Photos by My reflection, used sans permission.

FAQ:
Feel free to ask more questions, I'm happy to answer them.

What is LARP?
LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. It is sometimes shortened to LRP or FLRP (Fantasy). LARP is a game where players imagine themselves as characters in a game-world (often fantasy). Imagine Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft, where instead of rolling dice or tapping at a keyboard, you run around and literally act out your character's actions yourself.

Who plays LARP?
I've met people from all sorts of walks of life. Mostly they tend to be alternative people, as LARP is not usually considered cool by mainstream society. But there are people from all age ranges (most people tend to be in their 20s and 30s), and all genders (gender balance may vary. LARP is still largely male-dominated, but many games have lots of female players).

Isn't LARP really nerdy?
Yes. I'm not going to lie, looking at it from an objective perspective it can be incredibly geeky. But no more so than sitting at a computer grinding your Lv.50 Beastman Shaman, or sitting at a desk painting little models of Space Marines, or rolling dice at a tabletop game in your friend's basement.

What sorts of things do you do in LARP?
Well, more or less anything you can think of. Some LARP games involve sneaking through the woods and beating the crap out of orcs with your greatsword. Some LARP games involve playing a regency noble straight out of Jane Austin, wooing potential spouses whilst eating cake and drinking tea. Some LARP games involve crawling in the mud at the feet of your god, hoping he won't reduce you to a pair of smoking sandals. Some LARP games involve being trapped in a room for six hours whilst progressively horrible things happen to you and those around you. Some LARP games involve politicking your way into rulership of a great nation and staying just abreast of all the intrigue and assassination attempts. There really is scope for almost anything.

That doesn't sound like the LARP I've heard of. I thought it was just throwing beanbags at people and shouting "lightning bolt" whilst hitting people with tubes covered in duct tape.
That sort of LARP also exists, though mostly as local games in the USA. The international variation in LARP can be quite large. Scandinavian and Russian LARP tends to be very immersive and high quality, often eschewing rubber swords and the like completely. UK LARP tries to strike a balance between immersiveness and fun. US LARP tends to be more about hitting your mates with sticks and having a laugh, and sod the silly costumes. This doesn't hold true for all LARP in these places, but they're common trends.

What sort of setting is it? Fantasy, or what?
Settings vary from Tolkeinesque high fantasy through to historical settings, through to sci-fi, through horror and many others. Anything from the grim dark future of the 41st millenium (Warhammer 40k for the uninitiated) to the time of greek and roman myth, to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, to completely alternate universes altogether. Not all LARP involves fantasy; orcs, elves and magic may be common but aren't the be-all and end-all of LARP.

Is LARP different to historical reenactment? I've seen you post pictures of you dressed as a viking. Is that LARP?
That was historical reenactment. The two are subtly different; in LARP you are roleplaying your character as part of a game. Reenactment tends to focus on recreating history as it was, without there being an underlying game to be played. They do of course have many similarities (the costumes, often the fighting - though reenactment fighting tends to be for display purposes), and in the US the line is blurred even further by groups like the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). In general the two are seperate though there may be some overlap.

I want to try this out. How do I get started?
If you're in the UK, PM me and I can try to give you some advice. If you're outside the UK I suggest looking up your local games/comic shop and asking if they know of anything nearby that you can get involved in. The internet is also useful.

Have you seen Role Models?
Yes.
Is it accurate?
Sort of.

Show me some more pictures.
Sure. All the photos in this post are from Odyssey, a system run by Profound Decisions in the UK.

Concerning the economy, it is actually amazing what one can find out. During a titan build, for example, the cost of Scordite, a commonplace ore, nearly doubles, as it's metals are critical to the components needed. If more games had this kind of economy, not only would it be more immersive, but after a given time, it would be near indestructible - nearly nothing could serious harm the market.

I'm hoping to do some work on game economies as part of my doctorate, so it would be interesting so see whether that conjecture requires some prior assumptions about the game environment for it to be correct. For example, in most games the developer often acts like a central bank and regulates the economy through inflows and outflows, and regulates resource availability. I think that's what holds many systems up - after all even real-world economies can crash heavily if they're mismanaged. Game systems are much more susceptible to people gaming the system and manipulating methods of play in order to maximise their wealth, which can easily lead to inflation or the bottom dropping out of goods and resources markets (and the inherent job loss that entails), and so on.

I figured this could do with it's own thread. Just a whimsical thing; see how you score. Suggestions on a postcard to this address.

