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MikeCrotch posted:You can make it look better. But at the end of the day you're still wearing fancy dress and hitting people with rubber sticks. The big Empire battles look loving amazing when you're in them. From outside, not so much.
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May 17, 2016 10:42
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LARP events need someone with a GoPro strapped to their chest and they need to show off some actual RP outside of combat. LARP footage is nothing but long distance combat shots and it makes me despair, because there is no worse way of representing it.
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May 17, 2016 11:42
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:LARP events need someone with a GoPro strapped to their chest and they need to show off some actual RP outside of combat. Don't do this at a Whitewolf LARP unless you want to watch fat goth nerds wax poetic about the vampire equivalent of high school drama.
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May 17, 2016 14:40
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:This really drives home that here is absolutely no way to make LARP fighting look good. They slowed down the combat footage to make it look more 'dramatic'- which I think does things a disservice (also none of the people seemed to be particularly skilled). But yeah, line fighting like that always looks a bit crappy- skirmishing or 1-on-1 is much cooler. Without the ability to actually break a line physically by charging it (for obvious safety reasons) you do tend to end up with two lines poking away at each other until one side breaks; it's very attritional.
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May 17, 2016 15:06
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:LARP events need someone with a GoPro strapped to their chest and they need to show off some actual RP outside of combat. LARP footage is nothing but long distance combat shots and it makes me despair, because there is no worse way of representing it. My LARP buddy did this, it was actually pretty cool. However the director of photography at Empire loving hates GoPros so they got banned, ho hum. They used to be on Youtube but he had to pull them. Having said that some footage of the Senate or Military Council could be pretty interesting to have footage of, though the meetings go on for an hour so you'd probably have to edit it heavily or you're basically watching BBC Parliament/CSpan but for fake stuff.
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May 17, 2016 17:37
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LARP is very much not a spectator hobby. Every so often we get requests from people who want to come and watch, and we usually just let them know that watching it isn't nearly as exciting as they'd expect. We can usually convince them to come along and crew, though.
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May 17, 2016 18:55
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cptn_dr posted:LARP is very much not a spectator hobby. Every so often we get requests from people who want to come and watch, and we usually just let them know that watching it isn't nearly as exciting as they'd expect. We can usually convince them to come along and crew, though. Yeah, this. And for the love of god, never ask anyone about their character unless you want your eyes to roll into the back of your head from boredom after 5 minutes.
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May 17, 2016 19:24
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LARPers: please tell me about your character.
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May 17, 2016 22:28
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ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. Whatever lovely Orc or bandit they tell me to play. Average lifespan: 5 minutes. Sometimes I get to be an Ogre, which is a pain in the dick (since you have to wear American football shoulderpads under the costume) but fun (because you're an Ogre). The end.
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May 17, 2016 22:52
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ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. Answering earnestly, because why the gently caress not.. Karl Morgan (Lorien Trust system) A despicable fop of a man; an unsuccessful thief, swaggering duellist, general braggart and cock-about-town who found riches through the great art of pimping. Owner of the Cream Tease, literally the best brothel in the game's world. Father of an entire clan of skaven and recently ennobled for acts that externally appeared heroic, but were actually all about loving up someone who cost him money. For some reason people seem to like him. Has branched out now into publishing a satirical IC tabloid and sponsoring arts events and sports teams (he's basically fantasy-world Richard Desmond now) Bobbie 'The Tomb' Stone (Tommy Guns And Temperance) Literally a psychotic retard armed with a lead pipe. Highest kill count by a large margin in a game that's supposed to be combat lite. Has a tendency to cripple people during prizefighting matches. Has the intellect and morals of a somewhat concussed and maladjusted six year old on little sleep and too much sugar. Amazed he's survived two events, but every other character is too scared of him to try and PVP him. Enormous loving fun to play and I get to be him again this weekend. Woo.
