LARPing Horror Stories

[Ghost]

Lately I've been considering maybe one day giving my hand at LARP again. Not WoD LARP, but the camping/drinking/Knights of Badassdom stuff. Ive been eyeballing a few Dystopia Rising zombie-LARP chapters, maybe even NERO, but can these things get as fucked up as some White Wolf LARPs get?

Talk me out of it?

My horror story:

There was a LARP where I live run by this guy who had rape fantasies. My SO and I actually kicked him out of our house once because he offered to run a tabletop game (No big deal, right?), but then during an IC party scene proceeded to make my SO and his wife make super hard Stamina rolls. Their both woke up in some back room with douchebags with camcorders date raping them. My wife (and I) quickly went what the fuck and the GMs wife got cross with us for ruining the game by our chars trying to beat up/prosecute the date rapers. His wife was down with it. We were apparently in the wrong. Boot to ass. No more tabletop with them.

Cut to a year later. Same GM is running a Sabbat LARP. His Archbishop enjoys punishment for lesser ranking Sabbat who fail with (surprise!) rape with a super large, purple dildo. GM bought a super large dildo and brought it to the LARP and when character was punished (usually female) he would take them away from the group and describe the punishment. NOW QUEUE 16 YEAR OLD FEMALE PLAYER WHO IS A MOLESTATION SURVIVOR. Her character fails, and when her punishment scene comes along, she ends up bawling, in tears, has to leave the game. She was unaware that this went on at the game. I didn't know this either, for the record, as I didn't play in this game.

It turns into a huge Facebook shitstorm. GM, his wife, etc took the camp of "Hey, she signed a release and it's an adult game. We aren't responsible. She knew the risks." Where the other 50% of the players (note, 50%, maybe 20 players total, so this should give you an idea whose LARP hobby was more important than defending a wounded bird) took the "This is fucked up and you should apologize, and this should never happen again." angle.

I stepped in and politely informed the GM that showing a sexual toy and/or describing a sex act to a minor is a felony and falls under the category of statutory rape, and suggested the teenage girl file a complaint with the authorities.

This prompted the GM to kick 3-4 players (including teen) out of the game so he could continue to rape characters in peace. The teenager never filed charges because she didn't want to give up on LARPing. Last I heard, a few years later, the teenager had become an adult and was buddy-buddy with GM and wife.

[RnMissionRun]

Every experience I've had with LARP (which admittedly were all with this one group out of Baltimore) has been scary-bad. Every. Single One. To this day when people tell me they LARP, I quickly find an excuse to get away from them.

[Arkandel]

@Ghost Wtf.

All I can say is... okay, the first time someone pulls this off is fine, they didn't know. The second time... whatever, they maybe thought it was an isolated scenario.

At some point though they aren't going there for the hunting, are they.

As for that teenager, didn't she have parents or someone with custody who could intervene? That's pretty disturbing because at least the others were adults and could make their own choices.

[Ghost]

@Arkandel said:

As for that teenager, didn't she have parents or someone with custody who could intervene? That's pretty disturbing because at least the others were adults and could make their own choices.

The teenager is kind of an epic all in her own. The basic is that her father lived in a LARPHOUSE with her. Picture a crack house with stinky, unwashed people and a kitchen with stacked dirty dishes. People sleep 2-3 to a room and people pay rent on couch space. Dad moved daughter into the LARP house, and since he wanted to LARP, he got the LARPERS to allow her to LARP. Since daughter was 16-17, skinny, quasi-attractive, this led to a lot of overweight nerds referring to her as their little sister, trying to steer her into what they knew best, and her sitting on their laps while roleplaying vampires. THIS I saw first-hand, and Dad did nothing about it because he didn't want to rock the boat with his roommates and risk getting kicked out of the LARP that took place at his flophouse.

Eventually, daughter started sleeping with some 22 year old LARPer who lived at the flophouse. Dad got mad but didn't pursue charges. The people who owned the house sided with the 22 year old, supported the daughter for emancipation. After the teenager was emancipated, Dad was kicked out of the house, and the girl bonked uglies with that 22 year old for a while.

