A Crash Course in LARP....

[Mr Mystery]

So we've got two pretty serious 'crash course' threads, so I thought I'd knock this one up.

Now, first of all, please keep any inherent prejudices about LARP to one side. You are very much entitled to them, and goodness knows they stem from genuine LARP videos. But they stem from LARP done badly (lightning bolt for instance!)

To start with, I'd like to try to define LARP in the words of my fellow LARPers... My personal description is 'mass pagga with dress up'. Another, and very apt, is 'cross country pantomime'. If you need another? How about 'combat cosplay' or perhaps 'deadly dress up'

The system I attend is run by Curious Pastimes (http://curiouspastimes.co.uk/) and this one has been running since 1996, which is pretty impressive! There are of course others, but I am yet to spread my wings further than 'CP' at this time, though a friend does run a 40k inspired one called Green Cloaks (http://www.gclarp.co.uk/?page_id=30) which I intend to attend next year as well as CP.

Next up, just what is the appeal I hear you cry? Well, a massive chunk of it is naturally escapism. But whereas your traditional roleplay might contain 4 or so players (it's really hard to work with more!) at these events, there can be upwards of 1,000 players. It's an engrossing world, and for a few weekends a year, you can live a totally different life! At CP, play is for 16 hours a day, so it does wonders for your physical fitness.

A well run battle is an experience I can highly recommend. A good system (like CP) allows for pretty much any style of infantry oriented warfare. The Jhereg nation (faction I belong to) favour heavy skirmish type attacks, with loose knots of warriors working in concert to punch a hole, then pull back. When married on the field to say, The Lions, and all their clank, this can roll even a solid centre, as the hole punched is widened, whilst we scurry off to pagga their flanks in the face.

Then of course you have monstering. Some systems have a dedicated monstering crew, which is fine, but with CP, it's us players who do the majority. If you're faction isn't on the field, you get taken off to be monstered up. For instance, this year I went monstering as a corrupted human. Bit of armour, ambidextrous weapons, and some tasty magic. Players had to fight through our lines to besiege a fort, and destroy the big gribbly that lived there. Yes, it might sound slightly ridiculous to you, as yes it was just a fibre board fort, but as with any roleplay, all you need is a half decent imagination, and an ability to suspend disbelief.

A massive effort is made by the game team to keep us busy. From gribbly monsters on the road of a night, to random camp attacks that come any time. Impressive monster suits, unusual terrain, all helps to get you into the zone.

And for those over 18.....there is much, much drinking to be done! From within your faction camp, to the Crimson Moon Tavern (well, at CP events any way!) or perhaps even risking the road to visit another faction and drink some of there's instead.

If you enjoy Cosplay, Roleplay, Wargames, or even just camping, do give LARP serious consideration. CP and Green Cloaks are particularly welcoming to new players, and I heartily recommend just giving it a bash, even once. For those of us with mundane jobs, it provides a healthy outlet for aggression, as well as the aforementioned escapism. Hell, I can even setup a new group within my Faction if you would like to joins us!

[Nabterayl]

Bravo! We should have more discussion of our other geeky pasttimes down here.

Question: I've done some LARPing, and I have some friends who LARP, but what we/they do is completely different from what you describe. The Stanford system that I have the most experience with (frequently contrasted, at least among my friends, with the MIT system) is generally abstracted combat and light on mechanics in general, with the emphasis being on characters who have imperfect information about what the other characters are trying to achieve. A game can last for an evening or a week (though for logistical reasons, obviously, the evening timeframe is more common).

I've heard the term "parlo[u]r LARP" used to describe this activity. It is certainly LARPing as I understand the term, in that players physically embody their characters (live action) and are pretending to be characters who are not them (roleplaying), but it's clearly on a different end of the LARP spectrum than what you describe. Do you have a term that's more specific than LARP for what you do?

[Mr Mystery]

Not really. I mean, that's more or less what we do too.

I play a human, without a group. As such, I endeavour to make myself as useful as possible to my Faction, so I can prove value, and hold worth. Granted it's not a million miles from actual me, but then I'm not a great actor! We have people playing Beastmen (not the Warhammer style), Goblins, Orcs, Ogres, Trolls, Fae, Elves, Drow, pretty much anything really!