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May 18, 2016 09:51
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Whatever lovely Orc or bandit they tell me to play. Average lifespan: 5 minutes. Next time I see a goony looking motherfucker over 6 foot tall in the skirmish crew, i'll knows it's you. Hahahahaha who am I kidding, all larpers are goony looking. ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. My Empire character is an aspiring general and basically the comically straight guy to the rest of my group, who are a cross between the Borgias and the Conservative party circa 1982. Our greatest failure was not crushing the LARP equivalent of socialised healthcare in its crib, since giving poor people stuff for free is 'unprosperous'. (We are pretty much all actually lefties in real life and just enjoy playing comedy Thatcherites while dressed up in Italian Renaissance garb)
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May 18, 2016 09:52
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MikeCrotch posted:Next time I see a goony looking motherfucker over 6 foot tall in the skirmish crew, i'll knows it's you. That description almost (almost) makes me want to try Empire.
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May 18, 2016 09:57
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ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. Whatever the hell I want it to be, because when you run the game you can do whatever you want. What that tends to be is the undead librarian NPC who drops minor plot and keeps a room where the players can read a bunch of the in-game lore material and work on the scholarly plots. Anyone who tells you there's glamour in being a GM is lying through their teeth. Though sometimes I get to wear the dragon mask, I guess.
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May 18, 2016 10:05
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MikeCrotch posted:Next time I see a goony looking motherfucker over 6 foot tall in the skirmish crew, i'll knows it's you. If you've ever been murdered by an ogre wearing a hero belt with leather-scale tassets hanging off it, that was me. I'm not actually able to play Empire at the moment, I won't be back til.. uhhh.. 2018 probably. Jesus.
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May 18, 2016 10:54
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ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. Snarl, wolverine beastman from the frozen wastelands in the north. So called because beasts in our group are named after whatever sound they make before they learn to talk. Easily bored, totally uninterested in where we go or why, just wants to hunt, forage and explore. Which is why he's currently second in command of scouting and possibly soon to be first, since you don't need to care why the things you find are important, you just need to find out what they are. Learning to be more introspective and responsible due to his position, because character growth is a good thing. I've been gradually morphing his speech from slow and fractured to more regular sounding as well, and he'll be having a shave and a slimming down between events too if I get this new kit finished in time.
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May 18, 2016 11:39
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ScratchAndSniff posted:LARPers: please tell me about your character. I want to respond in earnest because, well, you asked. At the same time taking the bait seems... risky.
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May 18, 2016 12:41
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Skunkrocker posted:I want to respond in earnest because, well, you asked. At the same time taking the bait seems... risky. 
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May 18, 2016 12:45
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NERO gives you an increasing shot at permanent death that starts with 1 black stone in a bag of 9 white stones. On your second chance, it's 2 black stones and 8 white stones, etc. Pulling the first black stone is extremely unlucky, and that's how I lost my first character, a gypsy rogue who just kinda got in over her head. My second character was a boring-rear end hard-to-kill healer-type who kept to the back lines. Still technically alive, I guess, but I have no idea where any of her records might still exist, if they even do. My third character was a thief who played politics well enough to become squired under the nobility. Unfortunately, being a thief was way more fun than playing the noble (especially under my chapter's heavy-handed OOC rules), so even if I did want to go back to LARPing, it wouldn't be to play that character. I don't think I had any other lasting characters outside those three. my cat is norris fucked around with this message at 18:31 on May 18, 2016 |
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May 18, 2016 13:00
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my cat is norris posted:NERO gives you an increasing shot at permanent death that starts with 1 black stone in a bag of 9 white stones. Pulling the first black stone is extremely unlucky, and that's how I lost my first character, a gypsy rogue who just kinda got in over her head. Resurrection is currently listed as "Out Of Stock" on the NERO website  Gravitas Shortfall posted:If you've ever been murdered by an ogre wearing a hero belt with leather-scale tassets hanging off it, that was me. I have never been murdered by an ogre since I have no backup weapons, and so avoid ogres like the plague because Shatter is the worst. I did try to one-on-one a guy playing a giant tree monster once. I got a traumatic wound card from a ref telling me all my ribs were broken after it was done punching me in the chest repeatedly.