Fucked. Up. People.

[Packrat]

My LARP story is much less interesting, I caught a taxi to a friend's house (Friend 1) with another of my friends (Friend 2) and two attractive girls who were friends of Friend 1. In the car, we ended up chatting staff and it was mentioned we had played an RPG the weekend before, the two girls immediately asked if this was were we dressed up and acted out being vampires.

We stridently and vehemently denied this and explained it was a tabletop game at which point both girls were super disappointed because it turns out they were really into Vampire LARPing.

[Cirno]

@Ghost said:

@Arkandel said:

As for that teenager, didn't she have parents or someone with custody who could intervene? That's pretty disturbing because at least the others were adults and could make their own choices.

The teenager is kind of an epic all in her own. The basic is that her father lived in a LARPHOUSE with her. Picture a crack house with stinky, unwashed people and a kitchen with stacked dirty dishes. People sleep 2-3 to a room and people pay rent on couch space. Dad moved daughter into the LARP house, and since he wanted to LARP, he got the LARPERS to allow her to LARP. Since daughter was 16-17, skinny, quasi-attractive, this led to a lot of overweight nerds referring to her as their little sister, trying to steer her into what they knew best, and her sitting on their laps while roleplaying vampires. THIS I saw first-hand, and Dad did nothing about it because he didn't want to rock the boat with his roommates and risk getting kicked out of the LARP that took place at his flophouse.

Eventually, daughter started sleeping with some 22 year old LARPer who lived at the flophouse. Dad got mad but didn't pursue charges. The people who owned the house sided with the 22 year old, supported the daughter for emancipation. After the teenager was emancipated, Dad was kicked out of the house, and the girl bonked uglies with that 22 year old for a while.

Fucked. Up. People.

Was that a larphouse or a traphouse? It sounds more like a traphouse.

[Bobotron]

Boffer LARP is only as bad as the people you LARP with, really. I have good friends who are in good experience w/boffer LARP.

My only real complaint (besides an injury that prevents me from DOING it) is that I can't get into the multi-day/overnight events where, yes, Virginia, the GMs are allowed to BREAK INTO YOUR SLEEPING AREA and HAVE MODULES WHILE YOU TRY TO SLEEP. I will punch a fucker in the face for that.

[BigDaddyAmin]

I ran a LARP once at my home in Louisiana. Well, to be honest it was a murder mystery night, complete with dinner, drink, and fancy dress. It ended quickly with my toddler daughter waking up and announcing, "Poop! I poop!" We had a good laugh and just ended the night with snacks and booze.

[Bobotron]

@BigDaddyAmin
Unexpected children's honesty is always a fun time.

[Groth]

