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A Disclaimer: This is the first time I have talked/written about this, and I know it’s going to deviate from the usual MO’s of Ask/Tells, so I am hoping people will bear with me, I know I’m going to muss something up in the protocol of it. I promise it’s ignorance and inexperience, not willful provocation. My husband has seen this thing through from beginning to end, and has been talking to me for a while about doing an Ask/Tell regarding my time spent totally submerged in the LARP scene, and the things I saw and experienced, and how it pretty much nearly killed me. I think it could be a good thing all ‘round, but I also know it may be a little grim for an A/T. It does kinda seem retarded. The idea that some dorky hobby that’s good-naturedly ribbed by the general populace could do severe damage to someone mentally and emotionally, to the point where they’re this unglued by it is just...I know. I know. But the point here, I think, is twofold - tell people the sometimes really ugly truths about the scene from someone who was deeply, deeply involved and not swallow it silently, and maybe use this as a scouring tactic for myself. Bullet bits -
I had LARPed for 18 years by the time I quit, and had table-topped for 23. I was a member of a global LARP organization for five years, played in a troupe (singular LARP group) for two, and ran my own troupe for over a year. I did the freeform/theater LARPing, not boffer LARPing was the main focus of my life. I was a Lifer. LARPing’s toxic environment did not begin my illnesses, but did enable them, made them much much worse, and kept me from getting well. I do not believe everyone who LARPs is sick, but I believe all Lifers are unhealthy either mentally, emotionally or physically, often all three. I am not angry or bitter, and accept all responsibility for the choices that led me to, and kept me in, LARPing. I am out, in therapy, and on meds, and I believe I would be dead now if I had not quit LARPing. Thank you, no matter what the outcome is.
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Aug 10, 2015 04:36
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Wow. Thank you guys for the questions and comments. It was a good, if intimidating, thing to wake up to. I'll start in on answering them now, and then more when I'm back home in the afternoon.
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Aug 10, 2015 14:21
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Krysmphoenix posted:
I played in a few different LARPs. World of Darkness was the main one, and it’s the focus of this stuff. Krysmphoenix posted:How old were you when you first started LARPing? When you became a Lifer? And on a related note, what were the approximate ages of the groups you played in? I played in my first LARP when I was fifteen. My stepdad ran a one-night little game for me and four of my school friends (two guys and two gals). We went to a nearby college at night and did a treasure-hunt kind of adventure. We didn’t really have characters, but we were on a mission and part of a made-up team and stuff. It was fun. He was getting his degree in Computer Science or something, so he actually set up a moment where we had to ‘break into’ the computer lab and hack into a computer in the dark, all covertly. I did my first real LARP when I was nineteen. My tabletop group did a special event and we moved our characters into a LARP setting for one night. I did one-shots off and on until I joined the global club when I was twenty-six or -seven, which was when I became a Lifer. Krysmphoenix posted:And this one might be a little vague, but Could you go into a little detail as to what the LARPing toxic environment was like? I think I’ll be talking a lot about this in replies, but a broad answer is that the entire culture enables and encourages sickness. You’ll hear some LARPers say that it’s a non-judgmental and totally accepting group, which is utter, UTTER poo poo. They may not judge you for being fat or crazy, but if you deviate even slightly from their worldview or question/criticize their rules (both game-wise and social mores), they’ll peel you. And for someone who is already unstable, depressed or without self-esteem, it’s like the end of the world. The excuse really awful behaviors, and I’ll go into why/how a bit down the road. And the hierarchy is filled with people who should never be given any kind of decision-making power. It’s abused terribly. And it isn’t some angry little dork screaming that you can’t have the special sword you want for your character; it’s a lot more sinister. Again, I’ll be digging into that as I go.
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Aug 10, 2015 14:23
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Krysmphoenix posted:And on a related note, what were the approximate ages of the groups you played in? Sorry, missed this. Everyone had to be 18+ to play. In my local group the ages ranged from 18 to 40’s, I think. But I saw some pretty old folks at conventions. One dude I think was in his 70's.
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Aug 10, 2015 14:25
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EB Nulshit posted:1. If you don't mind me asking, how much did the average larper weigh? There are, as far as I’ve seen, two basic body types for LARPers - overweight/obese and super gangly. Goes for guys as well as girls. The girls who are skinny in LARP are either mousy and super-shy, or really really sexualized in their costuming and behavior. The overweight ones actually seem to be a bit more stable in their personalities, but because they are in a culture where there’s more dudes than girls and most of the dudes find them attractive when non-LARPer fellows don’t, it can give them a lot of false confidence which displays itself irritatingly. This is the average, not the exception, and I know there are LARPers who don’t fit these descriptions. I have never met a Lifer who didn’t fit one of the above descriptions, though. EB Nulshit posted:2. Why ?? > I believe I would be dead now if I had not quit LARPing. The LARP culture (practices and people) promotes being unhealthy. I was using it to both self-medicate and as a coping mechanism for some serious mental issues. Of course, bad coping mechanisms and unhealthy self-medication just makes problems worse, not better. So, there was that - LARPing was making me sicker. And I think if I’d not stopped, I would have killed myself. I was actually hospitalized at the end for endangering myself, and I had totally bottomed out. And what’s really awful is that your so-called ‘friends’ (I’ve seen LARPers call themselves family, even) will never help you. They want you to stay sick, because if you start saying ‘Hey, I think this whole LARP thing could be super bad for us Lifers’, you’re threatening their illusion that they’re healthy and happy, as well as their own coping mechanisms and self-medication. You're also threatening an addiction, which is absolutely what LARP is to Lifers. I’ve never seen a larger group of people living in fear of themselves and the world. Only ONE person ever, in all those years, came to me and said ‘This is not good for you. It’s hurting you’, and I’m now married to him.
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Aug 10, 2015 16:18
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Ice Phisherman posted:Tell me your craziest story, or at least begin to lampshade it with others. I knew the Crazy LARP Stories would be a big draw, and I don’t want to disappoint, so I think I’m going to talk about the funny/non-toxic ones in one spot and the scary/ugly ones in another. The funny ones I could talk about for days with no problem, the ugly ones are not as easy - some I’ve never even talked about to anyone. Here are some highlights, some funny, some not; I’ll tell the full stories as requested. * A guy pissed on my floor during a game. * I walked in on a woman totally naked. In my own house. * A girl whipped off her shirt in front of my husband and I. * A girl’s tit popped out at game and she didn’t notice. * A guy got caught with a girl during game, by his wife and the husband of the girl. * A girl would bring her mentally-challenged son to game and ignore him the whole time while he played on the ground with sticks and leaves. He pushed a baby carriage down a slope and let it go, with a baby in it. * Someone came to me while I was running a game at a campsite and informed me that one of the players was currently giving blowjobs in one of the cabins to various players. * A LARPer showed up uninvited to my New Years’ party already wasted, threw up on my floor, stole my bathroom trashcan and left. * A player had a screaming, insane breakdown in my living room because of what someone’s character said to her character. I was too scared to leave my bathroom. * A guy I knew was kicked out of the club after being arrested for child porn. * The biggest two rules at a con one year were 1. Take a shower and 2. Don’t have sex in public. Like, people had to be TOLD these things, because it had become such an issue. An hour later there was a flare up because apparently a couple were found getting it on in the back of a truck in the parking lot. And hotel stairwell sex was a problem, too. * A bunch of players would go to the beach every month for the full moon and get naked and splash around. I heard there was other activities that occurred, but never from any of the participants so it’s just rumor for me. *A girl had to be told by the hotel staff at a convention to put more clothes on, because she was walking around the lobby of a 5-Star resort wearing a scarf draped over her bare boobs. More are going to pop up as I dig into this. There are also just Weird Moments In LARPing, where I just couldn’t believe these were the people I was spending all my free time with. Like the dude who told me he could call storms to him. And the guy who bragged he was going to fly a jet in his friend’s private army, and that his genes were ‘too awesome’ to get cancer from smoking. And the night my husband and I walked into an after-party at a convention and there was only one girl on the dancefloor and she was humping the ground in a frenzy. You know - those little surreal moments.