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May 18, 2016 15:05
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Ugh, fine. I'll tell you about my last vampire in the Cam. Vincent Jackson. Vincent was a Ventrue turned near the end of the civil war. Raised from embrace by an Invictus he eventually joined the Carthians to establish a more liberal democracy within the Requiem. He was mainly a lawyer for others, and respected by the city for always being honest to everyone and also for being a pacifist. He had no combat skills, and often fed from non human sources as he was low enough Blood Potency to do so at the time. My goal with the character was to go up in humanity, something incredibly difficult. Other players realized what I was doing around the time I hit humanity 9. The game suddenly became "cause Skunk to go down in humanity." It didn't work. I applied for Humanity 10, and drew up a new character so I didn't have to play Vincent as much. Once my humanity 10 was approved I kind of quit playing because the games were getting lovely and the players were terrible and no one showed up except for Old WOD. There was an approval in the global system that would allow you to retire your character as a mortal human again. I was planning on doing just that and being the first to successfully do it but... eh, LARP is lame. Tabletop is better, and no bullshit "this ability has to be approved by seven people" or "this book isn't allowed in this genre" crap. I'm still bitter they wouldn't let me roll a Slasher in the Accord.
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May 18, 2016 19:59
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Skunkrocker posted:I want to respond in earnest because, well, you asked. At the same time taking the bait seems... risky. I wouldn't.
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May 18, 2016 20:57
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I wouldn't.
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May 19, 2016 00:43
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Skunkrocker posted:Unfortunately I didn't. I kind of regret my decision, but gently caress it.  QUIT TEASING
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May 19, 2016 00:56
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oh wait.  good show then.
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May 19, 2016 00:58
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MikeCrotch posted:Resurrection is currently listed as "Out Of Stock" on the NERO website That's for resurrecting permanently dead characters. Somehow we bitched enough for Joe V to stop that cash cow of pandering to insecure bastsrds that couldn't let go of their dead character and their immense power. I guess I'll bite the character sharing when I get a chance.
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May 19, 2016 02:01
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I had a Jedi robe in the closet from Halloween so I tied a rope on for a belt and made a monk  That's about all I wrote, the rest was just me hitting nerds with a hammer
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May 21, 2016 22:34
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I won't name names, obviously, but if people are interested in knowing what characters I played, and the specific choices I made with them to better facilitate my evil, I can. I don't want to yammer on about my characters, but I have realized there were deliberate choices I made when I created them that were tied heavily into my illnesses. In the meantime, here's a story I forgot to tell - Once, our local group was invited to play at a game in another city nearby. In the Cam, traveling to play in other cities was a big part of things, so we did it a lot. We hadn't been to that game in a while, but the folks who'd played there before said it was a solid game, so we gathered ourselves and headed out there. It was being held in someone's tiny house. No AC in summer. There were about fifteen of us, so we really crowded the site. The whole place smelled like cat piss. The house itself was filthy. Our Domain (term for a city's LARP group) wasn't prissy, but it was a little offputting. Then, I noticed that there was fetish stuff hung up all over the walls. Framed photos of BDSM acts and whips and whatnot. All over the house. Ok, not exactly what I'd display in my home, but whatever. But THEN, a little boy came out into the living room. That was really uncomfortable. He's blinking at us all innocently next to a picture of someone with their nipples clamped. And the hostess of the game walks in from the back yard and yells at the kid and grabs him and yanks him down the hall, shrieking at him. We heard him crying and we're pretty sure she was spanking the gently caress out of him. And I was like 'Ok, I'm done'. And it seems the whole Domain had the same thought because we all seemed to file out of the house at once. Went back to my place and finished the night gaming there.
