The Spoony Experiment - Because bad movies and games deserve to be hurt back!

Anonymous

Wow… This must be the biggest coi-ki-dink ever… Log on to check… Not only are there no comments… Not even the video’s uploaded properly yet. Hm… Do I resist the temptation to yell “First!” and earn ire from my very first comment on the Spoony Experiment? …Nah. Let’s just see who this Invisible Jason is first.

Wait… Frag. There goes my chance. Bloody hell, off by a whole minute to log in.

Anonymous

Well, you still beat me, and to be honest, I’m quite glad.

I never could stand the whole “first” thing, which is partly why I waited that 10 to 15 minutes. But the bit, like yourself, just coming to check, seeing a fresh video still setting itself up, not to mention the sleeping pill I just took, I felt I’d just say something about that amusing moment while I wait.

We must be bored. C’mon Monkey, dance for us!

Anonymous

I had just finished my long, long session of playing Civilization 4 (“one more turn” I told myself), I had just taken my Ambien pill, I do my routine last-minute website checks as I wait for the pill to kick in, then boom, I see another Counter Monkey with a most intriguing title and description.

So much for sleep. And I guess it’s fresh onto the website, as it isn’t even viewable yet. I’ve even waited a good 10 or 15 minutes so far, and I KNOW I should get to bed, but invisible drunks? This I have to hear before I sleep.

All right, Counter Monkey. Let’s Rock.

Anonymous

I like your style man.

http://twitter.com/OttoRosenlund Otto Rosenlund

Jason!? Jaaaasooon!? Jason!? Jaaaaaasoooon!?

http://twitter.com/SPBreit SPBreit

LARPing really depends on the actual, real-life setting you’re in. In a convention center or in a public park… not so much. But LARPing in the woods or in the wilderness or – if you’re lucky enough to be able to do it in Europe – around real castles etc. offers a degree of immersion that’s hard to achieve. LARPs like “Conquest of Mythodea” are really hard to top, where you’ve got literally dozens of acres just dedicated to the setting and story, with fortified camps and market places and all. Take a look:
http://www.google.de/search?q=mythodea&hl=de&safe=off&biw=1152&bih=726&prmd=imvnsfd&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rmW2TvjmG8uWOpKgrdMI&ved=0CGgQsAQ

Anyway, the gist of my argument about LARPing is this: location, location, location. You wanna LARP? Then don’t do it in the center or civilization.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MCK6CIYZ2C55FES3NW4BAOTG4E Christina

“Anyway, the gist of my argument about LARPing is this: location,
location, location. You wanna LARP? Then don’t do it in the center of
civilization. ”

Vampire LARP isn’t like Fantasy LARPing. Vampires are urban predators. The woods, in the World of Darkness, are infested with werewolves and other werecreatures, natural enemies of the vampires. You might get away with a castle if you’re playing a Vampire Dark Ages LARP.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Cody-Meyer/100000062682757 Cody Meyer

The closest I’ve ever been to a LARP is really at a RenFest. And that was one time.. I mean, I had imagined grand adventures when I had a trampoline (and was both light enough, and small enough, that the stupid thing wouldn’t just bust under my feet), but dressing up in costume never came into play.

Rasmus Björk

The experience Spoony describes is primarily true if it´s a larp that has been going on for a long while. Then you have to worry about both the core group doing their thing and not being overly interested in getting new recruits but also the hordes of rule-fascist…I would also recommend that you don´t read to much of the lore of the game you´re playing for starters so that you don´t always have to keep in mind what your character does and doesn´t know. I remember for example once I played in a VtM larp where I was discussing with a priest about his faith leading him to brake the game to check my stats and realising that my character didn´t know the things I was talking about..

Hayden Eddings

“Jason JASON!”
Was that an intentional Heavy Rain reference?

Anonymous

You’re perfectly right about your speech on how “political” LARPs tend to be. I’ve burned out of that sort of experience due to years spent with various associations and always, and I do mean always encountering the very complaints you have underlined right there.

The only chance would be to get in early so you manage to take an important role before they’re completely locked down, and I had such an opportunity last month, but… Even if I do, I’d just become part of the system, and frankly I got quite tired of that game.

Anonymous

It’s been a VERY long time since i´ve been to any Larp, but i agree that
rules needs to kept at a minimum. I remember one live i was at it was you got 2
hit points in your arms 2 in your legs and 2 in your body.
If you got hit in your arms twice well you couldn´t use them same with your
legs and if hit in your body well you where dead.

I unfortunately got hit twice in both my arms and legs, so naturally i had to
lie down on the ground because well i couldn´t use either my legs or arms and
because whoever it was that had hit me refused to finish the job i was forced
to sit there on the ground because well you can´t do anything your arms and
legs are destroyed.

Another live (with the same rules) called Eldoriels bane (the bane of Eldoriel)
suffered from overuse of magic (basically everybody was casting death magic)
and the masters controlling everything.
Me and some others had gone out to find out where the orks where, well
unfortunately they attacked and i retreated along with a few others.

So naturally i tried to mount a rescue operation what happen? The moment we set
out the masters came running saying that we couldn´t go out because the orks
would attack in 5 minutes or so.
Another example was when somebody would try to assassin the mayor once again
the masters came and said no no you can´t the Mayor is a vital part of the
plot.

The result was a VERY disappointing LARP/live as we call it in Denmark where I
live.

Some of the best ones I’ve been to have been small intrigue lives. I had played
the head of a family we knew the king was dead so of course we wanted the power
for ourselves.
Unfortunately it wasn´t that easy as besides us there were three other families
one we hated and wanted exterminated the other two we didn´t know where stood.
Also the families in themselves wasn´t all that well structured and neither was
mine.
We where three and i was playing the oldest, but the one who played my oldest
little brother refused to do anything i said he should even though i had been
put in control of the family so i had to constantly compete with him to remain
the leader.
The last one was desperately in love with a girl in one of the other families
so i mostly used him as a spy.

And to top it all off in the middle of it all came a guy claiming to be the true
air of the throne returned and to make matters worse he was in the possession
of the dead kings royal signet ring.