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Aug 10, 2015 21:35
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Carnival of Shrews posted:So my question is: What's the most abominably awkward, embarrassing LARPing moment you've ever witnessed? Preferably one that didn't involve you directly, so it's not stressful to write about. In fact, if you just wrote keyboard portraits of various LARPing denizens*, and not about yourself directly, it might be easier. The two things that come to mind are the incident with the spouses being caught at game, and the Doughy Tartlette. The former was grim. We all knew the dude would cheat on his wife - one Halloween at a party, he showed us a video of him proposing to his wife (she was still living out of state). He proposed at a con, of course. Anyway, while the video was playing, I saw him in a corner of another room licking some other chick's neck. Classy. So we knew he'd do it, we just didn't think he'd be stupid enough to do it AT GAME. And this was a big regional game so there were 30-40 people there. He and the girl snuck into another room (that was still part of the game space) and his wife opened the door and there they were in all their glory. It was an enormous scandal because he and his wife were super high up on the LARP echelon and they both had to immediately quit the organization over the shitstorm that followed. The Doughy Tartlette was, I think, the first really shocking thing I experienced at a LARP, and it's still up there. She was this plump, short girl who had some serious issues, and she loved to show up to game and flirt with the guys. She wouldn't even roleplay, she'd just giggle and prance about and tickle them under their chins and stuff. So, one night, I bring my friend to game. She's never played before, she's curious, huzzah. The D.T. shows up and begins cavorting. I'm distracted by my RP so I'm not paying too much attention. Suddenly, my friend grabs my arm and says 'Holy SHITBALLS'. I look, and the Tartlette is on the ground doing a split. A real live split. And she's in a tiny skirt. With no underwear. We were in the courtyard of a university building, too. Not in a private home. So, I kind of choke and blink. And then, she shifts and lifts her legs in the air, wide apart. The guys are all staring with their mouths open. My friend and I are just shell-shocked. Eventually the Doughy Tartlette closes her legs and prances away, but my friend said she was not interested in ever coming back.
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Aug 10, 2015 21:55
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Camrath posted:Hey there! Just dropping by to say that I'll be watching this thread with interest. I'm a LARPer myself, though likely from the other end of the spectrum (European contact LARP)- by comments you've made in your OP I'd hazard that your experience was with the Camarilla or whatever the post-Gehenna equivalent is? You were the one that prompted this whole thing. My husband sent your link and said 'You should do this about LARP'. So it's pretty exciting to have you drop by. I totally commiserated with you while reading your thread. And it's really actually uplifting to read about someone who 'made it out'. I haven't met anyone else who has. I lost almost all of my friends from this. I completely cut myself off from all LARPers, even the non-Lifers I actually liked and now miss. But it's like alcoholism; you can't be anywhere near the stuff. I'm not at ALL tempted to go back, but I just can't be around people who do it now.
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Aug 10, 2015 22:01
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Camrath posted:I'm really interested by what you term 'lifers'- though I've never encountered anyone like that in a decade or so of LARP over here, it sounds just like a /lot/ of the people I encountered in my time in the furry fandom. I guess this might be down to the different ways you and I interact(ed) with the LARP scene- for the fest events I play there's a very clear 'campaigning season' from May to September, and while factions might have smaller events off-season there's a very strict limit on 'downtime' activity (varying fr system to system, but it's very much a case of 'send in an email saying what you've been doing since the last event' for those that do allow it). It's sort of like.. LARP of the type I do is something you DO, rather than something you ARE. Yeah, I should clarify what being a 'Lifer' is, as well as the general schedule/MO for the LARPing I did. Which is going to lead into more stories, I think. Bear with me. This is the usual breakdown of how/when/where I LARPed, and what made me a Lifer: For the majority of the time, I played in a least two different venues, or kinds of games. They ran biweekly, so I’d have either two nights of LARPing every other weekend, or one night of LARPing every weekend. There were years when I played in three or four venues, too. So, my weekends were filled up with LARPing. For several years, I hosted games at my house. We also played at a local university, and occasionally in a park or something. I was very involved with posting on the message boards linked to the games, so I spent a lot of time in front of my computer. Pretty much every day I’d do at least something LARP-related. I also created and ran special LARP events, hosted/coordinated out-of-character social evenings, and spent gobs of money on costumes. I just got rid of twenty-six corsets, and that’s not all I had. I attended two of the big global conventions. The third time I went, the hotel was actually one that my great-great-grandfather had worked in as a chef. My husband and I arrived at the hotel, saw it full to the brim of loud, sweaty people in t-shirts with expletives all over them and no shoes on, crowded in the lobby and outside on the sidewalk smoking cloves and pipes, and I just couldn’t take it. I didn’t even check in to the convention. We just got our room, and spent the whole weekend walking around the city and sightseeing. I was so ashamed to be a part of that overbearing, obnoxious group staying in this very classy, historical hotel. We went to dinner one night at a famous, old restaurant and we saw a LARPer couple there. The girl was wearing a corset for her top (no jacket with it, no shawl, nothing) and her boobs were up to her neck and about to pop out and the guy had his trilby on inside the restaurant and…I know, it sounds kinda prissy, but this was an extremely expensive, century-old place. And I thought - what if I’d saved up all year to go to my 40th anniversary dinner here, and I had to spend the evening trying not to look at this girl’s tits because she couldn’t be assed to dress appropriately? Is that overreacting? I guess maybe it is, but I was so fed up by then. But I didn't quit altogether. I just left the global club and moved on to troupe games, then created my own group. There was a wedding one of the other years I attended the Big Con, and I felt so bad for the bride - her candid photos in the lobby would have big fat dudes in the background with ‘gently caress You, You loving gently caress’ on their shirts.
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Aug 10, 2015 22:05
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This isn't a reply to a question, but I wanted to post something about me, and how I was no better than my comrades. I've done a lot of ranting and finger-pointing and talked about how grody and evil things were, but I was a very willing participant in that culture for a long time, and I want to put that out there. So, here's my shame. First of all, I was addicted to LARPing, full on. I ate, slept and breathed it. I was also a tremendous attention whore. Before the eyerolls, I want to just say - nothing is ever done without reason. Attention whores are that way for a reason, and the reasons are often sad, deep ones. There’s a desperation there that stems from a problem in the soul, and calling them out never helps. They’ll just deny it anyway. So, yeah, I wore corsets and paraded about and, because I was under 200 lbs and not crack-skinny and didn’t have acne, I got a lot of male attention. This isn’t a boast - these dudes would hit on anything that was bipedal, and I really am not particularly attractive. But I was sick in the head and I needed attention and validation. Instead of getting it a healthy way from healthy people, I used flirting with and manipulating LARP dudes as a coping mechanism. It was sad, and really pretty evil. I hosed up a lot of already-hosed-up fellows, and I prided myself on pretending I was some sort of succubus or whatever. It was gross and wretched. I had a daughter who had to stay in her room on LARP nights at the house, and while she never seemed to mind, I look back and see just how hosed up that was. It was her home and she should have been free to go about it. There were also some unsavory types that would attend game and I was an idiot to ever let them within 500 feet of my kid. Nothing ever happened and she and I have talked about it, and she says she’s unscathed from the whole thing, but I know it was the wrong thing to do. I actually withdrew a whole lot from my family, and put a real chasm in between them and me that’s only begun to close. If someone left the LARP, they were dead to me. Never talked to them again. Which is so rotten because I realize now the ones who left would’ve made good friends right about now. I put so much time, energy and care into the LARP stuff I did, I had no room for anything else. That meant I couldn’t pursue my writing or filmmaking, which I love, and I stopped caring about them. The amount of writing I did for all my characters would be equal to an entire series of books. It’s such an abominable waste. I stopped living in the world. All Lifers do. I lived for the next game and just put in my time until that night arrived. Here’s a funny thing, and sorry it's a bit of a tangent. Oftentimes, someone will comment that roleplayers, or furries, or reenactment people, or actors, take on a persona because they don’t want to be themselves, they want to be someone cooler or hotter or more powerful. I think that’s maybe true a little, but I think there’s more; at least for me there was. The characters I played weren’t people I wished I could be - they were all aspects of my sickness, manifesting unconsciously in this weird, very intense way. When I realized that a couple months ago, I just fell apart. It was a very painful thing to see that I was struggling so hard and trying with all my might to survive and to understand what was wrong with me, but I was too stupid and addicted to start making the good choices that would actually make me well.