Combat is all about a proper paggaing though (for those wondering, Pagga is defind as a free-for-all fisticuffs between anyone who wants to join in). It's full weapon contact, but expressly no physical 'body on body' combat, as it's incredibly hard to that safely!

The scale however is referred to as 'Festival LARP'. Whilst player on player combat is completely fair and allowed, be prepared for repercussions. I am aware of kidnappings, ransomings, and even outright murder amongst the player characters, all of course which wound up pretty badly for the perpetrators!

I'm not sure I'd adapt to a smaller scale LARP, such as Live Action Vampire. Not at all keen on 'rock paper scissors' combat. Far prefer to whip my mace out and smash your face in!

Also, this year, I got made an Inquisitoral Apprentice (well. I volunteered). I'm now our faction's chief torturer. And as the other factions aren't that keen on it, pretty much the only torturer in the system! Next step is to invest in some suitable props for my....erm...interrogations. Things like appropriate tools (again made from plastic/latex), a modified vambrace to keep them in (only worn for 'special occasions'). And naturally, theatrical blood to squirt over my hands during it, to really get the look right. May even create some body part props, for those who are trickier to persuade!

[eldargal]

Good idea Mr M.:)

I don't LARP, but I do historical reenactment and cosplay so I'm close. My brothers and I have often thought about starting our own LARP group using the same principles we apply to reenactment: Authenticity and Accuracy above all else but Safety. We use metal weapons for example, but blunt obviously and train quite a bit so we know how to minimise the risks.

The main issue I have with LARP. and I'm not going to derail this topic with criticism, is that for my tastes costume and combat are too amateurish. Nothing wrong with that at all, so long as people are having fun, but it doesn't appeal to me personally. There are also reenactment groups like that (SCA) too so it is hardly limited to LARP.

I do like the idea of LARP though, the idea of extending an RPG beyond the table to a festival type event with people in costume and in character is very appealing.

[White Tiger88]

I can't Larp or WATCH larp after working for a gaming store that hosted it at night..... I had a creepy (i mean pedo creepy) guy fire a nerf gun at me yelling "YOUR DEAD NOW" well i was working so i cut his dart to bits with a pocket knife -_-

[Mr Mystery]

Sounds like you've encountered one from which the known legends stem WT :p and sadly it won't be the only one!

There's also a lot more to a really decent LARP than just a good pagga. As well as the general world plot, each Faction has its own intrigues, and a well organised group can also have their own plot to follow. And that was an aspect I'd previously missed out on. But this year I made sure I could get involved, and it really paid off.

There's Rituals to be performed, complete with proper wording. Refs get a copy of the intended ritual. The better it is performed in terms of keeping to the lines, and the more dramatically they're delivered, the better the ritual will go.

And for next year's Renewal, I'm looking at running Jhereg Games, to celebrate Lord Jhereg's ascension. Open to all people's, I'm looking into LARP safe trials for the chosen champions of each faction, along with medieval games and sports. It's a good excuse for a social gathering, and will also give the kids who attend something extra to do!

I really cannot recommend just giving it a go at least once!

[Phototoxin]

It has just never appealed to me. As an avid table-top RPG-er I prefer not having to camp and deal with sunburn.

I have a few friends who LARP, they're relatively normal and don't do it a disservice. It's just not my thing, I can't say I haven't been tempted in theory, but I'd rather play tabletop RPGS or 40k/warhammer with my man dollies..

[YorkNecromancer]

I love LARP. My tastes do not include High Fantasy system, though. For about two years I ran a long-standing Vampire: The Masquerade LARP, as well as attending numerous other ones. The 2nd edition WW Mind's Eye Theatre system was absolutely superb. Don't much care for the new one.

Physical combat is basically non-existant. The amount of political plotting that gets done, however... Really good fun. Neutralising a werewolf braggard through a combination of silver-nitrate fuelled teargas and SO19 operatives who are unaware their guns have been loaded with silver bullets beats any foam sword fun hands down for me. :) Plus you get to wear your nicest suit.

