Plain old larp thread as we used to have them

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fun fact is that before the game there was a pretty big rainstorm. Worst one in several weeks.
So lot of tents ended up flooded, and there was mud everywhere.
Cars and other things also got stuck in the mud and at one point there was so much water we had to dig little canals. as damage control

or really we can call it moats

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Cool shit, any advice one where an American would buy a decent costume to get started with? The amtgard fucks around where I live go in a tabard, jeans and boots.

well if you want to buy stuff there is always mytholon, wyvern and the other big larpshops, but also etsy if you sepnd time on search for it.
If you feel that you can make your own stuff then you can search on google for medieval tailors assistant

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>the quality of this armor
>I feel sick
>at least cover your straps

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>these boots
Can't they use their normal boots?

some people did that. Their smile weren't sincere

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The quality of the armor make it look pretty cool.

Neo/tg/ is filled with faggots that doesn't think larping is Veeky Forums. Its a shame we don't see you and Gropey_the_clown with these threads as often.

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Is gropey still about? Haven't seen him post in over a year.

he pops up in warhammer fantasy general from time to time.
Veeky Forums needs more warhammer fantasy stuff.

every once in a while I make a thread and while there are still people who are interested and it's totally worth to do it sometimes the thread just dies because there is no one to comment on it.
It's kind of sad when you compare it to several years ago when we burned through 3 threads in one day because there were so much stuff to say and argue about.

What happened? Drama or just the inevitable death of an internet community?
I never did LARP so rarely participated but you guys always had interesting stories and pictures to share so I would pop in every now and then.

He still occasionally shows up in the /whfg/ threads, and in historic inspo fashion threads on /cgl/. Last I heard is that his IRL job and some family issue has monopolized his time.

Newfags happened. Name/tripfaggotry is near necessity for LARPthread, and the very offline-centered interaction made neckbeard newfags scared, so they would shit up the thread just because.

Oh I must know what's going on here.

two things happened simultaneously I think.
First and foremost: a great deal of larpers who were frequent on Veeky Forums dissapeared.
This is for various reasons. Some got fed up with larping because drama in their own community, some didn't had time for it anymore, others got other hobbies or families or just simply grow out of it. None of these are really Veeky Forums related, the demography shifted and the rest of the fa/tg/uys weren't as interested in larp threads anymore. (you could add that in the US parts larp became a term for "acting as XY")
The second thing is that we started to have simultaneous larp threads at /cgl/ too because they were also interested and that board is waaaaaay slower so a thread stays up for weeks.
Then as people got less and less interested on Veeky Forums the larpthreads became more and more of a /cgl/ thing. Which is a shame because the seagulls just simply not the same as the fech/tg/uys, differnet board culture and all.

Anyway, there aren't many namefags left either. Gropalope barle has time to live, even less to post on a mongolian origamy cavepainting site, and the rest are either dropped their namefagging or just disappeared with the rest

I think it also might have to do with the fact that LARPing is a niche interest within Veeky Forums to begin with, coupled with the fact that the highly detailed LARP experience that you are familiar with isn't particularly common in America which really limits the amount of people you're going to have discussing LARP. You'll probably see more discussion when there is a good deal of time between threads, as people will have new stories and pictures and more people who are unfamiliar with LARPing asking questions.

If you've got any pics from a non-fantasy LARP, something like Stalker or post-apoc, with a focus on realism, or at least verisimilitude, you could always try starting a thread on /k/ and see how that plays out.

just everyday life in the landsknecht camp

nah, I mean, there were ALWAYS flaming faggots in larpthreads. first we had the "you are all pussies not playing hard enough" either buy self declaired experts on every martial arts ever of the scadian fags. Then there was the US vs Euro hostility. And of course there were always people who called this a losers hobby or childish or whatever the fuck was that weeks popular slur.
It happened all the time, and if anything nowdays we have less hostility toward larpthreads than before.

It's just simply there is also less of us so the ratios are a little different.

At the very least, its civil so far. If you talk to Gropes off Veeky Forums, tell him I hope he's not dead.

back in the time we always had a lot of people from all over the word in the larpthreads. swedish, danish, finn larpers, bulgarians, croatians, german, british, scottish, etc.
I'm well aware that the time when I stat the thread is a critical factor because of the timezones, but we lack the european larpers too.

And yeah, it's way too different in the US, but that never really stopped larp threads before.

>you could always try starting a thread on /k/ and see how that plays out.
I see no way that this carefully laid out plan could ever go wrong. I mean seriously, have you been on /k/ lately? I realize that now they don't instantly burn the anons who mention airsoft but it's still a little less than pleasant conversation. Try to mention larp to them and they will totally lose their shit.

Once or twice I started threads there but even the milsims that have actual APCs and helicopters in them had dubious success.

he isn't, posted on the cgl thread a few days ago, although mostly about that he doesn't have time

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Part of the issue with milsims and airsoft on /k/ is the high number of actual vets on /k/ and the generally terrible attitude some members of the milsim and airsoft community have out their hobby. I really reminds me of the shit your hear out the SCA sometimes. I specifically mentioned Stalker because a large portion of /k/ wishes nothing more than to be trudging around a highly dangerous and radioactive area decked out head to toe in Combloc surplus.