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Aug 10, 2015 22:11
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M_Gargantua posted:I got invited to a WOD LARP, went once. Dude, one girl was notorious for offering her body in exchange rides to game. It really, really is like a drug addiction. You lose all semblance of dignity.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:38
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Milky Moor posted:I have some experience with LARPing - I did it weekly for maybe six months. I hestitate to call it a LARP, though, because there was very little actual roleplay - it was more like the medieval reenactment battle people but with foam weapons. I'll be following this thread although I don't have that many stories to tell - just the fact that everyone involved was weird, gross and creepy. And the people who made the rules would regularly change them in order to keep their group more powerful. I actually like the idea of boffer LARP (foam weapons in a field), because at least you're flippin' outdoors doing something physical. But I imagine it has the same political issues and social cringes as theater LARP. Milky Moor posted:A fair few of my friends still do it and it hasn't exactly been the best influence on their lives. It combines the worst parts of a competitive sport with dozens of people who never grew out of being insecure high school nerds and can't handle competition. This was an awesome comment because it brings up one of the biggest toxicities of WoD LARPing - it IS a competition. They'll tell you it's not. Again and again you'll hear 'There are no winners or losers' ("Oh, there are losers," says Jim). Again, total and complete bullshit. You compete constantly, both in and out of character, and the system is grossly unfair and actually cruel. The club I was in had levels of member status out-of-character. Basically it was your 'rank' in the organization. You went up in rank by - guess what - being more involved in the club (hosting game, bringing snacks, cleaning up after a game, participating in the club's charity events). And as you went up in rank, you got bigger perks for your characters - more points to spend on your character sheet to make them stronger/more powerful/cooler, the privilege of playing special kinds of characters (like ancient vampires), that sort of thing. And so the club actually rewards you for becoming a Lifer. And if you're lonely, insecure, or even desperate for some form of power to negate being bullied or abused in your past, this is like loving nectar of the gods, as well as a one-way ticket to Delusionville. I once asked why it was that way. I didn't get how hosting a game or participating in a food drive equaled your character getting to be more powerful. I thought you should earn that perk through really good roleplay or exemplary behavior toward new people. I was told that the ranking system was the only way to get LARPers to actually do poo poo like bring snacks and clean up and donate canned goods. It was true. Unless you fed the addiction, why would a player bother to do anything? So, on paper, the highest ranking members of the club were supposed to be super responsible, very nice, upstanding folks. They were supposed to step aside and let the focus of the game be on the new folks to ensure a good initial experience. They were supposed to take new characters underwing in-character, and help get them involved with the plots that were happening. Basically, they were meant to be the best of the club, the paragons of the whole shebang. Instead, they bullied, cowed and used new players, hogged the spotlight and took all the plot, and were generally awful. I brought three friends to a game one night and the trio were playing these inept detectives who were hilarious and, admittedly, a little too silly for the theme of this particular game. One of the high-ranked players went off on them in-character and threatened to kill them (the characters) over and over. Afterwards, my friends said they wouldn't come back. They had a really bad time, and were unnerved by the nastiness of the high-ranker. When confronted, the high-ranker said 'It's what my character would do'. Which is the most infuriatingly wretched cop-out, and it was used ALL THE TIME to excuse the worst behaviors. So, what ended up happening is the new folks would come in, but because they were so low in rank, almost everyone else's characters were more powerful. And the older players would immediately subjugate, dominate and bully the new guys in-character. The higher-rankers would even use the fact that the new players weren't as familiar with the game system to their advantage in-character. I saw one new character get humiliated and punished in front of everyone because he used the wrong form of address to some ancient character. (Oh my god, this is such a rant, sorry. Almost done...) Which leads into 'Things that happen in-character don't affect out-of-character', another favorite bit of sputum horked by LARPers. In other words, if someone's character hates yours, it doesn't mean the player hates you. Lovely concept. Such such such bullshit. I saw hundreds of instances where people used out-of-character motivation to be douchecanoes in-character and get away with it. So, in the above example - I don't care what you say, if I'm in a room with people I've just met that night and they're standing around me hurling insults and threatening to cut out my tongue, it's gonna hurt whether it's directed at me or my character. It's gonna be humiliating. It's gonna suck. But LARPers have no issue doing it, and justify it by saying 'It's what my character would do'. Two guys cornered me one night and took the piss out of me in-character. They were so vulgar and said such horrible sexually-violent things I was reduced to tears. And my character has never even met theirs. They did it just because they could. Because it was in-character and they wouldn't get in trouble for it. This happened a lot, to many people, on many occasions. It was just awful. Sorry. I'm done. That was a doozy.
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Aug 11, 2015 20:16
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faarcyde posted:I've read this whole thread and have no idea what actually goes on at one of these. Could you describe your standard LARP? Is it like what civil war reenactors do? There are some comments from other folks tackling this, so I'll give my standard abbreviated answer: The LARPing I did is live improvisational dramatic theater without an audience. That's the best way I can describe it.
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Aug 11, 2015 20:18
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Jeremor posted:This reminds me of some embarrassing poo poo I did when I was younger, too. Never LARPed or got into tabletop gaming, though I think I might have if I knew anybody that did. Very very glad I didn't. I know exactly what you mean about personal issues, self-esteem, and can easily see how an activity like this can let it get further out of control. It really is like a drug when you get addicted to a toxic community like this, because you're lonely as hell or have zero self-esteem or direction in your life or whatever. Instead of facing up to those scary problems, you just dive into a group of other people trying to ignore their own problems and you all, quite literally, make up a fairy tale imagination land to live in. Then the bubble finally bursts and you realize, poo poo, this has made me even crazier than when I started. This stopped being fun a long time ago. If I'd spent all that time going out and talking to normal people, I'd have way more of my poo poo together. All that time got you was regret and shame. This is so on-point for me. And not only does it make your crazier, it excuses bad behavior, so you come out of it not only sicker, but more evil. Yes, there is a LOT of shame. Boatloads. Wow, this tugged something out of me. Whuff. Ok. Lemme see if I can articulate it. (Might get mushy, forewarned fellows) LARPers boast that their games are full of magic and adventure and intrigue and drama. They're not. They're full of ILLUSIONS of those things. I didn't know that 'til I was out. LARP cannot, CANNOT give you anything substantial. It cannot offer anything tangible or soul-sticking. It cannot add to you, it can only subtract. And usually what it's taking away is your connection to the world. I didn't realize how horrible that cost is, again, 'til I escaped. I was out on my porch one afternoon and it was storming. One of my favorite things to do now is go sit on the porch when it rains like mad and have some tea and watch the storm (which I know that one dude called with his powers). And my dogs were sitting with me and my husband came out and smooched the top of my head and it just hit me, so hard - the world, the real world, has magic and adventure and intrigue and drama. It has everything I was trying to get out of LARPing, and it has it for realsies. But when you've been hurt really bad and are scared to go back out into that world, it's hard not to just dive into an illusion to sate you. There's a lot of risk and, just like you said, there's scary problems you have to face before you get to be in the world again. You have to be willing to be vulnerable, and so so so many people aren't. (By the way, Brene Brown does a TED Talk on this, on YouTube, and it demolished me in the best of ways). And, in the end, that's the real reason I can never go back. Not just because of the toxicity, not just because those people are in places I've moved on from, but because the veil's been lifted. The illusion's been shattered. I can never be satisfied by what LARP offers, or even interested in it. Ok. I'm a mess. I'm gonna take a bit, then come back and do more responses. This is gruesome and glorious and so hard, and thank you, guys. Thank you.