[Wildeybeast]

Would silver actually withstand being fired from a gun? I've always wondered about wether it was a strong enough metal for that.

[Nabterayl]

Well ... a silver slug will exit the weapon, certainly; even if the pressure of the propellant deforms the base a bit, it isn't going to simply vaporize several grams of metal. Silver has a similar density to lead and is actually somewhat harder, so I imagine the in-flight and terminal ballistics of a silver bullet would be acceptable. The bigger problem, I think, is penetration - silver is significantly softer than steel, so if the werewolf is wearing body armor, you have a serious problem as to how to introduce the silver into its system.

EDIT: On the subject of live-action vs. tabletop roleplaying ... I too am an avid tabletop roleplayer, and I always sort of pooh-poohed LARPing as insufficiently imaginative. There are, after all, so many things that cannot be done in a LARP setting, such as dogfighting; or things that LARPing can do but isn't really suited to, such as playing a character who is significantly more physically skilled than you are. And I still think those are inherent limitations of the system. But after I tried my first LARP, I came to appreciate that the system has strengths compared to tabletop roleplaying as well.

The biggest of these, in my opinion, is character immersion. Now, I play with some fairly serious tabletop roleplayers, so my tabletop experience is far from the complicated board game archetype. But even so, I found it really eye-opening how much more time people spent in character at a LARP compared to at the table, simply because they were being asked to stand up and embody their character. The difference between people spending 95% of their time in character and 80% made a really significant difference to my experience, and not only that, but it was easier for everybody to stay in character because of the embodiment aspect.

The other big thing that contributed to character immersion was the lack of narration. Now, as a DM, I love narration - but while it gives me some great tools for storytelling, it also slows down the rate at which the players can take in the world that their characters are seeing. In a LARP setting, even though the visuals are not as rich as can be achieved at a table, everything comes much faster - you, as your character, assimilate sensory information at almost the same rate that you, as a player, do. That really added something new to the experience of roleplaying a character that I had never had before.

[YorkNecromancer]

On the subject of live-action vs. tabletop roleplaying ... I too am an avid tabletop roleplayer, and I always sort of pooh-poohed LARPing as insufficiently imaginative.

It's like comparing 40K to chess. They're functionally similar, but fundamentally different animals. I don't do WoD LARP for the same reasons I do tabletop RPGs.


The difference between people spending 95% of their time in character and 80% made a really significant difference to my experience, and not only that, but it was easier for everybody to stay in character because of the embodiment aspect.

Agreed. The ruling I always ran was that when your were in costume and we timed in, anything you said was in-character. Including if you'd gone to the bar to buy drinks. Really stops the whole out-of-character knowledge being used in-game malarky.


In a LARP setting, even though the visuals are not as rich as can be achieved at a table, everything comes much faster - you, as your character, assimilate sensory information at almost the same rate that you, as a player, do. That really added something new to the experience of roleplaying a character that I had never had before.

Having played an Assamite assassin, I will tell you now, running an in-character hit at an event held in Elysium and getting away with it? In real-time?! That takes WAY more effort than any game I've played sat at a table rolling dice. That was a tense, tense night.

Similarly, the five way peace treaty negotiations I chaired between the game's various supernatural factions took on a whole new edge when you've actually got those factions sat around you and you're having to use oration and brinksmanship for real.

I really miss that game. :( There's nothing like facing down a werewolf before turning your back on him and letting your Gargoyle and Revenant bodyguards deal with the situation. Especially when those bodyguards are played by two of your mates stood directly behind you.

The largest game I ever took part in was one of the Camarilla national events. 50 odd people showed up, all in costume, and the event was held in a proper ballroom. The fact that the game is called The Masquerade (because Vampires can't reveal themselves to humans) and you have the occasional non-playing member of staff in the room who STs decreed counted as being there in-character as well really ramped everything up. No shop talk around the kine.

Very exciting stuff.