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well, there aren't many good stalker larps out there. A little more good fallout ones but what they would really like is the wasteland weekend or whatever it is called which isn't really a larp so not my plate.

Anyway the postapoc larps I know is either has the same problems as the airsoft/milsim games has from the viewpoint of /k/ or they are done with nerf guns or similar stuff which goes even harder in the toy category in the eyes of a /k/ommando.

It's hard enough to do arms and armour threads there especially that the average /k/unt is way more autistic when it comes to medieval weapons than the average fa/tg/uy

Went to a LARP last year (Kandorya) and it was pretty cool but a bit cheap at times.
Is it worth really going into now, or is the community dying IRL aswell?

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Incompetent, not autistic.

I LARPed a bit around 2007-2009 and I think that due to the time and resource intensive nature of LARPing it's a hobby that ebbs and flows with how well the economy is doing.

>Incompetent, not autistic.
let's agree that they are both

no idea about it but I met several french larpers on drachenfest, so there is a chance that their community isn't dying

>so there is a chance that their community isn't dying
Don't really care if it's French or English, but I was more asking about the general community.

larping?
Fuck no it isn't dying. Beforehand I was talking about the larpers who go on Veeky Forums.
larpers all over the world? They are good and thriving. There are way more resources aviable, more information on how to make stuff, better and cheaper stuff that they can buy, larp shops comming up with new ways to make stuff.

Well, that is as long as you live in Europe. the US has slight improvement but not much

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>US has slight improvement but not much

Why not? What's the US doing that's wrong?

Potential US based larper here.

Not him but US LARPs look ridiculous, looks like no effort is put into the costumes, most of the weapons are buffers and it's mostly fighting.
At least you have Canada not that far away.

short answer?
Everything

>At least you have Canada not that far away.

Well, I'm in the Florida panhandle, so it kind of >is< that far away. 1200 miles or thereabouts to Toronto. About as far as Berlin to Madrid.

I don't want to be a bother, but can you be more specific than that? How do I know what to fix otherwise?

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oh boy, give me a minute to gather my thought.

The problem is complex and I doesn't even want to pretend that I know all of it as I never been in the US, nor do I know how to solve it apart from nuke the site from orbit and start from zero.

I will say this beforehand: the problem is complex and there is no single cause of it. People always try to point at X or Y and say, "yeah, that's the problem, only if that would be different..." but sadly, no. the US larping community has a fuckton of problem and even if you solve one the rest will remain.

As a start, two things: first that one could write several books about this and still not finished with the subject, secondly it's past 2 am here so don't expect too much consistency after the fifth or so post

The problems will be in no order apart who they come up in my head. Not all problems has the same gravity, some are smaller some are bigger. Also there ARE good larps in the US but those are the minority and the rest larps and larpers make too much harm.

So as to where to begin...
The legacy, the beginnings.
The US larp scene started from people who wanted to play DnD in real life. huge majority of larps (I doesn't count amtgard and the likes among larps, about that later) came from these roots and some are still at that level.
So they wanted to play DnD in real life but they didn't realized it's a different medium so they tried to use the tabletop rules. Even this day a fuckton of games try to be as much like the tabletop as it is possible. Calling out damage, several different types of damage, skills that try to represent things that cannot be really represented. It's just one step away from getting out the dice and roll for that damage.
Worst offender is Nero and it's clones.

When you make a larp you have to realize it IS a larp and not a tabletop game. You have to make rules that works well within this constraints, and you shouldn't try to enforc things that are hard to represent in the real life. Everyone wants to ts basically a used sock and someone yelling "SEVEN FIRE!!!" that really isn't helping immersion.

next thing: Culture
This contains a lot of things.

First and foremost, in the US, it is shameful to larp. You have to give excuses you have to explain yourself if you don't want to be seen as some retard or idiot or manchildren or whatever.
It is looked down hard. This brings a whole cartload of bullshit. One of them that people felt the need to make it "manly" so they will have an excuse to larp or they can explain it this way. This is one of the reasons why so much of the larps there is fight oriented (that and old DnD's dungeon crawl mindset) and why there is so much shitty battlegames. People also try to one-up each other and go deeper in the bullshit.
"Ohh, this is a FULL CONTACT larp! We fight for real" saying that with an oversized dildozer the guy which has troubles hitting the largest part of a barn.
"Ohh, this is a high-energy larp" I shit you not someone said this to me. I immidietly asked if they are larping as the large hadron collider or as the particle streams.

And this is another cultural problem, you guys make up new and slightly funny but bullshit words for every. fucking. thing. It's like US larpers try to shit the spanish wax 24/7 and try to sell it as some world changing invention, when in reality the difference is instead of red used socks now slightly dirty brown socks is representing a throwing packet and it's called differently.