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Aug 11, 2015 20:32
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BiggerJ posted:How easy is it/can it be to unintentionally fall from being a Larper to becoming a Larp lifer? Super easy. I never thought of myself as a Lifer. I thought 'I am nowhere near as hosed up as this person having a screaming breakdown about their character'. I prided myself on not talking about my characters every single time I hung out with people. I actually did not try to up my rank in the club, because powers and stats weren't important to me. I really, truly believed I was better than the rest of them, but I wasn't at all. Here's where I think the line is crossed - when you take it home with you after every game. The sanest, most put-together folks I knew were the ones who showed up on game night, played, and then we wouldn't see or hear from them 'til next game. They played hard, they were involved during game, but then that was that and they went back to living in reality. For me, the pitfall was that attention and false validation. I put all my energy into writing forum posts, making elaborate costumes, and playing as intensely as I could, all to capture interest and get individuals to spend time with me and pay attention to me in-character. Wasn't terribly interested in the main plotline - I didn't want to be in a group going on adventures; I wanted intimate, emotional scenes that pantomimed real connections. Lots of back room, weepy, sexually-charged scenes. People who've LARPed World of Darkness will certainly recognize my stereotype. I didn't do any PvP roleplaying, because that would counter what I was trying to get from game. As soon as I saw what I could get from LARP, I plunged in headfirst and became a Lifer.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:43
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Xenocides posted:I have LARPed on and off for several years. I know you said people would say they doubt your stories but I do not. Some of the people I played with were refugees from the bigger WOD games you describe and they had stories like what you shared. I was lucky with good GMs who enforced rules and were not afraid to boot people and tell them not to come back. Oddballs and deviants rarely lasted more then one night. Troupes (standalone roleplaying groups) were much less toxic than the global club, absolutely. And as I mentioned, folks who just played casually were usually fine. Happy to know you didn't get enmeshed in it.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:45
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Skunkrocker posted:OP, right here with you. I've seen WOD LARP cause divorces. I've seen actual fist fights when a person "in character" took things too far. Nervous breakdowns from people mid game because 'poo poo got too real' for them. And everyone there is ready to bone someone or something. It's really a hosed up game. I honestly can't remember the last time I had fun with it and I played for years. The issue is, and I think this is why I'm steering gently away from the Crazy Tales, is people regale others with the madness that occurs at LARPs, but nobody addresses how worrisome those things are. It's like telling stories about your friend Blaine who gets trashed every weekend and ends up naked in a fountain or loses his car somewhere downtown. On the surface it's entertaining (and I used to really enjoy breaking out the ol' LARP stories), but no one ever says 'Hey, you know, maybe Blaine's an alcoholic, sounds like he's going off the deep end and really loving himself up'. I mentioned the girls who whipped off their tops, or blew dudes in a cabin, or traded sex for rides to game. And the mind does boggle on a social level. But after that - what the heck is going on with these girls? Prudery aside, providing oral sex for random people while at a public campsite has to be at least a little indicative of a larger issue, if only being totally unaware the consequences of your actions - gossip, the possible shitstorm if some kid from another campsite wanders in through the unlocked door, the organizers having to do damage control. Coupled with the behaviors, health and attitudes I saw every game night, there is no doubt something was broken. I'm not going to play Armchair Psychologist and pick it apart, but there were many, many players who needed to get some real help, burying themselves in a culture that made them sicker. I look back, and there's a lot of guilt that I didn't try to help them, especially the ones I considered friends. When I left the global club because of how rotten it was, I never contacted the players I liked and said 'That is a bad, bad place for you. Please think about leaving'.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:59
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1500quidporsche posted:Have you ever seen the documentary DARKON? I'm pretty sure its about what others are referring to as boffer LARPing in this thread but it really gets at the heart of what you're talking about : Something is fundamentally wrong with these people's lives and rather then trying to fix it they're putting a bandaid over the problem with this fantasy escapism that takes over their life while it falls apart. I have seen it. That's boffer LARP, not what I did, but the general overview - Socially Crippled People Taking Things Too Far - definitely resonates. I think this sort of encapsulates the sentiment/theme I'm going for in this thread - The difference between the folks who go to have light fun and then go back to reality unscathed, and the Lifers, is the common unhealthiness in the Lifers. Sometimes that unhealthiness came before LARP, sometimes LARP causes it because it takes a normal person who's maybe just shy, or enjoys theater, who starts to believe that LARPing can give them what they need emotionally, when it can't. Really, no game can.
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Aug 13, 2015 17:51
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bunnielab posted:This is hilariously over dramatic. Like, if your mental state is so fragile that some nerds in capes can gently caress you up this much then something, anything, was going to get you. I guess at least if it was like model trains you could sell them to get some money back out of it. I had to chew on this one a while. What I decided was - you're absolutely right, on several fronts. My mental state was fragile, and something/anything WAS going to get me. I am very grateful it wasn't drugs, or porn, or anything else that might have a lifelong consequence like a disease or mental trauma from which I couldn't recover. However, I did this A/T specifically BECAUSE this is a coping mechanism not often discussed or analyzed. I doubt anyone would be curious about my battle with alcohol. Maybe the porn would've gotten attention. I dunno. And the second part that I want to thank you for is the "some nerds in capes can gently caress you up this much" bit. This is exactly the general opinion of LARPing, and it's also completely incorrect as far as the kind I did. It's not a good idea to pass off the unhealthy as harmless. Dorks are dorks for a reason. I'm not saying that reason is at ALL their fault, but to think nothing bad can come from a group of people because of who/what they are is dangerous. Especially people with grossly stunted social skills, who have weathered years of bullying and unhealthy lifestyles, and have submerged themselves in a culture where there is not only no accountability for their behaviors, but encouragement and reward for them.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:13
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joat mon posted:What would stop the inept detectives from role playingly sticking a stake in the high ranker's chest? The mechanics of the game. If the detectives wanted to do that, there would be rules for combat that the Storyteller (the person overseeing/running the game) would employ to resolve the situation. And since the high-ranker far outstrips them in level/stats because he's been playing longer and has accrued more experience points, there's little hope the newbie detectives could actually stick him with a stake. It'd be like a Level 1 character trying to fight an End Boss.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:15
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Depends on the venue. For Vampire - yes. A lot of politicking and social maneuvering. Again, a huge disadvantage for newbies. Lifers know the game inside-out, they know how to build their character sheets to maximize their powers and abilities, and they have the OOC connections (lame as that sounds) to ensure they start the game with in-character allies and clout. The Lifers are also the only ones allowed to play the most powerful, oldest Vampires. They don't HAVE to, but every one of them did. Even the ones who were claiming the game could be just as fun and successful if you played a brand-new vampire. I think this is a good spot to elaborate on how games went, generally. Like someone said earlier, there's a period of arrival and out-of-character chatting, getting your character sheet in order, all that. Then the Storyteller calls everyone together, does a recap of the last game and tells us the in-character setting for the game tonight. Then we all go in-character. For Lifers playing old vamps, Vampire is a lot of standing around bantering and trying to use social and mental skills to gain information, climb the Vampire hierarchical ladder, and get minions to go out and do your nefarious bidding. For non-lifers, it's more adventurey. The Storteller will take a group off into another room and run a plot usually involving going somewhere in the city and fighting something, or collecting something. Toward the end of the night, Court is called into session and the Prince of the city makes decrees/announcements, transgressors are brought forth to receive punishments, disputes are addressed and that sort of thing. Then the Storyteller calls the game closed, there's more chatting out-of-character, and folks leave.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:25
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Side Effects posted:Do you think documentaries such as Darkon and Monster Camp are representative of LARPing as a whole or did they just strike gold and find some of the saddest people imaginable? Both of those are boffer, which I've never done, so I can't say for sure that they're spot on. BUT, the people in them are familiar, and they're very much real and true. I'd like to see a documentary that explores the aspect of disease, though, in LARP. Sad people are there, yes, but there's also the folks that are really using the games to excuse wretched behavior - sexual harassment, stalking (I've been stalked. Made bad decisions and picked the wrong dude to try and seduce and it went very badly), anger issues, cheating, compulsive lying, all sorts of stuff. As the testimonials in this thread show, it's out there and not as rare as people might think.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:30
