very soft tips - several layers of foam and a layer of leather to stop the shaft from penetrating the tip. Aiming is definitely different because the arrows fly in much more of an arc due to the additional weight.
As for safety: An archer player once told me that the diameter of the tip has to be a certain dimension - I can't remember how large exactly - but a size that is greater than the bones around an average adult's eye socket, so that if you do get hit in the eye by accident, the arrow glances off the bone, giving you a black eye at worst rather than cornea damage.

Have seen the last happen, in fact. A gate breached, arrow comes flying in and smacks the lead bad dude straight in the eye and bounces straight back out. We never found out who shot that arrow either. Not even a black eye.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2015 08:23

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

Captain Narwhal posted:

Have you LARPers watched the movie Role Models? I loved the LARP scenes and from the way the community is described itt, it sounds like they got a lot right.

Some questions from the movie: Have you seen anyone ever show up at the boffer LARPs as KISS my anthia? How did/would that go over with other players if they did? Would they be kicked out as trolls or be allowed to do their thing as long as they take it seriously (as they do in the movie)?

Is the portrayal of the King and his cronies fairly accurate to the lifer-types (hanging out at Denny's in character, abusing power, etc)?

Are there any boffer/fest LARPs similar in the last-man-standing style? Winner becomes king or gets something special for the next LARP?

When people ask what LARP is I mention Role Models. It's not really accurate to what I play in Western Australia, but it's a starting point.

At the event I got home from this week in Melbourne, one of the groups wears a similar sort of facepaint, but they're well costumed and rad so nobody complains. If your LARP isn't too much up its own rear end, bad costumes are excusable, as long as you've tried/work on them.

Yes. Again, same event in Melbourne, whoever wins the final battle controls the town and sets rules for the event (in character rules, so they can be broken in character). A huge opportunity to be a dick there, and it was very nearly the case this time except that the people enforcing the rules acted like the nazis from Hogans Heroes. Easily distracted and confused.

And as well, the owners of the game (apart from one) are perenial assholes. Multiple complaints about rules breaking, harassment, and dodgy financial dealings. But since they comprise the entirety of the board who owns the event, there's nothing that can be done. Safety officers who call them on their poo poo end up not being safety officers any more.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2016 10:31

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

Milky Moor posted:

I'm seeing a lot of rumbling about someone apparently trademarking the words and term 'LARP Australia' and therefore expecting people to rename any and all Facebook pages that could... infringe upon it? Or something?

It's much smaller, pettier, and less interesting than you'd expect (even considering its LARP in Australia).

To cut a really boring story short, there's a facebook group called LARP Australia for larpers across Australia to spread information, share interesting or useful links, and generally network. There's some cool stuff going on with blogs being set up people can submit to, and so forth.

Anyway! A new organisation started up, registered the name LARP Australia, and asked the admin of the facebook group (Dave) to change the name of the group, hand it over to them, or delete it. Dave is very well respected amongst the Victoria LARP community, and has done a lot for their games. Dave put up a post asking for suggestions for name changes, and then got threatened with legal action by the person running the new organisation (I'll call him Steve) because Dave talked about it openly I guess?

The community as a whole said "nah, gently caress off Steve" and it broke down. What came out, in the end, was the facebook group was created before the organisation registered the name, the name was registered as a business and not a trademark (so their claim to the name means jack poo poo), and the whole business idea for LARP Australia was.. really vague and kinda dumb? Steve tried to act like they had the moral high ground, but couldn't even say what the business was about, apart from the fact that they had multiple staff, it had something to do with advertising and information sharing for LARP, and they wanted to make money doing it. Steve got super defensive and snappy and basically managed to completely turn off everyone in the LARP Australia facebook group, another related facebook group, and poison the well for themself entirely. Basically everyone who runs a LARP in Perth, most of Canberra, Victoria and the biggest larp group in Australia said they'd never work with Steve or deal with him on anything. Steve then complained that the stress from this had caused two people working on his unidentifiable project to quit, and then closed down the new LARP he was TOTALLY GOING TO RUN YOU GUYS.

Then people started posting pictures of their cats.

# ¿ May 14, 2016 05:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 20:17

Cocomonk3: Oct 21, 2010

BERGfu posted:

So what I've read from this thread is that you need to more or less check out a community before you invest any time in something like this because more often than not you run into people who don't have a grip on reality? Are certain games or groups more prone to being weirdos?

In my experience, stay the gently caress away from anything White Wolf related. Vampire, Werewolf, etc. And double the stay the gently caress away if it's their official group (Camarilla I think?). I do fest or combat larps, and every time the worst (unbalanced, lovely attitudes, difficult to deal with) players in them are from vampire or related games.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 20:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about LARPing destroying my life and my soul.