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LARP - Live action role-playing game

LARP

I've never LARPed, it doesn't really interest me because for me, tabletop role-playing allows and requires the use of suspension of disbelief to imagine an entirely fictional world and character, that you and the other players see in your mind's eye, in a shared imagination space.

LARPing has an alien visual component, the costuming and relies heavily upon actual full in-character acting ability of the players, which for me, is the wrong approach - I and the other players know I am not a plucky halfling pit fighter, nor a vixenous elven targeteer, and dressing as one entirely breaks the idea of the completely fictional shared imagination space and character concepts, as these ideas are intended to be superimposed over what are very obviously not what they are supposed to be.

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Persephone: Split from here in order to maintain subject matter.

game role-playing action Live LARP

In the years of playing that LARP I have seen more women join or come out of the wood work that on and off played in the group but even if all of the member where to lined up and counted women only make 10% or less of the LARPing community I am exposed to.

When I began to look at how they are portraying themselves I fell in love with the braking stereotypes concept.

In the LARP I play in earning noble title is a long and hard work. But nearly half the women that played in the game had done so. Emerging as leaders and taking charge in a way that benefited] the entire group. The other half of the weapon I noticed tended to play self-sufficient characters Thieves, Scouts, or Gypsy Arch Mages that could likely shank a man in the back if need be, or just fireball him in the head depending on who it was. I played the game for 3 years before I saw a signal woman in a roll of a wench bar hand, cream puff princess, or week lady needing protection. Yes for the 3 years the men still treated the women most of the time as if they were all that way even if they were better on the field of battle and took down more foes then any of the men. Every time after a fight the guys would make some comment suggesting the battle field was no place for a lady and that the blood of his foes should not sole the links of a woman's blade.

So, I spent the last couple of years recruiting men and women to join my LARP game, officially I found about 7 new players over the last 2 years to go to the game, 4 women 3 men. Nearly 50/50. Guess what of the 3 men only one of them still plays. And as for the 4 women, all of them still play and they each brought a handful more gamer friends" with them to join. This told me that it was the girl gamers that where helping the most to promote the growth and stability of the game.

In the last year more of the men that had played the game for a long time became busy with work or had to move a way and more girls joined. I happy to say that what at one time was only 10% of my LARP group as women is nor more like 33% making 1 in 3 players a woman. Even the games staff [which] at one point and for a long time been 7 men running the game now has 5 men and 1 woman as the staff.