Fallout LARP

I don't think this has been posted before.

sdmobile.livejournal.com/19621.html

I've never participated in a LARP, and don't really have any interest. but you've gotta admire the effort put out in this thing

This was on NMA, and despite that I haven't LARPed in 11 years, I still thought it was fucking cool.

That must of cost a fortune. Those guys are dedicated. They're even playing Carrom in one shot... with cue's too.

Far too geeky for me but fascinating, defintely fascinating.

Holy cow Batman! That's amazing work they did with the costumes, props and locations. If they had a script and some gear, they could have filmed a movie.

Before this, the two coolest larps that I ever heard of were:

1. Call of Cthulhu: several years ago at GenCon, they had a large CofC larp set in Shanghai. Somebody got ahold of a whole bunch of that special money they burn at Chinese funerals, and they used that as the currency for a whole wharfside area worth of players and npcs. Sailors, shopkeepers, prostitutes, cops, criminals, you name it. I wanted in, but it booked up too fast, so I played in a different event instead.

2. Paranoia: I heard about some group in Australia that staged a really elaborate Paranoia one-shot larp. They used an old office building to represent Alpha Complex. Everybody got colored armbands representing their rank in Alpha Complex society. The voice of the computer was sent out over the building intercom system, issuing various announcements, platitudes and veiled threats. At lunch time, players were served jello in accordance with their armband rank. High-ranking characters like blue or indigo got normal jello in the appropriate color, but low-ranking characters like red or orange had unpleasant-tasting additives in their jello, like chili pepper. Characters that got into serious trouble were required to report to a certain room (probably with an ominous name like Room 13 or Room 101). That room was kept dark, and when the character entered, they were notified that this was the disintegration chamber, and they should report to another specific room to start their next clone. The building also had an old vacuum tube mail system, which the referees used to send messages to each other and to players.

So nerdy, and I've never done a LARP before cause I think it's kinda weird, but that looked pretty fucking awesome.

LARPS are not always that weird....depending on the LARP.

I've always held that the best ones are like an RPG freed from the constraints of rules. It places more weight on becoming your character and the decisions you make. Somehow, the best of these seem far less nerdy than the rules-heavy Vampire games and the foam boffer games.

And the rules-light games often are more grounded in reality. I played in a hostage crisis freeform once that was utterly nerve-wracking.

We did actually do two 15-player runs of one of my games on a temporary set of a 7 room mansion (with hedge maze) built out in a college theater. With a couple of people running lights, sounds, and fog effects. It was a very CoC inspired thing.