Icon	Title	Description	MemberScore
	Starting Out	Make your first post	5
	Wait... Don't I Know You?	Make 100 posts	10
	Oh, It's You.	Make 500 posts	15
	Forum Regular	Make 1000 posts	20
	Boardfly	Make 5000 posts	25
	Need A New Keyboard	Make 10000 posts	40
	Need New Fingers	make 25000 posts	50
	I Have Something To Say	Start a thread	5
	Spinner	Start 10 threads	10
	Weaver	Start 50 threads	30
	Hot Topic	Start a thread which gets over 100 replies	25
	Burning Issue	Start a thread which gets over 500 replies	50
	Everyone's Seen It	Start a thread which gets over 20,000 views	20
	No-one Will Ever Read This Thread	Start a thread which gets stickied	20
	Someone Knows Who I Am	Have someone refer to you by name	5
	I Survived The Spore Forum...	Start a thread in Spore: General	10
	...And All I Got Was This T-Shirt	Have someone else start a thread with the same topic	30
	Resistance Is Futile	Post in each Spore-related section	5
	You Will Be Assimilated	Make 100 posts in any one of the Spore-related sections	10
	We Are The Swarm	Make 1000 posts in the Spore-related sections	20
	Warrior	Make more than 10 posts, each with over 100 words, in a single thread	10
	Warrior's Emblem	Be assigned a Flame Warrior type	10
	Grizzled Veteran	Achieve the prerequisites for Warrior in both a religion-related and a politics-related thread	25
	Push It To The Limit	Make a post so long you hit the character limit and are forced to use a second post	20
	Storyteller	Start an RP that involves at least 5 people	10
	Loremaster	Start an RP that continues for at least 10 pages	20
	Gamemaster	Maintain a metagame for at least 5 pages	10
	Incredible Skills	Maintain a metagame for at least 20 pages	30
	Hangin' Around	Accumulate a day of time spent on the forum	10
	Home From Home	Accumulate a week of time spent on the forum	15
	Cave Dweller	Accumulate a month of time spent on the forum	20
	Part Of The Problem	Post In Forum Games	5
	Part Of The Solution	Post In Site News	5
	Diverse Interests	Post in every forum section	10
	Stalin Approves	Post in the Off Topic... Topic	5
	Stepping Into The Minefield	Post in the Religion thread	5
	Identify Yourself!	Post a picture of yourself in the Photo Album thread	5
	Worth A Thousand Words	Post a new picture in the Random Image Bonanza	5
	Insomniac	Post in every hour of the day	20
	Behind The Name	Meet another forumite in real life	15
	Democracy In Action	Vote at least 50 times	10
	Eminently Quotable	Have someone sig one of your comments	20
	Puppet	Quote someone else in your sig	5
	Gabber	Chat in the IRC channel or other forum-related chat application	5
	Regular	Spend at least 20 days online	10
	Old-Timer	Spend at least 50 days online	20
	Parent	Adopt a newbie	10
	Are You The Gatekeeper?	Find all the forum's hidden keys	50
	33rd Victor	Be a Winner	10
	Loser	Change your forum habits so as to farm these achievements	-∞

More to come, possibly. Suggestions welcome. Post your scores, if you're so inclined. If you hit one of these, stick it in this generator and let us know.

Achievement Icons by Brandonazz, Krakow Sam, Celdur and Yannick.

Updated:
2008-7-23 +2
2008-7-24 +4
2008-7-25 +1
2008-7-29 +3
2008-9-08 +1
2008-9-10 +1
2008-10-05 +1

Ah, transhumanism. I don't know what inspired me to create this topic, but I thought it might be interesting to see what people thought. Wikipedia can probably explain it better than I can:

Transhumanism, a term often used as a synonym for "human enhancement", is an international, intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death.

While many transhumanist theorists and advocates seek to apply reason, science and technology for the purposes of reducing poverty, disease, disability, and malnutrition around the globe, transhumanism is distinctive in its particular focus on the applications of technologies to the improvement of human bodies at the individual level.

What are your thoughts on this sort of thing? Would you go for it, or not? What does it mean to be a transhumanist, or a transhuman? Is it ethical, is it desirable? What does this have to do with a potential technological singularity, the future of the species, and moral/religious philosophy?

I stumbled across this report a second ago. I'm having trouble finding stories on it elsewhere, but a press release on their website appears to confirm it.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html

Here's the Press Release.

Free Again! Lakota Sioux Make History in Withdrawl From U.S. Treaties

First Nation Travels to Washington D.C., Will Unilaterally Withdrawal from All Treaties with the United States Government

U.S., International Treaty Law Indicate Historic Land Range Returns to Sovereign Lakota People

SUMMARY: For far too long our people have suffered at the hands of the colonial apartheid system imposed on the Lakota Sioux. Our treaties with the United States government are nothing more than worthless words on worthless paper – repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life.

# The devastation this has wrought is clear: Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
# The Lakota infant mortality rate is 5x the U.S. Average.
# The Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.
# 97% of our Lakota people live below the poverty line.
# Unemployment rates on our reservations are approximately 85%.
# Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.
# Our Lakota language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.

