More 2nd Edition

Just a clarification.


That definition of LARP is what it is in the US.


In Europe, or at least in Sweden, LARPing is very different.
 
Live action roleplaying. like Ker'ion said. To my understanding, it's roleplaying with costumes, fake items, and such. To an extent, I guess LARPing is like improvised acting... It's considered an extreme fun by hardcore RPers and the lamest and gayest hobby in the universe by the most people (at least according to a magazine.)
 
LARP is like unto the 8th Circle of Hell.  


LARPers are to roleplaying games, what Furries are to the cosplay crowd--or the sexy cosplay crowd for that matter.


So, the drawn out question then is, what is LARP in Sweden then...
 
It's extremely serious, when it's done by the most heavily financed groups. I can provide some pictures of sort-of serious LARP groups ( and yes, we use real steel weapons and steel armor, and only tolerate historically correct stuff. no cotton clothing, no strange garments, no quilted chainmail, etc ) And we have full villages built from wooden beams in historical styles and such, with working blacksmiths, bakers, washers and everything living as a medieval community.


We have no "fireballs", we only have full contact action without any silly rules of "pretended combat".


Here are some pictures:


The first two pictures are of northmen and elves, and the third picture is me and two friends in gear that is designed from Haradrim in the Lord of the Rings.


http://hem.passagen.se/lucibert/Bilder/skaeigis.jpg


http://hem.passagen.se/lucibert/Bilder/alver.jpg


http://g.helgon.net/Gallery/{E1A/{E ... 32E}.jpg
 
In the US, it's call "Historical Re-enactment"--and since we've only had settlers for the last 400 years or so, we don't usually get a lot of armor and chain.


Though, there are entire villages recreated, for the express purpose of renacting the earliest of settlements in the US, complete with blacksmiths and folks dedicated to historical accuracy.


Then there are the Civil War and Revolutionary War re-enacters--and depending on where you go, that can be drunk ass rednecks who want to swing the Stars and Bars, Southies who've been doused in whiskey all morning and just want to scream at "The British" one more time before they collapse in a stupor, to dedicated folks who want to preserve our heritage.


Historical renactment is one thing.  LARP is another.  Boffing is yet another Circle of Hell--foam wrapped sticks and bad armor knock offs...


I was once approached by a group of Boffers on the green in Amherst, after a session at the Athletics Club.  I was offered a piece of PVC by someone I knew tangentally, who knew I trained with weapons.  I told him that I didn't train with toys, and perhaps he'd be better of playing with his friends.  He went on about how it would be a shame not to get some live practice with folks who were "experienced".  In the end, the idiot annoyed the crap out of me, and I took him up on his offer.  After some bantering, I took his two buddies and him on.


I beat the snot out of those poor dumb bastards.  Disarmed the first one with a strike to the wrist--classic Zentai Setsutetsu.  PVC can be hard if you hit folks in the right places.  The second took a shot to the jimmy after I rang his bell with a side stroke, and the last one I disarmed by letting him strike at the "blade" they'd given me, and it left him open for a leg sweep and a submission bar.


What I found hilarious was the first fella, the taunter, then had the nerve to tell me that I'd "cheated" and that I'd violated their rules.  I asked him if I'd ever been presented with any rule set when they'd asked me to play with them, and in the end, I have never been bothered by Boffers since this incident.  Nor has anyone else who trains at the AAC.


There was a fella who used to train the Society for Creative Anachronism in Amherst who was ex-KGB, who did nice weapons training, but when he moved on, the idiot train moved in to replace him and his pupils.
 
Zaramis said:
It's extremely serious, when it's done by the most heavily financed groups. I can provide some pictures of sort-of serious LARP groups ( and yes, we use real steel weapons and steel armor, and only tolerate historically correct stuff. no cotton clothing, no strange garments, no quilted chainmail, etc ) And we have full villages built from wooden beams in historical styles and such, with working blacksmiths, bakers, washers and everything living as a medieval community.
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There's stuff like that in the US as well (the SCA, et al), but it's not considered really LARPing.