What was great about that live was the uncertainty of it all, do we attack the
family that we hate and if so can we count on the support from the others or do
we wait and secure alliances with some of the other families and what of this
new upstart that claims to be the true air to the throne how do we get rid of
him, without causing the anger of the other families.

The rules were also very simple it was set in medieval times so we all used
swords.
The overall rule was this if you can then you can, if you can beat that two
meter tall guy with your swords well then you can, if you can convince those
other families that they should ally with you well then you can.

Rules in combat where simple you had a total of 2 maybe 3 hits points plus
maybe 1 or 2 if you where carrying a chainmail. your hit points would be liquid
and you would lose them all depending on where you got hit on your limbs you
lost 1 on your body it was 2.

Those where the rules it was simple and mostly it they relied on your own ability to role play.

So some lives might be political where only those who have been there a
long time gets anything and the others gets nothing, but I find that in most
summer lives and other of that kind that mostly played over a weekend and then
end of story will focus mostly on a
world story rather than individuals.

Like this town is threatened by something dark from the past or other
things and each get a small role with something he or she has to do: like you are
an alchemist unfortunately you got hooked on dragons tears, but those cost
money and you haven´t got any so you need to get some or try and brew your own
which isn´t easy and the fact that dragons tears are illegal doesn´t make
things easier and so forth.

Each character in the game gets a small part that
sets out the basics and you basically have to make the best of it yourself by
including others.

http://twitter.com/laFangirlz Amber

Kind of reminds me of my first few years of Amber the DRPG, Yeah a dice less role playing game but its not a video game. We have paper written characters, just no dice. The Amber Game is baed off a series of novels. The game can go tech heavy to fantasy heavy or a mix of both depending on the plot and the character you write up. There is no larp in it, just reminded of how none of the actual plots were based around me for the longest time.

I made up a female adventure type called Shawna. My brother and his two friends ran it. One guy was often MIA so I joined. And for the longest time I had to plan out things for me. I would get involved in the story but they were either based around other characters or things happening that happen to affect everyone. If I couldn’t think of something to so, I lost my turn. There is a time portions of worlds were being stolen by someone who was the daughter of a high level fighter.

Shawna got captured and met this woman. Found out she had daddy in prison because he wouldn’t attack his own daughter. My character was rather annoyed by the pointless battles that could easily all be ended so she challenged the main bad guy/girl to a duel. Not to the death, Shawna wasn’t an idiot. Three strikes thing, where you have to get the first three wounds on the other person. Shawna didn’t expect to win because she was outmatched warfare wise. Even another player tried to get her to cancel the duel. My reply, ” but why? were finally going to have fun! ”

So here she is in a stadium fighting this woman. Another character named lacalind was casting distraction spells like a line up of scantly dressed cheerleaders would pop up. Each time this woman got distracted, my character got a strike in. Ironicly, my character won so she had to give up.

Now the funniest part, the character who tried to cancel our duel was named Auoroa. The guy who was rping her misspelled her name so Aurororora on the player sheet. So we started to call the character Scooby’s sister. ” Look is a-ro-ro-ro-a! ” Yeah he dropped her because of that.

Anonymous

I haven’t LARPed myself but it is pretty big here in Germany and I have several Friends that do it. Here most LARPs are very organized meaning the Story is made by a group of GM’s and involves all Players as much as they want to. How much you get involved really depends on how you play your character, If you manage to play yourself off as the knowledgeable druid the other players will naturally turn to you for advice and the GM’s will actually give you infos you otherwise might not get. Your power in combat is also often determined by how much of an act you put up and how impressive your gear looks. Of course there are both LARP’s and players that do things differently but you have enough options to not go there.
Also there are some Mass-Combat LARP’s where people from all over Europe come to fight in giant battles. The most known would be the Drachenfest (http://www.drachenfest.info/en/) with several thousand players each year who join one of several camps. Each camp devoted to an ideal and one dragon avatar leading it with the goal to defeat the other dragons and become the ruling dragon for one year. There are some great trailers on the site if you want to see a LARP in action.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JQKIOP74UVJ4FYSD2BZ5W3W7DY Matt W

Having played and run a larp myself, I can definitely agree things get extremely political, and not just in who the plot focuses on, but in how the game itself runs. Back in college, I got into a Vampire: Requiem larp trying to revamp itself from the previous year by pulling in lots of new players. It successfully did so, but all the important characters and the characters in charge were mostly carry overs from the last game. The plots mostly involved their actions, and all the major politics were centered mostly on their characters.

However, that game also taught me that larps don’t HAVE to be like that. The further the game went, the more it began to change, since the new players began to severely outnumber the old ones, to the point where plots couldn’t help but incorporate newer players into them. The newer players also played differently then the old ones, doing things that the old players felt less and less fit the type of game they wanted to play. Eventually most of them left and turned the game over to newer players, and I eventually ended up acting as a storyteller for the game myself.

What this brings me to is how you run a game means everything. As a storyteller, I did have plots that revolved around certain players, but not because they were a core group or my favorite person or anything like that. I made plots that people could walk into if they looked for them, and the more they chose to be involved in those plots, the more personal the plot would be tailored to them. I made it a goal to reward initiative and willingness to invest in the game, rather then any form of longevity. I rarely did any plots with the older players (leaving that to other storytellers) simply because they never investigated my hooks or gave me any background that I could tailor into something special for them. It was the newer players who were willing to make that investment, and their experience was richer for it.

Larps are all in how they’re run, and a good storyteller/gamemaster can and should make a larp potentially involving for any player who decides to play the game more then once.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CL5LGLTLDSGXW73WU7OFUXTGIA stephen

Hehe, he stayed invisible until his character burst into flame.

doresh

That’s what I call endurance XD !

But the main question is: Did Jason found Nirvana after all those hours?

Anonymous

I got a trailer for the dark of the moon blu-ray when this was loading, Blip obviously know jack all about spoony

Anonymous

Your dog is so cute, I just want to reach out of the screen and scratch behind his ears. Sorry, had to get out my dog lover side.