We have no choice but to take this historic action to protect our people and our way of life, and reclaim our freedom from the colonial systems of the United States Government. So we travel to Washington D.C. to withdraw from our treaties with the United States and announce full return of our sovereign status under Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, International and Natural Law.

Sourced from http://www.lakotafreedom.com/

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/bashmilah/print.html?source=whitelist

From the page: "A Yemeni man never charged by the U.S. details 19 months of brutality and psychological torture -- the first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons. A Salon exclusive."

It's well known that there are networks of secret CIA prisons, but hard evidence of what happens there has been difficult to come by. Besides removing the right of habeus corpus, some extreme measures have been taken as part of the "War on Terror".

And of course, there's been this whole debate recently about waterboarding (bizarrely some people including the new US Attorney General seem to deny it's a form of torture) practised by CIA interrogators. Stuff like this has been endorsed by Dick Cheney. "Now, you can get into a debate about what shocks the conscience and what is cruel and inhuman. And to some extent, I suppose, that's in the eye of the beholder. But I believe, and we think it's important to remember, that we are in a war against a group of individuals and terrorist organizations that did, in fact, slaughter 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11, that it's important for us to be able to have effective interrogation of these people when we capture them."

From
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/waronterror/p/torturelite.htm

The Bush administration has been accused of using "torture-lite," or "moderate physical pressure," against detainees. In practical terms, what does this mean?
Psychological Torture: The number one criterion for American torture is that it must leave no physical marks, and psychological torture certainly qualifies. Whether U.S. officials are threatening to execute a prisoner's family or just falsely claiming that the leader of his terror cell is dead, it's hard to imagine a form of torture that is more effective--or easier to get away with--than a steady diet of misinformation and threats.
Sensory Deprivation: When you're locked up in a cell, it's already remarkably easy to lose track of time. Eliminate all noise and light sources--or, as was done to the Guantanamo prisoners at one point, simply bind, blindfold, and earmuff a prisoner into temporary oblivion--and life becomes a hellish, sanity-destroying experience. Whether prisoners subjected to long-term sensory deprivation can still tell fiction from reality is, of course, another question.
Starvation and Thirst: Maslow's hierarchy of needs identifies basic physical needs as the most fundamental--more fundamental than religion, political ideology, or community. A prisoner who is being given enough (unpleasant) food and water to survive, but only just, can go as long as a week before looking physically thinner--but will soon find that his or her life revolves around the quest for food.
Sleep Deprivation: Studies have shown that missing a night's sleep temporarily drains 10 points from a person's IQ. Consistent sleep deprivation, through harassment, exposure to bright lights, and exposure to loud, jarring music and recordings, can drastically impair judgment.
Waterboarding: Water torture, one of the oldest and most common forms of torture, came to the United States with the first colonists and has cropped up many times since then. In the latest incarnation, waterboarding, a prisoner is strapped down to a board and then dunked in water until nearly drowned, then brought back, gasping, to the surface. The interrogator repeats the procedure until the desired result is obtained.
Forced Standing: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," Donald Rumsfeld wrote in a 2002 interrogation memo. "Why is standing limited to four hours?" Rumsfeld would probably feel a little differently about this if he had to stand in place for 8-10 hours, which can cause ankle swelling, bruising, and excruciating pain.
Palestinian Hanging (aka Palestinian Crucifixion): This form of torture, referred to as "Palestinian hanging" due to its use by the Israeli government against Palestinians, involves binding the prisoner's hands behind his or her back. After fatigue sets in, the prisoner will inevitably fall forward--putting full body weight on the shoulders, and impairing breathing. If the prisoner is not released, death by crucifixion results. Such was the fate of U.S. prisoner Manadel al-Jamadi in 2003.
Sweatboxes: In this form of torture, sometimes referred to as the "hot box" or simply as "the box," the prisoner is locked up in a small, hot room which, due to lack of ventilation, essentially functions as an oven. When the prisoner cooperates, he or she is finally released. Long used as a form of torture within the United States (most recently against one Alabama activist in 1998), it is particularly effective in the arid Middle East.
Sexual Abuse and Humiliation: Various forms of sexual abuse and humiliation documented in U.S. prisons include forced nudity, forcible smearing of menstrual blood on prisoners' faces, forced lapdances, forced transvestitism, and forced homosexual acts on other prisoners. These abuses and alleged abuses should be considered in light of the fact that most detainees are deeply religious Muslims, and many are married.

A question to the Americans on the forum - doesn't this sort of thing worry you at all? I mean, if it happened in another country wouldn't you be outraged?

I'm surprised we don't have a thread about this most magnificent of reviews yet:

Zero Punctuation is a game review published by the Escapist Magazine, featuring Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. The content isn't always entirely SFW, but it's damn funny and worth a watch.

My favourite one so far has been the Medal of Honor one; which is your favourite and why?