Lawsuits and the triggerhappines to sue the everloving shit from your fellow human beings. Seriously, what the actual fuck? This makes organizers vary and they doesn't want to make big larps because they fear some idiot come and sue them for some banal shit. It's in the TOP 5 excuses about why US larps suck.

"lack of history" that's another one in the TOP 5 excuses. There are no good US larps because the lack of history, the US never had proper castles and knights and whatnot. Contrary to Canada who is just doing fine, It's not the lack of history. It's the lack of education about history....

I appreciate this, thank you. If you're going to bed, I probably won't have time to work a meaningful response to it all, but I really do thank you for this. I never even considered almost any of it.

I mean seriously, there are people out there who think, without sarcasm, that people in europe are better at larping because half a millenia ago some dudes in armor bashed at other dudes in armour, all of this is in general vicinity of roughly 2000 km of said larpers. Give or take a 100 years to the half millenia.

Another cultural thing: lack of effort. No effort. Seriously. I know I might overuse this but it's so painful to watch. It boils down to the shamfeul thing. It's shamfeul to larp, but there is one thing that is even more shameful: putting a lot of effort into larping (or basically into any hobby that isn't "manly") Even know that being a "nerd" is "popular" if you spend too much time to do stuff for larp you will be a weirdo n the eyes of others.
And I have no idea why the larpers care about this or why the other people give a flying fuck what others do. It's completely beyond me why would you care what your neighbor (or anyone who isn't your close friend for that matter) does as long as it's not sound related.

Here is another interesting one that basically comes from the cultural things: Remember how I said that some people try to upscale the manliness of larping? The "we hit really hard!!!" people? because of the lawsuits and stuff like that there are the opposites too. Softest touch to even no touch. There are live action games where you barely even allowed to touch the other guy with your weapon otherwise you are a brute and banned from the game.

This brings me to another interesting problem that comes from the beforemnetioned cultural problems

>that people in europe are better at larping because half a millenia ago some dudes in armor bashed at other dudes in armour,
The fact that the US is 300years old is indeed a factor, that's why there are much more civil-war era LARPs there.
Canada has a huge French/English background, and still relies on it.

What's the atmosphere like when you are LARPing?

Ohh, I just got started, and sleep is overrated anyway. If I start rambling I do it properly.

and the US has no French/English background? Or Spanish.
And there are a fuckton of civil war era reenactors but not so many larpers. Not the same.

so another interesting problem.
I mentioned that it's shameful to larp in the US. this means a lot of "average" people won't do it if there isn't anything that brings them in. Be it their friends, or some kind of TV show, or the legend that now there you will TOTALLY bone chicks because you only need to be there and it will instantly happen. Read it on the internet so must be true.

So who will play? those who have nothing to lose or pretty close to it. THAT GUYS and THAT GIRLS. While in other countries they also play because why the fuck not, but in the US the lack of averages joes in larping tips the balance. lot of retard gets way too much highlight, and even organizes games. The whole community's idiot to sane ratio is screwed and at some point it was even self generating and got even more and bigger assholes and autist into the hobby.
I admit that it seems at least this got a little better, but the fundamental problem is still there: the community leaders and opinion leaders are full with people who you wouldn't trust a wet match even less a kid. So when new guys join they see what is around them, think it's normal and try to assimilate.

Anyway, enough of the cultural shitposting, I'll get back to other problems

>and the US has no French/English background? Or Spanish.
For the French, only in the south east, and they broke from England. It wouldn't be honest to say that the US' culture relies on their European heritage. They may say they have some Irish blood here and there, but they still consider themselves Americans, above all.

roughly 1013,25 hPa, but depends on the weather.

And I consider myself hungarian and yet play a lot of characters that have german influance before the time when hungary and germany were buddies.
In sweden the german like characters also slightly popular thanks to warhammer fantasy. Not because history. It's not in the DNA.

so now that we looked at a few cultural problems (not all of them) there are other things that must be addressed (but because it's the people who are playing it will come as no surprise that you can point at cultural things as part of these problems)

There are little to no larpshops there. That's not unique, most eastern european countries has this problem too. But calimacil is a spit away but for various reasons until recently that wasn't good enough for the US larpers.

Because of this the weapons are mostly home made ones which is okay, because as I said a lot of other countries had this problem. The difference is the lack of effort thing.
So 90% of US larps have dickswords. Or even ultralight dickswords which is such an abomination that I would shoot the person who invented it into the Danube if I would had the chance. Basically a lot of larps there enforc the rules of dickswords saying it's for safety, when there is nothing that proves that home made boffers are safer than factory made latex weapons or even home made latex weapons, or injected foam weapons and I could go on. Let's not start on fiberglass core...

I already mentioned the rules but have to do it again because they are so shit. Lots of US organizers simply cannot think in a rules system. if there is a problem they add a rule to "fix" it, instead of looking at the problem, what causes it and might change or take away rules.

Also, so much safety rules that it kills the game. At some game, I shit you not, you had to pad the horns of the bows with foam, remove the string and throw spell packets instead of shooting arrows...

is that you?