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May 28, 2016 19:00
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Money has nothing to do with it; that is poverty 
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May 28, 2016 20:00
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"Veskit" " posted:
I knew a few black guys that LARPed. I don't know why there were so few, but the ones that did seemed ok. One of my closest friends in the Cam was black and, while I absolutely loved hanging out with him OOC, he was a power player to the max in the game, so he was always surrounded by drama on a national level. He is actually one of the few people I miss from that culture. I think he got out of LARPing around the same time I did. I am currently on Celexa and Wellbutrin for depression, and I recently moved, so I'm looking for a new therapist. I was on Abilify at the beginning, but it made me super sick, so I stopped. I was also on Strattera for a while, but the side-effects just way outweighed the benefit for my ADHD, so I'm trying to help that with lifestyle changes and mental exercises. I have anxiety attacks and have self-harming moments, but I don't want to take Xanax or anything, so I do breathing and ice-squeezing and stuff for that. Most of that is crap from my past, but it was shot into the stratosphere of crazy misery by LARP. LARP was the gasoline on the candle flame. It was everything I should NOT have been doing if I wanted to get better. And I wouldn't be so outspoken against it, if it was an autonomous thing. It's not. It's made up of people who enable and worsen things, deliberately or not. It's hard for me to read the posts where people are talking about great gameplay and how much fun boffer is and how they love it because, to me, it's like reading about how fun it is to go to parties and get wasted after you've been assaulted by a drunk person at a party. I know not everyone who gets drunk is gonna rape someone, or get violated by a drunk person, but it's hard to read the glorification of a culture that has done such harm to me and other people I know. On the other hand, if EVERYONE was as laid back and/or healthy about LARPing like that, there'd be no problem. I guess I just hope the non-lifers will recognize when someone whose vulnerable or sick joins up, and tell them that LARP might be bad for them. Then again, that's kind of an audacious move. I don't know. I don't know if anything can be done.
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May 29, 2016 20:06
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"Darius099" " posted:
I joined in '06, left in '11, I think, but I then did troupe until the end of '14. It's absolutely dependent on the person involved. I truly, truly never met a lifer who was healthy, but there were far less lifers than regular players. I think I saw more of them because I was one. I may add a caveat to your caution, though - even if the people you play with don't suck, be really aware of how much of yourself - time, energy, soul, interest - you're putting into LARP. Up until my plummet, I was having what I'd convinced myself was a great time. I had my own troupe that was bigger than the local Cam had been, the games were cooperative, elaborately decorated and everyone costumed beautifully, the plots were intense and fun, and everyone was getting along. We went out OOC together and bowled or played pool or saw movies. But, really, I had just created the ultimate coping mechanism and fodder to all the evil poo poo I was doing (namely, being a Nerd Queen Whore and manipulating, deceiving and hurting everyone I could). I made sure everyone loved playing the games because that meant they'd stick around and be part of my 'court'. The last big game we had before the implosion, everyone said was the best game they'd ever played in. The same year, I ran an 80-person LARP at MegaCon and had the guy in charge of all the RP stuff at the con tell me I'd gotten more players and more rave reviews than the LARP that'd been running there for 5 years. Honestly, from the outside, I had the perfect LARP life. But it was a bad, bad life. A good test, I think is to ask yourself how you'd feel if game was cancelled that week. If you'd just shrug and make other plans, you're golden. If you're upset, or immediately try to get a Soft-RP session to replace it (no sheets or mechanics, just hanging out IC), then that's a red flag. If you're doing something related to the game three times or more a week - IC journaling or online RP, for instance, take a step back. And if it's where most of your expendable income is going, for costumes, props or whatnot, something is up.
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May 29, 2016 20:07
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Holy shitballs, I have no idea why the quotes were formatted so weird. I apologize; I'll make sure to double-check more closely.
