Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The LARP Of It All

I'm not a big fan of LARPers (that's Live-Action Role-players to my less geeky readers). LARPers are those folks who dress up in medieval garb or in vampire fangs and play role-playing games "in real life," dressed as their character and fighting with foam-covered PVC "swords" or drinking wine that's supposed to be blood. It's not that I begrudge them their hobby - in fact, I can see the appeal of it in some ways - but it's that almost every LARPer I've met has been so socially maladjusted that it really makes me question where humans, as a species, will be in fifty years.

But when I read the following description of LARPers on Something Awful, I nearly fell out of my chair:

    "It's very simple. You are dressing up in half-assed medieval clothing, pretending to be a hobbit wizard or a dark elf census worker or whatever, all while awkwardly play fighting with your nerd friends in public. If you can honestly take yourself seriously doing that, well, then you are criminally insane and deserving of all the mockery in the world +3."
Harsh, but funny all the same.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eh. You have a valid point. Now, what about the SCA?

Jason said...

I kinda see the SCA like a workout program for geeks: learn to pound the snot out of each other in medieval ways and get in shape doing it. Hefting those swords is hard work, so is fighting!