[Nabterayl]

So ... query, York. I know very little about Vampire: The Masquerade, but I would assume that there are things a gargoyle, revenant, and vampire can do physically that a human player cannot. Can you talk some about how and to what extent that comes up, and how you deal with it from an immersion standpoint?

[YorkNecromancer]

The best way I can describe it is it's like when I watched Shakespeare with a traditional all-male cast. For the first five minutes, the fact that Juliet was a twenty five year old man in a dress was jarring. After that point, because all the actors are just, you know, acting, because they treat it as natural and normal, so do you.

So, with V:tM, you have the power of Obfuscation; functional invisibility (it's actually making people ignore you, but in the short term, it's invisibility). So, if a player invokes that power, they cross their arms, and that's it - you can't see them, unless you have Auspex (ESP/heightened senses). Now, if you're a power gamer, Vampire LARP isn't for you, because you'll just use your out-of-character knowledge, missing the point that playing along with the invisibility is actually cool as hell, because it helps everyone suspend their disbelief.

You want to be properly immersed? You basically have to work for it. You need other people to do it for you, you won't enjoy the game. The way we played it was much closer to free-form improvisational theatre than it a typical sword and sorcery LARP. I mean, if you're doing Vampire right, the most important stat is Humanity. You want to kill people? Every single murder will erode away what makes you you, and your character will quickly slide into depravity and horror, because the blood-crazed Beast that drives every vampire demands it. So you have to roleplay it.

Costuming helps a lot with some things. My mate Dave was my Revenant bodyguard (technically called a Risen in WoD parlance). He was basically The Crow in rules terms. His character was a Frankenstein's monster my Giovanni Necromancer had cobbled together in the lab. As a result, he wore a disquieting mask and an immaculate suit, because if you worked for me, suits were mandatory. There's a Masquerade to uphold, after all. His powers were nigh invulnerability, which was roleplayed through narrative. If your character was involved in a fight, you got together with your opponent, resolved it using a system that used scissors-paper-stone, and then discussed how the fight played out based on the results. You would then act as though this had occurred.

Friend Harry was my Gargoyle bodyguard. In character he could fly, and this was resolved through simple discussion of his actions, followed by roleplay. If you need to see the actions happen, you'd hate it. If you have a vivid imagination, it won't matter - by playing along with it, the atmosphere is created.

So, don't view it as a 'game'; it's not. It's a free-form narrative where you get to tell a story. The main problem we had was people who came expecting combat. They didn't last too long, because they found it boring - there were almost no fights. Lots of threats and prestation boons. the best illustration came when a group that had recently joined got their characters together and had a meeting. They were worried we would attack, so they had equipped their guards with illegal assault rifles - they had the stats to do this (Underworld influence 5, I believe).

Now, we did indeed attack them... By phoning the police. Because in the UK, having a firearm in your hand is punishable by five years inside. We made the call, and one of my 'employees' (who had Police influence 5) made sure that the book was thrown at them. Their characters went to prison for twenty five years apiece and they needed to generate new ones.

That was aways something I liked; the game world was very close to the real one, and you really had to think to get away with stuff. I mean, if you allow a human to discover that Vampires were real (very easy to do), you had to kill them, or be executed. Hence, my character (who had Medicine skills) cultivated a persona in the local hospital, and abused the blood bank on a fairly routine basis. Yes, I lost Humanity because stealing from dying patients is a pretty awful thing to do, but not so much Humanity as if I was feeding regularly.

Great system if you like stories of personal horror. Terrible if you just want to fight stuff without thinking about whether killing makes you a bad person (in WoD, it almost always does. Yes, you can kill, but you will always pay a high personal price, just like in real life). The fact it used scissors-paper-stone annoyed some of the more maths-liking gamers, as they felt there wasn't enough randomisation. As a more creative type, I much preferred it, but that's an issue of taste.

All I will say is that the greatest games of Vampire I have played have been so genuinely scary and affecting I've seen people break out in stress-rashes, take up smoking, break down into legitimate tears over the death of a loved one, and experience emotions so acute you would swear they were real.

So. Much. Fun.