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Jeherrin posted:N'thing the 'excessive immersion in role-play is indicative of a deeper problem'. My ex-fiancée was heavily, heavily into written RP; she'd stay up for hours crafting posts, she invested herself into it utterly, and it became a fundamental replacement for real-world emotional and physical intimacy. Not just with me, but with anyone. It would, literally, reduce her to tears. The fights and fall-outs she had with RP partners were of an impossible, ludicrous nature. Man, I know folks like you, bystanders who didn't even wanna deal with this poo poo and it ends up costing them so much. What a mess. I'm really sorry you had to go through all that. It's a poo poo coping mechanism, it doesn't work, it makes you worse and it's the wrong choice. I'm sorry your ex-fiancee didn't get good help and avoid all the crap.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:32
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Victory Yodel posted:Interesting thread and thanks for the description. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I played D&D like every other nerd when I was in high school so I get the general idea of roleplaying, but how are things actually resolved? In the example above where someone is going to "hack into the tv station's computer to get employment records", does the character in question simply have "hacking skillz"? Does it automatically succeed or do they have to do something? (In the tabletop games I played, someone would have to roll a d20 or something to see if it was successful). Does the GM arbitrate? The characters have skills on their character sheet that they can use if the situation applies to that skill. So, maybe they have a Computer skill with a specialty in Hacking. You're SUPPOSED to roleplay anything than can be, and use your sheet only for things impossible or unsafe to do in real-life (fighting, flying, shooting lasers out your rear end), but no one does. They use their sheets for everything, so it ends up just Stand Up Table Top. Anyway, they system uses a set of cards from 1-10 (playing cards are generally used). You pull a random card, add the number to the number of points you have in the skill you want to use, and see if it's successful. Just like rolling dice, but cards are easier to hold and use when moving about. There aren't foam knives or physical weapons at a theater LARP, like there are at boffer. You would let the person know 'I'm attempting to stab you in the ear' and then follow it with card pulls and combat skills that are on your character sheet. Victory Yodel posted:Is it simply "you can't do that" or you'll never be invited back? Oh, my sweet summer child. No, you can attack anyone you want, and kill their character if you have the skills/sheet to do it, and your pulls succeed. You can also do things like beat them with a motorcycle, set their house on fire and kill their wife and children, and shove a tire iron up their juxie without any protest from the Storyteller. So long as you succeed in your pulls, it can happen. Which is why so many of them use in-character stuff to get away with being horrible to people.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:42
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EATIN SHRIMP posted:Who do I have to larp as to get the most chicks? Doesn't matter. Just mosey in there with an ounce of confidence and they're yours for the taking. Seriously, I saw some vomitous unwashed goobers get laid constantly because they knew how to work the girls with bottomed-out self-esteem. Which is lovely to do, but there ya go.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:47
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Hazzard posted:I recall a few years ago when I had a pile of free time and no hobbies my parents advocated getting into LARPing. I saw a few videos on YouTube and thought it looked like good fun. You have horny loser dudes mixing with girls that have -400 self-esteem. Yeah, there's a lot of sex stuff. Even if it never becomes out-of-character physical, lots and lots of sexual characters and interactions.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:48
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EATIN SHRIMP posted:How often do fights break out because people refuse to be killed in the sword fights? Like no bro you're sword attack didn't do jack poo poo and then I come back with a sword attack that fake chops their head off Fights aren't common, but the most popular trend were revenge characters. Ravyn Bloodmyst would kill Lord Crymsynfart and then Lord Crymsynfart's player would make a new character who just HAPPENED to have a hatred for Ravyn Bloodmyst, and go after the character. You weren't supposed to be allowed to do it; happened constantly.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:53
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Whiskey A Go Go! posted:Is the combat system based more upon character skill sheets or personal skill? I kinda wanna see someone with a kendo background go to a LARP meet in their Bogu and wreak the place. It was all sheet-based. I never saw anyone with a real martial-arts background LARP. I DID see lots and lots of roly-poly sweatbutts who would try to one-up each other by talking about their extensive fight training. Oh! Oh! There was also something called 'Brazilian Rules', which meant actually using out-of-character physical fighting to settle an issue. Allegedly, a LARP down in Brazil had players beat a guy to death over something in-character. Became the stuff of legend. No idea if it's true.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:56
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Domus posted:
I created and ran games outside the Camarilla that I am, to this day, happy with and proud of. They had no sheets, the plots were totally cooperative, they focused on collaboration, and the players spent months building sets and working together to make cool special-effects and getting the playspace to be as immersive as possible. The goal was to not go out-of-character for the entire weekend. It was lovely, and had those been my only experiences, I wouldn't be doing this A/T. I also created a weekend-long horror LARP targeted at non-LARPers, which was so good. The standard Five People Trapped In A Haunted House deal. The tech we had for it was very neat, and it was a blast to scare the poo poo out of people for two whole days while they tried to figure out how to escape. Again, no sheets, very basic character outlines (like those Host A Murder dinner party games), cooperative and totally immersive. All my stories from those weekends are great. Not a sad/gross one among the lot. They're the only LARP things I don't feel were wastes of my life and time.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:08
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Crazyeyes posted:Your stories suggest a much more sexual culture than I would have expected from my idea of LARPing. Is it due to these people using this as a medium to depart their everyday lives and act on these impulses? When questioned (assuming she was confronted about this at all) why the woman was blowing guys left and right, did she just respond with "that's what my character would do"? I assume there are rules against such behavior but maybe not always? Or was this all done out of character and just some freaky nerds who don't know how to lock the door? The girl giving the Blow-J's was doing it out-of-character, and she was never confronted. People talked about it, everyone knew it was happening right there, but no one in 'authority' addressed it with her. And that's standard. And one of the reasons it was so toxic. Again, because Lifers are so bloody afraid to stir the pot lest their membership be revoked and their addiction hampered, it was the most non-confrontational culture I've ever seen. I was complicit in it, absolutely. I had written and organized that game at the camp where it happened, and I absolutely should have walked into that cabin, kicked the dudes out, and had a Come To Jesus meeting with that girl. I was a coward and I cared more about not making waves than I did about what was right. I've learned it doesn't matter what system you're playing, or what the game is like. It's the formation of a culture populated largely by unhealthy people that makes it turn out the was it did. Rime posted:It seems that long term relationships and engagements being regularly destroyed by partners who decide their vampire LARP is the most important thing in life, is more common than I'd ever imagined. I know this may sound awful, and I hope you don't get upset, but I have to mention something. What she did was poo poo, and she absolutely deserves a Karmic kick in her cooze for it. She consciously made the choice to do wrong things, cruel and evil things, and there is no excuse for it. But I don't believe people in that deep can't be helped. Obviously, I got help. You're not responsible for it, because she cut off your support the moment she began cheating and being a bad girlfriend, and you should never continue to be abused by someone in the effort to help them. But I am heartbroken someone didn't try and help her, just like I'm heartbroken if no one tries to help the drug-addicted trailer trash, who I don't really believe is trash at all. No one wants to be evil. Well, I guess some people do, but most don't. I know I didn't. But I had issues that needed treatment, and I was too much of a coward and too filled with self-hate to work for healthy solutions. So I chose things that were easy, even if they were bad, and I found excuse after excuse to keep doing it. Eventually, like a drug, it started to be less and less effective. The validation and endorphins I received through my LARP misbehavior thinned out every time I used it, and by the end it was not doing anything at all. I remember feeling like I was outside myself, screaming condemnation at myself for what I was doing, and still deliberately doing it. And I'll tell you - I didn't think I was worth anything going into LARP, but I thought I was a full-on cartoon villain by the end. I hated who I was so much. I was with someone who was a Lifer at the same time. They knew I was depressed, clinically diagonosed. They watched me those rare times I had moments of clarity and said that the club was a bad thing. They saw me gain weight, saw me withdraw from my family, saw me spend ten hours a day on the computer roleplaying. But they didn't say a single word against it, because they were with a Nerd Queen type, and loved it, and wanted to keep things the way they were. I did so much work in the club and I was so involved, they had a continuous LARP feed for themselves. I'm not saying it's their fault that I was the way I was - I'm just saying they turned a blind eye to what was happening to be able to continue their own unhealthy lifestyle. So if she's still in that mess, I am so sad for her. I can guarantee you she's not happy, and that she is living in a hell of her own making. I am so sorry that you were a casualty in all that; you don't deserve it.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:54
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Rime posted:No, no offense taken. I didn't mean to imply that there was nothing anyone could have done, only that I could not as I didn't have a clue what was going on until it was far too late and already long over. I thought the issues were coming from other areas and tried to address those instead, and sadly your bit about I am so sorry. I know the old 'it'll get better and you'll find someone awesome' doesn't work at this stage, but if you ever need to talk about it to someone who totally knows what you're going through, hit me up.