Anonymous

Your dog is so cute, I just want to reach out of the screen and scratch behind his ears. Sorry, had to get out my dog lover side.

Anonymous

Your dog is so cute, I just want to reach out of the screen and scratch behind his ears. Sorry, had to get out my dog lover side.

Anonymous

I’ve LARPed a total of twice. One was fun (a Vampire murder mystery), the other felt pointless (some Werewolf thing that was probably important to the core players, but not to some random guy, ie me).

Anonymous

My only contact with larp is through a guy who I met at work, the problem is he never shuts the fuck up about it, for about a week either side of an event you will hear the same comments about it over and over, he suggested I go and play as a mercenary, so when Spoony is going on about his experience that would of been my role. The thing about it is that he keeps on going on about the politics of his class and his guild which (as I’ve never even played table top before, its something I want to get into) I know nothing about. He keeps telling me about an how he basically started an inter class war because he screwed up a ice mage’s ritual by accident and the ice mages knew it had to be a fire mage who did it but didn’t know which one so basically declared war on all of them, this all sounds so petty and complicated that I said screw it I’ll get into table top rpging first.

http://twitter.com/Foxbat64 Kurt Aring

So this guy was drunk enough to believe he had to stand on the hood of someone else’s car for 12 hours, yet he had the composure to stand PERFECTLY STILL this whole time? Most people that drunk can’t stand perfectly still for 5 minutes, let alone 12 hours.

Michael Buchheim

Vampire the Requiem is about inner conflict. Masquerade was too, but that element often got lost in the growing focus on Gehena. The Spoony got it right when he says that the game works best when characters try to remain human despite what they have become and what they do to survive. But he got it wrong when he thinks that makes characters “good”. Humanity has both positive and negative elements, it has blood thirsty murderers as well as saints. And being human doesn’t makes one a saint – just as being vampire doesn’t makes one a bloodthirsty murderer. The Covenants are a reflection of such inner conflicts. The Lancea Sanctum, for example, are not a bunch of zealots who justify murder through religious dogma. Rather they are trying to find a way where one can exist as a vampire without becoming a soulless monster. They offer existence with a purpose and responsibility through their teaching, not a free license to be evil. Whether their path leads to equilibrium, salvation or damnation depends on the character treading it.But that’s the core of Vampire- tragedy and inner-conflict. Finding meaning in an existence which is ultimately pointless. Dealing with the fact that you are dead and gone, even if you are still walking and talking. Finding solace when your very existence means hurting the people around you. Yes, some might revel in such a state, but they are a dangerous minority- not the rule.

Jason Treloar

Good points, but I think you hit the wrong thread. Sounds like you’re commenting on the “Spoony’s jyhad” video. Might want to repost this in the other spot.

Anonymous

I have to admit, I’m almost kind of suspicious as to whether this story is completely 100% true. I mean, how could a guy whose so drunk that he’s willing to stand perfectly still on a car for 12 hours be physically able to stand perfectly still on on a car for 12 hours? At some point, the hangover kicks in, you start to feel too crappy to care about playing dress-up pretend games anymore, and you start to sober up to the point that you realize that its been several hours, the sun has come up, there’s no way that girl has been hanging around the parking lot all this time.

On another the way Oreo was looking at you as you were describing first encountering Invisible Jason on the car was priceless. Sort of a cross between the dog in the old RCA logo where he’s listening to his master’s voice on the Victrola, and “WTF? These are the kinds of crazy-ass friends my master associates with? What have I gotten myself into with this guy?”

Anonymous

I’ve seen this story posted before on a message board a few years ago. Think it’s genuine!

http://www.teamcybershark.com Jillers

V:tM LARP is… well it’s a pretty lame LARP.

…of course I prefer the LARPs with boffers to the RPS ones.

But yeah, the politics of LARPing totally exist. I’m sure a person could so a sociology research project on the politics within a LARP, and how they effect people outside of a LARP.

Oh! There’s a documentary about LARPers that’s pretty interesting called Darkon. Worth a watch even if you’re a not LARPer.

Anonymous

There’s also a recent film about it, ‘High Hunt’ I believe. Haven’t seen it, But I’ve heard favorable reviews.

http://twitter.com/BigPuppy_Stuart Stuart Phip

I used to know a LARPer who would do the opposite, he would go out of his way to involve guests and friends of friends in the story so they would have fun and maybe join the core group. He was really keen on me joining in as the Big bad, a demonic executioner. Unfortunately i was too uptight and shy at the time, it probably would have been a blast.

Anonymous

Great story. I have never tried LARPing, but you can’t deny those guys have commitment.

In the very funny (in my opinion) R-rated comedy Role Models, there is a huge LARP scene in the end, which looked like a ton of fun and honestly made me almost want to try it. But with my luck, I would end up in a similar LARP you described and be a stable boy shoveling shit or something.

http://twitter.com/JordS68 Jordan Stone

thank you for the laugh, i needed that XD

Duke Wintermaul

I like the floating objects in the blip video thumbnail.

Anonymous

You should have pressed x to Jason. :D

Anonymous

Damn, when Oreo hit the camera this shit turned into the Blair Witch for a second.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MCK6CIYZ2C55FES3NW4BAOTG4E Christina

Ohgodyes, Obfuscate. You are invisible unless the other vampire has a higher Auspex. I’ve only played Vampire LARP twice in my entire life, both times as an NPC, but I remember the silly gestures… and the “Obfuscate 10″ gesture (both arms crossed with all ten fingers outstretched) used if you wanted to indicate that you were not a player at all but only a bystander. Eh, I prefered to play my Tremere in pen-n-paper. But I did have a cool black frock coat back in those day and black leather “PsiCorps” gloves so a GM once asked me to do a surprise cameo as a Tremere quaesitor sent from Vienna to punish an errant Tremere player character. I hid in a back room until the GM called me in. I had brought a large and semi-petrified femur bone with me (I think it was from a cattle or horse), and interrogated the player character with the help of that Tremere ritual where if the target of the ritual speaks a lie the bone turns dark.