[Phototoxin]

See the thing with Vampire MeT stuff is that while it can be cool on occasion, it's not really that different, and seems more limited than tabletop / imagination-land stuff.

In addition what happens if you're character is toreador socialite with appearance 4 and charisma 5 when in reality you're a socially introverted acne-ridden geek or if you're playing a burly brujah ganger type but have the upper body musculature of an anaemic baby foal?

[YorkNecromancer]

In addition what happens if you're character is toreador socialite with appearance 4 and charisma 5 when in reality you're a socially introverted acne-ridden geek or if you're playing a burly brujah ganger type but have the upper body musculature of an anaemic baby foal?

Wel, if you've done that, you're kind of a fool. I know that roleplay is supposed to be this big escapist fantasy, but I find it works best when you actually come down off that high horse and look at it for what it is, accepting the limitations of the medium. If you can't, it's not the hobby for you.

The best parallel I can give is from the world of wrestling. Plain old Steve Williams was repacked as The Ringmaster, and because the character had a personality totally divorced from who he was, it bombed. Then, when he was repackaged as Stone Cold Steve Austin, a character who was basically Steve Williams with the safety catch off, the character exploded.

Every actor has a range. We're not all Sir Ian McKellen. In tabletop, you can use the dice as a crutch. Not so in LARP. When I'm STing a game, I always tell my players this, because it's true and fair. If you're not good with the social skills, don't play a Toreador socialte unless you want to play a lot of games of scissor-paper-stone! You don't like the fact you can't play the super awesome character you had in mind, then you have two real choices: keep trying your best, and maybe you'll eventually manage it, or just accept it's beyond you and generate a new character closer to yourself. There's no shame in that. :)

As for needing burly musculature, trust me: you don't need to be big to be a terrifying physical prescence. Look at Begbie in 'Trainspotting'. Robert Carlyle is a short, tiny man, and he's a physical nightmare in that film, and it's all down to his body language and aggression. (I'm not linking it because it's WAY too NSFW, but if you search Youtube for "Begbie", you'll see it.) Paddy Conside in "Dead Man's Shoes" is another excellent example of how you don't need to be a cliched 'Alpha Male' to be a total physical presence. Plus, Vampires are all emaciated in V:tM, so even if you're big and burly IRL, your character technically isn't. Plus, if you have Potence 5, it doesn't matter how big you are, you can physically bench press an articulated lorry. For Vampires, the Blood defines their capabilities, not anything so mundane as muscle tissue. :)

Ultimately, we don't go to horror films for gardening tips, and we don't watch romantic comedies for torture special effects. Every genre and medium has its limits. If you can accept the limitations, develop a character you can realistically portray, and get a solid crew of LARPers on your side, it can be great. Seriously, some of the most amazing experiences of my life were at those WoD LARPs. Of course, it helped that a lot of us were seriously into drama and acting too (friend Harry had been to the Webber-Douglas Academy in London, and left to study at RADA shortly after the game ended).


so if the werewolf is wearing body armor, you have a serious problem as to how to introduce the silver into its system.

Plus, if you're using guns in a UK game and the ST is worth their salt, you're doing hard time, my friend. Even toy guns will get you prison time here, this ain't America. Even if it is, say you shoot a werewolf with silver bullets. That corpse is now going to be investigated, and if the trail leads back to you, your fellow vampires will stake you and leave you for the sun for bringing unwanted attention to them. So you have to get rid of the corpse, and quickly, because that werewolf will have friends.

So we fight dirty, because there's a Masquerade to uphold. Your two best friends are silver nitrate and warfarin.

Silver nitrate in aerosol form is Werewolf pepper spray, if pepper spray melted people's faces. Very little effect on humans, devastating on lupines.

Warfarin is a blood-thinner, used to prevent blood clots. It's pepper spray for Vampires, if pepper spray made you spray projectile blood out of your arse.