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Aug 21, 2015 18:40
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Calico Heart posted:Tell us some cool ways you spooked people. And whose house was it? Did the players do anything cool? This is a long one. The links are all optionally clickable - just for people who want to see/hear the actual events. It was a friend's house we wired and set up to be able to run scares easily. Raspberry Pi's were used to control the house's lights and TVs and such. There was a main storyteller (me) who was inside the house playing one of the characters trapped there - easy for me to supervise and guide things, though I didn't go out-of-character much. Then, in the workshop behind the house, two people were running the special effects via computer/LAN. We had hidden cameras in the main rooms (not bathrooms) and mics, so they could hear and see the game going on and be able to run scares at the optimal moments. The general plot was six people from different parts of the country all drove over a ley line at the same moment and were warped over to this house. It's raining, so they have to seek shelter in there. Looks like a normal house, but no one's home. As they wait for the rain to stop weird stuff starts happening. If they try to leave, they walk through the blinding rain and always end up at the house's front door (I taped a paper to the door describing this, so they could roleplay it without any of us breaking character). So! Trapped in the house, they start to experience scares based on the individual secrets of their pasts (one guy was a news reporter who found a dead body and sent a video of it to his station without contacting police or the family, one guy was a budding rock musician who's girlfriend killed herself after his drug habit made him lash out at her, that sort of thing). Things escalate and escalate, and they're trying to figure out how to stop it and how to escape, finally learning they have to perform a ritual at midnight. They do, the house quiets, and they can leave. Ta da. Everyone was sent a packet that included their character introduction (Sample: http://www.docdroid.net/8XkDLmB/eli.doc.html ) some out-of-character info about food and sleeping arrangements, and an MP3 or CD with a track they were told to play as they were driving to the game site ( http://picosong.com/uTas ) It basically narrated their in-character arrival and set things up so they could go right into game without having to break character. Ok, some of the best scares: *In the middle of the night, all the TVs in all the rooms came on. There was static, and a little girl's voice telling them to wake up. Then we filled the whole house with this moaning haunty sound effect ( http://picosong.com/uTzm ) - we rigged it so that the subwoofers would actually make the floors vibrate. It was awesome watching folks flee their respective rooms all groggy, and huddle together. *There were pictures hung all over the house - landscapes, portraits, lovely things. When I was alone, one by one, I peeled off the top picture to reveal another that was gory or scary. My favorite was this one -  which was right in front of the toilet, so every time someone took a poo poo, this thing was staring at them the whole time. * Before any haunting began everyone was sitting down and having dinner. We rigged a lightbulb shattering sound effect synced with all the lights in the house going off in one moment. It was a jump-scare, which I know is cheap, but all the lightbulbs shattering made sure the house stayed dark and they could only use candles, which made the atmosphere better. * There was a long hallway leading to the Little Girl's Room (focal point for the hauntings). We used a Pi to program the light in there to flicker intermittently, like it was on the blink. It was the only light in the house that worked. Looking down the hall and seeing the door open and the light flickering scared the poo out of them. Took a while for them to be willing to go in there. * We had an old 1940's radio, and wired it with a pi, so it played Fatal Frame-esque sounds every now and then. A girl saying she didn't want to kill, that she was cold, that sort of thing. * This came up on the computer in the den - http://www.aooa.co.uk/THEPHONE.swf It's a fairly creepy game. The phone numbers were used as a code in a DOS program, when they input the numbers, the radio turned on and Play Or Die came on (http://picosong.com/uTDG/ if anyone wants to listen ) Basically they had to talk about their dark secrets or die. * The ritual had them forced to hold onto this knot of ribbons and not move. So the house was dark, and then the two tech people snuck in using an attic passage, and stood there in black robes and hoods. They would creep closer and closer as the wind howled and the clock chimed and screams and howls went through the house ( http://picosong.com/uTzJ ). We ran this game three times - every single time, the players screamed bloody murder during the finale. It was fabulous. There's a ton more that went into it, but those are the largest scares we had. If you're curious, here's the document I used to run the game. It probably won't make much sense, but it'll give you and idea of what went on. http://docdro.id/5gBC8Wf The other one I created was a space game. We turned the whole house into a spaceship. It was madness.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:48
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Mince Pieface posted:So me and my friends run a small LARP out of southern California every month. Our game is not any of the popular LARP systems, and most of the people we play with don't play any of the popular LARPs or have any interest in them. I think a big part of the reason for the famed toxicity of the general LARP community is that frankly, every single one of them has terrible loving game design. You guys seem to have a zero tolerance for shenanigans, which is awesome. I ran a troupe for a year+, and we had that, too - if someone was obviously a jerk or creep, we asked them to leave the group. The horrible stuff that happened in the global club didn't really occur on the same level, because we offered strict advocacy for people who had legit complaints. But just because there aren't assholes doesn't mean the group is healthy. The games in the troupe were never plagued with in-fighting. Out Storytellers were dedicated to using sheets as little as possible, providing really good plots that encouraged roleplay over stats, and everyone was very much into cooperation. We had things called 'drama-bombs' where a scene would pause, the storyteller would narrate something dramatic happening, and the ten minutes that followed could NOT be used in using sheets. Everyone had to roleplay the reaction. Worked beautifully. The games honestly were great, from a Lifer's perspective. That was actually one of the problems I had. Because I created this troupe and helped shape the way it would conduct games, I was tailoring it to my illnesses to be used as my coping mechanism and self-medication. I am not an douche in basic personality (I was a people-pleaser), so it never involved PvP, douchey mechanics, bullying or imbalanced sheets. What it involved was getting everyone deeper into the fantasy. Lifers loved it, because they weren't healthy. We did elaborate sets/decorations, had costume-making nights, built nifty props and rewarded people for their involvement - not with extra powers or skills for their sheets, but with tokens that granted them special moments in plot, or dramatic reveals from their past. Now, for the healthy folks who really saw it as a hobby and not a way of life, it was a non-issue. But it tipped a lot of people over the edge from casual into Lifer, and I hate that it did. It promised them excitement and emotional highs, a group of people who would praise and admire you the more you sunk into it, and never even hinted that you might have an issue that could benefit from professional help. And, just like with the global club, my troupe Lifers were unhealthy. The guys who are talking about losing their SOs to LARP/gaming don't seem to know or care how the mechanics worked, or how the group was structured and run. It was the total immersion and the untethering from reality that destroyed their relationships. I am in NO way suggesting your group is like that - I've seen casual LARP groups or tabletop groups who have zero Lifers in them. Lifers won't be interested in a group where they can't immerse and make it their everything, so they won't join. I just think that rules can't guarantee LARP being good for sick people.
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Aug 25, 2015 03:33
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Vagon posted:So.. What happens when a good looking, charismatic person shows up to one of these events? Do they already? Do the pitchforks come out by the other guys/girls(Depending on the gender of said newcomer) or does some insane cult of personality prop up around them? In my experience - they don't stick around. Either they decide the casual fun of LARP isn't worth putting up with the crazies (and because they already have good lives, it's not a big deal to give up LARP), or they get bored. Really, I should've hung up my hat a dozen or more times during my LARPing career just from the insanity I witnessed. Seriously. Would you stay in a book club with a dude who describes the themes of every novel in graphic sexually violent terms? Would you host your local bowling league if they came over and one of them pissed on your floor? I dunno, maybe some people would. But it seems pretty counter-intuitive. The people who turn a blind eye to that poo poo do so because what they desperately need is worth suffering all that nonsense. It's not offensive. There's a reason LARPers have a stereotypical look and behavior, Trilbys and M'Ladys all 'round. Just browsing this collection - http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/wod,worldofdarkness - you get a good idea (I just did an image search for WoD LARP Group, and I didn't go pages in, to make sure I'm not deliberately showing folks I used to know). Skunkrocker posted:You wouldn't believe the number of people who fill this category that go to LARPs. Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of fat balding men and women so skinny you'd assume they were skeletons except they have hair down to their non existent rear end and several who either were blasted in the face with a shotgun or used sulfuric acid to "cure" their acne because their face is all hosed up. But a lot of people show up who you'd be surprised are hanging out with a group of people like this. Often successful, good looking, charismatic men and women will show up and play. The guy accused of rape, the absolute worst LARPer I have ever known, was an assistant DA. You are correct, sir.
