Larping
LARPing is something I do on the weekends (mostly on every other Fri and Sat night from 6pm-1am.) at UMASS with lots of people who are now my friends. Not like any of you care, but I do have a few pictures of my friends at UMASS You can find their picture links at my "pictures" site.
What IS LARPing, you might ask yourself...well...in the simplest terms, i will describe it as a game...similar to playing HOUSE. You have mom and dad and sis and bro with the occasional Spot, the dog. In LARPing terms, everyone has a character they either create or are assigned to play. We therefore will go out into the world dressed and acting like the character. In most people's cases, the characters in this certain LARP are not human. We pretend to be vampires...yes, you heard me correctly. We pretend to be vampires. It's not nearly as stupid as it sounds. It's more of a political activity than anything gothic. Most people who participate there aren't even goth. The point of the game? You're asking the point of the game? It's to become powerful...and have lots of status...and to be important, and kill people, to spend time with your friends, and to have fun. For some people, the point of the game is to set up some sort of structure and manage to keep the vampire society hush hush from the normal every day human society...because then we'd be hunted and experimented on. This is known as the Masquerade. For others, the point of the game is the opposite. They don't care about structure and believe that since they are powerful beings, they can destroy and kill at their leisure...there's also something called PLOT...which can be hard to find. In order for the players to not want to stick a fork in their eye because of the boredom and lack of things to do, the creaters of the game, also known as Game Masters (GMs) and Storytellers will make some sort of funky plot for people to follow. Plot is good.
If you need any more information, I have a link to Dark Dominions, one of the LARPs I participate in at UMASS, and Valley of Shadows, also known as "Goose's Run."
Dark Dominions: http://members.nbci.com/deravyn/Dark_Dominions.html and also http://www.darkdominions.com
Goose's Run: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gosselin/
So Dark Dominions, a year after its reboot,
has decided to convert back to their old ways (thanks Adam) of
playing Vampire. Unfortunately he's keeping it to just Camarilla,
but, you know, it's better than nothing. Actually, he meant for
it to be Camarilla (definition: a sect of vampires devoted to
politics), but lots of the players decided they wanted to be
independents or anarchs. This is troublesome because Adam doesn't
really want the players rebelling. He wants the city to remain
Camarilla, but the harder he pulls, the harder the players pull
back. Me? I'm a storyteller too. I'm leaving that problem up to
Adam and while they're struggling, i'm going to initiate some
plot that if ignored could bring about the end of the world.
*giggle*
Everything else has seemingly been flushed down the toilet. There was dark ages, rage and mage, werewolf, the shadowrun, ...what else? oh well. What we have this semester is Dark Dominions: Sin City (Las Vegas circa 1995), and Mass Acres, the immortal run. Man oh man it's really difficult to explain. Grant, Brendan, and a few other people are GMs for this run. They came up with their own rules about testing (meaning Rock Paper Scissors) that's completely different from the Mind's Eye Theater/ White Wolf version. It's essentially like highlander. You have humans and immortals, and they are broken up into factions like the russian mob, triad, cops, odinists, gypsys, satanists, paranormal investigators, and the italian mofia. I'm sure i'm forgetting something...but who cares. The objective is: there's plot of course so we work on that, and the Immortals follow their "there can be only one" motto and chop off each others heads. Also - the cops are crooked. Me? I'm a paranormal investigator.
Among the LARPers I hang out with, I constantly enjoy the company of: Adam, Shana, Kevin, Brandon, Brenz, Elija, Sexy Nick, Hanky poo/Hanky Panky (although he is LAME), Joe, Colby (Brian), Xander, Matty, Sean, Chris, Justin, Tommy, Bish...and I'm sure there's more...but i'm just forgetting. I'm so sorry if I forgot about you!
Let's not forget about pizza. We go to Superior Pizza afterwards. The pizza is far from Superior, though. Shana and I have spent many a minutes in the bathroom recovering from "inferior pizza." BUT it's still a good time. We talk about the run and just chat. Sometimes we have GMs and storytellers work out scenes that were left unfinished.