12:33 AM <PaCo> So before we start, I've been in here for like 2 years now I think.
12:33 AM <PaCo> So I may have told this story before
12:33 AM <PaCo> If so, I apologize
12:34 AM <PaCo> So briefly, while scamming the american high school system (a whole other story entirely), I was enrolled at a community college in southern california
12:34 AM <PaCo> Antelope Valley Community College
12:34 AM <PaCo> I believe someone in here even goes/went there
12:34 AM <PaCo> Now, I found out from some of my gaming friends that AVCC took their WoD gaming very seriously.
12:34 AM <PaCo> This was 1998.
12:34 AM <Gayo> Antelope Valley Community College is a beautiful name
12:35 AM <PaCo> It's a shithole Gayo haha
12:35 AM <Gayo> well, that's kind of what I mean
12:35 AM <Gayo> it's very evocative of a community college sort of in the middle of nowhere!
12:35 AM <Gayo> anyhow go on
12:35 AM <PaCo> So I get introduced to the regulars by my fairly normal friend Mike
12:35 AM → MockCell joined (Mockery@sorcery-fcnapu.fios.verizon.net)
12:35 AM <Lumi> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twPyY8chalQ
12:35 AM <PaCo> It's by far the most gender diverse group of gamers I'd ever seen
12:35 AM <PaCo> an almost clean split of male to female
12:36 AM <PaCo> black, white, hispanic. It was like a goddamn poster.
12:36 AM <PaCo> Like an ad for diversity.
12:36 AM <PaCo> I was feelin' it at the time, being a stupid teenage idealogue
12:37 AM <PaCo> So I immediately am attracted to one of the girls in the group, Katie. She wasn't overly mallgothy, but it was just enough. It was probably the fishnets.
12:37 AM <PaCo> And also the extra 10lbs which made her look like a woman and not a teenage girl (how's that for an awful romance novel line)
12:37 AM <PaCo> So at any rate, I get into gaming with these people. Their main game was Vampire, but they allowed Werewolves if they were blood bound to another PC.
12:38 AM <Gayo> adequately mallgothy
12:38 AM <MorkaisChosen> ohgod
12:38 AM <PaCo> So just let that sink in for a sec
12:38 AM <MorkaisChosen> please tell me you didn't play a woofwoof bloodbound to Katie's PC
12:38 AM <PaCo> MC: I did not
12:38 AM <PaCo> she already had a bitch
12:38 AM <MorkaisChosen> I am equal parts relieved and disappointed
12:39 AM ⇐ MockeryCellPhone quit (Mockery@sorcery-6a7cnu.faf0.o13m.100c.2600.IP) Ping timeout: 121 seconds
12:39 AM <PaCo> So they are... very bad players. I mean like, some of the worst players I've ever seen.
12:39 AM <Gayo> it would have been funny if the game gradually shifted to be one vampire with four blood-bound werewolf pokemon
12:39 AM <PaCo> Like, it's all social one upsmanship and lore shittalking
12:39 AM <PaCo> However, I, being the youngest and newest person in the group, decided not to make any waves
12:40 AM <PaCo> I would ask Mike how he puts up with this, and he just said "girls who play games dude"
12:40 AM <PaCo> I think he expected me to high five him, but, I missed that cue at the time
12:40 AM — pringles facepalm
12:40 AM <PaCo> So anyways, I try to get my way in with Katie
12:41 AM <PaCo> In the process of doing so, I learn that they take their RP so seriously, that they sometimes interact in character in the cafeteria... and in class... and in the quad...
12:41 AM <pringles> ... oh god
12:41 AM <Endings> oh no
12:41 AM <Gayo> I think I saw this movie
12:41 AM <Will12343> ...huh.
12:42 AM <PaCo> I had an embarassing moment where I was playing Street Fighter in the cafeteria with my other group of friends (i tended to segregate), when one of them called me by my characters name
12:42 AM <PaCo> and I had to run a hurry-up social offensive to distract and end that situation
12:42 AM <MorkaisChosen> ... oh jesus
12:42 AM <PaCo> 50 dice to change the subject
12:42 AM <MorkaisChosen> this shit is why all the LARP movies contain no concept of the IC/OOC divide
12:42 AM <pringles> loooool
12:42 AM <MorkaisChosen> and are therefore cringe-inducingly unwatchable
12:43 AM <PaCo> anyways, I thought, ok, these guys are touched but they are mostly OK people
12:43 AM <PaCo> sometimes I'd have to stoneface them to get them to cut the shit, but I mean, friends are friends right?
12:43 AM <PaCo> So after a month or so I think I've got a bit of clout and I want to make a move on Katie
12:43 AM ⇐ Inqy quit (Inqy@sorcery-ftuc8f.range81-146.btcentralplus.com) Ping timeout: 121 seconds
12:44 AM <PaCo> I feign that I lost my cash and didn't have enough for buss fare home and ask her for a ride and tell her I will pay her gas money when we get back to my place.
12:44 AM <PaCo> My parents were not home, they were off on vacation
12:44 AM <PaCo> She agrees, we talk, things are looking good
12:45 AM <PaCo> I invite her in, we hang out awhile, I flirt, she is receptive, we start fooling around.
12:45 AM <PaCo> We are about to get down to business, and she says "I can't" so I say "Ok, no problem, but do you mind if I ask why?"
12:45 AM <PaCo> anyone want to field as guess as to what her answer was?
12:45 AM — MorkaisChosen is feeling the fear one feels as a horror story reaches its climax
12:45 AM <Endings> The blood bond?
12:45 AM <Zironic> She's undead?
12:45 AM <Will12343> I'm with Morkai
12:45 AM <MorkaisChosen> vampire blood sex doom?
12:45 AM <•Mobius> It isn't what our characters would do
12:46 AM <PaCo> "I can't fuck a Caitiff"