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Aug 25, 2015 04:16
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BiggerBoat posted:I have sort of a dumb question. Why, instead of dedicating your life to something as soul crushing and ultimately unrewarding as LARP, don't the players just get involved in community theater and put on a play or something if they like to play dress up and act? Even an improv type of thing? For me, personally - I felt too worthless to succeed in theater, or anything for that matter, despite a deep love of it. A lot of LARPers suffer from depression, social anxiety and any number of mental cocktails that'll stymie them from being productive in their lives. Many I knew had no driver's license, or job, or home. The parents' basement caricature is pretty correct sometimes. That's the whole theme of this thread - Lifers in LARP are unhealthy, and LARP makes it worse, not better. BiggerBoat posted:Fascinating thread. I agree it's hypocritical, but people rarely confront their own demons when there's an opportunity to project onto someone else. I know I did, even to the point of openly mocking other Lifers because they did something I didn't do. I was just as bad, I just didn't do that one aspect. It was ridiculous. I think it is MUCH harder to break free from a physical+psychological addiction than just a psychological one, but I hope you do it. It's not a chastisement, it's just being on the other side and seeing how amazing it is here. If you've had depression a long time, you can't even comprehend what it'll feel like to get better. I was staggered. These two posts kinda melded for me because I wanted to talk about bottoming out and the climb back up. So, Deep Blathering Time, skip the below if uninterested, or if you don't want to know how evil I was. For about six years, I had a routine - whenever I noticed a LARP dude was paying some attention to me, I would 'innocently' and companionably invite him to make character ties with mine. It was always in-character stuff; I wasn't interested in reality. I wanted to get my fix in the place where I felt the most beautiful, powerful (seductive) and worthwhile. So, we'd start building character ties. After a bit, I could tell whether or not they would be what I needed: someone who'd fall completely for me, to the point of obsession/worship. It was going to take a lot of attention and praise to sate me, so it had to be that deep level of besotted-ness. If they looked like they were headed that way, I'd start RPing with them online a lot, and doing side-scenes at game alone with them. Nothing physical and, sometimes, not even really romantic or sexual. But a immediate source of attention and validation I could tap any moment I started feeling worthless or ugly. From there, we'd start chatting out-of-character. I had a boyfriend (another Lifer, selected because he was a pushover and would feed my addiction), so they would be hesitant to reveal their feelings (they were mostly good dudes, awkward and naive), so I'd give little flirt nudges until they broke and admitted to adoring me. I didn't love them. I didn't even really like them romantically. I didn't like what I was doing, and I didn't think it was right. It felt wretched. I did it anyway, fully cognizant of the choice, though. I'd lie about reciprocating their feelings (gotta keep them on the line). I'd do everything I could to make our interactions in-character as much as possible - that was way more fulfilling than real-life stuff. I had clever ways of ensuring it didn't go physical; out of eight or nine guys over the years, I only actually slept with one. To me, that's no saving grace and I'm not putting it here to prove I wasn't all bad, it's just a interesting piece of the evil. After a while, there'd be less of a thrill. The hunt was over, and having the same person tell you how amazing you are day after day tends to rub the shine off the meaning. So I'd find a way to break it off. They'd leave the group, crippled. Or they'd stay and pine from afar. Some were solely through online RP sites, so I'd just go dark one day and that was that. The last year it was going on, I knew things were getting worse. I weighed more than I ever had, I hand't worked in ages (boyfriend supported me), and the usual tricks weren't making me feel any better. I was running my troupe, the games were more intense than ever, but it was no good. I was sliding down into suicidal. All the bad from my past was crammed in a tiny box in my head (I'd never gone to therapy for the things that'd happened to me; I'd just pretended I was ok) and now that box was being crammed even more with the evil poo poo I was doing in the present. The hinges were straining and the lid was gonna blow. My final 'conquest' was a guy ten years younger than me (he was legal) who had joined the group with his wife. They'd been married less than a year. He became so obsessed, he followed me places. He was also very, very bad at discretion. We got found out, first about the in-character cybering, then his wife found the out-of-character chats we'd done. She left him. My boyfriend said he still wanted to be with me. He said he'd forgive me and we'd work it out. A couple days later, I went to the ER and told them I was going to hurt myself and to please help me. Total breakdown. I'd never done anything like that before. I was there, and then in a psychiatric facility briefly (same place they sent mentally ill inmates. It was a co-ed facility. That was fun). I really was at absolute rock-bottom. They were overcrowded, so I had to sleep on a pallet in the bathroom. I really can't remember a time I was so scared, hollowed out and done for. But I refused to be discharged until I spoke with a doctor. Did that, made him give me outpatient resources and my first anti-depressant prescription. My boyfriend picked me up and, on the way home, I told him I didn't want to be with him anymore. I said if he wanted to drop me off on the side of the road that I'd understand. He didn't. I started going to therapy, got the right balance of meds, and began to work my rear end off to stop being an evil human being. It sucked so bad, guys. I dunno why they show therapy as being this hour where you talk about your problems and the therapist nods and writes poo poo down. It was a full-on war waged in that room every week. We did guided meditation to bring me back to my past and make me face it and acknowledge it. We picked apart every inch of me to be looked at. There were weeks I'd actually psychically limp out of there. But I was pissed the gently caress off at my life being poo poo and feeling like I was poo poo, and so that anger helped to keep me going. It's been almost a year. I've lost 40+ pounds, and still going, just by not being at the computer 12 hours a day, and being too poor to get takeout, heh. I'm working, we adopted two dogs, we live in a little blue house I love more than I ever did the big place that I rented so I could host games. The meds have made a huge difference - they're the rope that was thrown down into the pit; I had to climb out myself. For the first time since I can remember, I feel like I deserve to be on this earth. Not perfect, not awesome, but a right to exist here with everyone else. There's still stuff to do, still work ahead, but I know I won't ever be back in that place I was, and I will never be a cartoon villain again. *cue the E.S. Posthumus cinema music*
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Aug 25, 2015 05:06
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Calico Heart posted:This sounds cool as balls and now i think larping is cool. I need to assemble something for this one, so bear with me. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.