-S
 
Yeah, we have the SCa, but they dont fully play fictional characters in a fictional world, most of the time. They have their titles and courts and such, but they still use duct tape to fix their armor and such :P
 
Um, the SCA, here at least, doesn't so much fix portions of their battle armor with duct tape so much as build it with duct tape. 8)


Kingdom of Calontir, Barony of Vatavia.


Society for Creative Anachronism


or


Socitey for Consenting Adults - the Baron and Baroness would so hang me for calling it this, but we have some great after hours parties on site.
 
Zaramis said:
Just a clarification.
That definition of LARP is what it is in the US.


In Europe, or at least in Sweden, LARPing is very different.
Click to expand...
Hear hear. In Denmark too... well some places in Denmark. Other places it's still just geeks in ugly costumes pretending to be something, that they clearly aren't. Sadly :(


And what magazines are actually portraying LARP as the gayest hobby ever? I would like to read that article.
 
Google.  I'm freakin' ancient by the standards of this august assemblage, and to be honest, it's the first thing I think of.  Instant articles.


LARP+Gayest Hobby Ever=137 hits. I'm not even going to bother linking the cream of that particular crop.  You have to learn how to survive the Web on your own...


Seriously.  Google isn't just for finding your favorite celebrity's nude shots.
 
Stillborn said:
wordman said:
Because they have no wit or cleverness. The same reason why complete wusses play ass-kicking barbarians.
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the problem, as I see it, is that role-playing is inherently a social activity, not a physical, ass-kicking one. No matter what you pretend you're doing, what's really happening is that you're sitting around with a bunch of guys and talking.


Imagine a game where in order to play, you actually kick asses. Imagine then, being a player that has no ass kicking ability, but just pretends to. That would be pretty lame, no?


-S
Click to expand...
IMO role-playing has many different aspects to it and many different types of people that enjoy many different types of play.  Some like the ability to beat ass, some like the ability to play out emotional content, some like to see a story unfold, some like to be able to sya they have a character with wa spiff cool powers, some liek to run around and do one thing and one thing good.  


I don't think you can generalize role-playing down to just social intereaction alone, not even sure you can generalize it down to the above mentioned things.  


The thing that rules systems imo have to take into account is as much of the feild of player types as possible if as a business they want to appeal to the widest audience.  Not having rules for social situtations to allow players who like to roll dice to roll dice means that those types of players probably won't buy the books nor play your system, which could hurt sales depending on the percentage of the gaming market that prefers this method.  Now you and I may disagree as to whether we woudl use the system at all or if it woudl be useful for our gaming group, but i can't fault WW for putting it in in order to appeal to as much of the rpg market as they possibly can.
 
psychoph said:
I don't think you can generalize role-playing down to just social intereaction alone
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To be completely fair, RPing is both a social activity, and and internal, imaginative activity. However, it is nothing more than this, unless you get into live-action stuff.


-S
 
I think Roleplaying is an educational activity ( you learn things about things, if you play in any sort of setting with a little reality in it ) as well as a creative activity ( you create a person, even if you never imagine yourself in his/her place, it's still creativity, or you create the world the people play in )
 
Researching and checking up on how society worked and such, or being told by the storyteller, giving the educational aspect, isn't really a social activity.


But of course, I agree, it's mainly social and imaginative
 
Zaramis said:
Researching and checking up on how society worked and such, or being told by the storyteller, giving the educational aspect, isn't really a social activity.
Click to expand...
It's also not roleplaying.


-S
 
Seriously.  Google isn't just for finding your favorite celebrity's nude shots.
Click to expand...
It's not?


:shock:


Wow.  Gouess I'm going to have to try searching for mundane stuff too.


Actually, I use Kazaa if I'm looking for nudie pics of celebs, and Yahoo search for normal stuff, but it finds nudie pics too.
 
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