The reason I don’t like to LARP is, no matter how good a roleplayer I am, I hate being restricted by reality to only be able to impersonate a character who basically looks like me. I’m stuck with the cards nature dealt me. And, with all the cliques that form in big LARPs and the ensuing politics and power struggles and favoritism, I kind of feel like it’s school all over again, only this time I can’t hang out with the rest of the geeks, because *everyone around me* is a gaming nerd… but I still don’t fit in.

Anyway.

Girls didn’t like to game in the 1990s? Whu? Maybe in the United States, but not in Germany. I’m female, and I started roleplaying in 1992, when I was 18 and in (the German equivalent of) highschool. While sometimes I was the only girl in a group, I also have played in games where the group was 50% or 100% female or only had a single guy. Often those where World of Darkness games, but often I’ve not been the sole female player in Horror games and stuff like Shadowrun either.

Another thing is, we often play crossgender around here, so I’ve seen games where the girls all played male characters while several guys played female characters. (I myself play male characters 8 times out of 10, it’s just something I prefer) And often, those male characters are swordwielding homicidal maniacs… *cough*

Mind you, not all gamer chicks are “hot”, but not all gamer guys ain’t either. LARPers are often fitter, physically, especially the fantasy LARPers who treck through woods in full orc costume and battle with foam swords. (Vampire: the Masquerade LARP tends to draw the goths.)

Although there still are some type of tabletop games and RPGs who are nearly 100% male domain to this day, i.e. Battletech, I admit.

Anonymous

Oh oh oh, that’s a really good point about being restricted by nature. Yeah, that really annoys me too about LARPs. Of course there’s nothing you can really do about it. Unless your fellow LARPers are ready to use more of their imagination.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ULUK3HNFCHM6ZAJOVACZ3YQDZA Hathor Liderc

Pretty sweet Con story…I have dozens of those!

As for the LARP politics, reminds me of a few circles I know of. XD

http://twitter.com/spazfox Spazfox

I actually met and hung out with a woman who dragged ME to a tabletop RPG at a con back in 2002. It was the best night ever.

Tim Anton

Every time I hear Americans talk about LARP, it seems like it is kind of… a really small community of people over there, who are actual LARPers… you should see what is going on with LARP over here in Europe ^^ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv18y2ACwEM

Anonymous

Ooooh my god that looks awesome. :D I wonder if we have stuff like that here in Finland… or even anything close to it. The circles are pretty small here, I think, so I don’t know… All the LARPs I’ve been to have been major let-downs.

http://templeofthehut.blogspot.com The_Hut

My one and only LARPing experience was during lunch in high school. My principal was cool. He told us we couldn’t do that on campus but he wasn’t a douche about it. He just said the school would be liable if anyone got hurt and please don’t. So the group took it off campus and I never found out where.

Ryan Kicoyne

I have defiantly seen the “cool kids” club mentality at some larps, but I’ve also seen newbies get a lot of attention from veteran players as they are asked to join courts, baronies, guilds, etc… I am not a “cool kid”

Anonymous

Orio got interested in vampirism, or she was annoyed because you had her toy and keep waggling your hands in weird poses!

http://www.facebook.com/people/George-Rosenbaum/100001387887487 George Rosenbaum

Oh God.

If I was there, my dick would swell up so much, the pressure would make it blast out of my crotch like a bottle rocket.

And then I would die of blood loss. But that’s not important.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Nathan-Ellis/100002419726549 Nathan Ellis

I’ve used boffers before, me and my friends would hit each other with foam swords, but there isn’t a big LARP community in Colorado. In my experience, RPG, anime, video game, and comic conventions bring in lots of girls, but there’s nothing but sausage at an MTG tournament.
Does Burton ever get jealous of Oreo?

http://profiles.google.com/magdelen2501 Magdalen O’Reilly

Hmm… your friend sounds…not drunk. Definitely on SOMETHING. But probably not drunk XD

Anonymous

Agreed booze doesn’t do that and doesn’t last that long without more alcohol!

http://twitter.com/Exaveron Cord Sims

i once went to a local amptgard larp, and the people who showed far outweighed the story characters, so the organizers decided to do a series of skirmishes. several times i got cornered by the leader of the story characters in which he proceeded to flail his foam sword at me over and over again, which i would deftly lunge underneath and hit him center mass. which of course he “didn’t feel anything” and i would be counted out. then we did a tournament and i faced him in the second round, but this time i planted when i did it and drove through it, dislocating my right thumb, but the next time i saw him he had to ice down his chest.

Anonymous

I was all ready to defend larping, because seriously, it can be a lot of fun, but… you’re actually totally right. It’s only fun when you do it with a sort of a small group of friends. All the big LARPs I’ve been in were ridiculous: I seriously was just a background character, I wasn’t even there to be ordered around, I was just THERE. Although I usually tended to try and come up with stuff to do for myself so I ended up being a huge asshole as a character because that way I could at least get a reaction from others and stir up something, as insignificant as it was. xD I mean like being a racist elf who hated all non-elves and acted really condescending towards everybody who wasn’t an elf. That kind of a thing. My defense is, I was just really, really bored…

Jason Treloar

I messed around with amptgard a little bit in college, but I never really thought of it as larping because, to me, there was no role-play, it was just running around playing swordfight. I guess it could’ve been a physical version of a hack & slash campaign but there were no characters, just classes and abilities with “costumes” just being there to garner armor points. Now that I think about it, it was actually way TOO MUCH like some of my early D&D games :P

Anonymous

That didn’t sound like alcohol that sounds like she slipped him acid or something! The alcohol should’ve lefthis system in the 10-12 hours he was on that car!
Also, man I’d had to stay there and watch him in case the police show up and I’d have to explain things for my friend!

Jamie Sheil

could’ve moved from the realm of alcohol influence to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation tends to mess with my mind more than alcohol to be honest XD

http://twitter.com/SisyphusFalls Hannah Yanega

On a completely different note, Spoony, is your dog part Basenji?

On a better note, I have missed you so much <3

Anonymous

Wow, Jason would make an exellent sniper with that kind of endurance.
I really would like to know how he got there though.