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May 29, 2016 20:08
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As someone who has recently quit the Cam because seriously, gently caress the Cam? I think a lot of the local toxicity and trouble was because the main game run is Vampire, and Vampire is a broken game for broken people. I say this coming from a place of fed up bitterness, but loving hell, the game that the overarching organization likes to run is one where everyone is out to get everyone else, there's rarely a larger goal that you're allowed to go after, everything is highly socially stratified, the older players lord it over the newer ones, and... just... a friend of mine who quit a while back said that he was tired of spending his weekends pretending to hate his best friends. And that's what it seems to devolve into, after a while. If you're going in to such a social setting with unaddressed problems of your own? That is not going to make it better. I spent 7 years mucking around in the club, occasionally running games or acting as a domain admin, but the work is thankless and irritating, and when someone toxic joins up, you just can't kick them out. Enough toxic people finally showed up to make me feel that spending my Saturday night doing anything else would be a better way to pass my time. I've had plenty of fun, I've taken trips, I've met interesting people, I don't really regret the experiences I've had... but I'm done. So are a lot of my friends, friends who've held national positions and who've put a lot of work in to running an organization that frankly, needs to be taken back behind the barn and put out of its misery. I can't see the Cam's various remaining bits and pieces keeping things going for a whole lot longer. From the stuff in this thread, boffer LARP sounds better in a lot of ways... but isn't really my cup of tea. And since it's still got those nice warm escapist crevasses for someone with reality problems to crawl into and get lost in, saying "just do this kind of LARP instead" would just be switching your drug of choice, wouldn't it? That said, we've recently started trying out an Ex Arcana LARP, which is structured around a PvE experience rather than the PvP fuckery that Vampire always seems to devolve into. It's a steampunk-magic-modern-day thing and two games in, everyone's having fun? And the guy running it has put down explicit rules that while anyone can come and play, he reserves the right to kick you the gently caress out if you're a terrible person. Being able to tell people to get out improves any activity like this, honestly...
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May 29, 2016 20:51
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Can I ask y'all where you larped? Narrowing it down to, say, city, would help a lot understanding this thread. Thanks! --- Aurelius ---
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May 30, 2016 12:28
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Nah man, sharing that much personal information in a thread like this generally isn't gonna happen. Up to the OP if she wants to respond or not, but I don't think she needs to do that. It's better to ask for those kinds of details in PMs. 
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May 30, 2016 12:37
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Yeah, also you just registered two days ago. Kind of creepy dude.
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May 30, 2016 12:40
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my cat is norris posted:Nah man, sharing that much personal information in a thread like this generally isn't gonna happen. Up to the OP if she wants to respond or not, but I don't think she needs to do that. I play stuff like College of Wizardry, The Monitor Celestra, and End of the Line myself, where the social dynamics are very different from the endlessly running intrigue of your local fantasy larp and Vampire chapters. I've heard before that long-term intrigue-based larps lead to toxic communities, just trying to figure out whether the reason is the game, the people it attracts, the combination, or something else. There's even an academic paper written on the topic of poisonous larp cultures. But having seen Darkon, Monsters Camp, Wild Hunt and so forth, there are obviously massive differences in how people do their stuff. --- Aurelius ---
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May 30, 2016 14:01
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Aureliu5 posted:Valid point, and didn't mean to ask to discredit. Where I larp at, narrowing down by location wouldn't make people identifiable. Then again the way I larp is going to a few big events every year, basically flying around to find the coolest stuff. I actually know or know of several of the participants in that paper, ha. It makes me wonder if there are any people like me, who suffered life-altering trauma from LARP, especially in the Cam. I know there are girls who were victimized pretty nastily, and I personally am responsible for screwing up several dudes, but I don't know if the damage stuck and they ended up needing treatment.
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May 30, 2016 18:20
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To be fair, if they did need treatment they probably would have anyway, with or without your involvement. I'm not convinced that the correlation between LARPing and mental illness is evidence that otherwise normal people can end up damaged by any make-believe experience they have while pretending to be a vampire.
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May 30, 2016 19:23
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ScratchAndSniff posted:To be fair, if they did need treatment they probably would have anyway, with or without your involvement. I'm not convinced that the correlation between LARPing and mental illness is evidence that otherwise normal people can end up damaged by any make-believe experience they have while pretending to be a vampire. This going off the assumption normal people LARP. I apologize if that sounds insulting, just saying I know that mist if not all players including myself had some sanity problems going into it.
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May 31, 2016 01:09
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Skunkrocker posted:This going off the assumption normal people LARP. I apologize if that sounds insulting, just saying I know that mist if not all players including myself had some sanity problems going into it. This is very true. The normal people either got bored pretty quickly and left, realized that they have no interest in it, or were driven out by the distressing enthusiasm of the lifers.
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May 31, 2016 02:37
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