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There wasn't a thread for all things LARPing, so I decided to make one up. If you're a larp vet, welcome! Post cool things that happened at your local larp, talk about systems, show off cool pieces of your kit. If you're new to LARP, feel free to ask questions here's a couple common ones that I get all the time. What is LARP? LARP, or Live Action RolePlaying is basically a mix of improv acting and tabletop RPGs. All the while being nerdier than it's component parts. Just like TTRPGs, there are longform campaigns that take place over years or decades of real life; and one-shot games, where you inhabit the role of a character for the one game and then finish with it- these are games that you'll usually find at cons. There are two major types of LARP: boffer/action, and theatre. So what's the difference between them? Boffer Larp is usually a lot more active, combat is resolved in real time with fake (usually foam) weapons, spells are actively incanted by the player. There is little stoppage of play to resolve actions (usually only when doing something that stretches beyond the normal rules), and little to no luck involved with resolution of effects. Theatre Larp leans far heavier on more traditional TTRPG mechanic resolution. Dice rolling, Rock-Paper-Scissors, card decks and more all can be used as ways to resolve challenges in theatre LARP. The World of Darkness Larps all exist in this space, as well as many others. Theatre Larps are traditionally a lot more roleplay heavy, with the resolution checks existing to provide some limits on what players can actually do. Sounds like fun, but nerd hobbies are expensive, what am I looking at for cost? It depends. Theatre LARP is usually a lot less expensive than boffer larp. Usually you just need to pay for the event and maybe some basic costuming pieces for your character. Boffer LARP is where you can invest basically infinite money. Armour is expensive, and boffer weapons can easily run $100 a sword. But when you're getting started, just throwing on some scrub pants, getting a loose fitting white shirt and a vest or altering a dress into a tunic makes for an excellent basic costume. You can build up everything piecemeal, and if the local community is anything like mine, they will probably let you borrow stuff while you build up your kit for your first character. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate and 
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Nov 1, 2023 01:14
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| # ? May 8, 2024 21:39 |
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Is this mostly for talking about US LARP or can us EU/UK LRPers and larpers and sundry contribute too? (We don't entirely have the same boffer/theatre split in the UK, or, well, we kinda do but it seems weirdly different and there are other categories.)
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Nov 3, 2023 13:03
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I'm personally familiar with NA larp, but feel free to talk about the variety of Euro stuff as well!
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Nov 3, 2023 18:10
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Would also be interesting to compare notes. I think you do weapons in what you call boffer larp (and we would call... occasionally boffer but that's really people who don't play it, maybe LRP in the UK if you want to get into the LRP/LARP argument) - the rubber sword thing. The strong norm here in the UK is fairly realistic-looking weaponry (pic related - that weapon is safe to hit people with) but I think a much slower combat style than in the US. Is this true? What sort of size are your events? You've got a lot more people over there but they are a lot more spread out. Here in the UK we have 3000+ person events (Empire LRP possibly currently the biggest? https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Main_Page) but that's an outlier really. I would say the <100 event size is more normal on average.
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Nov 3, 2023 18:40
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Nov 3, 2023 19:27
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No no, the Nordic larpers would be having a workshop about the correct protocols for performing their barely-disguised-kink-party. It would be three hours long and have at least two flowcharts.
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Nov 3, 2023 19:51
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We do have massive Larps, but they're usually once a year affairs. As a canadian, Bicolline is the one that immediately comes to mind, which got ~4000 people this year. In terms of upper limits of size, most long game larps usually peak at about ~100 people. There was one here that got to about 150 people before it cracked under clique drama and scandals. Most of the local games here get to about 30-50 players and actors.
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Nov 3, 2023 22:57
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What sort of game is Bicolline? Like, Empire is a political PvP game first and foremost, though also with large battle content.
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Nov 3, 2023 23:07
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Bico is sort of split between it's Campagnes, which are large-scale PvP and PvE combats, and their Soirees, which are more geopolitical and mercantile in nature. I've never managed to make it out to one myself- it's across the country from me, so it's more hearsay from friends that have made it out there.
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Nov 4, 2023 01:27
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Interesting! Thank you. And yeah it must be a real pain to live in such a large country when there's only so many larps happening.