Anyway, it’s always fun to just sit back and listen to you talk about these kind of things Spoony, keep up the good work.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JVA23FBQ7TXHZI27UX7OAMYAFA Tyler

I’d have been surprised if the promoters of that Vampire:The Masquerade Larp actually weren’t paid to do that. It just doesn’t seem like the odds would favor of that.

Anonymous

holy shit. what an idiot.

Anonymous

man, that guy’s a top tier idiot.

this is the kind of stupidity i would expect to see in a crappy sitcom.

but the fact that’s real makes it so fun and interesting i love these stories.

Anonymous

When I tell people of my gaming group, of which I am am member of for nearly 20 years, nobody beliefs me that the founding members of the group are three guys, including me, and four girls, none of which were anyone’s girlfriends, nobody believed me. I was confused by this until someone explained to me the girls/roleplaying-issue outlined by Spoony.
Larp-wise I can offer very little insight, aside from one in the Netherlands, where I didn’t understand a single word but had awesome props and locations (alternating between a bunker and a semi-abbandoned warehouse) and two here in Germany. Embarrassingly enough, I was drunk throughout one of those and knocked unconscious twenty minutes into the other. Somebody hit me over the head with a wooden mace and my leather hat didn’t live up to it’s armor class…

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_V3K7WV3HFEU34TVYZ5D2A3HOK4 charles

Could we get some background on this Jason, it seems like there may be some fresh material there.

http://twitter.com/nnecron Necro

Isn’t Jason that LordKat guy?

Anonymous

This would likely be a different Jason. I doubt Spoony knew LordKaT back then.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_H3LQNMETCOQZO3MXL6NPSZDWYA Jordan

I’ve had mostly similar experiences with LARPs. As Spoony says, they’re not “bad” in and of themselves but they do often tend to center around the handful of members who’ve been with the game the longest and/or who devote out-of-game time, effort and funds to help organize the events or support the LARP organization. That’s to be expected, I guess. It would sort of be like being the “kid brother” who shows up to a 10-player D&D game and is made to roll up a 1st-level character who is just kinda there to watch all the other 10th-level characters do awesome stuff and avoid getting in their way.

They do offer a different kind of experience than a traditional “table-top” RPG, though.

http://twitter.com/Narmolania Meiju Mylläri

A friend of mine tried to get me t be part of this Harry Potter larp, so that some day, I could be Lucius. When I had some experience and my hair had grown enough. Yeah, at that point, my hair was around my ears, I had just cut it, and I was smart enough to know “yeah, this will take YEARS….” and she did explain to me what me involved in the whole thing would involve. I would be a servant. That it. I would serve people food and drink. I knew that larps usually ahd some different characters that those of the stories (you know, creat your own) I asked about that, that was I allowed to make my own character at some point. I wasent that interested in being Lucious, but she was, and she told me no. If I wanted to be some other character, in the once she and her friends had created, they basically had to of the main books. So no creating characters, and I would always be the characters they told me to be. I was not at all interested in the whole thing. SO I never larped.

Now, when I was in… Spain? Yeah, I think it was spain… or Italy, I forget, we were touring this realy awsom caste, and at some point, there were these odd looking, almost like halloween decorations. It seemed a bit odd, but we desided to ignore them, and just look at the beautiful castle and small town that surrounded it. Until we got to the other side of the caste. There was a HUGE group of larpers. I mean a HUMOUNGOUS group. The street went down hill, so we cound see pritty far down the “line” that there was, and there were a lot of people in costume. They appeared to be in groups of 3-8 and there were a few people infront of the side gate. They were letting people in a group at a time, at sertaint points. and inside, we later on saw that the a bit halloweenish decorations were chekpoints or something, where you do a quest or something. Some of them were SO in to it, it was amazing to watch. And it did seem that because it was a one huge event, no one was the main character. Some times the groups would interact, talk, trade or fight (or some other) and then they would move one. They didint stay together for too long, I think it was because that would have crated too large of a groups for the narrow passage ways, but they did interact with each other. That was one time when I wished I was a larper.

Anonymous

I think ol’ Jason had a bit more than beer in his system if you know what I mean. BTW did you score with any of those models/escorts?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Grzegorz-Wojtczyk/100000046280578 Grzegorz Wojtczyk

So… if you are not part of the “core group” who organize the LARP they basically turn you into a NPC ? Wow…I feel like NPC my whole life I don’t need a game that will remind me that I’m unimportant character who is an extra for the main hero/heroes. Screw that !! I’m calling my friends that they can count me out from the LARP they planned to do on the Independence Day (11th November).

Anonymous

This might come too late but… the LARP your friends want you in might be awesome for all you know. Not all LARPs are bad. Try to find out more before you give up on it completely, ask around or something. Honestly, I’ve had a lot of bad experiences too, especially with the big ones where I didn’t know most of the people, but many of the smaller LARPs I’ve been to were a lot of fun.

Phillip Standifer

I was in the Marines for 5 years. The most I ever had to stand at attention was, I think, about 5 hours. A bunch of people in my platoon passed out during this time and those of us who didn’t had trouble getting our legs to work for the rest of that day and the next. Your friend certainly managed quite a feat.

Anonymous

Wow, now thats some endurance! Especially while drunk!

heh, I’m sort of in a LARP group….
I play Airsoft. Airsoft is sort of like paintball, but the guns shoot plastic BBs, and they look/behave very similar to real military weapons (i.e. blowback, fully automatic fire, magazines, scopes, silencers, some even have VERY similar weight to actual guns, etc.) Since the weapons look realistic, people usually get military style vests, helmets, goggles, etc. Since there is so much realistic equipment, we tend to do alot of MilSim type games/scenarios (i.e. Black Hawk Down or Area 51 for example). Basically, we run around in the woods shooting plastic BBs at each other (instead of foam swords). I have to say, it’s a hell of lot more fun than foam swords are! Of course, it’s damn expensive ($200-$300 guns, about $100-$200 for gear). BBs are dirt cheap though.

Anonymous

He was there all night! Holy shit, thats some serious larping.