That doesn't even cover things like Dominate (Vampire mind control), where you can give one-word commands in combat, which can affect autonomic body function. A personal favourite of our troupe was always a word that the auto-censor is deleting but which sounds a little like "organism" and rhymes with "floor spasm", followed by the always-popular "vomit". You heard it, you had to obey... :) There's also the fact that if you have an enemy with Prescence 5 (Vampire super charisma), you are literally unable to do anything other than marvel at just how awesome that person is. Obfuscation at high enough levels lets you vanish from sight. Fortitude 5 lets you ignore any and all damage for five straight minutes. Your character could swim in a volcano in perfect safety.

This is before we get to the really fruity stuff like Necromancy (from which my Internets name is derived), where I could do anything from gaslighting an enemy into insanity, to escaping in perfect safety through the realm of the dead (you needed a chalk outline of a door - I had one drawn under every rug in every building we played in. Tap my feet on the floor three times, and to all intents and purposes, I simply teleported away) to horrendous levels of Aggravated damage as a trained Wraith in my service literally melts your soul.

Given that any Elder vampire will have a variety of disciplines at high levels, and combat is just such a bad idea, especially with something as useless as guns. If you're thinking "those powers are brokenly hard", do remember that Elder vampires are supposed to be scary as hell. There's a reason the fan nickname for the human version of old WoD was "Mortal: The Screaming". Humans weren't able to stand a chance against supernaturals, and rightly so.

[Nabterayl]

See the thing with Vampire MeT stuff is that while it can be cool on occasion, it's not really that different, and seems more limited than tabletop / imagination-land stuff.

In addition what happens if you're character is toreador socialite with appearance 4 and charisma 5 when in reality you're a socially introverted acne-ridden geek or if you're playing a burly brujah ganger type but have the upper body musculature of an anaemic baby foal?
I think this is actually not different on the table. If you want to play a charming fast-talker in a tabletop game but cannot actually fast-talk people, you don't act anything. You just roll a die and say, "I fast talk him" or maybe "I fast talk him into X, based on Y." If you're cool with that, then there's no problem. If you think that's boring, or that it isn't "roleplaying," then ... you either need to get better at fast-talking, or stop playing fast-talking characters. If you want to know how your character defeats that monster in a duel, and do not actually know how to use the weapons involved, you just roll a die and say, "I defeat him." If you're cool with that, then there's no problem. If you think that isn't "roleplaying," then ... you either need to learn how to fight, or stop playing characters who do.

Same thing with LARPing. If you're cool with using abstract mechanical representations of your character's skills, no problem. If you think that's boring or isn't "roleplaying," you need to restrict yourself to characters who have skills that you have, and/or increase the skills that you have.

One might ask, given that, what the point of LARPing actually is. I am pretty well convinced at this point that it is not physical combat, costuming, or anything like that. Some LARPs have physical combat and some have abstract combat, just as some tabletop systems reward you for knowing how to fight and others don't require it. Some LARPs have lush visuals and others have sparse visuals, just as tabletop games do. Some LARPs require a lot of DM/referee/storyteller narration to explain what your character is seeing and some encode most of that information in visual aids, just as tabletop games do.

The real difference between live-action and tabletop roleplaying, in my opinion (and this is both a positive and a negative for both formats), really does boil down to the fact that in LARPs you are standing up and moving around a physical space. I know that sounds stupid, as the physical space you are moving around in does not necessarily resemble the physical space your character is moving around in, but as I said (http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?35170-A-Crash-Course-in-LARP&p=341828&viewfull=1#post341828), standing up and moving around actually does increase the percentage of time spent in-character by enough to make a significant difference in the player experience. Using your senses to sense what your character does (even with a significant amount of imaginative overlay) really does make a significant difference in the player experience.

[Mr Mystery]

In the LARP I'm used to, it's best not to stray too far from your actual self if you're not a great actor. You can however play up aspects of your normal character, whilst suppressing others.

Some guys and girls are awesome at this, and are able to keep up an accent and a facade all weekend!

Me, as mentioned before I just let my darker side out, which is fun in itself. Someone comes into our camp, I'll position myself behind them, ready to pagga them into the dirt as and when!

[Kirsten]

LARP makes BBC news website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23877430

[YorkNecromancer]

Dara O'Briain does LARP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ6exaC5ryE