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Nov 4, 2023 09:03
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I'm envious of Bicolline's site more than anything else, it's amazing. Profound Decisions are currently trying to buy land for Empire in the UK, it's extremely difficult and even when/if they do it'll be years before they'll be able to get it looking even half as cool.
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Nov 4, 2023 09:04
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They don't have the Town and Country Planning Act I guess.
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Nov 4, 2023 09:19
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I started LARP a few years ago and now I help run the local group. We're a pretty small club, maybe 20 people at the most. It's in northern Canada, so we only really do events during the summer.
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Nov 5, 2023 23:24
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I used to play in a small linear group when I was young but now I don't think I could escape the cringe factor. Fest LARP only for me, where the immersion is high and the location is private land that people can't just stroll through.
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Nov 5, 2023 23:30
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That is the beauty of LARP in Canada at least. There's a bunch of summer camps, crown land, and private sites that you can rent for not a ton of money, so even smaller scale larps have a lot of privacy and the public aren't usually strolling through. Immersion can vary, but I think that more comes down to the community and players. I'd love to see more fest style larps in western canada, but the population density just isn't really here to support it compared to the montreal-windsor corridor.
berenzen fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Nov 6, 2023 |
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Nov 6, 2023 08:05
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Yeah, I don't think we've ever run across another person while out LARPing. Just endless wilderness in every direction with neat rock formations thrown in.
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Nov 6, 2023 23:25
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At the Cambridge (UK) university larp society, they larp on Granchester Meadows, which is the sort of public footpath which is mostly empty except when it very much isn't. Many a time have I been implausibly dressed as a skeleton and seen some people with a dog walking past and had to act normal.
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Nov 7, 2023 00:55
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A few years back, the larp I was a part of ran a game as a part of an 'outdoor activities' advertisement initiative that the city was running, being run out of the military base. We had use of their local forested park- about a 2kmx1km area. I'm playing as one of the actors, and the idea of the mod is that the players encounter us as a group of scattered corpses surrounded by a necromancer and her pet demon, who would then raise us and we would fight the players. Enter the military police, who were doing a walk of the park we were playing in, and they happen to stumble across us, and get very worried for a second as the stumbled across us as we were laying on the ground, as we had heard someone coming up the path and thought it was the players. So we had to spend the next couple minutes reassuring the MPs that nothing was wrong, we were actors and that the blood on my neck and the dagger my wife was holding as the necromancer was all fake.
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Nov 7, 2023 05:12
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Ah yes, the "this game that we play" issue, also a problem when you are loudly discussing larp stories at the local pub and you're talking about murdering and sacrificing your friends.
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Nov 7, 2023 08:50
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I think one of the interesting things about LARP is that it looks like absolute dogshit on video compared to how it feels at the time, and how you remember it being. I generally describe it as your brain doing all the VFX work - any actual video is like seeing behind-the-scenes green-screen shots of actors fighting tennis balls on sticks.
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Nov 8, 2023 16:58
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I'm about to be an overdramatic little bitch, so feel free to ignore. And this is only about US theater style LARP. But Don't do it don't do it don't do it don't do it . Seriously, avoid like the plague forever. It is nothing but poison and sickness and disease and no one gets out unscathed. US Larp, in particular organized white wolf( used to be the Camarilla, who the gently caress knows what it is now), attracts and enables the worst of the nerds and the game systems encourage the most insidious kinds of abuse. Nothing good comes of it and you will regret all your wasted time and emotional energy. This isn't my thread, but a goon posted her experience in the White Wolf LARP and it's awful. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3735668&pagenumber=1&perpage=40 Okay, I'm done. And I'm sorry if this is threadshitting and I have no experience with boffer or UK Larp, so I won't say anything about those. My only experience is US theater, both White Wolf and otherwise.
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Nov 9, 2023 14:50
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I mean you're not wrong. You get people with no emotional filter, or people who want to be The Big Man, a whole lot of weird relationship stuff etc etc. I think White Wolf games in particular were bad for that kind of thing just because of the subject material, edgy themes etc etc. The thing about large-scale, fantasy-LARP fest events though is that there's enough people that you can just avoid those types unless you really want to, and the themes don't lend themselves as much to that specific kind of abuse. You can basically spend the weekend in a fantasy world, drinking in taverns, fighting monsters and generally having a good time without getting involved in politics or drama unless you really want to. Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Nov 9, 2023 15:29
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I guess if my only experience playing board games was Monopoly and there was a house rule about being sodomized when you're in jail I would recommend against them too.
