LostProxy said:
Therumancer said:
Saying I don't care was a poor choice of words, my mistake. A more accurate phrase would be I lack the energy. You'll also notice that I said I agreed with some parts. I just couldn't reply to/read all of it because I just don't have that amount of spare time. I think the big gap is that the definition to you of an RPG is static while to me it's fluid. Certain themes stick (character creation/development, assuming a role, open choices) and to me that's what makes an RPG. Everything else is mechanics and as the last 20 or so years of RPGs have taught us mechanics change and they always will. To say random numbers determine an RPG is essentially saying LARPers aren't role players and they are most likely the most hardcore of us all.
They AREN'T role-players (LARPers) but something unto themselves, they can come close due to some of the rules involved (it's not what you probably think). It's one of those cases where while "Role-Playing Game" has it's own meaning referring to a genere, "role-playing" as a set of words can refer to a lot of things. Such as if you have your girlfriend dress up as wonder woman, tie you to a bed, and "make you tell the truth"... that's "role-playing" but it has nothing to do with RPGs and things like dungeons and dragons. People wanting to associate things that are not RPGs with RPGs will oftentimes look at the literal meaning of the words by way of justification, with no idea of the actual backround.
Let me be painfully blunt, groups like the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and the like have been out there for ages, as has the whole "renaissance faire" crowd. Live Action Role-Players are at the core an extension... or more correctly outcasts from, those organizations rather than an extension of the actual RPG crowd.
Typically your SCA or Renfaire group is based around recreation, they want to produce period garb, weapons, and fighting styles. Some groups are dedicated to a specific period, others are more generalists but expect each member to be conisistant and as authentic as possible within their role. In general people who want to emulate sword and sorcery which blends all kinds of differant periods, or run around with pointed ears on, are frowned upon. Likewise when they do the fighting stuff, they generally want to recreate the actual styles and techniques used in the period, rather than simply going with what's cool. Someone who wants to run out there and start swinging rattan weapons around is generally viewed as at best a dork, and at worst soley a source of money for the people running stalls and enclosures dedicated to such things (ie a customer as opposed to a fellow troupe member, one viewed as a dork at least had the advantage of still being considered part of the overall group).
I used to hang out with, and game with, a bunch of SCA people, and as such I have a more than passing familiarity with the respective nuances here. There being a lot of gamers in the SCA, but not all that many people who will admit to LARPing.
That said, being the uber-nerd that I am, I have dealt with LARPers before, both in general groups, and professional "for pay" organizations like "Fantasy Quest" which many years ago used to operate out of some of the local 4H camps. The thing to consider is that SERIOUS Larp groups have a MASSIVE, ridiculous dependency on rules. Largely because the whole idea is for any nerd to be able to play a master warrior or whatever. Typically when actual combat occurs there are very specific guidelines being used, and the stats of the characters still overrule what the actual abillities of the players might be. Nerd running around swinging boffers around honking from their vocal cords in something that is supposed to be a laugh might be there, but none of that actually matters. Typically in a confrontation between players, it involves handing off your respective cards/character sheets to a GM who gives an outcome. What's more players typically have tokens that represent the usage of abillities their character possesses, to backstab or "bushwhack" someone generally involves simply touching them on the back (no need to sneak up) and inform a nearby GM of what you just did, at which point the GM gives the results, and takes your token since you used it for that play session.
Especially with various "Vampire" themed LARPs there is this issue with what some people call "killer wallflowers". This is to say that you have guys who define themselves as the grossest combat monsters the rules will allow, while at the same time being the most repugnant anti-social nerds you can imagine who do absolutly nothing for the overall event and interaction, maybe just walking around annoying people, or playing "Magic The Gathering". However whenever something happens of remote interest, they rush in with all their combat abillities and kill everything and everyone, irregardless of who was actually driving that event. They are also infamous for spending all their abillity cards, collecting their exps, and then going home so as to not have to deal with the repercussions of say having "spent their load", so basically in the case of a three day event, those guys who ruined your day in day #2 aren't going to be coming back with their "once per event" cards gone so you can get some payback, or just deal with them for having been twits.
In LARPing it's also noteworthy that the boffer weapons and such are meaningly generally, and costume weapons are not used. See, in cases where two people "fight" in a LARP they generally have a system in place where each character is given number cards in addition to their abillity use cards. If players, or a player and an NPC working for the staff go at it, they hand the GM/Ref a card with a number on it, and whomever has the higher number wins. It becomes a matter of gambling, trying to use the lowest possible card to beat the opponent. Some players will have combat mods as well, such as their gear or combat abillity giving a modifier on any card they happen to use. So say if two barbarians square off, instead of going at it with boffers, cheeto dusted fingers head into the crown royal bags around their respective waists and they each hand a card to the GM, along with their character sheets
and the GM gives the result.
"Fantasy Quest" which I have only very limited dealings with did experiment with a "boffers and bean bags" system when they first started but I believe got rid of it. For a while they kept the bean bags around though, with the bean bags basically being used to deliver spells at a distance, of course there were issues with that, and I believe people were telling me (even though I wasn't involved) that they went back to a touch/tap system, after too many nerds decided it would be fun to try and whap people with bean bags from accross the room while they were eating or whatever (since even with LARPs half the point is to sell food
to the gamers).
The point is that this is nerdism at one of it's highest, most undiluted levels. It manages to only be an RPG, or even a game at all, with some major stretches. What you see on TV with some D&D players dressing up as their characters to do "Larping" isn't really all that close to the reality.
You might notice if you read a lot of fiction, that the opinion of LARPers is also overwhelmingly negative with writers who have an SCA backround along with their gaming experience. John Ringo's "After The Fall" series and a book called "A Point Of Honor" (the author's name eludes me) go to great lengths to have recreationists bust on the live action fantasy guys, even if they are heavily "into" fantasy themselves otherwise.
At any rate, this is a long rant about LARP when it shouldn't have been. The basic point is that actual LARP groups *do* involve the whole "stats over personal abillity" thing, but they aren't actually RPGs because they aren't really the kind of simulation that being an RPG entails. It's not quite the same kind of purely intellectual exercise. If my opinion of it sounds negative, let's just say that every REAL LARP I've seen has been a giant mess, ditto for every one I've heard of.
Just because the terms "role playing" are involved does not mean that that is all there is to them, or even what defines them. Role-Playing Game is a term when taken as a whole means something quite differant from the words, especially when you look at the origin of RPGs and how they are defined. It's understandable WHY that term evolved, but on a lot of levels it's sort of like a european screaming about how Americans play "Football" when the feet are not paticularly involved other than for field goals (and of course running). I mean you could probably call RPGs Statistical Simulation Games (SSGs) more accuratly, but that isn't the name that was attached to them.