F. Maximilian Schneider

Obfuscate? Seriously? Where I come from (the weird kind of LARP; albeit the more fancy, elaborate, expensive, accepted-by-broader-society, European version, just google Mythodea) crossing your arms in LARP means “I’m currently not in-game”.

Well, you could count that as Obfuscate, too, I suppose.

Anonymous

Become invisible by standing on a car posing like Jeff Hardy.

I’ll have to try that some time.

Dennis Venner

Ahh LARPing. Would you kids like me to tell you a story?

Kids: *In unison* NO!

Back in the fall of 08 I went to a magical place called Dragoncon, to meet with a friend of mine from the internet. It was my first Dragoncon, my first convention in general. And, said friend was an avid LARPer there with a group called Nightfall. Thus I was talked into it.

Kids: We don’t CARE!

So, Nightfall is a group of Old World of Darkness RP, Vampires, werewolves, Mages, Hunters, Fey, The whole nine yards. I choose to roll up a Mage, not knowing anything about it at the time, I made a Hermetic (Who I now call the worst Hermetic ever.) traveling Artist, who knew a decent amount of Vampire lore (My friend played a Vampire)

Well…the first time there was…a lot like Spoony said really. I had a hard time getting into character. A hard time feeling useful. I couldn’t get passed how…silly…it all was.

Dragoncon ended, shortly after, my friend became my girlfriend, Long distance.

Kids: Still don’t CARE!

I didn’t LARP with nightfall again for awhile, two years to be exact. Tried a couple other LARPS at dragoncon the next two years, but…they were medicore at best. While my first time at Nightfall I felt a little out of sorts, with the other ones, I just felt like there was no point to me being there at all.

By this time, the beginning of 2011, My friend, turned LDR, then turned to live in girlfriend. We went to Dragoncon again this year, and Nightfall was running again. At my girlfriend’s insistence, I agreed to try again.

This time was a little different, They gave my character a little plot to pursue of his own. Had to clean up some arcane connections. any of you knowing mage knows it’s not good to have those out there. I actually felt, at least a little more interested. Other people were coming up to me, trying to help figure out my plot. I actually had a bit of fun.

Nightfall, between cons, actually runs a few extra events a year, and they run a Mush between events. I didn’t do much on the mush, but the private event happened to be more or less down the street. So my girlfriend and I set out for it.

Kids: GOD THIS STORY GOES ON FOREVER!

This was a whole other beast. Since there wasn’t much in the way of New players to try and bring into the fold and such, they were able to deliver a much more focused plot. For the first time since I’d started, I really did feel at least a little important to things. Over the course of the 2 night game, ran in a 24hour in character style (Which was pretty intense) Somehow the other mages got it in their head that I should lead the mages (Came as quite the shock to my character, as well as me)

We managed to make it through the crisis. Now…I’m on the MUSH more, not every night, but hey, they put my character in a position of power. I should show up now and again huh?

I suppose this story is just a certain amount of countenance to what Spoony had to say. When I first started LARP, I was lost. The whole thing just didn’t make much sense to me, and I felt pretty silly. But I stuck with it and, at least with the group I’m a part of. I’ve actually started having a lot of fun. A lot of it comes down to just being willing to BE your character, use you imagination, and forget how silly it all looks. It’s improv acting. If you can do that, there is a decent chance that you’ll be more than a torch carrier. Just might take a little while.

That said, some LARPS are just blah. Forget about them if they don’t help out newbies. I had issues with Nightfall my first year, but even I have to admit that it’s my own fault. I was a wallflower and too obsessed with how it LOOKED to enjoy the fun of just doing it.

If you come to Dragoncon, or live in the Atlanta Area, you might consider looking them up. They have been running for 15 years and do a really good job, you just gotta be willing to put a little effort into it as well.

If you’ve read this far, good job!

Kids: SCREW YOU! *Tosses tomato’s at me*

http://twitter.com/Shantalfigueroa Shantal Figueroa

For my own amusement I’m going to pretend that this is all being narrated by Bob Saget.

“Kids. This is the story…of how I met your mother. I mean, LaRPed”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jovan-Stipic/1520802005 Jovan Stipic

jebediah

Anonymous

Hey, Spoony. This is totally true, but mostly for LARPs run by inexperienced and/or selfish GMs.

I used to be a part of a quite large larping group, and they tried to avoid that. Here are two samples of the games they invented:

1. “Mountains of Madness”. A no-system scenario based on the 1972 plane crash in the Andes. Designed for about 20 people. Basically, your plane crashed on an ice plain, no way out, communications broken, food run out days ago. You can only survive on human flesh. And here’s the sick part: people get organized and vote on who gets to be eaten next…
While the premise may sound questionable (to say the least), it is reportedly great fun, lots of narrative tension and emotions included. PG-18 of course.

2. “Four rooms”. A nWoD-Changeling game, also for about 20 players. Your character wakes up in the Faerie (kind of a parallel world, inhabited by the Faerie-beautiful, cruel, wicked creatures, who kidnap humans out of sick fascination). Your quest is to get back home, and you can only do that by dealing with the Faerie Monarchs. There are four of them, representing the four seasons, as well as certain emotions associated with them (the game is actually laden with symbolism). You have to reconstruct your identity, find the people you were kidnapped with, and recall the dramatic event that was behind it. If you do that and tell the right story to the right King/Queen, they let you go-but you will have to trade sth in the process: memories, beauty, your unborn child etc.
While complex, this scenario is very playable as the characters have to cooperate, exchange information, find their tokens, guess and investigate, and everyone has a good story to discover. I GMd it at a convention a few years back, and the result was awesome. Needs top GMs, though.

The downside is that the characters are predetermined, but this is the only way, I think.

I also played in several Vampire/Warhammer/Mage larps, and they were shitty as hell–for the very reason you gave.

The worst thing are the ‘dramas’: larps played in several installments, usually about plotting vampires. God I hate those. It’s usually just a bunch of guys in Goth costumes, speaking pompous gibberish punctuated by ellipsis marks–if you know what i mean.