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Nov 9, 2023 15:34
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Yeah, I can't and won't speak to that style, and I'm sure that it can be fun and harmless, but the stuff I've endured is absolutely harmful and as you can probably guess, the scars are still there. and I'm a dude, so I'm sure it must be a 1000x worse for chicks or trans or non binary people. It's not even worth going as a lark to gawk at weirdos. Edit- yeah, white wolf was the worst of the lot, not just because of the dorky edgy bullshit, but the prevalence and importance of power and exercising of that power. Narzack fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Nov 9, 2023 15:37
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:I guess if my only experience playing board games was Monopoly and there was a house rule about being sodomized when you're in jail I would recommend against them too.
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Nov 9, 2023 15:39
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I played Camarilla Larp for years in the 90's and still have lifelong friends because of it, maybe that's due to shared trauma. Vampire in particular seems to attract a lot of lovely people, and the national organization structure encourages them to get into places of power, so I wouldn't get involved with it today. I've played many privately run invite only theater Larps, mostly Vampire but other genres as well and not encountered anything like the the bullshit I encountered or have heard about happening in the national organization. My friend currently runs a "Magical Academy" Larp and he's very dedicated to psychological safety and inclusivity he has zero tolerance for toxicity and removes people without hesitation. So like every other game, it's about finding the right group.
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Nov 9, 2023 15:55
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Narzack posted:I'm about to be an overdramatic little bitch, so feel free to ignore. And this is only about US theater style LARP. Oh yeah vampire larp in the UK has a similar reputation. I mean I do know people who have enjoyed it but the Cam is generally considered its own scene and often powerfully toxic as I understand it. Not that the other larp scenes in the UK don't have issues with this, but they're a lot more inclusive and much less tolerant of abusive people in the community than they used to be. Like, because of the personal hard work of close friends of mine if I'm honest, who have given their time and emotional energy to making a lot of things better.
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Nov 9, 2023 16:06
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That thread is interesting, by the way - as someone who has been larping a long time (a lifer? Possibly, but I try to make a point of not having it be all-consuming) I can't say some of those dysfunctionalities aren't familiar to me. But it has encouraged me to reflect that by and large the social groups I'm a part of have grown and changed in the last decade also - we have had success at making some of these things better. There's stories I've only heard from the bad old days that are just surreal and horrifying: but I think in many cases those things would be a lot less likely to happen now. Anecdotally I know of non-larping roleplaying communities who have also ventured into the realm of extensive dysfunction. Some similar patterns there too. Ultimately I think it's an issue in any hobby that focuses on immersion and escapism - it doesn't have to be an insurmountable issue, mind. I would say by and large I know a fair diversity of people who larp, from quite a few walks of life with different careers etc. The stereotypical British larper is white, progressive, and middle-class, I guess (it's not a cheap hobby and it hasn't always been... great... at cultural things) but that's by no means universal. I suspect to a degree as "nerd culture" in general has (mercifully) widened and diversified, so too it is true for the specific subset that is larpers. (Aside: quite weird in that post to see all this talk of LARPers, but the LARP/LRP/larp distinction, or otherwise, is a whole different kettle of fish.)
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Nov 9, 2023 16:25
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Bucnasti posted:I played Camarilla Larp for years in the 90's and still have lifelong friends because of it, maybe that's due to shared trauma. Vampire in particular seems to attract a lot of lovely people, and the national organization structure encourages them to get into places of power, so I wouldn't get involved with it today. National org White Wolf LARPS are the worst possible combination of petty power structures at the local level made up of people who never stopped engaging in high school cliques and their drama, and bad actors at the higher levels using any scrap of organizational power they manage to indulge their power fantasies with real people as the audience and cast. I once ended the run of a Cam Vampire LARP at the local game store they were playing at because the Shadowrun game I was running in the other room stole all the people who actually did the logistics for it, and none of the drama fiends could be bothered.