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Aug 25, 2015 05:07
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Tamarillo posted:When I was 16 my brand new boyfriend (23 Skunkrocker posted:Wow. So they didn't explain poo poo to you. Barely wrote you up a character sheet and thrust you into the middle of all of this without explaining major game mechanics politely? Your boyfriend is a total dick. First off, the no humanity thing is a total game mechanic; if he's low on humanity he's less Edward from Twilight and more Orlock from Nosferatu. Mechanically, within the game, he should have frightened you. Also, about the not being able to win RPS. Basically if the guy is old enough and goes back enough generations he gets enough retests that he'll eventually beat you. Even if you had retests to try and resist. It's a bullshit mechanic. There is a reason they stopped using it in New WoD. I think you must have lucked out a lot with your games, because I was in the Cam in the States for four years and this is, almost blow-by-blow, what happened at games on every level, local to regional games of the month, to the big global conventions. And her account is so like my first experience playing Vamp in the Cam. The only difference was I liked the attention and making the chicks pissy. I've never seen someone desanctioned, suspended or banned for anything less than an actual illegal offense. I saw it happen twice - child porn dude (who was in jail anyway) and date rape dude (6 month suspension and then he was back in the game free and clear). Here's the deal with the disciplinary process in the Cam: let's say you're at game and some guy comes up and gropes your tits. Physically does it, but it's his character doing it to yours. That is considered a Severe Offense (unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature at a Camarilla event). It's the same level of offense, by the way, as putting an extra 26 points on your character sheet, or forging an experience point log. They consider those equally horrible. You would go immediately to your game's Coordinator (they're the officers in the club that handle out-of-character stuff), and tell them what happened. According to the membership handbook, the coordinator CAN immediately evict the player from the game. Doesn't have to. So, if the guy who groped you is, say, a officer of higher rank like a Regional Storyteller, it's gonna cause a huge shitstorm if you boot them from your game. So, once again, Lifers who are high-ranking can abuse their standing with some confidence. But let's say you have an awesome coordinator who don't take no poo poo, and they boot Tit-Groper from the game. That just means he can't come back that night. Just that night. He can show up next game no problemo. Continuing on the non-corrupt line of thought (and it's being very, very generous to say no one's corrupt in this situation), you can lodge a formal complaint against Tit Groper in hopes of him being disciplined. The coordinator then has to go to the dude who groped and say you'd made a complaint. He's allowed to defend himself before any disciplinary action is taken. If you're not willing to just let him apologize and be let off the hook, you can ask for mediation, which means you two sit down with a coordinator and hash it out. If you aren't willing to sit with the guy who sexually molested you, you can ask for an investigation to be started for the purpose of determining what the disciplinary action will be. Here's where it gets super fucky. The handbook says 'Coordinators and storytellers may enact disciplinary action within the scope and limits of their offices.' For a local coordinator or storyteller, that ain't much. They cannot desanction characters, suspend players or take away their member ranking. That can only be done by the higher-ups: regional, national and global officers. Since those guys weren't at the game and have no idea what's going on, statements have to be written and sent by everyone involved, including any witnesses, and then the statements have to be reviewed by the higher-ups and a disciplinary action handed down. Takes a while, trust me. He can keep coming to game scott-free during that time. If the groper is best buddies with the higher-up handling the complaint, you're gonna be out of luck, kiddo. There is no Internal Affairs department in the Camarilla. I've seen this situation so many times. Suggested actions for a severe offence: • Permanent desanctioning of all that member’s characters • Up to a three-month suspension • Removal of up to 1500 prestige points No. Please. Anything but that. So people who you've never even met before get to decide the level of advocacy you receive. Three months at most, and the guy who groped you is back in action. Or he has his characters taken away, or his member level dropped. Which I'm sure matters a whole lot to you when he's still allowed to come to game and you have to be around him or quit playing yourself. But wait! That'd be too easy. Your groper buddy can also appeal any disciplinary action he receives. The appeals process is long, full of red-tape, and requires the next level of higher-ups to deal with it. That means if it happened at your local game, it goes past the Regional officers and to the Arbitration Board, which are national officers. What usually happened when I was playing was the offender would state his or her intention to appeal even before the disciplinary action was handed down. So, he or she could continue to play while the statements are written and reviewed, the action is decided, the appeal is sent to the Board, and they decided whether or not to grant it. There was a running joke in my group about one of our players who had filed a complaint and the accused had appealed it, and it had been four YEARS without a resolution, and the person he made the complaint against not only could continue to play, but ended up holding a regional officer's position. He was still waiting when I left. And all this doesn't even touch Formal Hearings, which can require people who live in different states to have to come together and determine what happens. Which means it's usually done online via chat or e-mail and, to me, that is a staggeringly flawed medium to decide something like sexual harassment. It's a bad system, and it's made worse by power-tripping assholes who can manipulate it to ensure they're never held accountable for what they do. I talked earlier about the guy who basically used my ignorance of the system as a new player to be ultra-creepy and intimidating, and how it was years before I knew I had the right to say 'no'. That's a prevalent situation. Unless the coordinator or storyteller happens to overhear the exchange, or the person who brought you is upstanding and watching your back all night (if you didn't come alone), there's no way you'd know what to do or how to get help. If you're a girl with low self-esteem, desperate to fit in and to be accepted, you aren't going to start complaining your first night. Here's the member handbook for those who wanna check it out: http://www.mindseyesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/handbook.12.2.03.bookmark1.pdf Sorry. I went a bit ranty on this one. I just wanted to share my experiences with complaints and offenses over the years as I played.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:24
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BiggerBoat posted:Thanks for the response. If you don't mind, what did they prescribe? I've had bad luck with anti-depressant meds until very recently (mirtazapine). I'm on Celexa (20mg) and Wellbutrin XL (300mg) for my anxiety/depression and Strattera (40mg) for ADHD. I've just begun to plateau, so I may end up increasing my dosage on the anti-depressants, since I'm nowhere near the max. I went off the Strattera for a while, then went back on it. I still don't know how I feel about it. It does help me focus and slow down, but it also seems to inhibit the antidepressants.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:35
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TheAttackSlug posted:If it's any consolation I've been in some combination of tabletop gaming group and/or convention-going circle of friends and/or MUD guild or whatever for the past ~20 years, and for most of that time couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting some girl that was doing this. I think most of them at least started with a genuine interest in the nerd games but got deeper and more insidiously into it once they realized that this was a place they could easily get more orbiters than the planet Jupiter. It's just a gold mine of guys who will become putty in the hands of a girl who doesn't ignore them. And the girls obviously get addicted to this above and independently of any other addiction they might have to gaming itself, which many do. There's a rather vicious trend that goes on both online and in gaming circles, where girls are castigated for wanting attention. I hate the phrase 'attention whore'. Hate it. It screws girls up so badly. We all want attention. We all want to be seen and heard and interacted with. The problem is, girls are rarely encouraged to own that desire and to make it something positive without resorting to sexuality. It took me a long, long time to figure out what was going on with me in that regard. I do game streaming, and I'm well familiar with the girl streamers with the cleavage and the flattering web-cam angle and the constant furious insistence that they aren't just there for attention or to break little gamer boys' hearts. That common scenario is so common because that's the only situation they're permitted - the guys will pay attention to them if they're hyper-sexualized, and they exonerate the heinous offense of 'attention whoring' by declaring they're not doing it. And the dance goes on and everyone's supposedly happy. I've been streaming for five years, and it was only three months ago I finally set up a web cam. It was very hard to do. I had created a persona of flirty seductiveness. I didn't use a cam, because I wanted the viewers to imagine me as whatever they wanted, whatever was the most attractive or beguiling. I also thought I was ugly as balls. But continuing to work hard to be well meant I had to adjust the way I did things. It's not wrong for me to want attention, or even want praise and admiration. But it really didn't make me feel good to get it solely because of sexuality and an act. So, I got the webcam, I did my makeup fully admitting I still have some issues with self-image/acceptance, but I didn't dress provocatively and I stopped being flirty. I made a conscious rule to only be myself. Not a single lie or performance. Sometimes that did mean referencing something sexual, but it also meant being happy to broadcast, excited to hang out with the viewers, and offer them the parts of me that were real, for good or bad. If they didn't think I was hot and didn't want to tune in because of it, they weren't good for me anyway. They know I like attention. We joke about it. And I'm coming to learn how awesome it feels to have people like me for me, which is so loving cliched I can't believe I typed that. To talk about books and movies and games and read them excerpts from my high school journals and have them good-naturedly tease me about how awful they are, but also not deliberately locking away sexual stuff (my husband said sometimes when we do it my body looks like a penis to him). It feels very good, and much more fulfilling, to ask honestly for attention that comes from companionship and an interest in who I am. I know I'm rehashing this, but those LARP girls are making bad choices to fulfill a good need. It won't work. It won't last. But instead of calling them out, maybe let them know you think it's a shame you aren't able to experience the non-sexual, honest them. Losing the distraction of cleavage and the clamoring din of Nerd Queenism would allow them to have healthy attention, and it'd do wonders. I'll say it now - prolly won't work. Wouldn't've for me back in the day. It would have hurt me, because I'd think the guy didn't find me attractive and that was all that mattered then. But you can walk away knowing you didn't make things worse by either fawning over them or lambasting them for being fake sluts.
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Aug 25, 2015 18:04
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Skunkrocker posted:No, it's okay! Seriously, I didn't know poo poo like that was going on. Our games were awesome by comparison and I hate saying that. I head heard legends of these awesome games, played in distant states. Actually, what I heard was that there were games that had the Storytellers and Coordinators ignore all the crappy poo poo in the club and run their games as they thought best, under the radar. And it worked, allegedly. And I was so, so jealous.
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Aug 25, 2015 18:06
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