Anonymous

Well the club I’m in, the cuckoosnest, basically we have a number of parties who go out on adventure on a rolling schedule and each party have different GM’s and world plot is decided by all of them. Then when a party go out adventuring the other’s in the club monster for it basically play all the monsters and NPC’s for the adventure so everyone gets a chance to play the main characters as it were and monstering for parties provides a good introduction to LARP before you join a party and make a character.

Anonymous

That’s actually a really, really good idea. That’s the first incarnation of LARPing in a large group that I’ve heard of that I actually like!
- http://www.facebook.com/Archmike Mike Broster
  
  This is pretty much the standard set up over here, work really well provided you make sure the low level parties are doing just as important feeling stuff as the high level ones :)

http://twitter.com/Spokavriel Daniel Thomas Stack

Yeah even LARP has its NPC’s only in LARP its Non Party Characters. If you aren’t in the main party clique then you are an NPC even though you are just as much a player.

Anonymous

Oh my God dude PLEASE do some Shadowrun stories like this. I’d love to hear some SR stories.

Anonymous

Hmm…

Anonymous

Mhh…like the other Germans/German LARPers here, i don’t really see the things Spoony says about LARPing applying to “our” LARPs over here. After reading a lot about US-LARP (and wanting to join a game; however, the last time i was in the virginia area for a few weeks – in late autumn :( – was unable to find a game there), i really think that LARP in the US and LARP in europe are two very different things.

My guess would be that this is due to 2 things, mainly:
- Lower population density in the US, which will lead to a different organizer-player dynamic. Since we in europe can potentially get to many games within a certain radius, as far as i know for the US is’s basically “play at your local chapter or don’t play at all”. Which means US games must cater for everyone – and be affordable for everyone – while we can afford to exclude players from games (not literally not allowing them in, but by having certain minimum requirements in terms of gear, or having select games in expensive places, for example). Even if i spent a summer going to a LARP every weekend in an area – say – 200km (~125 miles) around my city, i would probably not be able to attend all of them because on many weekends there’s multiple games.
However, i would also have to spend quite a bit of money on it, given that games average at about 60€ (~75$) and can go up to 200€ (~250$) – the latter for a fully catered stay at a castle for several days over new year’s eve.

- The origins of LARP in each area. In the US, i guess it’s mostly influenced by (A)D&D, while over here, it was probably an amalgamate of an interest for medieval reenactment and mostly low-fantasy tabletop RPGs. Which lead to a more down-to-earth playing style over here. A lot of impossible-to-display magic and special abilities (invisibility, transformations, teleportation, giant strength, etc.) are not completely gone everywhere, but a large majority doesn’t like them.

EDIT: spelling

Dragdar

interesting post , thanks
http://www.facebook.com/Archmike Mike Broster

Yeah totally agree with this. I’m in England and about 4 years ago I joined in with a group that had been going ~20 years or so and was made to feel right at home from day 1 :) Then I’ve also encountered the “clique” type of larp before as well, Vampire larpers tend to be looked down on over here as is any system that just uses “rock paper scissors”. You wanna fight some one then you should damn well fight them! Charge!!! ^_^

http://twitter.com/kirana44 C. L. Johnson

As an ex-air cadet, I can wholeheartedly back up what Spoony meant about how standing like that can be punishment. I remember having a great deal of fun counting just how many people would faint during our Remembrance Day parades, purely from standing at ease – not even at attention, but at ease (there’s a difference) – for an hour and a half, maybe two hours. Hell, I myself have fainted at a parade before, and this one was indoors (I was actually really lucky that there were guys standing behind me who managed to stop me from cracking my head against the floor). If healthy, non-drunk teenagers can pass out from doing that FOR AN HOUR OR LESS, I can’t imagine how much endurance this Jason guy had.

Anonymous

Okay, this is the kind of story I’d expect to hear from Nash on WTFIWWY (‘What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?’ to the uninitiated).

I think I have an explanation on why female RPers were such an underground thing back in the late 90s – I have no personal experience because well… I was 10 in 1997 and was inducted straight into VG RPGs like pokemon from a very young age rather than anything else. However, having a great and unfortunate degree of experience with how bitchy girls can be with other girls I know why back then there were so few girls openly being geeks: social preservation. Even in my early teens, if you were a geek in any shape or form and you didn’t have social protection, you shut the fuck up about it. I don’t know about guys bullying other guys, but girls are INCREDIBLY insidious and smart when they bully other girls. The only way to get them to stop is if you literally scare them off, and there is a very good reason why I was voted “Most likely to bring a sub-automatic to school and kill everyone” in year 12. Well, that’s how it goes in Australia, anyway.

I will agree on the underground anime thing. It was so hard for me as a kid to get my hands on good anime. I was stuck with fucking shoujo and shounen which I got through people in the know until the early 00s when DVDs of seinen anime started coming out and sites like mangavolume and mangafox started up. Watching Texhnolyse and NGE at 15 for the first time after being stuck with DBZ, YYH and Fushigi Yuugi (and anyone who’s watched The Mysterious Play knows the pain of having your brain liquefied by how mind-numbingly boring and stupid it is) was a breath of fresh air after suffocation.

I only knew about LARPing in the past few years, but I have never gotten involved just for the fact that my own sense of reality/identity isn’t exactly…er… stable, let’s say? It didn’t seem like a good idea for me to do it personally (yeah it’d probably be harmless but I’m nervous enough about the idea that it turned me off), and with the stories I’ve heard about LARPing, I don’t have a good opinion of it. A lot of them seem to spiral around the same tone of “political hierarchy dominates newer players” and it doesn’t seem to end that well. I don’t think it’s necessarily all that weird or bad in itself, but it does sort of seem to fall into that rut – from the stories I’ve come across anyway. I think that there’s always a learning curve when the new guy joins, not only for the new guy but for the core group. If you don’t know someone, know how they are going to behave or how well they’re going to play with others, so to speak, you don’t really want to write a plot for them, and I do understand that… I still don’t think it’s fair to the new guy though. I get the impression that it is avoidable with a really good DM and a good core game structure, but a lot of generic LARPs just seem to fail. Well, in America anyway. I think it’s different in Europe, especially where there are a lot of different specialized groups. I have NO idea what it’s like in Australia, oddly enough, despite living here – haven’t come across any stories on the net and there seem to be very few LARPs in my home city.