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Nov 14, 2023 05:09
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Liquid Communism posted:National org White Wolf LARPS are the worst possible combination of petty power structures at the local level made up of people who never stopped engaging in high school cliques and their drama, and bad actors at the higher levels using any scrap of organizational power they manage to indulge their power fantasies with real people as the audience and cast. That tracks, the peeps willing to do the work were rarely the ones creating drama. I don't regret my time in the Cam because like I said, lifelong friends, but I wouldn't go back. Now... I've volunteered to help one of those friends run a pirate larp at a local convention. It's going to be a theater larp and originally I was looking for a good generic system that didn't use rock-paper-scissors. I did a bit of research and surprisingly found pretty much gently caress-all. A few half-assed blog posts about games that might or might not exist and a generic system called Rules to Live By which requires dice and is way too complex for my needs. Lot of boffer systems but seems like MET has the market cornered for theater. What I did find was some super basic rules for Castle Falkenstein, and I've decided to use them as a jumping off point for my own card based system.
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Nov 14, 2023 06:09
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Honestly a lot of the modern 'theatre'-style games I see in the UK are virtually systemless and that seems to work fine most of the time. You can just vibe it out!
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Nov 14, 2023 08:30
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You can also do things like drawing coloured stones or dice from a bag, with different colours meaning pass/fail/a secret third thing, with skills allowing for re-draws.
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Nov 14, 2023 09:39
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Ok this has got me thinking now - next year I'm going to a board game/RPG camping festival that hasn't historically run any larp and I'm planning to write a game to run which'll serve as a gentle introduction to the hobby for folks who've only previously done stuff like Werewolf. I was gonna be doing Medieval Court Intrigue but pirates sound way cooler tbqh (and also I just finished watching Our Flag Means Death) I'm still in the process of brainstorming out the system but happy to share my notes with you as they develop.
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Nov 14, 2023 13:35
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Where's this taking place? Pirates sounds good, though unfortunately the greatest pirate larp has already been written. http://larp.soc.srcf.net/wiki.pl?NickTaylor/PirateLARP "You may discharge your pistol at any time. This has no mechanical effect." still remains the best rule ever.
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Nov 14, 2023 13:43
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lines posted:Where's this taking place? Pirates sounds good, though unfortunately the greatest pirate larp has already been written. This is the Strange Games festival near Brighton, it's a good one!
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Nov 14, 2023 13:57
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So my current thinking is: for theatre LARP, you want to make the primary interaction based on words, rather than deeds, because it's hard to physrep deeds and easy to physrep words. That means you want to set the event somewhere with lots of things to talk about and have most of the action happen off-camera. So: instead of making the game be about pirates running around desert islands and digging up treasure and swinging from masts onto other ships, make the game be about pirates drinking, scheming, and assembling the crew they need (by finding other players with the right skills), have all the swashbuckling and heroism happen off camera, and then come back with big bags of gold and stories about how they totally threw a knife through one guy's eye and it was awesome. That way you don't get immersion broken by having to switch back to rules and do rock-paper-scissors all the time, the game becomes all about the things that are easy (ish) to physrep without suspending disbelief.
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Nov 14, 2023 14:14
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Do you have any NPC crew for this?
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Nov 14, 2023 15:07
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lines posted:Do you have any NPC crew for this? My current thinking is to make it almost entirely driven by player-on-player interaction: give players briefs on what their characters want and which other characters can offer it and what they can offer in return, design them so that a lot of peoples' goals are at odds, then let sparks fly.
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Nov 14, 2023 15:52
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Yeah that's the good stuff. Though I might make it entirely about recruiting crew for a journey. That to me sounds like the interesting part.
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Nov 14, 2023 16:44
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| # ? May 8, 2024 21:39 |
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lines posted:Honestly a lot of the modern 'theatre'-style games I see in the UK are virtually systemless and that seems to work fine most of the time. You can just vibe it out! Yeah, I've played Parlor LARPS, which have not system, just people in a room with motivations, goals and secrets. They're cool, but I can't imagine it working on a large scale, or having a pirate game without at least some sword fighting. Whybird posted:So my current thinking is: for theatre LARP, you want to make the primary interaction based on words, rather than deeds, because it's hard to physrep deeds and easy to physrep words. That means you want to set the event somewhere with lots of things to talk about and have most of the action happen off-camera. The setting for the game we're running is a yearly gathering of pirate crews to elect the captain of a pirate fort in Port Royal. There will be a lot of pirate politicking, I'm sure a fair amount of skullduggery and I'm probably a little bit of swashbuckling. There's the main plot for the big kids, and then a couple of B plots for the rank and file to participate in.
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Nov 15, 2023 06:51
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