[Gingerlily]

@Ghost

Unlike most of the 'horror stories' posted around MU Soapbox (the kinds about curseword fights with mean staff/obnoxious players/nasty cliques) this is an actual, legit horror story. My reaction upon reading it is horror, terror for that girl, horror for you that you had to even be a witness to that disgusting, terrible, ugh ugh ugh ew situation.

Legit horror right here, it made my stomach twist. If I were that girl's parents that GM would have been in a courtroom so fast. No no no.

[Cobalt]

@Ghost
Jesus. Just. Jesus.

The most "horror" story I have is that while I was in the Cam LARP, we had a "core group" and then folks that came in from further out of town (Fort Lauderdale, and then out out northward). There was often times drinking after game. I'm chilling with a chick from one of the non-Core group, and her boyfriend(??) and another guy are chilling drinking with a guy from the core group. The night is going well. Drinking continues.

Then there is fighting. Fighting starts by the pool. Fight gets broken up. Fight was between one of the core-group fellows, and the boyfriend(??) of the chick I was hanging out with. The out-of-towners are going to leave, one of them is sober and can drive. So we're in the process of getting folks out to the car. When the core-group fellow comes from around the house and starts off at the mouth again. At some point calls the chick a whore.

Her boyfriend(??) is being held back, but the guy antagonizing him keeps going off at the mouth. He says something else about the chick, and all of the sudden she's jumping from where she was to go after him. And I'm grabbing her about the waist and holding onto her. Meanwhile, cops have been called. And I'm like: Just stop, just stop, the cops are on the way. Don't do anything.

And she eventually collapses, so I'm on the driveway in a tangle with a very drunk chick, who is now sobbing and telling me she missed her period when the police arrive.

ETA: I'm still not entirely sure what was going on that night. But most I can piece together is that the core-group guy was jealous of chick and her boyfriend.

[Ghost]

@Cobaltasaurus for the record, in WoD LARP lingo, this was not a CamFanclub game but an unaffiliated offshoot of OWbN players in the Phoenix area.

Your story, ugh, for lack of a better term, sometimes people just need to be cool. That must've been a pain in the ass.

@Groth I totally LOLd. Can't fuck a caitiff. I knew girls like that back in the day who took it way too seriously.

True Story: I LARPed one night in New Orleans with a number of people who claimed (whether it was true or not) to have been friends with the infamous "Vampire Clan" killer, Roderick Ferrell (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Ferrell). From what i understand, he was down in NoLa a lot while i was down there. I might have met him and not remembered. That summer of 96 was the absolute prime of Gothic-Punk WoD taking LARP too seriously, and New Orleans was kind of an epicenter of it. I met at least 20-30 people walking around claiming to be Tzimisce, Brujah, etc. There were so many and a good number of times I had no idea whether or not a LARP was going on, or if they were for that taking it too far type.

Great time to be in NoLa, though. Trent Reznor's club was amazing and with Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite, it was vampire stuff and goth people with capped fangs everywhere.

[Bobotron]

And every day I thank my lucky stars that I stopped doing Cam LARP and only do/run local troupe LARP now. The lack of insanity has been hyper-refreshing. Despite having about 40 regular players, I think the most social weirdness we have is a couple of young guys (19-21) who have some social awkwardness (poor David, wants to play a political character and is trying, but he gets nervous and stutters when he has to speak in front of the big crowd since he's the defacto Brujah leader, but he gets it done).