So that’s what LARPs look like from an outsider’s perspective, and I’ve rambled long enough.

Anonymous

“Model-hot women.”

A trap you say?

REALLY.

http://twitter.com/Doctor_Docson Doktor Dok Dokson

For a moment I thought he meant those women were cross-dressers.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Andrew-Browner/100003565537718 Andrew Browner

Sad thing? Now I’m going to be wondering whether he was a Nosferatu, Malkavian, or some other vampire clan with Obsfucate…

Anonymous

Being king of the LARPers is akin to being the head jizzmoper

Monolith001

Gorgeous models asking you to LARP with them.

And you were shocked that this was a trap?

http://twitter.com/SetToJetPodcast Set to Jet!

This story makes no sense.

The sunlight should have killed him at 8 AM!

Rachenar

My girlfriend used to play Mario 1 and 3 and sonic the hedgehog 2 as a kid…but that’s pretty much the full extent of her gaming culture.

K B

The biggest influences bringing girls into geek culture are

1) Fantasy or sci-fi romance books.
2) MMORPGs.
3) Manga.

That larp must’ve had wealthy members and/or some money pooling to afford hiring escorts as booth babes.

Jason left and got there before you the next day, retaking his position from the previous night, just to mess with you.

http://twitter.com/kiji_kun kijikun

Dude, some of the original people in ‘geek’ culture were women. Women have been writing sci-fi and Fantasy novels for generations. I’m 31, I’ve been rpging both table top and video game since I was pretty damn young. My mother was majoraly into Star Trek and went to some of the original cons.

It’s only recently that it’s become acceptable for women to be into ‘geeky’ things. We weren’t seen a lot because we weren’t welcome. Even today, were only welcome in a lot of circles if we’re hot or dating a guy geek.

David Bythewood

I’d argue against this. I am 35, going on 36. My wife is four years my elder and has been gaming since well before she met me. In fact, we have a sizable number of women gamers in our LARP group and area.

I will admit that a lot of women were ostracized to some extent from gaming and nerddom for many years. Most writers were (and still are) male, and after the comics crash of the 50s many women were understandably turned off of comics by the very sexist new wave of the 60s.

For those who don’t know, during the 30s and 40s about 90%+ of kids read comics. Not boys. KIDS. Girls and boys. If girls were turned off of sci-fi, comic books, roleplaying, and so on, I’d say it’s because of the way they were often depicted and treated.

http://blip.tv/The-Film-Twit The Film Twit

I’ve only “LARPed” once, and I don’t know if you’d call it a LARP. Basically, my RPG group decided we needed a break from Legend of the Five Rings and our GM said “Let’s play Doctor Who!” Since I was one of the big RPers in the group he picked me to play Captain Jack, as the story he had written involved The Doctor crossing paths with Jack in the 70′s, between his resurrection and the end of Series 3 of the new show. It started as a standard dice rolling game, but the more we played the more we just got up and got into our characters, which all started with me deciding to act out the dying and coming back Jack is famous for. The game unfortunately didn’t run long, as our GM kind of got burnt out on GMing and I didn’t want to pick up the reins and have to police The Doctor, on top of my general dislike for GMing anything. While it lasted, though, it was great collaborative theatre. At least, that’s what the group kept telling us.

http://twitter.com/kiji_kun kijikun

Bullshit. I’m 31. I’ve been LARPing for years. Some of the original LARPers were women. You didn’t see us because it was often made clear we weren’t welcome unless we were a) hot and b) willing to bang any guy that paid attention to us.

OgdruJahad

Oh come on, who among us HASN’T spent an entire night standing on a stranger’s car?

http://www.facebook.com/joshua.stewart.9619 Joshua Stewart

ok, as a USMC Enlisted.. ..yeah.. standing on the hood of a car for 12 hours and the reason for doing so NOT being if you move you’ll be blown up or shot? ..eff that..

http://www.facebook.com/people/Bryan-John-Sauriol/711670364 Bryan John Sauriol

I think you’re wrong about the rise of girl nerds there. From my experience it was the rise of Anime/Manga, especially Manga. All of the girl nerds/gamers I know (and that is a lot) started in with Manga/Anime.

http://www.facebook.com/FatherG Monty Fromage Von Comicus

Does anyone else get the “Sorry, episode not available” message every time they go to view the video?

Daniel2112

The specific message is “Sorry, we’re unable to play this episode”. And yeah, I’m getting it too. I really wanted to watch this one again.

Patrick Coyle

At 7:00, Oreo starts watching Spoony and looking into the camera whenever he leans forward, like she’s trying to figure out who he’s talking to.

It’s just adorable, is all.

Daniel2112

I’ve tried to play this Counter Monkey, Botchamania, and Leaping Wizards. I’ve gotten “Sorry, we’re unable to play this episode” each time. I’m about to try one of the regular reviews. Wish me luck.

http://twitter.com/Das_Bass Das_Bass

not to be a hipster, but liked anime before it was cool =p

http://www.facebook.com/people/Freddy-Duran/100000817426762 Freddy Duran

Dude its still rare as all hell, 2 years can’t find one female who plays Dota =( or D&D but thats besides the point.

Faith Tschirhart

The closest I go to LARPing is cosplay chess. basically human chess, only with people dressed as characters. You may not always get to take out a piece, but I still have fun… unless it’s held outdoors on a sunny day and you get overheated.

http://www.facebook.com/taylor.avalos Taylor Avalos

Stinky Wizzleteats: This is a song about LARPing–NO! This is a song about beingdrunk!

Mitch Gamburg

Best. Advertisement. Technique. Ever.

http://www.facebook.com/BigHarv Mike Harvey

I just love the little note that the friend known as JD cannot hold his liquor at all. I giggled.

http://www.facebook.com/dtilson1 Daniel Tilson

I know a lot of girl gamers. Some of them are very enthusiastic about their games.

But back in the day, seeing any girls inside the gaming store would immediately cause heads to turn, no matter what they looked like. It was hilarious.

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