I guess I'll chalk it up to the majority of our crew being in their mid-late 20s/early 30s on up, with some of these younger kids being new, but really good players (even our one kid who is always 'jumps in feet first, with feet covered in concrete tied to anchors' often without considering character stuff, though he is trying sometimes).

I think my worst LARP horror stories come from the ICC -- International Camarilla Conclave -- events in the Camarilla. I helped out with security once and trying to ensure people aren't diddling in the stairwells (and in the pool, and in the hallways, and in EVERYWHERE) gets really tiring. Combined with the fact that, at one con, the actual con staff had to announce 'please use your showers, you have a hotel room, it has a shower, please be kind to everyone around you' setup, it turned me off from large cons. That and the people who have no anything outside of the Camarilla and so get insane OOC when they don't get their way IC.

[Jaded]

LARP things. Good god.

The first location we ever played at was ran by a guy named Scott at a house that his parents were trying to sell and had been on the market for six months - it was a small two floor ranch with attached barns for horses out in the middle of BFE Ohio between Springfield and Mechanicsburg. The troupe consisted of three small group of people from this area, separate towns really, coming together to play. So the membership was about 20 people.

My first time going out to the ranch house to LARP with these people, there were these three girls in the Springfield group that were dressed all goth and vampire-like. And they thought vampires were HOT. The evening ended when Scott discovered the quasi-orgy going on in his old bedroom because IC LARPwise these girls felt that Dominate was a valid excuse to get their tops off and their mouths on any variety of shaft that was presented before it. Because it was RP. And that was what they'd do.

Weeks later, the girls and half the people that came with them from Springfield never returned. We had a new guy who thought index cards for weapon props sucked - and brought his own real sword and an actual empty Glock. His reasoning when people freaked out having a gun pointed at them was to go "It's not loaded! See!" and then rapidly rack the slide after disengaging it to try to prove his point. We never saw him again.

The last gem was years later. New troup based solely out of London in a gaming store that had opened in town. Scott was the Storyteller Prime for us again. The game fell apart when he started printing out the emails of the players from one clan, and share them with other people in other clans for the sole purpose of derailing every play that the first group made, and every influence move they initiated. When the cheating was discovered all six members of the clan quit the game and it pretty much fell apart after that since no one trusted Scott anymore.

The lightest of my horror stories was a case of ruined clothes. We had a guy who would pre-cut ketchup packets and if he did damage to you in combat he'd throw them at you hard enough to spatter ketchup on you for every damage in health that he did. The Storyteller was okay with this.

[Gingerlily]

@Jaded

This is just an advertisement for gun control. Another nope.

[Cirno]

@Gingerlily said:

@Jaded

This is just an advertisement for gun control. Another nope.

I have guns and swords. Maybe I should give it a try.

Edit: I'm kidding. I have little wish to be shot by the police.

[Ghost]

Anyone remember this story? Conservative Christian would-be Congressman by day, blood-sucking coke of whores asses badass vampire by night?
http://www.businessinsider.com/floridas-vampire-candidate-future-of-american-politics-2014-4

[Cirno]

@Ghost said:

Anyone remember this story? Conservative Christian would-be Congressman by day, blood-sucking coke of whores asses badass vampire by night?
http://www.businessinsider.com/floridas-vampire-candidate-future-of-american-politics-2014-4

Yes. I was sad he didn't make it to the seat of power.

[Gingerlily]

@Cirno said:

@Gingerlily said:

@Jaded

This is just an advertisement for gun control. Another nope.

I have guns and swords. Maybe I should give it a try.

Edit: I'm kidding. I have little wish to be shot by the police.

Seriously. I do not want to watch some headline explode about an unloaded gun at a LARP and "they never should have shot him/her, he was ONLY PRETENDING TO BE A VAMPIRE" and have to try to make careful faces so people at work and such don't have any way to guess I even know what a vampire larp is. Mercy guys.